Now Let's Talk of Graves

by Sarah Shankman

  Chéri’d said it was like putting in an order. It was only a matter of time now till she’d be free of this fat bastard.

  In the meantime— “I hear you got yourself a new boyfriend,” she said.

  Maynard damply tongued his stinking cigar to one side of his mouth. “What?”

  “You gone deaf, honey?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, May-retta.” He waved his arm and his cigar. “Get on out of here. Leave me alone.”

  “I bet you wouldn’t say that to Jimbo.” She slid it in like a dagger.

  Maynard thought his heart had stopped. Suddenly the bathwater felt like ice. “Jimbo who?”

  “Now, darlin’. Don’t be coy with me. I hear you been keeping steady company with that old boy. I think it’s kind of cute. I always knew you hung out long enough you’d figure it was boys you liked anyway.”

  Maynard stood, the water pouring off him, splashing out of the tub onto the tiles. “Out! Get out of here, you bitch!” He was waving his arms.

  “Okay, darlin’.” Staring pointedly at his little thing flopping. “You don’t have to shout. I’m going.” Sashaying out with a twitch to her cute butt. She knew it still was—cute, that is. Chéri told her so every chance she got. “But I’d be careful, playing around with trash like that, hon, I was you.” She slammed the door behind her.

  God damn her to hell! His cigar was all wet. Maynard jerked it out of his mouth and threw it on the floor.

  Then he caught sight of himself in the floor-length mirror on the inside of the door. He was the spit and image of a sounding whale.

  Jesus! Where had all the good part gone?

  *

  I’m making progress, Lavert had said to Joey the Horse this morning. Joey was a little hung over. He’d asked Lavert to whiz him up a couple of raw eggs, some fresh ground pepper, splash of grappa, touch of Fernet Branca, throw it in the blender.

  Joey didn’t want to hear about progress. Joey wanted to hear about history. Things done. Accounts closed.

  But hell, Lavert thought. He himself wuddn’t gonna kill anybody. He never had. Couldn’t see any reason to start now, especially since he could feel himself so close to his restaurant, Lavert’s. G.T. smiling at the door, all in gold. He’d decided her dress would be gold. Not cloth of gold, but gold the color of a bloody moon. With her complexion, it’d be something.

  So what he had to do was: he figured Billy Jack Joyner was gonna be a piece of cake. Little dude was already in a shitload of trouble. Dealing. Holding up Pic’N’Pacs. Hitting on big-time doctoring dudes right in broad daylight, or practically, at Kush’s. Wuddn’t no way little dude wuddn’t gonna do his ownself in. All Lavert might have to do is figure out a way help him along. He’d talk to Harry about it.

  Mr. Dupree was a whole other ball game.

  Harry saying he figured him to be their numero uno suspect doing Church Lee. Some crazy story about fat white women. Lavert shook his head. Go figure.

  All he knew—following the fat boy now in his big old car, Lavert in his Spider—was Maynard Dupree couldn’t drive worth shit. He kept cutting people off like he owned the road. Rich white men, no class, acted like that. He looked like he was in some kind of tizzy. Lavert had followed him from his house; now where was he going? Dupree stopped, parked in a towaway right in front of one of those fancy florists, and came out carrying a big bouquet. Was he, just like Joey suspected, calling on Miss Chéri? Nope, no Audubon Place for this man. He was going right downtown. Now he’d crossed Canal, so he wuddn’t going to his office. Turned right onto North Rampart, taking Lavert back toward Esplanade, past Governor Nicholls, making a big circle tour this morning. Too bad they didn’t have some tourists in tow. Lavert could give ’em a nice talk, explaining it all to ’em, your Quarter, your Garden District, your Quarter.

  Now Fat Boy was pulling over like he was gonna park. Lavert pulled right in beside him. Right tight.

  Fat Boy looking up. Startled. Red in the face. Can’t open his door.

  Lavert, top down on the Spider, leaning over.

  “Mr. Dupree,” he said, knowing the effect he always had on strangers. Biggest motherfucking nigger they’d ever seen. “Mr. Dupree. I got a message for you.”

