Authors: William Lashner
Tommy’s High Ball, midday.
I stepped inside from the bright sun, squinted into the smoky, neon-tinged dusk, made my way to the bar. It was busy for that time of day. Two men were shooting darts, a card game was going on, Motown was playing softly. A couple of old-timers were talking baseball at the bar. I wasn’t thirsty, but I ordered a beer. I wasn’t hungry, but I grabbed a handful of peanuts and rattled them in my fist. Wearing a suit as I was, I didn’t exactly blend, but it didn’t take long for interest in my presence to subside.
“Is Tommy around?” I said to the barkeep with the white hair when I ordered a refill. He was way tall and way thin, and his frame was curved like a question mark, as if from a lifetime of trying to avoid hitting his head on low-hanging fixtures.
“Tommy who?” he said.
“Tommy from Tommy’s High Ball.”
“Mister, that Tommy’s been dead for twenty years.”
“Then why don’t you change the sign outside?”
“They call me Whitey.”
“I guess that explains it. Rumor is, a man who might be interested in finding a chess game could do worse than coming here.”
His eyebrows rose. “You any good?”
“Not really.”
“Then you’re out of your league.”
“Still, it might be fun, don’t you think?”
“No, no fun at all, unless you think sitting in the dunk tank at the fair is fun. You bring any money?”
“Some.”
“That might be enough.” He lifted his head to call over my shoulder. “Hey, Pork Chop, you got time to teach this fellow a lesson?”
I turned around. Alone in the booth closest to the door, a chessboard with its pieces arrayed in front of him, a thick green paperback in his hand, sat Horace T. Grant.
“I don’t got time for fools,” said Horace T. Grant, staring at the board. “Tell him the grade school down the block has got a chess club first Tuesday of every month. That might be more his level.”
“He says he got some money,” said the bartender.
“With that suit? He don’t have enough.”
“But the tie is nice,” I said. “Don’t you think?”
“How much?” said Horace.
“Let’s say five a game?”
“Get your skinny ass over here to my office,” said Horace T. Grant. “And make sure you bring me a cold one, too. Whipping white boys sure builds a thirst.”
I bought the beer, slid into the booth, watched as Horace set up the board for a game. A few men ambled over to watch.
“What’s the book?” I said.
“Alekhine.”
“God bless you.”
“Here’s an idea. Why don’t you keep your mouth closed so we don’t learn just how stupid you really be?” A chuckle from the onlookers. “I’ll let you move first, seeing as you’ll need every advantage you can take.”
“You know, I’ve played before,” I said.
“I suppose you probably screwed before, too, don’t mean you know what you doing.”
The men watching laughed out loud.
“Go ahead,” he said.
I surveyed the board, nodded a bit, pushed the pawn in front of my knight two spaces.
“You might as well give me that five right now,” said Horace with a chuckle.
“I made one move.”
“One was enough,” he said, and then proceeded to beat me bloodless in just a few short minutes. The men around him cackled as his queen sliced through my defenses with alarming savagery and checkmated my king.
“Again?” I said as I held out the five.
Horace shrugged, snapped up the bill, set up the board. The men who had been watching shook their heads at my stupidity and dispersed. My chess had been so ugly they couldn’t bear to stand through another game.
“Go ahead, boy,” said Horace. “Make your move.”
I reached into my jacket pocket, took out a folded document, dropped it on the board.
I watched carefully as Horace T. Grant read the order appointing me as counsel to Tanya Rose, a minor, location unknown. There was something in his face, something soft where I had never seen softness in him, something trembling just beneath the surface.
“I need your help,” I said.
It could have taken me weeks to find the exact location of the fortune-teller named Anna that Julia Rose had told me about. I would have called some cops I knew in the district, I would have checked out the Yellow Pages under “Tellers, Fortune,” I would have gone door-to-door in the general vicinity asking the question, and let me tell you, going door-to-door as a stranger in a strange neighborhood asking about someone who’s a stranger to you and a neighbor to them is not the most pleasant or efficient way to maintain your teeth. It could have taken me weeks to find her, if I found her at all.
