‘(4) A majority of the surviving adult brothers and sisters of the decedent.’ Ditto for that. Mr. William Douglas McCall’s siblings are all deceased and have been for a long time. And finally, ‘(5) A majority of the adult persons respectively in the next degrees of kindred as established in Civil Code Article 880 et seq,’ which is the nitty-gritty of the matter.”
“You memorized all of that,” Tom said incredulously. “Holy shit. I had a hard time with the National Anthem.”
“It’s my job,” Ophelia said scathingly.
“So how many adult persons do we have to find?”
“In order of descendants, parents, siblings, siblings’ descendants, ascendants starting with the deceased’s grandparents, and finally collateral relatives, in the nearest degree of kinship to the decedent.”
Tom looked blank. “Do you have to find all of them? I mean, can’t you find one grandkid that doesn’t give a flapping, flying crap and get that one to sign over the body to the town?”
Ophelia thought about it. The day wasn’t as wondrous as it had been before. There was a shade of bother to it that hadn’t been there before. It seemed as if the swift collection of William Douglas McCall’s earthly residue wouldn’t be as unproblematic as she had anticipated. “Do you know any of Mr. McCall’s grandchildren?”
Tom scratched his head. “Bill had a way of…alienating folks. Especially relatives. That’s why he had so many wives. The only reason that the last one stayed married to him so long was that she was mostly deaf. Apparently real forgiving, too.”
“She lived in Sawdust, right?” Ophelia asked the question but didn’t really need the answer.
Nodding Tom, added, “Bill’s mistress lived in Albie. Once Bill went into the home in Shreveport, Lenore, that’s her name, cleared out and went to California to live with her daughter.” He grimaced. “On account that Bill didn’t want to marry her. Guess he’d had enough of that particular institution. Seven times after all. I draw the line at once, myself.”
“That’s just peachy,” Ophelia said acerbically. “We need blood relatives, preferably grandchildren.”
“I’ll call John back,” Tom said weakly.
After another ten minutes Ophelia was reading a book on the mayoral duties of a Louisianan citizen and wondering if she could borrow it for the rare occasion that she had trouble getting to sleep at night. Tom hung up the phone with a tired wheeze.
“Wow,” he said, examining his scribbling on his desk calendar. “Bill had ten children. The oldest was born in 1920 and the youngest in 1964. All are dead, as you’ve said. The ten children had six grandchildren, some of whom were older than various uncles and aunts. Five of those grandchildren are dead, too. John said that Bill’s siblings had children, that would be Bill’s nieces and nephews, and he doesn’t have a clue where they would be located. I’ve got the name of a historian who specialized in Bill’s family. I believe he wrote a book about Bill. And perhaps we can talk to Lenore, Bill’s last mistress, to see if she knows where Bill’s relatives can be located. We could look in his house just as soon as-”
Ophelia slammed the book shut and threw it unceremoniously upon Tom’s desk. He flinched and wondered if his paperwork was all in order. He thought that perhaps it wasn’t and sincerely hoped to live through the day. She looked at him again and the anger cooled somewhat with her reflection. She said with deliberation, “So if none of these children, grandchildren, et cetera, are about, or were of a mind to be family-like with William Douglas McCall, then they won’t be rushing in to claim the body.”
Tom didn’t think that was a question but he nodded regardless. “Wouldn’t they have to prove a relationship?”
“Of course, they would,” Ophelia said with an abrupt bright smile. “Surely they would. Unless their last name was McCall, and they had birth certificates, marriage certificates and assorted official paperwork, they would be hard pressed to do so.”
“So what happens to Bill in the meantime?”
“The state searches for relatives,” Ophelia said carefully, thinking about the process. “When they can’t find any, and I’m not sure if they’ll have better luck than we would. In fact, I think they would probably give up after a cursory search and question period, with perhaps a write-up in the paper, then the state or parish is obligated to bury the body in a pauper’s grave, unless someone offers to pay for the funeral and interment. Perhaps it would be someone who has the proper facilities and means to give said honored and deceased individual the farewell that his legend deserves.”
