NINE

I GOT TO the library well before five and made out a call slip for Life magazine, July 18, 1944. I stood anxiously at the periodicals desk as an indifferent young clerk went to look for it. I was still feeling crazy and frustrated, and sure enough, she returned empty-handed and lazily muttered something at me.

“What!”

She jumped. “It’s on microfilm,” she said. “Microfilm. On the third floor.”

I spun the old machine to the table of contents, and there it was, the caption to the cover photograph:

Maj. Danny Beemon, Fifth Fighter Group, Eighth AF, after his return from an escort mission over the German heartland.

 

I spun to the article. It was general rah-rah typical of wartime press, about what a terrific job the Eighth Air Force was doing in Europe, how D-Day couldn’t have come off without them, and what a fine leader Jimmy Doolittle was. This Danny Beemon was mentioned as being among the top pilots in the European Theater. Though I’d never heard of Beemon, I’d heard of the others, of Gentile, Blakeslee, Zemke, Johnson. If dreaming of doing a thing were the same as doing it, then when I was twelve I flew with them, searching out FW-190s on the frigid upper edge of the atmosphere where vision is endless.

I returned the reel of microfilm and hauled down the Official History of the Eighth Air Force. Beemon, it told me, had destroyed nineteen German fighters in air-to-air combat by the end of the war. In the bibliography, I found a newsletter called “The Big Eighth.” It had a New York address and was listed in the phone book. I called from a booth in the marble hallway.

“Hello. I wonder if you can tell me anything about Major Danny Beemon, about what happened to him after the war, his present whereabouts. I’m writing a book.”

“A book?”

“Yes, sort of a Boys of Summer approach.”

“Good for you. Danny Beemon, ey? He was a hot one, all right. Hang on. I’ll ask Buzz.” Buzz? There was a guy actually called Buzz? “Buzz is remembering. Gotta give him a second.” We waited while Buzz remembered. “Buzz says Beemon survived the war, all right. Buzz says they sent him out to the Pacific. Saipan, but he didn’t see no action. Buzz says he don’t know what happened to him after the war. Wait, he just remembered: Beemon got killed testing jets in California.”

“He’s dead?”

“That’s what Buzz says.”

“Does Buzz remember about what year that was?”

“Fifty-one, fifty-two, thereabouts. If you wanna come in and talk about that book, we’d be happy to see you.”

“Should I call for an appointment?”

“Naw, just come on in. Most of us are dead, you know.”

“Pardon?”

“I’m just saying you better hurry it up with that book.”

The Map Room is beautiful, richly wooden, with an elaborate projection of the world painted on the vaulted ceiling. In fact, the entire library is an architectural treasure, but the Map Room is my favorite, and I used to use it as my personal retreat. I wished as I entered to see grizzled, bearded explorers planning expeditions to Borneo or Ellesmere Island, but there were only a bored clerk sitting at the front desk listening to her Walkman, and Sybel. She was sitting at a table in the far corner eyeing me with mistrust and resentment as I approached. “Look, don’t come around the store anymore.”

“Why?”

As an answer, she stood, gathered up her bag and umbrella, and banged her chair in.

“Okay,” I said, “I won’t.”

She looked into my eyes to see if I was lying, which I was, then sat back down. “So?” she snapped.

“There were photographs in that ice tray. Negatives. I had them enlarged.” I tapped the manila envelope as portentously as possible and sat down across the table from her. Her eyes were beautiful, deep and dark, but hostile. It’s tough, even under the best of circumstances, to deal with the person, man or woman, who shared your lover.

I removed the photographs from their envelope and showed her the one on top. It was a shot of Renaissance Antiques taken from across the street at a downward angle, which I had decided was the window in Billie’s studio. En route to the library I had suddenly remembered that a couple of months before she left me, Billie had moved her studio from Chelsea to Eleventh Street, across the street from Renaissance Antiques.

Sybel looked expressionlessly at it’s image, then looked back at me.

I tried the next one in the stack—I had arranged them in the order I thought most effective—but this one elicited no more response than its predecessor. It was a picture of Jones standing in front of Renaissance Antiques. His stance seemed to suggest that he was waiting for something or somebody.

“Maybe you don’t understand,” I said. “These are the pictures Billie left for us in the ice tray. Important. Get it?”

“What do you mean us?”

“Yeah, us. Why didn’t Billie just messenger the note directly to me? No, she sent word through you. Why? Because she wanted us to meet. You know what else I think? I think she was killed over these photographs. So could you cut this hostile attitude and say something about them?”

“I don’t know you. Why should I trust you?”

“Because Billie wanted us to meet. Never mind, just look at the pictures.” I passed her the next one: Renaissance Antiques from the same angle; they were all from the same angle. Jones stood at the curb in front, only now there was a big panel truck in the frame. Two burly men were muscling a chest of drawers down a ramp from the rear of the truck, the arrival of which Jones might have been awaiting in the previous photograph. “Who are those guys?”

