Page 6 of Hanging and Burning

“No. Not here. I didn’t bring them with me.”

“Okay.”

“Well?” Arman asked, a little peevishly.

“You want me to find this Twyla, tell her that somebody named Mara is not her mother but that you’re her blood,” I repeated.

“Yes.”

“Is that all?”

“Um, I guess—I guess I’d like to see her if it’s possible.”

“You want me to ask her to come see you?”

“That’s what I said.”

“What if she doesn’t want that?”

“I don’t know. I guess she won’t come, then.”

“Do you want me to tell you where she is?”

“Well, of course.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“Look, Mr. Babylon, this woman deserves privacy. If she wants to call you, I’ll pass along the number. She’s the one who’ll decide whether or not to share her whereabouts with you.”

This was not the script that Arman Babylon was expecting to play by. I got the feeling that in his life, when he asked for something, he got that thing. But now he was old and sick, playing the last hand of a lifelong night of poker.

“Okay,” he said. “Tell her what I said and say that I’d really like to see her.”

“I wanna ask you some questions first.”

“Okay,” he said again.

“Is Babylon your real name?”

The question tickled the old man. I say old; all things being equal, he would have been maybe a hale eighty, but the condition he suffered from added anywhere from ten years to a century on top of that.

“In a way. My parents were Mr. and Mrs. Babel, from Old Palestine via Warsaw.”

“And,” I conjectured, “you don’t want any harm to come to your granddaughter.”

“I love her. The reason I want to hire you is that I want to—want to make sure that she’s safe.”

“Safe from what?”

There came a tic in the flesh around his left eye and that side’s shoulder seemed to rise involuntarily.

“She’s alone in the world. She’s smart and tough too. A beautiful girl. That’s a—that’s a dangerous combination.”

I smiled before asking, “You have a recent picture of Twyla?”

He rustled around under the blanket until coming out with a sleek and silvery key hanging from a dirty piece of string.