So why was he thinking about Puerta del Rey again? There was no answer to that most elementary question, the only question he ever asked: What happened? What happened? He forced his mind away from it. He made himself concentrate on
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the satin cushions around him on the bed, and on the tequila, and the tequila and the tequila.
And before the bottle was empty, the world was good and fine with Bernard C. Daniels.
Then he smelled the lilac perfume. "Wake up," Gloria said, shaking him. "It's night."
"Hell of a time to wake up."
"It's time."
"Time for what?"
"For killing Calder Raisin." She smiled, her lips stretched tight across her teeth. Blurred through Barney's drunken vision, her face appeared to him like a grinning death's head skull through a misty fog. "I had you moved here when I heard you'd made contact with your CIA friends."
"Don't have friends in the CIA," he said, his mouth still fuzzy.
"Those two on the corner. My men saw you. But now they don't know where you are, so they won't be able to help you, poor baby. You're going to have to kill poor Calder all by yourself." She patted his cheek. "Get up now. You have an appointment with Mr. Raisin at the Battery."
"What if I don't kill him?" Barney asked.
"Then you don't get the thousand dollars, darling," she said sweetly. "And you lose your life very painfully in the process. You know what 'painfully' means, don't you? Do you remember the pain, Mr. Daniels, or has the scar on your stomach healed completely?"
He leaped at her. "What do you know?" he demanded. "Tell me!" But her bodyguards were in the room, and pulled him away from the woman as she shrieked laughter as cold and shrill as the wail of a banshee.
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There were no television cameras on the pier, as the two black reporters dressed in neat black suits had promised Calder Riaisin back at the hospital. Nor were there any microphones on the creaking boards of the deserted place where a group of demonstrators was supposed to be waiting for him.
As soon as the limousine filled with overly friendly reporters deposited Raisin at the pier and sped away into the darkness, he knew the black reporters were fakes and he had been brought to this isolated spot to be killed.
Calder Raisin shook his head. He had been warned.
A man was waiting for him, sitting on the planks, his back resting against a barnacle-encrusted dock support.
Only one man, thought Calder Raisin. But then it would only take one man to kill him. It was his own fault, Raisin reprimanded himself, for not listening to the young white man at the hospital rally. Well, there wasn't much he could do now. He would just try to get it over with as fast as he could.
"What you want?" Raisin asked, turning up the collar of his bathrobe to protect himself from the wind. He shifted his weight from one hospital slipper to another to fend off the chilly wind. His hands were stuffed deep inside the pockets of the robe from which, at the bottom, a half-inch of hospital gown protruded.
"I said, what you want," Raisin repeated. "Look, you gonna kill me or what?"
Barney looked up, first at Raisin, and then off over the glistening black water.
"See here. I didn't come all this way to stare at New York Harbor with you. Now, you gonna 'sassinate me, or I going to walk away?"
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Barney looked out over the water. It reminded him of a giant inkwell. A place where all the words of his life could be obliterated in an instant. Words like honor. Decency. Love. Words he had lived by once, when he had had a reason for living. One jump, and he could be as dead and as meaningless as those words. The water would swallow him up, and the remains of Barney Daniels would disappear into it. The water. The cold, bleak, unforgiving, welcome water.
"Snap to, boy," Raisin said," bending over to slap Barney on the shoulder. "It's cold out here. You gonna freeze."
Barney stared out over the water.
Raisin's voice softened. "Hey, want to grab a cup of coffee somewheres?" the portly black man asked.
But Barney only stared.
Raisin picked up his red terrycloth slipper and bounced it on Barney's head. "Look alive, man," he shouted. "What is this stupidness? I get hauled out here in the middle of nowheres, getting the crap scared out of me 'cause I thinking you gonna kill me, and now you ain't about to do nothing. You on junk, boy?"
Barney didn't answer.
"You wasting my time. I got a sick-in demonstration going, so if you ain't going to rub me out, I better get back to it 'fore I die of the cold."
Barney offered Raisin his flask. "Have a drink," he said. "It'll warm you."
Raisin drank. "Man, what is that shit? Tastes like poison."
"Tequila," Barney said, regaining possession of the silver container. "But it could have been poisoned."
"Sure as hell tasted like it."
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Ignoring the crass comment, Barney lifted the flask to his lips and let the liquid pour down his throat. "I could have poisoned you, you know," he said.
Raisin shrugged.
"Your wife wants me to kill you."
"Lorraine? What she want to do that for? Who gonna pay the bills on that split-level money-eater in Whiteyville?"
"Not Lorraine. Gloria. Your wife. The blonde."
"My wife ain't no blonde," Raisin protested. "Leastways she wasn't four days ago. Lorraine look mighty silly a blonde. I gonna slap her silly if she done dyed her hair. Blonde. Hmmph."
"Gloria," Barney said, louder.
"I don't know no Gloria, stupid white ignoramus. You done come down here to kill the wrong man. Good thing you spaced out."
"Her name is Gloria, I tell you," Barney shouted, "and she's paying me a thousand dollars to kill you."
Raisin hopped up and down, his jaw thrust forward. "Well, then, you do that, smartass. You just try and kill me." He put up his fists. "Weirdo white junkie."
"Oh, get lost," Barney said.