by Lou Berney
“But of course,” she said. “Uncle Carlos has complete faith in this man. Never once has he failed us.”
Who? Guidry started to ask again. Instead he turned to stare at her. “Me?” he said. “No. I’m not going near that fucking car.”
“No?”
“I’m not going near that fucking car, Seraphine.” Guidry remembered to smile this time. “Not now, not a hundred years from now.”
She shrugged again. “But, mon cher,” she said, “in this matter who can we trust more than you? Who can you trust more?”
Only now did Guidry complete the arduous climb to the summit and, panting with exertion, realize just where Seraphine had led him. It had been her plan all along, he realized. Have Guidry stash the getaway Eldorado before the hit so that he’d be thoroughly motivated—his own ass on the line now—to get rid of the car afterward.
“Goddamn it,” he said. But you had to admire the dazzling footwork, the elegance of the maneuver. Who needed to tell the future when you could create it yourself?
Out on the street, Seraphine handed him a plane ticket.
“Your flight to Houston leaves tomorrow,” she said. “You’ll have to miss your Saturday-morning cartoons, I’m afraid. The car will be left for you downtown, in a pay lot across the street from the Rice Hotel.”
“What then?” he said.
“There’s a decommissioned-tank terminal on the ship channel. Take La Porte Road east. Keep going after you pass the Humble Oil refinery. You’ll see an unmarked road about a mile on.”
What if the feds had already found the Eldorado? They’d sit on it, of course. They’d wait for some poor idiot to show up and claim it.
“In the evening you’ll have all the privacy you need,” she said. “The ship channel is forty feet deep. Afterward walk half a mile up La Porte. There’s a filling station with a phone. You can call a cab from there. And me.”
She kissed him on the cheek. Her expensive scent, over the years, had never changed: fresh jasmine and what smelled like the scorched spices at the bottom of a cast-iron pan. She and Guidry had been lovers once, but so briefly and so long ago that he remembered that period only occasionally, and without much feeling about it one way or another. He doubted that Seraphine remembered it at all.
“You and Carlos never miss a button, do you?” Guidry said.
“So you see now, mon cher? Don’t worry.”
As Guidry walked back through the Quarter, Seraphine’s scent faded and his mind worked. It was true that Seraphine and Carlos never missed a button. But what if Guidry was one of those buttons? What if he was worried about the feds when in fact the real danger—Carlos, Seraphine—stood smiling right behind him?
Get rid of the Eldorado.
And then get rid of the man who got rid of the Eldorado. Get rid of the man who knows about Dallas.
The priest on the steps of St. Louis was still going strong. He was just a kid, barely out of the seminary, pudgy and apple-cheeked. He clasped his hands in front of him, like he was about to blow on the dice in hopes of a lucky roll.
“When we pass through the waters, God will be with us,” the priest was assuring his congregation. “When we walk through the fire, we shall not be burned.”
That wasn’t Guidry’s experience. He listened to the priest for another minute and then turned away.
4
Barone got the call at nine. He was ready for it. Seraphine told him to meet her at Kolb’s for dinner in half an hour, don’t be late.
Bitch. “When have I ever been late?” Barone said.
“I’m teasing, mon cher,” Seraphine said.
“Tell me. When have I ever been late?”
Kolb’s was the German restaurant on St. Charles Avenue, just off Canal Street. Dark-paneled walls and beer steins and platters of schnitzel with pickled beets. Carlos was Italian, but he loved German food. He loved every kind of food. Barone had never seen anyone in New Orleans pack it away like Carlos.
“Sit down,” Carlos said. “You want something to eat?”
The place was almost deserted, everyone at home watching the big news. “No,” Barone said.
“Have something to eat,” Carlos said.
The ceiling at Kolb’s was fitted with a system of fans connected by squeaking, creaking leather belts. A little wooden man in lederhosen turned a crank to keep the belts and the fans moving.
“His name is Ludwig,” Seraphine said. “Tireless and reliable, just like you.”
