by Brian Hodge
“No?” he said, with arching eyebrows. Playing the callous asshole who could take this as a challenge instead of a shoulder to lean on.
He looked over to Allison Hunter, now solo, for the moment or for good, it didn’t matter.
“Just watch,” he said, and left Nan alone at the table as he ventured forth to seek his fortune.
Morning, and he woke up first, stranger in a strange bed, with twenty-some minutes to contemplate how ugly the scene was going to be when Allison’s alarm went off.
He wasn’t disappointed.
It had been too many years since he’d been through such a mutual tableau of self-loathing and newly-restored inhibitions. He could only imagine Allison’s horror at realizing whom she had allowed to violate the sanctity of this chamber. No corporate player, he, ten years her junior and out on his ass. He could do nothing for her but cause embarrassment. Clinically, he wondered if she’d ever spread for someone so low, so powerless. He recalled with a queasy repulsion that she had been wildly given to baby-talk.
Allison’s wide-eyed demands that he leave, her convulsive stripping of the sheet from the bed to clutch around her like a full-body veil — it was just what he needed, he’d gotten far more out of this than she had.
No coupling out of friendship, this, nor shared grief gone awry. Not even a pity fuck. Just some leftover flicker from a proposition born of cool self-interest, and he’d never dreamed he would be debased enough to need it. It was better than the bottle, went deeper somehow. What wretched delights we can wring from this, as long as we have nothing better to do; we can flay ourselves open with the mere presence of the other; lick each other’s scars with barbed wire tongues. We two sinners, we’re all the punishment we need.
Justin left her popping pills in the bathroom, the sheet half-falling away, spread behind her like a bridal train spotted with cum stains. Ray-Bans up, his armor, into this early morning and sunlight too revealing to maintain a lie: seven-thirty A.M., and he was headed for the loft with more guilt than any whore ever brought home.
But not yet, not yet.
Live this life, and you learned where to find bars open at this hour. Such thirst, a beer would take the edge off, rehydrate tissues as dry as sawdust. He wheeled through Tampa’s morning drive, first stopping at a magazine and news shop to pick up a couple of papers.
The bar next, table for one, beer for two. The Tampa Tribune he set aside, he’d get to it later. The New Orleans Times-Picayune was his first priority.
Combing each issue had become a daily ritual. Scouting for any mention of Andrew Jackson Mullavey or Nathan Forrest, some indication that either was getting justice due. As hobbies went, it was devoid of reward. Though certainly these two had enough to answer for; more all the time, it seemed.
Christophe Granvier had been late in phoning from Miami, but until the call came, Justin had given it little thought. No news is good news, he’d reasoned, until Christophe set him straight.
Napoleon Trintignant, gone. Justin had found with odd relief that he still had tears for the dead.
The rest of the Haitians — those who had left — were now in the struggle of their lives, just to stay in the country. Many of them were hidden throughout Miami with sympathizers among the sanctuary movement, until a suitable strategy could be worked out to augment their chances to avoid deportation.
Hardly seemed fair, with Mullavey walking around free.
Speaking of…
Justin homed in on a small article, a puff piece, about the man’s upcoming honors banquet. He’d forgotten all about that. Man of the Year, as selected by the CEO Alliance for a Brighter Tomorrow. Scheduled for this Friday night.
This morning was Wednesday. Two days away? This was actually in the realm of feasibility.
It took him another two beers to commit his outraged sense of justice to making the trip.
And one more to contemplate the very real possibility that he might not be coming back.
Chapter 34
What One Man Does, Another Can Undo
The tux fit better than it had in years. Mullavey smoothed the cummerbund into place and stood straight as an oak before the bedroom mirror. Pink-cheeked from a fresh shave, hair trimmed yesterday. Turning this way and that, he satisfied himself that from every angle he looked the Guest of Honor.
“Tell me something.” He spoke into the mirror. “I look as if I’ve lost some weight here lately?”