I gave Horace T. Grant my phone, and he had the exact address in ten minutes.
“She’s in that there house,” barked Horace.
I had followed his directions, had parked where he told me to park. Now we sat in my car across the street from a sagging brick row house with a long stoop. “The old lady’s got herself the entire first floor.”
“Does she know we’re coming?” I said.
“Don’t be a dumb cluck. Of course she does. She’s a fortune-teller.”
“I meant, do you think any of the people you talked to might have tipped her as to what we were after?”
“I didn’t tell none of them what we wanted with her. Just said I had a fortune that needed telling. You think the girl’s in there?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “but if the old lady knew we were looking for her, I’m pretty sure she would have packed her off somewhere before we showed up. You get any more information about this Anna other than her age?”
“Just that she’s got deep connections in the spirit world.”
“Why don’t I find that comforting?”
“Because,” said Horace, “you don’t believe in anything beyond your own infinite ignorance.”
“And you, I can tell, are much more at one with the great mysteries of the universe.”
“I like to think I have a spiritual dimension to my nature. I’m a churchgoing Baptist, if you need to know. Besides being good for the soul, it helps keep me regular. And let me tell you this, boy, you been on this earth as long as I have, you learn there ain’t nothing much more important in life than keeping regular.”
“Thank you for that advice.”
“No charge for it neither. But this Anna, she’s nothing but a charlatan. The only fortune worth telling is that we’re all going to die, and I don’t need no witch to tell me that.”
“Let’s go,” I said. “And, Horace, let me do the talking.”
“Oh, I intend to. Nothing more entertaining than watching a young fool trip all over his own damn self.”
We stepped slowly up the cracked cement stairs and then across the bending floorboards of the porch. Beside her door was a clay medallion of a cherub’s face. The cherub was smiling, but its expression was more doleful than glad, and its eyes were blazing with some awful certainty. It was disconcerting seeing it sitting there staring, as if it were looking into my soul and not liking what it found. Hell, I didn’t blame it, but still. I looked away as I pressed the doorbell. I didn’t hear anything inside, so I banged lightly on the door. I was about to bang harder when it slowly opened just a crack.
“What you want?” said a whispery voice from inside.
“We’re looking for Anna,” I said.
“What you want with Madam Anna?”
“We just have some questions,” I said.
“You the two men she expecting?”
I looked at Horace.
“What two men?” he said.
“A young one and an old one.”
“I suppose, then,” said Horace, “that would be us.”
The door opened wider. A thin old woman with wild, straggly hair and one milky eye stepped forward into the light. “Tell me your names.”
“I’m Victor Carl,” I said. “He’s Horace.”
“Come on in, then, Victor Carl. And you, too, Horace,” she said, stepping aside. “You got any cell phones, you better turn them off now. Madam don’t like radio waves slipping into her home. They interfere with her readings.”
I took out my phone, pressed the off button until the light went dead, and followed her inside.
We were swallowed by the gloom of the apartment’s parlor. Pushed to the walls were a pair of shaggy couches, a passel of old chairs, a high and heavy breakfront. A hooked rug lay like a beaten corpse in the middle of the floor. And all of it was covered by a thick layer of dust and the twining scents of must and incense. It was a room for meetings of unnameable associations, for bizarre sacrificial rites involving roosters and snakes. I looked around for any sign of a child’s presence, dolls or toys or small shoes; there was none. But if this Anna had actually been expecting us, then maybe Horace had slipped up in his inquiries and she knew what we wanted. It wouldn’t be a trick to clean the place of the girl’s presence for our visit.
“Wait,” said the woman, standing now at the far side of the room. We waited as she slipped through a doorway. A moment later she came back out, leaving the door open for us. “Have a seat, and Madam Anna will be with you shortly.”
