No Pigeyes in sight, none of his pals. I put on a winter hat and drew up my m.u.f.fler and went out to see if I could talk a hack into taking a ride at night into the West End. I was thinking about Brushy. She had kissed me goodbye in the bathroom, a long, lingering embrace full of all her s.p.u.n.k and ardor, and issued fateful advice before disappearing: 'Don't get another rash.'

XXV.

THE SECRET LIFE OE KAM ROBERTS,.

PART TWO.

I got to the West End with more than an hour and a half to spare and I spent the time in a little Latin bar on the corner near the Bath where almost no English was spoken. I sat sipping soda pops, sure every second that I was going to break down and order a drink. I was thinking about Brushy and not enjoying it much, wondering what-all that was coming to, whether I wanted what she did or could give it, and as a result, I was in one of my most attractive moods, refusing to move my elbows and waiting for somebody to try to hoist my no-good Anglo a.s.s.

But the fellas here were pretty good-natured. They were watching one of those taped boxing matches from Mexico City on the bar TV, commenting en espanol, and taking peeks now and then at yours truly, figuring all in all I was too big to mess with. Eventually I got into the mood, joshing with them, throwing around my four or five words of Spanish, and recalling my longtime conclusion that a neighborhood joint like this might be the single best cla.s.s of places on earth. I was more or less raised at The Black Rose, a terrible thing to admit maybe, considering the rumpot I turned out to be, but in a neighborhood of tenements and tiny homes, people longed for a place where they could expand, lift an elbow without knocking down the crockery. At the Rose, it was all right if your wife came; there were kids running round the tables and jerking on their mothers' sleeves; there was singing and those jokes. Humans warmed by one another's company. And me, as a kid, I couldn't ever wait to get out of there, to blow the whole scene. I recollected this with chagrin, but suspected for reasons I couldn't explain that I'd end up feeling the same way if you put me back there today.

Ten o'clock even, I headed out and walked down the alley. This was a big-city neighborhood where the cops and the mayor long ago installed those orange sodium lights with their garish candlepower that seemed to turn the world black and white, but the alley was still all kinds of menacing shadows - garbage cans and dumpsters, sinister alcoves and iron-barred doorways, a lot of lurking spots for Mr S/D, Stranger Danger, to smile and wield his knife. Walking on, I had the usual dry rot in the mouth and watery knees. I heard a grating clank and stopped dead. Someone was out here waiting for me. I reminded myself that was how it was supposed to be, I was meeting somebody.

When I got closer, I saw a figure beckoning. It was the Mexican, Jorge, Mr Third World Anger, who'd questioned me the day I was down here. He stood in the alley in bathroom slippers and an iridescent blue silk robe. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets and you could see the great puffs of his breath hazing above him in a blade of light angling from the doorway behind. He chucked his face in my direction and said, 'Eh.'

Bert was inside, out of sight of the door. We seemed to be in a supply area behind the locker room, and he greeted me as eagerly as he had the other night. Meanwhile, Jorge engaged the dead bolt on the door and padded off. Apparently he was going back to sleep. He paused to poke his head down the hall.

'When you leave, lock it. And, men, don't leave n.o.body see your a.s.s. I don' want no f.u.c.kin s.h.i.t here. I tole you a long time ago, hombre, you was f.u.c.ked up, all f.u.c.ked up.' He said this to Bert, but he pointed at me. 'I tole you, too.'

Jorge, Bert said, had to get up at four, arrange the stones which had been in the oven firing all night, and make the place ready for the bathers who'd begin arriving as early as 5:30 a.m. I wondered where Jorge stood with the outfit guys. There were a lot of them that came around here to steam off the stink of corruption and ugly deeds. Jorge, I suspected, kept everyone's secrets. But if a guy with a tommy gun or a coat hanger knocked on the front door now, Jorge'd point out where we were and go back to sleep. It was a tough life.

I told Bert we had to talk.

'How about the Bath?' he asked. 'You know, oven's on. It's blow-your-brains-out hot in there. It'll be great. Get all that oil and stuff right up to the skin. How about it?'

