Trip Wire (12 page)

“Mostly they were leaning on me about Wilt: What did I know about him, and did he ever talk to me about revolution. Did he have guns in the apartment. Shit like that.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not, man. I swear. A lot of the time they just left me alone. And they kept giving me steak and french fries for dinner. I don’t even like steak. I mean, once in a while it’s okay, but I’d rather have spaghetti—or that eggplant that Mia used to make. That was my favorite.”

Planet Zuni. Taylor’s description of Dan’s world.

“It sounds like the federal clowns just wanted to stick you somewhere, take you out of commission for a few days. And when they were good and ready, they let you go.”

“That was the trip,” he said. “They gave me back my Leica, but they kept the film.”

Grandfather Zuni was knocking back a second Jack Daniel’s, telling a rapt Cliff about his early life on the reservation. I slid off the bar stool and took Dan by the arm, led him back to the gents’ bathroom.

I locked the door behind us, handed him the joint I knew he was hankering for, passed the book of matches to him. “Okay, Dan. Talk quickly, before somebody comes in. You and Mia.”

He looked down briefly, then back up at me. “There was a baby. It was sad.”

“I can imagine. But I don’t mean that. I mean before. You and Mia were together before she knew Wilton?”

“Yes. We lived in the building across the street.”

“Not Crash and Bev’s building?”

“Yes. For almost two years.”

“And Wilt knew?”

“Sure. He was okay with it. Besides, he had a right to know.”

“And were you okay with it?”

He smiled. “I loved Mia. And I loved Wilt. And together they were—” His voice gave out there.

That was an awful moment. All this time, I’d felt sorry for Dan because of what the cops had put him through. Now I realized that because of that ordeal, he’d had no time to feel the weight of the loss of his friends. He had been given no time to grieve.

He cleared his throat. “So you found them, right? You saw them—dead.”

I nodded, heard the choking noise he made. “Go ahead,” I told him. “It’s okay to cry.”

“No,” he said. “Not now.”

I waited a long time for him to speak again.

“I should go now, Sandy,” he said finally. Then he stubbed the joint out on the bottom of his shoe.

“All right. Just one more thing. How come Barry’s got the Volvo?”

“He asked to borrow it for a couple of days. To do some business, he said. He laid some mescaline on me for it. I said sure, just gas it up when you’re done.”

“Oh. That’s not such a big mystery at all, is it?”

He kissed me on the forehead. “Tell him it’s his now.”

“If I get the chance.”

“If what?”

“We haven’t seen him for a couple of days. I’m thinking . . . well, what difference does it make now? I’ll tell him.”

Cliff and I, both teary-eyed, watched as Dan and his grandfather found seats on the bus.

“Don’t forget us, man,” Cliff called.

Dan gave him the peace sign. And then he lifted his Polaroid and aimed it. He took our picture.

CHAPTER SIX

SATURDAY

1

I did miss Hyde Park, in a way. It had an austere beauty in the cold. The streets on the North Side were so much noisier, and no whispering trees towered protectively over the houses.

I passed Toad Hall, the electronics store where I’d bought a radio with my birthday money the year I turned fifteen; Jimmy’s Bar, the old beatnik hangout where the poetry readings with bongos took place at night; the used-book store, where as a twelve-year-o1d I regularly made a pest of myself with the owner, Mr. O’Gara.

Woody and Ivy always had lunch out on Saturday afternoon, after they took their walk. They either went to Valois on 53rd Street, a cafeteria with a long steam table, or to the Medici, a little café where UC students sat reading for hours, and where they served the “espresso scrambled eggs” and warm Italian bread that Ivy and I loved.

I caught up with them at Valois. As popular with cabbies as it was with coeds and librarians and retirees, the place was busy and loud. I pushed my way past the crowd at the door and joined my aunt and uncle at their table.

No, no, no, I didn’t want anything to eat, I told them. I wanted their help. Obviously Jack and his cop friends don’t give a damn about who killed Wilt, I said. Now that I had put together the meaning of Wilton’s keys, I knew they had something to do with the murders.

“Cass, you can’t just invade those people’s property,” Ivy said sternly.

“I know that. But I’ve got to figure a way to get a look around up there in Kent.”

’’It’s damn sure Oscar Mobley’s not going to let you do that,” Woody said. “You said he wouldn’t even tell his own wife what he found. What are you planning to do? Just go up there and boldly let yourself into that man’s house with his dead boy’s keys?”

“I don’t know. I might’ve tried that. But I don’t have them anymore.”

“What happened to them?”

I was going to pick the moment to tell them about the break-in. But it looked as though the moment had picked me. “Listen. I may as well tell you. There was a little trouble—a little more trouble—at the apartment.”

Ivy dropped her soup spoon into the bowl.

“Calm down,” I said. “It’s all over now.”

“What trouble?” Woody demanded.

“Somebody was waiting for me when I got home a couple of nights ago. He roughed me up, took off with those keys. I didn’t want to tell you because I knew how you’d react. Exactly like you’re reacting now. But he didn’t hurt me. He got what he came for. The keys. Don’t you see? That’s why he left the minute he found them in my bag. That’s why nothing else has happened.”

