Now Let's Talk of Graves

by Sarah Shankman

  Never mind a poolhall.

  She glanced back up.

  Wait a minute.

  Was that who she thought it was, driving right past her in that Town Car?

  It was that little son of a bitch!

  She’d stake her life on it.

  G.T. did a U-ey in the middle of Dante.

  The little sucker stared at her in his rearview mirror for a long moment, then floored it.

  G.T. hit the siren. That was against the rules, off duty, but what the hell were rules for?

  Thirty-Two

  HARRY HAD GOTTEN Sam’s message, called her back, and made a date to meet her in the Pelican on Magazine. She’d wanted to see the place where he’d followed Chéri that afternoon of Mardi Gras eve—where he’d overheard the conversation between Jimbo and Maynard.

  He was waiting for her at the bar now, whistling what he had of “I Thought I Knew How Angels Flew” under his breath. And there she was. God, she was beautiful.

  “What’s that tune?” she asked. Harry looked like a cool drink on a summer afternoon. It seemed years since she’d seen him.

  “A song I’ve been working on.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “Great.”

  “Great.”

  “Listen, I’m really s—” Their mouths formed the words simultaneously. Then they laughed. Together. Again.

  Sam looked somewhere to the side of his left ear. “You’re looking pretty good.”

  “You always do.”

  She stared down at the toes of her shoes, feeling the blush rise up her neck, feeling like first grade. “So, who do I have to see to get a drink around here?”

  “Lookin’ at him, darlin’.” Calvin popped up from behind the bar like a Jack-in-the-box. “What’s your pleasure?”

  “Perrier.”

  “No fancy water.”

  “Club soda. Slice of lemon. Splash of bitters.”

  So. She slid a little sideways look at Harry. Jeans. Old navy blazer. Loafers. Gray shirt the same color as his eyes.

  Did he just wink at her, or was that her imagination?

  “How’re things?”

  “Good. I’ve taken in a partner.”

  “At the office, you mean?”

  Harry laughed. “No, I can’t imagine my friend Lavert working for Uncle Tench.”

  “Is your Lavert a huge black man?”

  “You know Lavert? Oh, I forgot, you met him with G.T. He told me that.”

  “Really?”

  “We go way back.”

  “So what’s he doing for you?”

  “We decided to throw in together finding Billy Jack and G.T.’s little dude.”

  “What’s his interest?”

  “G.T.”

  “I see. Any luck?”

  “We’re meeting later for a nightcap to compare notes. We started only last night.”

  And it was only yesterday afternoon that he’d walked out on her at the Royal O. Why did it seem like years ago?

  “Lots been happening,” she said.

  He wasn’t sure he wanted to know about it. Was she going to beat him over the head with whatever she’d been up to? “Wanta tell me about it?”

  Sure. The visit with Sister Nadine, Zoe and the french-fried rat—Bastard! spat Harry—her little chats with Jimbo and Miss Cissy.

  “Damn! You make me feel like I’ve been standing still. Though”—laying it out casually—“I did hop over to St. Martinville earlier today, met with Madeline Villère.”

  “You did! Really!” The without me was implicit.

  “Now, as I remember—”

  “Okay. Okay. It’s just that Hoke, my managing editor, has been calling threatening to cut out my gizzard if I don’t get back to work—”

  “Which puts you on slo-mo.”

  “Exactly. So I was thinking I’ve never seen Cajun country, it would be a good opportunity—”

  “It’s not going anywhere,” Harry said. “One day I’d be happy to drive you.”

  What was she talking about? This wasn’t a vacation. Two minutes with Harry again and she was losing track of what was important. “So what’d you find out from her? What was she like? What’d she say?”

  “Said it was high time you came to visit.” He delivered the line to his beer.

  “Harry.”

  “Okay.”

  Then he told her. She listened without interrupting for ten minutes, a major exercise in self-control. Finally, she breathed, Holy Toledo.

  “My sentiments exactly. All that obsession with fat women—enough to make Jane Fonda commit suicide, don’t you think? And that means Sister Nadine’s a member of their club. You think Church’s death could be about her? Maynard finally got tired of losing out with the ladies, offed him? Or hired Jimbo?”