She smiled at Barone. She liked to make you think that she could read your mind, that she could predict your every move. Maybe she could.
“It’s a compliment, mon cher,” she said. “Don’t look so grumpy.”
“Try a bite of this,” Carlos said.
“No.”
“C’mon. You don’t like German food? Let bygones be bygones.”
“I’m not hungry.” Barone didn’t have anything against the Germans. The war had happened a long time ago.
Seraphine wasn’t eating either. She lit a cigarette and then set the matchbook on the table in front of her. She positioned it this way and that, observing it from various angles.
“It’s time for you to proceed,” she told Barone. As if he were too dumb to figure it out by himself. “The matters we discussed.”
“Houston?” he said.
“Yes.”
“What about Mackey Pagano? I don’t have time for that, too.”
“Don’t worry,” Seraphine said. “That’s already been taken care of.”
“Did I say I was worried?” Barone said.
“Your appointment in Houston is tomorrow evening,” she said. “As we discussed. You’ll need to go see Armand first, though. Tonight.”
Carlos still eating, not saying a word, letting Seraphine handle everything. Most people thought that Carlos kept her around—the well-dressed, well-spoken colored girl—for blow jobs and dictation. Barone knew better. For every problem that Carlos could think up, Seraphine had a solution.
“All right,” Barone said.
His Impala was parked on Dumaine, a block off Bourbon. Friday night and hardly a handful of people around. Down on the corner, an old colored man was blowing “’Round Midnight” on the alto sax for a few tourists. Barone walked over to listen. He had a minute.
The old colored man knew how to play. He hit a D-sharp and held it, the note rising and spreading like water over a levee.
The guy next to Barone jostled him a little. Barone felt a hand brush against his pocket. He reached down and grabbed the hand. It belonged to a scrawny punk with pitted cheeks. Needle marks up and down the pale belly of his arm.
“What’s the big idea, pal?” the dope fiend said, playing innocent. “You wanna hold hands with somebody, go find a—”
Barone bent his hand backward. The human wrist was fragile, a bird’s nest of twigs and tendons. He watched the dope fiend’s face change.
“Oh,” the dope fiend said.
“Shhh,” Barone said. “Let the man finish his tune.”
Barone couldn’t remember the first time he’d heard “’Round Midnight.” On the piano, probably. Over the years he’d listened to fifty, maybe a hundred different versions. Piano, sax, guitar, even trombone a time or two. The old colored man tonight made the song feel brand-new.
The music ended. The dope fiend’s knees sagged, and Barone turned him loose. The dope fiend stumbled away, not looking back, hunched over his hand like it was a flame he worried might flicker out.
Barone dropped a dollar bill in the sax case. The old man might have been fifty years old or he might have been eighty. The whites of his eyes were as yellow as an old cue ball, and there were needle marks running the length of his arms, too. Maybe the old man and the dope fiend were partners, one drawing the crowd so the other could rob it. Probably.
The old man looked down at the dollar bill and then looked back up. He adjusted the mouthpiece of his alto. He didn’t have anything to say to Barone.
Barone didn’t have anything to say to him. He walked over to his Impala and slid behind the wheel.
The west bank of the Mississippi, just across the river from New Orleans, was a dirty strip of scrapyards, body shops, and lopsided tenement buildings, the wood rotting off them. The Wank, people called it. Barone understood why. The smell was something else. A couple of refineries fired night and day, a burning funk that stuck to your clothes and skin. Ships dumped their garbage on the New Orleans side, and it washed up here. Dead fish, too, the ones even the gulls wouldn’t touch.
He pulled off the main road and guided the Impala down a narrow track of oyster-shell gravel that ran parallel to the train tracks. Tires crunching, headlights bouncing over rows of busted windshields and caved-in grills. A stack of chrome bumpers ten feet high.
It was after midnight, but the lights in the office were still on. Barone knew they would be. A man gets in a certain habit, he stays there.
