But Sam wasn’t there to talk with Zoe about that. “Cocaine,” she was saying to the young girl with the big dark circles under her eyes.
Zoe shrugged, Yeah?
“Talk to me about your dealing. How’d that come about?”
If you insist, Zoe’s eyebrows signaled. Then she spread her thin hands and took Sam back to that primo importante conversation she’d had with Dr. Cecil Little when he’d walked in on her in the bathroom at Chloe Biedenham’s grandmother’s house the afternoon of Chloe’s first tea. His trying to sneak a peek, then realizing she was doing something even more interesting than lifting the skirt of her blue party dress, slipping her a C-note for a little toot. Laughing his there’s-lots-more-where-that-came-from-little-girl laugh.
“So I said,” she continued, “‘Most of the time, you must go to parties, Dr. Cecil, and not luck out. You can’t always count on finding someone like me in the ladies’ room. So it would be convenient for you if there was someone else holding for you. I mean, someone you could count on seeing, say, maybe once or twice a week. Someone who knew all the same people. Who went to the same parties.’
“‘Why, Miss Zoe Lee!’”
“I had to give myself a pat on the back for that one,” she said to Sam, “for my plan. It was a natural, a simple, brilliant natural. But then, the best things are.”
She and Dr. Cecil Little did see each other at least once a week. Because, as she explained, in New Orleans society you had your country clubs, New Orleans and Metairie, your Southern Yacht Club, your men’s lunch clubs, Boston and Pickwick, your ladies’ Orleans Club, your old-line carnival organizations, Comus, Rex, Momus, your members of the board over at the Ochsner Foundation and Tulane, your United Way, your kids in McGehee and Sacred Heart, your Little Lakes Duck Club when you felt like doing some shooting.
But it was all the same people, numbered about two-fifty, three hundred all told, that you saw over and over. Never anybody new, at least not socially. You either had Old New Orleans blood or you didn’t.
There was nothing more pathetic, Zoe had heard her daddy say more than once, than to watch a big-deal corporate executive move into New Orleans and buy his huge house and furnish it all new and shiny and settle down with his little wife to wait for the creamy engraved invitations which would never come except from other miserable parvenus.
Whereas if you were born into it, New Orleans was one long party—starting with the Twelfth Night, Carnival, Easter, followed by the Jazz and Heritage Festival, then Spring Fiesta, and Halloween. November was All Saints Day, when you visited your dead and made a picnic on the grass between the graves. It was only a hop, skip, and a jump to Turkey Day and Christmas and then, count your fingers and two toes, you were back at Twelfth Night again. Life was one Big Easy round of slapping the same backs and brushing the same cheeks and shaking the same hands your whole life over.
Now, why couldn’t one of those little hands pass a small package, a prettily wrapped present, a petit cadeau in the never-ending crush of kissy-face? It could. No problem.
So Dr. Cecil Little fronted Zoe a couple grand to make the first buy for him from Billy Jack, whom she’d met hanging out at Patrissy’s. Zoe doled out the stash like a schoolmistress giving stars for good behavior.
And it was awfully good blow.
It was so good, in fact, that Dr. Cecil couldn’t keep it to himself.
Zoe knew he wouldn’t be able to. That’s what she was counting on, expansion.
Before long, Dr. Cecil had provided her with a whole network of august customers, pillars of the medical profession with very greedy noses, who didn’t want to be caught holding.
Pretty soon, there wasn’t a social gathering in town where you didn’t hear the cry, “Where’s Zoe? Is Zoe here yet? Where is that sweet thing?”
It made her feel like a star, she said to Sam. A princess. It didn’t even matter to her anymore that she was as big as the side of a house—even if everybody said different—that her mother had run off and left her, that her father was a lush whose personal habits were getting sloppier and sloppier.
It didn’t matter, because everywhere she went people were calling her name. She was like a light at the tippytop of one of those towers of silver she used to build in her room.
And if they missed connections at a party, Zoe made house calls.
