The humidity had not returned, and the air was significantly cooler. Though it was almost dark, children were still outside playing; an ice cream truck, sounding a jingle, had lured six or seven of them into a line. Smith determined to go directly to the Dezmuns’ apartment and engage Kogat Dezmun in a verbal face-to-face, as prolonged a sit-down as was necessary, with paper and pencil, maps and dictionaries, interpreters if need be, and, once and for all, make some sense of the nagging affair. As the entrance to the building came into view, he accelerated the plan. The figure in the first-floor window was still too distant to be discerned perfectly, but the mop of hair was unmistakable: Kogat Dezmun was leaning out over the sill, his arms folded, gripping a cigarette, his pop-eyed stare fixed on Smith’s approach.
Smith strode past the entrance, pushed between the hedges and stepped to the knee-high brick wall surrounding the rose garden as he had seen neighbors do, placing himself below the gargoyle’s window.
“What’s going on, Mr. Dezmun?”
Shocked by Smith’s directness, the janitor tossed the cigarette and waved his hands frantically, close to his chest, imploring Smith to stop acting so overtly.
“No,” Smith protested. “Up until now, you’ve been the one choosing the spots and moments for our meetings. Well, I’m calling a meeting right here, right now. And we’re going to use complete sentences. No more pantomimes.”
Dezmun grimaced. His expression showed none of the presumption or pleasure of the earlier encounters; it was disapproving, as if Smith had pursued his task in all the wrong ways. He peeked up at the neighboring windows facing the street, which were dark and vacant or were illumined with the shades pulled down. Then he glanced behind him into his gloomy apartment.
Smith lowered his voice. He spoke more slowly, thinking that Dezmun would have trouble understanding him. “I went to the police.”
Dezmun clutched his hair and mouthed a word: No.
“Yes. Police. I went. They did nothing. They pretended to be concerned at first but did all they could to keep me away from the facts.” He doubted that Dezmun understood but continued nevertheless. “They assaulted me, physically and mentally, but that’s another matter. Afterward, I went to Chinatown. I thought I had a contact but that fizzled. Or else I left too soon. I waited more than an hour, and still I may have left too soon. I want to go back there, and I suggest you tell me specifically where I should go. I suggest you write it down, legibly so that I can understand it. Or have your wife write it down or your son or nephew or somebody. And give me people’s names. Real names, from the real world. No more mythology.”
Dezmun’s glance had stopped flitting, and his hands hung limply over the ledge. The censure was gone from his demeanor, and a muted gleam had returned to his eyes, not the familiar salaciousness, but pity and resignation, as if he recognized both Smith’s plight and his own inability to direct Smith any further.
He adjusted his glasses, leaned out the window and extended his right arm down toward Smith who was still beyond his reach. Dezmun’s hand opened and closed, as if hoping Smith would grasp it.
From Smith’s memory sprang that inflexible image: the statue in the park. The Iron Men. The shipwrecked sailors. One kneeling, one standing and shouting, and the third, whom Dezmun now modeled, reaching down, over the gunwale, to pull the fourth, the drowning man, on board.
Smith noted his own resemblance, too, and asked himself, were he caught in the water, gasping to keep his head above the waves, would he not grab the offer of assistance, the chance to save himself from perishing, even while the boat itself was going down?
He started to reach for the gargoyle’s hand.
Abruptly a figure lunged up behind Dezmun and pulled him inside. The bulky Lupo now filled the opening.
“Get your sick ass out of here!” raged the piggish face.
Smith stood his ground. “I demand to speak with Kogat Dezmun.”
“I said get lost, scumbag! You don’t belong here.”
“Wrong! I . . .”
“You belong in prison, you pervert. I told you, leave that man alone. He’s sick, and you’re making things worse. You’re making things worse for everybody.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Fuck you! You’re lucky I don’t come out there right now and bash your face in, you wise-guy piece of crap!”
A shouting match ensued: Lupo spouting profanity, Smith insisting on the justness of his inquiry and the malevolence of his enemies, among whom he now accused Lupo of being the ringleader. The argument ended when Lupo slammed the window shut, leaving Smith alone but triumphant for having succeeded, at least for the moment, in chasing the gargoyles away from their post.
He looked up at the windows and, as he did so, a half dozen of his neighbors, attracted by the uproar, immediately withdrew. But he knew that they were listening. Like a master of ceremonies addressing an audience, he extended his arms upward. “So you like watching a man drown!” he shouted. “Well, the show’s over, ladies and gentlemen! Go back to your television sets! I’m not going under!”