House of Blues

by Julie Smith

By then Skip had had coffee and talked to Jimmy Dee, who said, "Tiny, precious darling, why didn't you come over to Dee-Dee's and cuddle up with a little white puppy? Whatever were you thinking of, trying to go through a thing like that alone?"

  "I must have been crazy, Dee-Dee. Never again."

  "Certainly not, my angel. Certainly not. Come tonight; now promise!" His voice was so stern she didn't dare argue.

  Reed arrived looking like the restaurant queen of New Orleans, in a wheat silk suit with cream blouse, silver Thomas Mann pendant set with a carnelian, and matching earrings. She seemed to have made quite a recovery. Skip wondered what it must have been like coming home to a husband who'd become a heroin addict; a mother who'd apparently decided to take over the job Reed had worked for her whole life. She wondered if Dennis would clean up again.

  "Let's go to an interview room. I'll just get us some privacy and we can do it pretty fast."

  "I'm sorry. I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "On advice of my attorney."

  Oh, boy. Here we go. "I see. Is he meeting you here?"

  "Do I need him? He said just to say—"

  Skip didn't wait to hear the rest of the sentence. She said: "You'd better call him."

  In the end it shook down this way: Reed was perfectly prepared to tell the story of the Dragons lair, and adamantly unwilling to talk about her father's death. Dennis must have done it. He laid it off on Evie, and Reed wouldn't ga along with it. But she won't incriminate her husband.

  Still, there was another witness.

  Evie had been taken to Baptist, rather than Charity Hospital, probably at Reed's behest. Skip rounded up Abasolo—she wasn't doing this without a witness—and paid her a visit.

  Evie had on no makeup, and her hair was matted, but she must have gotten a night's sleep. She was pale and thin, but Skip could see the beauty that had captured Dennis, and Maurice Gresham, and Manny Lanoux.

  She introduced herself and Abasolo.

  "You're the one Anna locked up."

  "Don't remind me."

  "You saved us—Reed and me. And Sally too, I heard. You know what? Anna Garibaldi always did scare the shit out of me. Long before this happened. She fell for the kid, though—I never saw anything like it. She was all gloppy and goopy around her—like caramel sauce or something. You could throw up."

  Abasolo gave Skip an amused glance.

  "Is Sally okay?" Evie asked.

  Skip nodded. "Fine. How about you?"

  "My throat hurts like a son of a bitch. The smoke, they said. I can talk, though, as long as I keep sucking ice." She pointed to a glass of ice chips, and helped herself to one.

  "We want to talk to you, but I need to tell you a few things first." Skip gave her the Miranda warning.

  "Am I under arrest?" Evie asked calmly.

  "Yes. Do you want an attorney?"

  Evie waved a hand, pursing her lips impatiently. "Hell, no."

  "You're waiving your right to an attorney?"

  "Yeah. Later for that crap."

  Skip wasn't going to argue. "Tell us what happened a week ago Monday night."

  Evie sat back and sighed, and blew out her cheeks. "Do I have to? It's too embarrassing."

  That's the least of it. "I think you'd better."

  "That's the night I got drunk and decided to reclaim my long-lost child. Pretty brilliant, huh?"

  Abasolo smiled. He had a way about him.

  "I don't know what got into me. I swear to God I don't."

  "I do," said Abasolo. "I'm a drunk from way back."

  "Oh, no. You're not going to give me that Twelve Step crap, are you?"

  He shook his head. "Uh-uh. I mean, unless you want me to."

  She hesitated, once again waved a hand. "Ehhhh, save it."

  "What happened, Evie?"

  "They let me in, and I demanded my fucking maternal rights."

  Skip could have sworn Evie's cheeks got slightly pinker, as if she were blushing at the memory. "What was I thinking of? I know less about children than W.C. Fields."

  I don't cure what you were thinking of. Just tell the story, goddammit. Skip thought she was going to pop, but Abasolo nodded and gave Evie a polite smile.

  Like he's flirting, Skip thought. God, he's good.

  She shrugged. "Dennis tried to get the gun away from me. Do you blame him?"

  Very deliberately, Evie made eye contact with Abasolo, who shook his head this time.

