Black Hornet by James Sallis Read Free Book Online

appreciate it, Papa.”
    Before he retired, Papa had spent more than forty years hiring and training mercenaries and funneling them in and out of Latin American countries. What he couldn’t find out, no one knew.
    I’d met him through a guy named Doo-Wop who made a career of cadging drinks in bars all over town. Doo-Wop was always talking about how he’d been a Navy SEAL or rustled Arabians for a stable over in Waco or once played with Joe Oliver, and for a long time I’d assumed that what he told me about Papa was as made up as all the rest of it. But slowly I’d come to realize that those stories weren’t made up. They were appropriated from various people Doo-Wop drank with and processed for redistribution. The stories became his stock, his product: he traded them for drinks. And as he told them, Doo-Wop in some way believed they were real about himself. Eventually a group of Mexicans I spent a weekend drinking with at La Casa put me on to Papa’s being the genuine article.
    Binx was standing at the end of the bar. When he caught my eye, I nodded. He grabbed a bourbon and a vodka bottle, brought them over.
    “Fill it up, my good man,” Papa said. “Doesn’t happen often, but I feel young tonight.”
    Binx glanced my way. I nodded again.
    “You won’t be feeling much anything very long, you keep putting this stuff away like that, Papa.”
    “Seize the moment, my young friend. Seize the moment.”
    “Seize away, Papa. But then what the fuck you gonna do with it, once you caught it?”
    Business taken care of, Binx returned like a good fighter to his corner.
    “Give me a few days, Lewis. You want to come by and check with me, I guess. Since you don’t seem to live anywhere, near as anyone can tell.”
    “That be okay?”
    “I’ll be here.”
    I left enough on the bar for another couple of doubles, threw back the rest of my bourbon and stood.
    “You ever hear Big Joe Williams, Lewis?”
    “Yeah. Man couldn’t tune up a guitar to save his life.”
    “Once said how all these youngsters, white kids of course, are always asking him how to get inside the blues. You heard this before?”
    I shook my head.
    “Said the whole point was to get outside. Outside the sixteen to eighteen hours you have to work every day—if you can find work at all. Outside where you have to live and what you and your children have to look forward to. Outside the blue devils that are everywhere you go, that are in everything you do, and aren’t ever going to leave you alone.”
    Papa turned back around on his stool. He took another gentle sip at his vodka. I remembered what Esmé Dupuy had said about O’Carolan and his beloved Irish whiskey kissing one last time.
    “You want a man hurts as bad as this one, Lewis, you don’t look for him down here with the rest of us. He’s been hurting so much for so long that he doesn’t think anyone else can hurt that bad, or ever has. So he’s already set himself apart from us. Outside. He’s gone on to some other level, one where maybe hurt doesn’t have anything to do with it any longer. You want to find him, you look up. ”
    I stood there a moment.
    Then I said, “Thank you, Papa.”

Chapter Eight
    I STOPPED BY THE APARTMENT to pick up the .38 I carried sometimes back then, before I learned better. A manila envelope was stuffed halfway into the mailbox by my front door. Hosie Straughter’s name and address had been marked off and LEW scrawled above in what looked like crayon. Inside was a book, The Stranger , and a note in pencil on a piece of paper torn from a grocery sack.
Thanks again, Griffin. This is one of my
favorites—by way of appreciation. This
copy’s been mine a long time. Now it’s yours.
    Since Claiborne was closest, I went there first. Not the smartest thing for a black man to do, start climbing around on roofs at 12:30 in the morning: I’ll give you that.
    A fire escape began about eight feet up the back of the building, really little more than a steel ladder