by Greg Herren
“My grandfather is not well.” He walked into the room and went to the other side of the bed. “And you’re upsetting him. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
I stood up. “May I speak to you privately?”
“NO!” the old man gasped out. “I forbid it!”
“You don’t want your only remaining grandchild to know you were responsible for murdering his father?”
“What?” Darrin looked at me, then back at the old man. “What are you talking about?”
“Are you going to tell him, or should I?”
“Get out!” The old man gasped. “I…can’t…breathe…”
“What’s going on?” Darrin stood up. “You can’t come in here and make wild accusations. I’ve already asked you to leave. If you don’t, I’ll have you thrown out.”
“By Lenny Pousson? The man who killed your father? And your brother and sister?”
“Lenny?” Darrin’s face went white. “What are you talking about? This can’t be true!”
“Lies!” the old man wheezed out. He gasped and clutched at his heart. “My God…my God…my heart!”
“Grandpa!” Darrin picked up the phone and started dialing.
“Put the phone down.”
The voice came from the doorway. We both turned. Lenny was standing in the doorway, and he was holding a gun. His eyes were wild, his hair and clothes were soaking wet. The gun moved back and forth from me to Darrin.
“Lenny?” Darrin stared at him, the phone in his hand. “What are you doing? Have you lost your mind?”
“I said put the phone down!” Lenny half-shouted.
Darrin replaced the phone slowly. “I have to call the doctor. He needs a doctor, Lenny, please.”
“No.” He took a step into the room. “No doctors, no phone calls. I don’t care if he dies.”
“It’s all over, Lenny,” I said, keeping my voice calm while tightening my grip on my own gun. If I could get it out without him seeing me… “Cathy told Iris everything—but you already knew that, right? You knew that as soon as Iris left St. Isabelle’s, because her room was bugged, but Iris recorded the conversation. I found it…and the police have it now.”
“I should have killed that bitch thirty years ago.” His gun swept from me to Darrin. “She was always nothing but trouble for everyone.”
“You can’t kill both of us,” I went on. “And for what reason? The police already know, Lenny. You won’t be able to get away with it. They’re probably looking for you already. You can’t just shoot us both and walk away from this. It’s too late.”
“Let me call the doctor.” Darrin pleaded. “He’s dying. Please.”
“It’s good enough for him!” Lenny shouted. “It was all his idea! He told me how to do it! To set the fire!”
“Lenny—”
“I loved her.” He went on as though I hadn’t said a word. “I wanted to marry her. Michael was making a fool of her, and I hated to see it. She cried all the time, every night when he was with one of his men. And he knew it. He worked on me…all the time insinuating how much Michael was hurting her, making her life a living hell. If only Michael were out of the way, then I could have her. So I did it, yes, I did it. I set the fire. On his orders.”
“And you got her pregnant.” It started all falling into place now.
He stared at me. “What?”
“Iris was your daughter,” I went on. “Michael and Margot stopped having sex after Darrin was born.”
“No.” His eyes grew wilder.
“What—what are you talking about?” Darrin demanded. “None of this makes any sense!”
“He’s…lying…” Percy’s face was turning a strange shade of pale blue.
“You killed a bunch of innocent people in the process.” I kept my eyes on the gun. It was wavering.
“They were perverts who didn’t deserve to live.” He was perspiring. “No one would suspect, he said. If it looked like arson, no one would care, no one would care about a bunch of dead faggots… and no one would ever suspect that it was really a murder… The more who died, the better it would be. And so I did it. I followed him every Sunday when he left the house. I went up there the day before and checked around, saw what a firetrap it was… It was easy enough. And I’m not sorry. He made her suffer.”
“But she didn’t want you again, did she?” I said. “She made a mistake with you once, right? And then she never stopped mourning him, hoping he’d come home one day. She never knew he was dead—you put her into hell, didn’t you?”
“I wanted to tell her. He wouldn’t let me.”
