Crime Plus Music (16 page)

He crossed Lefty O'Doul Bridge where China Basin narrows into Mission Creek and kept trudging up Third, ballpark looming to the right, downtown a mile ahead. Avoiding eye contact as pedestrian traffic intensified, he continued across Market with its trolleys and traffic and crowds, aiming almost unaware toward Chinatown, sensing somehow he could find a place there to sit, rest. No one would trouble over him. For all intents and purposes, he'd be invisible.

He passed through the pagoda-style gate on Grant Avenue and dragged himself up the steep hill, maintaining his balance any way he could, bracing himself on cars or delivery vans along the curb, latching onto parking meters, grabbing lampposts entwined with dragons, trying not to tumble into the vendor tables mounted outside every storefront.

Somehow he managed the two long blocks to California Street and planted himself breathlessly on a wooden bench in the shaded square across from Old St. Mary's. Rest here, he thought, not long. Once you've got your strength back and can talk without choking, maybe ask a lady with a kind face if you can use her cell, call Katy at the center. Say you were mugged, which is true after all.

Wiping tears from his good eye, he glanced up at the cathedral's bell tower and felt a sudden, powerful sense of release. He'd reached a place of reckoning, acceptance, and felt ready to surrender. If he could only decide: to whom?

I
N
TIME
HE
SPOTTED
A
familiar figure at the corner, waiting for the light. A slender man in a sport coat, a scarf knotted at his neck. His appearance seemed incongruous, even impossible, and yet not. Excluding Metta House, where else but here to encounter Doctor Wu?

Lonnie scrambled from the bench and headed toward the corner. He didn't make it in time for the light, and he lacked the strength to call out, but he watched Doctor Wu continue down Grant, deeper into old Chinatown.

Traffic was light so Lonnie crossed against the red, shambling as quickly as he could. He spotted Doctor Wu turning into an alley and hurried to catch up, forgetting his pain, his weakness, his savaged eye and ribs and knee. When he reached the corner where Doctor Wu had turned he found himself facing a narrow cul de sac cluttered with nondescript shops and restaurants at street level, tenements overhead, towering above the damp pavement.

He went storefront to storefront, glancing through steam-fogged windows. At last he spotted the telltale sport coat vanishing up a stairwell inside a crowded dim sum tearoom. Totally Asian clientele, not a round eye in the place—it worked to his advantage. Nothing but stunned glances tried to stop him as he plowed through the dining room to the doorway that led upstairs.

His good fortune ended at the top. A wide, thick-necked, short-haired guard in a black suit manned the door at the hallway's end, the one just now closing. He stood with his open left hand covering his right fist, as though ready for a Bao Quan bow.

“I need to speak with Doctor Wu.”

It came out slurred—the damage to his face, the stabbing lack of breath from his stairway climb. Bracing himself with one hand against the wall, he shoved off with each step, pushing himself along. The guard simply stood there, eyes front, the empty gaze of a temple dragon.

“I need to speak with Doctor Wu!” Bellowing now, as best he could.

That brought the door guard forward, ready to wrap Lonnie up, pitch him back down the stairs into the clamor of voices and hissing oil, clanging pots. Lonnie slammed his palm against the wall, pounding against the ancient plaster as he continued shouting, “I need to speak to Doctor Wu! It's me, Doctor Wu, Lonnie, I need to speak with you, please! Please come out, talk to me, please!”

He was thrashing in the guard's vice-like arms when the door opened. Doctor Wu stood there, ashen but otherwise expressionless. Beyond him, inside the room, a number of stern-faced men in suits, white shirts open at the neck, no ties, sat around a conference table in utter silence.

Doctor Wu whispered something harshly over his shoulder to someone inside the room, then entered the hallway, closing the door behind him. He said something in Chinese to the guard who, after a long moment, released his hold.

Lonnie collapsed to the floor. Doctor Wu bent over him, checking the various obvious wounds, specifically trying to look at the shuttered eye.

“You need medical attention,” he said.

A
SHORT
TIME
LATER
K
ATY
arrived and, with the help of the thickset guard, managed to get Lonnie down to her car. Doctor Wu had long since vanished back inside the room with the other men.

She turned up California, heading west. Lonnie said, “Don't take me to a hospital.”

