Damnation Street

Epilogue

It was one of those nights-the last one of those nights-when Weiss and I sat alone together in his office. He was in the huge leather swivel chair behind the massive desk. I was in one of the two blocky armchairs the clients used. The halls were dark around us and the other offices empty. Weiss's desk lamp surrounded us with light, a little island of light in the pool of shadows. At the big arched windows on one wall, the skyline rose and fell, its pale glow seeping into the violet sky. The snap and rattle of the streetcars down on Market drifted up to us. The high winter wind made the panes knock in their frames. I had that sense, that sense I often had on nights like this, that Weiss and I were sitting in the one still corner of the cold and frantic world.

Weiss kept a bottle of Macallan in his desk drawer, just as if he were a detective in one of the old novels. He had poured us each a glass of scotch, and now the bottle stood on the desk between us, glowing amber in the lamplight.

I swirled the whiskey in my glass. I drew in the scent of it.

"It's a wonderful thing to imagine," I said.

Weiss laughed softly.

We were talking about Bishop. He was getting better, stronger, all the time. Two weeks before, he had left the hospital in Phoenix and come back to a rehab center in San Francisco. They held him there for a few days, until the insurance ran out. He was still too weak to take care of himself, so Sissy took him in.

It was, as I said, a wonderful thing to imagine. All the dangers Bishop had faced, all the adventures he'd had, the things he'd done, and the things we thought he might have done-none was more amazing to conjure in the brain than the mental image of him sunk in the white fluffy recesses of Sissy's apartment, lying all but helpless amid white fluffy valentine pillows and a white fluffy comforter while the white fluffy cats made a bed of him.

I admit I felt a little jealous when I thought of it-a little. Sissy would lavish all her tenderness on him, and I knew well how tender Sissy could be. She would coddle and nurse him, feed him and mop his fevered brow until he had to get well just to keep from killing her.

The outcome seemed to me inevitable. Bishop's wounds would heal. His vigor would seep back into him, then flow back in a strengthening stream. Alone with Sissy and with few distractions, he would become increasingly aware of the sweetness of her smile, the delicacy of her features, the whiteness of her skin-the smell of her; she smelled great, as I think I've already had occasion to mention. She would come and go from the kitchen, from the bathroom, bringing whatever he needed for his comfort, and he would watch her come and go. The girlish whisper and the maternal endearments that annoyed him at first would soon come to reveal what was true gentleness in her. He would think: she was really not so bad, not half-bad, after all.

As for Sissy-well, I can't imagine anything so trivial as her experience with me would have lessened one little bit her propensity for the Impossible Man. Bishop's helplessness, his gratitude, his slowly growing realization of her undeniable charms would all work their magic on the pent-up longings of her over-romantic nature. She would begin the familiar process of convincing herself that he was other than he was. She would tell herself that she had overstated his detachment and aggression, unfairly denied his charisma and heroism, and momentarily lost faith in the possibility that a man's personal defects might be reformed by the love of a good woman.

Thus there would come a day-who could help but think there would come a day?-when as she was bustling past his couch to do some errand on his behalf, he would reach for her, his strong fingers closing around her slender wrist. I could see her stopping, looking down-him looking up, his pale, sardonic gaze on her blue eyes.

I could hear her thinking: Maybe he was right in front of me all this time and I didn't see it.

And I could hear him: What the hell? Maybe I'll stick her once before I go.

And so they would continue, as we all continue more or less, each in his or her own way.

That was my imagination of it anyhow. Weiss, of course, read my mind.

"It'll make her forget you in a big hurry," he muttered into his scotch glass. He laughed.

I laughed too, although not without a stabbing pain in my ego, I admit.

I'm sure Weiss was aware of that too. "Well," he consoled me, coming out of his whiskey with a small gasp. He tilted his glass my way. "You've done all right yourself."

I smiled, consoled. I tilted my glass back at him.

I had done all right-much better than just all right, as the years would prove-although it was some while after I got back from Nevada before I could finally deal with Emma and her father. It was awhile before I could simply get the various parts of my body to move in some semblance of working order.

When I did, I called Professor McNair. It seemed only fair to go to the old man first. There was no good way to straighten the whole mess out, but that seemed the only fair way to begin. I knew it wasn't going to be easy. I wasn't going to tell him Emma's secret, and I knew he wasn't going to like that. And I was going to have to betray his confidence and let her know he'd hired me to watch her, and I knew he wasn't going to like that either. And if he didn't like that stuff, he sure as hell wasn't going to like it when I explained the reason for it all: that I was in love with his daughter and I suspected she was in love with me.