  "We struggled—little me and great big Dennis. I mean, I was commode—huggin'. I probably thought I could win. And to tell you the truth, I almost did." She hesitated. "It gets a little fuzzy. Anyway, I thought I was winning, but somehow or other, the gun flew across the room. I mean, flew. Like it was shot out of a cannon.

  "Then it got really weird. When I think back on it, it doesn't make sense. Reed picked the gun up, and Daddy tried to get it from her. I mean, that's not the part I don't get—that was just like Daddy. A hundred percent like him." Her face twisted with dislike.

  "Controlling goddamn bastard. You know how bad he is? When I was in high school, we got this new electric can opener. So I came home one day and said, ‘How do you work this?' Grady showed me—he was always handy with stuff like that. You know I have a brother, Grady?"

  Skip nodded.

  "But Daddy was in the kitchen, see. Getting some iced tea or something. I started doing it, and I was a little slow catching on. I didn't put the can in right and it was opening crooked or something. I took it out and put it in again, but it still wasn't quite right. Grady said, ‘That's right, you've just got to move it a little to the left.' So I reached up to do that, and I felt someone come up behind me, cover my body entirely with his body, so I couldn't move, and just take the can out of my hand.

  "It was Daddy, of course. He said, ‘Neither one of you can do a damn thing right,' and he stood there, with me trapped between him and the kitchen counter, and opened the damn can. What do you think of a man like that?"

  Abasolo said, "Ummm." Skip shook her head, as if in disbelief.

  She thought: How awful to have spent thirty-odd years being a father and have nothing more to show for it.

  "Back to Monday night," she said.

  "Well, I've had pretty much time to think about it, see it from Reed's point of view, and I swear to God I know how she felt. I swear to God I'd have done the same thing if it had been me."

  Skip waited, heart pounding.

  "Anyway, he said, 'Give me the gun,' and he reached for it, but she kind of waves it and says, 'I'll handle it, Dad. Keep out of the way.' So he yells at her: 'Give it to me, Reed!' and she turns to him for a minute, which is good for me—I'm thinking maybe I can make some progress while she's distracted.

  "What happened was, she says, 'It's my kid. Get out of the way.' I mean, she yells it, actually. Let's face it, we were all getting pretty excited.

  "So what do I do, I take advantage of the situation, get to Sally, grab her, and then I hear the gun go off I think I'm dead, right? And Sally starts in like somebody's tearing her apart. But I don't feel a thing and I look over there, and blood's coming out of Daddy's leg like a fountain—way high up—I mean, like right at the crotch. And he looks—I can't even describe it—he's just got the most surprised look I've ever seen on a human being. Somehow—I'm not sure what happened exactly—but the table went over, and then I heard another shot. And Daddy went down."

  She stopped, but Skip prompted. "Then what?"

  "Well, something weird. Dennis said, 'Reed!' in a weird voice. You know what voice I mean? Like when a kid's done something wrong. You know, like you say, 'Sally!' if she throws her supper on the floor. You know what I mean? Like Reed was a real bad little girl.

  "Anyhow, he said that, and then Reed yelled back, 'Goddammit, he should have gotten out of the way.' I figured they were going to argue for a while, so I took Sally and split."

  "Taking the gun, of course."

  "Are you kidding? Wha
t did I need the gun for? And how the hell was I going to get it? I just turned around and ran. Wouldn't you have?"

  "Who shot your father, Evie?"

  "What?" Evie looked bewildered.

  "You're lying. What really happened?"

  Comprehension dawned in her eyes, but puzzlement came out of her mouth. "Goddamn, motherfucker." It was an expression of amazement, not an epithet. "You don't believe me."

  "Why should I believe you? You're a drunk, you're a junkie, you're a kidnapper—you're a murderer too, aren't you?"

  "I haven't been a junkie in years, goddammit!"

  "But you are a murderer."

  "You're trying to fuck me, aren't you?"

  "Get real, Evie. You weren't the only one in that room."

