“I did not,” Pascal protested heatedly. “Like I would have done something like that. Everyone can just get eat at the soup kitchen this week, except me. I’m eating Alpo. They sell it half price at the Safeway when the can’s been dinged up. It tastes like corned hash, you know. If you mix it with week old eggs and a little stale cheese you get from behind the Taco Hut, then it’s really-”
“Jake called to confirm that he had the correct accounts to make the transfer,” Gibby said snidely. “You also told him to take as much out of your personal savings account as was necessary for the next month. He doesn’t think you’ve got enough in there to take care of business, by the way.”
Pascal swore. “Goddamnit all to hell. Well, motherfucker on a Popsicle stick. Son of a fuckfaced bitch.”
Gibby looked for her pencil. She was hearing some very new and very interesting phrases and words lately. She wanted to look them up in her dictionary. And if they weren’t defined in her dictionary, then they would be on the Internet. But Pascal was turning away. Was he angry that Jake from accounting had let the cat out of the bag or that there wasn’t enough money to cover the month?
“What were you so happy about?” Gibby asked instead, downright curious now. “You were dancing on my desk.”
Pascal cast a sideways glance at her and then looked down the hall. “You really want to know? I mean, you really want to know?”
“City’s going bankrupt, right?” Gibby said sourly. “I need to get my resume together. And when you’re out of a job, then you’re not going to have a savings account to fall back on, because of what you just did.” Her face twisted oddly. “Actually, I do want to know.”
Pascal looked both ways as if he were ascertaining security of the area and motioned her surreptitiously into his office. Gibby followed slowly. She wasn’t sure what to expect. His office looked much the same as it always did. Coffee cup on the desk without a coaster. Papers strewn across the broad wooden top. A framed oil portrait of the first mayor of Sawdust City dominated one wall. She didn’t see a half-drunk bottle of bourbon peeking out of a desk drawer and there wasn’t a single sex toy to be found anywhere.
Gibby was disappointed. The mayor shut the door behind them and indicated the newspaper on the desk. “Did you read The Sawdust City Journal this morning?”
“No,” Gibby answered plainly with distaste evident in her tone. “They covered a story when one of Old Lady Harrison’s twelve cats died last month. She had a Viking funeral for it. Floated a barge of tinder out on Toledo Bend Reservoir and set it on fire. She burned off her eyebrows lighting it.” She paused when she realized that Pascal was getting irritated. “I mean, what idiot would cover a story like that? And furthermore, what moron would print it?”
Running out of steam, Gibby looked the paper again. The headline was clear. ‘Bayou Billy Dead at 110.’ Okay, Bayou Billy is dead and he was a really old guy, too. Her eyebrows came together in a frown of concentration. Bayou Billy was a bank robber. Robbed banks and river boats, too. Oh, yes, he lived here. But I haven’t heard anything about him in years. Not since his last wife and his mistress got into a fight on Main Street, broke two plate glass windows and one fire hydrant. How does a pair of old women break a fire hydrant?
“The last time I heard anything about Billy was that he was in a home in…Shreveport, wasn’t it?” Gibby leaned over to look at the paper. “Yes. That is where he died. Peacefully, in his sleep, of old age. How about that? Hardly a surprise, considering his age. It’s not like he would have had a skydiving accident. It would have been more interesting if he’d been shot in his wheelchair trying to rob another bank.”
“And we get him,” Pascal said excitedly.
“We get him,” Gibby repeated dumbly. “But he’s dead.”
Pascal’s eyes rolled. “Of course he’s dead. But we get his body.”
Gibby’s head suddenly went blank. She really couldn’t understand why the mayor was so excited about a corpse, much less a 110 year old corpse. Good Lord above, that’s got to be one horrible smelling stiff. I mean, wicked yuck.
“And,” Pascal said slowly as if instructing a mentally deficient individual, “we get to bury him here, in Sawdust City.”