Armand’s office was just a shack, four walls and a corrugated tin roof. The front room had a desk, a sofa with one arm sawed off so it would fit, and a camp stove that Armand used to boil coffee. The back room was behind a door that looked like any other door. Solid steel. Try to kick that in and walk with a limp for the rest of your life.
Armand gave Barone a big smile. He was happy to see Barone. Why not? Barone shopped the top-shelf merchandise and never dickered too much.
“What’s doing, baby?” Armand said. “Where you been at? How long since the last time you come round to see me? Three months?”
“Two,” Barone said.
“You want something to drink? Look at you. Nice and trim. That ain’t me, baby. Man, I just peek round the corner at a plate of beans and rice, I get fatter.” He grabbed his belly with both hands and jiggled it for Barone. “See that? So where you staying at these days? Still over there by Burgundy Street?”
“No.”
“What you think ’bout all that business up there in Dallas? Awful shame, ain’t it? You ask me, it was the Russians behind it. One hundred percent. You just wait and see. The Russians.”
“I’ve got a new piece of work,” Barone said.
Armand laughed. “Down to business. Every time.”
“I need something tonight.”
“What you looking for?”
“Tell me what you have.”
Armand took out his ring of keys. “Well, snubbies, take your pick, two-inch or four-inch. Clean, guaranteed. Or you want something with a little more gris-gris, I got another .22 Magnum, cut down to the stock.”
“How much for the .22?” Barone said.
“Cost me a nickel more than the last one did.”
Barone doubted it. “Clean?”
“Guaranteed.”
“I’m not paying an extra nickel.”
“Oh, baby, you gonna put me outta business.”
“Let’s see it,” Barone said.
Armand unlocked the door to the back room. It was half the size of the front room, just enough space for a few boxes and a steamer trunk. He squatted down to unlock the steamer trunk. The effort made him groan.
“How’s LaBruzzo and them?” Armand said. “You know who I run across the other day? That big ugly rumpkin from Curley’s Gym. You remember him, muscles all over. I know you remember him. Guess who he works for now. I’ll tell you who. He …”
Armand glanced over and saw the gun in Barone’s hand. A .357 Blackhawk.
It took a beat for the gun to register. Then Armand’s face went flat, like a mask coming off. He stood back up.
“I sold you that,” Armand said. “Didn’t I? Threw in a box of .38 Short Colts.”
“A couple of years ago,” Barone said.
There were no cars on the road this time of night, and the shack was a long way from the next yard over. But Barone never took chances, not if he could help it. He decided to wait for a barge to pass and blow its horn.
“Just listen to me now, baby,” Armand said. “You barking up the wrong tree. Carlos is. I ain’t have no idea what this all about.”
He had one hand at his side and the other one on his belly, making slow circles. Barone wasn’t worried. Armand never carried a gun. The guns in the trunk were never loaded.
“Please,” Armand said. “I ain’t sold nothing to nobody. Whatever happened up there in Dallas, I ain’t got the first idea. Put me in front of Jesus Christ himself and I’ll swear it.”
So Armand did have an idea what this was about after all. Barone wasn’t surprised.
“Please, baby, you know I know how to keep my mouth shut,” Armand said. “Always have, always will. Let me talk to Carlos. Let me straighten him out.”
“You remember that big Christmas party at Mandina’s?” Barone said. “A couple of years after the war.”
“Yeah, sure,” Armand said. He couldn’t figure out why Barone was asking about a long-ago Christmas party. He couldn’t figure out why Barone hadn’t shot him yet. He was starting to think that he might have a chance. “Sure. Sure, I remember that party.”
Winter of ’46 or ’47. Barone had just gone to work for Carlos. He was living in a cold-water flat down the street from the Roosevelt Hotel.
“There was a piano player,” Barone said. He wondered if that Christmas party at Mandina’s was when he heard “’Round Midnight” the first time. “A piano player with a top hat.”
