Voodoo River

by Robert Crais

  Mrs. Williams came to the door, still with the big purse, still with the pissy expression. “You don’t have time for all this, now, girl. You have to get back to work.”

  Chantel nodded without looking.

  “You late, that Jew’ll get after you.”

  Chantel closed her eyes. “Ada!”

  “Well, he’s a Jew, isn’t he?”

  “Ada. Please.”

  Mrs. Williams harumphed and stalked back into the house. Chantel Michot said, “That woman is such a trial.”

  I said, “Think about Leon. Maybe you’ll remember something else.”

  She stood up. “I may have something. You wait here.” She went into the house and came back a few minutes later with a King Edward cigar box and sat with it on her knees. “This is mostly Robert’s things, but there’s some stuff from Leon in here, too. Lord, I haven’t looked in here in years.”

  She opened the box and stared down at the contents, as if the letters and snapshots and papers within were treasures awaiting discovery. “You see Leon? Here’s Leon right here. That’s Lawrence and that’s Junior and that’s Daddy.”

  She handed me a yellowed Kodak snapshot with a little date marker on the white border: 1956. An older man was standing in front of an enormous Chevrolet roadster with three boys. Mr. Williams and his sons. Lawrence and Junior and Leon. They were light-skinned men with delicate features. Leon was the smallest, with large expressive eyes and long lashes and an athlete’s carriage. He would have been twelve. She said, “We had some good-looking men in this family, but that Leon, he was plain pretty.”

  “He’s handsome, all right.”

  She fingered through handwritten notes and birthday cards and a couple of elementary school report cards and tiny black-and-white snapshots of older black men and women, all neatly dressed and stiffly formal. “My momma gave me these things. She said these were the little bits of us that she held dear. This is me. This is Robert and Lawrence. Oh, my God, look how young.” She smiled broadly and the smile made her seem younger and quite pretty, as if for a moment she was free of the weight of the five children and the crummy job at the sausage factory. “Robert was killed in the army,” she said. “He died in that Tet thing.” That Tet thing.

  “Uh-huh.”

  She lifted out a white government envelope, its edge ragged from being torn, now yellow and flat from the years in the box. We regret to inform you… There were spots on the envelope. I wondered if they were tears. “They gave him a medal. I wonder where it is.”

  I shook my head.

  Mrs. Williams reappeared at the door. “You are going to be late now.”

  “I am busy, Ada.” Sharp.

  Ada shook her finger at me. “You are going to get her in trouble with that Jew.”

  “Ada!”

  Mrs. Williams stalked away.

  She said, “Oh, here’s some of Leon’s things.” She lifted out two brown newspaper clippings, the originals to the articles I’d read on the LSU microfiche, brittle and brown and very likely untouched since the day her mother had cut them from the Ville Platte Gazette and put them in the King Edward box. She took out more bits of paper and photographs and passed them to me. Leon sitting on a tractor that looked a million years old. Leon and a swaybacked mule. There were a couple of Mother’s Day cards drawn in a child’s hand and signed “Leon,” and a poem he had written. She handed me things as she found them, and she was still fingering through the box when I opened a piece of yellowed notebook paper filled with the doodles you make when you’re bored in class. Most of the page was class notes about the Louisiana Purchase, but in the borders there were finely detailed pencil drawings of Sherman tanks and World War II fighter planes and the initials EJ EJ EJ. LW+EJ.

  I was wondering about EJ when I saw a little heart at the bottom right-hand corner of the page. The kind kids draw when they have a crush on someone. And that’s when I knew about EJ, and all the rest of it, too.

  Inside the heart Leon Williams had printed I LOVE EDIE JOHNSON.

  Edie Johnson. Edie Boudreaux.

  Edith Boudreaux wasn’t Jodi Taylor’s sister. She was Jodi Taylor’s mother. And Jodi’s father was Leon Williams.

  16

  I folded the paper and handed it back to her and twice she spoke and both times I had to ask her to repeat herself. I love Edie Johnson. When we had gone through the rest of the things, she said, “Does any of this help?”

