Harry had been sleeping with it under his pillow ever since. God Almighty! The things he’d been dreaming. Now he reached for the gin bottle and topped up his drink.
So he was going to feel like shit tomorrow. He flashed back to Sam at the Royal O this afternoon, talking to him like he was a kid. The blood had rushed to his head. He’d felt like shit then. He felt like shit now.
He tried the verse again.
I thought I knew how angels flew till you stepped off the plane.
Smilin’.
Babe, I’m ready for dying.
Said, Lord, take me up, lay my head front of that
moaning train.
Suddenly from out of the dark, a voice called, “You sure ’nuff gone feel like you been run over by a train you don’t put that bottle down stop moaning them blues. Sound like a dog done treed a possum.”
What?
Harry struggled up out of the canvas sling, his guitar rattling on the patio bricks. His legs, beneath his boxers, spread like he knew some mean moves. Watch it! He grabbed his bottle by the neck, just in case. “Who the fuck—?”
“Who the fuck you think?”
Harry shook his head. The voice was real familiar, but from somewhere far off in memory.
“I said who is it?”
“Open this goddamn door I’ll show you who is it, unless you want me to cave it in.”
“Lavert? Man, is that you?”
The gate swung open as the huge black man tapped it with his shoulder. “What it is, Harry Zack.”
*
Two hours later, they hadn’t budged. The gin bottle was long ago a dead soldier, and they’d wrung out a six-pack trying to get a handle on the fact that their paths hadn’t crossed again until now.
Harry was shaking his head. “I bet if you were God, or if you were a bird—”
“Now, which you talking about?” Lavert grinned. He’d always loved listening to this boy talk, from the very first day they’d met at Grambling. “God ain’t no bird.”
“Now, you don’t know that. God could be a buzzard for all you know.”
“I know God ain’t no buzzard. God’s gone be a bird, he’d be an eagle.”
“How come you so sure? Might be a pelican.”
“Louisiana pelican.” Lavert threw his massive head back and laughed. “Sheeeeit. Kind of thing you’d say, Zack.”
“So like you’re a bird up there, is what I’m saying, and you can see you and me. Like we had little lights on us all the time.”
“What color lights?”
Harry narrowed his eyes. “You’re just being difficult, man. Okay. I have a red light. You have a green light.”
Lavert grinned. He could see it now. Like little figures on a game board.
“Okay.”
“And here I am, with my red light”—Harry made a little hopping journey with the screw cap of the gin bottle across the low table—”going about my life. And here you are”—he fingered the guitar pick he was using for Lavert’s marker—“with your green light, doing the same.”
“Yeah, but for a while my light got kind of dim, sitting up there under a bushel in Angola.”
“Okay, okay. But nonetheless”—Harry waggled the two markers—“it’s got to be, if you could see it from up above like God, I bet lots of times, I’m just going out this door while you coming in the other.” The guitar pick chased the bottle cap. “I paid my bill and left while you getting dressed to come hear the same tunes, same place.”
Lavert picked it up. “Like I done slipped my dick out of some sweet thing you just wondering if you ever gone get hard again.”
“Shit.”
They slapped hands across the table.
“Can you believe this?” Harry said. “Tell me again, now, you were just talking with some guys, and my name came up?”
So Lavert told him a version of the truth, putting in that he was cooking for someone—leaving out that it was Joey the Horse.
“I like to lost it,” Lavert said. “Almost cut my foot off when I dropped that cleaver.”
“And then you just looked me up in the phone book, came over here. Hop, skip, and a jump away.” Harry shook his head. “Unbelievable.”
Lavert laughed. “Always been one of your favorite words. You ’member that time—?”
“You gon’ tell that again? Jesus!”
“And then,” Lavert said, spreading his hands in an expansive gesture as if he were speaking to a crowd, drawing them in, “little old white boy done fainted dead away in the middle of registration.”
“Fuck. That gym was hot. About eleven hundred degrees.”