Gibby slowly nodded her head in time with Pascal’s words as if she was repeating them silently, but she still didn’t get the drift. The city didn’t have the money to pay the employees, there were old newspapers in the bathrooms because they’d run out of toilet paper last week, and forget about getting new toner for the printers, because everyone had been specifically instructed by the CFO, Bobby Joe Bruce, on the finer methods of shaking the last bit of toner loose from an depleted printer cartridge. So where was the money going to come from to bury a recently deceased reprobate?
“Do you have any idea how many people go to visit famous people’s graves?” Pascal asked carefully.
Having never visited a famous person’s grave, unless she counted Graceland, Gibby couldn’t begin to imagine. “More than one and less than a million?”
“Hundreds of thousands,” Pascal answered cautiously as if the number would dumbfound her.
Gibby sat down in the mayor’s leather chair and looked up at him expectantly. She couldn’t quite see where Pascal was going, but that he had a definitive plan was evident. “Maybe to see Marilyn Monroe’s grave,” she said warily. “Certainly, Elvis. Or the Pope. Lots of Catholics in the world. But not an old bank robber. Not hundreds of thousands, anyway.”
“The first annual Bayou Billy Festival,” Pascal exclaimed gleefully, motioning his hand in front of him as if he were pointing out a banner of significant size spread out before him. “A parade. Old town shootouts. Gift shops. Food vendors. Tours of the place the infamous Bayou Billy called home for the final years of his life.” His voice lowered into a shrewd undertone. “We could even have a…website. Bayou Billy t-shirts. Bayou Billy mugs. Bayou Billy handguns. Plastic, of course. Bayou Billy dolls. Perhaps even created from the Franklin Mint.”
“Ooo,” Gibby breathed appropriately.
“I’m going to talk to some bankers in Dallas this afternoon,” Pascal went on. “See if we can’t get a nice business plan approved and an appropriate loan for the start of the venture. But first, we’ve got to build Bayou Billy a suitable monument.”
“Something large and gaudy,” Gibby added. “The place where he will be buried has to catch folks’ attention. Really something eye-catchingly hideous.”
“Lots of marble and statues,” Pascal put in.
“Lights and ornate Japanese boxwoods,” Gibby said.
“Neon lights,” Pascal said.
“Too much,” Gibby interrupted.
“Yeah, that’s too much. But we could have a bar with neon lights. Bayou Billy’s Outlaw Inn. Barmaids in leather miniskirts and wearing six-guns. Plastic, of course.” Pascal rubbed his hands together.
Gibby shrugged. “How do you know we get his body?”
Pascal waved a hand casually. “His last wife is buried here. Two of his children are in Resurrection Cemetery. Where else would he be buried?”
Chapter Five
From an article in Deadman Detective, ‘I Killed 3 Men and 2 Women on the Ole Miss!’, August, 1971, written by William ‘Bayou Billy’ McCall, edited by George Hathaway, pg. 16:
I Confess!
I killed 3 Men and 2 Women on the Ole Miss!
Bayou Billy Tells All From Inside a Federal Prison!
I killed my first man in 1930. His name was Bob, as I don’t recall his last name, and he aimed to take my coffee and beans from me. I took a sharpened screwdriver that I used for protection and used it upon him, not stopping until the man no longer wanted to steal from me. I don’t even remember what state I was in at the time. It was during this time that I rode the rails and the river boats, worked for whatever farmer or dock boss who would have me, and slept under the stars. In the winter, I went south, as far as New Orleans. In the summer, I went as far as Minnesota once, and it’s as cold as a w
itch’s elbow even in the summer time. Many folks were starving and more folks wanted to take from you what you had. I stole when I had to steal, when I was hungry, and when I needed something I couldn’t get any other way. Bob, as I recall, was one of those men who would steal anything from anyone. Not because he needed it particularly, or because he was desperate. It was just the way he was, and up until that point in time, Bob and I got along just fine. It didn’t matter to him at all that the coffee grinds had been used three times before or that the beans were a week old and smelling poorly. So he attacked me in the night whilst I slept. I took the screwdriver from under my pack where I lay my head and stabbed him while he attempted to strangle me. If the situation had been reversed I would have hit him over the head with a large rock and then he would have no chance of defending himself with a weapon such as the shiv that I had. It pays real good to have the advantage over a fellow who wants what you’ve got.
