Epitaph

TWELVE

One of the fans had died, just like that, sputtering off like an aircraft engine hit by flak. Mr. Weeks had ministered to it for several minutes, but it was no go; machines were a mystery to him, he said. He readjusted the remaining fans as best he could but it made little difference-instead of three fans blasting hot air around the room, there were now two; it was nearly an improvement.

Yet the darkness in the room made it seem like the inside of a rain cloud: the heat, the moisture, and the sense that something was about to happen, that answers, like lightning, were about to light up the room.

But no such luck. The file was full, but full of what? William had spent several minutes flipping through it as if skimming a book for the dirty parts; but there were no dirty parts, nothing that juicy. Just a list of names: Mr. Samuels… Mrs. Timinsky… Mr. Shankin… Mrs. Winters. Names and addresses-one to a page, and a check under each. And on another page some numbers- license plates perhaps, six to a group. That was it. William looked up now at Mr. Weeks, who was back in his chair and staring back at him, warily, as if under house arrest. Senile, Rodriguez had said. Well, William thought now, we'll see… He leaned forward, just enough to be friendly, like an old friend, like an old friend of an old friend. "Did Jean ask you to hide this for him, Mr. Weeks?" Mr. Weeks nodded. "He said it was in case something happened. Don't give it to anyone, he said. It's my last testament, it's what I bequeath, understand? He made me promise." What I bequeath. "But you didn't keep your promise?" "I know who you are. Jean showed me your picture once. When I saw you in the hall yesterday with Rodriguez, I knew you'd come back." So, William thought, so… "Funny, isn't it." "Funny?" "Jean gets you to clean up for him-just in case. And Rodriguez to bury him-just in case. Two of you-just in case. And then Jean's on a case, that too." "Yes…?" "It's just that Jean being Jean, we could say maybe something had him worried. Not just here, understand, but hereafter." Mr. Weeks blinked at him, at him, or at the wall, or just at the situation. "So, Mr. Weeks, what was the case?" "I don't know."

"You don't know, or you don't know if you should tell me?"

"I don't know."

"Not another something he made you promise, huh?"

"No." Mr. Weeks shook his head, a good shake, a no- doubt-about-it shake. "He never said a word to me. If you knew Jean, you knew that wasn't his way. I wasn't even supposed to look in the file. I haven't."

Okay, so he was right. That wasn't Jean's way. Even with that woman. I can't tell you, he'd said. I can't… Secrets, for Jean, were like insurance policies and he'd loaded up on so many of them that he'd long ago reached equity.

"Okay. Any guesses? Go ahead… it's free."

"I don't know anything," Mr. Weeks said, as if he were making a general statement of his intellectual worth, a totaling up of seventy-odd years' worth of acquired knowledge. Maybe the older you get, the less you do know. Maybe Weeks had gotten so old he was already into negative knowledge. On the other hand…

"Maybe you don't know what you know. Knowing things is like that." Like his clients, remember, who always knew, but didn't. "Why don't we see?"

"How?"

"Tell me about Jean's last few weeks. What he looked like, where he went, what he said. Walk me through them, okay, Mr. Weeks? We'll take a stroll, nice and easy, you and me. Okay?"

Somewhere outside, an ice cream truck was rolling up the street. There were these bells, this jingle, something insipid but kind of catchy… Here comes Mr. Softee… over and over… Here comes Mr. Softee… but as far as he could tell there were no takers. Not a one.

Now inside, it was different. Here comes Mr. Weeks… and he had a customer too, a customer just about panting for something refreshing, for something tasty to chew on.

Mr. Weeks had gone to the refrigerator for some juice, had opened it, closed it, come back empty-handed, shuffled his feet, cleared his throat, made up his mind. He would tell William about the last few weeks, but not just about the last few weeks. He was one of those people who have to start from the start, not from the end, not even from the middle. To remember his lines he needed the first cue, and the first cue here was Jean-not several weeks ago, but several years ago, more than that, a Jean bored, broke, and nearly beaten.

He'd tried his hand at security years before, Mr. Weeks began, but whether he'd resigned from it or whether he'd been forced to, the experience hadn't been pleasant and hadn't been long.

William picked forced to. Jean had always been a lot happier breaking laws than trying to enforce them. Does fox in the chicken coop ring a bell?

After that, Mr. Weeks continued, after a long while of doing nothing at all, really nothing, because Jean didn't read, or have a television, or even an interest, he tried to start over again. Another agency, a one-man agency. He found a storefront in Flushing, he fixed it up, he hung up a shingle. No one came. One look at the man in the one-man agency and would-be clients turned tail and ran.