“And then Iris found out,” I went on. “And so she had to die, too, right?”
“Is this true?” Darrin’s face went pale. “Oh my God, this can’t be true.”
“And Joshua too. He found out, didn’t he? So he had to die as well.” I went on. “But the police know. And they’re going to arrest you.”
He pointed the gun at me. “I’m not going to jail!”
My entire body went cold. Everything seemed to slow down. I had my hand on my own gun, but if I fired it, I couldn’t be sure I would actually hit him. So this is how it ends, I thought to myself, shot to death by a sociopath during a thunderstorm. The lights flickered again. I watched him. His hand was shaking. Maybe I could talk my way out of this… “Lenny, you don’t want to do this,” I heard myself saying. I heard Darrin say something and Lenny turned, pointing the gun at him. I pulled my gun out, spread my legs wide, and gripped the gun with both hands. Without hesitation, I pulled the trigger and watched as Lenny fell backward, still in slow motion. He fell backward. “Call the doctor!” I shouted at Darrin as I reached for my own cell phone. I dialed Venus’s number as I ran over to where Lenny fell.
I could hear Darrin talking to the doctor as I leaned down and felt for a pulse. There was none. He was still holding his gun.
“Casanova.”
“Venus, this is Chanse. You need to get over to the Verlaine house,” I said, my voice starting to shake. “I’ve got a dead body and a story to tell you.”
“I’m on my way.”
I got up, walked back over to the bed, and reached down, putting my hand on Percy’s carotid artery. There was a slight heartbeat—weak, but still there. I leaned down and started doing CPR.
I had gone to the Verlaine house with my mind made up. I was going to kill Percy Verlaine, to avenge the innocents who’d died in the fire, to avenge the deaths of his grandchildren.
And now I was performing CPR, trying to keep him alive until the paramedics came.
As I breathed into his mouth, I kind of hoped he would live.
Wouldn’t it be the greatest irony of all time for Percy Verlaine to realize that not only had a pervert saved his life, but I had put my mouth on his in order to do it?
Call it poetic justice.
Chapter Nineteen
“I don’t know whether to thank you or beat you to death.” Venus said.
Venus, Paige, Blaine, and I were at our usual table at the Avenue Pub. There was no one else in the place, and I was glad of that. The big-screen televisions were tuned in to some poker show and the jukebox was silent. The bartender was wiping down the counter, and the girl working the grill was sitting on a barstool drinking a Coke and reading a Nora Roberts novel. It was almost eleven; the curfew was less than an hour away, but we were with cops—so I didn’t think we had anything to worry about, should we get stopped on our way home.
Percy Verlaine didn’t make it. When the paramedics arrived, they tried to save him, but he was too far gone. And Lenny never had a chance. I’d shot him in the chest—didn’t get him directly in the heart, but he was dead. And unlike the first man I’d killed, I didn’t think I was going to lose any sleep over killing Lenny Pousson.
“I feel kind of sorry for Darrin Verlaine,” Blaine said, taking a swig from his beer. “Man, how do you deal with all of this? His brother and sister are dead, his grandfather’s dead, his grandfather was responsible for killing th
em—and his father.” He shook his head. “That’s a lot to handle.”
“Darrin is now worth many millions of dollars,” Paige said. She had a glass of red wine in front of her, which was nice to see. Maybe she was coping better now. “He can afford the best therapists in the world—and the best drugs. He’ll be fine—eventually. Is he going to get Cathy Hollis out of St. Isabelle’s?”
“She’s already been released.” I replied. “Darrin took care of it.”
“What were you thinking, going over there like that?” Venus whacked me in the arm. “You almost got yourself killed, jackass. And then I’d have to explain to the commissioner why the man I deputized was in the morgue.” She sighed. “Although it’s just as well—that they both are dead, I mean, not that you almost got yourself killed. We probably would have never been able to bring them to trial.”
