Fire Lake (16 page)

"Mister?" Levy said.

I glanced back at him over my shoulder.

"Look out for her, won't you?" he said with
feeling. "She didn't deserve the break she got. She never did."

"I'll do my best," I promised.

"And mister . . ." He put his glasses back
on and stared at me. "Look after him, too, if you can."

I told him I'd try.
 

23

I had a brief moment of panic when I stepped out of
Levy's Music World and couldn't find Karen on the street. Then I
looked over at the Pinto and saw her sitting behind the steering
wheel, fixing her makeup in the rearview mirror. I walked slowly over
to the car. My back was beginning to hurt again, but I didn't know
what to do about it-except take another pill.

"Are you all right?" I said, easing into
the seat beside her.

She glanced over at me as she blotted her eyes with a
wadded-up tissue. "I'm sorry for that scene in there," she
said, blushing.

"It's okay," I said gently.

Karen stared at herself in the mirror. "No, it's
not okay. I don't like to get like that. It's not good for me. It
puts bad ideas in my head."

I eyed her for a moment.

"You still love Lonnie, don't you?" I said,
perhaps because Levy had just said that Lonnie still loved her.

"I don't know," she said with a doomed look
on her beautiful face. "I guess a piece of me does. In spite of
all the shit, I guess part of me will always love Lonnie."

I must have winced a little, because Karen reached
out quickly and touched my cheek. "I'm falling in love with you,
too, Harry. Don't misunderstand. But you're still new to me. Being in
a relationship is new to me. We hardly know each other yet." She
dropped her hand and stared vacant-eyed at the car seat.

"Seeing that studio . . . it made me realize how
many years had gone by. Wasted years. Dreadful years. But it also
made me realize that there had been a good time too." She looked
up at me again, uncertainly. "I can say that, can't I?"

"Sure," I said.

She shook her head. "Maybe I can't say that.
Maybe it's crazy to say that. Maybe I ought to go back to St. Louis
now and forget this whole goddamn thing."

"I think you should, although I'd miss you."

"I'd miss you too. That's the bitch of it."
She turned back to the steering wheel. "No," she said
decisively, "I won't run out on you, Harry. I just don't know
how many more of these trips down Memory Lane I can stand. I don't
want to lose my balance again and start falling."

A few drops of rain dashed against the windshield.
Karen started up the engine and switched on the wipers.

"I don't know where Norvelle lives, but I guess
we should find out," she said, straightening up the rearview
mirror.

"That's the good news," I said. "Levy
told me that Norvelle was working in a theater downtown--the Bijou.
When I found Lonnie at the motel, he had a ticket in his pocket from
that theater; so he must have gone there, after visiting Sy."

"He and Norvelle were always tight," Karen
said. "Who is Norvelle?" I asked.

"A tall, gangly black kid who played bass in
Lonnie's band. Flower Power--the group I told you about."

"He's working for someone named Leanne Gearheart
now."

Karen winced, as if I'd pricked her with a pin.
"Another name from the past," she said, although I could
tell from the pained look on her face that it wasn't a name she was
fond of.

"You don't like her?"

"It's not that I don't like her," Karen
said, pretending indifference. "She went with Lonnie before I
did, and we just never got along. You know, there was a lot of
jealousy there. And then she took it hard when Lonnie broke up with
her. I always felt kind of guilty about that."

"Do you think Lonnie might have looked her up?"
I asked.

Karen shrugged. "Sure. It's possible, although
she might not have been all that happy to see him. Norvelle is a
better bet."

"Why?"

"He's a junkie," Karen said. "Or at
least he used to be. And after getting out of jail, Lonnie may have
been looking to get high."

"Norvelle is connected?" I said with
interest.

Karen nodded. "Norvelle is the dude who taught
Lonnie how to shoot up. He's a ghetto kid, and smack's a ghetto vice.
At least, it used to be back when we got into it. I used to kid
Lonnie about being half black himself; but it wasn't really a joke.
For a few years there, we lived in the ghetto. All our friends were
black. It just came with the habit."

"Maybe Norvelle was Lonnie's connection on the
cocaine deal," I offered.

"Maybe," Karen said absently, "although
Norvelle was into getting down--not up."

"It's still worth a look-see," I said,
trying to sound positive. "You've got to start thinking like a
detective."

"I don't think I like being a detective, Harry,"
Karen said as she guided the car back out onto Vine Street. "It
hurts too much."

"Tell me about it,"
I said with a laugh.

***

The Bijou theater was located on Fourth Street, on
the first floor of a converted brownstone office building. The
brownstone was right on the edge of what had become the gallery
district--a block of trendy, hi-tech art emporiums. I could remember
when that same block had been the wholesale clothing district. When I
was a kid, my grandfather had jobbed menswear from the second floor
of one of the brownstones.

It gave me an odd feeling to be wandering near his
old warehouse. In fact, I found myself staring nostalgically at the
tall windows of the building that used to house his company. I'd
spent a lot of hot summer afternoons in that warehouse. It was a
printing outfit now.

As we walked down Fourth, Karen seemed to be lost in
thought too. I figured she was still brooding about Lonnie. It didn't
make me happy to know that. I didn't know quite how it made me feel.
Guilty, jealous. A little of both. More jealous than guilty, finally.
I'd already started thinking of her as my own.