  "Oh." Evie let that sink in a minute. "That bitch Reed wants to let me take the rap. Just when I thought—goddammit! or course they'd play it that way. Of course. I was always dirt to them and I still. A tear formed at the corner of her eye. "Fucking Dennis too, I guess."

  Skip felt unbearably sorry for her. She almost didn't blame her for snatching Sally: A baby doesn't judge and doesn't betray. As long as you feed it, it has to love you. There's nothing else in its world.

  Evie didn't speak for a while, obviously making an effort to pull herself together. When she did, she said, "I want a lawyer."

  * * *

  On the way back to headquarters, Abasolo did his best to be consoling: "Maybe the gun'll turn up in the debris of Anna's house."

  But it didn't.

  Nor was it in the car Evie had driven, or the one Reed had driven.

  Anna denied that either she or her thugs had taken a gun from either of the women. Maurice Gresham—now in the throes of a massive Internal Affairs investigation—also denied it.

  Dennis had undoubtedly disposed of it—either sold it to buy drugs or chucked it to protect Reed.

  In the ensuing days, Skip brought him in repeatedly for questioning, and she brought Reed back as well. Still Dennis insisted Evie had shot her father—though Skip could swear he now looked sheepish when he said it—and still Reed said nothing, though she becarne red in the face and she sweated under questioning. Her foot tapped the floor and she shredded more than one tissue.

  One day, when Skip was spending an unproductive hour with her, she caught an expression, a set of her mouth, that reminded her of Anna Garibaldi, and she realized something that astonished her:

  They're practically the same person.

  They both went into the family business, where they were totally subservient to the men.

  They're both good little girls who never for a second stepped out of line; just conformed to the prevailing culture and waited for pats on the head.

  Did what they were supposed to do, and volunteered for more. Suffered put-downs every day and worked all the harder to be a credit to their sex. Probably built up a storehouse of resentment someone like me couldn't begin to comprehend. I'd have blown up the damned fish company. Burned the restaurant down. They just bowed a little lower, and scraped a little deeper.

  Then one day they both rebelled.

  Big-time.

  Evie, under further questioning, only grew more rocklike, though a sullenness entered her demeanor, especially on days when she seemed to be suffering a hangover.

  Susan Belvedere, the Deputy D.A. assigned to the case, was married to a man who had dated Reed in tenth grade and said she wouldn't hurt a fly—she'd be too sure she was going to hell for it. Yet Susan believed Evie's story with the fervor of Skip herself. Long before she began her aggressive questioning of Evie, before Evie even got as far as the can opener, Skip had had a feeling. Evie was too relaxed, too easily waived her right to an attorney, to be worried about a murder charge.

  Then there was her story.

  As Evie told it, Skip had felt the tightening in her stomach that meant she was hearing an unpleasant truth—not what she expected to hear, or what she wanted to hear, but what every cell in her body told her was true.

  "What do you think?" she asked Abasolo.

  "I don't blame her. I'd have done it too."

  "Who, goddamn it? Who don't you blame?"

  "For Christ's sake, Skip, if Evie shot her dad, why the hell would Reed clam up?"

  "To protect Evie?"

  "Uh-uh. Not Little Miss Goody Two-Shoes. She'd get her the best legal counsel, all that kind of crap, but she'd feel deep, deep in her little civics-lesson heart that her sister, 'though still my sister and I love her, must Pay her Debt to Society.' Believe me, I know the type."

  "Why, AA, I wouldn't have thought a rogue like yourself would go in for those babes."

  "I don't. They go in for me—they all want to reform me."

  "That makes sense. Reed reformed Dennis."

  "I guarantee you it makes sense. It's why I'm single today."

  Despite her best efforts and those of Susan Belvedere, and all the support Abasolo could muster, they still had no physical evidence and two witnesses with different stories.

  There was simply no way to take the case to court. But they could at least take it to the grand jury.

  Or so Skip thought until Belvedere showed up shaking her head one day. "Sugar got to my boss."

  "Sugar! What are you talking about?"

  "The Heberts are pretty damned influential in this town, did you know that?"

  "I know they were connected. Is that what you mean?"

  "I don't know if that entered into it. All I know is, yesterday Sugar turned up and had a conference behind closed doors. The next thing I knew I was told to drop the grand jury investigation."

