“Hello, Harry.”
His sick eyes slid in the light. He was wearing a corduroy coat over a denim shirt, chinos bagged out at knee and butt, pant legs too long, cuffs frayed. They’d all seen better days, clothes and man alike. Harry had always been a sharp dresser, people said; they even used the word natty. But now skag and his own errant heart had got him.
“Carl?” His voice was an emphysematous whisper. Even now a cigarette dangled out the side of his mouth. It waggled up and down as he talked. “I got the money, man. Business as usual, right? Just like you said.” A rumbling cough deep in his chest.
“No rush, Harry. Be cool, there’s plenty of time. Let up a little, enjoy life.” The yard lights were behind me and he squinted at the shadow moving toward him. Not that it would have made much difference. He didn’t know me from Earl Long. “And anyhow, first I want to tell you a story. You like stories, Harry?”
Behind us, oil derricks heaved and rested, heaved and rested.
“Magazine Street. Ten-fifteen, Saturday night, about a month ago. There was a girl from Mississippi, Harry. And a party. And you. Any of this beginning to sound familiar?”
His eyes searched the darkness around him.
“I’ve been looking for you a long time, Harry. It took a long time to find you. A man like you, with your needs, he shouldn’t be so hard to find.”
He took the cigarette out of his mouth and threw it down. It lay there like a half-blind eye. I stepped out of the light and when he saw me he was scared for the first time, really scared. Old fears die hard.
“It’s only a story, of course. Stories help us go on living. Stories can’t hurt anyone, can they, Harry?”
I let him see the knife in my hand then, a leatherworker’s knife.
“Big Black Sambo’s coming to get you, Harry. Nigger’s gonna carve you up like you did her. Nothing left for the pigs and chickens, not even enough for soul food.”
His eyes moved. He knew escape was somewhere. But he also knew that like everything else in his life it was going to get away from him.
“Look, man, I don’t know who you are, but you got it all wrong. You listen to me, it wasn’t my fault. I just fix things-arrange them, like-that’s all I ever done. It was those crazies, man. Goddamn long hair and kraut van. They’re the ones did that girl.”
It tumbled out of him much as the world must have gone in: fitful starts, none of them connected; and underneath, everything blurring together.
I raised the knife and light glinted on the curved blade.
“Yeah, I know, Harry. Crazies on skag and smack feeding new monkeys, crazies on speed and booze and horse and the rush of a couple hundred dollars they just boosted out of some mom and pop’s till. But who got the stuff for them, Harry? Who gave it to them and started the party? How much of their stake did it cost them? And whose idea to bring the girl into that?”
Fear lit his eyes like a torch. All around us oil derricks sighed, the last breaths of tired old men.
He turned to run but fear tangled his legs. He fell. I let him crawl, a few yards. He was sobbing. Choking.
“You didn’t even know her name, Harry.” I walked up slowly behind him, got a foot under and flipped him over. He flopped like something not human, and his eyes rolled. I let him have a good long look at my face, all the things that were in it.
“Sleepy after your bedtime story?”
Blood welled out of his throat and soaked denim, corduroy, ground. No light left behind those eyes now. No light anywhere.
I searched his pockets and got the money-that was for the kid. Then I bent down and opened up his wasted belly with the knife.
“That was for Angie,” I said.
Behind us, oil derricks shushed any eulogy.