“The Palominos,” she said.

“Which is which?”

“The big one is Leon.”

He was considerably bigger than Freddy. Leon would never have fit in that refrigerator.

I passed her another photo quite similar to the previous ones. Jones still stood near the stern of the panel truck, and the Palominos were still on the ramp with the chest of drawers, only now a long black car was parked behind the truck.

“Just show them to me. I’m sick of you dealing them out one by one and watching my reaction.”

I passed her the stack. “Who is the cheery fellow behind the wheel?” He wore mirrored sunglasses and a dark scowl.

“Ricardo. He’s Jones’s assistant.”

“Is Ricardo his first or last name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is that the whole staff? Jones, Ricardo, the Palominos?”

“And me.” Her tone defied me to make something of it. She looked at the next photo. It was of Stretch at the phone booth.

“Who’s he?”

“I don’t know.”

“I ran into him last night in the hall outside Billie’s studio. He asked me if I was part of ‘the photography crowd.’ Then he asked me if I knew a guy named Barnett Osley. Then he ran from me. Does that seem strange to you? It seems strange to me.”

But Sybel said nothing. She looked at the next photograph. It returned us to curbside, Renaissance Antiques. The van was gone, but Ricardo, Jones, and the black car remained. A stocky man in his sixties was addressing Jones forcefully, index finger pressed into Jones’s chest. “Who’s that guy?” I asked.

“I think he’s the owner.”

“What’s his name?”

“Pine.”

“What’s his first name?”

“I don’t know. They call him Mr. Pine. I’ve never met him. He never comes into the store. I don’t know him at all.”

“What’s going on at Renaissance Antiques? Do you know that?”

“Nothing that I know of.”

“Nothing? Then why did Billie leave all these photographs of the place and all its people in an ice tray before she was murdered?”

Still she said nothing, just stared at me. She wasn’t even trying, so I decided to haul up the bigger guns.

“Freddy’s dead,” I said. “Murdered.” That drew reaction. Her jaw dropped, and her black eyes blinked as if I’d just thrown sand into them. “I found him stuffed into Billie’s little refrigerator like a hundred and eighty pounds of seedless grapes. The studio was ransacked. I think they were looking for these photographs.”

Sybel began to cry, and my anger evaporated.

“Was Freddy a friend of yours?”

“Sort of…He took me to a Mets game with his two sons. I liked the way he treated them, bought them caps and things, banners.” She clenched her eyes, squeezing out heavy tears. I don’t own any handkerchiefs, but I passed her a Kleenex. She balled it up and threw it at my head. “Drop dead, fucker! All the men Billie screwed were brutes!” She snatched up her belongings and made for the door.

I caught her arm as she came around my side of the table, and I think she seriously considered clouting me with her umbrella. “Please don’t go,” I pleaded. “I’m not a brute. I’m a wreck. I’ve been through the wringer since Billie died. Please sit down. I’ll tell you everything. The whole truth.”

She stood there for a moment before she sat back down and regarded me through teary eyes. I told her everything step by step just as it happened. No other two days in my entire life had been so filled with events. They took a long time to tell. But when I finished, I felt tremendous relief. Not only had I shared with someone my grief, anger, and fear, I had put the events in order, made connections in that objective way required to tell anything. I told her about Billie’s bathtub and the wreckage of her studio, about Freddy’s forehead frozen to the aluminum, about Cobb and the stench of death in the morgue, I told her about Stretch and the mud of Union Square, about Danny Beemon, and the letter from Dibbs at the nursing home. And I felt as if I had just emerged from a terrible trek through the jungle. My shoulders, from up around my ears, drooped down to a saner level. I felt such a pleasurable easing of tension that I wanted to smile, but only a true brute would crack a smile after telling a story like mine.

Sybel sat back heavily in her chair as if I had shifted the weight from my shoulders onto hers. She held both hands over her mouth. Then she said so quietly I had to ask her to repeat it, “We didn’t even know Billie.”

We didn’t know Billie. Maybe she was right, but I wanted her to be wrong. So I said nothing. Sybel picked up the next photo in my stack, an old woman wearing a terry-cloth bathrobe standing in a doorway. Nothing of the building was visible, just a weary old woman in a doorway out of all context. She clutched a Raggedy Ann doll against her breast. The doll’s battered head flopped over her shoulder sideways. “Do you think this is Billie’s mother?”

“I guess so. I don’t know.”

Sybel placed the old woman with the doll in the doorway beside Danny Beemon on the cover of Life. Then she placed the Raggedy Ann lady next to the photographs of the happy family at the beach and around the Christmas tree. Beemon was the father of the family, there was no question about it, but time had scoured away all resemblance between the smiling young mother and the old lady hugging her doll. I had already tried that matchup.

“Billie told me her mother was dead and her father lived in California,” Sybel said. “Why did she lie like that?”

