Part 19 (1/2)

They had been walking for more than an hour when Candy exclaimed, ”f.u.c.k's sake! Don't this guy eat or anything?” All Candy had eaten for breakfast and lunch had been the mingy bagel and so-called cream cheese.

”Don't worry. Even if he doesn't, one of us can grab something to go.”

”I don't feel much like eatin' on my feet, K.”

”There she is again,” said Karl. He had called Candy's attention to the redheaded woman originally because he thought that under the shapeless raincoat she had a great body; then he called Karl's attention to the fact that the great body had been with them for an hour-sometimes walking behind, sometimes walking ahead. She was good, Karl said. If the two of them hadn't been even better, they'd never have spotted her.

”There's another thing. You see that guy go by in a cab? Well, he's done it twice. I didn't get a good look at him, but something about him's familiar. Now why would he be going around and around?”

Saul decided he would have to forget this waving down of cabs and instead hire a car. Cabs were just too purposeful and too hard to direct if what you wanted to do was start and stop and circle back all the time.

He had seen the two men on the pavement stare after him; it was them all right, the same two men who'd appeared in the little park, later in Swill's-Paulie and Larry-something?-to sit down at his and Ned's table. Had they said they were from Pittsburgh? They'd talked about Pittsburgh somehow, only he'd tuned them out, thinking about his book (the last fifty pages of which he had brought with him, the way Ned always did, because you never know when something will hit, do you?).

And Saul wondered, as he had many times before, about convergences, confluences, sudden meetings of things you had never thought of as coming together. The rivers, for instance: the Monongahela and the Allegheny.

It would be easier if he knew just what he was looking for when it came to Ned. He didn't know; it was just this general feeling of something's being out of whack, skewed, even ominous.

The cab drove by a huge billboard advertising Porsche, Mercedes, and BMW. Ned, he saw, was coming back this way. It was nearly six P.M. Saul told the driver to drop him off at the Porsche dealers.h.i.+p.

THIRTY.

Ned crossed the street to look at the river. It was wide and gray and not especially pretty, but he thought he could remember himself standing at some point along the river where it pa.s.sed through the city; he saw himself looking over the barrier, perhaps being picked up and his feet squarely planted there by his father. He was fantasizing. He did not know if that had ever happened, but it could have. Over there, on the North Side he thought an aunt had lived, rather poorer than the other relatives. He was not sure about the aunt; he could not picture her, not her face not her voice not her mannerisms.

Sally walked on past him. She was getting pretty good at shadowing people, she thought. The trick, or one of them, was not to be taken by surprise, not to alter one's course because the person you were following did. Sally considered this useful training because she lived most of her life startled. People could get a reaction out of her even if they weren't looking for one. So Sally moved with great purpose past Ned, eyes looking straight ahead, her blond wig curls bouncing. A little farther along she would stop and take out her compact and look in the mirror to see when he started walking again.

”You like it? I don't. As rivers go, this one sucks,” said Candy. ”He still standing there?”

”Hasn't moved. Probably caught up in some childhood dream.” Karl seemed to ponder what he'd said.

Candy made a face. ”Ever since you been reading that book, you come out with s.h.i.+t like that. So what's he looking at?”

”The other side of the river, looks like.”

”I sure hope he's not thinking of going there. This ain't a bad city, is it? Stuff to look at. That stadium over there.”

”If you're from New York, it's not much.”

”So no place is if you compare it with New York, f.u.c.k's sake.” Candy looked across the wide water. ”Paris, maybe. Rome.” But his tone was dismissive, suggesting he was convinced Paris could not go head to head with New York. Neither could Rome.

They stood looking across the river.

Karl pulled the guidebook out of his coat pocket, thumbed a few pages. ”Heinz Field.” Helpfully, he explained: ”Three Rivers Stadium-called that because these rivers meet there-it got torn down couple years ago.”

”How come?”

”Who knows?”

”b.u.mmer.”

