Shadowland

    Marcus banged the Gremlin against the curb and rocketed out of the seat. He half-ran into a bar called the Hurricane Pub. It was so open to the street it seemed to be missing a wall.

    'Counselor!' the bartender shouted.

    'Jerry! Give us a couple beers here!' Reilly bounced onto a stool, lit a cigarette, and started talking again. 'Jerry, this guy here's an old friend of mine.'

    'Real nice,' Jerry said, and put the beers down before us.

    Marcus drained half his glass. 'In this town, you see, it helps to know everybody. That way you know where the bodies are buried. I'm not through yet. I got deals cooking like you wouldn't believe. Hell, I'm still a young guy.' I knew his age because it was mine. He looked at least ten years older. 'And I got the right mental attitude — you're not counted out until you count yourself out. And believe it or not, I get a bang out of being here — I even get a bang out of the Wentworth. Collins Avenue addresses are gold in this town. Two, three years, I'll have my license back. You'll see. And what do you bet friend Bobby will come around looking for a favor? I know everybody, everybody. I can get things done. And that's one thing people in this town respect, a guy who can deliver.' The rest of his beer was gone. 'How about something to eat?' He slapped two dollars down on the bar and we rushed back out onto the street.

    A few blocks down, he opened the door of Uncle Ernie's Ice Cream Shop. 'You get great sandwiches here.' We sat at a table in the rear and ordered our sandwiches. 'That school we went to — that place — boy, I can't get it out of my mind. For one thing, Hollingsworth's always talking about it — like it was Eton or something.' Even sitting and eating, Marcus was a congeries of small agitated movements. He worked his elbows, drummed his fingers, unscrewed his hair, rubbed his cheeks. 'You remember Lake the Snake and that chapel?'

    'I remember.'

    'Stone crazy. Wacko. And Fitz-Hallan and his fairy tales. Man, I could tell him a few fairy tales. Last year, when I still had my license, I got involved with these people — heavy people, you know? These were serious people. Maybe I wasn't too swift, who knows, but people like that always need lawyers. And if I want somebody to get hurt, he'll get hurt, you know what I'm saying. And at the same time, through connections of these serious people, I got next to some folks from Haiti. This city is full of Haitians, illegals most of them, but these people were different. Are different. You done with your sandwich yet?'

    'Not quite yet.' Marcus had vanished as if he had taken it in one gulp.

    'Don't worry. I want to show you something. It's in your line — I know your work, remember. I want to show you this. It's connected to these people from Haiti.'

    I finished off my sandwich and Marcus jumped up from his seat and tossed money on the table. Out on the sunlit, shabby street, Marcus' big florid face came up an inch away from my own. 'I'm in tight with them right now, these guys. Disbarred, who cares if you're a Haitian? They got a flexible notion of the law. We're going to do big things. You know anything about Venezuela?'

    'Not much.'

    'We're into buying an island off the coast — big old island, classified as a national park. One of these guys knows the regime, we can get it reclassified in a minute. That's one of the things we're talking about. Also a lot of odd stuff, you know, odd?' He took my elbow and hauled me across the street. 'Mind if we stop at McDonald's? I'm still hungry.'

    I shook my head, and Marcus led me into the bright restaurant. We had been standing directly in front of it.

    'Big Mac, fries,' he told the girl. 'Next time you're here, we'll go to Joe's Stone Crab. Fantastic place.' He took his order to the window and began to bolt the food standing up. 'Okay, let's talk. What do you think about that stuff Fitz-Hallan used to say?'

    'What stuff?'

    'About things being magically right? What does that mean?'

    'You tell me.'

    'Bobby thinks that's what he's got. The boat, the house, the two-hundred-dollar shoes. I helped him get a rock-bottom deal on a Jacuzzi. That's what he thinks it is. You probably think it's a good paragraph.'

    'At times,' I said. The Big Mac was gone, and the fries were following it.

    'Well, I think it's a crock. I've seen a lot of stuff, being with these guys. They . . . got a lot of strange beliefs.' The fries were gone, and Marcus was moving out of the restaurant, wiping his fingers on his trousers. 'They can make you go blind, make you deaf, make you see things, they think. Magic. I say, if it's magic, it can't be right. There's no such thing as good magic, that's what I learned.'

    'You know about Tom — '

    'Flanagan. Sure. I even went to see him once, down here. But . . . ' His face suddenly fell apart. It was like watching the collapse of an intricate public building. 'You see a bird over there?'

    I looked: a few peeling storefronts, the ubiquitous old men.

    'Forget it. Let's go for a ride.' He belched, and I smelled meat.

    I looked at my watch. I wished I had gone out on Bobby's boat and were sitting on wide seamless water, listening to Bobby gab about the toilet business. 'I really have to go,' I said.

    'No, you can't,' Marcus said, and looked stricken. 'Come on. I want to show you something.' He pulled me toward his car by the sheer force of his desperation.

    Back in the Gremlin, we drove aimlessly around upper Miami Beach for half an hour, Marcus talking the entire time. He took corners randomly, sometimes doubling back as if trying to lose someone, often cutting dangerously in front of other cars. 'See, there's the library . . . and see that bookstore? It's great. You'd like it. There's a lot of stuff in Miami Beach for a guy like you. I could introduce you to a lot of the right people, get you material like you never dreamed existed, man. You ever been to Haiti?'

    I had not.

    'You ought to go. Great hotels, beaches, good food . . . Here's a park. Beautiful park. You ever been to Key Biscayne? No? It's close, you want to go there?'

    'I can't, Marcus,' I said. I had long since suspected that whatever he wanted me to see did not exist. Or that he had decided I should not see it after all. Finally I persuaded him to drive me back to my hotel.

    When he dropped me off, he took one of my hands in both of his and looked at me with his leaky blue eyes. 'Had a hell of a good time, didn't we? Keep your eyes open, now, pal. You'll read about me in the papers.' He roared off, and I thought I saw him talking to himself as his battered car swung back out into Collins Avenue. I went upstairs, took a shower, ordered a drink from room service, and lay down on the bed and slept for three hours.

    Two months later I heard that Marcus had shot himself — he had named me as executor of his estate, but there was no estate except for a few clothes and the Gremlin, in which he had killed himself. The lawyer who rang me said that Marcus had put the bullet in his head around six in the morning, in a parking lot between a tennis court and the North Community Center. It was about three blocks from the McDonald's he had dragged me into.

    'Why would he name me as his executor?' I asked. 'I barely knew him.'

    'Really?' asked the lawyer. 'He left a note in his room that you were the only person who would understand what he was going to do. He wrote that he had shown you something — while you were visiting him here.'

    'Maybe he thought he did,' I said. I remembered him asking me if I had seen a bird as little tucks and dents appeared in his face, just as if someone were sewing him up from the inside.