  “Jesus, I don’t know. But what a couple of good-for-nothing losers.”

  “You’re right there. At least Madeline’s happy now. And the good news is she wants to get involved with Zoe.”

  “Absolutely great.”

  “I told her you’d call her.”

  “Why, Harry, that was awfully nice of you.”

  “Way my mama raised me. Can’t help it.” He tapped his glass on the bar in lieu of patting Sam. “Calvin, my good man, another round.”

  Calvin was Johnny-on-the-spot, as if he’d been waiting. Which he had been.

  “You know,” he said, wiping down the bar with a damp rag even though it didn’t need it, “I couldn’t help overhearing.”

  “Yep,” said Harry. “Isn’t that what bartenders do for a living?”

  “Yeah, well, you know, some of what you’ve been saying, I’ve thought a lot about that afternoon you were in here before, you remember, that conversation the afternoon before old Church Lee died?”

  “Yes?” Sam gave him her most encouraging smile.

  “Well, you know how it is when folks get to drinking, fooling around. Say things they don’t mean.”

  “So you don’t think Maynard meant what he said about killing Church?” said Sam.

  “Well, as I remember it, wasn’t Maynard said that in the first place. That was Jimbo.”

  “You sure?” asked Harry.

  “Well, hell, what difference would it make? I mean, they was just teasing. Talking big drunk talk. Hell, you believed a tenth of what you hear in here, you’d be on the phone to the police all the time. Couldn’t ever make no money.”

  “And there was never any further conversation about it that you know of?”

  “Sure not in here. And both Jimbo and Maynard Dupree come in time to time.”

  “Together?” asked Sam.

  “Well. Let me think about that for a minute.”

  Sam watched the rag making circles. The old mahogany bar glowed.

  “Nope.” Calvin shook his head. “I’m sure they’ve not. They’re not really friends, you know. May run into each other here, there, somewheres else in their drinking rounds, but”—he waggled a hand—“you know, different worlds.”

  Oh, well. Sam gave Harry a look. Certainly didn’t hurt to ask.

  “Sort of like that young guy came in here with Church one night last fall. Yep, that was the same kind of thing. Different worlds.”

  “What young man?” Sam jumped in.

  Calvin went right on. “Of course Church Lee was no snob. ’Specially when it came to drinking partners.”

  “Could I buy you a drink?” Harry offered Calvin. “Maybe you could remember something about that young man?”

  “Well, that’s right kindly of you. Don’t mind if I do.” He poured himself two fingers of Glenlivet. Sam watched the lights bounce off the top of his balding head as he leaned forward, tipped the glass back. “Now”—wiping his mouth—“this was, as I said, sometime back in the fall. Pretty late one night. It was still warm. You know how we don’t have but one season here in N’Awlins, summer with a couple days of cool—”

  Sam choked down the impulse to rush him.

  “—anyway, the
reason I mention that is Church was sweating like a pig.” He gestured down his chest, under his armpits. “Right through a good suit.”

  “That’s some sweating,” said Harry.

  “Well, that’s what I said too. Church said he’d been running a race.”

  “A race?” Sam echoed, trying to keep the rising hope out of her voice. A bell was ringing in the back of her mind.

  “Yeah. Said he’d been chasing this young man he had with him. Then they both laughed. Like it was a big joke.”

  Sam grasped Harry’s arm. The night Church was mugged. The story Zoe had told her. He’d bought the mugger a drink?

  “Was it around eleven, eleven-thirty? Did Church say he’d been to a party?” Of course, that could describe many of Church’s evenings—but then, this one had ended differently.

  Calvin squinted. “Something like that. They came in, sat down there”—he pointed—“at the end of the bar. Stayed for about an hour. Discussing something serious, it looked like. Kind of peculiar.”

  “Because of the young man?” asked Sam.

  “Yeah. Like I said, the dude, well, he wasn’t, well, he wasn’t Uptown, that was for sure. And if he’d been chasing Church, it didn’t make sense—”

  Sam had been holding her breath. “What’d he look like?”

  “Little bitty guy. Not a whole lot over five feet tall. Runty. Blond hair.”

  SAM: “The guy at the airport!”

  HARRY: “Billy Jack!”

