Cities of the Red Night (5 page)

He awoke with a throbbing erection and a sore throat, his brain curiously blank and factual. He accepted his rescue as he had been prepared to accept his death. He knew exactly where he was: some forty miles south of Panama City. He could see the low coastline of mangrove swamps laced with inlets, the shark fins, the stagnant seawater.

HARBOR POINT

Early morning mist … birdcalls … howler monkeys like wind in the trees. Fifty armed partisans are moving north over Panama jungle trails. Unshaven faces at once alert and drawn with fatigue, and a rapid gait that is almost a jog indicate a long forced march without sleep. The rising sun picks out their faces.

Noah Blake: twenty, a tall red-haired youth with brown eyes, his face dusted with freckles. Bert Hansen: a Swede with light blue eyes. Clinch Todd: a powerful youth with long arms and something sleepy and quiescent in his brown eyes flecked with points of light. Paco: a Portuguese with Indian and Negro blood. Sean Brady: black Irish with curly black hair and a quick wide smile.

*   *   *

Young Noah Blake is screwing the pan onto a flintlock pistol, testing the spring, oiling the barrel and stock. He holds the pistol up to his father, who examines it critically. Finally he nods.…

“Aye, son, that can go out with the Blake mark on it.…”

“Old Lady Norton stuck her head in the shop and said I shouldn't be working on the Lord's Day.”

“And she shouldn't be sniffing her long snot-dripping nose into my shop on the Lord's Day or any other. The Nortons have never bought so much as a ha'penny measure of nails off me.” His father looks around the shop, his fingers hooked in his wide belt. Lean and red-haired, he has the face of a mechanic: detached, factual, a face that minds its own business and expects others to do the same. “We'll be moving to the city, son, where nobody cares if you go to church or not.…”

“Chicago, Father?”

“No, son, Boston. On the sea. We have relations there.”

Father and son put on coats and gloves. They lock the shop and step out into the muted streets of the little snowbound village on Lake Michigan. As they walk through the snow, villagers pass. Some of the greetings are quick and cold with averted faces.

“Is it all right if my friends come to dinner, Father? They'll be bringing fish and bread.…”

“All right with me, son. But they aren't well seen here.… There's talk in the village, son. Bad talk about all of you. If it wasn't for Bert Hansen's father being a shipowner and one of the richest men in town there'd be more than talk.… Quicker we move the better.”

“Could the others come too?”

“Well, son, I could use some more hands in the shop. No limit to how many guns we can sell in a seaport like Boston … and I'm thinking maybe Mr. Hansen would pay to get his son out of here.…”

*   *   *

Spring morning, doves call from the woods. Noah Blake and his father, Bert Hansen, Clinch Todd, Paco, and Sean Brady board a boat with their luggage stacked on deck. The villagers watch from the pier.

Mrs. Norton sniffs and says in her penetrating voice, “Good riddance to the lot of them.” She glances sideways at her husband.

“I share the same views,” he says hastily.

Boston: two years later. Mr. Blake has prospered. He works now on contracts from shipowners, and his guns are standard issue. He has remarried. His wife is a quiet refined girl from New York. Her family are well-to-do importers and merchants with political connections. Mr. Blake plans to open a New York branch, and there is talk of army and navy contracts. Noah Blake is studying navigation. He wants to be a ship's captain, and all five of the boys want to ship out.

“Wait till you find the right ship,” Mr. Blake tells them.

*   *   *

One winter day, Noah is walking on the waterfront with Bert, Clinch, Sean and Paco. They notice a ship called
The Great White.
Rather small but very clean and trim. A man leans over the rail. He has a beefy red smiling face and cold blue eyes.

“You boys looking for a ship?”

“Maybe,” says Noah cautiously.

“Well, come aboard.”

He meets them at the gangplank. “I'm Mr. Thomas, First Mate.” He extends a hand like callused beef and shakes hands with each boy in turn. He leads the way to the master's cabin. “This is Captain Jones—master of
The Great White.
These boys are looking for a ship … maybe…”

The boys nod politely. Captain Jones looks at them in silence. He is a man of indeterminate age with a gray-green pallor. He speaks at length, in a flat voice, his lips barely moving.