She didn't respond—just kept driving, eyes straight ahead, hands at ten and two.

“If I wanted to go to a hospital I could've stopped at SF Gen.”

“Lonnie—”

“It was on the way. Kinda. Given where I was coming from. Where I . . . ended up.”

She stopped at a crosswalk and they watched a gaggle of Asian school kids troop merrily corner to corner, the sound of their laughter dulled by the windshield.

“Why didn't you?” She looked both ways, then accelerated from her stop. “Go to the hospital, I mean.”

He sank a little deeper into the car seat. In a whisper: “I don't know . . .”

They continued on in silence for several blocks. “Well, never mind. Doctor Wu feels terrible about what happened—he assumes it had to do with the errand he gave you—and he's already called his personal physician. He's waiting for us at Metta House.”

How responsive, Lonnie thought. How discreet.

“Those guys back there at the tea house,” he said, “the ones Doctor Wu was meeting. Who are they?”

Katy shrugged. “I'm not sure. Businessmen, I suppose.”

Lonnie managed a small laugh. “Think I don't know a gangster when I see one?”

“Lonnie, please.” Like she was talking to a feverish child. “You've been beaten nearly to death, who knows what kind of damage you've suffered, shock alone, but that's no reason—”

“The Triads are in bed with the Chinese military.”

“According to who—the US press?”

“He's a spy, isn't he—Doctor Wu, I mean.”

Katy put her hand to her head. “Lonnie, for God's sake—”

“Christ, for all I know, you're all spies. Mazur for sure. Jonathan?”

“Yes, yes. You've found us out. We're all . . . spies! What better way to end the infinite afflictions of all living beings. You know what bodhisattva really means, right?”

“Secret agent?” He'd never seen her angry before. She looked on the verge of tears. “Have to admit, it's a perfect front. Put a little ‘boo' back in Buddha.”

She shook her head. A small, miserable laugh. “You ungrateful prick.”

“Who says I'm ungrateful?”

“Please, just be quiet.” She redoubled her focus on the street ahead. “At least until we get home.”

So that's what we're calling it now, he thought. Not the center, not Metta House. Home.

E
XCEPT
FOR
THE
DOCTOR
,
THE
place was empty when they arrived. Not uncommon, most of the others still worked. Katy helped Lonnie to the sofa nearest the fireplace and the physician, an affable, melon-faced Asian perhaps ten years younger than Doctor Wu, commenced with the expected Q&A—“What happened, where does it hurt, are you experiencing flashes of light or a buzzing in your ears?”—his voice calm and caring and precise.

Rummaging in his pebbled black bag, he said, “I understand you are a recovering addict. I therefore need to ask your informed consent before administering a painkiller. But I would like to get a better look at that eye. The knee as well, of course, but that may require a specialist.”

A painkiller, Lonnie thought. Probably an opiate. Fentanyl, maybe.

He nodded. “Sure. Why not?”

The doctor took out a sterilized needle and a vial, the print too small and far away for Lonnie to read. As the syringe's cylinder filled, Katy came closer, crouched beside the sofa, and took Lonnie's hand. Her grip felt reassuringly cool and dry.

The doctor came close. “I'm going to lift your eyelid, which may be very tender and painful. But I need to anesthetize the area, and the best spot for that is the eye itself.”

Lonnie decided not to tell him he'd shot up in his eye before.

“From the needle itself, you'll only feel a pinprick, nothing more. Okay?”

Lonnie nodded again and braced himself and, all things considered, it went quick. He lay back and closed both eyes and waited for the effect to hit, only realizing once the numbing warmth began to spread throughout his body that the doctor had emptied the entire syringe. And, from what he shortly gathered, it wasn't just an opiate. It was a paralytic—at least, he couldn't move. And yet, with Katy's fingers still entwined with his, panic seemed a thousand miles away.

If he were to describe the ensuing sensation to someone, he'd say that it was like wandering into a strange, small church, no one there but you, except for an unseen organist playing up in the choir loft, which you can't see no matter where you look. You can hear the music, though: a hymn you think you recognize, the name right there on the tip of your tongue. But then the music falters, the organist loses the tune—stops, goes back, repeats an earlier phrase, but once again turns into a musical cul de sac. The organist retreats, revisits another beautiful line, then wanders off, stumbles across another hymn, diddles with that, then strays into odds and ends from other songs: “Fools Rush In,” “River Deep, Mountain High,” “Mary Had a Little Lamb” . . .