  “Yes. I believe it does.”

  She nodded, pleased that her effort was of value. “You wanna take any of these things, you may.”

  I smiled. “No. These are your precious things. Keep them safe.”

  She put the papers back in the King Edward box and closed it. “I wonder if they’ll ever catch that man who killed Leon.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s been so long now. I can’t imagine anyone would care.”

  I patted her hand and then I stood. “Somebody cares, Chantel. Somebody somewhere cares. I’ve always believed that.”

  She gave me a nice smile and we finished our lemonade and then I left. I followed the back roads north to Ville Platte, checked out of the motel there, then stopped by the Pig Stand and bought a link of boudin for the road. I told Dottie that my business here was finished, and that this would be our last time together. She laughed and told me that I’d be back. She touched the place beneath her eye as she had done before and said she had the second sight. I wished that she would have used it earlier. Jimmie Ray might still be alive.

  I ate the boudin as I drove back to Baton Rouge and listened to the same female radio evangelist screaming about plague-carriers from abroad and once more crossed the big Huey Long Bridge and arrived back at the Riverfront Ho-Jo at 1:40 that afternoon.

  I didn’t bother trying to call Sid Markowitz or Jodi Taylor. I booked the first available flight back to Los Angeles, checked out, then phoned Lucy Chenier’s office from the lobby. Darlene said that Lucy was in and asked if I wished to speak with her, but I said no, that I was at the Riverfront and would walk over. Ten minutes later I rode the elevator to the Sonnier, Melancon & Burke offices. Lucy’s smile was wide and bright, and she seemed glad to see me. Something ached in my chest when I looked at her, and the ache increased when I took her hand. I said, “I think I’ve come to the end of the line on this and there are some things we need to talk about. I’m going back to Los Angeles.”

  She stopped smiling, and said, “Oh.”

  We sat on the flower-print couch and I showed her the copies I’d made of the articles reporting Leon Williams’s murder, and as she read them I told her about Mrs. Lawrence Williams and Leon’s sister, Chantel Michot, and the little heart that said I LOVE EDIE JOHNSON. She finished reading before I finished talking, then sat quietly, watching me with sharp lawyer eyes until I was done with it. “Jodi told me none of this.”

  “I didn’t think that she had.”

  “And you believe she knew all of this? She knew that Leon Williams was her father.”

  “I think that’s how Jimmie Ray bought his Mustang. I think he went to them with the documentation, and they paid to have him sit on it.”

  She placed both hands in her lap, one atop the other, then stood and went to the window, and then she came back around her desk and leaned against the front of it. “This is silly. It’s the nineties. What does she think will happen?”

  I shrugged.

  She waved her hand. Adamant. “It isn’t even compelling evidence. ‘Edie Johnson’ is hardly an uncommon name. The possibility of coincidence is large.”

  “Maybe she didn’t see it that way.”

  She shook her head again. “But why hire us to find out something she already knew? Why lie to us about it? She had to believe that we’d find out.”

  “I’m going to ask her.”

  Lucy pursed her lips and stared at the floor. She took a breath, let it out, then looked up at me. “So you’re going back.”

  “I don’t think I was hired to
learn anything about her medical history. They knew Jimmie Ray was blackmailing them, so they didn’t hire me to uncover his identity. I think she just wanted to know if it was real.”

  Lucy sighed again and stared out the window. Maybe she, too, was looking for Huck and Jim.

  “Also, I don’t like being lied to. I like it less because the lying may have had something to do with getting Jimmie Ray Rebenack killed.”

  Lucy came over and sat beside me. “I know you’re angry, but may I offer something?”

  “Always.”

  “Adopted people often wonder at their histories, but there are more obvious traits by which we define ourselves. How tall we are. The color of our hair. I want you to consider that the entirety of Jodi Taylor’s identity has been called into question. Not just her name, but what she sees when she looks in the mirror.” Lucy’s face was softer now, and I wondered if she were putting herself in Jodi Taylor’s place. “She has a career and friends, and she is probably wondering if everyone in her life will see her differently. Do you understand?”

