Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

At the bar, the celebrating Guardia officers had grown progressively more hilarious. But a few of them, drunker than the others, were subsiding into a sinister quietude. They were not coastal people but Indians and mestizos from over the mountains and their style of being drunk was different. They leaned on the bar as though holding themselves up, communicating to each other in single shouted words, in whistles, sudden gestures, bursts of unpleasant laughter. Some telepathy of alcohol.

The Miami dentist came in, accompanied by a tall youthful man in an elegant guayabera. Behind them came Mrs. Paz and her sons, all combed and scented. Their entrance was cordially saluted by everyone present, not least by the officers at the bar. Holliwell gave them good evening and Heath, who apparently knew the tall man, did the same. The tall man, Holliwell assumed, was Mrs. Paz’s brother.

When the Cuban party were seated and served, an American couple came in from the darkness outside, and seated themselves at a table behind Holliwell’s chair. Holliwell had time to observe them as they passed.

The woman was of a certain age — perhaps in her forties, though she might also have been sixty or even older. She wore a muumuu with a coral necklace at her fleshy throat, and her hair, dyed deep black, was pasted against her temples like Pola Negri’s. The man was lean, pale and thick-lipped. He had very close-shaven hair and small dark eyes; his face preserved a kind of desiccated youthfulness. He was in white, even to his loafers.

The couple’s entrance induced an attitude of watchful menace in the drunken Guardia officers at the bar. But it appeared that no one knew them.

Mr. Heath watched them sit down, drawing thoughtfully on the lemon slice that had come with his fish.

“Stew Nabbs was in Key West,” Holliwell heard the man say. He himself was at the point of exhaustion. Of course the rum did not revive him.

“Ugh,” the woman muttered in a deep coarse voice, “the pits. The pits.”

The man giggled. A tiny-eyed giggle.

“Well,” Holliwell told his dining companion, “I’m going to bed. I’m out of it.”

Mr. Heath leaned forward and addressed him softly with a bland half smile.

“You’re not to go. Stay where you are.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Holliwell said.

Heath glanced over Holliwell’s shoulder at the couple and fixed his eyes on Holliwell’s.

“I want you to listen to these people. They’re extremely interesting.”

“What a guy,” the man behind Holliwell was saying to his friend. “Indictments on him from here to Seattle and he’s living it up in Key West. A house, you know? A bankroll. Fuckin’ guy. But it won’t last.”

Holliwell shrugged and frowned a question at Mr. Heath. But Heath had settled back like a man about to listen to some beloved music.

“Stay,” Heath whispered. “Listen.”

“You lived with him,” the woman said.

“I went by his pad up there. Off Duval. He’s got a kid passed out in the garage — the kid’s fourteen? Fifteen? On a tank of gas. I split. I said, ‘See you, Stewart.’ ”

“You were his pal,” the woman said.

“New York, Clyde Hotel. Aagh. That fuckin’ place. Needle Park over there.”

“Hey,” the woman crooned. “Hey, I remember, Buddy. Do I remember?”

“You remember Phelan, the loan shark?”

“I was into Phelan,” the woman said. Holliwell tried to bring her face to mind again. “You were also, Buddy. And Stew.”

“Everybody was. Me and Stew were supposed to be whattaya-callit. His men.”

“His leg breakers,” the woman said. In a sweet singsong, like one reminding a child of a lesson forgotten. “And legs were broken, in my recollection.”

The man began to curse immoderately.

“How was your dive today?” Heath asked.

“I was just thinking of the dive,” Holliwell said. “It was a lot of things.”

The young man was speaking again.

“That little harelip from Riker’s. The fuck was doing six bits a day and going to Phelan. Simpleminded. Phelan says put the arm on the little stiff. So we go to the big hotel there, the Ansonia. They got offices there, everything. Pay phone and we order shit from Riker’s. An hour later comes the harelip and we jump him. He runs, he screams like a cooze. Runs up a dozen flights of stairs. Finally me and Stew get him on the top floor. We hold him over the stairwell by his feet and it rains coin. His change, his wallet, his works, everything goes — and he’s upside down there making little bird noises. The whole goddamn time he never let go of that burger.”

“Down the purple corridor,” the woman declared, “the scarlet ibis screaming ran.”

“You know what Phelan says? He says how come you didn’t drop him?”

Holliwell’s eyes met those of Mr. Heath.

“Twixt, wasn’t it?” Heath asked. “I remember that wall very well. See anything marvelous?”

“There was something down there. I don’t know what.”

“Stew had holes in his shoes,” Buddy told his dining companion. “He wore rubbers every day. Fucking Clyde Hotel.”

“And Phelan passed away?”

“Did he ever,” Buddy said.

“Did you find it frightening?” Heath asked Holliwell.

“Oh,” Holliwell said, “I suppose. I gather it’s a sinister place.”

“It’s never been my idea of a sinister place,” Heath said.

“Right after Phelan got it,” the man behind Holliwell said, “Stew’s wig snapped. He went funny.”

“Ha,” the woman said, “I heard. I know what it was.”

“No, Olga,” the man said. He lowered his voice. “No, you don’t.”

The officers at the bar were much quieter now, drunk almost to silence. They neglected to play the jukebox. At one end of the dining hall, a waiter was counting out white candles from a stack on a table before him.

“We were still in the Clyde. Stew was chicken-hawking. All these kids, in and out. He dealt. He had a string.”

“Those kids are lousy,” Olga said. “Detestable.”

“He left town. He did one.”

“He did?”

“He did one. He took this chicken out.”

“Curtains?”

“I’m telling you,” Buddy said. “He went to L.A. I saw him there. Hollywood he went to.”

“The Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” Olga said.

“He had chickens on skateboards. Dolls, a couple. Hustling.”

“Tray bizarre,” Olga said.

“Bizarre. He was on Percodans. He was into snuffing. Him and a friend.”

“Some friend.”

“They had clients took pix. They ran the roads, Stew and this friend. Chicken snatching. Kids up the bazoom, they grabbed them. The freeways, like. Off the street.”

“Gollywilkins,” Olga said.

The Japanese lanterns in the palm grove flickered, went out, then came on again. The officers at the bar were leaving. One of them staggered past the tables into the grove, belched loudly and began to piss in the frangipani. Over the palm crowns hung an infinity of stars.

“It’s the simple life down the wall at Twixt,” Mr. Heath told Holliwell. “Clean down there. One sees so far.”

“I was thinking it was the same up here.”

“Humanist fallacy,” Heath said. “Appearances deceive. There’s a philosophical difference.”

Holliwell was unable to answer. Mr. Heath had proved himself a philosopher and once again Holliwell caught the saffron taste of Vietnam. The green places of the world were swarming with strong-arm philosophers and armed prophets. It was nothing new.

Heath was looking over Holliwell’s shoulder, holding his expression of affable uninterest. Buddy had lowered his voice further, it trembled with rodential wariness.

“Chickens were disappearing. Stew had these pix. He sold them. Famous names, he says.”