Chasing the Wind

by Pamela Binnings Ewen

  Bingham smiled, thinking of the look on Tom's face that evening at the beach bar on Cayman when he'd first mentioned the plan. He'd made Tom work for it, though, made him dig out the information piece by piece over the week. He dropped his head back against the chair, thinking of those blue waves rolling in, the warm moist air, the cold margarita in his hand. His lids began to droop.

  He snapped to and opened his eyes wide. He'd fall asleep if he wasn't careful. He was used to moving around during the day, stretching himself, using his muscles, working his brain. If it were up to him, he'd just sign a note for the banks. With a glance at his watch he swallowed a sigh. He ran a finger around the ring of his collar, wishing it wasn't necessary to sit in these meetings to get the job done.

  Bingham reached for the cup of coffee on the table before him and took a sip, hoping the caffeine would jolt him awake. Step by step, he told himself. Patience.

  With new resolve he sat up straight, put down the coffee cup, and squinted, looking down the table. Every seat was occupied by expensive lawyers on the clock. He had to stay sharp, alert, on the ball. Robert Black would do his job all right, but Bingham would keep his eye on all of them. Including Robert.

  An hour passed before Doug announced they'd take a break. Except for young Ms. Catoir, who was working alone, the bankers and lawyers dispersed into huddles. Tom and Robert's attorney, Adam Grayson, sat beside him. Adam lit up a cigarette and unrolled Dominick's blueprint, spreading it out across Bingham's end of the long table. Robert and Doug were discussing a provision in the draft of the construction agreement. Bingham looked down the table, watching as Amalise flipped pages, taking notes. Just then she glanced up and caught his eye.

  He winked.

  She blinked, gave him a confused smile, and returned to her work.

  Bingham pulled a pack of Raleigh cigarettes from his shirt pocket, tamped it against the table, and picked one out. Holding it between his fingers, he reached for a lighter, hesitated and stuck it back in, setting the whole pack down on the table. There was enough smoke in this room already. He took a deep breath and choked as thick smoke tunneled down his windpipe.

  Coughing, Bingham nudged Adam. A gray stream curled from the ashtray at his elbow. "Get rid of the cigarette," Bingham said.

  Bingham saw panic rising in the young man's eyes. He figured it would take maybe a minute for Adam to find an excuse to leave the room. As Adam stubbed out the butt, Bingham glanced at his watch. Yawning, he pushed back his chair, rose, and strolled down to the far end of the table where Amalise sat.

  "Sorry about that wink." He lowered his voice as he sat down beside her, looking at the notes she'd been scribbling. "I'm just not used to lawyers wearing lipstick." He nudged his chin toward her notes. "What's all this?"

  "I'm double-checking the list of items we need for closing."

  "Don't forget to include the money."

  "We'll need account numbers and wire transfer numbers."

  He watched as she scanned a couple of pages and pointed out the section covering money transfers. Bingham leaned over, studying it. The largest funding would come from Tom's investors in New York—twenty million for the demolition and construction. "Here it is," she said when he asked, pointing to the middle of the page. Something in her voice made him give her a quick look.

  Ignoring him, Amalise reached for the Lone Ranger subsidiary's certificate of organization from Grand Cayman. Bingham peered at it.

  "Why Lone Ranger?" she asked.

  He shrugged. "Because I am, I suppose."

  She gave him a sideways look. He smiled.

  "Where do you call home?" She ducked her head as she went back to making notes in the margins of the list.

  "I have an apartment in Manhattan."

  "So why did you choose Marigny for the hotel?"

  He smiled. "Isn't that obvious?" He leaned back and crossed his arms. "It's close to the French Quarter. We'll have a nice view of the river." As he spoke, he envisioned the eastern shoreline of the Mississippi River from the wharves at Marigny, moving past the Quarter, crossing Canal Street into the dark warehouse district. "At the other end of the Quarter, there are too many established nuisances to contend with—the ferries, the trade center, the customs house, busier warehouse areas. Each one has its own government regulator." He spread his hands flat on the table before him. "That's expensive. Slows things down."

  She nodded.

  "It's easier all around to deal with small properties. Anyway, Marigny's a slum."

  Amalise raised her eyes to his. "It's not."

  "Not what?" The energy of her words surprised him.

  "The Marigny is not a slum."

  He gave her a hard look.

  She arched one brow. "Have you driven through there?"

  "Of course." Well, he'd driven around the Marigny once, a year ago when lightning first struck.

  She tapped the pencil on the pad, and something in her expression put him on guard. "It's an old neighborhood," she went on. Was he imagining a spark of anger in her voice? "Families have lived there for generations. It's historic."

  "Not designated as such."

  "No. But it should be." She was doodling on the page now. Nervous? He resolved to keep an eye on her as he watched her sketch a raised square. The square became a house with a steep, shingled roof. "The architecture in Marigny is unique. Some of the cottages are hundreds of years old, but go look at the fresh paint on them. And the gardens, the children playing in the yards. Look at the old-growth trees." A porch appeared across the front of the house as she sketched. Windows across the front. She glanced at him and put down the pencil.