She watched us carefully with her one good eye as we stepped through the opening, and then she closed the door behind us.
The room we found ourselves in was small and dark, devoid of windows, with two doors. The walls were painted a glossy maroon and covered with strange symbols painted in yellow: swirls and stars and staring eyes. Set in the middle of the room, surrounded by four chairs, was a round table painted a pale blue, with the same yellow symbols. The flames of three thick candles, each placed in the center of a yellow star on the table, provided the only light. A stick of incense smoldered, the air thick with mystery.
I looked at Horace T. Grant in the flickering candlelight, tilted my head, widened my eyes. “I see dead people.”
“Shut your mouth, boy. This place gives me the creeps enough without you adding the horror of your sense of humor.”
We both pulled out chairs and sat and waited. And waited. I checked my watch. I sneezed at the incense. I tapped my foot. Horace, sitting next to me, was literally twiddling his thumbs.
“How do you do that?” I said.
“It takes talent and coordination,” he said, “which means you can count yourself out.”
I was about to get up and go looking for her when the far door opened and a woman stepped inside. She was wearing a shimmering green robe, her eyes were closed and her feet were bare, and she was chanting softly in some language that sounded like it was long dead. I swiveled my head and looked at the door we had come in, then turned back to the chanter. It was the same straggly-haired woman who had greeted us at the front door. Madam Anna, I presumed.
“You couldn’t have just come in with us?” I said.
“I was preparing for our session,” she said as she sat down across from us at the table, “and it helps for me to get a sense of my visitors.” She spoke now with a slight accent that I couldn’t quite place, as if she had been born somewhere in the ocean between Haiti and West Philly. “Now, you said you have questions.”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Of course. We all have questions. And I know what it is you are seeking.”
“You do?”
“You have lost someone. Someone you care about very much. And you’ve come to me to find this person.”
“How do you know?”
“It is my business to know. Just as I knew that you were coming. Take off your shoes, please.”
“Our shoes?”
“Oh, yes. It is very important. Our reception from the other world comes through every part of our bodies, including our feet.”
“You want us to take our pants off, too?” said Horace.
“Just the shoes.” As I untied my wingtips, she said, “I will also need an offering of good faith.”
“What kind of offering?”
“Something to show that your heart is pure, your intentions honorable, your search sincere.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “How much?”
“Two hundred dollars for our first contact.”
“You must be confused,” I said.
“But it is you with the questions, so which of us is confused? The offering is not a gift to me, it is a gift to the spirit world in which we will be looking for answers. It is not easy to enter the world of the dead. But before we can discuss the offering, we have business to finish.” She turned her milky eye to the old man beside me, lowered her voice into a schoolmarmish snap. “Horace, you haven’t yet taken off your shoes.”
“I don’t take off my shoes for no one,” he said. “I didn’t take them off in Japan, I didn’t take them off in Korea, I didn’t take them off in my Aunt Sally’s house with all them stupid white carpets, and I’m not taking them off here.”
“You must humble yourself, old man.”
“I’m too old to be humble and not old enough to be called old by the likes of you.”
“Madam Anna,” I said, “I think you have the wrong idea about us.”
“You’re not lost souls?”
“Well, maybe you’re right about that part.”
“And you don’t want to communicate with the dead?”
“Who wouldn’t, actually? But that’s not why we came to you. We’re looking for a missing girl.”
“And you want me to ask the spirits to help the search. It is not what I normally do, but it can be arranged. Though the offering will of course be higher.”
“We’re not here to ask the spirits, you half-blind witch,” said Horace. “We’re here to ask your sorry ass.”
I put my hand on Horace’s biceps to calm him down, squeezed hard to remind him that I was to do the talking, was surprised at the thinness of his arm.
“What my friend means is that we are looking for a missing girl and we hope that you can help us. Her name is Tanya, Tanya Rose.”
