The Remembering (23 page)

“I had one of my ‘forecasts,’ Z. Over at Mitch’s place, clear as a tear, I saw it and I knew it.”

“Knew what?”

“A ‘big one’ is comin’, Z, and it’s comin’ soon. We gotta get hold of Willie.”

I glanced across the table at Carolina. She was worried. She knew Ray, the “Weatherman,” would not be mistaken. She had lost her sister the last time Ray had said a tornado was coming. Carolina rose from her seat and went directly to the telephone. Willie had left the number of their hotel and the number of the airport. She dialed the hotel and asked for Willie or Star. They had already checked out. She nervously dialed the next number, messing it up twice and having to start again. She got through to the airport and was put on hold for several minutes until she was finally connected to the proper person. She found out Willie and Star had taken off half an hour earlier. Carolina’s face dropped, but she didn’t panic. She asked the man if she could get a message to Willie now, while he was in the air. It was an emergency. The man told her he thought they were still in range and asked what she wanted to say. Carolina thought for a moment, then said, “Tell him Z and the ‘Weatherman’ said to turn back, do not come home. Repeat, do not come home.”

Carolina hung up the phone, sat down at the kitchen table, and waited twenty minutes before redialing the Rockford airport. Ray paced the room. When she called back, she had to wait again until the same man came on the line. She listened for a tense moment or two, then smiled and the blood came back into her face. The freckles on her cheeks and across her nose all seemed to jump out at once. “Thank God! And thank you, sir,” Carolina said to the man. “You have probably saved two lives.” She hung up the phone and told us Willie had received the message and was returning to Rockford.

“Yes!” Ray shouted. “Yes, yes, yes.”

Carolina walked over and gave Ray a crushing hug for an eighty-eight-year-old woman. “I am forever grateful, Ray,” she whispered.

Ray winked and whispered back, “We got lucky.”

Nova glanced at me and I knew what she was thinking—there could still be a tornado headed our way. “When is it coming, Ray?” she asked.

Ray walked to the window and looked out at the sky and the trees. The sky was cloudless and the trees were quiet. “Soon,” he said.

At six o’clock, we watched the local news on television, but they only expected cloudy skies and the possibility of rain in the forecast. Afterward, we played cards for a while, then watched
I’ve
Got a Secret
on TV and waited. Antoinette and Georgie said good night and slipped off to bed. Eight o’clock and nine o’clock came and passed. On the ten o’clock news, they continued to predict cloudy skies and the possibility of rain. Maybe Ray missed it this time, I thought. Following the news, Carolina retired, thanking Ray again and saying, “Wake me if necessary.” Ray, Nova, and I stayed in the living room, watching TV. Eventually, Nova fell asleep on the couch and I fell asleep in my chair. Only Ray remained awake, turning off the television and sitting by the window, staring into darkness.

At 1:50
A.M.
, the same time as Buddy Holly’s plane crash, Ray tapped my shoulder and woke me. “It’s here,” was all he said.

I blinked and stood up immediately. Outside, I could hear the wind roaring through the trees, and hailstones were hitting the windows. Just then, a tree limb cracked like a rifle shot in the front yard, waking Nova up. Thirty seconds later, Antoinette ran into the room with Georgie in her arms and a frightened look on her face. Carolina wasn’t far behind, coming down the stairs in her nightgown and robe. “To the basement,” she said, “everyone to the basement. Quickly.”

One by one, we followed Carolina downstairs. We huddled together and waited. In ten minutes, everything was over. We walked back up into the kitchen. I got a flashlight and Ray and I opened the door and looked out. A light rain was falling, but the sky was quiet and the storm had passed. Tree branches and scattered debris covered the yard and driveway. We walked around the house to see if anything was broken or missing, then wandered into the “Honeycircle.” In the beam of the flashlight we saw something that only a tornado can create. Impaled on the point of the bronze gnomon of Baju’s Roman sundial was a street sign from the intersection of Manchester Road and Woodlawn. I looked at Ray and we shook our heads in disbelief at the power of such a storm. We both knew Manchester Road and Woodlawn was at least ten miles away to the southwest.

I looked up at the sky and whispered, “I’m glad Willie and Star are safe … but I think it’s us who got lucky.”

Ray was still staring at the street sign. “Ain’t that the truth,” he mumbled.