“O-kay,” Tom said. “I reckon you mean Rector Mortuary.”
“Of course, I do,” Ophelia said with a snap. “Who else would want Bayou Billy?”
Chapter Six
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. 17:
I Confess!
I killed 3 Men and 2 Women on the Ole Miss!
Bayou Billy Tells All From Inside a Federal Prison!
The second man I killed was a no-account criminal by the name of Tyrone Payton. I was spending the night outside of New Orleans, sleeping on the side of a levee, trying not to get et alive by mosquitoes. In those days a fellow would spread mud over his bare face and arms to avoid getting bitten by the dratted little creepy-crawlies and I was no exception. Not putting mud on my body had not been my mistake. However, getting into a penny and nickel poker game with Tyrone Payton had been a grave error because I did not know how personally he would take his meager losses. Although I won enough money to pay for a bottle of liquor or a room, I had chosen the liquor and slept on the levee like the homeless wretch that I had become. I covered myself in the slimy, thick, mucus-like muck that lined the Great Mississippi River and laid myself down to listen to the sounds of river boats passing. Tyrone came creeping like the lowlife thug he probably had been born as, seeking to recoup his losses one way or the other. If he had known that I had already spent the money on the liquor, I’m certain that his aims would have been the same. If he wasn’t apt to get a return of his hard stolen cash then he would get his fists bloodied in treacherous revenge and then he would have rolled my warm corpse into the mighty Miss as a convenient way of covering up his unspeakable misdeeds. I remained awake despite the liquor coursing through my blood and when a screech owl alerted me of Tyrone’s presence, I leapt up with a forceful yell. Tyrone had not seen me because I was dressed in dark clothing and covered with mud to boot. Bellowing, I wrestled Tyrone to the ground. The other was hissing and spitting and taking the Lord’s name in vain. He cursed me and the mother who brought me forth into this world and when I could stand to hear no more of his foul, terrible mouth I issued forth a dire warning of which Tyrone took no interest. Then with a loud snap I broke his neck in my muscular grip. As I stood above his still quivering body, it occurred to me that it would be moral providence if his remains underwent exactly what he would have done to mine. My father always told me to do unto others what they would do unto you. So I did.
The Present
Friday, July 14th
Shreveport, Louisiana
“What do you think of this one?” Pascal Waterford asked, looking over the item as if it were a piece of well-marbled beef. Did it have enough substance? Did it appear to be fresh? Did it look like something he could put his teeth into? No matter how he tried to adjust himself to the process, Pascal couldn’t quite escape the chill that ran down his back like a leech was attached to his balls and there wasn’t anyone who could get it off except him.
It wasn’t exactly his taste, but then as he’d never actually had one of these before, he wasn’t sure what his taste was in such objects. It seemed like it was big enough and would keep well enough. But if he glanced over his shoulder he could see about three dozen other models and not one appeared to be the same. So much variety. Wow. Who knew?
Gibby Ross looked it over as well. Her eyes were scrupulous
as they gleaned over the piece. “Does it say what we need it to say?” she asked at last.
“What does it need to say?” Pascal asked tetchily. The hangover had passed with the consumption of a blended glass of orange juice, one half bottle of Coke with Lime, two aspirins, three ibuprofens, and one Advil, all topped with a teaspoon of Tabasco, not to mention the hair of the dog that Pascal had secretly added. Gibby had produced the blender from the café on the lower floor and gleefully created the concoction with more flair than he would have given her credit for having.