“White boys don’t know nothing about no heat. Ain’t never worked in no fields.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
“Little old white boy, famous little old white boy, first one ever come to Grambling, got himself a track scholarship, we figure you done run all the way up from New Orleans, little old white boy lying there, looking like a ghost on the gym floor.”
“You gonna take all night to tell this thing?”
“Comes to. Looks up at this circle of black faces peering down at him. “Says—”
“‘God, I didn’t know angels were black.’”
And then they laughed, pounded each other on the back. It felt great to laugh like that.
“And nobody ever let me forget it,” Harry said. “Awh, it wuddn’t that bad, was it?”
Harry shook his head, then tilted it back, staring up at where the stars were, except with the city glare you couldn’t see them.
“Best years of my life,” he finally said.
“Go on.”
“I’m not kidding.”
“All the shit we gave you?”
Then they both settled in their chairs a bit. Lavert chuckled low in his throat. “Me too. That’s for damn sure.”
“We had some good times, didn’t we? You remember that time I won that big race?”
“Night of the football game that that one other white boy we had, come a year after you, scored the winning touchdown. Then two seconds later y’all’s race, one of them what ended in the stadium, you come flying in in the lead, ahead of the pack, your pore little face red as a beet.”
“Six weeks after that, people still congratulating me on that touchdown.”
Lavert laughed. “How you expect us to tell y’all apart?” He stretched long. “Yeah, lordy, them was the good times. Listen, you want me to go over to the A&P on Royal get some more beer? Now that you got over your mean reds.”
“I didn’t have the mean reds, man.”
“Yeah? Then why you sitting out there in your underpants moaning about some lady?”
Harry gave him a look.
“Don’t hardcase me, sucker. Tell Papa L all about it.”
“Awh, it’s nothing.” But the next thing Harry knew, he was telling Lavert about Sam—starting with that very afternoon.
“So she thinks you’re stupid.”
“That’s what it feels like.”
“She treat you that way from the git-go, you stupid to be messing around with her in the first place.”
“Unh-uh. The first time I saw her she pretended I was invisible—not stupid.”
“Where was that?”
“Day before Mardi Gras. Out at the airport.”
“Oh yeah? What you doing out there?”
“Following a lady lied about a neck injury. For, you know, the insurance company I told you I’m working for.”
“Oh, yeah? Lady white?”
“Yeah, Lavert. See, Tench Young is your equal opportunity—”
“Redheaded? Built like a brick shithouse?”
That made Harry sit up.
“Right! Chéri. You know Chéri?”
“Who the hell do you think was driving the limo, son, picked her up?”
“Jesus H. Christ! You work for Joey Cangiano, Lavert?”
“God, you white boys swear something awful.”
“I can’t fucking believe
it. You’re hooked up with Joey—we were that close to one another.”
“You and your little old red and green light theory you’se talking about earlier, we been closer than that hundreds of times, bopping around the Quarter.”
“Yeah, but see, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. I was right there, but I didn’t see you.”
Then an idea occurred to Lavert. “So, you didn’t see that little old white boy fell out in the street on me?”
Harry laughed. “No, but I know exactly what you’re talking about.”
And then he told Lavert about his hiding behind the pile of luggage and a taxi dispatcher that day so Chéri wouldn’t see him. How he missed the big event, but overheard Chéri later in the Pelican telling about it.
“So you don’t know who that sucker is,” said Lavert.
“Who?”
“The little sucker fell out in street, thought he’d been shot?”
“No, why?”
“I want to find him for G.T.”
“G.T. Johnson?”
“That very lady. That girl makes my heart sing.”
Harry clapped his hands to his head. “Unfriggingbelievable. You know she’s sort of a friend of Sam’s?”
“Sam a tall, good-looking black-headed woman? Curly hair? Chest?”
“Yep.”
“I don’t know her.”