  “You’re making it hard to stay mad.”

  She smiled, but it was sad. “Mad is always easier, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. “Are you going to call them?”

  “Of course. I don’t like being lied to, either, and if my employment is at an end, then we have to terminate the file.”

  Termination. There didn’t seem to be a whole lot left to say. “I guess that’s it.”

  “I guess so.”

  I nodded at her. “I’m glad we had a chance to meet.”

  She nodded back. “Yes. I am, too.”

  We stared at each other. The Lawyer and the Big Time Op, not knowing what to say. She stood and I stood with her. “Well. I hope we stay in touch.”

  “Christmas. We can do cards.”

  “That would be nice.”

  “I write very funny cards.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  We stood like that for a time, and then she put out her hand and I took it. “Tell Ben I said ’bye.”

  “I will.”

  “I’ll see you, Lucy.”

  “Good-bye, Elvis.”

  Lucy went back to her desk and I rode the elevator down to my rental car, and four hours and twelve minutes later I was descending through the haze into midafternoon Los Angeles.

  It was ten minutes after three, L.A. time, and I was home. There had been no significant earthquakes in my absence, and the temperature was a balmy eighty-four, the humidity twenty-nine percent, winds out of the northwest. Home. The freeways were jammed, the smog was a rusty shade of orange, and Lucy Chenier was two thousand miles away. On the other hand, we didn’t have hundred-year-old snapping turtles and mutant Cajuns. Also, I wasn’t very likely to get anyone else murdered in the foreseeable future. If I could keep myself from strangling Sid Markowitz, I might even be able to drink enough beer to stop seeing Jimmie Ray Rebenack’s body. That’s the great thing about L.A.—anything’s possible. Portrait of the detective looking on the bright side of life.

  I phoned Sid Markowitz’s office from the terminal. His secretary said, “I’m sorry, but Mr. Markowitz is unavailable.”

  “This is Elvis Cole. Do you know that I’m working for him?”

  “Yes, sir. I do.”

  “It’s important that I speak with him.”

  “I’ll give him the message when he checks in, Mr. Cole. He’s at the studio now, with Ms. Taylor.”

  I hung up and dialed Jodi Taylor’s number on the General-Everett lot. A man’s voice answered. “Ms. Taylor’s office.”

  “This is Elvis Cole. Is Ms. Taylor or Mr. Markowitz available?”

  “Oh, hi, Mr. Cole. Jodi’s on the set, now. May I take a message and have her get back to you?”

  “Nope.”

  I rode the escalator down to baggage claim where a representative of the airline informed me that my bag had been misrouted to Kansas. They said that they would be very happy to deliver it to my home upon its recovery, and they smiled when they said it. I said fine. I caught the airport shuttle to long-term parking to pick up my car. The shuttle bus was jammed with Shriners from Orange County, and I had to stand. No problemo. A fat guy with breath like a urinal stood in front of me. Every time the shuttle hit a bump he lost his balance and stepped on my toes. Every time he stepped on my toes he would excuse himself and burp into my face. Sour. We were on the shuttle bus for twenty-two minutes, and most of that time I was trying not to breathe. Looking on the bright side. When I got to my car, the top had been slashed and my CD player stolen. A Blaupunkt. I tried to file a report, but the parking attendant didn’t speak English. Hey, that’s L.A. It took forty-five minutes to get out of the airport and onto the freeway, only to find that the freeway was gridlocked. A bald guy in a deuce-and-a-half truck cut me off in a sprint to the exit ramp. He called me an asshole, but he was probably having a bad day. At the bottom of the ramp he squeaked through on the yellow, but I got caught by the red. No big deal. Look at the bright side. A homeless woman wearing a garbage bag spritzed oil on my windshield and told me Jesus was coming. She said that in the meantime she’d be happy to clean my windshield for a dime. I paid her, and said that if Jesus didn’t get here soon I was going to stop looking on the bright side and kill somebody. Welcome home.

  I sat at the light and thought about Christmas.

  At Christmas, I could send Lucy Chenier a card.

