3

I went back to the office in time to get a message from Sandra saying they had caught the Riverwalk embezzler. Something about her glee left me depressed and I broke out another beer, even if it was only three o’clock. I went downstairs where I found that Lavelle had already been working on his sherry.

“How’s witchcraft?” I asked him, sliding into a wicker chair under some hanging garlic.

“Bad.” He shook his head. “Tourism is off fifty percent. I don’t know how I’m going to stay in business.” A small, dark man with a spade-shaped beard and darting eyes, he talked quickly, as if each sentence had to be uttered before it was too late. “And do you know the bastards actually cut the tourism budget this year? I mean, what else have we got in this state? What else?”

“There’s always pre-Columbian artifacts,” I said.

“Tougher all the time,” he declared. “Used to be Houston was half the market. Oil money. Now look at ’em. Do you know John Connally’s broke?”

“Is that where most of the buyers are? Private individuals?”

“A lot of them. But museums are a big market. Or they used to be, before the laws were tightened up. Now there’s a reciprocal agreement with Mexico, and with a lot of the other countries down south. So the museums have to be careful that what they’re getting is legally in the country. Papers can be forged, of course, but it’s a big risk. No, the money’s definitely with the private buyers.”

“Tell me something. Where do you get the items you sell?” We had never discussed the subject and I knew I was taking a chance.

He gave me a dark look. “You have your secrets, I have mine.”

“Oh, come on, David, I’m not going to screw up your action.”

“I told you not to call me that. Not here, anyway. The name is Henri.”

“Sure. Now about your sources …”

He shrugged. “Various. Some tourists, but mainly from some people in the various countries who know what they’re doing. Some have diplomatic cover, so there’s no problem. Salvador is another good market these days. They don’t have any laws down there about export. Now please don’t ask me to name names.”

“Of course not. But how do you know they aren’t selling you fakes?”

He scowled. “How do you know your car has genuine GM parts?”

“I don’t know. So how do I?”

“Feel. Appearance. Dealing with reputable people. Sometimes, of course, you have to get an appraisal by an expert.”

“Where would you go, Tulane?”

“Tulane?” He snorted. “Those bastards won’t lift a finger. It’s against their ethics. I go to Jason Cobbett, the director of the Crescent City Cultural Center.”

“The man responsible for the Maya exhibition?”

“That’s right. He knows his artifacts, especially ceramics.”

“And it’s not against his ethics?”

“He’s a museologist, for Christ’s sake, not a damned archaeologist. Don’t you know they fight like cats and dogs? Archaeologists accuse the museum folks of being collectors, and museologists accuse the archaeologists of trying to be high priests that hide their knowledge from the public.”

The door opened then and a middle-aged woman in designer jeans walked in, accompanied by a man in shades and Bermudas. Lavelle’s glance told me to get lost, so I went back upstairs, which was as well, because my phone was ringing.

Somehow, before I even lifted it, I knew it was the Captain.

“Micah!” It was more a bellow than a statement, and I wondered what effect it would have on the fiber optics of the long-distance lines.

“I’m here,” I told him.

“It’s about damned time. I thought I was going to have to talk to that goddamned thing of yours, that recorder. I’ll be damned if I will, too.”

I sighed. They were an hour ahead of us in Charleston, so it was almost four, which meant he was well into his third cuba libre.

“Well, I’m here now,” I said evenly. After all, he was my father. “What’s up?”

“I want to know when you’re coming home, that’s what. I’ve been reading about that state in the paper. It’s all going to hell. I can’t for the life of me see why you’d stay.”

“Just mean, I guess. How’s Mrs. Murphy?”

“She’s fine. But don’t try to change the subject. She may just be the housekeeper, but she’s of the same mind as I am.”

“Well …” I began, but he cut me off.

“By the way, I saw Arnie Robbins the other day. He’s a captain now. Waiting for sea duty. He says you weren’t at the class reunion in May.”