And everywhere that Mary went . . .

Someone should wise up the lamb, he thought, as the cool dry fingers he'd been clutching slipped free. Following Mary is not a viable long-term option.

THE LONG LAMENT

BY BRENDAN DuBOIS

T
HE
WORD
WENT
OUT
THAT
October that the leader of the Campbell clan was dying, and for the next few days a steady stream of family members, relatives, and supplicants made their way to the city of Dundee, Maine, where a part of the widespread Campbell family arrived from the Highlands when the worldwide Great Depression had struck nearly ninety years earlier.

They drove in from the rest of the New England states, others took the ferry down from Nova Scotia, and a fair number flew into the Portland International Jetport from across the world, including Duncan Campbell—the younger son of the dying Colin Campbell—who had flown in to Maine from Phoenix, where he had lived for the past twelve years. Duncan's oldest brother, William, was already in Dundee, where he had never left. For the past several days, William had been keeping watch over his dying father in the upper floor of his modest two-story home in the Highlands section of Dundee, which offered a grand view of the rocky harbor.

Duncan had rented a black Lexus at the airport in Portland, and along the two-hour drive his wife Rosalie kept her own counsel. As Duncan drove up the jagged coast on Route 1, he had a fair idea of what was going through his wife's mind, for she had never been to Maine, had never met Duncan's father or older brother, and was native of Scottsdale and whose last name had been Hernandez before marrying Duncan.

She was thirty-six, with a slim, taut body wearing black slacks and a waist-length light-red wool jacket over a white blouse, her black hair pulled back in a ponytail, small gold hoop earrings in her ears. Rosalie caught him looking at her and said, “Are you all right?”

“Doing all right,” he said. “You?”

She shifted in her seat, looked out at the ocean. “I . . . I've never seen the ocean like this, so cold and dark looking. All those rocks. And those trees! So high, so green.”

He nodded. “Yeah . . . have to admit, it's good to see. It's been a long, long time.”

Another mile passed and Rosalie said, “How much longer?”

“About thirty minutes.”

“How . . . how will they respond to me, do you think?”

“I don't care and neither should you,” and the moment those words left his mouth, he regretted them.

She crossed her ankles and then her arms, and she said, “That's easy for you to say,” and in her anger, her suppressed Hispanic accent would come out. “You're the prodigal son, returning home. I'm the dark-skinned
puta
whose family came from Mexico, not Scotland, and who gave your father two half-breed grandchildren. You will be welcomed. I'll be stared at as . . . some foreign witch.”

Duncan felt that familiar ache strike him, and he said, “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that.”

They drove on for another half mile. Rosalie reached over, rubbed his shoulder. “I'm sorry, too. You're going home to see your dying papa. That's hard enough without me bitching at you.”

He reached across, patted her hand, and then came the exit sign up ahead for Dundee. Duncan took the turn, saw the familiar streets come into view, and then slowed down. He said, “Whatever happens . . . my brother William won't do it. His friends, our cousins, they may try to tease you or push you to do something. He'll let others do the fighting.”

“Why would they want to do that?”

“To embarrass me in front of the family.”

“Why?”

“To solidify William's claim on all of my father's businesses and interests. To keep me out. To send me back to Arizona with nothing.”

She said, “I know you've talked of him, but your older brother, he sounds so cruel.”

“You have no idea.”

T
HE
STREETS
OF
D
UNDEE
WERE
cracked and narrow, and Duncan maneuvered the Lexus past the small downtown that offered a hardware store, bakery, diner, and a supply shop for the lobster-men and other fishermen who worked from the small harbor, and then he took the turn for Overlook Drive. The road was steep and Rosalie said, “How can you drive on this street in the winter, with all the snow and ice?”

“You don't,” Duncan said. “Usually people take the long way around, which leaves it to the kids to sled down.”

Rosalie looked back at their steep ascent. “Duncan . . . you're telling me you used to slide down that hill? In the winter?”

