A Marked Man

by Stella Cameron

Kelly clapped his hands over his ears and he was not the only one who did. “Jailhouse Rock,” as only Elvis could sing it, blared through the speakers from the jukebox, cutting off Jellyroll Morton on the sound system.

  Max smiled at his diminishing pile of softshell crabs. Folks called Roche “oblivious” and Max guessed they were right, but he liked him the way he was.

  “Dammit, he can make me mad,” Kelly said. “Listen to that racket. Who’s the Elvis look-alike over there?” He shifted to see better. “Black wig and a white suit. And damn me if he isn’t wearing blue suede shoes. This place got stuck in a decade I don’t remember. Kitschy doesn’t come close.”

  “Loosen up,” Max said, losing patience. “I was told about him. Name’s Carmen. Apparently he’s worked here for years and he’s part of the atmosphere, I guess. He’s around in case someone forgets their manners. When Roche gets over here we’ll listen to whatever’s on your mind and get out. We could have talked at the clinic anyway.” He glanced toward Annie’s office again. The door was still closed. She loved this place and treated it with the kind of care she’d use if it belonged to her. He had seen her yesterday. If she intended to be out today she would have said so.

  “The clinic ought to be finished,” Kelly said. “Aren’t you worried about your arteries with all the fried food?” He eyed Max’s crabs and took another bite out of his own toasted cheese sandwich. His basic tastes in food hadn’t progressed much since grade school.

  “Sure I’m worried. Don’t you think that lump of yellow goop you’re eating could be a problem, too?”

  Max was used to watching his own double walk around. Finally heading in their direction, Roche loped, tall, loose-limbed and relaxed, his short black hair mussed. Crossing the dance floor in the middle of the low-lying building, he returned nods from folks he knew only by sight. He rarely smiled because it slipped his memory, but people felt drawn to him anyway.

  He sat beside Kelly, opposite Max. “Did you take a look at that jukebox. Wurlitzer ‘1015.’ How do they keep the thing running?”

  “Probably a new knockoff,” Kelly said.

  Roche swivelled and hooked a thumb in the direction of the machine. “Uh-uh. Take a closer look. They first made those in the forties. There’s nothing new in this place. Anyway, sorry I’m late,” he finished absently.

  “You were late before you got here,” Kelly said in a monotone. Max didn’t like the way Kelly looked. It wasn’t like him to be pale under his tan or to have dark marks under his usually clear, hazel eyes.

  “I stopped in at Rosebank for the mail,” Roche said. “Nothing but bills.”

  All three of them had small apartments at Rosebank, a resort that belonged to Spike Devol, the local sheriff, his wife Vivian and her mother, Charlotte. Green Veil, an antebellum house next door to the resort was the site of the new clinic. Already converted into a plastic surgery clinic a few years earlier, Max had decided that, with work, the place was exactly what he wanted. The work had turned out to be a lot more extensive than he had figured, but despite Kelly’s panicking, Max expected the place to open within months. It had to. Already there were doctors with different plastic specialties from Max’s who had committed to coming on board at Green Veil.

  Roche looked around for a waitress. “I ran into Father Cyrus at Rosebank. He and Vivian closeted themselves away and didn’t look so happy.”

  “Wonder what that was about?” Kelly said. “Those two don’t go in for closed-door meetings, do they?”

  Roche shrugged and asked a waitress in squeaky-bottomed shoes for the same thing Max had ordered. “This is a great place,” he said, hanging his head back to look at a thick layer of mostly yellowing business cards tacked to the ceiling. “It’s got character, atmosphere. I’d like to come when the band plays. Did you see the size of the gator out front? Blue.” The restaurant surrounded a dance hall and the section where the Savages sat was built off one side of the building.

  “Blue what?” Kelly said, after considering. “The shoes? Yeah, fucking idiot Elvis impersonator. Jeez.”

  “He was talking about the alligator,” Max said. “It’s called Blue. I told you that when we got here.”

  “Yeah,” Roche said to Kelly, his tone light and even. “And I’m humoring you, friend. Otherwise I’d tell you to go to hell and take your third-degree with you.”

