If he was going to talk to Mrs. Delasante, it would have to be after her guests had gone. He continued walking, heading toward the old Customs House and the Cooper River, following its shore down to the Battery that curved around the point at the end of the Charleston peninsula. High stone steps led to its wide walkway. He felt a slight breeze against his face when he reached the top.
The remains of Fort Sumter were a flat, dark silhouette on the watery horizon at the distant mouth of Charleston harbor. Antique cannon arrayed both along the Battery wall and back among the trees of the adjoining park were still aimed at it, as though the pummeled old installation continued to pose some threat. The barrels of the long guns were stopped with concrete, and most were a century or more old, yet there was something very menacing and powerful about them.
Camilla’s ancestors had stood on these ramparts. They had gone north and killed and died. They had lost slavery, but their ancient society had indeed survived, its vestiges manifest in that garden party at the Delasante house.
A.C. moved on. There were many tourists walking about the Battery. One elderly couple asked for directions he could not give. A man and wife with two small, pretty daughters asked him to take their picture for them. He did so, returning the camera with a polite smile, then descended into the park and walked sadly back through the old streets, wishing Camilla had stayed in New York—wishing that he had stayed there.
He’d go back to the hotel. He’d leave it to his detective friend to decide what to do next.
Lanham did not return until evening. He found A.C. out on the second-floor terrace near the pool, where he had gone to have a drink after a nap.
“I could use a beer,” the detective said. He looked tired.
A.C. pointed to a telephone mounted on the hotel’s exterior wall. “You have to call Room Service. They’ll bring it out here.”
Lanham did so, then seated himself heavily, stretching out his long legs.
“Where did you go?” A.C. asked.
“Well, I started out at a church.”
“Church?”
“The Huguenot church around the corner,” Lanham said, pronouncing the French word correctly. “Very historic. The original church on that site was built in 1681. I looked up the Delasantes in the old books they have there. There weren’t any, but that other name you told me? Beaugerard? The mother’s maiden name? And the Dutarques? There were a lot of those. All the way back to the beginning.”
A.C. imagined one of the elderly ladies of the local historical society, in floral print dress and white gloves, playing guide to the New York cop’s tourist. He supposed she had been polite, perhaps even pleased at a stranger’s curiosity in what they all held so dear—even if the stranger was black.
“Then I went looking at the flowers.”
“Flowers?”
“They’ve got some pretty good gardeners down here. I don’t think there’s anyone in this town who couldn’t win first at the New York Flower Show just by potting something from the yard.”
“They’d probably think the New York Flower Show beneath them.”
“Then I got arrested.”
“For what?”
“For looking at flowers. I thought it was a little park, but I was in someone’s private garden. I didn’t know. There was no fence or anything. Anyway, someone in the house called the law, and one of them made a stop on me.”
“You mean you were handcuffed and all that?”
Lanham shook his head. “I was going to see them anyway. We went for a ride down to the station house, and that’s all that came of it, except for some interesting conversation. Did you know this town has a black police chief?”
The police chief was a public servant. All the servants in Charleston seemed to be black.
The room service waiter, an old black man in a white jacket, came out onto the terrace bearing Lanham’s beer on a silver tray. Before he left, A.C. ordered another gin and tonic.
Lanham used the cocktail napkin to wipe the foam from his lips after taking a thirsty pull of his beer.
“Mr. Delasante, the old man, died under unexplained circumstances,” Lanham said, setting down his glass. “Maybe murder. It was seven years ago, but they still have the case file. He made it back to his house before expiring from a stomach wound. The family said he’d had an accident, but some of the local coppers say they don’t believe that because there wasn’t any blood on the premises or anything. He got knifed in the gut. Some say he’d been seen down in the black end of town earlier that night, that he got in trouble down there and someone stuck him. The word was that somebody from the family came and got the body so there’d be no talk. But there was no proof of that, no witnesses. No one wanted to pursue it much. At least the mother didn’t. So they called it accidental and left it at that.”
“I heard much the same thing today, from the editor of one of the local society magazines.”
Lanham drank again. His glass was half empty. He refilled it from the bottle.
“There was another daughter, the youngest child,” he said. “Danielle. As good looking as your lady love except she had dark hair.”
“I saw her in one of the photographs.”
“She blew her brains out a few weeks after the old man got whacked. This is not what you’d call a happy family.”
“The police told you all this?”
“Most of it. I spent a little time in a couple of shanty bars down in what passes for the ghetto hereabouts. Unlike New York, everybody seems to know everything that goes on around here. They just don’t like to talk about it much.”
“But they talked to you.”
“Yeah. You know, brothers.”
The old waiter came with A.C.’s drink. Lanham ordered another beer.
“The feds are here,” he said.
“In the hotel?”
Lanham shrugged. “The local coppers know about them. And I saw a couple of white faces come driving by when I was down among the darkies.”
“Are they after Pierre?”
“I don’t think they know what they’re after.”
“I found the Delasante house,” A.C. said. “I saw the mother.”
“Any sign of Camilla and her brother?”
A.C. shook his head. “I went by twice. They were having a garden party.”