"Christ, he should have been out on a golf course, they thought, maybe shuffleboard, maybe not even that, the exertion might have killed him, okay. He was seventy or so-and he looked ten years older," Mr. Weeks explained. Anyway, the agency went bust. Quickly. The store turned into a Cantonese Buffet, Jean went back to his room. "Then," Weeks sighed, "Jean maybe got a little desperate. A little seedy. That's what happens when no one wants you anymore and when you still think they should, when you think there's still a place for you." Yes, William thought. The secret, of course, is realizing there isn't. A place for you. That tends to ease your desperation just a little, or at least, keep it quiet. "Jean went looking for business, sort of," Mr. Weeks said. "Sort of, how?" "Well, he went looking for children"-Weeks winced here-"for runaways. He'd go down to the Port Authority, to the tunnel. Sometimes, he'd find them…" "And when he found them?" "He'd notify the parents," Weeks said. "Is that so? He'd notify them. How responsible of him. What a good citizen. That's all then…?" "He'd ask for the reward." "Sure. The reward. That's fair, isn't it, seeing as how he went to all that trouble. Just tell me one thing. Just asking, but what if there wasn't a reward?" "Well…" There was that wince again. "He'd name a figure I guess, a figure he thought was fair…" "Sure, Jean was always fair, wasn't he? But, just asking again, what if the parents, the ones he notified, didn't think the figure was fair? What if they maybe didn't have it, what if they were a little strapped for cash. What then?"

"Then?" Mr. Weeks wasn't happy now; William wasn't being friendly anymore, he wasn't being a friend of their old friend, laughing at his silly foibles, chuckling over those endearing eccentricities that made Jean such a card.

"Yes, then," William said. "The parents didn't have the money, let's just say they didn't, so our Jean would say, don't worry, if you don't, you don't, here's where your son is, your thirteen-year-old daughter, the one all the pimps are after, the one who's broken your heart. Here she is. Right, Mr. Weeks? That's what he'd do."

"Not exactly," Weeks said.

"Then what exactly?"

"If they didn't pay him the money, he'd hang up."

"Yeah," William said, "of course. I sort of thought that's what he'd do."

"You're just like Jean said you were," Weeks said.

So Jean hadn't just shown Weeks his picture; he'd provided commentary. Did I ever tell you about Father William, Father William and his confessional down the hall, Father William, whose wife was caught playing nooky with the Monsignor?

"What did he say?"

"He said you were a Boy Scout."

Okay, there was a definite change in tone emanating from Mr. Weeks's side of the room. No doubt about it. Mr. Weeks, who'd picked Jean's apartment clean of incriminating evidence, wasn't going to give up his friend without a fight. Maybe reliving the old days wasn't going to be such a hoot after all.

"Maybe just compared to him," William said. "Maybe compared to him, we all were."

"Look," Weeks said, "Jean thought if parents wouldn't pay the money, then they didn't really care."

"No," William said. "That might be what he said but that wasn't what he thought. What he thought was different. What he said was for us Boy Scouts. There's finding runaway kids and then there's selling them. Jean didn't distinguish. Jean wasn't a Boy Scout."

Mr. Weeks sighed, a sigh that seemed to say a lot, a sigh that said that maybe the jig was up.

"I told him I thought it was a little… sleazy. I told him that," he said.

"Sure. And I bet he cared too. By the way, why did he even bother telling you?"

"He said, you're my conscience, Weeks. That's what he said."

"Not a very big job, was it." Or maybe too big of a job, William thought. After all, there'd be so much to keep track of. You'd need to hire an assistant conscience too, then an assistant to the assistant and so on.

"Do you want me to go on?" Weeks said.

"Sure. I haven't heard how it ends yet. Jean's busy selling runaway kids, that's where we were up to. Sometimes they made it home, sometimes they ended up with the pimps. And then…?"

"Well… this."

"Yeah." William was all ears now. This. What I bequeath to you…

"Well," Weeks said, "to begin with, he was scared."

"Scared? How scared?"

"Very. Because, you see, I'd never seen it before, not from him. Jean wasn't exactly the emotional type. A little cool, if you know what I mean."

Sure. William knew what he meant. And maybe it wasn't coolness so much as coldness, which could be mistaken for coolness if you weren't careful, or if you happened to be a crazy neighbor who happened to like him.

"And then," Weeks said, "he comes in here one night looking like a ghost. Just like a ghost. Sits down in the chair-the one you're sitting on, and just sits. Sits and sits. Doesn't say anything. I think… I think, well…"

"Yeah? You think what?"

"I think maybe he wanted to be near someone, just that, just near them. And then after, oh, I don't know, an hour or so, he says, I've got a case, Weeks. Not some runaway-yes, I remember he says it just that way. Not some runaway."

"So…?"

"So I said, well, what is it, Jean? You look a little… sick. What is this case…?"

"And?"

"Big. That's what he says. Big. The biggest case of my life. That's what he says and that's all he says."

