Castle Murders (20 page)

"No numbers," Carney said. "Which one, Velma?"

"You got me."

The building was quiet except for the far-off sound of a radio playing. Soft dance music.

Carney picked the first door on his left and knocked.

Nothing happened for quite a while. Then came sounds of latches being thrown. The door opened a crack, the chain still hooked.

Dim light inside, a woman's voice: "Yes?"

"Does a Mr. Lemarr Hamilton live here?"

"Who're you?"

"I'd like to engage his services, if he's not too busy."

"He in bed."

"I realize it's late, but I'm in a great deal of trouble. Mr. Hamilton can help me. Can you please wake him?"

"He don't do that stuff no more anyway."

"I can pay well. As I said, the situation is very urgent. In fact, it's a matter of life and death."

The eye on the other side of the crack was unblinking. The door closed momentarily. Then it opened wide. Carney and Velma went in.
 

A tall woman in her forties closed the door. She was tall and slim in a green flower-print housedress and worn slippers. She gave her visitors a distrustful frown. "Go on through there, into the parlor," she said.
 

It was a railroad flat. They passed through the kitchen, then through another room where a blanketed form lay sleeping on a cot in the corner. There was a larger bed and several other pieces of furniture. Ragged holes marred the ceiling plaster, and water stains billowed across it. The place smelled of frying grease and mildew. Otherwise the apartment was well-kept.
 

They passed through a short corridor with a door. The back room had comfortable, if threadbare, furniture. Carney and Velma sat on the antimacassar-draped couch. They waited, looking at family pictures on the wall.
 

Presently an old man came into the room. He walked stooped, his gray head inclined, his eyes up and aware. He was thin, almost emaciated, dressed in baggy pants and undershirt, black wool socks with a hole in one toe.
 

He looked at his two visitors, unsmiling, then sat in the chair opposite.

"You want somethin' with me?" His voice was strong, clear, belying his appearance.

"Yes," Carney said. "I wish to engage your services as a consultant in supernatural matters."

The old man studied him with penetrating black eyes. "Yes, suh." He smiled. "Yes, suh. I believe I know who you are. Can't say as I know the name, though."
 

"John Carney. I run a couple of businesses in this town. Some people say I'm pretty influential."

"I believe they right." The old man leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "What can I do for you?"

"I need the power."

They sat in silence for a while. The radio, far off, had switched to lively Latin rhythms.

"Everybody need the power," the old man said. "You got to have the power to live."

"I need more. I'm fighting something pretty big. I think you might know what it is. They've been in this town for a long time, and they're growing."
 

"Yessuh. I know it."

"I want to fight them. I am fighting them, though not very effectively up till now. But give me an edge, the slightest edge."

"Edge?" The old man grunted. "It ain't nothin' you can edge up on."

"Perhaps the metaphor . . . I need what power you can summon. What you can generate and transmit. Whatever this power is, or whatever its nature, I might be able to work with it."
 

The old man straightened up slowly, then sat back. He let a long contemplative quiet intervene before answering: "I can't transmit nothin'. I can't generate nothin'. It don't come like that."
 

"Can you describe how it does come?"

The old man shook his gray head. "Ain't no describin'. There's feelin'. You got to feel it."

"What is it?"

The old man studied him for a moment. "You not the man for it."

"No?"

"No, suh. You not the man."

"Is it the color of my skin?"

Silence again. The old man looked off to his left, out a window that offered a view of darkness obscuring nothing worth viewing.

At length he leaned forward and spoke calmly but with underlying controlled emotion. "Ain't a matter of color. Matter of . . . experience. You born with a color, but every man, he live different. Do things different, different things happen to a man. He get to be different. He look at things his own way. No one can tell him, 'cause he know. It get into his blood and then he can't go back, he is what he is. It get to be part of him like it was his color, like he was born with it. A man's life ain't like any other man's life. It's his own. Can't do nothin' but live it his own way. He got his pain, y'understand. Livin' is pain. Don't matter nohow if he happy or he sad. Livin' is pain. Each man got his own pain. You got to take that . . . work with it. Shape it up. Use it. Then you got somethin'. But each man got his own. Ain't no use tryin' one man give it to another. Can't be give out. You got to keep it. You got to work with it."
 