Ivy pushed her soup away. “Oh, Lord. Don’t you care anything about your safety, child?”

“Yes, I do, Ivy. You’re not the only one who doesn’t want me to get my neck wrung.”

I dared to look over at Woody then, dreading his gaze. “I have one thing to say,” he pronounced. “And I’ll only say it once. Sim will be going with you when you go back home. And he will stay in that apartment until you move out. I don’t expect to hear any argument, understand? Because if you say one word, let alone try to refuse . . . I’m through. Through with it all. No more help. No more information from Jack. No more money. No more tuition. Nothing. You understand?”

“Yes.”

What else was I supposed to say? God had spoken.

I looked away from him and over at the trio of cops on the food line. They eyed our table as they ordered great tongue sandwiches, soup, and cream-lathered desserts. I knew it must be snowing again. Their shiny blue jackets were wet, the imitation beaver collars slick and ratty-looking. But the hungry cops would have to wait for an empty table. Uncle Woody was nowhere near finished talking.

“I don’t understand you, Cass,” he said. “You must get some kind of satisfaction from living this kind of life. But I’m damned if I know what it is. Who are these people to you? Why do you stay up there with them after all this mess has happened? What’d they ever give you?”

“They liked me, Woody.”

“That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Ivy said acridly. “Why don’t you tell the truth? You just want to be cut free to misbehave, without us watching you. You’d rather smoke that stuff and roll around with men than tend to the business of getting an education and taking your place in the world. Don’t you understand, Cass—you are needed. Young people like you are the only hope we have as a people.”

I couldn’t speak for a moment. Wilton had related the gist of numberless such lectures he’d received from Oscar Mobley. The difference was, I was too gutless to make some smart-ass reply.

So I was supposed to restore hope among my people. That was a tall motherfucking order, and I wasn’t even remotely up to it. Goofy, neurotic me, leading the race on to glory. No problem. I’m right up there with Sojourner and Malcolm and Booker T. They used to throw temper tantrums and hide whole German chocolate cakes under their beds, too, didn’t they? And eat LSD like it was salted peanuts?

I finally said, “When this is over, I’ll try to do better. I’ll apply myself better. Is that okay?”

They both had locked jaws and teeth.

“Like I said, I’ve a favor to ask. Another one. Will you do it, Ivy?”

“Me?”

“You. Help me this one last time. And then I’ll try to be more like you want me to be.”

“Oh, the hell you will, Cassandra.”

“Will you?”

“Yes, girl. What is it? Just tell me. And then go on out of here before I lose my mind.”

2

Sim was one of the last people I imagined fitting into the mix at the commune. And where was he going to sleep? I had an image of his huge feet hanging over the edge of the sofa. But then I realized there was no shortage of beds now. He could bunk in Annabeth’s abandoned room, or in Dan’s, anywhere but Wilton and Mia’s bed. That would be ghoulish.

He dropped me at the apartment and then went home to pack a few clothes, and maybe a couple of his LPs.

Before I left Valois, the venerable Woody had dispensed some more sage words. “Look through the boy’s belongings,” he said. “You may notice something nobody else would pay any mind to. Maybe you’ll be the only one it means something to.”

Good thinking. The problem was, I’d already done that. Most of the knickknacks in Wilt and Mia’s room had belonged to her—Hopi Indian dolls, yoga mat, jewelry, sewing baskets, that kind of thing. Wilt had little besides his clothing and the secondhand bicycle his boss at the shop had given him.

He didn’t have any other belongings except his books.

Then look at those, Woody instructed.

That idea didn’t sound so wise to me. In fact, it sounded dumb. I did it anyway. Nothing to lose.

“But they’re mixed up with everybody else’s,” Cliff pointed out when I enlisted his help.

“Yeah, you’re right,” I said. “But it’s not going to be as hard as it sounds. Barry doesn’t have any books. Annabeth wasn’t much of a reader, either. Dan doesn’t have anything but art books. And all Taylor’s books are out on the sunporch. So that leaves Wilt and Mia, me and you. You know what’s yours, I know which ones are mine. That whittles it down a lot, right?”

He shrugged and started thumbing through the ones on the top shelf. We encountered
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,
I. F. Stone,
The Doors of Perception,
Richard Brautigan,
Nine Stories,
Eldridge Cleaver, Tolkien, Ken Kesey and
Dune,
Adelle Davis,
Goodbye, Columbus,
James Baldwin, Ross McDonald,
On the Road,
and Lao-Tse. Dog-eared volumes we’d passed back and forth, special editions from our childhoods. But no cryptic messages in any margins, nothing more interesting than a grocery list or movie showtimes jotted down inside a cover.

Some 250 books later, we gave up. I turned on the TV set, expecting to see Cronkite, or as Taylor called him, Uncle Walt. We had to settle for whoever it was anchoring the Saturday news. The reports from ’Nam were as scarifying as usual.