Which was more than she could say for her clients, the last home visit by a New Orleans physician having been made in 1963, right after JFK was shot over in Dallas. Which was before Zoe was born, of course.
She teased her docs about that, about how lazy they were, how they couldn’t get off their duffs even if someone was dying. Yes, they all said Zoe was a great tease. Laughter was good for business.
And business had been super supremo excelente until—here Zoe blinked back tears—until that awful night on St. Charles.
She took a deep breath. Stiff upper lip. On with it.
In fact, business was so good that through a broker/client she’d developed a fairly high-risk portfolio.
No flies on this child, thought Sam.
She held a mix of precious metals, moderately leveraged real estate partnerships, developmental oil and gas, aggressive growth stocks, and long-term high-grade bonds. All doing very well, thank you.
In addition, she was no piker at the Fairgrounds, betting on winners more often than not. She chose them by their jockeys’ colors and the horses’ names.
All very interesting, Sam nodded. “But let’s get back to your supplier, this Billy Jack. What I really want to know is if he might have any connection with your father’s death. Did he have any reason to hurt you? Had you—double-crossed him in some way? Done something—I don’t know—”
“I can’t think what. I’ve made him lots of money. But, on the other hand, he’s nuts. Crazy. A psycho.”
“Great, Zoe.”
“But nothing I can’t handle,” she rushed to reassure Sam. “He has an awful temper, but I know how to stay on his good side—except at the track. When I win and he loses, it weirds him out.”
“Is that enough to make him want to hurt you—or your dad?”
“I don’t think so. Would be pretty stupid, wouldn’t it? Well, except he is kinda stupid. No, not stupid, exactly. He’s great with numbers, has a thing about them. But he’s trash.” Zoe gestured, one hand palm out, as if that explained it all.
“Most drug dealers are not exactly aristocrats.”
Zoe laughed. “I am.”
Sam had to give her that.
“But I would suppose you haven’t seen much of Billy Jack since your dad—”
Two beats. “No. I haven’t. I haven’t been doing any business at all.”
“Have you heard from him?”
“He’s called a couple times, left messages on my machine over at the house. I left word for him that I was shut down.”
“Does he know why?”
“I can’t remember exactly what I said. Probably just that I wasn’t dealing now.”
“Do you have his phone number?”
“Yes, but it’s a machine too—somewhere. No one ever answers except the machine. I don’t even know if he lives there.”
*
Right outside Zoe’s room at Ma Elise and Kitty’s house, Billy Jack was sitting in a tree staring in at them.
He could make out only a word now and again, but then, he hadn’t come to listen. He’d come to watch the little show he’d planned for Zoe.
He’d gotten the idea for the show after he’d gone to Patrissy’s and talked to Willie, the maître d’ who’d said nuh-unh, it wasn’t Frankie Zito was doing the asking after him, was some good-looking young guy in a trench coat, didn’t look like anybody in the organization. That weirded him out, so he’d stomped out of Patrissy’s and jumped in his car. When in doubt, it was best to get moving.
As he drove, he came to some conclusions pretty fast. It was a cop who was asking after him. Or the DEA. He knew it. And he didn’t have time fo
r that crap right now. He needed to do more bi’nis, not less. No time to be laying low, Easter Sunday right around the corner and the man at Adler’s still holding his mama’s diamond cross in his fat little hands.
With that, Billy Jack’s suspicion had coiled tight around itself. Okay, who’d ratted him out?
Well, take a look.
Who’d been acting funny?
He’d sat dead still in his Lincoln Town Car at a green light, horns honking all around him. Fuck ’em. Hold on a minute. He wanted to get this right.
His mind had flipped through his customers.
A-Z.
Bingo.
Zoe Lee.
It didn’t take him but a few minutes to formulate a plan, throw the Town Car into gear, start rolling again.
He loved it—a natural.
Now, sitting in his ringside seat waiting for it to happen,
Billy Jack rubbed his hands in anticipation. He couldn’t wait to see the expression on Zoe Lee’s face.