“No out-of-state cars, anything like that?”
“No. It was just what you’d expect. A typical garden party.”
“I’ve never been to one.”
The weary waiter came with Lanham’s beer. A.C. signed the check, giving the man a generous tip.
“We’ll go there tonight,” Lanham said.
The streets were amply lit, in an antique way—the house and building fronts illuminated by yellow lamps, the streets themselves blue from tall lights whose tops reached into the hanging branches of the old, leafy trees. This was a city of ghosts—the shades of sea captains, slave girls, old soldiers, unhappy travelers, abandoned wives, and even John C. Calhoun—their fables and legends famous up and down the Carolina coast. With the windows of the car down, A.C. and Lanham could hear dogs barking randomly from yards distant and near, and a few birds still calling to the night. The air had cooled somewhat, converting the humidity to a fine mist. A.C. turned the Buick’s radio on and Lanham just as quickly turned it off.
“Save that for your room,” he said. “We want to hear, and we don’t want to be heard.”
They prowled down Meeting Street, rolling quietly by the big cemetery next to St. Philip’s Church, then turned left and followed the zigzag of one-way streets that took them past the Delasante house.
It looked even larger in the night, its windows lighted at the front and along the upper floors. They saw no one inside as they went by. A large, dark American car of recent vintage was parked by the main gate. It bore South Carolina plates.
“We’ll go by again,” said Lanham.
A.C. nodded, gathering a little speed. “Do you think the father’s death is
in some way involved with what’s been happening?” he asked. “I’ve been trying to figure it out all afternoon. Could Pierre have been threatening to tell the truth?”
“What? That the old man was shacking up with a black girl? As many people seem to know about that as know the South lost the war, and it hasn’t hurt the mother any. She still seems to be the principal deity around these parts.”
“What if he wasn’t killed by some black man, by his girlfriend’s husband or boyfriend? What if he was killed by his son Jacques? And Pierre just found out about it?”
Lanham stared out the windshield a moment. “I suppose that’s a possibility.”
“But then why would a man kill his own father like that?”
“Why would he kill some poor girl he didn’t even know?”
Because of the pattern of one-way streets, they had to go around several blocks. On the second pass, the Delasante house seemed much the same, but they saw a woman through a window of the front parlor, standing by a fireplace.
“Camilla?” A.C. asked.
“No. I think it’s the mother.”
A.C. drove on. “Shall I go around again?”
“Go the other way. I want to go down the street behind it.”
The cemetery next to the Delasante house ran all the way across the block. They cruised slowly along its rear fence.
“There’s an alley there,” Lanham said.
“Are you sure that’s not a driveway?”
“No. It’s an alley. Stop. Kill the lights.”
A.C. did so, then backed up slowly. It was an alley, but it was not clear where it came out. A.C. headed into it cautiously. The little roadway was narrow and made a sharp turn to the right, proceeding between high walls. There were two cars parked farther on, pulled up tight against the wall to the left and leaving barely enough room for passage. A.C. inched along past the first, then froze. The second car was a small red convertible, bearing Virginia plates.
“She’s here,” he said.
“Son of a bitch. Okay, get out of here.”
“I’ll have to back up. It’s a dead end.”
“Do it.”
“Without lights?”
“Do it.”
A.C. swore quietly, then slipped the gear into reverse and slowly began to roll backward, his head out the window.
He managed to avoid the other parked car, but his right rear fender or bumper caught the wall opposite twice, the scraping sound terrifyingly loud.
“Keep going. Get out of here.”
Once past the obstacle, he had an easier time of it, though he had to go forward and back twice to get around the sharp turn. Once in the street, he ground the Buick into forward and sped two blocks before turning on his lights again.
“Park here,” Lanham said. “We’ll go back on foot.”
The cemetery’s iron fence was easy to scale. A.C. went first, with Lanham standing lookout, then A.C. watched the street as Lanham went over, dropping to the grassy earth with a soft thump. They quickly stepped into the shadows.
The street lamp was flickering, making the shadows seem to move. Half a moon hung in the sky to the northeast, but the graveyard was quite dark beneath the trees.
“I wonder if the father is buried in here,” A.C. said.
“I doubt it. They had him cremated.”
Lanham led the way, falling into old army habits, moving silently. A.C. followed as carefully as possible, but banged his knee once. He had lost count of the injuries he had suffered, large and small, since first meeting Camilla.
The Delasante house looked immense when viewed from the side. The lights on the ground floor had just been turned off, except for a dim interior glow at the center. All the windows above were lighted. Lanham took them as close to the Delasante property as possible, crouching behind a large crypt, then slipping around to the other side and easing himself to the ground. A.C. did the same.
It was a good choice of place. They were only a few feet from the cemetery’s side fence, had the large crypt to lean back against, and had a good view of the entire house. A smaller tomb in front of them kept them in shadow.
“I hear voices,” Lanham whispered. “Upstairs.”
“I don’t.”
“Shhhhh. Listen.”
Finally, sorting out the night sounds, A.C. heard them, too, but he couldn’t discern any words. The conversation was between two women. His heartbeat increased when he realized that one of them must be Camilla.
