William Vollmann - The Royal Family

He wandered past the Hall of Justice where at that moment a judge was saying: Your swap surrender day would be October seventh. You have a warrantless search condition. There is a two hundred dollar fine to the indemnity fund. Based on your ability to pay, there’s a forty dollar probation fee… and Tyler crossed the street, entering the office of Mr. Cortez the bail bondsman.

What can I do for you, brother? asked Cortez with a knowing look.

My name’s Henry Tyler. I’m looking for a black lady named Africa Johnston whom I think you might have bailed—

Say, aren’t you the private detective?

Yeah.

I knew I’d heard of you. Who was it now? I think maybe Mike Hernandez in Vice dropped your name one time. Well, you know, Henry, with the market contraction right now we’re all going through some hard times. I wish I could use you. Most of the time we don’t have to hire a detective, because the family will lose their money, so they want to track the guy down.

Narrowing his eyes, Tyler said: You don’t quite get it, Mr. Cortez. Nobody’s hiring me. I’m just looking for her because I—

Well, it’s a free country, so I wish you good sport in your looking, laughed Mr. Cortez. I really can’t help you. Peace, brother.

In search of that priceless jewel of sources, the neighborhood snitch, he revisited the abandoned warehouse in Oakland where the Queen’s outcasts used to sleep, shoot up, hide and dream. It was August eighth, the day before Irene’s birthday. In the parking lot with the black cloth on his head, peering through the ground glass of his view camera, Ken the street photographer was saying to a whore so sincerely: You’re beautiful. That’s beautiful. — Tyler crawled under the dogeared flap of sheetmetal and found mounds of yellowed newspapers which dated back to the time that Deng Xiao Ping had still been alive, but which seemed to be wet with fresh spittle or some other substance. These burrows were all ringed round by concrete blocks. In the Queen’s day there’d been mattresses. — Anybody home? he called desolately. There had never been any signal to announce oneself to the Queen because her eyes and ears would have already done the announcing long before any visitor could have spied her out, but, remembering Domino’s call sign, he kicked the wall four times. He waited. Then he scraped one of the concrete blocks along the floor as loudly as he could. Nobody answered; nobody lived there anymore except for an ancient black lady he’d never seen before who whispered: ’Member I kept sayin’ there was somebody there? I miss the place, creeps and all.

But Beatrice with her smell of soap and cigarette smoke saw him one evening when it was already late enough for the fat red stripes on the back doors of ambulances to turn a cold purplish-black in the darkness, much less vivid than the purple lips of Beatrice who now rushed over, simultaneously lisping and croaking in her half-harsh, half-babyish voice: Henry, I come running, running! She had lost weight.

Hello, baby, he said.

Can I be your wife?

Sure you can, Bea.

Am I your wife? You said I’m your wife, so give me money!

Yeah, sure, Bea. Business isn’t so great for these days, but I can scrape together a couple of bucks…

Thank you, Henry. Now I know I’m your wife. You gotta always give your wife money. And that money you gave me before, I lost it at the bus ’cause somebody took my purse, so I couldn’t buy my baby his operation. You know, his tripas , his guts, they doan stay in his insides, so I got to go to the hospital, and get a ticket for way in line, maybe one-two, three-four hours so they can fix my baby. But he’s too far anyway; he’s way down in Mexico. I won’t never go back down there. Too far from my Mama. My Mama is my Queen. My other Mama said, Doan let him play outside ’cause he’s not strong, and maybe his tripas gonna get dirty. — But she’s dead like Irene, so I guess she didn’t really say that but I wish she was here to tell me what to do and how to live. She was a good Mama, just like my Queen. I always respect her so much. He’s a good baby, too, name Christian, just like you and me when we were babies, always playing, always good, like even you, even me. And my Queen says…

You never told me about your baby.

He’s a bastard.

Is his father one of your customers?

One night four men robbed me and cut me and beat me up, and then all night fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, and that’s how I got this bastard.

Is he a nice kid?

I doan know, said Beatrice with a cheery shrug.

They went to the Imperial Motel where she started to go down on him and he said: No, I don’t need it! but she snarled, bent his fingers back until they hurt, and did her job.

Thank you, he said wearily.

Thanks for nothing.

She opened her legs like the low spread-out buildings of Mexicali. Realizing that she actually wanted it, he went down on her. She reeked of excrement. When her orgasm came, tears exploded from her eyes.

Seconds afterward, her every word high-contrast and blatant like Mexican signs urgent red on yellow, like Mexicali grapes green and black shining in the sun, she told him that she was alone, that she’d fled from Domino and the others, that all her dreams told her that the Queen was dead.

Two decades before, when Tyler was just learning his trade, a wise old private eye had explained: Here’s the way you get information. Drugs. If you’re trying to get somebody’s rap sheet, well, people who need quick cash have always been for hire, whether it’s the phone company or whether it’s somebody who has access to computers or what. In other words, I don’t have access to rap sheets but I know people who do. We don’t jack each other on that stuff. It’s just like Mobil and Shell. We need each other, and we can’t all have everything. I know a guy who has access to unlisted numbers…

Tyler possessed his own list of such people. He called every one of them, and could hardly believe that these were the same “sources” who’d been so grandly infallible in years before.

Tightly gripping his heavy and reliable old telephone, made back in the monopoly days when such devices were rented, not owned, he called Mike Hernandez in Vice, who had first brought him knowledge of Dan Smooth so long ago. Usually he got that detective’s answering machine, but this time he reached the man himself, who jovially said: Yeah? as shouts of office glee rang out in the background — some party, some practical joke; maybe it was April Fool’s Day…

Mike, it’s—

Henry, old chum! How’s the life? You ever find that Queen of the Whores you were bugging me about last year? I figure she’s probably related by incest to the Loch Ness Monster…

That kind of rings a bell, said Tyler.

Listen, what can I do for you? Things are kind of in chaos around here, so I—

Wondered if you guys had picked up a Miss Africa Johnston.

What’s her social?

No social.

What do you mean, no social?

I took her prints, but even the FBI couldn’t find a match.

Then she must not be a U.S. citizen.

She’s a—

One of your whores?

Yeah, said Tyler, narrowing his eyes.

Look, buddy. I’ve been in Vice for fourteen years. If she’s been in the business, she has to have been busted. Now misdeameanors drop off the record, for the most part, within ten years. That’s the paperwork Reduction Act. But I’m sure if she’s in the life, as they say, then she must have committed some felonies. She’s the one you were looking for last year, right?