“I could take the family photos out to the nursing home and show them to Mrs. Burke. She could tell me if this little girl with the puppy is Billie or not.”

“She looks so happy…I wonder what happened to her. We’ve got to take these pictures to the police. I bet just having them is some kind of felony.”

“I’ve got to think Renaissance Antiques has something to do with this,” I said. We were going off the track. I wanted to know something.

“And since I work there, I ought to know something about it, right?”

“I didn’t say that. But if you do, I’d like to hear it.”

Sybel’s eyes hardened under her tears. “I just work there. I don’t know how the owners run their private lives. I’ve never even met them, but I keep the inventory, I’ve seen the books. It looks like a legitimate business. Look, I’m just a drone employee. It’s just a way to support my kid.”

“You have a kid?”

“A girl. Five years old.”

I gave that some thought. “You’re married?”

“I was, but it didn’t take.” She sat silently for a long time, maybe trying to decide whether she wanted to tell me anything about her life, then without color in her voice, she said, “I married an idiot of an actor and got pregnant. I was an ignorant hick from a dairy farm in Plattsfield, Wisconsin. Two days after Lisa was born, he left to do Measure for Measure in Texas somewhere and never came back. Last Christmas he showed up with presents for me and Lisa. He’d had his teeth fixed. He brought boy’s toys. He forgot his child was a girl. I threw him out. I was living with Billie then. My husband is bringing a custody suit against me on the grounds I’m an unfit mother.”

“He hasn’t got a leg to stand on,” I said stupidly.

“What are you, a lawyer?”

“No.”

Suddenly Sybel glanced over my shoulder at the doorway and inhaled sharply, her brows popping up into arches. I spun around, but no one was there. “Leon. It was Leon Palomino!”

“Did he follow you here?”

“How would I know? But he’s not here to do a book report.”

“What did he look like? I mean, did he look surprised or angry or what?”

“Hell, I don’t know. He’s nuts. He’s a hyperactive.”

“You didn’t see anybody behind you on the way over?”

“For all I know, he followed you here.”

That had just occurred to me.

“Leon has this tattoo of the Grim Reaper on his arm. Inside this balloon, like the Grim Reaper is speaking, it says: Ia Drang 1966. It Was a Bitch.”

“Vietnam?”

“Yeah, only he wasn’t even there. His brother was. Freddy was. But Leon goes around talking about the war all the time. Sometimes he goes all rigid and trembles and says, ‘I’m gettin’ a flashback.’” Sybel pulled a notepad from her purse and wrote on it. “This is my real phone number. Let me know what the police say.” She collected her bag and umbrella, ready to leave.

“Wait,” I said. “I don’t even know your last name.”

“Black,” she said, and she walked out.

Sybel Black. I wondered what her real name was, her dairy-farm name.

My lawyer was playing alone, practicing rail shots, shooting the same shot over and over, center cue ball medium hard, then the same shot with high right English. He looked pretty good, stroking the cue ball cleanly, not striking it. But he had no character. A thousand-dollar stroke with a two-dollar mind, as they say in poolrooms.

“Artie. What say? You get in?”

“Yeah.”

“Another satisfied client.” He leaned down to shoot another rail shot, but I laid three twenties and a ten in front of the object ball. “Ahh, a retainer. Modest, but a retainer still.”

“I might be in danger,” I said. “Maybe not, but just in case, I’d like to hire a friend. A strong friend.”

“If you’re in danger, as your lawyer, I advise you to seek help from the authorities.”

“Okay, thanks anyway.” I reached for my money, but my lawyer shot the cue ball at my hand.

“I’m required to say shit like that, Artie, in order to maintain my standing in the professional community. If you don’t want to take my advice, okay. I certainly won’t leave you without legal assistance. Besides, I’m on retainer.” He folded the retainer into his shirt pocket. “You want a weighty friend. No problem. What kind would you like?”

“Well, I’m not sure. I don’t want a guy to walk beside me like I’m Frank Sinatra.”

“Check.”

“Did you read Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy?”

“You mean you want Alec Guinness?”

“Smiley wanted someone to ‘watch his back,’ someone to follow behind, stay out of sight, and make sure he wasn’t being followed.”

“An ass man. No problem, but they cost. You can’t get the average psychopath or nightclub bouncer for a position like that. You need a hardass with a degree of intellectual prowess.”

“I might need two. One for a woman.”

“We can get you a swat team if you want.”

“Just the one to start.”

“Better give me a deuce down.”

I put $400 on the table, and gave him another $100 bill.

“Want to play some nine ball for old times?” he asked.

“Nah, I have things to do.”

“Come on, Artie. One game. You can even have your old cue back. For old times.”

We played for two hours.

“Feels pretty good, huh, Artie? Feels like law-school days, back when we thought the world was round.”

“Yeah,” I said. It felt good.