The phone rang just then and Zoe jumped.
Like that.
Like when she was six years old and Chloe’s big brother, Malcolm, had caught the two of them, her and Chloe, playing doctor and said if they didn’t do a rerun for him—that’s it, little girl—he was gonna call her father. Like she had done something bad. Just a little kid, she’d believed him, had jumped that high for years every time the phone rang, thinking it was Malcolm gonna narc on her.
Like that.
But then, somebody had been calling off and on and hanging up. But she didn’t tell Sam that.
“Hello?” she said. “Hello? Hello?”
The caller on the other end hung up.
*
Out in the tree, Billy Jack grinned. That call was the signal. All systems were go. Now.
*
Within minutes Zoe’s phone rang again. Sam reached for it, but Zoe was too fast.
Billy Jack, with a handkerchief over the mouthpiece of the portable phone he had up the tree with him, said, “You rat.”
“Who is this?”
Sam was shaking her head. Hang up, she whispered.
Zoe mouthed: Billy Jack.
That was different. Sam looked around for an extension, but Zoe shook her head, then turned the receiver out. They listened cheek to cheek.
“You shouldn’t rat on your friends,” he said.
“I know that’s you, Billy Jack,” said Zoe. “Don’t try to be so creepy.”
Silence. Then: “You rat!”
“I didn’t rat. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Cross your heart and hope to die?”
“What?”
“Cross your heart and hope to die?”
Zoe thought, what was this hope-to-die crap? He’d said it twice. Zoe’d never said it even when she was a little kid, just like she’d never prayed If I should die before I wake.
People who said stuff like that were nuts.
And then she got it.
“Are you threatening me?”
Billy Jack laughed really loud—like thunder out over the lake on a summer afternoon. “Why, what makes you think that?”
“Then why did you say it?”
Before he could answer, the downstairs doorbell rang.
Sam signaled to Zoe to get the door, she’d hold the phone.
“I have to go. Doorbell’s ringing.”
“Let somebody else get it.”
“Nobody else is home.”
“Are you sure?” The bell rang again. “Oh, yeah. I can hear that. Listen, why don’t I stay on the phone while you see who it is? These days you never can tell.”
“Like you’re gonna protect me,” Zoe laughed.
“Go get it.”
“Oh, all right.”
Zoe threw a quilted satin robe over her nightclothes and ran barefooted down the stairs.
Sam could hear Billy Jack’s excited breath on the line.
Downstairs Zoe stood behind the locked door. “Who is it?”
“Delivery, ma’am.”
“From where?”
“Commander’s.”
“Commander’s Palace? I didn’t order anything.”
And she didn’t know they did takeout. Though, of course, Ella Brennan would do anything to make you happy if you gave her enough lead time.
“I think your grandma did. I think that’s what they said. It’s getting cold, ma’am.”
That was weird; it didn’t sound like something Ma Elise, her great-grandma to be precise, would do. Through the peephole she stared at a tall young man with sandy curls who was wearing black pants and a white waiter’s jacket.
He was holding a white cardboard box in his hands. What the hell? She opened the door.
“Maybe your grandma felt guilty about not making you any supper,” he smiled.
His front teeth were a little crooked. He was sort of a wonk.
“How do you know she didn’t?”
“I just guessed.”
Zoe signed the receipt which he slipped into his pocket. The guy was still standing there. “So, Miss Lee, you better go eat this ’fore it gets cold.”
And then she remembered her manners. “Oh, let me get you a little something.” She started back into the house to find him a tip.
“No, ma’am. That’s all right.”
Quick as that, he was back down the brick walk. She didn’t see a car. Well, Commander’s was right around the corner. He probably walked.
Zoe ran back upstairs with the box, waving it at Sam, who handed her the receiver.
“So what was that?” said Billy Jack.
“Listen, thanks for baby-sitting me, but it was just a delivery boy.”
Billy Jack smiled. His delivery boy, but she didn’t know that. Yet. “What’d you get?”