  Maynard made a strangling sound. Kind of like gargling. Funny thing, Lavert thought, about lawyers. You get ’em scared enough, they inarticulate as hell. All of sudden, like everybody else, they got a frog in their throat, a load in their drawers.

  “Friend of mine said you ought to stay away from Miss Chéri.”

  “I—I—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Maynard managed, snapping his little eyes open and shut a whole lot. Sounding kind of like Minnie Mouse.

  “Now, there’s no point in lying. Just stay away from the lady, everything’s gonna be all right.” Lavert let two beats pass. “Prob’ly.”

  “Wha-what do you mean? What lady?”

  “Well, you gonna have to pay for what you done already, but after that”—Lavert turned one huge hand palm-up, gave him the big super-reassuring grin—“well, then with what you got left, you cool.”

  “What I got left? What do you mean, what I got left?”

  Now Lavert gave him the slow wink, icing on the cake. “Be seein’ you.”

  Thirty-Five

  IF THERE WAS one thing Billy Jack couldn’t stand, it was people getting too close. That made him feel claustrophobic.

  He’d been that way ever since he was a little kid, had seen this movie down at the Rialto Theater. He’d told Clyde Wayne, his next-door neighbor, he didn’t wanta see it. He hated scary pictures. But more than that, he hated Clyde Wayne calling him a sissy, so he’d gone.

  He’d been sorry ever since.

  What happened in that picture was there was this woman who was terrified she was gonna be buried alive. She thought about it all the time, so she planned for it.

  What she did was she spent a whole bunch of money having her tomb built in the cemetery on the family place, an above-ground tomb like these in New Orleans. She had it wired with a phone and one of those little TV cameras and a monitor, so she could see into her house from the tomb, could call them on the phone in case she did get buried alive. And vice versa, they could see and call her, that is.

  So the movie goes on, lots of creepy castles and chains dragging around, bats, all that usual spooky stuff, and sure enough, eventually, the woman dies.

  But it’s cool, see, because she’s really dead.

  But, hold it, don’t go out for more popcorn, because, the way they do to fool you in the movies, whoops, she’s not.

  The next thing you know, a whole bunch of years have passed, and they’re showing you inside this satin coffin and the woman wakes up.

  But it’s okay, right? It’s cool.

  Her hair has grown—it does, you know, after you’re gone—all the way down to her feet.

  Her nails are so long they’ve curved all the way over to her palms. It’s creepy as hell when she opens her hands, those claws looking like some kind of giant bird. She opens her mouth to scream, and her teeth are all scraggly, like little stumps.

  But it’s cool. You say, Don’t scream, lady. Just pick up the phone that’s right there inside the coffin.

  And just like she hears you, she does.

  Then the phone rings and rings and rings and rings, and you get this really sick feeling, which you knew you would, after all, this is a horror movie. Then the picture shows you what the closed circuit TV is seeing in the house: nothing. Absolutely nothing. Everybody inside is done long dead and gone, because lots and lots of years have passed, and the big old house has been abandoned for a real long time. Curtains are hanging all in tatters, rats playing around on what’s left of the sofa.

  That lady was calling into an empty house. She woke up in her tomb just like she knew she’d do, took every precaution in the world, and still ain’t nobody home. The last scene, she’s trying to claw her way out of that satin coffin with those fingernails all c
urved down to her palms.

  Well. Ever since that, Billy Jack had been scared to death off being squeezed in.

  He had nightmares about it for years. His mama would come in and jerk him up out of a bed where he was sitting bolt upright in his jammies, sound asleep, yelling bloody murder at the top of his lungs.

  He couldn’t stand being in little spaces like elevators or having people coming too close to him, eating up his space. His air.

  He liked to have gone crazy when he was in LTI, the reform school, their locking him in the hole, in solitary. That one time they did—it was that Dr. Frisbee’s fault. He’d jumped on the man because he was saying the way Billy Jack felt about his mom was weird.