  Time to change the subject. “Wasn’t it great to see Michele Riley yesterday? I knew she’d come for an interview just to be polite, but I wasn’t sure she’d accept the job.”

  Roche said, “I was,” and looked too pleased.

  “Because she can’t resist your charms?” Max asked. “I don’t think you had much to do with it. She likes the idea of having her own physical therapy department even if it will be small. And she’s damned good, so all the luck is on our side. I’m relieved she wants to come here—there’s nothing much she doesn’t know about me.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Roche crossed his arms.

  “You know what I mean.”

  Roche looked into the distance. “It’s a good sign she’s so positive. She’ll bring others with her—including the fiancé she ought to dump in favor of me. She seems to really like it here.” He and Max had known Michele professionally. At their invitation she had come to Toussaint the day before, expressed delight over the clinic and agreed to coordinate the physical therapy department. Her fiancé was a nurse.

  “Just remember Michele’s taken,” Max said to Roche and smiled. “It’s beginning to feel as if we should have done something like this a long time ago,” he observed. “This will be a good place for patients to recuperate.”

  “Fucking weather,” Kelly muttered as if he hadn’t heard a word either Roche or Max said. He gulped beer from a sweating glass. “You know you can’t hide forever, don’t you, Max.”

  “If I didn’t, I do now,” Max said. “Where did that come from?” He could always rely on their older brother to state the obvious.

  “Someone has to remind you what we’re facing. You get off in your own world and forget—”

  “Keep it down,” Roche said through his teeth. “We’ve been here a long time now without any problems.”

  “You and Roche have been here a fair amount of time,” Kelly said. “Making sure you two can do what you want to do keeps me pretty busy elsewhere.”

  “Can it,” Max said. “You don’t have to spend so much time in New York and you wouldn’t if you didn’t like it there. We all like it there, remember? It’s home, or it was. You’re in a rotten mood and it isn’t helping a thing. So we’re gonna get more rain, big deal, it rains plenty here and work doesn’t stop.”

  “Delays cost us,” Kelly said. He finished the sandwich rapidly and wiped his mouth on a paper napkin. “You know how hard it is to keep a work crew focused. If the weather gets bad they find inside jobs, and they come back when they damn well please.”

  “Dammit,” Max said. He noticed that noise had dwindled at nearby tables and saw patrons lose interest in their own conversations while they listened to the brothers argue. He dropped his voice. “What’s up with you, Kelly? You get jumpier by the day. If you want out of this project, say so. I never imagined we’d have to resort to hiding away to do our work but it’s the best we’ve got—or I’ve got. You two don’t have to be here.”

  Roche rolled his eyes and kept quiet.

  “You can be an ungrateful son of a bitch,” Kelly said.

  “So you say. You push me too far. We’re finally within shouting distance of opening the clinic’s doors and you’re looking for more problems.”

  Roche half turned away and pulled an ankle onto the opposite knee. Roche the quiet peacemaker with a steely will said less than he thought, much less. Max was the one man who read his twin regardless of the man’s enigmatic demeanor. Neither of them went in for idle talk.

  “Well, hell, it is starting to rain,” Kelly said, looking up at the first big drops on a skylight. He dropped his voice. “I get edgy is all. You’re righ
t, I look for problems. I’ll try to knock it off.”

  “Forget it,” Max said. “We’re going to be looking over our shoulders for a bit. We’ll learn to forget about it in time.” He did not say they’d be looking for unnatural deaths that might be blamed on Max the way two others, fifteen years apart, the second one three years ago, initially had been. He also didn’t mention that he hesitated to give the impression that he cared about any woman in more than an offhand way because knowing him well might be dangerous to a lady’s health. Kelly and Roche thought Annie Duhon was just a nodding acquaintance.

  “Okay,” Roche said, easing a baseball cap out of his back pocket and tossing it on the table. “Is that it, Kelly? You’re edgy and you wanted us all here so you could talk about it.”

  “For a shrink, you have a lousy bedside manner,” Kelly said, jutting his square jaw. “I already said I was uptight, but that isn’t why we’re here. I wanted to go somewhere we could talk without being overheard by the Devols, or those sorry-ass construction workers.”