  17

  Songbird kept its standing sets on Stage 12 at the rear of General-Everett Studios. I parked at a Shell station across from the front gate, called a friend of mine on the lot, and had them send down a pass.

  Much of the time when you walk along the back streets of a movie studio, you see Martians and Confederate soldiers and vehicles of strange design and other magical things. I have visited the different studios maybe a hundred times, and I have never grown tired of that little-boy surprise at seeing the strange and unexpected. But not this time. This time, the magic had been put away and the walk to Stage 12 seemed somehow oppressive and unwelcome.

  The little streets around Stage 12 were alive with activity. Big eighteen-wheelers were wedged against the soundstage walls, belly to butt with costume trailers and makeup trailers and a honeywagon. Econoline vans and station wagons were parked between the larger vehicles, all of which had little cards with the Songbird logo displayed in the windshields. Burly men wearing ball caps sat in the station wagons reading newspapers or Dean Koontz novels. Teamsters. Sid Markowitz’s Jaguar XJS convertible was parked behind a full-sized motor home near a door in the side of the soundstage with a red light over it. The red light was on, and a couple of people who looked like grips were watching it. I walked up like I had business there, and we stared at the light together. When the light went out, a loud buzzer rang inside the soundstage and we went in. I followed the two guys along a stream of heavy electrical cables between false walls and through dark sets: Jodi Taylor’s bedroom in the series, her family’s kitchen, the big bedroom where all four of her tiny blond children lived. Welcome to Oz, the Land of Make Believe where the nation’s favorite family drama comes to life.

  I came out at the roadhouse set where Jodi Taylor sang every week in Songbird, chasing her character’s dream of becoming a star. Maybe forty people were setting up for a shot: the camera crew positioning the camera on its dolly and gaffers rigging lights and stand-ins and extras waiting for their call to the set. A woman in an L.A. Raiders cap and baggy bush pants was with Jodi and the actor who played Jodi’s husband, framing a shot with her hands. She would be the director. A guy with a walkie-talkie and a guy with long gray hair were watching, the guy with the hair suggesting something every once in a while and whispering to the camera crew. The guy with the hair would be the director of photography. Sid Markowitz was talking to a woman in a business suit by a coffee machine in the shadows to the side of the set. I went over and said, “Hi, Sid.”

  Sid Markowitz’s face turned the color of fresh clams. “It’s yo
u.”

  I held up two fingers. “Two words, Sid. Leon Williams.”

  The fresh clam color went fishbelly white and Sid Markowitz pulled me away from the woman in the business suit. “Jesus Christ, keep your voice down. Whattaya doin’ here, f’christ’s sake? All this is confidential.”

  “That was before I found out you lied to me, Sid.”

  I stepped away from him into Jodi Taylor’s line of sight and crooked my finger at her. She looked at me as if she wasn’t quite sure who I was, and then she recognized me and her face shut down into a grim chalk mask. Now you’re smiling, now you’re not. Sid hurried up behind me and took my arm again. “C’mon, Cole, don’t make a scene here, okay?”

  I said, “If you don’t stop touching me, I’m going to break off your hand and stuff it up your ass.”

  Jodi Taylor left the woman in the Raiders cap and came up to me as if we were the only two people in the soundstage, as if everyone else were only shadows flickering on the wall, cast by a tree through an unseen window. She said, “Leon Williams is my father, isn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  Sid Markowitz had Jodi by the arm now, trying to move her away from me. “Jesus, would the two of you keep it down? Let’s go outside.” Then he was back with me again. “We had our reasons for not coming clean, all right? What’s the big deal?”

  “Jimmie Ray Rebenack is dead. A human being died, and now it’s time to tell the truth because I have to decide what to tell the police.”

  Neither Jodi Taylor nor Sid Markowitz said anything for several heartbeats, and then Sid Markowitz said, “I’m gonna call Bel, kid. Bel needs to know.” Beldon Stone was the president of General-Everett Television.

  I said, “Other people know about this?”

  “About this, but not about you. We hired you without telling anybody.”