The North Face of the Heart - Dolores Redondo Page 0,35
least two stories. As Dupree climbed into its darkness, he made out a dusky orange light at the far end, as if the third floor were on fire. The irregularly spaced steps echoed hollow beneath his tread.
The top floor was a loft. The stairwell appeared to be the only way to access the room. The air was heavy and still. Shafts of sunlight, insufficient to illuminate the room fully, came through a half dozen small vents. A number of gas lanterns carefully hung from the ceiling produced the strange yellow-orange glow he’d seen from the stairs. At the far end of the loft were two men, one white and the other black, both wearing coveralls, gloves, and surgical masks. They were packing gauze-wrapped objects that looked like dried roots or chunks of tree bark. The smell of earth, talcum powder, and musty flowers filled Dupree’s nostrils.
He knew they hadn’t noticed him, so he took a moment to watch them work. The black man was Jacques, who’d always been Meire’s assistant, as far as Dupree knew. The white man was Meire himself. His deep tan ran right up into his receding hairline, where it contrasted with a bushy white mane combed back in a style that reminded Dupree of Christopher Lee.
Meire’s left eye was blind. While playing in a harvested corn field at the age of three, he’d fallen headfirst and a jagged stalk had penetrated that eye. He didn’t lose it entirely, but the pupil and the iris were destroyed, their colors mixing to resemble a tiger’s-eye marble. Nana always said there are some folks who see too much, so fate maintains balance by depriving them of an eye. Antoine wore tortoiseshell glasses with a magnifying lens for his good eye and a plain lens for the blind one.
Meire and Jacques carried their dusty load to a metal table where a bag lay open. They wrapped the soiled contents in a second layer of gauzelike fabric that resembled a shroud. Dupree looked away and suppressed the urge to gulp for air.
“I’m always tempted to ask how they find ’em.” Meire’s voice was just as dusty as the brown residue on the surgical mask he pulled off his face with gloved hands.
Meire stood in front of him. That blind eye looked different than Dupree remembered. Its owner, aware of its hypnotic effect, held Dupree’s gaze for five seconds before giving him a sly wink. “Show it to me.”
Dupree held out the thousand-dollar bill. “The fact is—”
“Not a word!” Meire cautioned him. “I said I’m always tempted, but I never said I give in.” He pulled off his gloves, extracted the banknote from the cellophane envelope. With his other hand, he adjusted an overhead lantern and held the bill up against the light. “Grover Cleveland, our twenty-second president. And our twenty-fourth. The only man to occupy the White House in nonconsecutive terms.”
“I guarantee it’s real,” Dupree said.
“I know it’s genuine, even though those notes got no stripes or watermarks. Wasn’t the custom back in those days. There aren’t enough in existence to make counterfeiting worthwhile, and besides, my babies wouldn’t have let you up here unless it was real.” He smiled.
“Caleb and Emma?” Dupree was surprised. “My God, how the time passes! I remember when . . .”
Meire stepped toward Dupree and raised his glasses to peer into the agent’s face. “My, my—if it ain’t Andrew Aloisius Dupree!” he muttered. He stepped closer and for an instant seemed about to hug his visitor, but instead he put his glasses back on, took Dupree’s hand with both of his own. “Must be somethin’ serious. You wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
Dupree pressed his lips together and looked over his shoulder as if to admire the strange variety of goods that filled the room. He didn’t want to look into that eye. He fixed his gaze on the different colors of cascading human hair that hung like a curtain from a rod fixed to the ceiling. On one table, a bowl with a cork lid was full of molars. He saw cardboard boxes of dried animal parts. Silky shrouds, still marked by the reddish-brown outlines of bodies that had lain in them for years, were draped from hangers suspended from the ceiling, as if the souls of their deceased owners still inhabited them.
“What you need?”
Dupree reached into the same inside pocket where he’d carried the banknote and took out a list written in pencil. He gave it to Meire, who bent over to examine it. Two