I had some thoughts, silly bigoted ones, about sitting around naked with Bert, even wrapped in a bedsheet, and then I began to feel sheepish and stupid, sure that if I said no he'd read that as the motive. So we hung our clothes in the lockers and Bert found the way down, both of us in the ocher-colored bedsheets cinched at our bellies and worn much like skirts. Bert didn't dare burn a light near a window. The shower room outside the bath remained dark, and the bath itself was lit only by a single bulb that left a gloomy light the color of tea. The stones had all been shoveled back into the oven and the room was arid, the great fire roasting the air. Even so, the place still had a vaguely vernal scent. Bert cracked the door a bit on the oven and then sat himself down on the top bench in the stepped wooden room and made exultant noises in the withering heat.

You'd have thought he had no troubles, chatting away about the Super Bowl, until I asked him to tell me on the level how it had been. He looked down then between his knees and didn't answer. Scary times, I suppose. Here was a fella who'd flown wartime missions, who knew what it was like being throttled by fright. But time had pa.s.sed; the imagination takes over; honest memories fade. The pain of fear had plainly surprised him.

I been eating fried food. Drinking bad water, man. Can't tell what's gonna get me first. You know?' He smiled. Loopy old Bert. He thought he was funny. Lead from the tap or a gun barrel was lead either way.

'And where the h.e.l.l have you been hiding out?' I asked.

He laughed at the question.

'Brother,' he said and laughed again. 'Here, there, and everywhere. Seeing the sights. Tried to keep moving.'

'Well, let's take today, for instance. Where'd you start out?'

'Today? Detroit.'

'Doing what?'

He fidgeted in the dense heat while words evaded him.

'Orleans had a game up there last night,' he said finally. He was looking the other way as he said it and he didn't say any more. I got the picture: Bert was seeing all the best places, Detroit and La Salle-Peru, chasing Orleans, romancing on game nights in funky motels, places like the U Inn.

'And what about money? What've you been doing to live?'

'I had a credit card in another name.' 'Kam Roberts?'

That startled him momentarily. He'd forgotten what I knew.

'Right. I thought it'd be better than using my own, they'd have a harder time tracking me down, but they did anyway.'

I thought Orleans used that card.'

I had one, he had one. We scissored them finally. The cards were about to expire anyway. But we piled up some cash. That's okay. What the h.e.l.l do I need? A motel with cable, I'm cool. It's just those guys, man. They were right on us. They were checking at stores where Orleans used the card, stuff like that. Scared the h.e.l.l out of us both. Man.' He looked at me. 'Those guys were cops, you're saying?'

'They're hot on the trail.' I had remained on my feet. I figured if I kept the sheet clutched around me and my b.u.t.t off the boards, I'd make Brushy happy and come home unblemished. 'That's our problem, Bert. The coppers. They know I've been looking for you, so now they're looking for me, especially after that runaround at the House of the Hands on Friday. I haven't slept at home for four nights. You and I have to scope out what I tell them, Bert, cause "I dunno" doesn't really seem to cut it. This whole thing with Orleans - I'd like to know how it happened, just so we can figure what kind of dance step I do.'

I wasn't facing him then. There was no point in that. Even so, I could feel him sort of hanging, suspended in s.p.a.ce as we sat here in this hot wooden box.

I mean, you know,' he said behind me.

'Right,' I said. We were going forward easy. 'You met him when he came to visit his mom at work. Something like that.'

'Right.'

So we stumbled around in conversation and Bert told me the tale of Orleans and him in his own half-a.s.s way. We were there broiling, not looking at each other, just two voices in the tea-gloomy light and incredible heat. Bert wasn't much of a story-teller. He did a lot of s.h.i.t-out-of-luck mumbling. 'You know,' he'd say, 'you know.' And I did, I guess. I got the point. Orleans changed Bert's life the way people's lives are ordinarily altered only by human violence and natural disasters - volcanoes, hurricanes, typhoons. You see the pictures all the time, some poor son of a b.i.t.c.h in his hip waders, looking with zoned-out disbelief at the roof of what used to be his house, now angled into the black waters of the flood. That was Bert after Orleans. I'd only seen the guy across the distance of a basketball court, so I couldn't tell you a thing about him, except that he was a fine-looking young fellow. But as I put the pieces together, my two bits, he was sort of high-strung and erratic. Apparently he'd been a high-school football star who tore up his knee and suffered a lot over that, getting cut out of athletics, then started refereeing various sports while he was still in college. These days he taught grade school PE as a sub and reffed, but his princ.i.p.al occupation apparently was fighting with his mother. He had a peculiar job history, moving in and out of town, always coming back, living at home half the time. I suppose Glyndora wanted him to be different and he was engaged in the usual parent-child struggle, always angry with her and wanting her to accept him, the way we all want with our folks at one level or another.