  "No!" Skip couldn't take it in.

  "I'm sorry, Skip. I'm just as sorry as I can be."

  Belvedere looked as if someone had died.

  * * *

  "It happens," said Cappello. "You've got to let it go, Skip. The old fart had it coming."

  She didn't mean it, of course.

  Skip knew her: Though she had small children like Reed, though she knew that if Reed were convicted, Sally might be left to the tender mercies of Dennis and Sugar, Cappello would have locked Reed up and thrown away the key if she could have. She was trying to make Skip feel better.

  But nobody could these days.

  30

  She came home from work and fell immediately into bed, unable to read or even watch television. She tried spending time with Dee-Dee and the kids, but they didn't cheer her up, she brought them down. The kids didn't need that; they had enough trouble.

  Sometimes she'd see Angel after a few days—or was it weeks?—and she'd have tripled in size. She'd panic: I'm missing it. She's growing up, the kids are growing up, and I'm not even there for it. Still, she could do nothing. She couldn't stay awake. And when she was awake, she didn't want to be.

  She dreamed sometimes of the night in the Conti Breezeway, saw Jim's face as he lay wounded on the ground, and when she saw Augustine Melancon's face, it was not the terrified baby face of a teenager caught in a nightmare, it was a Satan mask and it spoke to her, droning and much too slow, like a record played at the wrong speed.

  "Your turn now," it said, and she would wake up sweating. In the dream, she thought the figure was predicting her death, and sometimes she would tremble afterward, unable to go back to sleep.

  But in daylight she'd remember what she knew it meant, what she always forgot when she dreamed it: It meant it was her turn to kill.

  It was funny. For the longest time she was afraid to go to sleep for fear of dreaming. Yet she never dreamed the thing she feared, never saw tiny Shavonne crawling across that floor to her mama. She did all the time in her conscious hours. Every time she saw a pair of pink jeans or a pair of flip-flops, or even, sometimes, just a small black girl with braids, Shavonne came to her like an acid flashback.

  Sometimes when that happened, she would very deliberately switch channels—take her camera across the room to Delavon lying dead of her own bullet. She wanted to avoid hiding behind his daughter, t
o break the denial she knew was there, to understand, deep in her belly, that she had taken a human life.

  And yet the image of Shavonne hurt her more deeply than that of Delavon. Indeed, she found it almost unbearable, and sometimes, in the office, brushed at her head when it came, as if a swarm of bees surrounded her. People stared. Cappello brought her coffee and asked if she were all right.

  She said she was, she always said she was, because she knew the job was the only thing holding her together right now, and she could not risk being transferred. The pressure to perform was enormous.

  The funny thing was, at work she was a hero. The round of applause the day after the shooting was just the beginning. She got a Medal of Merit, a little gold button shaped like a badge. She got congratulations from people whose names she didn't even know, strangers who stopped her in the hall. She finally gave Eileen Moreland an interview.

  Eileen didn't ask her, she asked the superintendent, and he all but ordered her to do it.

  "Heroic Female Cop" was great publicity for a department that sorely needed some.

  "Oh, Skippy, don't be such a pill," said Eileen. "It's a chance to get things off your mind."

  Sure. Heroic Female Cop's supposed to tell the whole city about her depression. About the recurring nightmares. The superintendent would love that one.

  She ended up saying, more or less, that she did what she had to.

  As if it were original.

  As if it were the end of the story.

  As if police officers were automatons.

  And then she had to deal with a second round of congratulations.

  Joe Tarantino, her lieutenant, encouraged her to take the sergeant's test, saying she was "ready" now; she'd "matured." She was "seasoned."

  All words that mocked her.

  You're mature if you shoot somebody? A seasoned cop is a killer? What the hell am I doing here?

  She was there because it was her job and it was the only identity she felt she had right now; she needed it to maintain contact with the Earth. But even at headquarters she couldn't check her hopelessness at the door.

  Cindy Lou told her she should be in therapy, but she couldn't seem to get around to finding a therapist and making an appointment. She certainly wasn't going to do it at work, where everyone, including O'Rourke, could hear.