The old man settled back in the easy chair again. His voice was soft as he said, "I don't rightly know if you the man for it."
 

"I'm willing to learn," Carney said. "I can pay very well." The Latin rhythms went on — tinny conga drums, maracas like rattling gravel. Suddenly, the music stopped. Quiet. A horn sounded outside.
 

Carney cocked his ear. He heard nothing. Velma had been sitting quietly. "You mind if I smoke, Mr . . .?"

"No, I don't mind, miss. You go right ahead." Velma lit a cigarette, looked around for an ashtray. She found one on the end table.
 

"You ain't had enough pain," the old man said.
 

"Maybe not," Carney said. "I can't say I regret that, but there it is. There are other considerations, though."
 

"Yes, suh. They other things. Maybe you got 'em."
 

"I think I do. As you said, each man is unique. The singular circumstances of his existence mold the clay of his character, the stuff of his inner substance, and the curves and contours are all his own, like his signature or the cracks in the palms of his hands." Carney's grin was lopsided. "That's a fancy way of saying exactly what you said."
 

"Mighty fancy."

"There is a kind of pain that comes from seeing too much. Of living too much. Too long."

The old man nodded. "I know. I know that for a fact."

"There's the pain that comes at the end of chasing down the wild possibilities until there's nothing left to surprise you. Of ringing the changes over and over until there are no more permutations, all the treble bob majors rung. A melody played once too often. There's a sickly feeling that goes with that, maybe a tiny hint of regret. Anxiety, too. You're facing the big Nothingness. Because what does it all matter at the end, when the end comes? It doesn't really matter what went on up to that point. I don't think it matters one whit. When you're faced with that yawning abyss . . . no, that's too dramatic. Think of finding your last cigarette crumpled, a crack in it. Think of walking through a fun house and coming out into a junkyard. Think of . . . but I think you know what I mean. You see? Pain is universal. There is only one kind. Because, as you said, living is pain. It's a struggle, from day to day, minute to minute. The heart works, pumping unceasingly, night and day, a complex machine beyond our comprehension. It sweats and strains and throbs, and if it muffs a rhythm, if it lets up for a second, we feel the life draining away from us. We're that close to it, one heartthrob away from oblivion. We eat and work and play, skating on the thin ice of contingency. One moment we're gliding along as usual, the next, into the chill depths, from which there is no returning. Do you get what I'm saying? The rub of it is that power, fame, or fortune won't ease up the pain one iota. Not even love will, which is another kind of pain. We're all inevitably alone with ourselves and with the awful realization that all of it means . . . nothing. Nothing at all. No matter what construction you wish to put on it, atheist or monotheist, nihilist or romanticist — "
 

Carney took a breath. He settled back into the worn velvet of the sofa and fanned himself with his hat, smiling. "Warm in here, isn't it?"
 

"Yes, suh." The old man smiled back. "Yes, suh." He laughed, a low, dyspeptic cackle.

Then slowly, he rose and shuffled out of the room.

Velma crushed out her cigarette. She took out a small mirror from her purse and checked her lipstick, put the mirror back. She looked at Carney.
 

"What's he have that you want, anyway?"

"Maybe nothing. Maybe nothing at all."

"I need a drink." She began the motions to light another cigarette.

"Maybe our host will oblige."

He took the matches she was fumbling with and lit her cigarette. The flame danced in her eyes. She stared at him as she puffed. He reached across her to put the match in the ashtray.
 

"You have a lot of character in your face," she said.

"I paid for every line of it."

"No, you do. You have a very interesting face. Did anyone ever tell you that?"

"Not in so many words."

"I can tell about a person just by their face. It's all there. You can tell a lot."

"What does my face tell you?"