“Maybe you have. And maybe not.” Clarisse watched him from the bed with a dull-eyed stare. They’d not used the bed since last night, she was just spending too much time there as of late. “If I tell you yes, will you take me with you?”
“I’ve got a math problem for you.” Frowning, he tugged at both sides of his tie, couldn’t get it to come out looking level. “Are you ready? Here it is: How many times have we been over this one already?”
“Not enough, if I’m still staying here tonight.”
Defiant little thing. She smelled like a rum bottle. Must be some curse of the nouveau leisure class. While he was trimming down, Clarisse was, if anything, packing it on. Love or friendship or arrangement of convenience, how rare it seemed for two people to go the same direction at the same time.
Without a doubt Clarisse would never appreciate the demands expected of her if she were on his arm tonight. Put her in an evening gown, and while her beauty would be unquestioned, even coveted, a fine trophy, she would be lost amid polite society and the careful conversations that were as scripted as plays.
And then, yes, there would be the color of her skin. Divorce was one matter, quite acceptable, but this was another. He would provide no cause for tongues to wag.
“I promise you one thing,” he said. “You’ll never find anything more boring than you will a civic awards banquet. I’m doing you a favor and you don’t even recognize that.”
Clarisse rose up from the mattress, on her knees. “I’m not so sure it could be more boring than one day here. One day, every day.” She groped with heavy hand for a glass on the nightstand and gulped the rest of its contents. “I got no one to talk to here, got nothing to do, nowhere to go…”
He sighed. Ah, how quickly they learned to take for granted all that which, only weeks before, meant everything to them. Human nature, he supposed. Very flawed, in that there was no ceiling on the level of satisfaction.
He knew himself to be different. He’d known just how much he was going to miss those Haitians even before he’d had a chance to fathom the implications of their departure. Ungrateful wretches, every last one of them, but what could a man do? In this day and age, eat the loss and move along, and pray they caused him no problems down the road.
From those who worked the canefields, he had tried pulling a few to move up here to the house. Keep it clean, keep the meals cooked, the laundry on schedule. It would work out in time, certainly those people had motivation enough; he saw it every time they looked at him. And if they no longer seemed to consider Clarisse one of their own, a traitor, then maybe that was for the best. It freed his mind each day, while he was at the offices, that he didn’t have to worry about Clarisse back here taking one on as a pet stud, to shorten those long afternoons.
Such surprises never served a relationship well.
Evelyn — now there was a woman full of surprises in the end.
He was finding that he didn’t miss her nearly as much as he thought he might. It wasn’t so much the death of love and devotion that plagued him. Rather, it was the quiet moments of morning or evening when he might unburden himself of some trial or decision at the company, and realize Clarisse had no idea what he was talking about. Evelyn could always shed new light — or, at the very least, comprehend — but in retrospect, he really did have to wonder just how sound her judgment had become…
Eel? She had been carrying on with Eel? Now that hurt. Of course there was the sense of betrayal, but he could in hindsight concede her desire to take a lover. Tit for tat, so to speak. But Eel! She could have
at least exhibited better taste. It was all just so very disappointing.
He stood by the bedroom door. “Care to wait downstairs with me, for my ride?”
Clarisse waved it off from the bed, with a huff and a sullen toss of her hair. “What for? So I can stand in the door and wave goodbye to you? Don’t you be treating me like some new wife you just married. And don’t you expect me to act like one.”
Her hand burrowed through the sheets until it came out with a remote control, and she jabbed it toward the television. She left the channel on the first thing to materialize. Folded arms over chest, and she was absorbed.
Goodbye to you too, princess. Mullavey started downstairs.
Soon he would have to lay down some priorities if this household was to sustain its grandeur. This would mean, of course, rules, and their enforcement by a stronger hand than he had wielded most of the time, although it was firming considerably. Much about himself he recognized as new, better, stronger … a man whose emergence he rejoiced with the barbaric yawp of Whitman.
Lesser men crumbled beneath the strains of loss. There could be no greater pride than in proving the exception.
