The Horse You Came in On (28 page)

“Other end,” said Estes. “You want I show you?”

The others clearly suspected that more money was about to change hands and started arguing with Easy that they knew just as much as he did about John-Joy. They were not to be left out of this scheme and trotted along to the other end.

Estes, with very colorful language, described the scene as he saw it in his mind's eye. John-Joy trundling his cart along, a figure creeping out of the shadows, and then—here Estes crossed his hands in front of his neck and made a pulling motion.

In a voice so irate it was a squeal, the woman objected: “Hell, you don't know that any more'n
I
do. You wasn't here—you just makin' it up.” She turned to Melrose with her own superior knowledge. “You ask Milos—Milos, he says he found him.”

“
That
is fuckin'
in
sane, Twyla. Milos is
blind
and
deaf,
so how the hell he'd know?”

“Milos?” Melrose feigned ignorance.

“Blind man hangs out over to Howard Street near some shop named . . . New somethin', . . . I can't remember.” Estes turned to Twyla and continued: “The
cops
found his body.”

Twyla looked disgruntled and mashed her gums around, but she couldn't deny the truth of this.

Melrose dispensed another round of bills and they all moved, as a mass, back up the alley to the oil drum. Melrose wanted that market cart.

He asked, warming his own hands over the drum in a rush of camaraderie, “Who owns the doin's now—everyone?” He looked around at the four faces, the bare or half-mittened hands fixed above the oil drum, the cheeks of the woman actually rosy in the firelight.

Estes looked a question at the others. None of them laid claim to the doin's, which surprised Melrose. He thought they'd fight over the basket. But perhaps their instinct was that this recent swelling of their ranks meant a fair shake, that he had behaved very well towards them and, with his Old World savvy and, of course, his bankroll, might deliver them from their predicament of Who Owns the Doin's.

Melrose enjoyed thinking this, at least. “Would you be willing to sell the cart—” Melrose nodded toward the wire basket—“for, say, a hundred dollars?”

Their mouths dropped open.

Since no one immediately took him up on it, perhaps he should raise
the price. After all he hadn't rooted right down to the bottom. Maybe there was a baby in there. “Two hundred?”

But Estes was suspicious. “Hell you want
that
junk for? Some valuables in there?”

“Not that I know of. You're welcome to go through it if you like before I take it. That is, of course, if you're all willing to sell it. But I'll tell you why I want it: only because it might offer up some clue as to why the man was murdered, that's all.”

“Two hunnert, huh? Two hunnert?” The fat man was busy with a mental arithmetic that was getting the better of him. He scratched his grizzled hair and pulled at a ragged ear in concentration.

“Fifty apiece,” said Melrose, helping him.

The bargain was struck and Melrose peeled off four fifties, to their delight, since that meant no haggling over who'd get the bills changed or hold the money. Each got a fifty.

“Tell me something: did John-Joy have any particular friends—I mean, besides this Milos person and yourselves—in whom he might have confided?”

“Confided
what?
John-Joy went along chantin' all the time, mister. Just went round chantin' worse'n a bunch of Democrats with rubber checks. He kept on sayin' he was to be rich one day, real rich, soon as he got him a lawyer. ‘I got the doin's! I got the doin's!' My, that man could be an aggravation.”

“Didn't he ever explain what he meant by that?”

Estes said, helpfully, “Tell you what, mahn. He say he got a friend name of Wes over to the shelter, that big shelter called Cloudcover over on Fayette. Mighta had other friends over there, too. John-Joy used to stay there nights when he had the money.”

“Well, thanks very much. I might stop back to talk a little more, if you don't mind.”

They certainly didn't.

 • • • 

Melrose stopped on the other side of Harborplace and got out his guide. They'd told him it wasn't too far, and he hoped his Cider Alley cohorts weren't like Brits giving directions: Oh, just go to the top of the street, there, love, and then walk along a bit, and after a little while you'll see Acacia Cottage (or wherever you were looking for and would likely never find)—and then you walk to the top of the street and keep on walking (for days and days, it usually seemed), and next thing you're in Edinburgh. . . .

