Epitaph

ELEVEN

Rodriguez was on the roof. A boy had answered Rodriguez's door and told William where he could find him. On the roof. Catching some rays in a white beach chair, beer cooler to his right, radio to his left, oiled from top to bottom with Bain de Soleil; William saw the plastic bottle discarded on the rooftop. A pair of mirrored sunglasses reflected half sky and half tar. He was singing along to something catchy and sophisticated. Do it doggie… "Rodriguez!" William called out to him. No answer; Rodriguez hadn't heard him. William had to take a walk on tar beach, sinking a half inch into the roof with each step, then tap him on the shoulder before Rodriguez knew he had company. Rodriguez stared at him. William's sweat-soaked face stared back, two very tired, very old-looking sweat-soaked faces, one to a lens. "Sorry," Rodriguez said. "I already sold them." "Them…?" "The drapes. You said you didn't want them." "That's okay. I don't." "Fine." Rodriguez turned back toward the sun. Doggie style makes me smile… "Rodriguez," William said again. "Yeah?" "What didn't you give me." "Huh…?" "Was there something you didn't give me?" "Yeah. The license." "Besides the license?" "The drapes."

"Not the drapes. Something else?" "I'm not following you, Cochise." "Was there anything else? Anything you didn't give me?"

"Like what?"

"Like pictures maybe?"

"Huh?" Doggie… doggie… doggie style… "Pictures," William repeated. "I gave you a picture."

"Sure. Maybe there were other pictures you didn't give me."

"Maybe I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. You want the license?" "No."

"Right. You don't want the license."

"I was thinking about pictures."

"Pictures?" Rodriguez shook his head. "What kind of pictures?"

"Personal pictures."

"Personal pictures."

"Right."

"What the fuck you talking about? I gave you a picture."

"Yes, I remember. It's other pictures I'm thinking about."

"That's funny."

"Why?"

" 'Cause there ain't no other pictures. So that's funny. That you came back in this fuckin' heat to ask me for something I don't got."

Rodriguez was right about the heat. It might have been the hottest day of the year and if it wasn't, it might have been the most humid, and if it wasn't that, it was close. The sun was particularly brutal up on the roof; the top of William's head was starting to feel well-done, not funny at all. And the scent of Bain de Soleil was beginning to sicken him, the odor of fruit left too long in the sun.

"What's the matter," Rodriguez said, "something bothering you…?"

Yes. The heat was bothering him. His shoulder was bothering him. Rodriguez was bothering him. Bothering to come here was bothering him.

"Okay," William said, "okay, so there were no other pictures lying around."

"What the fuck you think I've been trying to tell you?"

There comes a time when you either believe someone or you don't, and even if you don't, you have to walk away. So bye.

"Take it easy," he said.

"Uh huh." Rodriguez trained both mirrors on him; William looked like something basted now. "You know," Rodriguez said, "you're nuts. It's hot out, man."

"Yeah. I noticed."

Do it from behind… that's what's on my mind… the radio was wailing away; Rodriguez was turning away; William was walking away. Over to the stairway door which said Chakalakaboo on the top and Fuck all Niggers on the bottom, then through it and into the steaming elevator, when he suddenly realized that he needed something. Desperately and immediately. He needed water. If last night's drinking hadn't dehydrated him enough, buzzing around in ninety degree heat had. Now he had a choice: He could go back up to the roof and ask Rodriguez for a little something from his beer cooler. Or he could knock on someone's door and depend on the kindness of strangers. Or he could stay in the elevator and die of heat prostration-that too. Okay-door number two. He didn't think he could make it back up to tar land, and though dying had its attractive side- not having to negotiate his way back through kung fu city for instance, he thought two funerals in a week was a lot to ask of anyone-even Rodriguez.

He took the elevator down to the third floor. To Jean's floor, but not to Jean's apartment. No, another apartment just a bit further down.

Where Mr. Crazy lived. That old white-haired tortoise, Mr. Weeks. And why not. At least when he asked him for water he could ask him by name.

It took almost a minute of knocking before Weeks came to the door, but the second he opened it and looked out at William with an expression that was either one of fear or one of relief or maybe even one of both, William knew he may have come for water but that he'd be leaving with just a bit more.

"You're here about Jean," Weeks said. "Aren't you?"

"Yeah," William said. "I am."

Later, sitting in an armchair rough as sandpaper with a glass of water finally in hand, William thought that he could have knocked on any door, any one, but that he'd knocked on this one. Which made him think that maybe he should have stayed and played the horses after all. Fortune was definitely smiling on him today.

First William had knocked and Weeks had answered. Then William had asked for water and Weeks had given it to him. Then William had gone ahead and asked for something else.

"Jean's apartment," he'd asked, begging the same thing of Weeks that he'd asked of Rodriguez. "Did you take something from it-not steal, not at all-just borrow maybe-Jean being dead. Some pictures maybe?"

And though Weeks hemmed and hawed at first, he hadn't done it convincingly or done it for long. Maybe his heart wasn't in it, maybe he just had to resist a little before giving a lot. Maybe he'd only been waiting for someone to ask.

Pictures then. Lots of them-Weeks bringing them out in a large manila envelope. Pictures, because that's what the woman had said. He kept them, answering his curiosity, he kept them, I guess. I guess. But they hadn't been in Jean's apartment and they hadn't been in Jean's box and so someone had taken them. That's what had crossed his mind this morning smack in the middle of OTB, thinking of that picture of the three of them. One picture suddenly becoming many pictures.

