That was the last time I saw her alive.
7
I've never seen anything like that before.' 'Any luck at all, most people never do.' Verne knew about the man I'd killed a few years back, but we never spoke of it, not then, when I climbed into bed beside her after the long drive back with his blood still on my hands, and not now, as we sat together, eleven in the morning, on her narrow balcony. Box seat at the Orpheum. Beneath us opera New Orleans went into its second act.
We all know it's out there, just at the edge of our vision, past the circle of light from our campfires. Camus said only one diing is necessary, to come to terms with death, after which all things are possible; but we go on failing to meet its eyes, ever dissembling, dressing it up in period costume, caging it in music or drama, gelding it to murder mysteries: how clever we are.
How I used to love that late scenefrom 'Benito Cer-eno.' I was fifteen, skipping breakfast before school and ignoring calls to dinner because I'd just discovered books and what seemed to me then their far realer world. Blacks have taken over the ship but with the approach of an official vessel set up an elaborate Trojan-horse masquerade whereby the enslaved whites pretend to dominance.
That tome was the ultimate dissembling. Because the slave couldn't say what he meant, he said something else. And that scene from 'Benito Cereno' seemed to me just about as something else as it got.
In African folklore there's a great tradition of the trickster, Esu-Elegbara. Hoodoo turns him into Papa Legba. In America he becomes the signifying monkey, given to self-relexive flights of ironic, parodic language foregrounding what W.E. B. Du Bois defined as the black's double consciousness.
We're all tricksters. We have to be, learn to be. Dissembling, signifying, masking-you only think you have a hold on us, tar babies all.
I got up and this time, instead of shuttling glasses in and back out, exported the botde itself from the kitchen.
'Appreciate your help, Verne. Some comfort in knowing I won't have to disturb Doo-Wop.'
'Man's busy making a living.'
'Aren't we all.'
'But findingher there like that pretty much shuts it down for you, doesn't it? What's left? Eddie Bone's out of the picture. Now the woman.'
I drank off the last of my Scotch. Its sudden swell of warmth inside echoed precisely that of the long, slow noon and sun beyond-or my feelings for LaVerne. Front tire flat, her bicycle leaned on its kickstand inches away from my right ear. Before me on the railing were small pots of basil, rosemary, thyme and lemon grass.
'You're right. Precious little left to go on. Clothes imtraceable: everythingfrom Montgomery Ward and the like. No mail, of course. Cans of Spam and generic chili, packets of hot dogs; sacks, boxes and condiments from carryout Chinese food, old White Casde burger bags. We're not even sure who was living in the apartment.'
The phone rang. Verne went in to answer and remained there conversing, some friend, maybe, or one of her regulars, as I finishedoff the Scotch. I looked in at her and she smiled, holding out her left hand with thumb, index and little fingers extended: Love you.
Verne leaned against the wall as she talked. The phone was set in a niche there. A table beneath held piles of junk mail and unread magazines, a pad of paper for messages.
Just like the entryway on Jane Street.
Verne hung up, detouring to the bathroom. When she came back out, starting to ask if I wanted breakfast, I'd taken over the phone, was waiting while they tracked Don down.
'Lew.'
'What a man. Party all night, still show up for work.'
'What the fuck else am I gonna do, stay home and suck aspirin, watch reruns of Hazel? How you feeling?'
'Like a garbage bag left out in the sun.'
'Good. Hate to think I was the only one. What can I do for you?'
'Had a thought. Jane Street been packed up?'
'Yeah.'
'There was a wad of paper on the table just inside. Discarded pages folded in half to make a scratch pad, kind of thing you might jot names and numbers on. Any chance that got kept?'
'Damned good chance, if there was writing on it.'
'That's what I was hoping.'
'Anything there, though, it's already been checked out.'
'What I'm wondering now is what was on the back of them, where they came from.'
Don thought about that a moment. 'You at home?'
'Yeah.'
'Let me call down to Property. Any luck, they might actually be able to find the stuff. I'll get right back to you.'
While I waited, I went in and ground more coffee. Verne said she was going back to bed. I said I might join her.
'We got half lucky,' Don told me. 'Most of the papers got tossed-nothing there, Willis said. A few of them had numbers and the like scribbled down, though. Those, he saved.'
'And?'
'Five or six of them were mimeographs, announcing a 'town meeting' a couple of months back.'
'Where?'
'One of the high-school cafeterias, DeSalvo. In the Irish Channel. Principal rents it out to community groups for a nominal fee.'
'Any ID on the group?'
'Nothing but these tiny letters at the bottom, kind of a crooked F with the foot extended to become the cross for a T.'
'That's it? You have any idea what it is?'
'Oh, I've got something better than an idea: I've got a cop that just transferred down here from Baton Rouge. Says they started seeing it up there about a year ago, some of the rougher bars. Now they're seeing it a lot. You want, I'll have him call you.'
Ten minutes later, he did, identifying himself as Officer Tom Bonner.
'Walsh tells me you're black.'
'He tells me you're from Baton Rouge.'
'Hey, we all got our crosses to bear, right. How much you know about prison life, Griffin?'
'Less than most black men my age.'
His laugh was quick and britde. 'Know what you mean. Wife's black. One of the reasons we moved down here, thought things might be better.'
'Are they?'
'Call me back in a year. Anyway, prisons like Angola, you've got the strictest color lines that exist. Whites, blacks, Mexicans and Orientals, they keep to their own, each one's got its own space on the yard, its own section of tables in the mess. People get killed just for crossing the line.'
That much I knew.
'Generally all that stays inside. Now it looks like it's been exported, some of these guys have dragged it out with them. Inside, they were dirty white boys, defending themselves in their solidarity against the encroaching hordes, only way they'd survive. Inside, they got religion. Now they're gonna spread the gospel. And the gospel's pretty simple: White's right.'
'What's this FT business?'
'Who the fuck knows?'
'So what do they call themselves?'