He'd been trundling the cart before him for blocks, sorry now he'd
dismissed Hughie, but not wanting to hop in a strange cab with his grocery cart and ask to be taken to a shelter.

For one thing, he wasn't dressed for it.

He looked down at his cashmere topcoat, his Liberty silk scarf, and frowned. On top of the pile of stuff in the cart was a heavy old coat, a sort of salt-and-pepper wool with big black buttons that wouldn't, of course, fit, but that was hardly the point. He removed and folded up his topcoat and put on the black one. The arms were too short and the shoulders drooped off his shoulders and he wondered what gorilla it had originally been tailored for.

He also removed his calfskin gloves and dug around for the dark brown mittens he'd seen in there. There was a cap, too, with ear flaps. He put that on his head. On top of the pile was a plastic cup shaped like Mickey Mouse, the inside of which he inspected. As he looked over the top of the metal rubbish bin on which he was resting his
Strangers' Guide,
he saw two children, tongues sculpting their soft chocolate cones, staring at him.

The mother, who had apparently just walked on up the street without them, as if they were leftover children (“I have more at home, you see”), realized her error and rushed back and started carting them off, one hand on each shoulder. Then she saw what they'd been staring at (Melrose Plant), cocked her head, and started rooting in a bag slung over her frontage.

She walked over and put two quarters in his Mickey Mouse cup.

He didn't really see much to choose between the woman and himself, since she looked like a swamp thing in her outsized jungle-green jacket and all sorts of sweaters and thick gloves and mile-long scarf drawn around and around her neck and up over her mouth.

Nevertheless, he thanked her, and the little family moved away, the girl not forgetting to look back over her shoulder and stick out her tongue.

Melrose sighed and consulted the
Strangers' Guide
. He couldn't even find Fells Point. Unfortunately, the Strangers had decided to have lunch in Little Italy, and then to double back to Harborplace, which was no help to him at all.

He crossed over Farragut, walked along with his cart past steaming manhole covers, traceries of mist rising from them and disbursing into the outer air. They made him think of Victorian London, he wasn't sure why—the ground mist and fog, probably. He walked on, wishing he'd purchased a more detailed map when he'd had the opportunity. He turned a corner that looked familiar and went shoving along for four blocks before he realized it wasn't familiar at all. He was terrible about
directions; whenever anyone told him to walk east or south they might just as well have said to walk straight up into the sky. The buildings here were a trifle shabby, housing on their corners small businesses such as convenience stores, jewellers behind furious-looking black grates, and PayLess everything: PayLess Shoes; PayLess Appliances; PayLess Drugs, travel, mattresses.

And then he stopped.

Here it was, a huge old building with a little brass plaque:
CLOUDCOVER HOUSE.

Melrose could not say that he was exactly hailed by the people on the steps, but he was examined and silently greeted with a nod of the head here, a gesture of the hand there. In and out of its doors a number of people—black, white, possibly Puerto Rican (Melrose lived an insular life)—hung about Cloudcover House, hands shoved in trouser pockets, breath pluming the air. As he stood uncertainly with his burden of rags and books, two of them stopped their conversation and gave what he interpreted as a welcoming smile. Hell's bells, why not? He advanced up the steps and, not wanting to appear too uncertain as to how to proceed, simply shoved his wire cart with a great deal of difficulty up several steps, stopping to lift it in front, until one of the two came along to take over the lifting job. Melrose thanked him very much when they got to the top. He shoved open the big door.

Inside was a long hall, at the near end of which was a sort of bullpen-like area, with a counter. A woman with heavy body and heavy features, a down-turned mouth as if she'd seen too many days of catering for the homeless and had grown less charitable withal, looked at him with a show of indifference. Probably a volunteer, probably unpaid or paid very little; but, really, they could have hired someone with a bit more bounce to cheer up such as he. He felt quite wan as he signed the book, and when she asked for the two dollars, he wondered how the devil he was to skim two bills from his weighty money clip. He mumbled something deliberately incomprehensible as he started searching around through his pile of junk. He kept on mumbling and muttering until she lost patience and turned away, back to the working circle inside the hemmed-in area. In this way he was able to whip out a wad of notes and slip off what he hoped were two singles and not two hundreds and then stuff them into one of the pockets of his cashmere topcoat. The money over here was the devil of a problem; all the same size. He smiled as he waited for the woman to turn back to him, thinking of the boy Alex Holdsworth and the trouble he'd had to go to to fleece his poker-playing friends because the trick
required
bills of all one size. He chuckled. There was a kid he hadn't
minded knowing. He wondered if he'd run into him again since Lady Cray—

“. . . got all day!”