"It's strange. Interesting. You've done a lot, seen a lot." She took a long drag, blew smoke into the greasy air. "Nobody really knows you. You keep it all inside."
 

He nodded. "Ever work the carnival circuit? You have a good line of patter."

"I mean it. You think I'm kidding. I know you. I can see inside of you."

"Maybe you can." He inclined his head toward the doorway. "How does the old man's face read?"

She looked off and shrugged. "Old Tired."

Carney tossed his hat onto the table beside the sofa. "It is kind of warm in here. Either that or I'm having hot flashes."

The old man returned bearing a bottle and a cloth sack. He set the bottle down on the table. He raised the bag, fiddling with the drawstring until he had it open. He reached inside, felt around, and took out a darkly gnarled object and handed it to Carney.
 

Carney looked at it. It was some sort of root or twig, almost black, of a hardness not usual for wood or plant material.

"High John's root?"

"Uh-uh. No, suh. That be Black Benjamin. You can't hardly find that."

"Really."

"I spent a week in the woods, just sneakin' up on it. You gots to sneak up on Black Benjamin. You turn around, you think you know where it is, and it gone, man. Gone. After I dug it up and brung it home, it just sit there and stew. It was madder'n hell I dug it out. It don't wanta be out. It don't want no one t'see it."
 

"It's sentient, then. It thinks."

"Yessuh. It knows. Got a mind of its own, Black Ben."

The old man rooted in the bag again and brought out a lump of a grayish substance. Carney took it. It was iron-heavy, and looked the part.
 

"Just a guess. Meteorite?"

"Yessuh. That's what they calls it. Sky iron. I found that forty . . . no, forty-five years ago. Just layin' on the ground. Sittin' there lookin' up at me."
 

"Nickel-iron," Carney said. "Partially melted."

The old man rummaged again. He brought forth a succession of odd stones, various roots, sprigs of henbane and liverwort, a bit of bone — other talismans.
 

Carney examined each item and pocketed it. When there was no more, he said, "Thank you."

"But that all don't mean a
damn
you not in the spirit. You gots t'get in the spirit."

Carney picked up the bottle. The glass was old and dark. There was no label. He popped the cork and sniffed it.

"I get you a glass."

"No, don't bother." Carney sniffed, then took a long pull on the bottle. He swallowed and started coughing.

The old man smiled with satisfaction.

"Jesus!" Carney gasped.

The old man cackled.

Carney caught his breath. "That went down hard." He looked at the bottle. It was about three-quarters full. "Applejack?" he asked.
 

"Ain't applejack."

"Tastes like it, a little. Stronger. Apple brandy with hydrochloric acid, maybe. Damn."

"You gots to drink it. A lot of it. The spirit's what does it."

"Yeah." Carney drank again. This time the stuff coursed down easier, like lava down the slope of a volcanic cone. He drank again; then one more time. His eyes were watering.
 

"I think I'm going to be in the spirit very soon."

"It do you good."

Carney offered the bottle. "Join me?"

The old man shook his head. "I ain't the one for it, either. Too old. Too used up. I threw it all away. I didn't use it to no good at all. Can't use it no more. You got to be careful with it. It use you like you use it."
 

"Oh, yes."

"It turn on you, you don't watch out."

"I can imagine."

"Yessuh."

The old man sat back down on the easy chair. "My granddaughter," he said. "She need a job. Can't get no work."

"What does she do?"

"She went to school. She gots some education. College. Scholarship."

"Wonderful."

"She quit. Took up with some friends. They take her out drinkin'. All night sometime. She come home, sleep all day. She say she can't get no work. Ain't nothin' she wanta do anyway, she say. No good jobs for colored girls. Don't wanta make no beds or scrub no floors."
 

"Can she write?"

"Yes, suh. Has a fine hand."

"Yeah. I didn't mean quite that. There's a position open in one of my companies here in Dutchtown. Importers. They need someone to write brochures and catalogues. A little college is all a person would need."
 

"These people . . . they colored?"