And now he sat with the pictures on his lap, just a dutiful and polite neighbor leafing through the trip to Hoover Dam, the excursion to Mount Rushmore, the holiday to Disneyland. That's me with Mickey… There I am with Old Abe… Okay, maybe a bit more exotic than that. For instance no Abe here, and no Mickey, no Teddy or Goofy or Donald Duck. In fact no Jean either; just her.

Mr. Weeks's apartment suited this particular photographic retrospective too; dark, shuttered down, as if Mr. Weeks was trying to extricate himself from the outside world. Three fans were set up in a triangle around the room, streams of hot air converging on each other like separate rivers into a murderously hot delta, stirring up instead of silt and shells, fine dust and white lint.

Okay. The pictures. He'd gone for a certain look here, Jean had. A definite theme had been attempted, a common thread carefully sought. There was, for instance, the matter of her clothes. Black boots, black stockings, a brown cloth shirt. And on her arm a symbol most definitely retro, a symbol more commonly exhibited on rest room walls and in certain South American countries with large German populations. A swastika. Red, white, and absolutely true, your honor. A swastika. In every picture. The only thing, in fact, that changed from picture to picture was her position-now spread-eagled on a couch, now standing ramrod straight against the wall, now sitting defiantly on a small settee. And yet, William thought, perhaps he was wrong about that as well. Each picture had been shot from the floor up; to take such a picture, at that kind of angle, one would have to grovel belly down, no higher than shoe level. Each position was different but each position was exactly the same: superior. Okay, so maybe he hadn't enjoyed being beaten, remembering now what the woman had said, but what he had enjoyed was close.

"You shouldn't judge him," Mr. Weeks said now, softly, but with a certain undeniable firmness there. "Not by that. It's not fair."

And now William realized he'd been wrong about something. He'd been right about who'd taken the pictures, give the gentleman a gold star, but he'd been wrong about why. He'd assumed Mr. Weeks had taken them for the same reason he'd thought Rodriguez had. A little amateur pornography, the Old Dick and the C, the charming story of a retired detective trying to recapture those carefree days of Dachau. Something to look at on a rainy afternoon, something to hide beneath the bookshelf. But okay, he was willing to admit that's not why Mr. Weeks had taken them after all. It wasn't general horniness that sent him into Jean's apartment before Rodriguez got there; it was something more bizarre. A genuine regard for the deceased. Hard to believe considering the deceased was your old friend and mine, the utterly charming Jean Gold- blum. But then there's no accounting for taste, is there. Instead of robbing the dead, Weeks had been protecting his memory. At least, he'd been giving it the old college try.

"Sure," William said, "I'm not judging him." But that, of course, wasn't entirely true. He wasn't judging him because he'd already condemned him. And while he was at it, he'd gone and sentenced him too. Death by general disgust. It was the swastika, of course. It was a swastika that had made Jean's wife and child disappear; it was the swastika that made William sick.

"You don't understand," Weeks said.

Fair enough. He didn't. Strange sex, after all, wasn't exactly his province these days. Sex was not exactly his province these days, though on occasion he could remember it quite vividly, especially the kind practiced in a certain ground-floor room at the Par Central Motel. But while that was worse, this was close, somewhere, at least, in the general ballpark.

"Sure I do," William said. "Jean was exercising his rights under the First Amendment. Jean was just having some fun."

"Jean didn't have fun."

"Oh, yeah. I forgot."

"Jean wasn't the kind of person who could."

"That's right. It slipped my mind."

"You didn't know him…"

"You can say that again," William said. "Hey, I don't care about the pictures. I don't want them. You can rip them up, burn them, sell them to Rodriguez, whatever you like. I'm not interested in them."

"Then why'd you ask for them?"

Yes. Why did he ask for them?

"It's a little hard to explain." Which was true, considering he hadn't exactly explained it to himself yet. "We used to work together," William said, a line he seemed to know by rote now.

"Uh huh." Mr. Weeks was still waiting; Mr. Weeks looked like he'd been waiting for a long time.

"Back when we worked together we sometimes had to finish each other's cases. We didn't like each other all that much, but we'd cover for each other. Because it was professional courtesy. That's all."

"He's dead."

"Yeah. Right. You've got me there. But maybe what he was working on isn't. Dead. What do you say, Mr. Weeks? Is there something else you haven't given me? Just one thing else. Maybe something Jean really cared about, not like the pictures, something else?"

Okay, the cat was out of the bag. He hadn't come for the pictures. He'd just followed the pictures, the way you follow those signs on the highway that promise food fifteen, then ten, then five miles down the pike. He was hungry; after all, he hadn't eaten in twenty years, and he could just about taste the meal. The pictures? They were just the flyers that rummies hand out in the glow of topless bars. He'd come for the show. For if someone had taken the pictures, someone, for instance, like Mr. Weeks, it stood to reason he would have taken something else, the something he wanted, the something he'd come for.

And now Mr. Weeks was sitting stock-still, his shock of white hair rippling up and down from the fans, up and down like the hair of a cat caught between fear and hunger.

"Okay," Mr. Weeks said. "Okay…"

He stood up and walked to the back of the apartment where it was darker still, where Mr. Weeks disappeared into the gloom and all William could hear was the sound of someone rifling through drawers, through this, inside that, right down to the bottom.

Then he was back, and in his hand a file, which he dropped ever so softly into William's lap, as if it were holy.

To William, it was. The file was thin, worn, and stained with thumbprints. And it was red.