Somehow, though, they connected. For Bert, it was epochal. Orleans, I took it, was Bert's first actual real-life thing, and Bert was in love with him the way you'd love the genie if you'd found that magic lamp. Orleans to Bert was liberty. Destiny. In the midst of his longing, his attachment, Bert was also wild with grat.i.tude. It's hard to believe that this could really happen in this day and age - people who live on the other side of earth from what they're really feeling -but the old copper in me says it occurs every day. Look at Nora. Look at me. Suddenly you're at an age when your own naughty thoughts exhaust you; no matter how much you try to ignore them, they remain. Whatever ugly stamp they place on your soul is impressed there indelibly. You might as well be whatever it is they say you are. You are anyway.

So they got their rumba going, Bert and Orleans, and Glyndora caught on and went wild. I got the feeling that was okay with Orleans, to be causing that kind of ruction.

Bert was walking back and forth now on the tier above me, roaming on his big feet with the long nails and the calluses from his loafers and athletic shoes. His black hair was heavy with perspiration and his unshaven cheeks looked darker in the heat.

'And how'd this betting thing happen? Whose idea?'

'Oh, you know, man,' he said again, for the one hundredth time. 'There was never any idea about it. We'd talk games. Players. Stuff like that. You know how it is, you hang with somebody, you kind of figure what they're thinking, I mean maybe he'd say - He'd say. You know, before the Michigan game, he'd say, "I'm going to call Ayres tight, he's a street player, you got to call him tight." Or Erickson at Indiana. All elbows.'

'And you'd bet it. Right? If Ayres was going to be called tight, you'd bet against Michigan.'

'Yeah,' he said. He was slowed by shame. 'It didn't seem like much. Just a little edge. I didn't really think twice.'

'Did Orleans know?'

'To start?'

'Eventually?'

'Man, do you know I bet the games?'

'I do,' I said. Orleans, he was saying, knew too. I thought for a sec about Bert as a gambler. What was it that compelled him? Did he l.u.s.t to feel favored by chance, or did he want to dare punishment? What drew him? The men? Or the sport? The grace, the fact that it was all winners and losers with no compromise? Something. It was part of the game of hide-and-seek he was playing with himself.

'Did he ask if you bet his games?'

'Not like that. He'd just ask what I was down on. You know, I'd tell him. He wasn't even sure where he was going until 4:30 the day before.' This was slow: 'He never said I'm gonna fix this. It was nothing like that.'

'But did you notice that he was taking care of it?'

I dared a look back at Bert, who was standing on the top tier, his head in the rafters, his black eyes still and stricken.

'You want a real f.u.c.king yuk? When I knew what he was doing - when I saw it, you know, I was happy. I was f.u.c.king pleased. G.o.d.' Bert suddenly reached forward and hooked one hand on the beam and leaned out, muscles articulate in his long arm, wincing, holding on to his sheet with the other hand. What he'd thought was that Orleans was in love with him. That's why he liked it. Not the money. Not even bragging rights in this room. Because it was a token of love. Now he was in pain.

'What a sick stupid thing,' he said.

I realized suddenly that I had been looking forward to having this out with Bert for my own reasons. Here we both were, two middle-aged men, big-deal successes, sort of at least, and both of us felons. There may be no honor among thieves, but there is a kind of community, knowing that you're no weaker than somebody else. And I guess I'd been thinking that cornering Bert, making him account for himself, I'd have an answer or two to throw back at that nagging voice of my ma's. But this was a letdown. Bert's was a crime of pa.s.sion. Not in the sense that the object of the scam was secondary; maybe it was with me too. But because for Bert and for Orleans there was really no scam at all. It was simply a stepping-stone, a point of access to the place they needed to go, Bert especially, where 'wrong' didn't even exist.