So Pascal stared at her instead of what they were about to buy and decided he very well might have created a monster. But Gibby was turning out to be not such a bad looking monster after all. The animated state she was in added to her character. Despite the fact that she was a few years younger than Pascal, he’d often thought that the vicious assistant had a corncob up her butt that made her so tight that the boys at the Metamucil company would have to roll their sleeves up in consternation. But Gibby Ross wasn’t quite the secretarial tyrant she pretended. She was interested in saving Sawdust City’s butt and she thought Don Swancott was a knuckle-headed, hemorrhoid-nibbling, brother-humping dipstick. Her exact words, by the way and was I impressed by that? Worse even, was that Pascal thought that, given the opportunity, she was quite capable of kneecapping the unsuspecting dimwit, Don, in a convenient dark alleyway.
On the other hand, her roman nose was still long and slightly beaked. Her face tended to be pinched. However, when those oversized, would-be Elton John glasses slid down that nose, he could see that her eyes were an attractive green and that they sparkled with absolute interest at the task in hand. Tendrils of her blonde hair, streaked with shots of cinnamon brown, had escaped their captivity and were gently framing her face. The final product of which was that Gibby looked more like an actual, somewhat attractive human being and less like the thing of which no man discussed at City Hall.
Most notably, Pascal hadn’t smelled her feet even one time on the hour long drive to Shreveport.
“It needs to say that I’m important,” Gibby said, waving one hand majestically, as if she were a queen doing the hand twist to her subjects. It made her boobs jiggle and Pascal definitely noticed that. He’d have to be dead not to notice that. In fact, he wondered why he hadn’t noticed her whamdanglers before. They weren’t little ones either. More on the order of a C cup, possibly a D, but that would take close scrutiny to discover. A little hands-on endeavor that Pascal would be happy to-
Her words cut in on his internal reverie and shook him loose. “-That I am something truly significant, that I speak to those who would look upon me, that I mean something.”
Pascal reluctantly transferred his gaze from the dynamic Gibby who he did not know particularly well to the entity in question. “It needs to say all of that?”
Gibby nodded solemnly. “Categorically. We’re in trouble if it doesn’t.”
“Can’t we wait until I talk to those banks in Dallas, first?”
“Your Honor,” Gibby protested. “Would you want to wait in limbo until someone got around to you? Would you want your family to do that? Would you want to be forgotten like some useless lump?”
“I don’t think I’d care one way or the other,” Pascal said positively.
“Of course you’d care,” Gibby said firmly. “Everyone cares. Otherwise, we’d dump them on the side of the road until they were dust.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” Pascal said. “Saves on cost, you know. Helps the environment. Feeds the worms and the vultures. Win-win situation all the way around.”
Gibby was aghast. “It isn’t done. It has to say something very, very imperative. Something proud. Something decent, even. It states that we care for ourselves, we love ourselves, and that we are proud to be human beings.” Pascal saw that her breasts were atwitter with a near patriotic fervor. Very nice fervor, those.
Pascal reached inside his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He flipped the worn leather bifold open and extracted a dented and scratched Bank of America Platinum MasterCard. He didn’t know exactly what was left to charge on the card, but he wasn’t going to let a little thing like being maxxed out from stopping him. He held the card up between index finger and thumb so that Gibby could see it clearly. “What it really, truly, awfully, desperately needs to say that it’s within the range of what’s left on this card so that the clerk doesn’t take the card and a pair of scissors and slice it in two pieces that I will never be able to use again.” He considered. “It also needs to say that it will fit in the vehicle we brought.”
Gibby’s face fell. So did her fervor, much to Pascal’s disappointment. “I don’t know why you couldn’t get a better car. One of those big, black things you see in the movies.”
Pascal chewed on the end of the MasterCard. “Big black things?”
“You know,” Gibby said quietly. “A hearse.”
“Where was I going to get a hearse?” Pascal objected. “The dog collector’s van is good enough. All we had to do was take out some of the cages.”
Groaning, Gibby said, “But it’s not proper.”
“I thought you said you weren’t a Baptist,” Pascal said suspiciously.
“I’m not,” she snarled. “But look, we’ve got to do him right.”
Pascal sighed. “The big, economy size.”
“Not the pine one.”
“We’re at Caskets R Us,” Pascal whispered sotto voce. “I think they’re used to cheapskates.”
