The White Road

He smiled.

“I’m leaving it all to charity. You think that’s a good thing to do? I think so. I think it’s a good thing.”

“You could go to the police. You could tell them what you did.”

“No, that’s not the way. I have to wait.”

“I could go to the police.”

He shrugged. “You could, but I’ll just say you made it all up. My lawyer will have me out in a matter of hours, if they even bother to take me in at all, then I’ll be back here, waiting.”

I stood.

“Jesus will forgive me,” said Poveda. “He forgives us all. Doesn’t He?”

Something flickered in his eyes, the last dying thrashing of his sanity before it sank beneath the waves.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know if there’s that much forgiveness in the universe.”

Then I left him.

The Congaree. The spate of recent deaths. The link between Elliot and Atys Jones. The T-bar in Landron Mobley’s chest, and the smaller version of it that hung from the neck of the man with the damaged eyes.

Tereus. I had to find Tereus.

The old man still sat on the worn steps of the rooming house, smoking his pipe and watching the traffic go by. I asked him for the number of Tereus’s room.

“Number 8, but he ain’t there,” he told me.

“You know, I think you may be bad luck for me,” I said. “Whenever I come here, Tereus is gone but you’re taking up porch space.”

“Thought you’d be glad to see a familiar face.”

“Yeah, Tereus’s.”

I walked past him and headed up the stairs. He watched me go.

I knocked on the door to 8, but there was no reply. From the rooms at either side I could hear competing radios playing, and stale cooking smells clung to the carpets and the walls. I tried the handle and it turned easily, the door opening onto a room with a single unmade bed, a punch-drunk couch and a gas stove in one corner. There was barely enough room between the stove and the bed for a thin man to squeeze by and look out of the small, grime-caked window. To my left was a toilet and shower stall, both reasonably clean. In fact, the room might have been threadbare, but it wasn’t dirty. Tereus had done his best to make something of it: new drapes hung from the plastic rail at the window, and a cheap framed print of roses in a vase hung on the wall. There was no TV, no radio, no books. The mattress had been torn from the bed and thrown in a corner, and clothes were scattered around the room, but I guessed that whoever had trashed the place had found nothing. Anything of value Tereus owned he kept elsewhere, in his true home.

I was about to leave when the door opened behind me. I turned to find a big, overweight black man in a bright shirt blocking my way out. He had a cigarette in one hand and a baseball bat in the other. Behind him, I could see the old man puffing on his pipe.

“Can I help you with something?” asked the man with the bat.

“You the super?”

“I’m the owner, and you’re trespassing.”

“I was looking for somebody.”

“Well, he ain’t here, and you got no right to be in his place.”

“I’m a private detective. My name is-”

“I don’t give a good goddamn what your name is. You just get out of here now before I have to defend myself against an unprovoked assault.”

The old man with the pipe chuckled. “Unprovoked assault,” he echoed. “Thass good.” He shook his head in merriment and blew out a puff of smoke.

I walked to the door and the big man stood to one side to let me pass. He still filled most of the doorway and I had to breathe in deeply to squeeze by. He smelled of drain cleaner and Old Spice. I paused at the stairs.

“Can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“How come his door is unlocked?”

The man’s face creased in puzzlement. “You didn’t open it?’

“No, it was open when I got here, and somebody had gone through his things.”

The owner turned to the man with the pipe. “Anybody else asking after Tereus?”

“No, sir, just this man.”

“Look, I’m not trying to make any trouble,” I continued. “I just need to talk to Tereus. When was the last time that you saw him?”

“Few days ago,” said the owner, relenting. “Round about eight, after he finished over at the club. He had a pack with him, said he wouldn’t be back for a couple of days.”

“And the door was locked then?”

“Watched him lock it myself.”

Which meant that somebody had entered the building since the death of Atys Jones and had probably done what I had just done: gone into the apartment, either to find Tereus himself or something co

“Thanks,” I said.

“Yeah, don’t mention it.”

“Unprovoked assault,” said the pipe smoker again. “Thass fu

The late afternoon deviants were already assembled in LapLand by the time I arrived, among them an elderly man in a torn shirt who rubbed his hand up and down his beer bottle in a ma

I found Lorelei sitting at the bar, waiting for her turn to dance. She didn’t look too happy to see me, but I was used to that. The bartender made a move to intercept me, but I lifted a finger.

“My name’s Parker. You got a problem, you call Willie. Otherwise, back off.”

He backed off.

“Slow afternoon,” I said to Lorelei.

“They’re always slow,” she said, her head turning away from me to signal her lack of interest in engaging me in conversation. I figured that she’d taken an earful from her boss for talking too much the last time I visited, and didn’t want to be seen to repeat her mistake. “The only cash these guys got are nickels and dimes and Canadian quarters.”

“Well then, I guess you’ll be dancing for the love of your art.”

She shook her head and stared back at me over her shoulder. It wasn’t a friendly look.

“You think you’re fu

She had a point. I put a fifty on the bar, but kept my finger firmly fixed on the nose.

“Call me cautious,” I said. “Last time, I think you reneged on our agreement.”

“You got to talk to Tereus, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, but I had to go through your boss to get to him. Literally. Where is Tereus?”

Her lips thi

“Listen to me,” I said. “I’d prefer not to be here. I’d prefer not to be talking to you in this way. I don’t think I’m better than you, but I’m certainly no worse than you, so save the speeches. You don’t want my money? That’s fine.” The music came to a close, and the few customers clapped desultorily as the dancer gathered up her clothes and headed for the dressing room.