“And there was a Christmas tree,” Armand said. Nodding and grinning and finally giving in to hope, the sweet embrace of it. “That’s right. A big old Christmas tree with an angel on top.”
Barone thought about the old colored man playing “’Round Midnight” on his alto sax earlier, his fingers flying over the keys. Some people were born with a gift.
Finally a barge blew its horn, so loud and low that Barone felt the throb in his back teeth. He pulled the trigger.
A quarter of a mile east of Armand’s scrapyard, driving back to the bridge, Barone saw a car coming on, headed in the opposite direction. An old Hudson Commodore with a sunshade like the brim of a baseball cap.
Behind the wheel a woman. Barone’s headlights lit up her face as they passed. Her headlights lit up his.
He tapped the brakes and swung around. When he caught the Commodore, he flashed his headlights. The Commodore pulled onto the shoulder. Barone parked behind it. On his way to the driver’s window, he popped his switchblade and gave the back tire a quick jab.
“Damn it to hell, you scared me to death.” The woman had her hair up in curlers. Who was she? Why was she out here this time of night? Barone supposed it didn’t matter, the who or the why. “I thought you was the damn cops.”
“No,” he said.
She was missing a piece of a front tooth. Her smile was friendly. “The cops is the last thing in the damn world I need right now.”
“You’ve got a flat,” Barone said.
“Damn it. That’s the next-to-the-last thing in the world I need.”
“Come look.”
She climbed out of the car and came around to the back. She wore an old housecoat the color of dirty dishwater. When she heard the back tire hissing, she laughed.
“Well, if that ain’t the cherry on top of my sundae.” She laughed again. She had a nice laugh, like the cheerful jingle of coins in a pocket. “After the day I had, it’s the damn cat’s pajamas.”
“Open the trunk,” Barone said. “I’ll change it out for you.”
“My hero,” she said.
He checked to make sure the road was empty and then cut her throat, turning her a little so that she didn’t spill blood on his suit. After a minute she relaxed, like a silk dress slipping off a hanger. Barone just had to let her slide into the trunk of the car, no effort at all.
5
While everyone else gathered around the television in the living room, Charlotte inspected the dining table to see what she might have forgotten. She’d been awake since five-thirty that morning, baking and basting and grating and mincing. And last night she’d stayed
up until almost midnight, polishing the silverware and ironing the Irish-lace tablecloth that Dooley’s parents had given them for their wedding.
Had she slept at all? She wasn’t entirely sure. At one point, lying on her back in the darkest hollow of the night, she’d felt the dog’s whiskery muzzle twitching close to her mouth, making sure she was still breathing.
Dooley’s mother, Martha, popped into the kitchen. “Need any help, Charlie?” she said.
“No thank you,” Charlotte said. “I’m just about ready.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
Both Martha and Dooley’s father, Arthur, were lovely people, gracious and unfailingly kind. If Charlotte had left the silver unpolished, the tablecloth unironed, if she’d forgotten the rolls or the cranberry sauce, they would have made a point not to notice.
Which made it worse somehow. Charlotte wished that her in-laws were less gracious, less lovely. Better a pair of cruel snippers, icy snubbers, implacable adversaries she could never hope to appease. The searchingly earnest way Dooley’s father studied Charlotte, the way his mother would reach out, unprompted, to pat Charlotte’s hand—their pity, at times, was agonizing.
In the living room, the mood was hushed and grim. The television report showed a horse-drawn caisson bearing the president’s casket from the White House to the Capitol. A reporter broke in to confirm that Lee Harvey Oswald, who had been shot earlier that morning, was dead.
Charlotte saw that Joan and Rosemary had snuck back inside to watch the TV.
“Rosemary,” she said. “Joan.”
Rosemary prepared to deliver arguments for the defense. “But, Mommy—”
“But nothing,” Charlotte said. “I told you to go play outside with your cousins.”
The girls had already been exposed to far too many hours of disturbing television news for which they were far too young. They understood that a bad man had killed the president of the United States. They didn’t need to know all the gruesome details.
