I muted him. The same avaricious expression on his face. The collector asking about Charlie Shaw. The same beseeching hands. He spent a long time in the live room, much of it lying on the floor, one arm flung over his face as if he were exhausted or in physical distress. Later, after he’d calmed down, we started drinking. We took a bottle of vodka out of the freezer and ordered chips and soda from a bodega. It was an old routine, one of the ways we reconnected when things were going wrong. Dogged consumption of alcohol. One of us always said something, eventually. One of us always broke and began to talk.
—You don’t understand what that record means. If I had that record, people would deal with me. I would count for something. These fuckers are tribal, man. You offer them good money, even ridiculous money, and some of them still won’t sell to you. It’s like you have to deserve the music, some shit like that. They’re all old too, the big ones. Old white dudes. No one who wasn’t already doing it years ago can get a foot in the door. Tell me, what else has the guy got? Did he mention any other names?
—Bro, come on. He hasn’t got your Willie Brown record. He hasn’t got anything. He’s just an old man who lives on his own in a room that probably smells of piss and cat food. He’s just trying to get you to go see him.
—Why?
—How the fuck should I know? Because you’re a baby millionaire and you have money coming out your ass?
—Don’t talk like that.
—He’s just trying to get mixed up in your shit.
—It doesn’t mean he doesn’t have records. You’d be surprised who has records.
—If it’s not about money, then he wants to hear the great lost Charlie Shaw, who—just as a reminder—doesn’t exist. He already thinks we’re holding out on him. He thinks he heard it before, but obviously he must have heard something else.
—Here’s how it works. He thinks we’ve got something he wants. That’s leverage. I can at least get in there and hear what he’s got. If he has mint condition thirteen thousand Paramounts he could easily be sitting on other stuff. Did he say Gennett to you? Vocalion? Black Patti?
—You are obsessed.
I started getting ready for bed and he went into his room, leaving the door half-open. From the record deck, crackle and hiss. A strident voice singing about That bad man, Stagolee. Later, I saw him counting money on the bed. Thousands of dollars, stacks of twenties and fifties zigzagging across the covers. Willie Brown, he said as I went past in my dressing gown. Thirteen thousand ninety-nine. And he gave me the thumbs-up.
Willie Brown, Charlie Shaw. What kind of names were those? Ten thousand dollars. Fifty thousand dollars. No-names. Scottish or English or Irish. Common and blank. Names that didn’t match the voices looming up out of Carter’s records, testifying through the static.
Early the next morning, still mostly asleep, I went to the bathroom. Carter’s door was open. The bed hadn’t been slept in. I didn’t know what time it was. A gray hour just before dawn. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.
MY PHONE SAYS 4:47 A.M. People have been muttering on the other side of silence, just out of range. Leonie’s name on the screen. It’s hard to make out what she is saying. She’s sobbing, taking great gulps of air. Half-asleep, I find myself drifting, wondering how she got my number, feeling pleased she has it, the thrill of speaking to her overriding what she’s actually saying. That something has happened to Carter. Something very bad.
—Where did you say he was?
—The Bronx, the Bronx, why don’t you listen?
—What was he doing in the Bronx?
—How the hell should I know? They took him out of his car and beat him up.
—I don’t understand. He got carjacked?
—He won’t wake up. He’s unconscious, Seth, I’m not in the city. I’m in Montauk. You’ve got to go there for me.
She gives me the name of the hospital, or a version of it. I tell her I’m on my way.
A driver, speaking to some friend or family member in French creole, punching buttons on the radio, hopping from Naija pop to light classics to some ranting religious phone-in show. The streetlights are faint and watery against the lightening sky. I have a terrible feeling that I’ve missed something, that I ought to know more than I do. Distracted by his conversation, the driver leaves the dial between stations, and I ride uptown bathed in static that soon gives birth to all the other things, the whistles and moans and urgent whispering. If Marconi was right and certain phenomena persist through time, then secrets are being told continuously at the edge of perception. All secrets, always being told.
By the time I get to the hospital, a grim brick slab in the South Bronx, the sun is up. The scene in the ER is chaos, and it’s hard to make myself understood. They keep saying they don’t have Carter as a patient. I insist, until the nurse at the desk tells me that if I keep bothering her she’ll call security. Finally I phone Leonie, who takes a long time to answer. Her voice is slow and thick. I wonder if she’s sedated. They moved him, she tells me. New York Presbyterian. He’s in surgery. You should have called me, I say, making my voice gentle, hiding my anger. She does not apologize. I ask if I should go to New York Presbyterian. Sure, she says. He’d like that. Then she hangs up.
I have to wait thirty minutes for a car, then some drunk takes me back downtown in a rattling old Crown Victoria that smells of vomit. By the time I get there the sun is over the horizon and when I phone Leonie from the hospital lobby, it goes to voicemail. The receptionist isn’t supposed to give out any information, but I beg and she takes pity on me, pity on the state I’m in. She can’t tell me much. Carter is alive, but in critical condition. I push. What happened? Did the police say what he was doing there? She asks if I’m a journalist. If I’m a journalist, I will have to leave. A representative of the family has told her to be on the lookout for the press. She uses that phrase. Representative of the family.
—My advice, go home, get some sleep. If they want you here, they’ll let you know.
—Are they here? Is his sister in the building?
—His father and brother, I believe.
I can’t get any more out of her. I keep calling Leonie, but she doesn’t pick up, so I walk to get coffee, then hang around the lobby. The receptionist gives me the evil eye, whispering to her colleague. Finally Corny comes out of the elevator, talking on his phone. He is not happy to see me.