The Present
Friday, July 14th
Albie, Louisiana
The plan was simple. Ophelia Rector would go to Shreveport and as the owner and head funeral director of Rector Mortuary, she would claim William Douglas McCall’s body before anyone got a notion in their heads to do anything else with him. After all, the order of priority was clear. The manner in which events were occurring was utterly wonderful. The day was like a fresh breath of spring air. It felt absolutely glorious to be alive.
“So where is his will?” she asked absently. Of course, there would be a will, with a clear executor, who would merely need the proper incentive to put the man where he rightfully deserved to lie in his eternal slumber.
Tom Carew, the mayor of Albie, Louisiana, dithered. “I don’t know,” he said, at last.
Ophelia perked up and not in a good way. It was Friday morning. The sky was brilliantly blue. Albie’s City Hall building looked clean and alive as she had entered it, greeting people amicably, and Tom had seen her immediately, as if he knew exactly for what she had come. After all, he’d very likely read The Sawdust City Journal the day before. It was the only local newspaper for the two towns and included news on both sides of the Sabine River.
“You don’t know,” she said slowly. She was standing in Tom’s office, looking at his framed bachelor of arts in underwater basket weaving diploma or whatever the major had been, and creating Bayou Billy’s astonishing monument in her head. Ophelia turned and gave Tom a look that would have frozen solid the devil’s ass in an instant.
Tom shivered involuntarily. “Bill always said he wanted to be buried here,” he replied feebly.
Ophelia pursed her lips. On this particular day she was dressed in a bashful pink Ralph Lauren linen jacket which covered up a pink lace tank top and she was wearing matching bashful pink linen pants with a pair of gold metallic sling back sandals. Her purse was a Kate Spade calfskin hobo. Her makeup was skillfully applied and she appeared to be ten years younger than she actually was. If a passing stranger had seen her, then they might have guessed she was a wife of a wealthy land owner, a socialite, a woman of means, and little to do but play at charities and the political event. They would have been drastically wrong in their assessment.
“Do you happen to know anything about funereal law in the state of Louisiana, Tom?” she asked carefully, calmly transferring her gaze to her hands as she examined her French manicured nails for chips.
Tom scooted forward in his seat and cautiously considered his answer. “Well, I buried my daddy last year. You remember. You took care of the details. A right fine event. Daddy would have liked it himself.” He chuckled weakly as if he hoped the sentiment would be catching. It wasn’t.
A wintry smile crossed Ophelia’s lips. Repeat business was the best way of keeping Rector Mortuary going that there was; people were always going to continue to pass into the great unknown. Just as Tom Carew’s father, Earnest, had done. Just as his wife, Francine Carew, had done a few years previously. Just as Bayou Billy had done.
“Was there any disagreement about what was to be done with your father’s mortal remains, Tom?” Ophelia finished her fingernails and turned back to face the mayor of Albie. It was a rhetorical question, but Tom felt as if he had to answer anyway. The first and major rule of being a politician was to say as little as possible, but when it came to speaking with Ophelia Rector, inane words spilled forth helplessly from Tom’s mouth.
“No,” he said. “Sis and I were agreeable on that. Daddy wanted to be right next to Mama in Albie Cemetery. Not cremated or anything like that. Solid oak coffin. Memorial service at the Methodist Church. The church choir singing some of Daddy’s favorite hymns. He pretty much spelled it out years before. You know that, Miz Ophelia.”
“I do know that,” she admitted firmly. “And William Douglas McCall stated to you that he wished to be buried in Albie, as well?”
“Many times,” Tom said. An uncomfortable expression crossed over his visage as he was about to admit something that he would have never admitted to doing in public. “In exchange for…certain liberties.”
Ophelia frowned. “Liberties.”
Tom shifted painfully. It appeared as though he had hemorrhoids and no anti-itching cream in sight.
“Liberties?” Ophelia prompted.