It wasn’t until the morning newscast that we found out the extent of the damage in St. Louis County and the city of St. Louis. The storm path had missed us by less than a mile. The Channel 2 TV tower had been blown down, and many power and phone lines were down. There was heavy damage around Grand and Page, and entire apartment buildings had collapsed in several places, the worst being in the vicinity of Boyle and Olive. That was Gaslight Square and it was exactly where Mitch and Mercy lived.

All morning long we tried to reach them by telephone. We never got through and they never called. Willie and Star did call, and so did Caine from Austin and Jack from Washington. We assured them we were all right. Around noon, Antoinette drove Nova, Ray, and me near the neighborhood of Gaslight Square, but there was too much chaos to find anything out. Firemen and police had closed off several streets, including the area surrounding Boyle and Olive. We waited the rest of the day in Carolina’s kitchen, hearing nothing. As the sun was setting, Willie and Star finally arrived home safely only to learn that Mitch and Mercy were missing. The local evening newscast estimated twenty-one people had been killed and more than three hundred injured, and the search through the debris of collapsed buildings continued. Carolina called every hospital in St. Louis looking for them and came up empty. No one said it aloud, but we feared the worst. Then, early the next morning, Carolina received a telephone call from the police. Mitchell Ithaca Coates, age sixty-six, and Mercy Marie Whitney, age fifty-six, had been found dead, buried in the rubble and debris of their apartment building. The news was more than sad. It took the wind out of us. Carolina had known Mitch since he was twelve years old, as I had, and every one of us had been in love with the good and beautiful Mercy.

Jack came back on the first flight out of Washington, and Caine drove home from Austin. According to wishes stated in both their wills, Mitch and Mercy were cremated. We held our own service in Carolina’s home, and instead of a preacher’s words, Jack rounded up a few local jazz musicians, all of whom knew Mitch well, and they played some of his favorite tunes while everybody shared drinks, good food, and memories of Mitch and Mercy. All day long, I kept seeing the same image in my mind. It was Mitch as a twelve-year-old shoeshine boy in Union Station, snapping his shine rag with a loud clap, a big grin, and a wink of the eye. “Hey, Z, man,” he’d say, “where you goin’?” I never had an answer for him, but he never stopped asking.

Long after everyone had either left or gone to bed, Jack, Ray, and I were still awake, sitting in the kitchen, talking and drinking the last of the coffee. Jack said he would take care of all the legal work concerning Mitch, Mercy, and their property. Ray pointed over to two brass urns sitting on a table near the door. They contained the ashes of Mitch and Mercy. “What are you gonna do with them?” he asked. Jack paused and the three of us stared at the urns.

Before Jack could answer, I said, “Paris.”

Ray looked at me. “What do you mean, ‘Paris’?”

“We’re going to take their ashes to Paris and get on a boat and let them go, into the wind and over the water of the Seine, the heart of Paris. There’s only one place where their ashes should be—the place where they fell in love.”

Jack and Ray nodded in silent approval. We kept staring at the urns for another ten minutes, then turned out the lights and went to bed.

Instead of insisting that I stay, this time Carolina was urging me to leave. Once she heard my idea, she applauded it and suggested it should be carried out sooner rather than later. Jack made all the necessary arrangements and within two days, Jack, Ray, Nova, and I said our farewells, flew to New York, changed planes, and flew nonstop to Paris. On the flight over, I thought about the future. I didn’t know when I’d return to St. Louis. The sphere had to be found and it had to be read.

In Paris, Jack leased an available
peniche
, or barge turned houseboat, for ten days. It was located on the Canal St. Martin and suited our purposes perfectly. Shortly after sunrise on the second day, with Jack as pilot, we made our way slowly out of the canal and scattered the ashes of Mitch and Mercy into the dark waters of the Seine. It was a quiet and solemn act and Jack ended it with a quiet sentence and prayer. He said simply, “God bless both of you, forever.”

That afternoon I telephoned Opari in Montreux and told her where we were and why. The following day Opari, Sheela, and Sailor boarded a train and joined us in Paris. Just seeing Opari again lifted my spirits immediately. Sailor knew that Mitch and I had been close, and he gave me his condolences and sympathy, something rare for Sailor.

