Uptown Blues

by Seth Pevey

  “How much do you reckon they spent building that amusement park?” Felix asked. “And it shut down, what, the first week? Millions and millions of dollars just gone. Poof. And they’ve never been able to do anything with it.”

  “They can’t do anything. They should have never built a theme park in a swamp to begin with. That, my young friend, is nothing but a monument to foolishness. To the limits placed on us by geography. Gives me the creeps every time I drive by. I hope it rots back into the swamp sooner rather than later.”

  They passed the old amusement park and got off on a side road that wound its way down to the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. Here the roads were a mere suggestion, more potholes than pavement, everything all washed out and clinging to stolen earth. The El Camino struggled to make its way. Finally, the two detectives pulled up at a complex of buildings a stone’s throw from the shores of the lake itself. Though Melancon couldn’t quite make out the waters beyond the high earthen levee, he knew it was right there. He could smell it, that smell like your dog had come home salty after swimming in the sea all day, and he could almost taste it on the air, too. A wooden, brackish taste on a moist wind. They left the car and walked towards the doors.

  How many had smelled and tasted this breeze as their last sampling of freedom for a long while, he wondered, before they tagged you with the crazy stick and you lost everything.

  The main building was out of date, not much medical about its wide antebellum porch with its Doric columns and slate roof. Maybe they had converted it. Or maybe it was the whole point, Melancon thought. When someone led you here, someone you trusted, they didn’t want you getting any hint of what lay inside, waiting for you. At least, not before they could get a few burly orderlies flanking you. No, all they wanted was for you to get some wind off the lake, look up at an old plantation building, follow them inside and—

  He shuddered.

  It wasn’t so bad in reality as it was in his mind, though. At least not what he saw of the lobby, where the place seemed almost a decent sort—quiet, clean, clinical. But this was only the lobby, after all. Where were the padded rooms? The electroshock therapy, the—

  “Can I help you gentlemen?”

  He found himself at the front desk, a young woman in a white uniform greeting him and his partner.

  “Yes. We’re here to see Lashawn Jones.”

  “Oh.” The young woman blushed a bit. “She has asked…she’s not taking visitors.”

  “By her own request? Or doctor’s orders?”

  The receptionist scratched her head, fiddled with some paperwork in front of her. She put her hand on a phone receiver, but she didn’t pick it up. Then she looked at the detectives with clear hesitation.

  “Are you journalists?”

  “No, no,” Melancon said. “This is very important. We’re private detectives.”

  He put his credentials down on the counter. “But we’re not here to cause any trouble. We’re here to help.”

  She leaned forward and ran her eyes over the impotent badge.

  “She’s in a very vulnerable state right now, gentlemen. She has had a bit of what you might call a breakdown. She doesn’t want to talk to any policemen, I assume that would include the private sort as well.”

  Felix slid his raw hands onto the counter and leaned into the woman, flashing her a smile.

  “Do one thing for us. If it doesn’t work, we’ll go on our way.”

  “And what’s that, young man?”

  “Tell her we’re here about Louis Armstrong.”

  Soon after, they found themselves sitting at a foldout table and watching a large woman being led into the visiting room. She was unrestrained, tall and formidable in stature, wearing a gown of sorts, and just on the verge of being overweight. She looked still young, still pretty around the face—but motherly in a stern sort of way. Her latent beauty was clearly marred by terror and loss, both of which showed themselves in an expressive scowl on her face. Her stricken eyes bounced between the two detectives, and she began muttering to herself as she sat down, adjusted her too-small chair and looked up at them expectantly.

  “Who are you?” she asked, still wearing the scowl—though it was softening now into a pouty frown.

  “We’re here about Andre,” Melancon started.

  She sniffled, her eyes wincing and mouth crinkling with hidden pain. “I figured out that much. The damned nurses here won’t tell me a thing. I ask and I ask. I want to see the paper, watch the news. I want to call him. But they just stuff pills down my throat. I thought…I thought someone was supposed to listen. I thought that was what this was all about. I can’t sleep but can’t stay awake either. You ever feel anything like that?”

