by Sandra Hill
“Dint yer brother’s lawyer tell the jury what a rotten SOB yer father was?”
“Pfff! The public defender assigned to Leroy didn’t even call me to testify. Since no one had ever filed charges against Dad, and Mom was no longer there to attest to his brutality—she was run over by a car late one night when she was out on a wine run—well, they chose to consider it a drug crime. Leroy’s lawyer told him he had no choice but to plead out with second-degree murder.”
“Thass why you decided ta become a lawyer, ain’t it?”
Gabrielle nodded. “Lot of good it’s done, though.”
“God works in mysterious ways.”
Gabrielle bristled. If that was the best Tante Lulu could do for her—offer religious platitudes— she’d wasted half a day when she could have been researching another legal angle on Leroy’s case.
But just then a car horn beeped outside, and Tante Lulu exclaimed happily, “Company!”
Company? Oh no!
“Yoo hoo! Hallo!” a feminine voice called out.
“It’s mah niece Charmaine. Ain’t that nice?”
Just swell!
Into the kitchen came the most amazing presence . . . well, two presences . . . because behind Charmaine was a male.
“And Tee-John!” Tante Lulu exclaimed.
If Gabrielle had thought Tante Lulu’s appearance was outrageous, it was nothing compared to Charmaine LeDeux Lanier. Gabrielle had never met her before, though she had heard of her. Everyone in Louisiana had. Twenty or so years ago, she had been Miss Louisiana. Now she was the owner of a chain of beauty spas, including one smack-dab in the middle of her husband Raoul “Rusty” Lanier’s ranch in northern Louisiana. Even at fortysomething, Charmaine was still beautiful in a trashy sort of way. Today she wore leopard-print jeans that appeared to have been painted on, with gold sandals that exposed her crimson toenails, a perfect match for her really long fingernails and her pouty lips. A stretchy black tank top left about three inches of abdomen exposed and had glittery letters with the provocative words, “Ask About My Vibrator.” Tante Lulu and Charmaine must get their clothes from the same place, 1–800–SLUTWEAR.
Noticing the direction of Gabrielle’s stare, Tante Lulu giggled and said, “Charmaine jist added a vibrating massage table at her Houma spa. Fer folks with back problems.”
“I’ve got back problems,” the male in the room said. He was wearing a Fontaine, Louisiana, police uniform and looked hotter than any man had a right to look. Gabrielle had never met John LeDeux, either, but everyone knew he had been one of the baddest of the Cajun bad boys before his marriage a few years ago. He was only about thirty-two, much younger than his half brothers and sisters. “I wonder if two people with back problems could fit on one of those tables.” He blinked innocently at Charmaine.
“In your dreams, bozo,” Charmaine replied.
After quick introductions, leaving Gabrielle feeling trapped in her chair, Charmaine placed several glossy pink designer bags on the counter with the stylized logo “Charmaine’s” and below that in smaller print, “Where every woman is beautiful.” She leaned down and kissed her elderly aunt on both cheeks before telling her, “I brought those new lipsticks and body lotions.”
John, known to his family as Tee-John or Little John, long before he’d grown to his current six foot two, winked at Gabrielle, as if he sensed her discomfort, and set several grocery bags on the other counter. “I picked up the boudin sausages you wanted from Beaudreaux’s General Store. And rice . . . what you gonna do with twenty pounds of rice, chère?”
“Hmpfh! A Cajun cook cain’t never have enuf rice.”
Just when Gabrielle was about to make her excuses, Tante Lulu pushed her niece and nephew into chairs at the table and placed cups of coffee in front of them with a platter of beignets, and announced, “Gabrielle needs our help. ’Pears we got us a new mission.”
“What? No, no, no! No mission. Just advice, that’s all I want.” In fact, I don’t even want advice now. I just want to escape. Bad idea coming here. Bad idea!
Charmaine squeezed her hand. “Best you sit back and let Tante Lulu have her way. There’s nothing she likes better than a LeDeux family mission.”
“But I’m not a family member,” she protested.
“You are now, sweetie,” Charmaine said. “An honorary LeDeux.”
Tante Lulu quickly brought the other two up to date on what was happening with Gabrielle’s brother, leading up to the latest parole board decision.
