Page 90 of Hanging and Burning

I made the unchallenging calls first.

Aja was at Silbrig Haus, Roger Ferris’s sprawling estate on the farthest reaches of the Upper West Side. Leaf was on the train and seemed safe. I offered her a gun before we parted, but she said, “I would prefer not to,” showing off her penchant for reading fine literature.

Aurilia, Twyla, Mara, Estelle Person, and even the daughter I had never met, Blythe Macintosh, were upstairs in the Hall of Penitence, sleeping in bare rooms that belonged in a Bruegel painting. The ladies were blood and extended family, and nearly all estranged in one way or another.

The next call was to the West Coast.

First I tried the cell phone number, but it went directly to voicemail.

Then I called the landline.

I got the switchboard, or some other kind of exchange, and was then asked to wait. A minute later another ring occurred, and a woman’s husky voice answered, “Mr. Babylon’s line.”

“Ilsa, that you?”

“Who is this?”

“Tell him it’s Joe Oliver.”

“He’s sleeping, Mr. Oliver.”

I expected her to hang up, but instead a deep male voice barked out some kind of order and then said into the receiver, “What is it, Joe?”

“Do you know a man called Kenneth Rouche, Arman?”

“I don’t think so. Why?”

“He’s tall and trim. The one time I saw him he was wearing all black except for maybe his socks.”

“White guy?”

“Yeah.”

“Somebody looked like that was askin’ about me—my name, anyway.”

“Had you already moved to the South Tower?”

“Yeah. They turned him away, and after that I asked for Ilsa to be my private nurse. Your grandmother helped with that.”

On the lighter side, I wanted to ask if Ilsa had been kissing him good night but decided not to.

“So, what about this Rouche guy?” Babylon asked.

“He’s got somethin’ to do with Paulie Jr., and he might be tied up with the guys who ambushed me.”

“Why the hell would anybody be after you?”

“Your daughter and her druggy boyfriend went out to LA to ask Paulie Jr. about Melton.”

“First—Twyla is my granddaughter, and second, how the hell she find out about Malto?”

“A liar can spread lies only if the people he tells them to don’t know the truth,” I quoted from my father’s copious store of snippet philosophies.

“What kinda shit talk is that?” he said on a raised tone.

Ilsa Lund said something in the background, but he did not heed her.

“Mara and Dalia told Twyla—your daughter, not your granddaughter—they told her as much truth as they thought she could bear.”