LITMIR.BIZ

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Wade, would you do me the favor of turning your head to the side?”

      Delpha lifted her gaze from the steno pad. She looked directly at the client, and again, for a second, her eyes narrowed. Then she turned her head in the direction of the wall that had most needed repainting.

      “I am right. You’ve got the profile of Madeleine Carroll. Not the hair of course, hers was wavy. And blond. But, really, the nose, the chin, a dead ringer for—”

      “’Fraid I don’t know who that is.” Delpha returned her attention to the pad.

      “You’re too young. She was the star of, no, Robert Donat was the star, of course, but she was the lead actress in ‘The Thirty-Nine Steps.’ Alfred Hitchcock, 1935. You’ve seen it?”

      No, at Gatesville, movie-time was Doris Day and Elvis Presley. Delpha placed her chin a fraction higher in the air and a slight smile on her lips, to act out interest.

      “I’m a film buff. I realize it’s not everyone’s passion, but for me, well…” The client’s gaze turned to rope in Phelan. “Let me remind you that I’d like my identity to remain confidential.”

      The sunglasses had told Phelan that.

      The man’s nose—straight-bridged in profile but redveined and lumpy from the front—suggested that he liked the bottle. The gray tinge of its tip, that he was an ardent smoker, and the vertical folds in his cheeks, that he had some decades on him. But he didn’t have an elderly hump or a spindly frame. He was built thick like a wrestler or boxer who gravity had weighed down. And he was turned out—wore a navy blazer over a blue plaid shirt, the snap-brim fedora with neat brown hair around its edges. The hair and the mustache, sort of a briefcase brown, looked less than natural. That he kept his hat on—a man of his age, indoors and in the presence of a woman—said he was hiding what was or wasn’t under it. Vanity? Probably. But sunglasses in the rain, well, that said eye problem, ugly, or disguise.

      “Yes, sir. We got that part. I assure you confidentiality is one of our principles. What is it you want us to do for you?”

      “I…I’m all by myself now.”

      The client halted, lips still open. “Excuse me. It’s startling to say that.” A gust hit the window, and the glass rattled. One of his hands moved to hug the other. “I want you to find my brother. I have reason to believe he’s recently purchased a house in Beaumont. We went our separate ways long ago. One of those family matters.” Bell looked away. “My health…well, I’m not young, as you can see. I’d like to see him once more. Clear the air, as it were.”

      “And he’s not in the telephone book?” Phelan’s head angled toward a corner, where they had twenty-seven or eight phone books piled up because sometimes phone books were useful.

      “I don’t even know what name he’d be using.”

      Phelan’s head inclined. “Why would your brother use an alias?”

      “He’s…Rodney’s got this cloak and dagger mania. He’s always had it. As kids, we’d play hide and seek, and Rodney would just run. He’d never come in, even when we called ‘Ally-ally-in-come-free.’ Our mother had to call him. Then he’d come in.” Mr. Bell’s brows squeezed.

      “Rodney got your goat.”

      Bell looked at Phelan, angled, and threw a glance toward Delpha. “He knew he did. That’s why he did it.” After a moment he took a breath, and his head sank. “Ridiculous, I know. Here we are at the end of our lives, and Rodney is still running.” He drew a tobacco pouch and small packet from his jacket pocket. “Do you mind?”

      Phelan pushed over an ashtray, eyebrows lifted. Bell was using Patriotic rolling papers, the C-note pattern.

      The man nimbly fashioned a cigarette, saying, “Things happened in our family. Like any family. I told myself the sky was still blue without Rodney. But now I’ve changed my mind. I want to see my brother.”

      “Whatever family things happened—they didn’t bother Rodney?”

      “Ohhhh.” Pondering. “They did. But we have to be realistic. Neither of us can take it back.”

      “Take what back?”

      “My word! The past, of course.” He leaned back, homemade clamped between his lips, drew a small coin from the breast pocket of his blazer. Phelan took it: gold, worn out of round, foreign words bracketing the head etched in the middle. Which, as near as Phelan could tell, was two Siamese twins with fat lips, joined together at the back of the skull.

      He glanced over at Bell.

      “Roman. The god Janus, who faces both the past and the future. Nice to look at, isn’t it? To remind yourself that the past is gone.” Bell plucked back the coin and stowed it again in the blazer’s pocket, gave it a pat. “Or that, in the future, something can be done to make up for it.”

      “OK, you want to talk to your brother, maybe make up. You’re retired, Mr. Bell?”

      “Yes. I’m retired. And I want to see Rodney again, just one more time.”

      Phelan damned the sunglasses. He’d have liked to have studied the old fellow’s eyes.

      “Then I’ll go home. Go to the movies, tavern, gymnasium, attend Classical Club meetings until, well, until I can’t do those things anymore. You have a great many years before you’ll know what I mean, Mr. Phelan.” He bent his head toward Phelan in what maybe was meant to be a fatherly nod, but his bottom lip bowed upward.

      “Classical Club?”

      An expression of pleasure lifted the man’s heavy face. “A group of professors. I taught an occasional night class at Loyola, just an elective, a history of early film. Paid practically nothing. But the credential allowed me discounted entry to some events. My favorite is The International Film Festival in Houston, I always drive over. Maybe you’ve gone?” Bell threw a glance at Phelan and turned inquiringly to Delpha.

      “I missed that,” Phelan said, so that Delpha didn’t have to find a reply. What Phelan did not miss, some years back, was movie night at a base camp in Kon Tum province—“The Alamo” projected onto an outdoor screen with holes in it. Him and Jyp Casey still wired from the night before, hauling a guy around downed and blasted trees, Zion Washington striding beside, both hands on his M-16.

      “Too bad. Film’s my passion, but my livelihood…it was drearier. I took over my father’s business. While my brother Rodney was off gallivanting here and there, I was selling coins, like the Roman one I showed you. Sabres and pistols, assorted antiques. I added movie memorabilia, autographs to our stock. I kept the shop going. Cooped up inside the same four walls every day. Same noisy little streets, my god, the racket tourists make, the local fools. Yowlin’ like cats.”

      “Where was that?”

      Coy smile. “Confidentiality, remember? Let’s just say, a city.”

      Having connected Loyola, the client’s accent, noisy little streets and yowling tourists to New Orleans, Phelan was annoyed by the lack of verification. He injected the atmosphere with a friendly smile. “Born and bred in New Orleans, Mr. Bell? Sell a lotta sabres down there?”

      With the nicotine-stained fingers of his right hand, Bell doffed the black glasses and set them on Phelan’s desk. His eyes were darkest brown and hooded, the lax skin of his upper lids balanced on pale lashes. “I suppose it’s not that difficult to guess. Born and bred. Yes, we sold sabres. Daggers, dirks, fancy pistols. Weapons, you know, of war.”

      “Was your brother Rodney a part of your business?”

      “A long time ago. He kept the books. When he moved away, he simply got an allowance for doing nothing.”

      “And that chapped you.”

      “Oh, not really. They thought…they thought that was better for everyone.”

      “They?”

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