He realized he'd been standing there with a stupid smile on his face. He handed over the two dollars and she directed him to a room, informing him that he wouldn't be able to use it until seven p.m. that night. Melrose started to push his cart along, then stopped and said, “Pardon me, but do you know someone here named Wes?”

“I ain't the Yellow Pages.”

“No. Sorry.” He pushed off.

There were four beds, each with thin but very clean sheets and a mouse-colored blanket rolled up at the bottom. On one of the beds near the wall sat an elderly, emaciated-looking man, sitting and staring at the wall. His lips moved steadily. Perhaps a prayer, thought Melrose.

A much younger man sat on the near bed, a guitar against his chest. His hair was shoulder-length, very dark and almost burnished like mahogany; he had a thick mustache and rather humorous brown eyes. He nodded towards Melrose and thrummed his guitar, not really playing anything, just making soft noise.

Melrose looked around, wondering what the drill was. He could not, he was sure, leave his cart unattended.

“You can have either one. Just flop. Never mind what they tell you out there about not using the room till night. The name's Jerry.” Here he raised two fingers to his forehead in a mock salute.

“Uh. Mel. Glad to meet you.” Melrose moved over to Jerry's bed and stretched out his hand. Having noticed the fellow had a pleasant, honeyed drawl, Melrose decided to engage him in conversation by saying, “You're not from around here. You certainly don't sound like Baltimore. Where are you from?”

“Baton Rouge.” The black eyes regarded Melrose. “Yourself?”

Melrose puffed out his cheeks. “I'm English, actually.” He sounded too stiff, he thought. “Just one of your Brits.”

“No kidding.” The tone was flat, but the note of mild surprise was pure pretense. Jerry only just barely kept from smiling. “Coulda fooled me, Mel.”

“Yes. Yeah. See, things were bad back there—”

“With an accent like that I can believe it.”

What? Melrose had always thought his accent quite passable. What did this Jerry mean? He was lying there with an arm draped over his guitar as if it were a baby, blowing smoke in Melrose's face.

“Newcastle, that's where I'm from. North of England.” He doubted Jerry was all that well acquainted with the Geordie accent. “It's fierce up
there. Worst employment problem in England. They call the job centers ‘joke shops.' ” Melrose was warming to his subject and was a little annoyed when Jerry interrupted.

“Smoke?” Jerry reached the pack towards him, punching up a couple of Marlboros.

“Ah, thank you.” Melrose's own silver cigarette case was at that moment resting in the inside pocket of his cashmere coat, near the money clip. “Much obliged,” he added, as roughly as he could.

“Sure.” Again, that smile that reached Jerry's eyes and just missed
twinkling
.

Well, for God's sake, why had he expected to get away with this absurd charade? First he'd treated the heavyset woman at the counter as if she were the desk clerk at the Dorchester, and now here he was trying to get this person to believe he came from Tyne and Wear.

Jerry asked him, “You an actor or something?”

Melrose certainly hadn't expected this. “Actor?”

“Yeah. You know, studying your role. Pretending to be a tramp.”

Melrose concentrated on the coal of his cigarette and turned over this possibility.

Jerry went on: “What's the flick?
The Happy Homeless?”
But he did not seem to take all of this in other than good spirits. He grinned.

Melrose laughed. “You're pretty damned smart. What gave me away?”

“Oh,
shee
—it . . .” Jerry more or less lost the word in a spatter of saliva and wiped his hand across his mouth. “Tell the truth, Mel, I ain't one bit clever. I am pretty dumb, or I wouldn't be in here. No offense, but why didn't they get a
real
English dude for the role? Michael Caine, like?”