'And how did Archie find out?' I asked him.

'Well, Christ, he's taking the bets. All the sudden I'm betting one game heavy three times a week and making a bundle. I didn't want him to get hurt. I'd tell him, Watch out for this one. Everybody down here had money in Archie's book.' Bert took an instant to explain Archie's system with Infomode, everybody with a credit card and a funny handle. One guy's Moochie. Hal Diamond got called Slick. Bert was Kam.

'We sit here, we're talking games for hours. And, you know, we keep track of each other. Real close. You know how that is. We're all in each other's pockets.'

So pretty soon everybody here knew. They'd kid Bert. 'What's Kam Roberts got today?' Bert realized it was a mistake. Afterwards. At the time he couldn't resist. That was his way: talk and swagger. I'm a fella. Who says we'll ever change?

'Archie had no idea where you were getting the information?'

I wasn't talking, I don't know what they thought. Some connect to the players, I guess.'

I paused to put it together in my head. 'And Orleans got the credit card?'

Wrong thing to say. Bert popped. He came down a tier, cat-quick, got right up in my face. My favorite madman.

'Hey, f.u.c.k yourself, Mack. It wasn't like that. Christ, it's part-time work. Refereeing. He's a teacher. You know, you have money, you give a friend money. Get real. I had this credit card, money to spend. That's all, man. But it wasn't like that. Don't give me that c.r.a.p.' Orleans wasn't really fixing games. Bert wasn't really sharing the proceeds. It wasn't corruption. Not in their minds. It was love. Which, of course, it was.

Behind me I heard a faucet loosen and water begin to run. He had turned on one of the spigots between the boards and was filling a bucket, getting ready to do that number with the icy aqua over the head.

I realized about then that I'd sat down. I jumped up and did some heavy-legged version of the hootchy-kootchy, swearing, swatting at my big broad Irish bottom as if that was going to do any good. Bert watched, but I didn't explain. I pushed him back to the story.

I said, 'So play it out for me. Some dude with bra.s.s knuckles starts making an impression on Archie, telling him he's got to give up the fixer, and all he can give them is you. And you find Archie in your refrigerator and go for the world tour, right?'

'Sort of. I knew I was leaving. Martin had pretty much convinced me of that.'

Bingo. I watched the sweat gathering among all my gray chest hairs, the rivulets running over the swell of my belly and dampening the sheet bundled there.

'Martin had?' I asked. 'Fill in the blank, Bert. Where does Martin fit?'

Bert's reaction was amazing. He hooted.

'What a question!'

'Where he fits? Martin?'

'Hey, the answer's like, "In Glyndora,"' said Bert and, smirking like an absolute juvenile, circled his index finger and thumb and poked a finger through the form a couple of times. The gesture was so silly but direct that we both laughed out loud. What a life! Here we were, me and Bert of all people, giggling about somebody else's peccadilloes.

'Mar-tin?'

'f.u.c.kin' A,' he answered. 'No way.'

'It's ancient history. Years ago. Not now. Orleans was in grade school. But they're still like, what would you say -' Bert shifted a hand. I mean, when things get heavy for her, that's who she goes to. Not just around the firm, man. You know. Life.'

'Martin and Glyndora,' I said. I was still marveling. I have made addled party-time chatter with Martin's wife, Nila, for years and know nothing more about her than what meets the eye: elegant looks and cultivated manners. I'd always a.s.sumed that Martin was happily wed to his own pretensions. The idea of him with a girlfriend was somehow at odds with his projected image of complete self-sufficiency.

'So what problem did Glyndora come to him with?' I asked. 'I still don't understand why he got involved.'

Bert didn't answer. By now I knew what that meant. Go gently. We were on that subject.

'She was upset about you getting to know Orleans?'