The
peniche
Jack had leased could accommodate up to a dozen people, so there was plenty of room, and living on the river and canals of a large and vibrant city like Paris suited all of us. At the end of the ten-day lease, Jack decided the barge would make an excellent base of operations and we agreed. He made a generous offer to buy it, which was accepted, and we became the new “river rats” of Paris. The name of our barge was the
Giselle
and in no time Opari, Nova, and Sheela had transformed her tiny galley into a floating gourmet’s kitchen.

Jack’s cover for remaining in Paris for an extended length of time was a series of articles published in the American magazine
Sports Illustrated
. Each article was written about different events in the upcoming 1960 Olympics in Rome. However, his real work was helping us search for any trace of Valery and the Beekeeper. For this, he used Cardinal’s European network of agents and contacts. On several occasions during the summer and fall we thought we had a lead, but none of them ever became anything we could use.

Time passed. Sailor and I kept in touch with Mowsel and the others in San Sebastian, but mainly we stayed in Paris. We settled into a life living on the river. Every season was intensified and stood alone, and yet every season followed one into the other in a graceful, seamless parade. There is, without a doubt, something timeless about living on the river.

Finally, in the spring of 1963, an odd set of circumstances combined to create a breakthrough, although we didn’t know it at the time. It came not from Cardinal’s network, but from Ray and Opari and a conversation they observed quite by accident. Three years earlier Ray had discovered a new passion, photography, when he accompanied Jack to the 1960 Olympics and returned with stunning pictures he had taken of the sprinter Wilma Rudolph and Cassius Clay, winner of the light-heavyweight gold medal. He gradually acquired more and more cameras and lenses and began taking photographs all over Paris, often using Opari or Nova as models.

On May 15 Cardinal, who was now seventy-seven years old, came to Paris for a visit and to announce his retirement. That same morning Ray and Opari had gone to the Eiffel Tower to take pictures. Ray was experimenting with telephoto lenses and panoramic vistas. They had climbed to the upper observation deck with a full view of Paris spread out before them. At one point, while Ray searched through his equipment for more film, he handed his camera to Opari. To pass the time, she put the camera to her eye and scanned the crowd far below. To her shock and amazement, she recognized a man walking by, a man she could never forget. It was Blaine Harrington, the same man who had used and abused Zuriaa. He was walking with another man whom she had never seen before. Instinctively, she handed Ray the camera and told him to take a photograph of the two men. He quickly reloaded and focused, shooting a dozen snapshots of the two men before they disappeared in the distance.

Ray went directly from the Eiffel Tower to have the film developed and Opari returned to the
Giselle
, telling us of the encounter. While we waited for Ray, we speculated on what Blaine Harrington might be doing in Paris. Jack said the last rumor he’d heard of “Colonel” Harrington was that, through a third party, he’d purchased a vast and remote property in Mexico or possibly Texas. Cardinal added, “But no one I know in Washington knows for certain what he’s up to.”

Ray came back three hours later with a folder of eight-by-ten photographs. He laid them out across the kitchen counter and the table next to it. Every picture was clear with good resolution and detail. I studied the face of Blaine Harrington. He was older, of course, but underneath the creases and lines was the same hard and humorless expression. He still wore wire-rimmed glasses and his graying hair was short and cut exactly as it had been at the end of World War II.

“One thing is clear,” Sailor said, staring back and forth at both men in the photos. “This is not a social conversation. These men are conducting business.”

Cardinal put on his glasses and scanned the pictures, mumbling, “Well, well, well.” When he was finished, he looked up and said, “I know the other man.”

“Who is he?” Opari asked.

“His name is Sesine, but he is known by other names—‘the Algerian’ and ‘the Broker’ being among them. He is rich, he is ruthless, and Interpol would love to have these pictures, Ray. This man is a ghost. Whatever Blaine Harrington is buying, selling, or planning with Sesine, it will be exotic, illegal, dangerous, and expensive. Sesine has brokered everything from unattainable antiquities to international assassinations. He is also said to have been one of the few people who have successfully arranged an assassination by the Beekeeper and not been eliminated afterward.” Cardinal paused and removed his glasses. He rubbed his eyes and said, “Well, I guess my retirement is postponed for a while. I’ll get these pictures to all my contacts as soon as possible. Perhaps Sesine will surface again soon, and if he does, we will be watching.”