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"But understand, I didn't make myself rich as a hit man. It washeroin first, and then cocaine, and with the cocaine it was going backto some of the very same cowboys I'd known in the beginning, whoflew the cocaine over the border same fashion, same routes, sameplanes! You know the history of it. Everyone does today. The earlydope dealers were crude in their methods. It was 'cops and robbers'
with the government guys. The planes would outrun the governmentplanes, and when the planes landed, sometimes they were so stuffedwith cocaine the driver couldn't wriggle out of the cockpit, and we'drun out and get the stuff, and load it up and get the hell out of there.""So I've heard.""Now there are geniuses in the business, people who know how touse cellular phones and computers and laundering techniques formoney which no one can trace. But then? I was the genius of thedopers! Sometimes the whole thing was as cumbersome as movingfurniture, I tell you. And I went in there, organizing, picking my con-fidants and my mules, you know, for crossing the borders, and evenbefore cocaine ever hit the streets, so to speak, I was doing beautifullyin New York and L.A. with the rich, you know, the kind of customersto whom you deliver personally. They never have to even leave theirpalatial homes. You get the call. You show up. Your stuff is pure.
They like you. But I had to move out from there. I wasn't going to bedependent upon that.
"I was too clever. I made some real-estate deals that were purebrilliance on my part, and having the cash on hand, and you knowthose were the days of hellish inflation. I really cleaned up.""But how did Terry get involved in it, and Dora?""Pure fluke. Or destiny. Who knows? Went home to New Or-leans to see my mother, brushed up against Terry and got her preg-nant. Damned fool.
"I was twenty-two, my mother was really dying this time. Mymother said, 'Roger, please come home.' That stupid boyfriend withdie cracked face had died. She was all alone. I'd been sending herplenty of money all along.
''The boardinghouse was now her private home, she had twomaids and a driver to take her around town in a Cadillac whenevershe felt the desire. She'd enjoyed it immensely, never asking anyquestions about the money, and of course I'd been collectingWynken. I had two more books of Wynken by that time and mytreasure storehouse in New York already, but we can get to that later on.
Just keep Wynken in the back of your mind.
"My mother had never really asked me for anything. She had thebig bedroom upstairs now to herself. She said she talked to all theothers who had gone on ahead, her poor old sweet dead brotherMickey, and her dead sister, Alice, and her mother, the Irish maid?
the founder of our family, you might say梩o whom the house hadbeen willed by the crazy lady who lived there. My mother was alsotalking a lot to Little Richard. That was a brother that died when hewas four. Lockjaw- Little Richard. She said Little Richard waswalking around with her, telling her it was time to come.
"But she wanted me to come home. She wanted me there in thatroom. I knew all this. I understood. She had sat with boarders thatwere dying. I had sat with others than Old Captain. So I went home.
"Nobody knew where I was headed, or what my real name was, orwhere I came from. So it was easy to slip out of New York. I went tothe house on St. Charles Avenue and sat in the sickroom with her,holding the little vomit cup to her chin, wiping her spittle, and tryingto get her on the bedpan when the agency didn't have a nurse to send.
We had help, yes, but she didn't want the help, you know. She didn'twant the colored girl, as she called her. Or that horrible nurse. And Imade the amazing discovery that these things didn't disgust memuch. I washed so many sheets. Of course there was a machine to putthem in, but I changed them over and over for her. I didn't mind.
Maybe I was never normal. In any event, I simply did what had to bedone. I rinsed out that bedpan a thousand times, wiped it off, sprin-kled powder on it, and set it by the bed. There is no foul smell whichlasts forever after all.""Not on this earth at least," I murmured. But he didn't hear me,thank God.
"This went on for two weeks. She didn't want to go to MercyHospital. I hired nurses round the clock just for backup, you know, sothey could take her vital signs when I got frightened. I played musicfor her. All the predictable things, said the rosary out loud with her.
Usual deathbed scene. From two to four in the afternoon she toler-?ated visitors. Old cousins came. 'Where is Roger?' I stayed out ofsight.""You weren't torn to pieces by her suffering.""I wasn't crazy about it, I can tell you that. She had cancer allthrough her and no amount of money could save her. I wanted her tohurry, and I couldn't bear watching it, no, but there has always been adeep ruthless side to me that says, Do what you have to do. And Istayed in that room without sleep day in and day out and all night tillshe died.
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