  He shook his head. "Charm has its limits."

  "People there know their neighbors. They look out for each other. They've been shopping at the same small grocery stores for years, frequenting the same cafes, attending the same churches for generations. Then there are the blues bars and the restaurants. And Washington Square Park."

  "The park isn't included in our project," he said. "We're buying the land adjacent for parking. But like I told you, we'll do a little landscaping, separate the two, clean it up some."

  She looked at him. "The park will change when the surroundings change, when the people are gone. People live in that neighborhood. They're a part of the city's soul."

  He looked at her and knew he was looking at trouble. "Souls?" he snorted. "We're talking about real estate, not souls."

  Instantly he saw it in her eyes: She knew she'd gone too far. Small muscles contracted at the corners of her mouth, and she turned away. Picking up the pencil, she tore off the page with the sketch and went back to her list. Bingham noted with interest the dark imprint of lead on the paper as she pressed down. Yes, something was troubling Miss Catoir.

  With an abrupt but silent laugh, he looked through the windows at the cloudless sky, considering the irony of being lectured by a young associate—an associate who, by the way, was a woman, and a woman charging hundreds of dollars an hour for her time at that.

  He crossed his arms, watching her write. "I'm worrying about a multimillion dollar loan, property lines, and dealing with owners who'll jack up their prices if they get even a hint that we're buying for a project." He could almost feel her hackles rising as he spoke. Good. "I'm worrying about dirt and tractors, levee restrictions, politicians, the press," he went on. Not to mention the possibility of populist revolts. He gave her a careful look. "And you're talking about souls?"

  She said nothing.

  Bingham shook his head, straightened, pushed back his chair, and stood. "Souls," he muttered, making his way to the door. Where was the elevator in this place? He needed to escape for a while. Outside where the air was cool. Automobile exhaust was better than the smoke and tension in this conference room.

  Anonymous souls. As if he didn't already have e
nough to worry about. That was the trouble with people in New Orleans: The residents of this city just weren't practical.

  Amalise ducked her head to hide her fury. Bingham announced to the room that he'd be back soon as he strode out the door. She fumed as she wrote, imagining his anonymous agents spreading over the Marigny like a fungus. The lead on the pencil snapped, and she felt Raymond's eyes shift her way. Expressionless, she found another sharpened pencil and went back to work.

  At the other end of the table, the blueprint Adam had unrolled lay open and unattended, spread out across the table. Those plans mapped each parcel to be purchased for Black Diamond, she knew. She glanced around, but no one was paying her any attention. Doug, Preston, Raymond, and the bankers were in deep discussions. Robert was on the phone. Bingham and Adam were gone.

  Setting down the pencil, Amalise pushed back her chair and strolled toward the credenza on the other side of the room. She dropped some ice into a glass, opened a Tab, and poured the drink over the ice. She leaned back against the counter. No one looked up.

  Sipping the drink, she stepped over to the plans and casually scanned the squares—the spots where houses currently stood. Each square contained the street address of the property located there and the name of the legal owner of record, whether a lease existed on the property, and a few key points. A phone number was scribbled by hand under each owner's name. With a quick glance down over the surveyed area, Amalise followed the trail of lines along Frenchmen Street to Royal, curving around to Kerlerec Street where Caroline and Ellis lived.

  The house was the second from a corner on the plans. The address was there, and she bent closer, looking for Caroline and Ellis's name below. Instead she found herself staring at the name C. T. Realty, Inc. She blinked and looked again.

  C. T. Realty, Inc., a slumlord entity well known in this city for its cutthroat tactics.

  The full impact of the information took a moment to sink in. Caroline and Ellis were only renting. There was no notation of an existing lease.

  As she stood looking down at the paper covering one end of the conference table, the facts raced through her mind in the order she knew they'd occur after the closing—the sale by Caroline's landlord to Murdoch's agent, immediate notice to Caroline and Ellis evicting them from the premises, and the adoption agency's response to the loss of their home, the report citing instability and potential damage to the children. It was a classic "parade of horribles."

  She thought of the worn furniture in the house, the children's secondhand clothes, and knew that Caroline and Ellis didn't have the money required to move, not to an equivalent house and neighborhood. Such a move was well beyond their means, and the social workers, already worried about the age of the prospective parents, would realize that too.

  Her heart sank. The adoptions were probably doomed. Those children, just adjusting to their new home, would be tossed out into the world again. The landlord on Kerlerec would reap the profit from the sale, and Caroline and Ellis would be left to fend for themselves.

  And her job was to make sure that all of this happened.

  How had things come to this?

  Heart racing, she looked again at the phone number for C. T. Realty, Inc., memorizing it.

  Walking back to her seat at the other end of the conference table, she sat down, pulled over her notebook, and jotted down the name and phone number of the owner of Caroline's house, all the while asking herself what she thought she was doing. When she looked up, Robert's eyes met hers. He'd been watching her, she realized. He lounged against the credenza while Preston stood beside him hammering home some point into the speaker of the telephone.

