His dear mother in Boston had given him the middle name Jellicle, after the Jellicle Cats in T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, which she’d read long before Andrew Lloyd Webber was even a glimmer in an Englishman’s eye. Michael Jellicle Barnes, a name his schoolmates had found enormously amusing, reciting over and over again as they beat him up, “Yellow Belly Jellicle, Yellow Belly Jellicle,” he could have killed his mother. He had tried unsuccessfully to hide the name from the girls he met in high school and later in college, all of whom naturally found out mysteriously and at once and who dubbed him “Jellybean Barnes,” which was better, but not much, than getting beat up, he supposed. In the army, he had become “Jelly-ass Barnes” because of the slight accident he’d had the first time the squad went into battle, a name everyone had called him—except Andrew.
Dear, dead Andrew.
Easy come, easy go, right?
The moment Michael got out of the army, he’d become plain old Michael J. Barnes, and that was the name he’d used when he’d applied for his driver’s license and his library card in Florida. And later on, his credit cards.
Michael J. Barnes. No middle name, just the initial. And that’s what he’d been ever since, Michael J. Barnes, no Jellicle, just plain old Michael J. Barnes.
This Michael J. Barnes person.
Was what Crandall had said.
This Michael J. Barnes person is responsible.
For murder.
He was suddenly lost.
Lost in thoughts as tangled as the Vietnam underbrush. Lost in time, because the Jellicle was out of his past and the present was an unknown man he had not killed. Lost in space as well, because the streets had run out of numbers and now there were only names and he did not know where in hell he was. Why was he all at once on Bleecker and then Houston and then King and Charlton and … where the hell was he? He looked at the slip of paper upon which Albetha had scribbled the address for him.
He looked up at the street sign on the corner.
He was on Vandam and Avenue of the Americas. So where was St. Luke’s Place?
Downtown, Albetha had told him. Between Hudson and Seventh. But where was Hudson? Or, for that matter, Seventh? He studied the empty avenue ahead as he would have studied a suspect trail, and then he looked to his right and looked to his left and decided it was six of one, half a dozen of the other, and began heading east, never once realizing that St. Luke’s Place was to the north and west.
He walked for what seemed like miles.
Not a numbered street anywhere in this downtown maze. Sullivan and West Broadway and Wooster and Greene and Mercer and now Broadway itself though it did not seem like the Great White Way down here in lower Manhattan except for the snow in the streets. Kept walking east, although he did not have a compass and did not in fact know he was heading east. No sun up there in the sky. Just a cold, dead moon and stars that told him nothing. He turned corners, seemed at times to be doubling back on his own tracks, coming to the same street sign again and again, thoroughly lost now. He studied the sign on the corner.
Mulberry and Grand. He looked up Mulberry. It was festively hung with welcoming arches of Christmas lights. Blinking.
Beckoning. Surely there was a telephone somewhere on this beautifully decorated street.
He began walking.
Italian restaurants, all of them already closed for Christmas. Hand-lettered signs in some of the windows, advising that they would not be open again till the fourth of January, which, come to think of it, was when Michael had planned to head back to Sarasota. If he’d ever made it to Boston.
He decided that if he found an open restaurant or an open anything, he would first call his mother to let her know he wasn’t dead even though she didn’t have any of his clothes she could give away prematurely, and then he would call China Doll Limo to see if Connie Kee was yet free to take him to St. Luke’s Place, wherever the hell that was.
The awning over the restaurant read:
RISTORANTE BLUE MADONNA
The sign in the door read:
CLOSED
But there were lights blazing inside, and the sound of music—the Supremes singing “Stop in the Name of Love.” The early Sixties came back in a rush. Boston before he was drafted. Sixteen-year-old Jenny Aldershot sitting on a wall overlooking the Charles River, her blonde hair blowing in the wind. He tried the door. It was unlocked. He opened it a crack. The music was louder now. He opened the door fully and stepped inside, and then he almost ran right out into the street again because the place was full of cops!
Beautiful young women wearing garter belts, panties, seamed silk stockings, and high heels —which was just what Detective O’Brien had been wearing earlier tonight. Dancing with men in business suits. As he started for the door again, someone clapped a hand on his shoulder. He turned to see a short-roly-poly man who looked a lot like both Tony the Bear Orso and Charlie Bonano.
“Help ya?” the man said.