  “Really?” Roche looked at the nearest table where four men instantly got real interested in their food. “So talk. Quietly. And the contractors are doing a great job. Looks like they’ll finish almost on time and that doesn’t happen so often.”

  Kelly put his elbows on the table and rested his face in his hands. “I’m not sure about this place anymore, that’s all.”

  Roche and Max looked at one another quickly, and Roche shook his head slightly.

  Sure, Max thought, as usual they were supposed to consider Kelly’s unpredictable moods and give him space. “What d’you mean?” he asked, unable to resist. “If you’re saying we’re making a mistake opening Green Veil, I wish you’d said something a year or more ago.”

  “You were so set on it,” Kelly said, his face still in his hands. “Your buddy, Reb Girard, told you this was a good place to get lost and you believed her. I don’t know what I think about it now.”

  “I still believe her,” Max said, getting heated.

  Roche’s crabs arrived, sizzling on the plate. He thanked the waitress who gazed into his very blue eyes for a bit too long, then glanced at Kelly before she scuttled away.

  “Reb’s dad was the town doc around here and she’s the second generation taking care of the folks. She ought to know if it’s a backwater. Half her bills, or more, get paid in chickens and eggs—a ham if she’s lucky.”

  “My heart bleeds for Dr. Reb Girard,” Kelly said, running his fingers lower on his face until his eyes appeared. “She and that architect husband of hers are rolling in it. He owns most of the town.”

  “So what?” When Kelly went into one of these phases they never got anywhere. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Wait,” Kelly said, slapping the table. “I’m telling you I think we should consider selling and getting out while we still can. Someone’s going to figure out who you are. I feel it coming. That cousin of your friend, Reb, is always looking for dirt to put in that miserable little newspaper of hers. I’d say you’d give her enough to last a long time.”

  The cousin was Lee O’Brien and she lived out at Cloud’s End, the Girard estate, while she ran the Toussaint Trumpet, the town’s one paper.

  “You don’t know half of what’s gone on in this quiet backwater, do you?” Kelly said.

  Max figured he knew about everything that was worth knowing, and some of it he didn’t like, but that didn’t change Toussaint into a metropolis. “They’ve had their share of bad luck—of the criminal kind—but it’s over now. Finally. Sooner or later my history will come out. I’m betting everything on having some champions who will speak up, and on winning over the folks who live here. So far, I’m doing okay.”

  “Yes,” Roche said. “I think you really like it here, and I sure do. What have you got against the place, Kelly?”

  That bought him an unblinking stare. “I love it. Especially when I feel like seeing a first-run play.”

  Max laughed. “If you knew how you sound, you’d change the subject. You can get to a play anytime you want to, or whatever—or whomever—you have an itch to see in a hurry. You don’t have to be here at all if you don’t want to be.”

  “So you don’t want to reconsider?” Kelly asked.

  “No.”

  “Neither do I,” Roche said.

  A smile, all unaffected charm and guaranteed to disarm, transformed Kelly. He laughed and flipped back overlong, dishwater blond hair. “Just checking.”

  Roche was first out of his seat and shaking Kelly by the shoulder. “Rat. You don’t change. Outside. I want to beat the crap out of you.”

  Reason stopped Max just in time and he sank back into his seat, but he chuckled watching the other two wrapped in a mock-ferocious embrace. “Nice language from the gentleman shrink,” he said. “You’ve been listening to our clown act here for too long. That wasn’t funny, Kelly, but you always did have a cruel sense of humor.”

  “Just wanted to get us together for once,” Kelly said, punching Roche good-naturedly. “I’m relieved to hear you say you’re not wearing rose glasses, though, Max. Hell, I worry about you and so does Roche, you know that. You got a rotten deal and we don’t want to see it happen again just when you think you’re safe.”

  Max’s stomach revolved but he kept the corners of his mouth turned up. “My eyes are open,” he said. He never intended to share some of the thoughts that went through his mind. Green Veil would work. He and Roche made a great team and together with a hand-picked staff they were going back to what they loved. Kelly’s financial skills made everything easier and maybe it was a good idea to have him keeping everyone’s feet on the ground.