Mullavey paced along the grand hall, still ten minutes before the stretch limo was to arrive. He’d been driving himself these days, having lost a second chauffeur in as many months, but fortunately the CEO Alliance would have him arrive in no less than grand style. In the back — he had seen to this ahead of time — would be a suitable companion for his arm tonight. Who knew when to smile, what to say, and more importantly, what not to.
Professional courtesies remaining from Nathan’s tenure in this city were scarce, but this was one he could count on. And really, it was all he needed. Appearance was everything.
Nathan…
As went the marriage, so went the brotherhood. He’d heard nothing for weeks, assuming no news was good, in its way, and that Nathan was safe and far gone. Certainly Eel’s role as go-between had ended right here in this hall. That Kathleen had heard nothing from her husband was a puzzle, although perhaps Nathan too had been forced to reevaluate the merits of his relationship and found it lacking after all.
But in the end, frankly, who really gave a damn?
In time, without word to the contrary, it would undoubtedly seem as if Nathan had been an imaginary figure, at times a friend, often a foe of the most stubborn kind, the lifelong competitor. Perhaps the game had ended more than three weeks ago, and now look who was the one left standing.
He could stare into the mirror — and often did lately — and believe that perhaps Nathan truly was no more. That in his defeat at the hands of more violent rivals, Nathan had ceased to exist on his own, while the best, and strongest, parts of him returned home to be absorbed into the one rival he could never deny.
Andrew Jackson Mullavey, staring … wasn’t the evidence right there in his face, his body? The slimming waist, the firming jaw, even the resolve in his eyes. It was all the proof he would ever require that they had coalesced into one indomitable man.
Brother’s keeper, indeed.
Eel began to think he might soon forget the sight of the sun. This world of brick and mortar, stone and water, torch and candle — he hadn’t built it, but at least he had given it definition. And how might Nathan see him now? Skulking down here for weeks, where sunlight never reached, he was like some white creature mutating in a cave. The last thing to go would be his eyes.
Although he was all the better for it, this retreat like that of a holy man seeking enlightenment. His diet reduced to rough staples, he ate but a double handful each day. He called down the loa into soul pots and spent hours in their company, beseeching them with three weeks’ worth of prayers in preparation for what he wanted to accomplish.
At last, then, the final night.
Eel had hung a calendar on one wall of the humfo, and snapped a fingernail against the date. The thirteenth. Friday, the day preferred by sorcerers for the receptivity of their gods. Coincidence? He chose to think not.
“Andrew’s evening of glory,” Eel said. “I’m sorry to keep you from it.” Mouth twitching with a small grin. “I’m sure it pains him.”
“Bullshit.” Nathan’s voice sounded like a cough. “I wouldn’t have gone and you damn well know it.”
“I guess I forgot.” Eel watched him sit against the brick wall that served as his anchor, Nathan’s every limit defined by shackles and chains. “You were given a great gift in a twin. And you squandered that. You both did. So you managed to put the fear into a group of Haitians and felt like old confederates for a while. Do you realize how small that is? Do you have any idea?”
Nathan bristled with indignation. “That was A. J.’s fetish, it sure as hell wasn’t mine.”
“At least he did something with it.”
Nathan grumbled some epithet Eel couldn’t hear. This was the most they had spoken in four days, but by now everything of any importance — and a great many trivialities — had been said. Even Nathan’s wellspring of threats had dried up. Silence was golden.
Three weeks and one day of chains and a diet as rigorously reduced as Eel’s, and Nathan Forrest had become a very quiet man. Since awakening from the sap’s blow to find himself in bondage, Nathan had threatened and blustered, snarled and grieved, schemed and dangled the possibility of fortunes if only Eel would release him. In the end he’d turned into precisely what Eel had known he would: a cooperative, if sullen, prisoner who seemed to accept his plight with meager resolve only to get through each sunless day without a screaming breakdown…
And the punishment of the whip.
