thoughts drift. He thought about going for another swim, to clear his head, but then, too quickly, even before he could avoid it, he was remembering the weedy field and the fight that Tisler’s stiffening limbs had put up against the final confirmation of his death. Tisler had managed to surprise everyone, had managed to set minds to work on his death that had never given him a second thought when he was alive. That was, of course, a sad inversion of the way life should be played.
But Graver learned a lesson every day on the fallacy of the concept that life “ought” to be a certain way. Everyone believed in that, of course; perhaps it was the last vestige of a long-submerged Platonism-the idea of the ideal, that somewhere there was lightness and perfection and if we could only adjust or fine-tune ourselves or society or our environment, then life would be as it “ought” to be.
Maybe Tisler’s suicide was his own comment on the “oughtness” fallacy. Maybe he decided that was a screwed concept-or maybe he decided that just a little more pressure on the trigger was the precise amount of fine tuning needed to bring the idea of “oughtness” full circle to perfection.
When the telephone rang on the corner of his desk, it startled him. He cringed to think that there were still developments breaking in Tisler’s grim death. It was approaching one o’clock. It occurred to him that he might not answer it, though there was never really any possibility that he wouldn’t. But he did let it ring six times. Still holding the dish towel in one hand, he reluctantly picked up the receiver with his other.
“Hello.”
“Marcus?”
It was a woman’s voice, not Dore’s, not instantly recognizable. His mind began reeling through an inventory of voices.
“Yes,” he said, waiting for another audible clue. And then immediately he was cautious, even suspicious, afraid she might disconnect without speaking again.
The next voice was a man’s. “Graver, this is Victor Last.”
Graver recognized this voice immediately, even though he didn’t think he had heard it in eight years. Last’s voice was distinctive for its softness, even kindness, and its peculiar accent Last was the son of British parents who owned a shipping business in Veracruz, Mexico, where Last was raised. His pronunciation was a wonderful amalgam of several languages.
“Well, this is a surprise, Victor,” Graver said. He was wary.
“Yeah, well, I’m in the city now,” Last said. “Thought I ought to check in with you.”
Graver could hear the hollow, rushing-air sound of Last attempting to cover the mouthpiece while he spoke to someone with him, probably the woman who had been on the telephone when Graver answered it.
“Uh, look,” Last said, coming back on the line, “I’d, uh, I’d like to talk to you. Could we get together for a drink?”
“Victor, you’ve caught me at a bad time. I’ve got a lot of fires to put out at-”
“It actually would be best tonight,” Last interrupted. His voice was calm and natural, agreeable, as though Graver had called him to ask for a meeting at Last’s convenience.
This polite disconnect with the reality of their situation put Graver on guard even more. Graver looked at the dish towel in his hand. Shit.
“Okay. Where are you? North? South?”
“The best place, I think, would be where we used to meet,” Last said casually. Graver noted that he had avoided saying the name.
“Is it still there?”
“Sure.”
“It’s late. It’ll be closed.”
“I checked it out,” Last said. “It’ll be open.”
“Fine,” Graver said in resignation. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Twenty minutes,” Last said, and the line went dead.
Chapter 9
The small La Cita Cafe was only a block from the ship channel, near the neck of the turning basin in a barrio that never changed. Two languid Guadalupe palms still flanked the dirty, mandarin red front door, their huge, rough trunks rooted on the little spit of dirt and weeds between the buckled sidewalk and the rock building. A single strand of flamingo pink neon light still bordered the two horizontally rectangular front windows with their rounded corners, and the porthole in the front door still allowed a glimpse of the murky interior before you entered.
Graver parked across the street and waited a moment. He surveyed the neighborhood of small bungalows tucked back under old trees, their dim interiors glimpsed through the cinnamon vines that laded the dilapidated fences of thin wire and wood and the banana plants that lent a cool grace to the graceless, bare yards. He saw no cars parked along the street that seemed out of place.
He got out of the car, locked it, and walked across to the cafe. The neighborhood night smelled of the ship channel, a mixture of bayou and bay water, of diesel engines and foreign ports, of neighborhood kitchens and other-country foods. Graver inhaled deeply of the smells and let them carry him back eight years.
He pushed open the door and stepped inside. La Cita had never been much of a place, but it had been a good cafe. Now the once warmly lighted interior that had smelled of Greek and Mexican food was a gloomy twilight of neon beer signs, and the air was a bad breath of stale bodies, dead cigarettes, and rancid grease. Behind the bar a heavy Mexican woman was huddled under a small, goose-neck lamp reading a magazine. There were a few dark visages in the corners, but he walked past them to the back door and stepped out into the patio where strings of low-wattage, colored lights were draped back and forth above the stained concrete dance floor. Here everything was the same, the cinder-block walk that formed the sides and, across the back, a series of low-arched openings through which he could see the slow-drifting lights of ships moving through the channel. And the chunky wooden tables that randomly bordered the edges of the patio were still there too. But on this hot summer night only three or four of them were occupied by a few men and women who looked as though they had never had a chance at anything or, worse, had thrown it away and never had learned to forgive themselves.
Walking to an empty table toward the back corner, Graver sat so that he could see the door that opened onto the patio from the tavern. Behind him, through one of the arches, he could hear a tug grumbling softly past the wharves. He ordered a bottle of beer from a young man who had one side of his chest caved-in, causing a shoulder to sag and making him walk crab-like as though always having to correct a drift He distinguished himself in this shabby setting, however, not by his deformity, but by having an immaculate haircut which he had combed to perfection. He also wore a dazzling white waiter’s apron which, in this setting, undoubtedly was considered a foppish flair.
As Graver drank his beer, a wraith of a man in his early thirties got up from where he had been sitting alone and put some coins in the jukebox on the far side of the dance floor. He returned to his table, and in a moment the accordions and cornets of a conjunto began playing while the man lighted a cigarette. As if by request, two worn prostitutes wearing tight dresses that barely reached past their crotches and accented their obtruding stomachs, left their male companions at their table, stepped onto the dance floor, embraced, and began dancing. Seemingly oblivious to the sprightly rhythm of the conjunto, they moved mournfully about the floor, the calves of their thin legs knotted tightly as they crane-stepped on high heels that scratched across the gritty concrete floor, stomach to stomach, the arms of each draped over the other’s shoulders, their foreheads together in unsmiling partnership.
Graver watched them, as did their companions and the wraith. Nearby a man and woman ignored them and shared a thick joint of marijuana in a sweet, mauve haze. When the music stopped the women returned to their companions, and Graver finished his beer.
Five minutes later Victor Last walked out the back door of the cafe, looked quickly around the courtyard, and started toward Graver, passing through the patches of colored lights in his casual, loose gait with which Graver was so familiar. He was wearing straw-colored, full-cut linen trousers with pleats, a blousy and wrinkled long-sleeved silk shirt, and a light tan, soft-shouldered sport coat with patch pockets. His dun hair was stylishly long, though barbered around the ears and neck, and combed back with a lock falling carelessly over his forehead.