“His biggest problem is not the murder of our father,” Gabrielle added. “He would be released by now on good behavior for that offense, but he was convicted of killing another inmate a few years ago and that got him life, which means twenty more years, minimum. He didn’t do it, I swear. I’m afraid he’ll go after the witness who testified against him, or maybe even commit suicide. He was morbidly depressed when I saw him yesterday.”
“I heard something last week at a criminal justice seminar over at Tulane,” John said. “Something like ninety percent of the five thousand inmates at Angola never outlive their sentences. They deserve to be punished, of course. Mais oui, they do. Still, it amounts to a living death.”
“Thass a cryin’ shame,” Tante Lulu said, tsking her sympathy.
“You can see why Leroy is feeling so hopeless then,” Gabrielle said to John.
John nodded and asked, “Why is the parole board so against him?”
“He earned a college degree the only way possible at Angola, through a theological seminary’s prison extension program. Then he antagonized Warden Benton, who fashions himself a savior to the inmates, by refusing to minister. He ended up using his education as a literacy teacher before getting a job on the prison newspaper, the Angolite, but that wasn’t what Benton had planned for him.
“Most at all, Leroy can’t keep his mouth shut. My brother has become very articulate in expressing his opinion about Louisiana politics in both the Angolite and any outside publication that will give him a voice.”
“I read that piece where he called the Loo-zee-anna legislature a bunch of corrupt sheep. It was well written. Of course, as a cop, I’m not too fond of his stabs at law enforcement.”
“How soon kin we all skedaddle up ta Angola? I aim ta assess the sit-ye-a-shun.” Tante Lulu was rubbing her hands together in anticipation.
Gabrielle put her face in her hands. Pistol-Packin’ Senior Annie on the grounds of Angola. The image defied description.
“Well, fiddle-dee-dee! Wonder what I should wear?” Charmaine asked.
Good heavens! Charmaine, who must fancy herself a modern-day Scarlett O’Hara, would cause a riot, no matter what she wore in that testosterone-oozing prison. Even Gabrielle, who didn’t have Charmaine’s wow factor, dressed down for her visits to Leroy.
“There’s no way your husband will allow you to go to Angola, chère,” John said as he licked sugar off his lips from his third beignet.
“Allow? Allow? What century y’all livin’ in, Tee-John? Besides, Rusty was an inmate himself at one time, as y’all know.” She turned to Gabrielle and explained, “Unjustly incarcerated.”
“Was that before or after you married and divorced him twice?” Tee-John asked.
“Oh you!” She swatted her half brother on the shoulder. “I only divorced him once.”
“Charmaine was a born-again virgin before they got married again. Dontcha remember, Tee-John. She was gonna have her thingamajig sewed back up, but Rusty put a stop ta that.”
“Really? I wonder if Celine would have her jig sewed back up, to add a little spice to our love life?” Tee-John pondered, and he looked serious, too.
“Yer wife gives you enough spice, you rascal,” Tante Lulu said with a laugh. “I swear, ever’ time I see you two t’gether, yer all over her, lak dew on Dixie.”
“I wouldn’t bring up reattaching Celine’s hymen anytime soon, seein’ as how Celine just popped out one of your babies last month,” Charmaine advised.
Whoa!
So, that’s the thingamajig they’re talking about.
“Good point!” Tee-John agreed. “It might be a sore point.”
Gabrielle listened to the three wack jobs talk in the charming patois known only here in Cajun country. A bit of country twang, a lazy drawl, an occasional French word thrown in, an exaggerated mispronunciation of words that might trick the outsider into thinking they were illiterate. Gabrielle and Leroy were part Cajun, but they’d never felt that way, having no exposure to the Cajun culture. She was only now realizing how much they might have missed.
She was also enjoying the warm teasing they engaged in, the way only people who loved each other could.
But wait, John was talking to her. “You were saying?” she said.
“What you need is someone from the inside to help while we work from the outside,” John told Gabrielle.
We? Damn, how do I get out of this? “Actually, I couldn’t possibly ask you folks to get involved. Maybe a little advice. People you know that I might approach, that kind of thing.”
It was as if she hadn’t even spoken as the three of them tossed around various ideas.