“What do you think, Chanse?” Paige asked. She hadn’t touched the glass of wine. It was just as full as when it was brought to the table. “Do you think Percy ordered Lenny to set the fire?”
“We’ll never really know—although even if they were still alive, we’d never know for sure.” I shrugged. “They were too busy playing ‘my word against yours.’ Deep down, there’s no doubt in my mind that Percy ordered him to do it. But to give the old bastard credit, his surprise when I told him about Iris and Joshua was genuine. I don’t think he knew about that—although…” I hesitated, then shook my head and changed my mind. “No, he did know. He wasn’t a stupid man, and there’s no way he could have ever thought it was just a lucky coincidence Iris was killed by a burglar on the same day she confronted him with everything. He might not have known about Joshua, though.”
“Well, it’s never a smart idea to blackmail a killer—I guess they didn’t teach Iris that at Harvard.” Venus finished her drink and set it down. She laughed. “I’m done. Long day, and I should already be in bed.”
“Yeah.” Blaine yawned and stretched. “And we gotta be in early tomorrow.”
“Can everyone just wait a second?” Paige said. She cleared her throat. “Um, I just wanted to let you all know that I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“Leaving? For good?” Blaine asked.
Paige threw her arms up. “I don’t know. I doubt it. I’ve got a lot of vacation time saved up, and I’m taking all five weeks of it. A guy at the office has a cabin up in the mountains in Tennessee, and he’s letting me use it.” She bit her lower lip. “I’m going to go up there and get away. I’m going to finish my book.” Paige had been working on a historical romance novel set in New Orleans during the War of 1812 for at least five years. “I’m never going to finish the damned thing working on it in bits and pieces here and there around my job, you know? There’s always going to be something else more important for me to do here. And I do want to finish it. I can’t keep putting it off. And I think the peace and quiet would do me a lot of good.”
There was silence. Blaine was playing with his cocktail napkin. Venus just looked at Paige; her mouth opened and closed without saying anything. I took a deep breath and said, “I think that’s great, Paige.” Everyone turned and looked at me. “Really. The one thing we should all learn from what we’ve all been through is we need to stop putting off the things we want to do. Life is short, and we don’t know how much time we have. We’ve got to make the best of it while we can.”
“Thank you, Chanse.” Paige gave me a weak smile.
“Don’t get me wrong—I’m happy for you, but I want you to come back.” Losing Paige permanently would be like losing a limb. “What about you, Venus?”
“I’ll miss you, Paige,” she replied. “But he’s right. Go for it.” She looked at me. “All right, I know what you meant. No, I’m not going to retire. I’m not leaving New Orleans. This is home. If I ever get my insurance settlement on the house, I’ll start looking for another place, or start paying rent for the carriage house.” She playfully punched Blaine in the shoulder. “I can’t mooch off these guys forever.”
“You know you’re welcome to the carriage house as long as you want it.” Blaine played with the label of his empty beer bottle. “And you don’t have to pay rent.”
“No, I need to,” she smiled. “As long as I stay there for free, it won’t feel like it’s my home. And I need that, you know? I need to feel like the place I’m living is my home, not some transitional place.” She gave me a sidelong look. “And what about you, Chanse? You going to stay or move on?”
I didn’t answer for a moment. They were all looking at me. “I’m staying.”
Once I said the words, I felt a sense of relief. It was though saying it out loud made it real somehow.
New Orleans was home, in a way Cottonwood Wells and Baton Rouge never had been. I had known that the first time I’d driven down I-10 to come to the Quarter when I was in college. The city was part of me now. I couldn’t even imagine living anywhere else. No matter how many frustrations and irritations the city had thrown at me in the years since I’d moved down after college, it had never once occurred to me to move away, to leave and never come back. The best memories of my life were in this city. Yes, of course, there were bad memories as well, but that would be the case anywhere I chose to live. Even during the worst days, when the city was under water and people were dying, trapped with no way out, as I watched the city die on national television, as my heart was ripped out and all I could do was cry, all I could think was I want to go home. And I’d finally been able to do just that. So many people couldn’t, might not ever be able to. Their jobs were gone, their homes were gone, and if they had children, they couldn’t come back until the schools were open again. And so many had nothing to come home to—so would they? Or would they just choose to stay wherever they’d relocated to, rebuild their lives somewhere else?