“Yep.”

“My God, I think you'd end up in the harbor.”

“Almost did, a couple of times.”

The road flattened out and they were on a side of a hill, where homes had only been built on the left. The land to the right fell sharply away and showed the small downtown and the harbor, some ships at their mooring anchors, and off in the distance the waters of the Gulf of Maine.

“So beautiful.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Didn't mean much back when I was here but now, years later, yeah, it is pretty, isn't it.”

He slowed as they approached 19 Overlook Drive, and he was irritated, seeing no parking space had been left open for him. Duncan knew that one word from William would have left an opening on the front lawn, and seeing nothing was there, he knew his older brother had fired the first shot in today's lengthy and no doubt bloody battle. There were high-priced Audis and BMWs parked next to dented pickup trucks, and then a half dozen parked Harley motorcycles, with bulky bearded men in boots, blue jeans, and leather motorcycle vests announcing
DUNDEE
HIGHLAND
M
/
C
on the back, with a red-and-yellow lion's head situated in the middle. The men all had beer cans in their hands and eyed the Lexus with suspicion as it motored by.

“Those men . . . do they belong to your brother?”

“No,” Duncan said. “My cousin Henry.”

“They look mean.”

“They are mean.”

About one hundred feet from his childhood home, Duncan finally located an open spot and pulled in. He switched off the Lexus, walked around, and opened the door for his wife. “Should we call Auntie Serena?” she asked.

“What, you think the twins might already have tied her up? They're only ten, you know, and girls at that.”

Rosalie laughed, showing perfect white teeth, and she held out a hand, and he took it and gently helped her out of the Lexus. She said, “They may have my eyes and my hair, but their blood is one hundred percent hell-raising Campbell.”

“If you say so, Mom.”

He walked hand in hand with his wife to the house, going past the motorcycles and grim-looking men, and Rosalie whispered, “That sea smell . . . that's . . . invigorating. I like it.”

Duncan squeezed her hand. “Yeah, I've missed that, too.”

Through a gap between a Mercedes Benz and a Ford F-150 pickup truck, he led her up a flagstone path heading to the wide porch up ahead. There were closely trimmed juniper bushes in front of the porch, and the lawn had been crisply mowed. An old-fashioned black metal lamppost was adjacent to the pathway, and hanging beneath it was a black-and-white metal sign that announced
CAMPBELL
. Seeing this little yard and the lamppost brought back an unexpected flood of memories, from the hot summer days when he and William had to trim the bushes and the lawn (even though he sensed at a young age that Dad had enough money to hire landscapers, and even being young, knew better than to suggest it), to the Halloween night when someone stole the sign, and when it was returned less than twelve hours later by two frightened young boys with black eyes and torn pants who had no doubt encountered the wrath of his older brother, William.

Up on the porch were a collection of men and women, all ages and stations, some smoking, most drinking, and Duncan found that he recognized about half of them, and they offered him crisp nods, which he returned.

Rosalie stopped and looked out over the harbor. “What a great view.”

“Sure is,” he said. “Dad always liked this view.”

“Lucky no one built houses to block it.”

“Oh, they tried,” Duncan said. “About twenty years ago, some developer wanted to build some condos, right on top of that slope of land. Would have blocked the view indeed. Never happened, though.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because before a spade of dirt was turned, the contractor responsible for the project saw his warehouse burn down. Nobody else would take the project, and that was that.”

Rosalie seemed to ponder that, and he took her hand and led her into the house, and he heard something familiar indeed.

“Bagpipe music,” Rosalie said. “Is that what I'm hearing?”

He half listened, recognized the tune as “Black Bear,” and said, “I'm afraid so, and you better get used to it. Dad loves bagpipe music, except for one tune, and that's all you're going to hear.”

“Which tune is that?” she asked.

Duncan said, “All right, here we go.”

T
HROUGH
THE
FRONT
DOOR
THERE
was a carpeted staircase in front of them, with a small foyer. To the right was the front parlor, which had been off limits to him as a child, and was only used on Sundays for company, or when Dad had his “special visitors.” The parlor was nearly full and Duncan was surprised at how uneasy he felt, seeing all those people in the restricted parlor. To the left was a kitchen with linoleum flooring and appliances at least thirty years old, and lots more people. One older woman broke away from the crowded kitchen and Duncan blinked in surprise: his Aunt Alicia now looked exactly as his mother had, back years before, just before dying so suddenly from a stroke.