The Bijou was still a very new place and trendy, like
the arty shops around it. There was no old-fashioned marquee, running
with light bulbs, above the doors just a neon sign on the bare brick
wall reading "Bijou" in fancy script. The lobby was tiled
in parquet. The walls were decorated, like a gallery's, with works of
local artists; and there were several abstract-looking metal
sculptures dotting the floor. One of them reminded me of the fish
statue in front of the futuresque house in Jacques Tati's
Mon
Oncle
. In fact it would have been a funny
allusion, if the rest of the theater hadn't reminded me of the house
itself. It seemed as if someone had gone a long way out of his or her
way to make the Bijou look like anything but what it was. The only
bows to tradition were the chrome-and-glass refreshment stand on the
right and the little ticket booth built into the wall on the left.
And when I took a closer look, I realized that the refreshments at
the stand consisted of hot cider and espresso. No popcorn machine. No
Milk Duds. No orange drink.

In the rear of the lobby, a guy who was trying very
hard not to look like an usher was standing in front of a pair of
polished wooden doors leading to the theater. He was a white college
kid, a DAAP student from the look of him. And the girl in the ticket
booth looked just as white and collegiate. It seemed like an odd
place for a black junkie to be working.

"I guess we're going to have to ask about
Norvelle," Karen said, glancing around the lobby. "I don't
see him here."

I nodded and walked over to the ticket booth. The
girl inside smiled at me with polished insincerity.

"Two?" she said sweetly.

I shook my head and her face fell. "I'm looking
for one of your employees. Norvelle Thomas."

"I don't think Norvelle is working today,"
she said.

"Is there someone here I could talk to about
Norvelle? It's really important that I get in touch with him."

The college girl gave me a skeptical look. I could
hardly blame her. Norvelle Thomas didn't seem like the kind of guy
with a guest register.

"I guess you could talk to our manager, Leanne,"
the girl said. "If it's really that important."

"Oh, it is," I said, looking serious and
concerned. "There's a door on your right," she said. "Just
go through and tell the secretary you want Leanne Silverstein."

"Thanks."

There was a door on the right, but it took me a few
seconds to find it. It had been made to look like part of the
wainscoted wall. I opened it up and ushered Karen through.

We walked down a little corridor to an anteroom full
of sleek Italian modern furniture and framed movie posters. A
secretary, another college girl, was kneeling in a backless chair in
front of a lacquered desk so smooth and angleless it looked as if it
had been poured from ajar. Soft rock music was being piped in from
speakers concealed in the ceiling. "Yes?" the secretary
said, looking a little alarmed at the company.

"We'd like to speak to Leanne Silverstein,"
I said. "I don't know if she's in," the secretary said.

"Tell her Lonnie Jackowski's wife, Karen, wants
to see her," Karen said.

The secretary got out of the chair as if she were
dismounting a horse. She started off down another hall, looked back
nervously, and said, "Just stay there, okay?"

Karen nodded, and the secretary walked off.

"Christ," Karen said with a scowl, "this
is going to be awful."

"I'm kind of curious," I said. "Why
would a woman with this kind of job hire a black junkie?"

"Old times, probably," Karen said. "I
think she and Norvelle used to sleep together, after she broke up
with Lonnie.

"Is she black?" I asked.

"Half-and-half. Her parents were a mixed
couple-solidly middle-class. Her father was a GP. Her mother was a
social worker. They raised Leanne like a white kid, and she was so
light, she could pass. Then the sixties came along, and passing for
white suddenly didn't seem as good a deal as it once did. Leanne went
through a hell of a lot of changes about that. She and her dad used
to get into real screaming matches about the race thing and about
Lonnie. I saw them fight, once--at Sy's studio, actually. It was
awful. I mean, I think he would have hit her if the band hadn't been
standing around. I think he hit her a lot, anyway. Her dad was a real
hardworking black man, who was proud of what he'd accomplished with
his life. And, man, he did not like what Leanne was doing with hers."

"How did she end up with Lonnie?"

Karen smiled. "Lonnie had his good points,
Harry."

"I remember," I said.

"I don't just mean sex. He was also a very
sympathetic guy. Completely nonjudgmental. He more or less took
people at face value--took them for what they wanted to be. He was
like a very flattering mirror, if you understand what I mean."

"Better than you think," I said,
remembering the way Lonnie had helped me when I'd first met him.

"I guess Leanne just connected with him at the
right time. From what Lonnie told me, she'd been an art student when
the black power thing started up. Sometime in the mid-sixties, she
dropped out of DAA and tied up with some local black activists. Those
dudes were really into macho, and they ended up treating her like
shit. When Lonnie met her in at the end of '68, she was very confused
about her race and her sex and her folks, who couldn't understand why
she wasn't happy being the white girl they'd raised her to be. Lonnie
was a good listener. He helped her out. He lived with her until he
met me, in '69."

Karen glanced nervously down the hall.

"It has been close to twenty years, Karen,"
I said. "She's probably forgotten the whole thing."

"You don't understand," Karen said, shaking
her head. "Leanne tried to kill herself after Lonnie broke up
with her. She took some pills. That's not something you're likely to
forget, even if you wanted to forget it. And Leanne didn't want to.
For a year or two after that, she'd send Lonnie these pathetic
letters about how her life was over and how he'd ruined her for other
men. She laid a real guilt trip on him, and on me."

The secretary came back into the anteroom-a smile on
her face. "Follow me, won't you," she said.

"Leanne's office is in the back."

Karen glanced at me nervously as we followed the
secretary down the hall. "I'm not looking forward to this,"
she said in a stage whisper.

I patted her back and said, "If it gets us
closer to Lonnie, it'll be worth it."
 

24

We followed the secretary up to a door at the end of
the hall.

"Through there," she said, smiling
cordially.

I opened the door, guiding Karen in ahead of me.