“Listen,” the girl said laughing, “I can manage the black hair and some words so nice you’d never know they meant nothing at all.” She said, “But I have the torch shift tonight and I don’t guess improvisation’s what you had in mind. Get in and we’ll see who we can find. Like I said, there’s nothing here anyway.” I got in the boat. I pushed off from shore and she watched me as we seemed to drift in exactly the direction she wanted to go. “You must be very undercover,” she said. “Whoever dropped you off out here didn’t want to be seen by nobody.”
“I’m not a cop,” I said.
She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to anyone here if you are. Actually I assumed the opposite.”
“What?”
“Forget it. Your business with cops is your business.” The mansions of the park were gliding past us now, becoming more and more colossal. I could see into the houses where the tide flooded the lobbies and lights shone on the water lapping against the inner marble stairs. The first steps were covered with sea debris and the original drapes on the upper landings were rotted by the salt air, hanging in tatters and bleached in color. Every once in a while we could hear low laughter in the dark and sometimes arguing. In the distance on the southern shore of the main canal was a huge structure sitting alone on a knoll. “That’s the old hotel isn’t it?” I said.
“Yes.”
I watched for a while, then I said to her, “Do you know the person I’m talking about?”
“There’s a woman named Lucia, up near the next river.”
“You think it’s her?”
“It might be her.”
“Are we going that way?”
“Eventually. I have another live or six lights.”
I looked around me. “Can I ask you something?”
She became impatient. “Not why am I doing this for a living.”
“Two questions, actually.”
We pulled into another dock and she leaned across the boat, bringing the torch within inches of me. With one sweeping motion she lit the lantern. “Well?” she said.
“How do you direct the boat?”
“I know the water,” she said.
“Were you born in America?” I said.
“No.” She waited. “Were you?”
“I’m sure of it.” We sailed beneath a row of overhanging trees and then into the lobby of the mansion where the woman named Lucia lived. The mansion was built in an antebellum style. Inside the lobby were several very small fires burning in different wall alcoves; the light from them was dim. We sailed through some doors in the back of the lobby, and at the end of this second room I could make out the stairs. We bobbed around a little from wall to wall. For the first time she had to physically push the boat where she wanted it to go. Back here, she explained, the water’s unknowable. She got us to the stairs and I got out; it was impossible to be sure but my guess was the water came about a quarter of the way up the steps. She also got out and we pulled the small boat up the stairs to the top. We were standing in the dark and the girl called Lucia’s name, and when she didn’t get an answer we started down the hall. After a minute we saw some faint light coming from a room; she called Lucia again. I was thinking of her peering out at me from the dark corner here; I was looking for the flash of the knife but there was no moon, and the fires were too dim to catch the glint of it. Walking down the dark hall it occurred to me I didn’t really want to find her here. If she lived here then I would know the man at her knees was just another pimp for whom a little throat-slashing was not enough; I didn’t want to believe that. I didn’t want to believe the man at her knees was any common stranger other than Ben Jarry, because I needed him to be there, I needed to save his life. When I’d done that I knew I would free all of us, Jarry and myself and this Lucia; then he and I would be through with each other. Then she and I would be just beginning.
Lucia! the girl said, and we heard something from the room with the light at the end of the hall. A woman’s voice and a Spanish word.
We got to the doorway of the room. There was a large tousled bed and the threads of a canopy hanging from the posts. A white matted rug was on the floor and wallpaper ran down the sides of the room like brown water. A small dresser was directly opposite us, with a mirror.
In the mirror I caught the momentary dark reflection of someone’s black hair. There was a movement to my side, I saw it out of the corner of my eye. I turned and lurched for it, my hands in front of me to catch the blow of a knife.
Lucia, said the girl.
Lucia said something in Spanish.
The woman called Lucia indeed had black hair. She wore a black robe. But she was ten years too old and her hands were one weapon and one victim too empty. She looked at me like I was crazy.
I stopped and stared back at her. Then I looked at the other girl. She looked at both of us, and Lucia said something else, or maybe it was the same thing she’d said before.
Not your Lucia? the girl said.
She said something to Lucia and while they talked a moment I went back into the hall. I waited for the girl to come out. When she did she said, Sorry. That’s it for Spanish women with black hair, at least around here.
I knew it wasn’t her, I said. I’m glad it wasn’t her.
The