At the commercial break, something on the TV stand caught my attention. A burst of bright yellow on a dark background. It was the illustration on
The Wretched of the Earth.
I blew the dust off the cover and opened the book. In the middle was a folded sheet of ordinary white paper. I opened it out and saw it had a kind of letterhead: two hammy black fists, a grenade in one, an ugly-looking bowie-type knife in the other, and underneath them, the word
TURNABOUT
in thick black letters.

I held it out to Cliff. “What’s that?” he said.

“I have no idea. Doesn’t exactly look like an invitation to a garden party, though.”

I refolded the paper and replaced it in the book, then took them both to my room.

“I think I found something,” Cliff called to me a few seconds later.

He was in Annabeth’s old room, picking through the few odds and ends she had left behind. He was holding a couple of sheets of typed text. The pages were messy, sentences had been partially erased, corrected, scratched out. The words didn’t make much sense at first. But then I spotted my own name. And Cliff’s name. And Annabeth’s. And the word
murders.

I had to read it over again before the pieces fell into place. “Oh, Christ,” I said. “It’s a story. About us.”

“Who’s writing a story about us?”

“I don’t mean a short story. It’s some kind of report—about the killings and everything else about all of us. We have our own little Hunter Thompson in residence, remember.”

“Taylor,” he said.

“Yeah. Taylor. He’s writing about us for
Rising Tide.
Do you love it?”

3

Taylor was wearing a shirt and tie when he came home, a marked change from his usual Army-Navy store duds. Ordinarily we might have needled him a little about the job interview threads. Not today. We pounced on him.

“You’re being a little melodramatic, Sandy. I’m writing about the commune and the murders. I’m not ‘betraying’ you guys.”

“Then how come you never told us what you were doing?” Cliff asked.

“I was going to.”

“Yeah, right,” I said.

“I was, man. I’m at the point now where I’d like to interview everybody. Before we all—you know. Lucky I got Annabeth to talk before she split.”

“Let’s see the rest of it,” I said.

“What?”

“Let us read what you’re saying about us.”

“Well, no.”

“Why not?”

“Look, Sandy, I’m a journalist. I’m entitled to write about what happened. Don’t get so uptight. I’m not saying anything bad about you. In fact, you’re one of the stars of the piece. Your background makes you really interesting. That, and the way you’re obsessing about Wilt.”

“Is that so? I’m glad you think I’m so fucking interesting, Taylor. Do you think Wilt’s death is interesting, too? Jesus Christ, man, he was supposed to be your friend, not your big break.”

“Do me a favor, okay?” he said. “Just wait till you read it. Maybe you won’t be so judgmental then. Hey, look—Cliff, you’re not mad, are you?”

He wouldn’t answer. He just stood there with the typewritten sheets pointing at Taylor like an accusing finger.

Taylor looked relieved when he heard the knock on the front door.

Oh, right. It was time for them to meet Sim.

Dinner was “interesting,” too, in a kind of absurd way. I cooked, so the food was pretty awful. Cliff ate nothing, but must have downed a six-pack of Heineken. Taylor kept asking if it was all right to interview Sim, whom he kept referring to as my bodyguard, which annoyed the hell out of me.

After supper, Uncle Woody phoned and asked pointedly to speak to Sim, not to me. Guess he was still pissed off. I talked briefly to Ivy, though, who had already started delivering on the help she had promised to provide.

Before I went to bed, it occurred to me that Taylor’s expertise in the current political scene might come in useful. I got the piece of stationery with the two black fists and showed it to him.

He shook his head. “I’m not sure, but I think I might have seen this logo somewhere,” he said. “It means something. I just don’t know what.” I was about to leave when he added, “But you know who might?”

“Who?”

“Your friend Nat. Either him or that guy who’s always with him at the Wobbly hall. Torvald.”

I imagined De Lawd would not be happy to have me contact him about something other than us—our relationship, that trite, overused word. My apology to him would have to be abject. If he wanted me to fall on my knees before him, I knew I’d have to do just that.

I had a hot bath, smoking and soaking in the tub for almost ninety minutes. By the time I dried off and changed into my night things, the house was quiet and dark. I got into bed, rolled another skinny joint, tried to unclog my mind. Nat was part of the logjam. I kept going back to the time line of the murders, thinking how Cliff and Mia were probably getting slaughtered while I was at Nat’s place. Thinking, too, about my shame at suspecting even for a moment that Nat could have been my attacker.

All kinds of images floated in and out of my head as I was drifting off to sleep: the table radio back in my room at Woody and Ivy’s; the beautifully browned cornbread Nat had made for me; the brass ashtray on Jack Klaus’s desk; three Chicago PD officers in dark blue jackets, looking like fat birds on a telephone wire; Annabeth’s lovely hands sorting Indian cotton blouses; the comfy leather chair in the Mobleys’ drawing room; the peace sign on Wilton’s key ring; the buttery yellow of Sim’s shirt collar peeking out of his jacket; Henry Waddell’s obscenely wet lips.

But just before I fell off, I heard a muffled commotion in the hall. When I snatched the door open, I saw Sim, in pajama bottoms, and Cliff, in long johns, both reaching for the knob to my door.

The three of us stood frozen for a minute, nobody saying a thing. I merely closed the door quietly, and turned the lock. Then I pulled the covers way up over my head.