  The two detectives looked at each other.

  “Is Andre okay?” she said, her voice cracking with the sound of oncoming tears.

  “He’s—” Felix began.

  “He’s fine.” Melancon cut the young detective off, shooting him a pregnant look. “As fine as he can be, under the circumstances.” He gave the woman across the table contrite smile, but he could read the suspicion plainly in her face.

  “We were just wondering what you might be able to tell us about the boy, seeing as how must have been so close. We’re told that Andre will only talk to close family members. That’s adding a lot of difficulty to the investigation, seeing as the boy is the main witness,” Felix went on. “You raised him up, didn’t you?”

  Her eyes creased and she tucked in her lips. Melancon pulled a tissue from a box on a nearby table and passed it to her. She took one and pressed it to a leaking eye.

  “Little Andre. Little Andre. Little hayseed. You never seen a boy like that. Never.” Her gaze fixed to a far wall, where she stared for some time. When she snapped out of her haze, her eyes lost their fuzziness and again became small and angry. She turned on Melancon and snapped at him.

  “How you know…about Louis Armstrong? You’re the police?”

  The old detective put out two hands in a gesture of placation. “We’re friends. Friends of Andre’s. Friends of Mr. de Valencia, his tutor. Mr. de Valencia is a wealthy man who harbors a great love for your son.”

  “Stepson.”

  “Right. As I was saying. A friend of Mr. de Valencia’s is a friend of ours. He has great respect for Andre, and this situation has him worried sick. Sick about Andre’s future.”

  “I’m so damn sick of hearing about that boy’s future. Mercy. You’d almost think some folks ain’t alive and living and breathing the way they love to carry on and on about the future. Say, what’s it matter about the future when you going to take a bullet in broad daylight while just doing your job, Detective? And I’m the crazy one?”

  She clenched her jaw and rapped her knuckles on the fake wooden table a few times, looking down at it.

  “Well, what is he like, then? Right now. What kind of boy is he?” Melancon asked. “It’s hard to tell when he’s as quiet as he is.”

  “He’s a daddy’s boy. Was…a daddy’s boy. Mostly talked to his daddy,” she said. “He never would listen to me, even though I been his mama for damn near ten years. But he never acted up either. He really didn’t need to listen too well, because he mostly just did right all by himself. A grown little boy, kind of. Just not much good at…you know…the social things. He couldn’t go to school. Couldn’t make friends with the other boys. Oh, he talked to me sometimes. Mostly when he was upset. But he almost never got upset. Only thing he ever fussed about was his music and his horn. He’s just quiet, you know. There ain’t nothing…you know…really wrong with him. In fact, he’s real smart.”

  Melancon nodded, trying to imagine raising a silent, headstrong genius. He nearly shuddered at the thought.

  “Well, we aren’t here to upset you…but the boy…he needs his family. Now we understand he was released into the custody of your…brother Melph.”

  Her sniffling stopped. “Melph?” she asked.

  “That’s right. We thought that you had—
”

  “Yeah…I had told the police to give Andre to Melph. Is that where he is now? At Melph’s place?”

  The two detectives shot another wary glance at one another.

  “Melph was in the…in the war, you know? I’m not sure which one. Someplace real hot. He came back and just wasn’t the same. He’s got some problems from all that. Some of that…shell shock what you call it. I don’t know if he can take care of Andre, long-term you know. I’ve got to…try and get out of here somehow before…”

  They eagerly waited, each of them gripping their seats, to find out before what exactly. But Mrs. Jones seemed to pick that moment to change track.