  Pappy’s was busier than usual today, not that it was ever too quiet. Every few moments the front door opened to admit more customers. Then it opened and Annie came in. Carmen went to her at once and they shared a few words before she went directly into her office and shut the door.

  Max tensed. She hadn’t looked to see if he was there, but she probably assumed he’d be gone by now. He would hang around until his brothers drove away, then come back and talk to her. The tension in his shoulders relaxed. There was nothing to worry about.

  Not far from where Max sat, someone watched his reaction to Annie Duhon. Pleasure, the watcher thought, the good doctor felt real good at the sight of her. He wanted her—it showed in his face. How convenient.

  CHAPTER 4

  Gator Hibbs and his wife, Doll, proprietors of Toussaint’s one hotel, the Majestic, arrived at the table. He shifted his round body uncertainly and took off a battered, sweat-stained Achafalaya Gold Casino baseball cap, revealing his sweating bald head. Doll stood behind him as if she were shy, which was anything but the truth from Max’s dealings with her. Nondescript, with fine brown hair held by a rubber band at the back of her head, Doll’s eyes were her one notable feature. They were incongruous. Light gray and wide, as if in perpetual surprise, they didn’t reflect a thing about Doll’s acerbic personality.

  “Hi, Gator, Doll,” Max said.

  “Nice day,” Gator said, fastening his attention on the rain-splattered windows. “I like this kinda day.” He winced and jerked—and Max figured Doll had elbowed her husband.

  “Y’didn’t have to do that,” Gator said, turning his back on Max. “What d’you do that for? Pokin’ me in the kidney like that. Me, I already got water troubles—you heard Dr. Reb—”

  “We come to talk to Dr. Savage,” Doll said, her eyes still wide open and blank. “He’s not interested in your water-works, Gator. I hear tell he does the faces and stuff.”

  Max raised his eyebrows at Kelly and Roche and stood up. He tapped Gator’s shoulder. “Let’s find somewhere quieter.”

  “We can say what we got to say here,” Doll said. “Ain’t nuthin’ private.”

  “The hell it ain’t,” Gator said, and turned red. “Thanks, Doc. Appreciate your understandin’.”

  They moved outside under the covered entry. Gator shoved his hands in the pockets
of his washed-out overalls and spread his feet to brace his weight. Doll stared at him.

  “Relax,” Max said. “Just tell me what’s on your mind.”

  “We’re real fair folks,” Gator said after a pause. “Give anybody anythin’, we would. Ain’t that right, Doll?”

  “Right.”

  “You can ask anyone in this town and they’ll tell you how the Hibbses is generous.”

  Max smiled. He felt sorry for the man. “You’re uncomfortable with whatever you need to tell me. You can’t say anything I haven’t heard before, so why not get it over with?”

  Gator took a deep breath and gave a bronchitic cough. “It’s the damp,” he said, indicating the rain beating into a layer of fog resembling ice vapor. “You did say your Miz Riley was only stayin’ one night?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she was goin’ to pay when she left this mornin’?”

  “She didn’t pay,” Doll said rapidly. “And extra days is extra pay. She’s takin’ up a room even if she ain’t sleepin’ in it.”

  These two didn’t amuse Max anymore. “When I made the booking, I told you to send the bill to me.”

  “You said it would be one night but check-out’s at eleven. We’re owed for two nights now—as long as she’s gone by tomorrow mornin’.”

  His throat tightened. “Miss Riley is still here?”

  Doll actually smirked. “Why don’t you tell us? What you do in private is your business, except if you try using us as a cover. Don’t make no difference to us if she’s stayin’ with you, now. But it makes more sense for her to get the rest of her things, don’t it?”

  Max couldn’t draw a full breath. “I drove her back to the hotel last night.” He didn’t want to think what he was thinking. “I saw her go inside. Perhaps she just forgot one of her bags. I’ll arrange to get it sent on.” He retrieved his wallet from a back pocket and pulled out some bills.

  Doll looked uncertain. “She didn’t clear any of her stuff out of the bathroom. And her rental car’s still parked out back of the hotel.”