“Can we move closer?” he said.
“Quiet.”
Lights went out in one room, and then another. Two windows stayed bright, the ceiling and a glimpse of the interior visible behind thin curtains. A door slammed. A figure moved past one of the windows. It was a woman, possibly Camilla, possibly her mother. She passed by again. Then the lights went out.
Minutes passed, a few, then many. The stone of the crypt was cold against their backs. A.C. leaned forward, but Lanham kept his place.
A.C. held out his arm in the shaded moonlight, but could not quite make out the time on his watch. Small events marked its passing—a barking dog, a car hurrying along the street to their left, someone coughing loudly in a house nearby.
There was a loud, sudden sound, a door banging. A.C. looked up to the dark, open window above. The lights went on. He could hear the words now, coming in a torrent.
“Go back to bed, Momma! You won’t change my mind.”
“I won’t let you go!”
“You have no choice! I’ve got to do it, Momma. I’ve got to end this!”
“Leave it to Jacques.”
“Leave it to Jacques? Are you forgetting all he’s done? The way his mind is torn up with this, it wouldn’t surprise me if he tried to kill all the people on Tawabaw now! I’ve feared for my own life these past few days.”
“He wouldn’t harm a hair on your head, Camilla.”
“Wouldn’t he? There’s a man up north, the nicest man I’ve ever met. Jacques knows how I feel about him, and I think I love him, Momma. Jacques beat him, brutally, and then he tried to kill him. If I hadn’t kept him from following me down here, he’d probably be dead right now!”
“What man? I know nothing about him.”
“And you won’t, either.”
“Camilla! What about your husband!”
“Don’t talk to me about husbands, Momma! Not you!”
There was sobbing now. It wasn’t Camilla.
Lanham was hunched forward, as intent as a night animal in the midst of a prowl. A.C. was stunned, and terribly confused.
“You can’t change anything, Momma. We’ve got to see this through. There’s no other way. You made a big mistake, and I’ve got to fix it. There’s no one else.”
“It’s too late.”
“No it isn’t. Pierre’s got everything hidden someplace on Hilton Head or at Tawabaw. He’s going for it. That’s all he has left, and Jacques is after him like a hound on a hunt. I’ll find them, Momma. I know every place they’ll go.”
“You’ve already done so much, darlin’.”
“I should have done a lot more. You go back to bed now, Momma. I’ll call you from Savannah.”
The older woman was crying again.
“Go to bed, Momma. I’ll take care of everything.”
Those were the last words. A.C. and Lanham waited for more. The night continued as though this were a normal house in a normal time—as though they were not even there.
Finally, Lanham rose on his haunches and leaned near.
“Let’s get back to the car,” he said quietly. “We’ll park back by that street there and wait for her to come out of the alley.”
“She said something about Savannah.”
“And Hilton Head and some other place. We’ll follow her, and this time we won’t lose her.”
After they’d made their way out of the cemetery and retrieved the Buick, they drove to near the entrance of the alley and turned off the engine, slumping down in their seats.
> “Sounds like you made quite a conquest there, sport,” Lanham said.
“Shut up, Ray.”
Nothing stirred in the street. Nothing moved from the alley.
“In a way, I think I could get used to this town,” Lanham said after several minutes.
“And be a policeman here?”
“Something. It’s a real pretty town.”
“She’s certainly taking her time.”
“Probably getting her beauty sleep. She’ll be out of here first thing in the morning.”
They talked, mostly about the South, then took turns dozing. The sky lightened, and then became inflamed with the sun, which went from red to yellow to white, climbing higher. Traffic began using the street.
Lanham sighed. “I think we’d better make sure she’s there. Should have done that a long time ago.”
“Go back in the cemetery?”
“No. The alley. You go. Better a white man back there at this hour.”
A.C. pretended to be a stroller, a man out for a morning walk, taking a short cut. Whistling, he turned the corner of the alley.
The first car was still there, dew glistening on its windshield. The small red car was gone.
CHAPTER 17
Savannah was Charleston with sin. It had been founded a half century after the Carolina city just up the coast, but seemed much older and wearier, not to speak of wiser. Charleston had been preserved and prettified, made garden-club perfect. Savannah hadn’t been preserved. It had simply never changed. Sitting on a bench in one of its many ancient, tree-sheltered squares on a hot, still afternoon, a visitor felt time running backward to a century or more ago. And on hot summer nights, with every street menacing and mysterious and swathed in steamy gloom, there was a sense of lurking cutthroats and footpads, ghostly and real. Crime thrived in the heat of this river town like some night garden bloom. Every solitary figure glimpsed or heard in the shadows of the sidewalk was worrisome, carrying the prospect of violent, sudden harm.
There were fine ladies in Savannah, in picture hats and white gloves and floral dresses. But there were women of a seamier sort as well, hookers in the sailors’ bars, Southern girls with daring makeup and mischief in their eyes, strolling along the storefronts of Bay Street on the bluff above the Savannah River. Hard-hearted Hannah, the siren of the old saloon song, would have been run out of Charleston. Here she was queen.
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