“Well, I could use five deckhands.… You boys had any experience?”

“Yes. On the Great Lakes.” Noah indicates Bert Hansen. “His father owned fishing boats.”

“Aye,” says Captain Jones, “freshwater sailing. The sea's another kettle of fish.”

“I've studied navigation,” Noah puts in.

“Have you now? And what would be your name, lad?”

“Noah Blake.”

An almost imperceptible glance passes between the Captain and the first mate.

“And your trade, lad?”

“Gunsmith.”

“Well, now, you wouldn't be Noah Blake's son would you?”

“Yes, sir, I would.”

Once again the glance flickers between the two men. Then Captain Jones leans back in his chair and looks at the boys with his dead, fishy eyes.

“We'll be sailing in three days' time … New York, Charleston, Jamaica, Vera Cruz. Two months down, more or less, and two months back.… I pay ten pounds a month for deckhands.”

Noah Blake tries to look unimpressed. This is twice as much as any other captain has offered.

“Well, sir, I'll have to discuss it with my father.”

“To be sure, lad. You can sign the Articles tomorrow if you're so minded … all five of you.”

*   *   *

Noah can hardly wait to tell his father. “I mean that's good, isn't it?”

“Aye, son. Perhaps a little too good. Captain Jones's name is not so white as his ship. He's known as Opium Jones in the trade. He'll be carrying opium, guns, powder, shot, and tools. And he's not too particular who he trades with.…”

“Anything wrong with that, Father?”

“No. He's no better and no worse than most of the others. Only thing I can't figure is why he's paying double wages for his deckhands.”

“Maybe he'd rather have five good hands than ten waterfront drunks.”

“Maybe.… Well, go if you like. But keep your eyes open.”

THE PRIVATE ASSHOLE

The name is Clem Williamson Snide. I am a private asshole.

As a private investigator I run into more death than the law allows. I mean the law of averages. There I am outside the hotel room waiting for the corespondent to reach a crescendo of amorous noises. I always find that if you walk in just as he goes off he won't have time to disengage himself and take a swing at you. When me and the house dick open the door with a passkey, the smell of shit and bitter almonds blows us back into the hall. Seems they both took a cyanide capsule and fucked until the capsules dissolved. A real messy love death.

Another time I am working on a routine case of industrial sabotage when the factory burns down killing twenty-three people. These things happen. I am a man of the world. Going to and fro and walking up and down in it.

Death smells. I mean it has a special smell, over and above the smell of cyanide, carrion, blood, cordite or burnt flesh. It's like opium. Once you smell it you never forget. I can walk down a street and get a whiff of opium smoke and I know someone is kicking the gong around.

I got a whiff of death as soon as Mr. Green walked into my office. You can't always tell whose death it is. Could be Green, his wife, or the missing son he wants me to find. Last letter from the island of Spetsai two months ago. After a month with no word the family made inquiries by long-distance phone.

“The embassy wasn't at all helpful,” said Mr. Green.

I nodded. I knew just how unhelpful they could be.

“They referred us to the Greek police. Fortunately, we found a man there who speaks English.”

“That would be Colonel Dimitri.”

“Yes. You know him?”

I nodded, waiting for him to continue.

“He checked and could find no record that Jerry had left the country, and no hotel records after Spetsai.”

“He could be visiting someone.”

“I'm sure he would write.”

“You feel then that this is not just an instance of neglect on his part, or perhaps a lost letter?… That happens in the Greek islands.…”

“Both Mrs. Green and I are convinced that something is wrong.”

“Very well, Mr. Green, there is the question of my fee: a hundred dollars a day plus expenses and a thousand-dollar retainer. If I work on a case two days and spend two hundred dollars, I refund six hundred to the client. If I have to leave the country, the retainer is two thousand. Are these terms satisfactory?”

“Yes.”