'Right,' said Bert. He took his time. 'He was in the middle at first. A mediator, I don't know what you'd say. She was just out of control. You know her. She's pretty nuts on this subject.' He glanced up bleakly, a one-eyed peekaboo. In the meantime, with that remark, I got a load of the family dynamic. Orleans had grabbed Mom's attention big-time. Not just 'This is how I am,' but 'I am - with your boss. Your world.' I knew Bert would never recognize these intentions. He was like somebody with a perceptual disorder. His own emotions so dominated him that he had little perspective on anyone else.

'Then Martin found out about this, the betting. Man, it was Mount Saint Helens. He was more ticked than Glyndora. He told me straight up we were in way too deep. You know, he learned all about these guys growing up. He said the best thing was for me just to clear out. Disappear.

'And it started to actually sound okay, you know?' Bert said. 'New life. That whole thing. Just drop out of sight. For a while anyway. Get out of the firm. You ever hear of Pigeon Point?'

'No.'

'It's in California. North. On the coast. I found this ad. For an artichoke farm. I've been out there now. You know it's foggy. Amazing, man. The fog comes in over the artichokes twice a day. You barely have to water them. Great crops. And it's a phenomenal food.' He started on the f.u.c.king vitamin count, more information in five seconds than a label on a can, and I let him go on, struck again by that notion. The new life. The new world. G.o.d, the mere thought still made my heart sing. Then, unexpectedly, I recalled that I had nearly six million dollars in my name in two foreign bank accounts and was gripped by an urgent question I could just as well have asked myself.

'So why aren't you gone?'

'He won't leave.'' Bert threw his big hands in my direction, the fingers crippled by desperation. 'The dumbf.u.c.k won't go. I've begged him. I beg him three times a week.' He stared at me, unhinged by the thought, and then turned away rather than confront what he could tell I was seeing - that Bert had given up his life to protect Orleans, and Orleans, when push came to shove, lacked the same dedication. Maybe Orleans couldn't honk off his mother sufficiently from two thousand miles away. Maybe, in the end, he didn't really have it for Bert. However it went, Bert's crusade was a one-way thing. I saw something else then, that this romance, Bert and Orleans, wasn't the high-flown love of the poets. There was something bad in it, it was tethered to pain; there was a reason Bert was so long telling himself the truth he did not want to know.

And even so, I envied him for a minute. Had I ever loved anybody like that? My feelings for Brushy seemed flimsy in the intense heat. But what about time? I thought. Maybe with time. Life has these two poles, it seems. You go one way or the other. We're always choosing: pa.s.sion or despair.

'I've told him about the police,' Bert said. 'He doesn't believe it.'

'They'll be pretty convincing if they catch him.'

'Can you talk to them?' he asked finally. 'The cops? Are they friends of yours?'

'Hardly,' I said, but I sat there smiling. It was terrible really, the joy I took at the notion of skunking Pigeyes. I already had a few ideas.

The heat and the hour were gradually making me faint. I turned on the water and poured a cold bucket for myself, but didn't have the stamina or the courage to dump it over my head. I stood there before Bert, dabbing the water on my face and my chest, while I tried a moment to figure out what all this meant for me. There was a whisper about of the oven and the rocks barely sizzling.

'You don't know a thing about what's been going on at the firm, do you? The money? That whole thing?'

The sweat ran into his eyes and Bert blinked. He had his impenetrable black look: he doesn't understand you and never will.

I asked if the name Litiplex rang any bells. 'Jake?' he asked. I nodded.

'Didn't Jake send me some memo? And I wrote him a bunch of checks on the 397 account? Yeah,' Bert let his long body bob. He was remembering. 'Something was very touchy. It was a mix-up with the plaintiffs. Jake was afraid Krzysinski would roast his hind end when he heard Jake had to pay these expenses. Big, big G.o.dd.a.m.n secret. Jake was very uptight on this thing.' Bert reflected. 'Something's f.u.c.ked-up, huh?' he asked.

'You might say.'

'Yeah,' he said, 'you know, now that I'm thinking, maybe a month ago Martin asked me about this. This Litiplex. But he was like, no problem, no big deal.'