  Coming up with his plan to pay Frisbee back was the only thing kept him together in the hole. He dreamed about it every night till he got out. Then it was easy as pie. He just kept following Frisbee until late one afternoon the man was driving the LT station wagon over to the little town of Grambling, where they had the college with the nigger football players. Frisbee was going to pick up some poor little nigger kid they was putting in LT. The nigger kid was in the station wagon when Billy Jack passed them. Billy Jack put on his flashers, pulled over like he was in trouble.

  Frisbee might be a Jew, but he was still a Southern gentleman, so he got out to help. Billy Jack was counting on that. Frisbee’s eyes got big when he realized who it was was in trouble, not Billy Jack, was him, but by that time the tire iron was already coming down.

  When they found Frisbee in the middle of I-20 that night, the paper said he’d already been run over so many times he was flat—just another piece of roadkill. The little nigger who was with him was still cuffed to the door handle. Billy Jack would have let him go, but he didn’t have time to be messing around, had to git.

  But that little nigger was a good little nigger. He never said a word to anybody about what went down. Billy Jack had kept track of that through some buddies still in LT—where they went on ahead and took the little nigger when they’d finished grilling him about Frisbee. Nigger didn’t say squat to anybody white, about that or anything else, the whole time he was in. Didn’t say a blessed word for three years.

  That was the kind of nigger you could like—the kind that understood about respect.

  Not like that big jigaboo was on his tail, crowding him. Son of a bitch busting into the Pic’N’Pac like that. Damn! Just when he needed the score.

  And who the fuck was this other dude asking questions about him? Dude wearing a beat-up old raincoat, said his friend at Patrissy’s. Two people squeezing his elbow room.

  Not to mention there was that woman he’d seen at Zoe’s, the one he’d followed over to where he’d got rousted by the cop. The woman DEA agent was gonna be moving in on him, too, any second. He was sure of it. Just like he was sure Zoe’d sicced the DEA on him.

  Zoe, that little bitch. Some girls never learned. No matter how many times you told ’em and you told ’em: Just keep your mouth shut, just do business. The message just didn’t get through. Sent her that fried rat, you’d think that’d do it. Wouldn’t you?

  But, oh, no. Not these girls, fancy Uptown girls, girls bought jewels every day from Mr. Adler. Girls born with his silver safety pins for their little diapers.

  Zoe had actually told him that—he couldn’t remember how it came up—she’d never worn Pampers in her life. Only the genuine cloth article, some poor woman having to wash ’em ’stead of tossing ’em out, good enough for her precious little butt.

  He’d asked his mama about that. She’d laughed, said, son, I had more things on my mind than that when I was raising you.

  He loved thinking about when he was her little baby, safe inside her. Then got to cuddle up to her beautiful breast and suck on her.

  He remembered her singing hymns while she nursed him. He’d told her that. She’d laughed and said, son, How could you remember? But he remembered. He remembered, all right. After all, he’d still been sucking on her sugar tit when he was five. Almost six. Almost right up until he went off to school.

  Mama said, now that wasn’t true. Said they were never that poor, even if it was cheaper to nurse him than to feed him. But it was true. He knew it was. After all, he was there. He knew what he knew.

  Right now he knew there was a whole lot of people getting way too close to him. And he knew that he had to forget about them for a little bit, because what he had to do was put together the money to get his mama’s diamond necklace. And he also knew that right here on Prytania, which is where he was driving, he was gonna stop at Zoe’s house, where she wasn’t staying no more, and kill two birds with one stone.

  Bird one: He was gonna rob the hell out of her house, fence the stuff, and take the money to Adler’s.

  Bird two: He was gonna make sure Zoe knew he did it, be another warning to her—back off with the fucking DEA lady.

  Now here he was. He pulled right up in front of Zoe’s house, where she used to live before she moved over to her grandmama’s. She’d told him her daddy died. Likely story. But maybe he had. Billy Jack had never asked her any more about it.