“That’s right. I had some business to take care of here.”

“More of that private-eye stuff, eh? Boy, when are you going to grow up and get into something worthwhile? I could get you a vice presidency at B. L. Davis. With your background, education, you could be on the board in five years. They just got a contract from the Navy to—”

“Thanks, but I really don’t see myself in that kind of job.”

“Well, what about security then? You could head up their security division. I was talking to Bert Davis the other day and—”

“Dad, listen: I don’t want any strings pulled for me. I have a job. Usually, I enjoy it. Anyway, it’s what I do.”

I heard a sigh and I knew what he was thinking. First, I’d shocked him by choosing the Marines instead of the Navy upon my graduation from the Academy. His romance was with the big ships, but I never could relate to anything that didn’t respond to wind and wave. When I was wounded in combat and prematurely retired from the service, he’d considered it a worse tragedy than I had. He pulled every string to get me the kind of position a disabled war hero deserved. When I rejected his efforts, he was mystified. The truth was that it took me a while to adjust and to realize that a bottle wasn’t the solution to my problems. I lost a wife who’d married an able-bodied man, and if her image of me was changed, so was my own. I came through it all right, though, and made a new life. The last thing I needed was to go home where people would make allowances because I’d been wounded and, more important, because I was the Captain’s son. I heard him on the other end of the line now, clinking his glass, and I knew he was pouring another drink, probably standing there on the front porch in his immaculate white slacks and blue jacket, staring out at the dunes.

“You know, sometimes I get lonely,” he said and it took me by surprise. The idea of the Captain confessing to such tenderness. “It’s been thirty years since your mother went. Thirty years last week.”

So that was what accounted for the call. I’d been small when my mother died; I only remember brown hair, a soft voice, and a smile that meant nothing could go wrong. Then one day she was gone. I followed him from station to station then, growing up fast, under a succession of nannies. Most of the time he wasn’t around, but I got letters describing his various ports of call. I suppose he’d even been a commander at one time, but even then he’d had his own ship, so he was the Captain, always had been and always would be.

“Twenty years,” he said. “Twenty years since they piped me ashore. You know we only had seventeen years together, and half that time I was at sea. I thought we’d have all the years after I retired, together here.”

There wasn’t anything I could say, so I kept silent.

“I was …” He cleared his throat. “I was going through some old letters of hers, boy. Written while I was in Japan, during the Korean thing. Telling me when you first crawled, when you walked. She was proud of you. I’d like you to have them sometime.”

“Sure,” I said. I didn’t like his tone of voice. There was something alien, as if he was afraid to tell me something.

“Dad, are you all right?”

“Me? Fine. I … well, it’s just some tests, is all. But I’ll come through with flying colors.”

“Dad, are you telling me you’re sick?”

“Hell no. Just getting old. Navy doctors. They killed more people in the war than the Japs. I don’t believe a thing they tell me. I’m fine, son. I was just standing here, thinking about … things. It’s been good hearing your voice. Look, go on back to what you were doing.”

“Dad …”

“Talk to you soon.” The line went dead and I hung up, feeling suddenly cold all over. The Captain not immortal? It was a heresy. He was the kind of man who lived forever, who’d had a destroyer shot out from under him in the Philippine Sea, who’d taken another almost into Haiphong Harbor to pick up a downed airman in ’67. Nothing could kill the Captain.

I changed into my jogging clothes and made myself trot up Esplanade to the Beauregard Monument and back. It’s five miles, a distance I can usually do in just forty-five minutes, even with my arm bound against my side. Today, though, my energy seemed to be sapped, and I stumbled through the doorway of the voodoo shop feeling like a wet rag. Less tired, I might have been more alert. Instead, I caught a glimpse of a woman’s face, disconcerted behind the thick glasses, and when I turned back to Lavelle’s showcase, trying to place where I had seen her before, she was gone.

