One Must Wait

by Penny Mickelbury

  By the time Carole Ann was ready to depart for Louisiana, she didn't feel like the self whose husband had been murdered three months earlier. That event felt like the memory of a nightmare: Terrifying but not necessarily real. The part of that remained real to her was the knowledge that someone close to Al Crandall was his murderer, and that knowledge angered her, smoldered within her, was the fuel that drove her. The murderer was in Louisiana, and she was on her way to find him.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Jake's final piece of advice to her was that she fly into Atlanta, buy a second-hand car, and drive to Louisiana. Tommy, by now so in awe of the veteran detective that he was occasionally taking notes, pulled up short at this one and actually disagreed. Carole Ann was impressed by his temerity, and put off by his reasoning, which was that if something happened to her—if she disappeared, for instance—they would need to be able to prove that she'd been in Louisiana in the first place. Jake's reasoning was that if nobody knew she was in Louisiana, she might be able to ferret out some useful information. By keeping a low profile and blending into the scenery, Jake thought she might be able to see and hear enough to develop some leads. A serviceable and interesting but not ostentatious car with Georgia license plates would permit that much more effectively than would a shiny, new rental car, he argued. Southerners traveled back and forth between states all the time; nothing unusual in somebody from Louisiana having a relative or friend visiting from Georgia. Carole Ann found that she agreed. Tommy held firm to his position.

  Carole Ann bought a six-year old Chrysler LeBaron convertible, white with red interior. Actually, Dave bought it for her with her money, and he had to be bullied into it. He was adamantly opposed to her going to Louisiana for any reason, and most certainly not to dig around in the muck and mire that was whatever Parish Petroleum was. Their argument was so acrimonious that when Carole Ann left, they were not on speaking terms. Before he stopped talking to her, however, he gave her the name of a legal services lawyer in New Orleans who also taught at Xavier University, a man whom he knew only slightly but respected greatly. Warren Forchette was his name and he was, according to Dave, well-connected in Louisiana legal and political circles.

  Almost five hundred miles separated Atlanta and New Orleans. Almost five hundred of the most beautiful miles Carole Ann had ever seen. She could have made the trip in one day of sustained driving, but she was fascinated by the countryside that was so different from anything she'd ever seen: Gentle, rolling hills instead of the craggy, wild mountains that she was familiar with in the West; dark, sluggish creeks and streams and rivers that sauntered rather than raged; meadows and fields and forests of pine. And all of it feeling so close and immediate. She was accustomed to the vastness of California, of Arizona, of New Mexico—places that extended into forever. If she drove all day in California or New Mexico or Montana, she'd still be in California or New Mexico or Montana. If she drove all day here, she'd traverse four states. Just like driving from D.C. to New York: Four hours and five states.

  She took Interstate 75 south out of Atlanta and into Alabama, toward Montgomery, then began meandering and wandering and alternating between the swift-moving, congested interstate and the snail's-pace two-lane blacktops that criss-crossed Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi, leading, eventually, to Louisiana. On previous trips to Atlanta and New Orleans, Carole Ann had arrived at airports and had seen only what there is to see between airports and downtown hotels. On this journey, she saw how it looked to be a Southerner. Felt it, too, because she was hotter than she'd even been in her life, and that included summers growing up in Los Angeles and three years of Peace Corps field duty in West Africa, although the more she felt it, the closer this heat felt to the African heat than to the California heat.

  Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana were hot in the way that the Caribbean Islands are hot: Endlessly and inexorably. Carole Ann understood instinctively that it was not the kind of heat that could be dealt with intellectually, with some kind of mind-over-matter approach. This heat had to be accepted on its own terms. So she turned off the air conditioner and let down the top and welcomed it. The hot breath of the blowing wind alternately burned and caressed, and she knew that by the end of the day, she'd be toasted carob-bronze. She looked forward to the feeling, and to the sight of herself browner than she'd been in years. With her new hair cut, she'd barely resemble the old Carole Ann Gibson.