  Quickly she looked off. Had he seen her take that name from the plans? She turned to Raymond and asked a question about the agreement he was working on, half listening to his answer. She'd never considered the situation she found herself in now—loving the work but hating the results. That wasn't the way things were supposed to work.

  Abba. You know that all my life I've wanted to be a lawyer. I thought law was supposed to be about fixing problems, about serving justice and righting wrongs, like Dad used to do in his courtroom. Now that I've made it this far, I thought I'd have a hand in somehow making the world a better place. But things aren't working out that way this time. Only you can see the big picture, Abba. Please help me think clearly now.

  When Bingham Murdoch blew back in and everyone returned to the table, still the shadows remained. Negotiations resumed and hours passed, but Amalise found that she couldn't dispatch the images of Caroline and the children. She told herself that this was just one transaction in a long career. Mangen & Morris had taken a chance in hiring her as one of the first two women lawyers in the firm. She couldn't blow it now.

  She wished that she could talk this over with Jude, but she quickly shoved the thought aside. She didn't need Jude's advice. Not now. He was Rebecca's now.

  Careful, Amalise, the observer said. The path is hidden in the storm. Let the hand of God lift you up, and soon enough you'll see the truth stretching out before you.

  Chapter Twenty

  A few nights after he'd fixed the fence for Amalise, Jude sat on the couch, weight on the small of his back, legs splayed, watching the television set. The sound was off, and he'd been thinking. Suddenly he lurched forward, switched off the set, and went into the dining room to the telephone. Festering anger was a losing proposition. If Amalise wanted only friendship from him, at least he'd hold onto that. He picked up the phone and dialed her office. She answered on the first ring.

  "Hello?" Her voice was low and tired. It was seven o'clock, and Rebecca had said the team was exhausted.

  "Hi. Thought you might want to take a break, get something to eat."

  There was a pause on her end of the phone. He gazed out the window. The street was dark, and he saw out there only ghosts of the children he'd hoped to have with Amalise. The others, the flesh-and-blood ones, were now all indoors.

  "Sure."

  Lights in the house next door flicked on, and the ghosts disappeared. Jude leaned against the wall, picturing her sitting in that office as he looped a finger through the coiled telephone cord.

  "I'm still working," she said, "but I could take a break."

  He slipped his finger from the cord and it sprang away. "All right. I'll pick you up and bring you back to the office afterward."

  "That sounds good. What time?"

  He glanced at his watch and pushed off the wall. "How about one hour?"

  "See you then. Park at the corner of Baronne and Common, and we'll find a place nearby."

  He went back to the living room, stretched out on the couch, hands behind his head, looking at the ceiling, and thought about the two cottages in the Irish Channel that he'd bid on earlier in the day. Should hear something on them tomorrow. He'd like to seal the deal before he left on watch next week. Then he could start planning the renovations. A thrill of adrenaline ran through him at the thought of this new venture. He'd do the work himself until he got further along.

  He shifted his back and relaxed again, still staring at the twelve-foot ceiling, one reason he'd bought this duplex. He focused on the light fixture; the light up there had never worked. He'd been using lamps in this room, but he'd get after that tomorrow. Old houses like this all had some electrical problems.

  Amalise had always liked old houses. He glanced again at his watch. Another half hour and he'd go pick her up, try to smooth things over after that fiasco at Clancy's the other night.

  By eight o'clock only Bingham, Amalise, and Adam were still working in the conference room, although Bingham seemed to be doing nothing more than passing time. Raymond and Preston had returned to their offices earlier to draft changes to the loan agreement. Robert was off in a meeting somewhere with the general contractor. Doug and Frank Earl had gone home, the prerogative of senior partners
and their clients.

  Amalise glanced at her watch and set down the pencil she'd been using, marking her place in the investor's placement memorandum describing the transaction. Consistency was the watchword with respect to the two lending group's documents, the bank syndicate, and Tom and Robert's investors. Briefly, she wondered when Tom would arrive in town.

  She rose and went to a chair in the corner and retrieved her coat. "I'll be back in a while," she said when Adam and Bingham looked up.

  Adam raked his hand through his hair, pushed back his chair, stretched his arms wide, and yawned. "I'll stick it out a little longer," he said.

  "I'm going to eat," she said. "Would you like me to bring something back? A sandwich? Or a salad?"

  "No, thanks."

  But Bingham rose too and slipped on his jacket, a herringbone tweed with thick double seams that looked expensive, yet also looked as though he'd been wearing it for fifty years. He clapped his hand down on Adam's shoulder and said he'd see him tomorrow. Early. Adam nodded.

  Amalise nodded toward the paperwork she'd left strewn across one end of the table. "If you finish up before I return, just leave the lights on so the night crew will know not to lock up."

  "I'll be here."

  Bingham pulled open the door. Amalise walked through and he followed. They stood together in front of the elevator, waiting. "So you're foraging for food?" He stepped into the elevator right behind her, punched the button for the first floor, and watched her reflection in the mirrored wall.

  She nodded as the elevator descended. "I'm meeting a friend for dinner. We'll find someplace close by."

  "Looking for soul food?" Bingham erupted at his joke.

  Amalise gave him a weak smile.