Suddenly, Tante Lulu let out a little whoop. “I know, I know. I was playin’ bingo at Our Lady of the Bayou Church when I heard about this strange bird up at the prison. A sort of minister, I think. A Viking, of all things. Ivan Stevenson, or some such name. No, that doesn’t sound right. It’s Ivak Sigurdsson. Anyways, this Viking guy is puttin’ on some kinda prison talent show. And us LeDeux are famous fer our talent shows.”
“Uh-oh!” John said.
“Oh boy!” Charmaine said.
Gabrielle just groaned.
Tante Lulu smiled widely. “We’s goin’ ta Angola. Yippee!”
Four
The knees will give you away every time . . .
Ivak understood why he, a man guilty of the sin of lust in the worst possible ways, had been assigned to an all-male prison as punishment. Maybe not for this many years, but then the lust still bubbled beneath the surface, even after all these centuries. Temptation was his constant companion.
And he understood the seriousness of his mission to save these dreadful sinners. Truly, five thousand inmates—penned together like animals, knowing that most would never leave their pen—had a need of him and the saving grace he could offer, even if they didn’t know it.
What he did not understand was why God or St. Michael, in particular, would lay this latest, ridiculous, doomed-to-fail mission on him. A talent show! He would love to tell Warden Benton he could take this job and shove it, but Ivak’s position in the prison was shaky at the best of times. He had to have a legitimate reason for being here, and being a chaplain of sorts was his cover.
Having just finished the morning’s latest round of ridiculous auditions, he sighed deeply as he shut and locked the auditorium door behind him . . . inmates stole anything that wasn’t nailed down, even the ivory keys on the piano. What he needed was a beer or twenty, not that he would find any here. What he did find, though, was the convict Leroy Sonnier strolling down “The Walk” toward the visitors’ center. The Walk was an elevated twelve-foot-wide concrete passageway that connected various places in the Main Prison complex . . . the offices, cellblocks, dorms, dining halls, laundries, and other outbuildings.
Inmates fell into one of three classifications in this maximum security prison: cellblock, Big Stripe, or trusty. Those inmates with good records or trusty status could go about their jobs without a guard for the most part, although they had to account for their whereabouts at every minute. About seven hundred of the five thousand or so inmates were trusties, while another almost three thousand were Big Stripes, working the fields and factories under the close eyes of armed guards. Only fifteen hundred inmates were confined to the kind of cells outsiders usually associated with prisons.
Sonnier had been a Class A trusty the past few years and was thus given certain privileges. That’s when he started working on the prison newspaper, the Angolite.
Ivak brightened and said with as much pleasantness as he could muster, considering his foul mood, “Hello, Leroy.”
“You again?” Leroy shook his head with disgust.
For the past few weeks, Ivak had been trying to approach Leroy to “save” him. It was one of those instinct things where he sensed a man in need of his help. What precisely, he wasn’t sure; so he went for a general plea for repentance. Maybe Ivak had been a bit of a nuisance, but for a good cause. “So, how you doing today?”
“Get lost, motherfucker.” The young man . . . well, he must be just over thirty years old, like Ivak, give or take a thousand years . . . didn’t even stop walking. No deference to authority at all.
Leroy’s response was certainly blunt . . . but a lot less graphic than what Ivak was often told to do by the hardened men here in Angola. And so much for Ivak’s being pleasant! He tried another tack. “I hear you play a mean trumpet.”
“I hear you’ve been trying to find gold in a shit hole.”
Not exactly the way he’d describe his job as a talent scout, but close. He continued to keep pace with Sonnier as they walked down the busy noontime corridor, guards posted at intervals to make sure no one misbehaved. An inmate, even a trusty, couldn’t go anywhere in the prison without permission. Every movement from one area of the prison to another required the inmate to stand and wait for the correctional officer to grant him access through one metal door after another. “Leroy . . . that’s an odd name for a person in Louisiana, isn’t it? Are you named for that famous jazz musician Leroy Jenkins?”
“Pfff! I come from the slums of Loo-zee-anna. I was named after that old Jim Croce song, ‘Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.’ ”
So, I made no inroads with that attempt at conversation. Son of a troll! A Viking trying to make conversation, like a bloody Saxon coxcomb? All right, here goes another try. “I understand you’re self-taught on the horn, but good enough to play in a New Orleans jazz club. A young Miles Davis. Could get a job in any French Quarter jazz club if you ever get released, you’re that good.”