  At about four-thirty she angled back to Interstate 65 in search of a motel with a pool, preferably located on a thriving commercial strip, where she also would find a gas station, a car wash, a grocery store, and a family-style restaurant—her best bet for a decent meal on the road. Prior to her marriage to Al, she'd been an incorrigible road runner, and it was only his distaste for automobiles that had curbed her indulgence. She hadn't realized how much she missed the open road.

  Carole Ann exited I-65 at a place called Bay Minette, not more than thirty miles from Mobile and the Parish of Mexico, after following a series of billboard advertisements for a Roadway Inn and a Western Sizzler Steak House. Sunset would not occur for at least another four hours, given the change from Eastern to Central time that occurred when she entered Alabama, but she was tired, hungry, and anxious to delve into the box of files and documents she'd picked up from Ernestine on her way out of town—a box that had belonged to Al. Al's background research notes on the racism of environmental pollution, is how Ernestine had described it, totally baffling Carole Ann, as well as embarrassing her.

  Carole Ann had called Ernestine to ask whether she knew the exact name of the town Al had visited on his last trip to Louisiana back in January. She'd fashioned her question so that if Ernestine asked, she could say, truthfully, that she wished to visit her husband's last work site without divulging that she was going in search of a murderer. Ernestine had asked no questions. She had merely released a pent-up rush of emotion, the end result of which was that Carole Ann now had a box full of information, some of it Al's hand-written notes, on the war being waged by grassroots citizen groups nationwide against environmental polluters. And somewhere in that box was part of a name: Eldon Somebody—Ernestine couldn't remember his last name—who was Al's off-the-record contact person. Carole Ann had refused herself permission to contemplate the box or its contents all day, focusing instead on enjoying the scenery and the freedom of the road. She could put it off no longer.

  Following her good-habits-of-the-road routine, she first got the car washed to remove the dead bugs baked into the car's finish by the heat, then checked the oil and filled the tank so she'd be prepared for an early departure. She ate a better than expected dinner of barbecued chicken, grilled potatoes, and salad at the almost-empty restaurant. She bought a six pack of beer and a bag of popcorn. Then she checked into the Roadway Inn where she requested, and received, a corner room on the top floor overlooking the swimming pool. By six o'clock, when the average driver was just coming off the road, Carole Ann was ensconced in a chaise by the pool, beer in a plastic cup at hand, engrossed in the history of the crusade against environmental racism, and feeling a deep sadness settle over her, for clearly this was an issue of extreme concern to her murdered husband, and she had known nothing of it. Had known nothing of the issue that Al had perceived as the next great civil rights movement—the turning of the neighborhoods of poor people and people of color into the toxic waste and garbage dumps of the nation.

  In Chicago and St. Louis and Houston and Dallas and Memphis and Nashville and New Orleans, and in tiny towns and villages with names familiar only to the few hundred souls who lived and worked in them, governments and private industries conspired to bury and burn and ignore waste products only in the parts of town inhabited by Blacks and Hispanics and poor people of all colors. And those people were dying because of it. Al had known this. Could have proven it. Except for one small problem: He got paid to prove just the opposite, to use the law to break the law. It had been his job to protect the polluters. They had paid him a lot of m
oney to protect their right to dispose of industrial by-products and waste in the most expedient and most economical ways possible, which usually were the ways most devastating to the plant, animal, and human life in the vicinity. The more she read, the angrier she became at the callous and unconscionable disregard for life in the name of profit.

  Carole Ann reminded herself that she'd promised to follow to the letter the advice given by Jake and Tommy, and one of Jake's favorite admonitions was "don't get mad, get even." "Focus on the problem at hand" was a Tommy-ism.

  She began shifting and sorting through the stacks of files, keeping out only those relating to Louisiana, returning the others to the box. And then she found the name. Eldon Warmsley who lived in New Iberia. Al had written down his address and telephone number and the notation to call only between seven and nine in the evening. She didn't know where New Iberia was and the map was in the car. No matter. She was beginning to feel the effects of the sun and the beer and a day that had begun shortly after sunup. She dove into the pool, swam a lazy four laps in bathtub-warm water, collected her belongings, and went to her room.