“Somebody sent over something from Commander’s.”
“That’s nice. What is it? Shrimp?”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
She eyed the box resting on her dressing table. If Sam didn’t want a snack, she’d bury it deep in the kitchen garbage, where Ma Elise and Ida would never see it. She didn’t want to hear any more lectures about her eating habits.
“Whyn’t you open it up?”
“Look, Billy Jack,” she said, “thanks a hell of a lot for calling and trying to weird me out, but I’ve got to go.”
“Open it.”
“You like surprises? If it’ll make you happy, I’ll open it.”
She reached past Sam, who was staring at her with raised eyebrows, snagged scissors out of a drawer, and cut the red and white string.
Inside, in a little basket like fried chicken came in was—Jesus, she didn’t know what it was. But it sure didn’t look like something from Commander’s.
“What is it?” Billy Jack asked.
“I don’t know. Something fried. Something fried whole. Yuk,” she said, backing away from it now. She’d gorged so much today that food in general was disgusting. Fried food was especially disgusting. And this, it looked like a little squirrel or something, was revolting. What could Ma Elise have been thinking about?
“It’s Willard,” offered Billy Jack.
“No, it’s not Will—who the hell’s Willard?” What was he talking about? “It doesn’t have a name I told you, it’s something fried.”
“Don’t you remember that movie? Willard?” he repeated. “No, I don’t. I don’t have time to go to—” And then, click, she did. She remembered. Willard was a rat.
Zoe screamed. She screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed and grabbed the box and tossed it out the window. She was so freaked out, she didn’t even see Billy Jack sitting in the tree right there. She was about to throw the phone out, too, when she heard the Billy Jack’s voice, low and slow, come slithering out of the phone like a snake.
“No more ratting. Billy Jack don’t like ratting. Okay, darlin’?”
Darlin’ was what Uptown bitches like Zoe called everybody. Billy Jack smiled. He liked that
.
Twenty-One
HARRY’S SLAVE QUARTER cottage behind a big house fronting on St. Peter was minuscule, but it sported its own courtyard and a few other sweet advantages.
He’d rented it ten years earlier from Allan Jaffe of Preservation Hall, and it abutted the hall, so if he was early to bed, he could drift off to Percy Humphrey’s “Lord, Lord, Lord.” Also, because Jaffe had had a soft spot in his gigantic heart for musicians of whatever stripe, the rent was less than the square footage.
Now it was after midnight, and Humphrey’s band across the way had already packed it in. Harry was sitting in a canvas chair out in his courtyard dressed in a faded T-shirt and his shorts, staring at a half-empty bottle of gin. Harry was royally pissed. He strummed his old Gibson and tried it again.
I thought I knew how angels flew till you stepped off the plane.
Smilin’.
Oh, baby, I ain’t lying.
Said, Lord, this is heaven, let me lay my head right now front of
that moaning train.
Moaning? Moving? Morning?
Harry banged the flat of his hand across the strings, which made a sound like a glass smashing if you throw it up against the wall hard enough. It was sort of like the sound of a man’s breaking heart.
Sheeeeit, Harry, come off it, he said to himself. You ain’t known the goddamn woman long enough she could inflict that kind of pain. You’ve seen her three times? Four? Maybe five you count that first time at the airport.
Yeah, well, how did you factor in those five/six weeks in between she’d come and gone and come again? All that time he was lying in his bed every night imagining her face right over his. Flying. Same thing every morning, waking up to her name.
He’d even found his feet out of control, walking him into a shop out on Magazine called Divine Light, where he’d asked the man behind the counter for a gris-gris to bring your lover back. Wait, wait, he’d explained. I want her to be my lover. Then come back to me.
The Divine Light man didn’t even blink, just drew pictures and arrows with colored pens on a piece of parchment, rubbed it with sweet-smelling oil, tied it in a little red bag with a drawstring, then said, Five dollars, please.
Now Let's Talk of Graves Page 18
