Bobby Ocean fucking hated queers.
So Billy had stoked himself with some Dutch courage and gone to confront his father with this newfound knowledge gleaned from Dean Harper. The response hadn’t even been a denial on his father’s part, just a quietly spoken instruction to get the fuck back to his own apartment and never again mention that fucking truck in his father’s presence. Dean Harper was also given his walking papers, having crossed the line drawn in the aftermath of the cruiser/lobster boat incident, which left Billy with even fewer friends in his father’s circle than before.
A Negro, Billy thought.
A fucking Negro.
40
Maela Lombardi regained consciousness in her favorite armchair. It took her a while before she could manage to keep her eyes open, and her head throbbed with a nausea-inducing headache reminiscent of the worst migraines she’d ever suffered. She heard someone moan, and was briefly confused and irritated by the sound until she realized that she was the one making it.
A man was seated before her. He was reading from a small volume in his lap, and did not so much as glance up when Lombardi exhibited signs of wakefulness. She grasped the opportunity to examine him: his build, thin but not frail; his clothing, a mix of velvets and tweeds, finished off with a pair of sensible brown brogues; his face, handsome in a cold way, the eyes intelligent and curious, but entirely without warmth. A slim, elegant finger was raised over the page he was contemplating, as though he were silently taking issue with the author’s words.
Maela tried to recall how she’d ended up in the chair. She remembered being uncomfortable in her own space, and a bad smell, or combination of smells, then nothing. She was compos mentis enough to realize she hadn’t simply fallen or taken a turn, and therefore whoever was responsible for placing her in the armchair had not done so out of any great concern for her well-being.
She tested her arms and legs. They had not been secured in any way. She could, she supposed, have tried to make a break for freedom, but she didn’t imagine that she’d get very far in her current state, which probably explained the absence of restraints; that, and the fact she was a small woman in her seventies with a bum hip and a bad back, which limited her options, even under the best of circumstances.
Which these, most assuredly, were not.
The man spoke, still without tearing himself from his book.
‘What are you thinking?’ he said.
Maela tried to speak, but her mouth was too dry. Movement came from behind her, and a woman’s hand extended a glass of water. Maela made an effort to turn her head, but even this slight exertion caused her nausea to increase exponentially, and it was all she could do not to puke on the floor. She grasped the glass with both hands. The water was mercifully cold, and had the effect of clearing some of the fog from her mind. Her eyes appraised more closely the face of the man in the chair. She decided she didn’t care for him at all.
‘I was thinking,’ she said, once she cleared her throat, ‘that some of the more educated Nazis probably resembled you. Not the hoodlums like Bormann or R?hm, but those who fancied themselves sophisticates: Heydrich, perhaps, or Eichmann – those who took pride in using the correct silverware.’
The man smiled. It wasn’t a false smile. He appeared genuinely amused.
‘That’s quite a statement from a woman at the mercy of strangers.’
Maela finished her water, and set the glass on the small circular table to her right, where she kept the clicker for the TV alongside a bag of sea salt caramels from Len Libby’s.
‘I don’t believe you have any mercy in you at all,’ she said.
‘Oh, you’d be surprised.’
Only now did he give her his full attention, and Maela experienced a similar sensation to the one she sometimes felt in great art galleries, when she stared at a face in a painting by an Old Master and discerned the amplitude of centuries.
‘Are you Jewish?’ he asked. ‘I’m wondering about your earlier analogy.’
‘My father was a Jew,’ said Maela. ‘He married a Gentile, so according to the Torah, I’m not Jewish, and I couldn’t be even if I wished it.’
‘And do you wish it?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘My father was the only member of his family to survive the camps. He and my mother left Italy just in time to avoid being rounded up.’
‘The rest must have been unlucky. My understanding is that a great many Italian Jews survived the Holocaust.’
‘And more than seven thousand died, so a great many didn’t.’
Her interlocutor conceded the point with a regretful inclination of his head.
‘That kind of history,’ he said, ‘might cause some to embrace their heritage, not reject it.’
‘We live in a despicable world. I don’t see any reason to give repellent men an excuse to hate me further.’
‘Why should they hate you at all?’
‘In my experience, being a woman is usually enough.’
The man stared past her to the unseen figure behind.
‘I suspect my colleague might concur with that position.’
‘Was she the one who knocked me out?’
‘She was.’
‘Then you’ll understand if I could give a fuck about her opinion. What did she use on me?’
‘Chloroform.’
‘It’s nasty stuff.’
‘But not terminal.’
‘Does that come later?’
‘It depends.’
‘On what?’
‘The outcome of our dialogue.’
‘What’s your name? I don’t favor discourse amid anonymity.’
‘You can call me Quayle.’
‘No first name?’
‘Not any longer. My turn at a question: Is it true that you help women in distress?’
‘I won’t deny it.’
‘Nor should you. It’s a noble vocation.’
‘You’re a patronizing individual, but I believe it’s endemic to your gender.’
‘I’m looking for someone who might have passed your way. Her name is Karis Lamb.’
Maela Lombardi did not respond, either by word or alteration in expression.
Quayle pressed her. ‘Is the name familiar to you?’
‘I can’t say that it is.’
The slap to the right side of her head was so forceful and vicious that Maela felt something tear in her neck, and when she tried to straighten up, the pain made her cry out. She tasted bile in her mouth, and suddenly she was puking on herself and the carpet, and was ashamed even though she had no cause to be. She began to cry, and she didn’t want to cry, not in front of these people, not in front of anyone. She had spent her life trying to protect the vulnerable from the predatory. Women and children had found their way to safety through her. If the world were fair, then protection and safety would in turn have been offered to Maela in her time of need. But the world was not fair, because men ruled it.
The woman went to the kitchen and returned with a damp towel, which she used to wipe Maela’s face and clean some of the filth from her sweater and skirt.
‘Do you know how I acquired this volume?’ Quayle asked, once Maela had recovered a little of her composure.
Maela squinted at the cover, and caught the name in the title: Marcus Aurelius.
‘I found it on Errol Dobey’s shelves,’ Quayle continued, ‘just before my colleague punctured one of his eyes. Dobey then began speaking more freely, but he could just as easily have done so with both eyes intact. And because I was disappointed with him for making us resort to such savagery, we burned his book collection to ashes and consigned his body to the same flames. Finally, we paid a visit to his girlfriend, Esther Bachmeier, and took her for a ride. She died more painfully than Dobey, and all because he couldn’t answer a straight question. Am I making myself clear?’
‘Yes.’
‘So: Karis Lamb.’
‘Karis Lamb is dead.’
‘How do you know?’
Maela spat a fragment of old food from her mouth.
‘You ought to watch more TV.’
41