”The one before that, that was Forbes Field. Tore that down, too.”

”This city's got nothin' better to do, it tears down its stadiums? The history of a city's in its teams, not its buildings. Willie Mays caught a line drive in Forbes Field that's like nothing no one ever saw before. And what was that guy's name was so great played with the Pirates? Even before my time? Clemente, that was it, Roger-no, Roberto Clemente. And Sandy Koufax. He pitched a string of no-hitters. Broke the record. Remember Sandy Koufax? We were kids, but remember?”

”Everybody remembers Sandy Koufax, even the ones that don't. We were what-? Six, seven? But he was the Dodgers, not the Pirates.”

”Yeah, of course. I didn't mean he was a Pirate. But the Dodgers played here. The Pirates were hot, really hot. They played them all. Koufax pitched there.” Candy inclined his head in the direction of a stadium long gone. ”Jackie Robinson ran the bases there. Stan Musial-” Candy broke off and shook his head sadly. ”If you're a baseball fan, it could bring you to tears.”

Karl returned the book to his pocket. ”Chrissakes, C, you remember all that stuff? What a memory.”

”Yeah, well, you know-you don't remember, then you forget.”

The two of them turned their heads and looked down toward Ned. Still there. ”Wonder why he came here anyway?”

”He's from here. It says so right in my book. So's the other one.”

”Givenchy? My guy?”

”Giverney. Can't you keep his name straight? 'Givenchy'-that's that mineral water from France.”

Candy frowned. ”You sure about that? We don't drink nothin' but Pellegrino.”

”I told you-” Karl gave Candy a severe look. ”It's that water. Anyway, both these guys are from here. So that might be it. Like Ned did something to Paul Giverney when they were in school together. Paul's never got over it. I blame myself for not probing into their backgrounds more. Find out what school they went to, you know, stuff like that.”

”Yeah but you can't be sure they went to school together.”

”Didn't I say? No, I'm not sure. It's just possible.”

”Do you really think a grown-up would carry a f.u.c.king grudge from his school days? Jesus. He must be real childish to do that.” Candy's back was bothering him-it always did when he had to do a lot of walking. He turned to rest it against the stone wall. Here came a couple of black kids on skateboards, arms out and going at a good clip. It was cold, and they weren't even wearing jackets. Candy thought about when he was young and how he didn't like coats. He nodded toward the street where a few cars, like the kids, seemed to float by in the river mist. ”That cab's been sittin' over there for as long as we've been standin' here.”

Karl turned. ”Who's in it, can you see?”

Candy squinted. ”Can't see, except it's some guy.”

Karl was looking down the street, in the opposite direction from Ned, laughing. ”Kids nearly ran into old Clive. He's standing down there. Beats me, really beats me why he's here.”

”Dips.h.i.+t,” said Candy, looking, too. Then in the other direction, where Ned was standing. Had been standing. ”Yo! Our quarry is moving!”

Karl chuckled. ” 'Our quarry'-you been reading too many CIA spy novels, C.”

”. . . a real departure, right? Literary, mainstream, whatever. But I figure, since it'll be literary, well, Tom Kidd could edit me.”

Clive was looking up the sidewalk at Candy and Karl and rubbing the s.h.i.+n that the skateboard had b.u.mped into. ”No, Dwight, Tom Kidd would not edit you. You cannot get Tom Kidd.” It was the only thing Clive had heard clearly in Staines's monumentally long monologue that made Moby-d.i.c.k look infinitely beguiling in its brevity, or A la recherche du temps perdu recited by a stammerer simply fetching.

”I'm not saying you're not an editor par excellence, Clive, far be it from me to say that.” Dwight gunned his rented motorcycle.

Clive was gearing up to grab this jerk by the strap of his helmet when he saw Candy and Karl move off. On the other side of the street, Pascal was going into the store whose window she'd been looking into. Clive could not see Ned; he was too far away or obscured by pa.s.sersby. ”Where's your signing?”