In the event, it was worse than I could have imagined. I can still remember feeling what seemed like a big iron ball lodged in my throat as I stood on the porch of the small clapboard house in the Berkeley hills, waiting to be admitted. It was Emma's mother who answered the bell. She looked startlingly like her daughter-physically anyway. She had the same long, lean figure, the same heart-shaped face. But any spark that had ever been in her eyes, any hilarious wickedness that had ever appeared in her lips had long since been worried out of her. Every feature, every line and angle of her seemed to have been drawn down, down, down by the gravitational pull of a wearying sadness. I couldn't swear to myself that Emma would never come to look like that, but I swore right then and there that she would never come to look like that on my account.

She led me up the stairs and down a hall. I've seen both those stairs and that hall many times since then, but they somehow were never again as long or as completely overhung with such a threatening gloom. At the end of the hall was a door, and when Emma's mother swung it open, I saw-I thought I saw-a deep and wondrous expanse of a sanctuary with book-lined walls running forever toward a towering oak desk in the far distance. In fact, it was quite a small room as I later found out, with books and files and papers stacked in every corner. But at that moment, I felt as if I'd come into the Library of the World and the Great Librarian himself was rising imperiously behind the Great Circulation Desk of Life.

McNair was as I remembered him-including drunk. Those eyes set in their nest of deep-cut wrinkles had a serpentine dullness, a film of whiskey and pure meanness that made the ball in my throat grow larger, heavier. If I had harbored any hopes that goodwill would somehow transform the discomfort of the situation and put our common errors to some happy use, those hopes sank bubbling to the bottom of my heart as I approached the desk.

Likewise any hopes I had of pity. The bruises I had sustained outside the House of Dreams were healing by then, but they looked even worse than they had when they were in their bruise prime. My cheeks were swollen, purple and yellow; the flesh around my eyes was puffed and livid; my lips looked as if they'd been attacked by an insane plastic surgeon with a syringe full of collagen-which was not to mention the fact that I was bent and limping from all the kicks I'd taken to my ribs and legs.

McNair didn't even mention it. He simply stood behind the desk and waited. He didn't even offer my poor broken body a seat.

"Well?" he said.

Well-I won't tell all of it. He was furious. He swore he would have me fired. When I told him I'd already quit, he actually shook his fist at me, too enraged for words. Then he found the words and railed against my dishonesty and stupidity for going on half an hour. I weathered it. There was nothing else for me to do. Finally he subsided, sinking into his chair, muttering dark imprecations into his sleeve.

"The question is do you want to tell her or should I?" I said.

"Oh, there's no question at all. You'll tell her. You'll tell her. It's your mess, you imbecilic bastard."

"All right. Well, sir… I hope this will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

"Get out."

I did-and with no small feeling of relief, let me tell you. But even better than that, I left in the understanding I had been given a great gift. To wit, I was not the man I was. I was not afraid as I had been. All the time McNair was yelling at me, I stood before his desk-I felt his hot, alcoholic breath washing over me; I felt the flecks of his spit pattering against my face-and I was immovable. What could he do to me, after all? He was not an old man, though he seemed like one to me then. He was in his prime, really. I suppose if he had charged at me, I would have had a fight on my hands. But, as I say, I was not afraid. Perhaps I could have handled him in a fight, perhaps not, but that didn't matter.

What did matter-and what has mattered ever since-was that if the worse came to the worst, I knew I could take a punch.

When I was done there, I phoned Emma. Rather coolly, she agreed to meet me on the university campus. She chose Sproul Plaza just within Sather Gate. That was the arch of bronze framed by concrete pillars through which students passed to enter and leave the university. It was so crowded, we were guaranteed not to have a moment alone. Which I guess was the point.

"Oh my God, my God, oh my God!" I believe were her exact words when I presented myself. She gaped at me with gratifying concern. "What happened to you?"

"I got beat up outside a whorehouse," I told her.

"Oh… damn! That's no good. What the hell were you doing in a whorehouse, now?"

"I wasn't in a whorehouse-I was outside a whorehouse."

"Well, what were you doing outside a whorehouse?"

"I was getting beaten up-I told you."

Then I did tell her, not about the whorehouse, not right away. First I told her that it was over between me and Sissy. I thought I saw her fight down a smile at that.

"Well, that's something, I guess," she said coldly.

Then I told her about her father and the Agency and why I'd followed her to her secret church.

Emma let out a low moan. She leaned against one of the gate's bronze uprights. The students flooded past us, into the campus, onto the street.

"I suppose that's my fault as much as anyone's," she said. "I should've had the courage to come out with it."

"It was just an amazing coincidence. I mean, that he came to the Agency-and that I was the only one there to deal with it."

She cocked her head. This time the smile showed. "Not so amazing."

I had forgotten she believed in God.

"All right," she said. "So what about the whorehouse? That's new."

