—Just tell me about Carter.
—I really want to find this—ah, here it is!
He brandished a battered little book, covered in red paper, and began to leaf through it.
—“Musician. To dream you hear one play foretells grief and sadness. Eight, eleven, eighteen and twenty-three.”
—What?
—Those are your numbers. Eight, eleven, eighteen, twenty-three.
He flipped the cover in my direction. Aunt Sally’s Policy Players’ Dream Book. Some kind of murky woodcut of a woman.
—At least if you played the numbers, you might win a little something. That’d be a consolation prize, am I right? To tide you over your feelings of grief and loss?
—This is all a joke to you.
—No joke, son. All the wisdom of the ancients is between these tattered covers.
He threw the book onto a pile and flopped down on a metal-framed kitchen chair, gingerly palpating his ribs. I saw that one of his eyes was red. A large bruise was forming below it. I tried to remember whether it had been light outside when they were beating him. I couldn’t hear anything, no street noise, no neighbors. The place was a womb. A rotten womb.
—I want to know if you met Carter. I think you did. I think you sold your collection to him.
—You are barking up the wrong tree, son. I sold up years ago, before you or your friend was even born.
—You’re mixed up in this, whatever is happening here. You know what’s happening.
—Hold your horses.
He made a gesture that incensed me, a sort of soothing pianistic fluttering of the fingertips, wafted in my direction. As if he were dispelling me, shooing me back to my place between the pages of his dusty books. I stood up and balled my fist. I told him that if he didn’t stop with the games, I would kill him. He scrambled out of the chair and adopted a fighting stance.
—Don’t threaten me, you little fuck. I know jiujitsu.
We stood there for some time, pantomiming aggression. Then he adjusted the waistband of his pants and tipped some newspapers off another chair so he could sit down again.
—He got hurt, you say, your friend? Badly?
—He’s in a coma. How does that sound? Does that make you happy?
He shrugged noncommittally. I could have strangled him.
—He had a lot of money in cash and I think he came looking for you. He wanted to buy that Willie Brown record you talked about.
—Thirteen thousand ninety-nine. I only said that so he’d come. I don’t have that record. Who in the world has that record? It’s a unicorn. I needed to talk to him, was all.
—Talk to him? You mean get someone to rob him.
—No.
—Carter came here.
—Not here. He came to the bar. And I tried to warn him what he’d gotten himself into. Look, you’re giving me palpitations, looming over me like that. I’m not in the best of health. Come on, sit down. Drink a cup of tea.
—What was it, then? What had he got himself into?
—Sit down.
He looked so pathetic hunched in his chair, quivering, holding his fists in front of him like tiny baubles. The idea of hurting him seemed absurd. I sat down. As he pottered about, making tea, I stared at the sickly yellow-green light filtering through the curtains, willing it to grow stronger. I wanted the sun to burst through. I wanted to be bathed in daylight. Once again I tried to tell him how it had happened. The guy singing in Washington Square, the guitarist in Tompkins Square. How we sewed the two parts together and made a song. Shakily, he set two china cups and saucers down on a pile of encyclopedia volumes that was serving as an occasional table. Then he sat down on a kitchen chair and took off his glasses, so as to fix me with a straight look.
—Son, you may think that story’s true. You may have persuaded yourself it is, but you didn’t make up Charlie Shaw. Charlie Shaw is real.
—It’s just a name. Carter chose it at random.
—Charlie Shaw chose you, more like.
—You may know some guy called Charlie Shaw. It’s not the same guy. I’m telling you, this is just bullshit. A misunderstanding about a name.
—I stepped away from the collecting scene after what happened to Chester and I don’t want to get back in. It’s not even safe for me to be talking to you, most probably, but I can’t help myself. I’ll be straight with you. Cards on the table. I’m curious. Killed the cat, right? But this thing has been nagging at me for so many years. I only want to know one piece of information. What’s on the other side? Graveyard Blues on the A, so what’s on the flip?
—Will you not get it into your head? There’s no flip. There’s no record. I don’t have any damn record. It’s a .WAV file, if you even know what one of those is. You probably have it compressed as an MP3.
—I don’t have it as anything and I can’t honestly say I know what the hell you’re talking about.
—Just give me your laptop, I’ll show you.
—Laptop?
—Your computer. You have a computer stashed away somewhere in here.
—Does this look like Bell Laboratories? Be a sport. I’m not even asking to hear the damn thing, let alone handle it. I just want to know what’s on the flip. Why is that so hard?
—Because it doesn’t exist.
—What is with you? I know your story. It’s just like mine. I was the sidekick, same as you. Chester was making all the running. At the time you feel you’re just going along, am I right? Going along to get along. Making yourself useful. But Charlie doesn’t care about that. He doesn’t make those kind of fine distinctions. Which one is the alpha dog and so on. So why would he want your friend? That’s the question you ought to be asking. Because it sounds like he got him.