“Kiss my ass.”
Ivak had learned that the expression “Kiss my ass” was a perfectly appropriate way to end an argument in Louisiana, but not with him. In fact, the guard arched his brows at Ivak, wondering if he was going to react to the convict’s remark. Where’s my broadsword when I need it? There was a time when an insult like that merited a head lopping or at least a fist in the gut. It took every bit of Ivak’s patience to tamp down his temper. “Do I take that for a no? Or a maybe? Yeah, you probably meant that maybe you’ll do it if you have time to think it over because just maybe I might be able to help a thickheaded lackwit like you.” Okay, that wasn’t very diplomatic, or angelic, but sometimes subtlety sucked.
“Leave. Me. The. Hell. Alone.” Sonnier didn’t even look at him now as he spoke, just kept walking.
“Listen, shit-for-brains, I just finished auditioning prison lovebirds Sam Olson and Georgie Dupree, doing a pantomime of Sonny and Cher’s ‘I Got You, Babe.’ Then, river dancing by six lifers, none of whom came close to being a Lord of the Dance, especially wearing heavy work boots. Followed by a former drug dealer who whistled, farted, and wiggled his ears at the same time. And how could I forget the Mississippi triple murderer who can polka standing on his hands?” He saw a smile twitch at Sonnier’s lips; so he continued, “And the icing on my personal cake of misery was a three-hundred-pound convict named Bubba doing a tap dance to ‘Happy Feet.’ So, if you have even a modicum of talent, I’m going to be the personal barnacle on your ass until you agree to help me out.”
“No way!”
“I could really use your help, buddy.”
Sonnier stopped to stare at him incredulously. “Number one, we are not buddies. Two, I should help you . . . why?”
“It’s a nice thing to do,” Ivak offered.
“Do I look like a fucking Mother Teresa?” Leroy resumed walking.
And so did Ivak. “No. You look like a man who co
uld use my help.”
“Pfff! I thought you were the one in need of help.”
“We could help each other.”
“Not interested.”
“What would it take to get you to participate in the talent show?”
“A busload of hookers parked inside the prison gate for my personal convenience.”
“I could do that . . .”
Leroy snorted. “And I could swim the Mississippi and escape to Alabama.”
“ . . . but my boss would object.”
“Tell me about it. Benton has a Puritan streak a mile wide.”
“Benton isn’t my boss. I answer to a higher authority.”
Sonnier rolled his eyes. “You are seriously weird.”
“I’ve been told that before.” Suddenly, Ivak noticed something alarming. There were twin marks at the side of Sonnier’s neck. Without warning, he leaned close and sniffed. Yep, lemony. Leroy had been bitten by a Lucie. Just a small sin taint at this point, which could account for the inmate’s bad attitude. But whoa! The very fact that there was a demon vampire inside the prison compound caused red flags to go up in Ivak’s radar. Where there was one there could be more. He’d already told Vikar that he suspected a Lucipire presence outside the prison grounds. Now he knew for sure they were inside, too.
Sonnier shoved him away. “Hey! I don’t swing that way.”
He must have thought Ivak was trying to kiss him. Yeech! “I don’t swing that way, either. I was getting a closer look at that . . . um, mosquito . . . bite on your neck.”
“That’s not a mosquito bite. I was out at Cypress camp yesterday, and some idiot Striper tried a turning out on me. Not the first time. You know how it is here, there’s always some yay-hoo trying to turn you into his bitch.”
Ivak was very much aware of the “turning out” ritual that existed at Angola and every other prison in the world. It usually involved the brutal gang rape of a new inmate, or any prisoner deemed to have a weakness. The act was not so much sexual as symbolic of stripping a man of his masculinity and redefining him as a female. Thereafter, the victim could be used, abused, sold, gambled away, whatever, and no one did a damn thing about the “gal boys,” “whores,” “old ladies,” “wives,” or whatever names they were given. Sad, it was, and tragic, much like the slavery of the Old South. In fact, Angola had been a slave-breeding plantation at one time. Ironic? Oh yeah! Ivak saved those he could from this life of degradation, but there were so many he was unable to reach.