She didn’t move after I said the name, didn’t so much as twitch. She stared at me with her one good eye as if trying to banish me with only her gaze. Then she closed her eyes and started her chanting once again. It was strangely beautiful, her chant, strangely haunting, but she could sing all she wanted, we weren’t going anywhere.
After finishing, she opened her eyes and saw, with a flash of disappointment, that we were still at the table. “Who are you to her?” she said.
“I’m her lawyer,” I said.
“How does such a girl have a lawyer?”
“A judge appointed me to find her, to make sure she is all right.”
“I can’t help you.”
“You mind if I look around?”
“You don’t believe me?”
“No, frankly, ma’am, I don’t.”
“She’s not here, I promise you that.”
“But you know where she is.”
“What would you do if you found her, Victor Carl? Would you send her back to the mother that gave her away? Would you send her back to that man who lives with her mother? Would you feel she is safe, her with him?”
“She’s my client. I’ll do whatever is in her best interests. And I have the law behind me.”
“Where was your law when the mother was trying to toss her aside?”
“You took her, didn’t you?”
“I did what I could for her.”
“And if she’s not here, you gave her away. Again. But I’d bet it wasn’t free. I’d bet there was one of your offerings involved. How much did you sell her for?”
“This session is over,” she said, blowing out one candle. The room darkened.
“What have you sold her into?” I said. “What terrors is she feeling now? Tell me where she is, Madam Anna, or I’ll bring the police with me next time I come.”
“You want to bring the police here? That’s a laugh. I’ve been calling them for months. The prostitutes are working this corner every night now, and they do nothing. The cars come by honking, they park in front of my house. Every morning I sweep up the condoms. Tell them to come. Please.” She blew out another candle, the room darkened further. Only one candle now burned, its faint flicker reflecting on all our faces before dying at the room’s edges.
“Maybe when they come, they’ll check your license,” I said. “I’m sure you have a business-privilege license as required by law. And this house, I’m sure, is zoned for commercial use.”
“Oh, yes, that is the work of your law. Shut me down, the scourge of the neighborhood. Forget the whores, forget the drugs, the gangsters. Good day, Victor Carl.”
She was about to blow out the last candle when Horace said, “We care about her, too.”
Madam Anna held her breath, raised the gaze from her one good eye to Horace. I turned my head, too, because there was a note of tender softness in his voice.
“The way her eyes squint when she laughs,” said Horace. “The way she skips instead of walks. The cool feel of her hand when she’s holding yours. The way she looks up at you with a face full of trust. You care about her, I see it in you. And we do, too. A girl like that, with a mother like that, she needs all the help she can get in this world.”
“What do you want?” said Madam Anna.
“We just want to know where she is,” I said. “And that she’s okay.”
“Leave your card,” said Madam Anna.
I took a card from my jacket, tossed it on the table. While it was still spinning on the wood, she blew out the last candle.
The room plunged into darkness, nothing to be seen but the faintly glowing tip of the incense stick. I stood up quickly, went to grab hold of her, grabbed only air, and howled out in pain.
“What happened?” barked Horace from the darkness.
“I stubbed my toe.”
“What kind of fool takes off his shoes whenever any old lady says so?”
I took out my phone, flipped it open, turned it on, used the faint light from the display to check out the room. Madam Anna was gone, and so was my card.
With the cell-phone light, I found my shoes, slipped them on, moved around the table, and opened the door that the fortune-teller had come through. There was a hallway and a bedroom and a kitchen and a bathroom, but no sign of the old woman and no sign of the presence of Tanya Rose either. I took the liberty of searching the rest of the apartment. Nothing. Madam Anna was gone, and Tanya, if she had ever lived there, lived there no longer.
“What’s next?” said Horace T. Grant on our way out of the apartment.
“I don’t know.”
“You better figure out something, boy.”
“Yes, I better. That was quite the speech in there, Horace.”
“A bunch of horse crap tied in a pretty knot.”
“I don’t think so.”