“Very good. I'll start right here in New York. Sometimes I have been able to provide the client with the missing person's address after a few hours' work. He may have written to a friend.”

“That's easy. He left his address book. Asked me to mail it to him care of American Express in Athens.” He passed me the book.

“Excellent.”

Now, on a missing-person case I want to know everything the client can tell me about the missing person, no matter how seemingly unimportant and irrelevant. I want to know preferences in food, clothes, colors, reading, entertainment, use of drugs and alcohol, what cigarette brand he smokes, medical history. I have a questionnaire printed with five pages of questions. I got it out of the filing cabinet and passed it to him.

“Will you please fill out this questionnaire and bring it back here day after tomorrow. That will give me time to check out the local addresses.”

“I've called most of them,” he said curtly, expecting me to take the next plane for Athens.

“Of course. But friends of an M.P.—missing person—are not always honest with the family. Besides, I daresay some of them have moved or had their phones disconnected. Right?” He nodded. I put my hands on the questionnaire. “Some of these questions may seem irrelevant but they all add up. I found a missing person once from knowing that he could wriggle his ears. I've noticed that you are left-handed. Is your son also left-handed?”

“Yes, he is.”

“You can skip that question. Do you have a picture of him with you?”

He handed me a photo. Jerry was a beautiful kid. Slender, red hair, green eyes far apart, a wide mouth. Sexy and kinky-looking.

“Mr. Green, I want all the photos of him you can find. If I use any I'll have copies made and return the originals. If he did any painting, sketching, or writing I'd like to see that too. If he sang or played an instrument I want recordings. In fact, any recordings of his voice. And please bring if possible some article of clothing that hasn't been dry-cleaned since he wore it.”

“It's true then that you use uh psychic methods?”

“I use any methods that help me to find the missing person. If I can locate him in my own mind that makes it easier to locate him outside it.”

“My wife is into psychic things. That's why I came to you. She has an intuition that something has happened to him and she says only a psychic can find him.”

That makes two of us, I thought. He wrote me a check for a thousand dollars. We shook hands.

*   *   *

I went right to work. Jim, my assistant, was out of town on an industrial-espionage case—he specializes in electronics. So I was on my own. Ordinarily I don't carry iron on an M.P. case, but this one smelled of danger. I put on my snub-nosed 38, in a shoulder holster. Then I unlocked a drawer and put three joints of the best Colombian, laced with hash, into my pocket. Nothing like a joint to break the ice and stir the memory. I also took a deck of heroin. It buys more than money sometimes.

Most of the addresses were in the SoHo area. That meant lofts, and that often means the front door is locked. So I started with an address on Sixth Street.

She opened the door right away, but she kept the chain on. Her pupils were dilated, her eyes running, and she was snuffling, waiting for the Man. She looked at me with hatred.

I smiled. “Expecting someone else?”

“You a cop?”

“No. I'm a private investigator hired by the family to find Jerry Green. You knew him.”

“Look, I don't have to talk to you.”

“No, you don't have to. But you might want to.” I showed her the deck of heroin. She undid the chain.

The place was filthy—dishes stacked in a sink, cockroaches running over them. The bathtub was in the kitchen and hadn't been used for a long time. I sat down gingerly in a chair with the springs showing. I held the deck in my hand where she could see it. “You got any pictures of him?”

She looked at me and she looked at the heroin. She rummaged in a drawer, and tossed two pictures onto a coffee table that wobbled. “Those should be worth something.”

They were. One showed Jerry in drag, and he made a beautiful girl. The other showed him standing up naked with a hard-on. “Was he gay?”

“Sure. He liked getting fucked by Puerto Ricans and having his picture took.”

“He pay you?”

“Sure, twenty bucks. He kept most of the pictures.”

“Where'd he get the money?”

“I don't know.”

She was lying. I went into my regular spiel. “Now look, I'm not a cop. I'm a private investigator paid by his family. I'm paid to find him, that's all. He's been missing for two months.” I started to put the heroin back into my pocket and that did it.

“He was pushing C.”