He’d demanded explanations in the beginning, but those would have served no purpose. Nathan eventually quit asking, and later, begging.
Besides, how to explain Michael Daudet’s offer, after his men had escorted Eel from his doctor’s visit? That subsequent meeting in the smoky back of an Algiers tavern, when the sleek-bearded Cajun had smiled shrewdly around a brown cigarette and proven himself an astute judge of character. He recognized a mercenary when he saw one. And to a mercenary, the work, whether of the flesh or of the spirit, was everything. Not who paid.
Right then Eel knew why he was still alive. Guns and muscle were cheap commodities, widely available, while his own talents were considerably more rare. Daudet was a man who simply could not resist their powerful allure. Or their potential.
The offer had been straightforward: fifty thousand dollars to turn over Nathan Forrest. Alive or dead; whatever was left would disappear all the same. Once they had concluded with that business — and show of good faith — they could discuss future arrangements.
“I’ll do you one better,” Eel had said. “Two for one. But it’ll take some time.”
Intriguing.
And he had walked out alive.
This could very well have been a poisoned carrot on a stick, an easy way to assure the disposal of a rival, although Eel suspected the offer was genuine. Daudet seemed to understand that a man of Eel’s bent was rarely prone to overthrowing his boss for the purpose of assuming greater control. Even so, how long before Daudet would consider the liability, if he hadn’t already: that a man who sold out one boss might someday sell out the next. Eel had seen that kind of paranoia in Washington, years before, and it had played a large factor in his decision to leave that life behind, as well. He would keep his word, but could do without another fifty thousand. It had never been about the money anyway.
“You’ve never been to Africa, have you?” Eel said.
Nathan snorted. “Now what use would I have for Africa?”
With chalk, Eel began tracing a new vèvè upon the floor. Symbol of the marassa, such an intricate weave that he’d had to consult a book. His shoulder had healed well enough that he could scrabble about the floor with minimal aches.
“It was the birthplace of mankind. Where it all started. You have to wonder, if all we know — at least all that matters — wasn’t first learned there. And we’ve just called everything by newe
r names.” Pausing for a moment to tip each of the three major axes in the grid with a rendering of a squat leaf. “I’ll find out someday. Or die in the looking … and then all the questions will be answered anyway.”
Nathan’s voice, that of a man all but broken, now content with so very little: “I never did understand you. Not one thing about you.”
Eel waited until the vèvè was complete before looking at him, and when he did, there was no more room for even the most shallow smile. “I’m not surprised,” he said.
Stripping his shirt away, candlelight gleaming orange on white flesh stretched taut over bones. It was time, and when he set flame to the waiting charges of gunpowder and the humfo filled with the sharp reek of sulfur, the gods of the petro realm smelled their summons—
And came.
He walked among New Orleans’s elite, its movers, its shakers, its brokers of power, and found it appalling that he blended so well none of them knew he didn’t belong. Perhaps one in thirty might suspect something amiss. Justin could speak their language, while a wholly different agenda lay beneath his surface, and maybe they would stroll away, cocktail in hand, wondering what he truly was. Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy…
Assassin?
Perish the thought.
He could be that instrument of divine retribution whose nature had so stymied a priest in a confessional, and in that spirit knew his mission had a holy sanction. And if he no longer believed in the reality of the divine, he could at least pretend, and adopt the fanatic’s zeal to see this through to its bloody end.
The Man of the Year ceremonies of the CEO Alliance for a Brighter Tomorrow were being held in the banquet hall of one of the city’s largest hotels. The Commodore Lafitte was everything in a hotel Justin could never afford, from red-jacket valet parking to a rooftop pool. It sat like a crown jewel in the business district, on Poydras Street, central to everything anyone could ever need.
He arrived midway through cocktails, stepping from a cab that had brought him from a hotel far more humble; he wasn’t about to fuss with his own car, not tonight. He wore no topcoat to check, because, on the chance that he got away, he certainly couldn’t take time to reclaim it.