  And then they said the words over again a few times.

  “Billy Jack!”

  “The guy at the airport!”

  “The little guy at the airport!”

  “Billy Jack!”

  “Is Billy Jack!”

  Finally the light had dawned. Was it possible, the little guy at the airport and Billy Jack were the same?

  “It’s not only possible, it seems probable, doesn’t it, now that you think about it?” Harry said.

  It did. It was.

  Sam threw up her hands. “Now what?”

  Thirty-Three

  LAVERT HAD PICKED the Napoleon House for the rendezvous with Harry, thinking the spot would retain some of G.T.’s vibes. That was earlier—long before he’d heard from the lady herself. Now he was vibrating.

  By the time Harry walked in, Lavert couldn’t wait. He wanted to grab and tackle him.

  “Man, you won’t believe what’s happened!”

  “Mine’s better.” Harry’s grin came over his face like dawn.

  “Don’t give me that Bogart shit. I’m telling you I got the goods. I know the dude’s name.”

  “Whose?”

  “Billy Jack Joyner’s, asshole!”

  “Joyner? Oh, yeah? I’m telling you mine’s better.”

  “And I saw the little airport dude. I ran right smack into him this afternoon holding up that Pic’N’Pac out on Coliseum with a peashooter.”

  “You don’t say. Did you get his name?”

  With that, Lavert got mad. “Man, what the fuck’s wrong with you? You think I said, excuse me, sir, I’m taking a survey, could I have your name right here on the dotted line? You getting me steamed, man.”

  “Unh-huh. Draw me a Dixie, please,” he said to the bartender.

  “Zack, I’m about to bite a piece out of you. Guess you don’t care now Chéri’s got Joey pissed off at your Maynard Dupree, Joey wants me to do him. And your Joyner. Guess you don’t care I just missed the Joyner dude at Kush’s a little while ago. Then G.T. calls me. Says she passed the other little dude—the one who jumped out of the ambulance that day on the way from the airport—when she’s going to pick up her granny. Old lady hangs out there at Kush’s. G.T. chased him, but he was too slick, got away from her.”

  “Anything strike you funny about that?”

  “About what? That we’re closing in on both these guys, we know Dupree’s in deep shit, been on the case only twenty-four hours.”

  “About the fact that Joyner walks out of Kush’s, then not too far away G.T. passes the little dude she picked up at the airport? Same time? Same place? Same station?”

  “You pissing me off, Zack. Talking to me like I’m stupid. I ain’t stupid, man.”

  “Nope. But you’re not seeing what’s right in front of your face. I didn’t either for a while.”

  Lavert drained the last of his beer, then reached over and polished off Harry’s. He narrowed his eyes, exhaling hard through his nose like a winded prizefighter.

  Then he got it.

  “One dude! We looking for one dude!” Lavert was jumping around now. “And we know the little motherfucker’s name! Couldn’t be too hard to find out where he lives.” Doing a little victory dance, boogying behind the barstools. “And I know where he hangs!”

  “You always were my main man.” Harry signaled for a celebratory round. Cuke-cool dude, smiling.

  Thirty-Four

  MAYNARD WAS HOME relaxing in the tub. Or, at least, he was trying.

  He could hardly think, his head hurt him so bad, not to mention the burning in his stomach, the flibberty-jibbities throughout his whole entire body, chills running up and down in little spasms.

  Face it, man, he said, staring down at his fat stomach floating like a desert island in the tub of hot water. You’ve lost it. Bad.

  Kids running up and down the stairs, Easter week, cowboy boots, goddamn cap pistols.

  Pow! Pow! Pow!

  The boots reminded him of Jimbo.

  He closed his eyes and moaned.

  That fucking Jimbo, holding the best tailor in New Orleans out the window. You could bet your sweet patootie he’d seen the last of Herbert. That was for damned straight. The man had made his clothes since he was in school.

  “Daddy! Daddy!” Maynard, Jr., came bursting in the door.

  “What the hell you think this is, son, Grand Central Station?”

  The boy stopped, cap gun drawn. “What?” The finger of his other hand was creeping up toward his nose.

  “What what, son?”

  “What’s Grand Central Station?”