  Her daddy couldn’t of been all that old—must of been some kind of cancer. Well, he couldn’t go soft thinking about that now, feeling sorry for her like she was some kind of orphan. Though she was, didn’t have a mother either. At least not he’d ever heard of.

  But that didn’t make no never mind. Business was business, and this little twat had been messing in his.

  Turning him in to the DEA. Probably they were on her tail was why she did it. But that didn’t make a bit of difference.

  Billy Jack was around to the back of her house now.

  Just like he thought, there were little decals on all of the windows said the house was guarded by this protection service. Like they was wired up directly to the police station.

  Rich people would all have you think that. Didn’t matter, they go right off, leave a first floor back window unlatched.

  Billy Jack crawled through. He was so little, was no problem a-tall. He found himself in some kind of sitting room. He brushed himself off. Then he stopped dead still.

  Everywhere he looked, the furniture was draped with sheets. Chairs, sofas, other big lumps he couldn’t make out. A piano maybe? Thing looked like an elephant. But mostly what the place looked like was his nightmare from the horror movie.

  Billy Jack froze. He could hardly breathe. With one hand he scrabbled at his neck, loosening his collar suddenly grown too small.

  Fuck! Fucking heebie-jeebies!

  He sat right down in the middle of the floor and put his head between his knees.

  He felt like he did that day out at the airport when Joey’s great big nigger came charging at him, got too close, then he heard all those gunshots. He’d felt sick to his stomach—just like he did now. Why was Joey’s nigger coming after him then, anyway? And why was he after him now? What did it mean? Did it have anything to do with Joey, or was it just some weird coincidence?

  He had to breathe through his mouth.

  That’s what he had to remember to do.

  Breathe through his mouth.

  Think good thoughts.

  Think of his mama holding him close, singing “Amazing Grace” in his ear. That was his favorite lullaby when he was a little kid.

  There now.

  There now.

  All better.

  Billy Jack slowly opened his eyes and raised his head. He focused and, pro that he was, zeroed right in on a bunch of old silver picture frames somebody had dumped into a cardboard box and left on the floor next to the thing that looked like a piano under its sheet. Like they’d been packing, got interrupted, or thought better of it. They were good, expensive silver frames.

  He picked up one and looked at the little imprint on the back. He’d learned to do that. Tiffany & Co., it said.

  Great! Silver was silver. Gold was gold. Everything didn’t have to be fucking Rolexes.

  Billy Jack dropped the frame onto the f
loor, picture side up.

  Then the faces jumped up at him.

  Son of a bitch!

  Goddamn son of a bitch!

  There was Zoe when she was a little girl, standing on what looked like a front porch, lifting the skirt of a little white dress. She had great big eyes and cute little legs. She wasn’t nearly so skinny then, was curtsying, sort of, playing around the way kids do, smiling like a sunbeam into the face of a man. Shit! Look at that man.

  Billy Jack grabbed up more frames from the box. There! Look there! And there again! That one looked like it was taken just last year. The man had never told Billy Jack he was Zoe’s dad. But then, the man had never told him his name either.

  No names. That was part of their deal. He’d do the man like the man asked him to, man wouldn’t narc on him to his mama, wouldn’t even breathe his mama’s blessed name.

  Thirty-Six

  G.T. WAS IN high dudgeon, sprinkling Ma Elise’s front parlor with Flying Devil powder, verbena oil, and Saint-John’s-wort, whispering imprecations under her breath.

  “Girl, come and sit down,” Aunt Ida fussed at her. “Watching you’s got me plum wore out.” Right after a too-big lunch, she and Sam and Kitty and Zoe and Ma Elise were spread across the sofas and chairs like a pack of dead cats.

  “Coffee,” said G.T. “You all need coffee.” She disappeared for a minute, then reappeared with the big carafe. “Now.” Pointing at Sam. “You called this Good Friday meeting. What you got?”

  “I’ve got a mess. I’ve got all kinds of possibilities, but I don’t know what to make of anything. What I need is help.” And then Sam began dealing out the players one at a time as if they were cards in a jumbled hand. First was the blind man, Cole Leander.