I showered, shaved, dressed, and broke out a beer, chiding myself for exceeding my limit. My mind went unbidden to the old man on his porch overlooking the dunes and confronting his own mortality. I wanted to call, to tell him not to be afraid, but I knew it would sound foolish. He was the Captain, after all.

I went out onto the balcony and took a seat overlooking the broken fountain. It didn’t seem to be working, and old Mr. Mamet, the caretaker, was puttering around with a toolbox and some wrenches. I kept trying to sort out my feelings about the Captain. He’d shown more of himself today than I’d ever seen and it frightened me, because it was a tacit admission of mortality on his part. Of course, I was going up at the end of July. My annual visit. Maybe that’s why I felt so bad; maybe it was guilt because I hated it so much, the visiting of old faces and places. Now I wondered if I shouldn’t go earlier.

By the time night fell I still hadn’t made up my mind, so I sat quietly, listening to the distant rhythm of traffic in the world outside. Hours later, despairing of an answer, I went in to bed. I was drifting through a nonsensical dream of Mayan artifacts and Vietcong snipers when the ringing phone woke me. I fought the sense of dread and fumbled for the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Dunn? Micah Dunn?”

It wasn’t the Captain. I knew that at once. But the voice was vaguely familiar.

“Speaking. Who …?”

“Mr. Dunn, this is Gordon Leeds. We talked earlier today. I’m sorry to call you so late, but I have to talk to you. It’s urgent.”

“Can’t it wait till tomorrow?” I asked.

“No. Really. Please. Can I come to your place in half an hour?”

My brain cleared slightly. “How did you find out where I lived? Who gave you my phone number?”

“I’ll explain later. Please.” The line went dead.

I glanced down at the bedside clock. One-thirty. I swung myself to the edge of the bed.

I fought my way into clothes and staggered out into the sitting room, put on some coffee to wake me up and slumped into my chair. What could be so damned important that Thorpe’s graduate assistant had to see me in the middle of the night? And who had told him where to find me? I hadn’t given anybody my address.

Then I realized he wouldn’t be able to get in. Lavelle’s shop was closed at this time of night, and the only other entrance was the locked pedestrian gate beside the driveway doors into the courtyard.

I kicked on my shoes and went down the outside stairway. The plaza was dark and Mr. Mamet had cut off the floodlights. A car horn sounded somewhere beyond the walls, but then the world lapsed into silence. I felt my way along the brick paving toward the gate and opened it, looking out onto Barracks Street. There was a rustle in some trash boxes on the curb and then a cat leapt away into the darkness. I exhaled, leaning back slightly against the wooden barrier.

Then I saw him, first just a shadow, rounding the corner at Chartres a block away, then merging back into the blackness of the buildings as if seeking cover. Leeds was too far away to see him clearly, but the walk gave him away, almost mincing at times, then hurrying as if he might miss his appointment. He was on the opposite side of the street, and I wondered why he had come from the direction of Canal, instead of parking a block away, on Esplanade. The Quarter is not known for its congeniality at night.

As if eager to answer my question, he stepped off the curb, heading in my direction, and I moved forward to meet him.

He had only gone a few steps when the darkness lit up. Tires squealed somewhere behind him and headlights pinioned him in their glare. The motor’s roar reverberated through the narrow street like an echo chamber and I glimpsed the car barreling toward him. All my senses were alert now and I knew this was no mere drunk on his way home in a hurry.

I yelled a warning at the same time I left the curb, but he didn’t hear. Like a fool, he stopped to look behind him and for an eternal instant I caught his profile, terror-frozen in the light. Then bone and metal met and my body took over and I jumped back out of the way, slamming against the gate as the car bounced up onto the curb and roared past inches away.

When I got to him he was going fast and I thought for a moment that he didn’t recognize me. Then he raised his hand and held something up for me to see: a dark stone, polished smooth. I took it and said his name but by that time he was past hearing. I got up slowly, pocketing the little relic. It was going to be a very long night.