Eight Million Ways To Die

He assured me it wasn't. While the coffee brewed he told me about his African sculpture, how the craftsmen who produced it did not think of their work as art. "Everything they make has a specific function," he explained. "It's to guard your house or keep off spirits or to use in a particular tribal rite. If a mask doesn't have the power in it anymore they'll throw it away and somebody'll carve a new one. The old one's trash, you burn it up or toss it away cause it's no good."

He laughed. "Then the Europeans came and discovered African art.

Some of those French painters got their inspiration from tribal masks.

Now you've got a situation where there are carvers in Africa spending all their time making masks and statues for export to Europe and America.

They follow the old forms because that's what their customers want, but it's a funny thing. Their work's no good. It doesn't have any feeling in it.

It's not real. You look at it and you take it in your hand, and you do the same with the real thing, and you can tell the difference right away. If you have any feeling at all for the stuff. Funny, isn't it?"

"It's interesting."

"If I had any of the junk around I'd show you, but I don't own any.

I bought some when I was starting out. You have to make mistakes to develop a feel for it. But I got rid of that stuff, burned it in the fireplace there." He smiled. "The very first piece I bought, I still have it. It's hanging in the bedroom. A Dan mask. Poro Society. I didn't know shit about African art but I saw it in an antique shop and I responded to the mask's artistic integrity." He stopped, shook his head.

"Hell I did. What happened was I looked at that piece of smooth black wood and I was looking in a mirror. I saw myself, I saw my father, I was looking back through the damned ages. You know what I'm talking about?"

"I'm not sure."

"Hell. Maybe I don't know either." He gave his head a shake.

"What do you figure one of those old carvers'd make of this? He'd say,

'Shit, what's this crazy nigger want with all these old masks? Why'd he go and hang 'em all over the damn wall?' That coffee's ready. You take yours black, right?"

He said, "How's a detective go about detecting, anyway? Where do you start?"

"By going around and talking to people. Unless Kim got killed coincidentally by a maniac, her death grew out of her life." I tapped my notebook. "There's a lot you don't know about her life."

"I guess."

"I'll talk to people and see what they can tell me. Maybe it'll fit together and point somewhere. Maybe not."

"My girls'll know it's cool to talk to you."

"That'll help."

"Not that they necessarily know anything, but if they do."

"Sometimes people know things without knowing they know them."

"And sometimes they tell without knowing they told."

"That's true, too."

He stood up, put his hands on his hips. "You know," he said, "I didn't figure to bring you here. I didn't figure you needed to know about this house. And I brought you without you even asking."

"It's quite a house."

"Thank you."

"Was Kim impressed with it?"

"She never saw it. None of 'em ever did. There's an old German woman comes here once a week to clean. Makes the whole place shine.

She's the only woman's ever been inside of this house. Since I owned it, anyway, and the architects who used to live here didn't have much use for women. Here's the last of the coffee."

It was awfully good coffee. I'd had too much of it already but it was too good to pass up. When I complimented it earlier he'd told me it was a mixture of Jamaica Blue Mountain and a dark roast Colombian bean. He'd offered me a pound of it, and I'd told him it wouldn't be much use to me in a hotel room.

I sipped the coffee while he made yet another call to his service.

When he hung up I said, "You want to give me the number here? Or is that one secret you want to keep?"

He laughed. "I'm not here that much. It's easier if you just call the service."

"All right."

"And this number wouldn't do you much. I don't know it myself.

I'd have to look at an old phone bill to make sure I got it right. And if you dialed it, nothing would happen."

"Why's that?"

"Because the bells won't ring. The phones are to make calls out.

When I set this place up I got telephone service and I put in extensions so I'd never be far from a phone, but I never gave the number to anybody.

Not even my service, not anybody."

"And?"