“But this one is called ‘The Evening Mists of Time.’ It’s made out of birch,” Gibby said, as if birch was the next thing to heaven and gold combined into one marvelous thing that could sold to the unsuspecting masses. Then she leaned closer to read the inscription. “It was handmade and meticulously carved by insane asylum inmates in a Panamanian jungle as their only means of revenue.”
“Does it really say that?” Pascal asked guardedly. It did. “That doesn’t exactly endear itself to me. Do they really have birch in Panama? What if they left insane cooties? And oh my God, did you see the price?”
“It’s lined with white satin,” Gibby objected. “It’s got a pillow.”
“They’ll call the police when my credit card explodes,” he said. “What about that one?”
“It’s got rope handles,” Gibby said sourly. “Why don’t we just wrap him in aluminum foil?”
Pascal brightened. “How about one of those body bags until we have a-uh-” his voice trailed off as he saw the expression on Gibby’s face. He quickly scanned the room’s large inventory and looked at the bottom lines of the price tags for what would send his credit card into an inescapable death spiral. “What about that one?”
“Steel construction,” Gibby murmured approvingly, sizing the coffin up. He thought that maybe she looked at new cars the same way, although the thought made him more than slightly uneasy. “Classic lines. Moss pink velvet interior. Rust resistant. Inside chemically against rust and corrosion. Adjustable bed and mattress. Not bad. It’s called ‘My Eternal Heart at Rest.’”
“My eternal butt in a sling,” Pascal said under his breath.
“What?”
“My eternal heart at rest,” Pascal said quickly. “Sounds very peaceful. The price is right and I think it’s about the right size. But why in zippity-do-dah does it need an adjustable bed and mattress?”
Gibby tittered and covered her mouth.
“What?” he said. She had a sudden look on her face that said she had thought of something very, very naughty and Pascal very much wanted to know what it was. Not Baptist, huh? We’ll see about that.
“Maybe not everyone who uses it is dead,” she said carefully and very nearly collapsed into helpless laughter.
Pascal gave the casket a long measuring stare with a mental image of a large red butt bobbing up and down out of the open side. “I think it would be too small,” he said regretfully.
•
Good Parish Hospital was a massive brick build
ing that stood prominently in downtown Shreveport where it overlooked the casinos like an indulgent but decrepit overlord. It catered to the city’s poor and homeless and those peoples who could not get anything but Medicare and Medicaid insurances. It was the first stop for immigrants with and without green cards and the last stop for those who had spent their entire savings to prevent the onslaught of Father Time. Its doctors were tired and overworked and its halls were covered with cracked paint and threadworm carpets. It was a weary place full of shopworn luster and balloon-like dreams that had been deflated into leaky rubber shreds.
It was also where Bayou Billy had died two days before. A parish coroner had validated the death and the medical examiner had declined to perform an autopsy, and the corpse had been relegated to the hospital’s morgue until the next of kin could be notified. Or technically speaking until the body ran out of funds and they donated it to the state in lieu of payment.
William Douglas McCall’s next of kin had been his final wife, Ruby Atwater Rickard McCall. She had been mostly deaf in both ears and wretchedly tolerant in her attitude toward her once infamous husband. When she had died, her oldest daughter had paid for the burial next to her first husband in Resurrection Cemetery in Sawdust City. Billy had not attended the rites and had, in fact, declined to pay his part of the kitty for the wake and the memorial service. When Ruby’s eldest daughter, Lucy, had been contacted by Good Parish Hospital officials, she had rudely informed the medical records clerk that William Douglas McCall could decompose on the hospital bed for all eternity for all she cared and she would be damned and roasting marshmallows in hell before she paid one dime of his ultimate bill. Lucy did not offer to tell the clerk of other relatives and she certainly did not mention that certain other parties might be interested in obtaining the corpse. Then she had hung up on the hapless clerk, slamming the phone into the base unit much harder than she actually had to do.
Life and Death of Bayou Billy Page 6