So, William thought. The biggest case of his life. Again. The woman hadn't gotten it wrong. Two people, his neighbor and his neighborhood hooker, and he told it the same way to both of them. I'm not in runaways anymore, he says, I'm back in the big time.

"And nothing more?" William asked.

"Nothing. Nothing said, anyway. But after that, I saw a lot less of him…"

"Nothing about who gave him the case? Who hired him? Nothing?"

"No. Just walked in here and said he had the biggest case of his life. That's all. That's it."

"Okay," William said, wanting to get him back on track now, this track which had seemed to be going somewhere promising but now seemed to be going nowhere fast. "You saw a lot less of him…"

"Yes. Once, when he came in to borrow some medicine…"

"Medicine?"

"Yes. He burnt himself cooking."

"And then?"

"Then, not for a while. More than a couple of weeks. Then he just showed up again. He came in here and told me about the file, told me where he kept it, behind the radiator. And he told me if anything happens to him, in case he ever gets hit by a car, or has a safe fall on his head, to go in and get it. Keep it, he says. Show it to no one. Promise me. It's my last testament, what I bequeath to you. Promise me. So I did promise. And soon after that, it happened, his heart attack. And he died."

And you went in and took the file, William thought. The file and the pictures, a friend to the end.

It was nearly time to go. Sure it was. All the signs said so; the suffocating heat, the sobering quiet, the evident weariness of the storyteller. Time to shove off.

But William thought he'd take one more look at the file, one more shot at seeing if anything struck a bell with Mr. Weeks, the storyteller himself.

But Mr. Weeks didn't know even one of the names in the file-Samuels… Timinsky… Shankin… Winters- all strangers. He didn't know what the numbers meant either-all of them mere mumbo jumbo. But when William leafed backward and looked closely at the addresses, so carefully lettered in beneath each name and above each red check, he suddenly realized that they weren't local addresses. This one here was Miami. And so was the next. And the next. And so on. All Miami addresses.

"All these people live in Miami," William said.

"Oh yeah," Mr. Weeks said.

"Oh yeah, what?"

"I think he went there."

"To Miami?" He had a sudden image of Jean at Sea World maybe, of Jean munching bananas in the Keys.

"I'm not sure."

"What makes you think he went to Miami Mr. Weeks?"

"Well, he went somewhere. He said he'd been away. And that last time he came to see me, he was tan. Not just tan. It was the way he acted too. Like he'd been on the best vacation of his life, rejuvenated kind of. Like he'd found something."

"In Miami."

"I'm not sure," he said again.

Something wasn't right here.

"But why did you think it was Miami? I said all these people live in Miami and you said oh yeah."

"I don't understand…"

"That's okay, Mr. Weeks. I do. You thought it was Miami because you'd looked at the file and seen it there. You said you didn't, but you did. You peeked."

Weeks looked just a little sheepish now, maybe even kind of embarrassed. Anyway, he didn't look too well.

"You know what, Mr. Weeks?" It was starting to come together for him now, not perfectly together, not beyond a doubt and eureka together, but at least he had this theory now, a theory he was starting to like, was starting to become even a little fond of. "I think you did what Jean wanted you to do. He bequeathed it to you, didn't he? I think he wanted you to look. I think, in a way, he was counting on it. That's why he gave it to you. I think he was counting on something else too."

"What?" His eyes, his whole tired white face seemed to be asking him, pleading with him, in dire need of an answer. And quick. For William could suddenly see that this, all this, had been a great strain on him. Think about it. He'd been appointed keeper of the flame, but he'd never been told why or for how long.

"Maybe," William said, speaking slowly, laying it out now, not just for Weeks but for him, "he was hoping one day someone else would come knocking on your door, not just anyone, but someone you knew, maybe someone whose picture you'd seen. Maybe even an old Boy Scout asking for donations."

There it was. As theories went, it wasn't half bad. It even made a little sense. Anyway, it'd do. And now, it was time to go, he was absolutely sure of it. But he had one more question, just one.

"Mr. Weeks, why didn't you go to the funeral? You, his conscience, why didn't you go?"

"Oh," Mr. Weeks said, as if he'd just been asked something inexplicably stupid, because he had, "but I don't go out anymore. I haven't gone out in years. Not in years."

And William, looking at the heavily draped windows, so carefully battened down against the light, thought yes, he's telling the truth, isn't he. He'd been sitting in a kind of zombie land, a land of the living dead, without a single spring or a single daybreak, a world stuck in time. And now he thought that maybe he'd been sitting there for longer than he'd realized. Outside was the real world, all they really had, where things were born every minute, and where they died only with a struggle, and sometimes not even then. He could be mistaken, but he actually thought he had a smile plastered across his face. No kidding. All because he was leaving the darkness for blue skies, his red file clutched firmly under his arm. Okay, put it this way. He was, in a matter of speaking, coming home.