“Walter?” she said again.
“Hello, Isobel,” he mumbled, hoping he sounded normal.
“Walter. Walter. What a treat. You look w-w-wonderful!” She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. Another kiss pushed its way into his mind, a kiss she gave him in front of the Hilton Hotel on Sixth Avenue in New York, years ago. He was struggling.
“Walter, I want you to meet Otto Heinrich, my husband.” Walter held his hand out. A man, standing a little behind Isobel, grabbed it with a big smile. He was a pudgy man, not very tall, shorter than Isobel, about forty maybe forty-five years old. Most of the hair on top of his head was gone.
“Nice to meet you, Walter,” he said. His handshake was strong and firm. It seemed like he was never going to let go. “Isobel has told me so much about you.”
“I have to go now,” said Walter. “I have to go now.” He eased past Isobel and her husband, out into the cool Georgia night. He did not turn around. Devereaux followed him and they walked in silence toward the valet parking pickup. Walter gave his ticket to the young attendant who ran off to get the car.
“You know her?” Devereaux asked. And just then Walter could sense inner panic. He tried, with no success, to push his instincts, to rebound, to be once more sharp as ever. It seemed to him that Devereaux already knew the answer to that question, that he’d known the answer even before Isobel walked into Il Localino.
“Yes. I do. I’m sorry I didn’t introduce you.” The words came out almost involuntarily. He didn’t mean to say them.
“Not at all. I know who Isobel Gitlin is-she doesn’t use the Heinrich name. Otto plays violin for the Atlanta Symphony. They live a couple of blocks from here, on Austin Avenue, within walking distance. Il Localino is her favorite restaurant. I thought you’d like to eat here.”
Walter’s car rolled up. The valet jumped out leaving the door open. Walter did his best to stumble in behind the wheel. He wasn’t thinking straight. He wasn’t sure what he was thinking.
“I’ll be in touch, Walter,” Devereaux said. “And don’t worry about me. There’s a car waiting for me.” Walter saw the black limo with its engine running, double-parked just up the block. Sinking down in his seat, he turned the steering wheel on his own car and drove off in the other direction.
“Oh, yeah. I remember President Roosevelt,” said Ike. “Mr. Roosevelt, we called him. Seemed to me back then-I was just a young boy, you know-seemed like he was some kind of king from a faraway land, didn’t have anything to do with us, with our little island. The war grew me up,” he added. “It surely did.”
“I never paid any attention to politicians,” said Billy. “Except a couple mayors and commissioners. They’re all thieves. Every damn one of them. License to steal, that’s what a politician has. You know-you got a driver’s license-I got a bar license-they got a stealing license.” Helen looked at her man, beaming with pride.
“I remember Nixon,” she said. “That man makes Billy look like a saint.”
“Hey! What are you saying?”
“No, Billy,” she said patting his face gently and kissing him on his stubbly chin. “I didn’t mean anything about you. I meant you had them all down pat. Nixon proves that, doesn’t he? Thieves and bandits.”
“Willie Sutton,” said Walter. “There was a thief for you. He said he robbed banks because-you know why? Because that’s where the money is. Cogent analysis.”
“De Nero,” piped up Ike, striking another of his long wooden matches and sticking the exploding flame at the end of a crooked, old cigarette he slipped out of his shirt pocket. He puffed it like a cigar, smoke billowing out about him as he spoke. “Not the man himself-he’s just an actor you know-but the guy he played in Goodfellas. That was a true story-yes, it was. Stole millions from the airport in New York. Kennedy airport, I think it was. Never got caught. ’Course they killed each other over it afterwards, but I don’t count that. We’re only talking about the thieving, not the keeping, right?”
Walter had been sitting in his regular seat since about ten. The lunch crowd came and went. Helen fixed him a salmon sandwich with steamed broccoli-small portions, after all it was only lunch. He’d been thinking about his recent trip to Atlanta-Devereaux, Il Localino, Isobel, and Sadie Fagan. If not for Sadie he wouldn’t have gone at all. She had given him something, certainly she had. She talked so much, so openly about Harry. Somewhere in what she said was something important. Walter was mad at himself because he hadn’t discovered it yet. His mind was unclear, muddled. Devereaux rankled him. And Isobel-“Damn!” he berated himself, unable to get her out of his thoughts, out of his way. He had no time for her. He needed peace to put the pieces in their proper place. What was it Billy just said? The thieving, not the keeping? What thief doesn’t keep his loot?
“Robin Hood,” Walter said, smiling at Ike.
“Robin Hood? What the hell does that mean?”
“Thieves who don’t keep it, Ike. Isn’t that what Billy meant?”
“No,” said Billy. “Forget about Robin Hood. We’re talking big time here. What was he doing? Hanging around a forest ripping off people dumb enough to ride through. Small change.”
“Okay then,” said Walter, I’ll take them all.” He lifted his glass bottle in the air. “The Robber Barons, Rockefellers, Bill Gates-all of them.”
“That’s a pretty powerful combination,” offered Ike.
“Yeah,” Billy said, on his way to the kitchen door. “The bigger they are, the more mud they’ve been swimming in.”
“Damn, I like that,” said the old man. “I’ll take the mud itself, if you don’t mind.”
“Mud?” Billy asked. “Why the hell would you do that?”
“The lubricant,” Ike said. “It’s the lubricant for all of them. For everything. You got a way about you, Billy. Thank you. Sort of like a metaphor, if you know what I mean. If they all swim in it, it must be so.”
“Metaphor?” marveled Walter.
“And I got it,” the old man said.
“The lubricant? You know what the lubricant is, don’t you?” scoffed Billy. “Judges. That’s the lubricant. You got the judges, you got it all, believe me. I’ll take the judges.” Once more, as they always did it seemed, Ike and Billy, their choices already settled, looked to Walter. He had this silly smile on his face. “Pennzoil,” was all he said.
“Damn, this is serious business, young man,” chided Ike.
Billy wrote it up-Mud/Judges/Pennzoil.
The restaurant on the veranda at the Caneel Bay resort overlooks the crescent-shaped, white sandy beach that is the private property of the hotel. The restaurant is very big-perhaps fifty feet square-and it’s protected from the Caribbean sun by a pyramid hip roof with cedar shake shingles. Cedar shake is a favorite among those who can afford it, in tropical places like St. John where the sun is particularly hot and where there is also an abundance of rainfall. When the cedar gets wet it expands and when it’s especially dry, the cedar shingles loosen up. The result is a kind of filter effect. The roof breathes, allowing heat to dissipate. It helps to keep a house cool. In the case of this restaurant, it was little more than a pleasant bonus. Its roof covered an otherwise open area built in exactly the right place to get the most of sea breezes. On the most uncomfortably warm days, the veranda was a nice place to be.