  She took a hot shower and climbed naked into bed, relishing the crisp coolness of the sheets. She fully expected to lay there eating popcorn, drinking beer, and watching cable movies until sleep came. She therefore was caught completely off guard when sadness overwhelmed her, leaving her feeling alone and cut-off, not a part of anything or anyone. No longer comforted by the urgency of her purpose, no longer certain of its rightness. What the hell was she doing looking for a murderer? Murderers came to her. And what would she do with him when she found him, assuming that she found him, for, in truth, she had no reason to believe that she could penetrate the mysterious and historical veil of secrecy and silence that was Louisiana. Not even with the help of Warren Forchette and Eldon Warmsley. And there was no guarantee that they would help; they didn't even know her. The tears rose up and spilled over before she could stop them. Hot, burning tears that she didn't want, didn't need. She choked them back, snatched up the remote control and aimed it across the room at the television. Images of running cartoon figures. She punched the buttons and the images changed and shifted, none capturing her attention. She drifted off to sleep.

  The loneliness was still heavy like the humidity when she awoke the next morning. Unable to shake it, she decided to try and outrun it. She loaded the car, returned her room key to the motel office where she poured herself a cup of muddy-looking coffee, and got directly on the interstate and didn't slow down until I-65 merged with I-10 just south of Mobile. She was on the Mississippi state line, low-riding I-10 along the Gulf of Mexico, when the thought struck: Stay on I-10 straight through to Los Angeles. Go home to your mother. Screw New Orleans and Parish Petroleum and environmental racism and murderers. That thought sustained her all the way through Pascagoula and Biloxi and Gulfport—wonderfully gothic, peculiarly southern, names, places she'd have had to see first-hand as recently as yesterday. She knew that untold thousands of Black Louisianans and Mississippians had flocked to California two generations ago seeking...something. Her parents' parents had been part of that exodus. So was this, perhaps, a homecoming of sorts? Maybe she didn’t need to go all the way to LA and risk driving her mother to boredom. Maybe going to Louisiana was, in a way, going home. Maybe she’d discover some unknown thing about herself and, in the process, discover who murdered her husband.

  Such was the state of the traffic on her emotional and mental by-ways that when the green sign road sigh read NEW ORLEANS 20 MILES, she was pleasantly surprised and followed directions from that point on, signs directing her to the legendary heart of the Crescent City, the French Quarter, and those of Jake Graham directing her to the Embassy Suites in the French Quarter. Another of Jake's lessons: As a stranger, seek to blend in during the day. As a stranger, seek the safety of bright lights and crowds at night. "You go to a big-name hotel and act like a big name when you get there," he'd told her. "Wear your fancy New York and L.A. clothes in the hotel at night and when you go out to dinner, and use your gold cards," he'd said. "Act like you're a three-hundred dollar an hour lawyer. That way, hotel security will know to keep a protective eye on you," Jake had told her.

  Carole Ann's top floor corner suite delivered exactly what was promised to the business traveler: An office away from home. Ignoring her clothes, she unpacked and plugged in her laptop and stacked her notes and Al's files neatly on the desk. She located Warren Forchette's telephone number and called him, listening to Scott Joplin on the line while she was holding and waiting to be connected, and thinking that she liked the New Orleans brand of canned music. When Forchette came on the line, she heard her first authentic Louisiana accent. It was different from the Southern accents with which she was familiar in a way she could not define, but no less pleasant. He directed her to his office and had her read those directions back to him with an apology and the explanation that his office was not located in the most convenient part of town. Any time she arrived would be acceptable, he said. Carole Ann quickly showered, changed into a comfortable skirt and blouse, applied lipstick as her only make-up, and hurried out of the air conditioned chill of the room, back into the early afternoon sauna of New Orleans summer.

