Mystery

At the start of the fifth chapter, the novel’s main character, a homicide detective named Esterhaz, woke up in an unfamiliar apartment. The television set was on, and the air smelled like whiskey. So hung over that he felt on the verge of disappearance, Esterhaz wandered through the empty apartment, trying to figure out who lived in it and how he had come to wake up there. Men’s and women’s clothes hung in the closet, dirty dishes and milk bottles filled with green webs of mold covered the kitchen counters. He had a dim memory of fighting, of beating someone senseless, hitting already unconscious flesh again and again, of blood spattering on a wall … but there was no blood in the apartment, no blood on his clothes, and his hands ached with only a faint, tender ache, as if a demon had kissed them. A nearly empty whiskey bottle stood beside a bedroom door, and Esterhaz drank what was left in long swallows and went into the room. On the floor beside a mattress covered by a rumpled blanket, he found a note that said, One anguish—in a crowd—A minor thing—it sounds—Come back tonight.—G. Who was G.? He stuffed the note into his jacket pocket. Esterhaz found his coat balled up in a corner of the room, and buttoned himself into it. He shuddered with nausea, and the thought came to him full-blown, as if he had just read and memorized it, that invisibility was more than a fantasy: invisibility was so real that most of the world had already slipped into a great invisible realm that accompanied and mocked the visible.

Esterhaz walked down a dark, clanging staircase and went outside into a bitter cold and a tearing wind. He saw that he was next door to a bar called The House of Correction and recognized where he was. Four blocks away stood the St. Alwyn Hotel, where two people he knew had been murdered. Esterhaz walked through a snowdrift to get to his car, took a pint bottle from the glove compartment, and let a little more reality into his system. It was some unearthly hour like six-thirty in the morning. A little anguish in a crowd, he thought, that bitch knew what she was talking about. He put the pint bottle between his knees, started his car, and drove to a deserted parking lot on the lakefront. Absolutely still curls and feathers of smoke clung to the grey surface of the lake, frozen into place.

“Pretty good, wouldn’t you say?”

Tom looked up through the memory of smoke feathers tethered to the surface of Eagle Lake, and saw von Heilitz bending over the table, making sandwiches with chunks of cheddar cheese and slices of salami.

“The book,” von Heilitz said.

Andres drove them past the tall white walls of the Redwing compound and through the old cane fields where rows of willows, the only trees that would grow in the tired soil, nearly hid all that was left on Mill Walk of the original island. Far ahead, a smooth cement riser took shape on the right side of the coastal highway, and swung to the right as it followed the curve of a blacktopped side road. This was the access road to the Founders Club, and the riser became the cement wall that ran down the southern end of the club property to the beach south of Bobby Jones Trail and Glendenning Upshaw’s bungalow. An identical cement wall bordered the northern end of the club. The guardhouse was located just past the point where the two walls were closest. Past the guardhouse, the access road divided into Ben Hogan Way and Babe Ruth Way, each of which led past the clubhouse to the members’ bungalows.

“Pull into the cane field and hide the car,” von Heilitz said.

Andres said, “You bet, Lamont,” and swerved across the road into the field. The old taxi jounced over the rough ground, snapping off dry bamboolike bristles, and pitched and rolled past the first row of willows. Andres patted the steering wheel.

“We should be back in two hours, maybe less,” von Heilitz said.

“Take your time,” Andres said. “Don’t get hurt.”

Tom and von Heilitz got out of the car and walked through the dry stubs of cane. They crossed the road. Ahead, the white cement wall curved toward them, then curved away to cut across an empty swath of sandy ground covered with broom grass, palms, and low bushes all the way down to the low flat plane of the water. Von Heilitz moved quickly through the long grass toward the fence, which was no more than an inch taller than the top of his head. “Tell me when you think we’re about level with Glen’s bungalow,” he said.

“It’s way down, on the first road off the beach.”

“The last bungalow on its road?” He looked back over his shoulder at Tom without slackening his pace.

Tom nodded.

“That’s good luck.”

“Why?”

“We can just walk around the far end of the wall—down on the beach, where it comes to an end. This wall is more decorative than functional.” He smiled back at Tom, who was hurrying to catch up.