St. John
“Still got nothing to say?” Billy asked. Walter had been sitting in his regular seat at the bar in silence nursing the same Diet Coke all morning. He hardly ate his breakfast, and the New York Times lay folded on the bar, unopened. Walter muttered something at Billy, nothing he could make sense of.
“I knew a man once,” Ike said. “Didn’t say nothing to nobody for damn near two months.”
“Who was that?” Billy asked, astonished.
“Isaac. You know him, Billy? Runs that Budweiser stand over near the beach.”
“The hot dog place?” Billy said, clarifying things. “It’s got that big Budweiser sign on it? Yeah, I know him.”
“Well, like I said. Nothing to nobody for two months.”
“You said ‘damn near two months,’ not ‘two months’.”
“Thank God A’mighty!” hollered Ike, managing not to cough in spite of the prodigious puff of smoke coming out of his mouth simultaneous with his words. “Walter, you can talk.”
“Better than the two of you.”
“I talk pretty good,” Billy said, a tiny bit of hurt in his voice. “You know, you can’t run a bar, not one as popular as this, and not be a good talker.” Walter nodded, but clearly not in agreement. Ike took another deep drag, the sound of the burning embers racing toward the butt, carrying all the way to where Walter sat.
“Christ, Ike,” he said. “You’re going to explode. So, are you going to tell us?”
“Tell us what?” Billy said.
“Alright Ike,” said Walter, putting on his best third-grade teacher voice, “why didn’t Isaac say anything for… however long you said?”
“Well,” Ike said, “I can only tell you what he told me-later on, of course. He said he didn’t have nothing to say.” Walter stared at Ike, the question of the old man’s credibility written all over his face. Ike, as always, smiled.
“Best talker I ever heard was Hitler,” Billy said, and neither Walter nor Ike could think of what to say next. They looked at each other with flat amazement. Finally, Walter said, “Hitler?” And Ike followed with, “Shit,” sounding more like bed linen than anything else. Billy rose to his own defense.
“Hey, I don’t like him. I’m just saying, did you ever hear him speak, talking? I’ve seen him on The History Channel. I don’t even know what he’s saying, but I couldn’t take my eyes off him. And then that crowd-all those Germans-yelling like that. All I’m saying is I never heard anyone else talk that way. That’s all.”
“I have,” Walter said. “Ever hear of Martin Luther King, Jr.?”
Billy picked up a rag and began wiping down the already spotless bar. His embarrassment was painful. Walter knew Billy wouldn’t be the next to say anything. Then Ike spoke up.
“Minister Henry Broomfield,” he said. “Come here a long time ago, must be forty years. Preached three weekends in a row, mind you. Out by the old slave battleground. In a tent. Went back and stayed on the rock during the week. Everybody went that first weekend. Ain’t that many of us here, right? And not much to do neither. But we went back again the next week, and then again another time just to hear that man talk. Spellbinder. For a few days after he’d gone I was this close to seeing Jesus myself.” Ike held up one finger on each hand about a foot between them. He laughed, and Walter did too.
“Powerful, huh?” Billy said, feeling a bit rehabilitated. Jesus and Hitler were equally irrelevant to him.
“And that wasn’t the best part,” said Ike. “You see, Minister Broomfield come here only once and leave. But he come back a few years ago-thirty, thirty-five years later. He sets up his tent in the same exact spot as before. We all went. Why not? My wife-” Ike stopped and took a very deep breath, this time without the cigarette. Walter remembered when Sissy died about a year before Billy arrived on St. John. The old man needed a minute. “We all went,” Ike continued, “and my wife wanted to speak to Minister Broomfield after his services, so she waits in line to see him and I’m waiting with her. Well, Sissy finally gets to shake his hand and she says something like, ‘I bet you don’t remember me, but I heard you when you were here before-twice, actually.’ That minister looked right into her eyes with a big smile, held her hands with both of his-you know, sort of like he was Christ himself-and he says to her, ‘Of course I remember you, darlin’. And your sister too.’”
“That’s impressive,” Walter said.
“Let me tell you,” Ike went on. “I was shocked. How this man remember Sissy’s sister? Sissy’s so happy she just sort of drifts away and I’m left standing there, just me and Minister Henry Broomfield. I look at him and say how could he remember my wife’s sister after maybe forty years? Her sister! That man put his hand on my shoulder, and with that same smile he just gave my Sissy he whispers to me, ‘They all got sisters.’”
The three friends were silent. What more was there to say. At last Billy said, “Sonofabitch. You want me to write it?”
“That’s good,” Ike said.
“How can people vote for this one?” asked Walter.
“How can they vote for any of them?” said Billy. “Nobody’s got the slightest fucking idea what this stuff is all about.”
“Okay,” Walter said, looking over to Ike for approval.
“That’s good,” the old man said again.
“Well then,” Billy said. He rambled over to the chalkboard next to the ancient cash register and, for the time being, a miniature Christmas tree, picked up the blue chalk, and wrote, “Hitler/Martin Luther King, Jr./Henry Broomfield.”
Walter ordered a fresh Diet Coke and Billy’s special swordfish steak with everything-the salad and potatoes too. He was hungry at last. And he was thinking, “They all got sisters.”
St. John
The chase was easy. The path well traveled. It was a foregone conclusion that he would find what he was looking for. At the heart of it all lay what people call “intuition.” Walter understood intuition as hidden calculation, invisible counting, and weighing. It made some card players rich, told goalies where to stick the glove without ever seeing the shot, drove scientific breakthroughs. As Walter had tried to explain to Billy and Ike, the conscious mind can’t find or control the place where these calculations are made.
Intuitive people get results through a one-way door in the mind. This worked better for some than others. Walter believed that to fully exploit intuition, people needed intelligence. What’s more, high intelligence plus intuition equals genius. True, people of average intelligence also have hunches and often know how to play them. Walter considered himself an average man with better-than-average hunches.
These skills and the resources he nurtured in thirty years spent finding people gave him a great advantage over cops and associated freelancers. He was confident of that. He faced no bureaucracy or any of the other multitudes of institutions that claim to be so vital to human sociology, yet more often than not are designed primarily to make things harder than need be. He worked without warrants, court orders, or permission, unshackled by rules. He encountered none of the legal, political, or jurisdictional red tape (priding himself on actually knowing the origin of the term) that plagued law enforcement. Most of all, when he thought about what made him a success he credited much of it to the simple fact that he knew what he was doing. His natural affinity for the process, going all the way back to Freddy Russo in Saigon, was only sharpened by years of experience. He wasn’t quite able to recognize it, let alone have such feelings see the light of day, but deep inside he knew he loved it. The plane rides, the long drives to the middle of nowhere, the finest hotels in the capital cities of the world and the cheap ones in towns nobody wanted to spend time in. He loved the solitude, the privacy, the assurance of being alone, the certainty he could not possibly run into anyone who knew him. Especially himself.