  Orleans Parish Legal Service Center was located in the kind of place that invites stereotype but Carole Ann couldn't help herself: It was in a ghetto. A dark, ugly, filthy, loud ghetto, but different from those she knew from LA and NY and DC. Here the streets were unpaved, the sidewalks were narrow wedges of chipped brick and rock and dirt that would be muddy mire in the rain. Here every structure listed and leaned so dangerously that Carole Ann could not imagine that they provided adequate shelter in any season. And here the heat was worse than anything she’d ever experienced, even in Africa: A disgusting, despairing, oppressive heat that felt as if it had been trapped and held in these narrow little streets for a century. Somebody's Voudoun curse realized.

  Few of the buildings, whether commercial or residential, had numbers, so Carole Ann was creeping along, peering first at the buildings on one side of the rutted street, then across at those on the other, muttering to herself that Warren Forchette must be a master of understatement to consider this location merely inconvenient. And as she scrutinized, a vague pattern began to reveal itself to her: The single-story commercial structures—the tiny grocery and liquor stores, the candle shops, the pool hall, even the churches—were gathering places for crowds of people who stood talking, smoking, drinking, listening to music. In front of the two-and-three-story residential structures people, usually women, sat. And usually alone.

  The Legal Service Center was recognizable because embedded in its grassy front yard was a neatly-lettered sign suspended from cast iron chains attached to a post arm, like a real estate for sale sign. Carole Ann parked, got out of the car, and took in the full effect of the legal center's presence. The three-story structure, once obviously a family home like its neighbors, was painted a pristine white and adorned by shiny black shutters at the windows, from which protruded loudly whining air conditioners on each of the three floors. Severely clipped deep green grass was bordered by the kinds of flowery things Carole Ann remembered seeing in Jake Graham's yard—bright and colorful and plentiful. The walkway was of obviously ancient brick, worn smooth by years and feet, and perfectly spaced and aligned. The front yard, like those of its neighbors, was deep, and on the journey to the front door, Carole Ann looked around, taking stock. The houses on either side of the Center, perhaps shamed into it, were considerably better cared for than the other houses in the area. Both had been painted in the relatively recent past—one white, like its imposing neighbor, the other pale yellow—and the yards of both were planted and reasonably well-cared for.

  The loud whirring of the air conditioners ceased to be irritating the moment Carole Ann opened the front door and felt the soothing cool of the office. She looked around at an interior that provided an extreme contrast to the outside. In here all was basic functionality. Mu
lti-colored metal folding chairs lined the walls of the rectangular waiting room that was the entrance, and bodies occupied each of the two-dozen or so chairs. The floor was highly polished but well-worn oak, and bare. The receptionist's desk was heavy, wooden and old fashioned, as was the armless swivel chair that held her. She, the telephone, and the computer at which she worked swiftly and efficiently, even as she constantly answered and forwarded calls, were the most modern aspects to the office.

  Carole Ann approached the desk and waited for the young woman's attention. Given the incessant ringing of the phone, and the speed with which her fingers danced across the keyboard, that could take a while. She looked around, beyond what she presumed to be the Center's caseload seated quietly and calmly in the hard folding chairs, toward a staircase in the center of a hallway that ran left and right from the stairs. A constant procession of foot-traffic up and down the stairs, back and forth in both directions on the hallway, created the feeling that there should be lots of noise. It was, however, strangely peaceful. And Carole Ann all of a sudden was aware that there was music in the background, a gentle, jazzy sound; and with that recognition, as if her more sensitive side were awakened, she became aware that the walls were a collector's paradise. Virtually every space on the gallery-white walls was home to some treasure: Paintings, sketches, photographs, mounted sculptures. Her fascinated scrutiny was cut short by a voice behind her.

  "Thank you for your patience, Miss. Can I help you?"

  Carole Ann turned to face the young receptionist, smiled, gave her name. "I'm here to see Warren Forchette. Carol Ann Gibson. He's expecting me."