Tom looked around him as if something would happen that would save him from having to answer to Ophelia Rector. Perhaps a meteor would fall from the sky. But there was nothing and he finally spat out the words in a vomitive heap. “We didn’t bill him for light, water, or trash in the last decade or so. He also didn’t pay a dime of city taxes.” Shrugging his shoulders with disgust, he paused and then went on apologetically. “Once a person reaches a certain age their taxes are rescinded indefinitely. He was a thousand years old, for God’s sake. It would have been like taking a Milk-Bone away from a Cocker Spaniel puppy.”
“You made an arrangement with him,” Ophelia let the words roll of her tongue with a sniggling amount of pleasure of the information. “Tit for tat.”
“Well, his dead tit for our free tat,” Tom nodded. “We knew from the beginning that having Bill’s body here would be good for tourism. Bill wanted it that way, and we thought it was a good investment.”
“But you don’t know if he put it down in a will,” Ophelia said.
“I’ll call his lawyer. I know I recommended the guy when Bill divorced his sixth wife, or was it his fifth?” Tom said quickly. He reached for his phone so quickly he knocked it on the floor. While he held the phone receiver in one hand and flipped through his rolodex with the other, he said, “Can I get my girl to get you some coffee, Miz Ophelia?”
Ophelia didn’t say a word. She merely stared at him.
“I guess that’s a no,” Tom said. His eyes focused on the little Rolodex pages. “Okay, here we go. John Heggenstaller. He’s got a little practice in Natchitoches. He’s…uh…” Tom’s eyes came to rest on Ophelia’s face and his words died out. He dialed the number as speedily as he could.
Precisely ninety seconds later, Tom had his answer. It wasn’t the one he wanted. He said goodbye to John Heggenstaller, Esquire, and reluctantly put the phone back into the base unit.
“No will,” Ophelia said coldly.
“John says that Bill didn’t care for the idea of a will, although he tried to get him to write one on more than one occasion.”
“Then were there instructions as to the disposition of the corporeal vestiges?” Ophelia went on benignly.
“Corporeal vestiges?” Tom looked confused. “Oh, you mean Bill’s body. John said that Bill never told him one or the other. All John did was to handle the one divorce and a property dispute with one of his neighbors. I believe he also used John to sue someone about a girl who had slapped him upside his head when he grabbed her…uh. Never mind.”
“Then we come back to our original question that I posed to you,” Ophelia said quietly. “What do you know about Louisianan funerary law?”
“Not much,” Tom said pathetically, wishing he was a hapless, brainl
ess mushroom blithely growing in a faraway rain forest.
“I’ll explain it to you.”
“Oh, good.” The words came out exactly the way Tom meant them, slightly tinged with cynicism and more than dripping with reluctant acceptance that he had categorically no choice in the matter.
“I’m quoting to you from Title 8, Chapter 10 of the Louisiana Revised Statute, ‘Except in cases of lawful dissection or where a dead body shall rightfully be carried through or removed from the state for the purposes of interment or cremation elsewhere, every dead body of a human being lying within this state, and the remains of any dissected body, after dissection, shall be decently interred or cremated within a reasonable time after death.’” Ophelia looked carefully at the diamond ring on her left hand. It needed to be cleaned. Two karats was just the correct image she wanted to project, but it didn’t work if the diamond didn’t glitter intensely.
“Okay,” Tom said. “Bury him fast.”
“Correct. Then most importantly, ‘The right to control interment, as defined in R.S. 8:1(26), of the remains of a deceased person, unless other specific directions have been given by the decedent in the form of a written and notarized declaration, vests in and devolves upon the following in the order named: (1) The surviving spouse, if no petition for divorce has been filed by either spouse prior to the death of the decedent spouse.’”
Ophelia paused and said, “Mr. William Douglas McCall had no written, notarized declaration, and no surviving spouse, so that’s that with that section.” Then without hesitation, she resumed quoting, “‘(2) A majority of the surviving adult children of the decedent, not including grandchildren or other more remote descendants.’”
Ophelia stopped again. “All of Mr. William Douglas McCall’s children are deceased and that’s the end of that.” Then she went back to the quoting, “‘(3) The surviving parents of the decedent.’ Well, he was 110 years old and that’s more moot than a serial killer saying he’s sorry to his murder victims.
Life and Death of Bayou Billy Page 5