“Shit!” Harry punched Lavert in the arm. “Where’d you see her?”
“Standing out on Royal this afternoon talking with G.T.”
“In front of the Royal O?”
“Precisely.”
“That must have been right before she told me I was ignorant.”
“Because you didn’t find this drug dealer?”
“I don’t know. I guess that’s part of it. Christ, I’d just told her I’d tracked down this woman Madeline Villère, used to—”
“What’s his name?”
“Who?”
“The drug dealer, asshole.”
“Billy Jack.”
Lavert sat there like a big stone deciding whether or not to come clean with Harry.
Harry stared at him for a while, remembering Sam’s legs beneath that polka-dot skirt. Then he added, “Billy Jack’s what Sam said. I’m not sure if Jack’s his last name.”
“I heard you.”
“So why are you sitting there looking stupid?”
“‘Cause I’d rather do that than listen to you say unbelievable again.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“That’s how your name came up, asshole. This evening when I was cooking dinner for Joey and the boys, Billy Jack is the creep Frankie Zito started talking about. Zito said somebody was asking about Billy Jack—who’s one of their dealers, sort of a tenth cousin twice removed from the organization, you know what I mean. Boy’s way down the line. But that’s what got Joey all worked up, somebody was asking about a man even remotely connected to him. That somebody asking was you, son. That’s where I heard your name.”
A hand grabbed Harry’s bowels. Did this mean he was dead? He was too young to be dead. “Joey gonna have me fed to the fishes?”
“Nah. I don’t think so. Franke Zito seemed a hell of a lot more pissed off at this Billy Jack—shit, what’d they say his last name was—than you.”
“Jack’s not his last name? You know his last name?”
“If I could remember it, I’d tell you right now, wouldn’t I? I just wasn’t paying that much attention, till they mentioned you.”
“Shit.”
“Listen. You want me to leave? I got better places I could spend my time, middle of the night, ’stead of sitting around with you. People who wear lots prettier undies. You know what I mean?”
“Fuck you, Lavert. You were in the frigging room when they said the guy’s name, and you don’t know who it is.”
“Yeah? Well, you’re out at the airport, and you don’t see me. Don’t see the little guy who thought I’d shot him, the one G.T. picked up and ran out on her. Now, if I can find him, make me a whole lot of points with G.T. Whereas you, you got no problem. I can find you your goddamn Billy Jack Whazzits, Zack. All I got to do is ask Frankie Zito.”
“For real?”
“What do you think this is, son? The comics? This is the friggin’ organization.”
“So you’ll do that?”
“Give me one good reason I should.”
“’Cause I’ll beat the shit out of you if you don’t.” Harry stood, the top of his head way beneath Lavert’s chin, and slugged his old friend in the chest.
Lavert picked him up and held him straight-armed out, level, then drew him in and kissed him dead on the lips.
“Jesus H. Christ!” Harry sputtered. “The Jolly Black Giant’s turned queer.”
“No, I ain’t.” Lavert laughed. “I’m just so happy to see my best little old white boy again. I tell you what, sport.”
“Put me down and tell me.”
Lavert did. “We’ll do a Batman and Robin. I get to be Batman. We’ll find both those suckers and win those ladies. How’s that, Zack?”
“Say shazam, man!”
Harry and Lavert slapped hands. Then the giant man lowered himself, and they bumped knees, hips, and elbows. Just the way Lavert had showed Harry, trying to teach him to be a brother, back at Grambling in the good old days.
Twenty-Two
THE NEXT MORNING Sam and Kitty were drinking coffee outside on the patio under a banana tree.
“How long did it take you to get Zoe to sleep?” asked Kitty.
“About an hour and a half. It took a while just to get her to stop screaming. I thought about pouring a bunch of Ma Elise’s good cognac down her, but, well, you know that’s against my religion.”
“So what’d you use?”
“A little wormwood oil, pinch of wallbreaker powder.”
Kitty laughed. “You called G.T.”