  “I pay eight thousand fucking dollars a year, more than it cost me at the University of Virginia, to keep you in private school, and you don’t know what Grand Central Station is?”

  “Ma! Ma!” the boy wailed, wheeling out of the room.

  Great. Just what he needed. Marietta coming in here, giving him one of her holier-than-thou you’re-such-a-terrible-father lectures.

  He reached up, dried his hands on the thick white towel, plucked a cigar from the glass shelf. Clipped the end of it with his gold knife. Flicked his gold lighter. Was there anything as satisfying as gold? Lit the cigar—ah, God bless those little Cuban bastards.

  Then he leaned back and tried to pull himself together.

  But he came all unraveled again—queasy like he had a bellyful of grease. What the fuck was he going to do?

  After Jimbo’d left his office day before yesterday, he’d called a car for Herbert, sent Sally Jean home squalling when what he’d wanted to do was smack her, sat alone in his office for a long time—long past dark. Wondering where it’d all gone wrong.

  Hearing his father calling him a pantywaist. Goddamn pantywaist, son. Should’ve killed Church right out. Always told you that. Sperm run out, weak when it got to you, always said that to your mama. That and her letting your curls stay so long, you wuz a kid, made you think like a girl. Think you wuz a girl. Still do.

  God, how he hated the old bastard!

  When Maynard was barely a pup his dad had said, That Church Lee, Davenport Lee’s son, is twice the man of you.

  That’s why he went after Peggy Patrick, that fat little girl he and Church had first fought over as boys—to prove the old man wrong.

  Now look what it had come to. He may or may not have killed Church. Jesus, he couldn’t remember. May or may not have hired Jimbo to do it for him. Oh, God.

  And now Jimbo was really leaning on him. Taking his money was one thing. Hanging his tailo
r out the window another. Now there was this mothering lawn-chair business, Jimbo strong-arming him into getting him on TV. Calling in celebrities! Was there no end? No end to his suffering? Oh, Jesus.

  They were gonna laugh him out of Comus. Laugh him out of the Pickwick. Laugh him out of the Club. His name linked with this cockamamy scheme and this redneck.

  Never again would he get to ride on the big horse in the parade. Never again would he be captain of Comus.

  But wait a minute.

  Maynard sat up.

  What the fuck was he worried about?

  This was New Orleans, the only town with a sense of humor in the whole United States.

  He’d just laugh it off. They would too.

  He reached for the towel again.

  He’d make the most of it!

  Hell! Maynard was getting excited now, he’d make himself a kind of eccentric hero, producer of the wildest stunt since Mardi Gras, if this goddamn lawn-chair sucker flew.

  See. It was only a matter of attitude.

  What the hell had he been pissing and moaning about? Maynard reached for the wall phone. He could do this! Never let it be said Maynard Dupree wasn’t wired, didn’t have the juice. Could he get Jimbo King and his Flying Lawn Chair on TV? You bet your sweet ass he could! Knew just the sweet patootie could do it for him too.

  “Maynard.”

  He slammed down the phone and rolled an eye at Marietta, who was standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips.

  “Yes, darlin’?”

  “Don’t you darlin’ me, you son of a bitch. What’d you say to Junior?”

  “I merely reminded him that he might take better advantage, given the cost, of his schooling.”

  “Humph,” she snorted.

  Maynard wondered what had happened to all those fine manners the young Marietta had learned in finishing school.

  “I bet that’s what you said. You gonna stay in here till you turn into a prune?”

  “Why, Marietta darlin’. I didn’t know you cared about my poor old body anymore.”

  “Well, you got that right.”

  “Now, sugah.”

  Marietta closed the lid of the toilet. She sat down, pulling one tan leg up, inspecting a scab on her knee where she’d fallen on the court. Playing with Chéri. A little chill ran down her spine. That Chéri—she’d told Marietta what she’d said to Joey about Maynard. Marietta cast a cold eye over to her pudding of a husband. They used to murder Caesars in their tubs, wasn’t that right? Marietta’s notion of history was a little shaky, but she knew she was on the right track here with the Italians. Caesars were Italians, right? And so was Joey. Mob Italian. And Chéri had made sure Joey was pissed as hell at Maynard.