Even if I never got another job on the investigation side of my business, my contract with Crown Oil enabled me to live anywhere I chose. I couldn’t just abandon the city simply because it was no longer convenient to live there.
New Orleans deserved better than that from me.
I looked around the table at the faces of my friends. Sure, Paige was going away for a while to get her head together and chase her own dream. But there was no doubt in my mind she would come back. New Orleans was a part of her as well. The city had that kind of effect on people. It gets into your head, your heart, and your blood. It becomes a part of your soul, your very being.
With no offense intended to Dallas, the weeks I’d stayed there had hammered that very point into my brain. Dallas was not my home. Dallas could never be that for me. I would miss New Orleans too much.
I could never live without being able to walk into a dive of a place and get a shrimp po’boy that tasted better than anything I could get in a chain restaurant.
I could never give up the beauty of the swamp oaks on St. Charles Avenue.
I could never give up walking two blocks to watch a Mardi Gras parade and catch beads.
I could never give up that sense of community that everyone in New Orleans shared.
The old New Orleans might be gone, but the city was still here. And no matter what changes were to come in the future, it would always be New Orleans.
Another hurricane could come. The levees could fail again. The next one could be even worse. But as long as there was a New Orleans, I was staying.
It wouldn’t be easy, but life in New Orleans had never been easy.
Our little get-together broke up, and we walked Paige back home. We said our goodbyes, shed a few tears, and then Blaine and Venus drove me back home.
*
I walked into my apartment and turned on the lights. I sat down on the sofa and picked up my pipe. As I took a hit, I looked up at the print of Paul on the wall.
We hadn’t had a lot of time together, but we were really happy during that time. I’d been happier than I’d ever thought I would be, happier than I’d ever imagined in my wildest dreams. Maybe I didn’t realize or appreciate it at the time, but
it was true. And I appreciated it now. I’d been too hung up on my own issues while he was alive to truly recognize what I’d had, and that had been a waste.
There are no guarantees in life. You don’t get a warranty when you are born. Things happen. Hurricanes come in, levees fail, people die. You never know when your own number is going to come up. There might be an afterlife; reincarnation might be true—no one really knows. But the one thing certain is you get one shot at your life, and it is what you make it. You can spend the rest of your life bitter over not having the kind of parents or background you think you should have had. You can bitch about growing up in a trailer with a drunken mother and an abusive father. You can close yourself off from other people because your partner was murdered. You can allow that to twist your perspective, make you think you don’t deserve good things from life. You can stop trying to be happy because it seems like life is always right there, ready to kick you in the teeth and knock you down.
We like to think we have control. We build our lives and we pretend we have security. But security is a myth. It doesn’t really exist. It’s an illusion we create to protect ourselves from the realization that so many things are random, out of our control. So we soldier on, pretending that it can’t all be taken away from us at any moment, but the major drawback of that mental insulation is it makes us less appreciative of what we have. We don’t live in the moment; we don’t take time every day to enjoy life and savor the great gift of being alive.
I stood up and walked over to the wall. I reached up and took the print down.
It was time to let go and start living again.
It didn’t mean I loved him less. It didn’t mean I’d stopped missing him and wishing he was still here with me. But it was time to stop hurting. It was time to appreciate what we’d had and move on.
Fee was right. Paul wouldn’t have wanted me to mourn him for the rest of my life. That wasn’t who he was. He would want me to be happy.
Maybe things with Jude would have worked out—but I didn’t see how they could have. I would never move to Dallas; I couldn’t expect him to give up his job and move to New Orleans. My only regret was that I’d hurt him, but I was hopeful we were getting past that now and could be friends.