  “We had a fight, you know. Me and Andre’s father. Me and Renato. It was about Andre. I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but we’ve been having trouble. Trouble with money. Well, actually that’s not quite right. We’ve been seeing the trouble with money coming for a long time. I don’t work, you see, because I have…well, I suppose I don’t need to tell you, because you can see me sitting here. I have always had some issues, with going outside. I do it, mind, but I get worked up when I have to do it a lot. So I mostly stay in. Then the roof started leaking last year, the hot water heater broke, and Renato started worrying the city might lay some people off with the tourist season being smaller than usual. So we…we had a fight…about Andre. It was a fight we’ve had a few times before.”

  “So what was the fight about?” Melancon asked, as carefully as he could.

  She sighed, looked around the room. “At least you listen. You’re the first man in a suit that has listened to me since this whole thing started. Even if that suit looks like it belongs in the seventies. You don’t have a wife, do you, Mr.…? What did you say your name was?”

  “You can call me David. And you are right, no wife, and never had much of a sense of style either. I find both can distract a man from his work, from his purpose.”

  She looked at him for a long while, clearly trying to draw out some meaning from the tired-looking old man. They made eye contact and she wasn’t the first to avert her eyes.

  “David…we fought for the same reason all married couples fight. Money and children. You know…I suppose you must know, if you’re friends with Andre’s tutor…and about Louis Armstrong…I guess you must know plenty about Andre’s talent.”

  “His horn blowing. Yes, we do,” Felix said.

  “Well, Renato was very…well, he didn’t want Andre getting a lot of special attention. Not yet. It was very important to him that Andre had a normal childhood. He didn’t want Andre being drug around from this show to that show, doing concerts, getting on TV and all that. Not yet. He said that he thought it would ruin the child, particularly with how shy and quiet he was, to be pushed out in front of crowds like some kind of trained seal or something. So, he was very, very protective about that. Meanwhile, I was getting phone calls from that Julian Oliver…offering us five thousand dollars here, ten thousand dollars there…and once even twenty thousand…for Andre to give concerts, be on TV shows, and so on and so forth. But it was always a big, fat NO from Mr. Adai, from Renato. Like to drive me crazy. See, Andre is Renato’s only son, and when they come down here from Greensburg—”

  “Whoa, slow down now. You mean Andre and his daddy…aren’t from New Orleans?”

  “Well, depends on what you call being from somewhere. Andre wouldn’t even remember the place, most likely. He’s been right here since he was three years old. That’s when they left Greensburg and came down. Ten years ago. I met Renato the first weekend he was down here, can you believe that?”

  Melancon had his notepad out now and was furiously scribbling. “Sounds like fate,” he said when the tip of his pencil broke.

  She nodded. “That’s just what it was.”

  “So, Andre wasn’t born here? But in Greensburg. Which is…”

  Felix had it pulled up on his phone and extended the map over towards his partner’s field of view. “About an hour and a half north of here. Small town. Not far from Amite, actually.”

  “Up by the Mississippi state line?” Melancon asked.

  She nodded again. “No, sir, Renato was definitely not from the Seventeenth Ward. He was an old country boy, even though he hid it pretty well. One of the first things that made me notice him was the way he walked down the street all slow, like he still might step on a snake, or like he was looking for a place to fish.”

  She almost smiled, but that smile quickly turned downwards into a grimace. “Maybe he wasn’t cut out for this place…this place with all its guns and blood.”

  Melancon was doing his best to keep her attention dialed in, to keep the wellspring of information flowing as long as he could. “What about Andre’s…biological mom. When did she pass away?”

  “She, uhh…well, all I know is Renato always said she went missing from a truck stop. They got those places up there for the long-haul truckers when they come off the interstate, right near the parish line. Casinos with showers and beds. You know the kind of stuff that goes on there? Because I don’t, and don’t want to either. All I know is from the couple of times Renato talked to me about it. Maybe three or four times over a decade. He wasn’t near as quiet as Andre, but he wasn’t a big talker either. Not about things like that, anyway.”

  Melancon scratched his chin, ran a handkerchief over his forehead.

  “She disappeared, huh?”

  Lashawn shrugged. “I don’t know much about it except that when they came down here, she wasn’t with them. And I was too happy with my new man to look a gift horse in the mouth too much.”