“Duncan!” she called out, coming closer, grasping his hand. “Oh, so glad to see you,” and he bent down and kissed her cheek, and caught a strong scent of vanilla.

“Glad to see you, Aunt Alicia,” he said. “You remember my wife, Rosalie, don't you?”

The older woman's smile seemed frozen in place, and she stiffly held out a hand. “Of course. Nice to see you, dear.”

Rosalie smiled widely, shook her hand, and Alicia said, “Your brother is upstairs, in your father's bedroom. Along with Uncle Alvin. You should move along before . . . well, you know.”

Duncan nodded. “Yes, I know. Rosalie?”

His wife said, “Go right ahead. I'll run up when I can.”

Aunt Alicia slipped her arm into Rosalie's. “Oh, let the men do their men stuff. Here, let me get you a drink. I bet that Mexican blood of yours is freezing up here in Maine.”

His aunt dragged his wife into the crowded kitchen, and Duncan went to the foot of the stairs, gave a quick scan of the parlor. Women in the kitchen, men in the parlor, the men drinking beers or glasses of amber-colored fluid. The men were aged eighteen to eighty, it looked like, and he felt their suspicious and pitying glances upon him, for he was the odd son, the disgraced son, and soon-to-be disinherited son. It was surprising how trapped he felt, with the too-warm house, the too many people, and that incessant playing of the bagpipes. Father never played, William was too busy to learn so it had fallen upon him, the youngest, to pick up the pipes, and while part of him enjoyed learning the tunes, once he had left Dundee, not once had he ever played them again.

Duncan trotted up the stairs, not looking back, the bagpipe music following him, now playing “Highland Laddie.”

O
N
THE
SECOND
FLOOR
IT
was like stepping back in time. The upstairs bathroom right in front of him, the short hallway to the left that led to the bedroom he and his brother had lived in those rough years, and to the right, the half-open door leading to his parents' bedroom. The framed photos of the Scottish Highlands, some needlework done by Mom and Grandma on the walls, and a large framed print of Jesus and the Sacred Heart. It was easy to stand here and think he was back up here as a young boy.

He went to the bedroom, gently rapped on the door, opened it, and stepped into the hard present.

The large double bed was gone, now replaced by a hospital bed, where his father rested. His eyes were closed. His thick red beard was white and thinned out, and the reddish-white hair on his head had been brushed back, exposing a strong, pale forehead. His large arms and hands were on top of the dull blue blanket, and he breathed slowly, gurgling noises coming from his nose. A night-stand held a collection of pillboxes, bottles, boxes of tissue, Vaseline, and a water bottle with a flexible straw.

It was odd but Duncan liked seeing the hospital bed. He had too many bad memories of the earlier bed, where he had been forced to lie down on while Dad administered his belt in his weekly rounds of discipline. This room reminded him of nothing more than violence, and the other two men in the room did nothing to dissuade that feeling.

The first man was in a dark gray suit, white shirt, and blue necktie, thick red hair and half-glasses perched on the end of a prominent nose. Cousin Alvin Campbell, an attorney who had one sole client, the man dying in the bed nearby. He had a notepad in his lap and was scribbling notes. The other man was standing in the far corner of the room, eyes glaring, thick red beard closely trimmed, wearing blue jeans and a tight black T-shirt, arm sleeves cut off, the better to show off his bulked-up biceps.

“Duncan,” his brother said.

“William.”

From speakers built into the walls—a technological marvel at least thirty years old—bagpipe music was piped in, and this tune was the slow, mournful “Skye Boat Song,” a dirge recalling the time Bonnie Prince Charlie escaped after the disastrous Battle of Culloden in 1746.

His older brother shifted his weight, causing the floorboards to creak. Speaking of battles . . . this whole house had the memories of fights and battles with his older brother, from his very earliest memory, all through grammar and high school, right up to twelve years ago, when the final and most bitter split had occurred, when William had betrayed him to Dad and had tossed him out onto that same front lawn, lying about a shadowy business deal gone bad.