“Hell, I figured, when in Rome—I got her on her beeper. She was over here in a flash.”
“She brought her traveling voudou kit with her?”
“Guess she carries it in her ambulance. She was out here sprinkling oil in a circle around that tree”—Sam pointed to a flowering pink mimosa—“muttering about sending hexes back to their maker.”
“Oh, Lord.”
“Then she was up with Zoe, who was still carrying on like a banshee, dusting her and the room with—she said it was wallbreaker powder, would make Zoe peaceful.”
“Did it?”
“Well, at least she stopped screaming. Then G.T. got us all three sitting in the middle of the floor, rubbing a couple of candles with oil. A dragon-blood candle to ward off Billy Jack’s evil. And a double-cross candle to throw a hex back on him—to be precise.”
“Precision is real important in voudou, God knows.” Kitty lit another Picayune.
“Go ahead, smirk. But I’ll tell you what. You’d been sitting here with Zoe, having a screaming hissy fit after that son of a gun ordered her up a deep-fried rat, you’d have been grateful for some magic.”
“And I am. I am.” Kitty reached over and patted Sam on the knee. “But the idea of you and G.T. doing all that—” Then her tone grew grim. “But you are right about that bastard. I’d like to deep-fry him. Why would anyone do such a thing?”
“Darlin’, I’m afraid he could have done lots worse. In any case, he kept talking about her ratting on him. It could be something totally unrelated or could be he got wind of Harry looking for him.” Then she added under her breath, “Not that Harry found him.”
“How is Harry working out? Or have you got him so nervous he can’t hunt?”
Sam studied her manicure for a long count. “I don’t know about that. But I have succeeded in making him so mad, he told me to go screw myself.”
“Lordy, lordy, you always have had such a way with men.”
“I think it’s my Betty Boop routine.”
“Well, hell. But wait.” Kitty sat up straighter. “Let’s lo
ok at it another way. If you’ve made him that mad, maybe he’ll throw in the towel. Call off the chase. Tench Young’ll give Zoe the insurance money.”
Sam’s mouth turned down. “I wouldn’t count on that. If anything, Harry’s probably working overtime to prove something, anything, to save Tench’s money.”
Kitty slumped back into the deep yellow cushion of the wrought iron chair. “Way to go, friend. I knew asking you to come help was the right thing.”
“Don’t get cute with me. I’ve been up to a trick or two myself.” Then she told Kitty about the visit with the amazing Nadine.
“So you think she’s the one? That she and Church were lovers?”
“I’m sure leaning in that direction. Though, still, if they were, what does that prove? Nothing.”
“I can’t imagine the preacher woman killing anyone. I mean, let’s say Church had dumped her.”
“I can’t either. Though I can see why Church wouldn’t want to bring her home to Ma Elise.”
“Are you kidding? Ma Elise’s one of her biggest fans.”
“But would she want her for a daughter-in-law? Granddaughter-in-law?”
“I don’t know that Ma Elise would have cared.”
“What about Church’s friends?”
“Now, that’s another matter. They’d have cut him dead for sure. I mean, can you see Sister Nadine twirling around the floor of the Comus ball with her tambourine?”
“I’m telling you, Kit, that’s all for show. The woman may have some humble roots, but you’d fall over dead at her sophistication. And I told you about her drug centers, and what she said about Zoe—about Church coming to her, looking for help for Zoe?”
Kitty shook her head. “Weird. It’s all so weird.”
“I know.” They sat quietly for a bit, sipping, smoking. Then Sam said, “Listen, something else I’ve been meaning to ask you. Tell me about Church’s money.”
“What about it?”
“Do you know how much he had?”
“Not exactly. His lawyer’s still working that out. Plus, with this business about the insurance—”
“Was Church in some kind of financial difficulty? I seem to remember, that night in the Sazerac, Tench Young teasing him about the cost of Zoe’s coming out, of Carnival—”
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