  An orderly had walked up behind her and bent down to whisper in her ear. She nodded sadly.

  “It’s time for group therapy. I’ve got to get going.”

  “Do you think…,” Felix began, leaving the question unfinished. Her eyes widened and her eyebrows raised.

  “You want to know if I’m really crazy or not, don’t you?”

  Felix reddened, but he slid his hands forward on the table towards her. “We care about Andre. He needs you.”

  “All I know is…if you can act normal a week after your husband gets shot in the face…you the crazy one. I’m going to do my best, for Andre, but…”

  A tear ran down her cheek just then. She turned her head and looked at Melancon a long time.

  “If you really care about Andre, there’s one thing you could do for me. For him, really.”

  “Anything,” the old detective said.

  She dug around in the pockets of her scrub pants and pulled out a folded envelope. The corners were dog-eared, and it looked as though someone had spilled water on it. She bit her lip, looked down at it for a while, and then stuck it out towards Melancon.

  “This is from Andre’s daddy. It’s a letter to him. He told me…if anything were to ever happen, I needed to give this to his little boy. I couldn’t do it that first night. I couldn’t do anything. But I stuck it in my bag once I knew I was going here. Can you promise me you’ll give it to Andre when you see him?”

  Melancon could feel the lump forming in his throat. He knew he better not hesitate.

  “You have our word,” Felix said.

  They watched her being led away by the orderly through the double doors of the ward. As they were standing up, Melancon’s phone began to buzz from his shirt pocket. He replaced it with the crumpled letter and flipped it open.

  “Hey, Janine.”

  “A hotelier called in with Renato’s RTA badge. Says some kid tried to use it as a fake ID. The NOPD has already gone in and taken the card, but I don’t think anybody brought the clerk in for questioning. Just thought you guys could maybe…you know…I thought maybe it was a good lead to help you find Andre. The guy didn’t let Andre stay, so I guess that means he’s sleeping on the street. I don’t want to think about that…don’t want it on my conscience.”

  “We’re on it,” he said and nodded to Felix.

  Sixteen

  I look down at the green, dirty
water of the Mississippi. I know it comes from far away and sweeps right through here, and that if I let it sweep me with it, there’s no telling where I’ll end up or what might happen to me.

  But then again, that’s already the spot I’m in, isn’t it? River or not, wet or dry, free or in some kind of a cage or waif’s home—there’s really no knowing what happens next. I never thought about it like that, not before this moment peeking down into the swirly river, but suddenly that dark water doesn’t seem nearly so bad as a lot of other things that may be coming.

  Like this man. He works for a riverboat, stands twice my height, and he knows my name well. “Mr. Adai,” he calls out to me, his arms out at his sides like he might lose his balance at any moment. The other passengers are starting to watch now. I see a woman in a sun hat cover her mouth and grab her little son up real close to her. The sense is that I’m wanted, just like in one of those old cowboy movies. My picture, my face, is up on the wall of the little cabin overlooking the deck, I’m sure. And then this man comes out, like the sheriff, and now he’s facing me down. After he takes another step forward, I feel the energy of his boot thumping down on the metal deck, closer now. I feel I can hear his breathing, even over the music (because the band keeps right on playing) and over the engine. I get that he’s proud and nervous and I can smell his aftershave mixed in with that wet-dog breeze coming off the factories and plants near the shore.

  I look down again at that water. So much of it. So dark and coming from so many places. But it all ends up right here.

  I’m not going to go with him. I won’t live with Melph. I know he doesn’t want me. Mama Jones probably wants me, but I don’t know if she could stand to see me every day wearing Daddy’s face and being so quiet, never making friends, just reminding her of everything. She has her own things, just like me. Her own problems. And I’m not going to go and live in some orphanage, either. I’m just not. The Waif’s Home for Boys was torn down a long time ago, just dust now, might as well be a fairy tale—torn all down to the ground just like Storyville, just like every place around. Just like everything in this flooded old place.