So I told her about that, about Weiss and the Shadow-man and Bishop and pretty much the whole story. For the sake of brevity, I left out the parts about how I was trying to make myself admirable to her, and it's possible I added a few bits for dramatic intensity, narrative style, and to make myself admirable to her.

She covered her mouth with her hand. When she finished laughing, she said, "Well, I guess that was actually kind of heroic in a sleazy sort of way."

I laughed too-which felt as if a Republican had gripped one side of my face with a wrench and a Democrat had gripped the other, and each was attempting to twist it into the shape he deemed correct.

"Stop laughing," said Emma, "you'll kill yourself."

"Listen," I told her. "That's it; I'm done. Are you gonna kiss me or not?"

"I might."

"Come here."

I grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to me. It was without exception, as I remember to this very day, the single most painful kiss I have ever experienced in my life.

They got better, though, after that.

"So now…," said Weiss. He smiled at me across the island of lamplight. The roar of a bus rose up to us from the loud city streets. The cold wind swept down Market, and the arched windows rattled.

I sipped my scotch. I stole a glance at his face. The heavy, baggy cheeks, the deep eyes, that small smile: I thought he looked sad. But he always looked sad.

"Yeah," I said.

"You're gone."

"I am."

"You're history."

"Now I belong to the ages."

He turned his sad smile into his glass, waggled the glass a little in his hand. "It's too bad," he said. "I liked having you around, kid."

"Yeah," I said. "It's been great, Weiss. Thanks."

"You're gonna become a book writer, huh."

"I'm gonna try. To write novels."

"Detective stories," he said.

I shrugged, embarrassed. Laughed.

"Well, let me tell you something," Weiss said.

Then he did. For the next three hours or so, he told me a lot of things. Other times we had sat here together and he'd gone over cases or given me some exciting anecdotes from his life as a cop. And there was some of that tonight too. But there was also other stuff. The real stuff.

He sat swiveling slightly back and forth in his chair. He held his whiskey glass on his belly with his two hands. He told me about Bishop and how they'd met. He told me about the nights he had prostitutes come to his place because he had no way with women. He told me about the nights he'd spent alone, sitting here in his office, looking at his photograph of Julie Wyant and watching the ten-second loop of video he had of her. Finally, he told me about the Shadow-man and about the last meeting between them in the little house in the middle of nowhere at midnight.

I don't know what moved him to tell me those things. It pleased me, because I knew he wouldn't tell them to just anyone, but I don't know why he told them to me. I wonder about it sometimes, even now. I had no plans to write anything but fiction then. I never imagined I would tell these stories, the true stories about the Agency, Dynamite Road and Shotgun Alley and now finally this. But I wonder sometimes if Weiss knew, if he knew already. He might have. He knew a hell of a lot, did Weiss, in his Weissian way.

I listened to him as if in a sort of dream. I could see everything, every person, every incident he described as if I were there. Then-all at once it seemed to me-he was done. He drained the last of his scotch and set his glass down with a thunk on the desktop.

"All right?" he said.

I blinked. I came back to myself. "Yeah," I said. "All right. Yeah."

He folded his hands on his belt buckle. He swiveled back and forth. He smiled with one corner of his mouth.

I sat for another moment with nothing to say. Then I stood. I wanted to get out of there before I got choked up, but I paused a moment to take one last look around the place.

It was all so large, larger than life. The vast office and the wall of soaring windows and the soaring city against the night. The enormous desk with the enormous chairs in front of it and the even more enormous swivel chair behind it and Weiss sitting there, enormous too.

"Well," I said. I cleared my throat. "It was fun."

"Hey," said Weiss. "Life's a comedy."

"Is it?"

"Sure," he said. He smiled. "And I'm the king of Romania."

When I was gone, Weiss poured himself another drink. He brooded over it. He swiveled back and forth in his chair. He listened to the traffic noise and the noise of the wind against the windows. He felt the city out there, beyond the light that fell over him, and beyond the shadows that covered the rest of the room.

After a while he swung around to his computer. He called up the image of Julie Wyant on the monitor, that little ten-second loop of video he had. It was from an Internet advertisement. It showed her leaning forward in a white blouse, crooking her finger at him, beckoning. It played over and over. He watched it for a long time. He didn't know how long.

Then, finally, he sensed something-someone-a presence in the room with him. Startled, he looked up.

There she was. Right there, right in front him. Julie Wyant. She was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame. She was watching him. She was smiling. The shadows of the room fell over her, but he could make her out in the glow of the desk lamp. She was wearing an overcoat belted at the waist. Her red-gold hair hung down loose. Her eyes were deep and dreamy. She had the face of an angel.

Weiss sat still and gazed at her. For a long moment, he wasn't sure whether he was awake or dreaming…

Acknowledgments