William Haggard - The New Black Mask (No 5)

In the morning I’m there watching the light appear around me. The ferries start crossing the river, and there’s a mist hanging over the river and through Algiers. In the square behind me people are starting to come out. The pigeons are sitting on Andrew Jackson, ruffling their feathers and yawning. The French Quarter streets pull away in either direction. They look low and mean and very lovely in the gray mist. Now I’m seeing this motley little faubourg with all its cracks and humps and distortions, and I know it’s not telling all of the truths about itself. That would be too painful, I guess. Its mask is affixed, and it wakes up each day and slowly stretches and doesn’t say too much about yesterday. Then there’s the carts rolling in on their wooden wheels, and the rosy faces having breakfast over at Royal Orleans, and I know it’s all right and I can lean back again.

Alice, I’m thinking, always had a good sense of timing and was always dangerous to be around for that reason. She encouraged you to do things where you knew damn well the odds were stacked against you. Like the time she talked Mary into going up in one of those gliders. Now high heels usually made my wife dizzy, but there she was one day, floating all over the valley, with her instructor before her and Alice in one right behind. Harry and I were sitting out on my patio having scotch and sodas when they went over. I couldn’t believe it, but they sure enough tipped their wings before heading up-valley again. Harry and I laughed like birthday boys when that happened.

But that was Alice. She reminded me of Lucille Ball, except she kept the whipped cream in the can. I couldn’t imagine her now, slowing down, but I could figure she still had something left. After all, she dug up Bob Blue and sent him to me. When that came to mind, I knew I suddenly wanted to talk to her about it. About all of it. It was a nice thought, us sitting out on the porch, chewing the fat. It was such a hell of a nice thought, all right. Talking with Alice again was a challenge that suddenly appealed to me. Seeing her again. I didn’t see it as a question of having paid one’s dues, but I knew this was the first thing I had really wanted to do in some time. It was not a routine motion. It was a quest. After that, it was only a matter of keeping my ass out of those gliders. I guessed she would have one tucked back somewhere.

So I call up Dick and tell him it's a go. There are a few things I have to do, I tell him. Want to turn over my route to Leo, who's this mildly retarded Quarter fellow I know. He scrounges cans but doesn't have the sense to organize. But this would be set up, and otherwise Leo is very professional. Then I have to pick up my things and say adios to a face or two.

“I’m going with you,” says Dick.

“That’s not necessary. I’ll meet you at the hotel.”

“Look, canman, you’re sitting in my new Monte Carlo.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be there shortly.” And I hang up on him and get busy. I spend an hour or two making the arrangements and doing my tidying up. Leo is pleased as hell with the offer and is hugging me and promising me the world he'll take care of my, or his, cart. Since Leo is one of the world’s great amateur spray painters (always catching the can sales at Ben Franklin’s), I picture something in translucent blue with wheels akin to Joan Crawford’s lipstick. I hurry on, giving the nod to Brother Marti, and he holds out, one last time, that squatty little Coke bottle of his. And so I take it, thinking it may be the appropriate memento to my time down under.

Back at camp, things are not so cheerful. Duke and Reese are there, having made a thorough inspection of the place and my possessions and evidently not finding what they came after. They’ve finished off my final bottle of port, and Duke is telling me how they saw me wandering around the night before and followed me back. I look around and say, “So what now?”

Reese spits and hisses his displeasure. “This is it, you old geek. You got money hid here somewheres. You sold enough cans to go to fucking Panama. Where’s it at?”

“Mailed it off to my sister,” I tell him. “You know I do, Reese. You’ve seen me.”

“ All of it?”

“All but necessities. I’ve got some pocket money you can have.”

“You sumbitch,” says Duke. “We don’t want no raggedy-ass dime ’n nickel. We want dem dollahs. Say, Reese.”

I stand there a moment, then make some idle comment about seeing what I can do for them. I start backing away when Reese lunges at me, and I take a swing at him with Brother Marti’s bottle. It comes down a good one across his head, and he hollers out loud and curses me. Duke is there, and I feel the bottle knocked away while his big arms come around me. It suddenly feels like an Oldsmobile is parked across my chest and I can’t breathe at all. Now they start dragging me off into the bushes with Reese hitting and kicking at me as we go. Then it crosses my mind about Alice, and I’m sorry, knowing she’ll believe, for the rest of her days, that her timing was off on this one.

They got me in the bushes now, really giving me hell-for, when I hear this real smooth voice saying, “Table open?” It's Dick, you see, a fresh Lucky stuck between his lips and palming the prettiest nickle-plated .38 I think I’ve ever seen. Duke and Reese drop me like a wormy apple, with Reese going on about what right the other had sticking his nose in.

“I got six rights, pizza face,” Dick tells him, then raises the revolver up to make his point. “You and your friend should really go play someplace else — like Kentucky.”

I think that’s a good one, even in my condition, and I enjoy watching the both of them back out of there. They hit the street at a brisk shuffle and disappear.

“You coming?” he asks, putting his gun away. “Or maybe you want to go play hopscotch on Canal Street?”

“All right, Dick,” I finally say, letting him help me up. I’m sore as hell all over but can’t help getting in the mood. “Let’s make like a tree and leave.”

“Ditto, canman.”

We vamoose.

Robert Sampson may be best known to students of popular culture for Yesterday’s Faces, a five-volume study of pulp magazines that is being published by Popular Press. Volumes one and two — Glory Figures (1983) and Strange Days (1984) — have appeared, and the next two volumes are with the printer. In addition to his scholarly work, Mr. Sampson, who is a management analyst at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, has published about two dozen mystery stories.

Fat raindrops rapped circles across puddles the color of rusty iron. Ed Ralston, Special Assistant to the Sheriff, said, “ 'Scuse me,” and pushed through the rain-soaked farmers staring toward the house. Ducking under the yellow plastic strip — CRIME SCENE, KEEP OUT — that bordered the road, he followed the driveway up past a brown sedan, mud-splashed and marked “Sheriff’s Patrol.”

Behind him, a voice drawled, “He’s her brother.”

The house, painted dark green and white, sat fifty feet back from the county road. That road arced behind him across farmland to hills fringed darkly with pine. Black cattle peppered a distant field. The air was cold.

In the rear parking lot, a second patrol car sat beside a square white van with “Pinton County Emergency Squad” painted across the state outline of Alabama. On the shallow porch, a deputy in a black slicker watched rain beat into the yard.

Ralston said, “Punk day, Johnny. Fleming get here yet?”

The deputy shook his head. “They’re still calling for him. Broucel’s handling things inside.” And, as the door opened, “I’m sure as hell sorry, Ed.”