Misisipi

by Michael Reilly

  “What?”

  “Guilt. You can get over a broken heart or settle the score and move on. Guilt though, you let that bitch in, you’re wedded for life.”

  “I don’t suppose that’s ever been a problem for you.”

  Sanders rose and leaned into the cane for support as he faced Scott. “My parting advice would be that you learn to do the same. Some things should stay buried.” He turned to leave.

  “Where did they bury Vic Leterrier?” Scott called after him. “I’m just curious.”

  Sanders stopped. “I wouldn’t know where and I don’t much care,” he snapped over his shoulder.

  Scott took the wrinkled sheets from Henry’s file out of his pocket, flapped them open loudly. “Vic Leterrier,” he read. “Guard at Orleans Parish Prison. He was found floating in the lake. Cause of death: strangulation.”

  Sanders turned back. “Someone obviously didn’t feel he was worth wasting a perfectly good bullet on.”

  “Or maybe,” Scott offered, “they preferred that an investigation into the death of Lirienne Almonester didn’t ever explain how Vic came to have her $20,000 sable coat in his attic.”

  “I can’t comment on the sartorial peccadilloes of the locals. I told you, they’re not my people.”

  “The theory was that Vic got the coat from Henry when Henry dumped Lirienne at the jail. Afterward, Vic was seen hawking the coat round all the local furriers, looking for quick cash. Happened to take it back to the same store that sold it to Henry in the first place. Lirienne’s murder was all over town by then. The store got suspicious and let the cops know.”

  “An unfortunate, if unsurprising, oversight on Vic’s part. I never imagined intellect was an entrance requirement for his line of work.”

  “Guess not. Anyway, the cops arranged for the furrier to set up a sting buy for the coat, catch Vic red-handed.” Scott held up the police report with the photo of a very dead Vic on the levee bank. “Two days before it was supposed to go ahead, Vic washes up in Lake Pontchartrain.”

  Scott then held up the beaten copy of the Times-Picayune article—and its own photograph—and faced it toward Sanders. “This was taken the morning of Jean’s funeral. It’s the last known photograph of Lirienne Almonester. Says she appeared to be ‘overwhelmed by her loss and grief’ and unable to even leave the car when she arrived for the service, so she was driven away without the chance to say goodbye. It’s not a great shot. I guess the photographer was trying not to get mowed down as her driver sped off.”

  Sanders ignored the page, instead watching Scott with hawkish fascination.

  “Anyway,” Scott continued unperturbed, “it’s still good enough to see that she’s wearing the fur coat. If you’re a junkie you can never be too warm, right? If you’re high and you’ve got a baby to bury, you really don’t care anyway—just grab the nearest thing and out the door. And it’s good enough to just make out the broach pinned on it. I’m told it’s a one-off. It’s hard not to spot it, when you finally know what you’re looking at.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  “So, Vic had the coat but not the broach, something much more valuable. Lirienne left the church with both and went to her death. Now, her driver—actually he’s a bit clearer in the shot. Now that I know who to look for, he’s easy to spot too. Wouldn’t you also agree?”

  “I’m sure you’ll do your civic duty admirably when, if ever, you finally cross paths with him.”

  Scott stood and came nose-to-nose with Tom Sanders. “If I ever see you again, they’ll have to bury you on top of the Hancock to save your sick fuck soul, Tommy Boy.”

  Sanders took his cane in-hand and turned his face to the river. “Fine. You have my word, Scott. You’ll never see me.” He took a step back, a man without a care on a splendid southern morning. “Take as long as you need with the hotel. It’s the least I can do. Oh, before I forget—your severance pay from the firm.” Sanders fished in his waistcoat pocket and when he tossed the object in the air between them, Scott instinctively caught it.

  “Be smarter than Vic,” Sanders advised, “Keep that for the next rainy day. It’s not far off and it’s going to be a rare beauty.”

  Scott opened his hand, revealing the golden broach. “What the?” he gasped. But Saunders was gone, striding toward the SUV from where another figure was coming in the opposite direction.

  “Michael?” Sanders barked as the newcomer ignored him, passed by, and continued toward Scott.

  “Mister Stencek!” Sanders called after.

  His right arm in a padded strap-sling, Mike stopped and put his good hand on Scott’s shoulder. Scott grabbed Mike’s elbow and steadied himself as he welled up.

  “I couldn’t save her, Mike. Some hero, huh?”

  Mike pulled him in a tight embrace. “As long as you keep asking me that question, then my answer’s always gonna be ‘Yes’. Abso-fuckinlutely.”

  Scott pulled back and pushed the tears away with the ball of his palm. “I dunno what to do now.”

  “You’re gonna come through this. You’re going to be fine.”

  “That’s what scares me.”

  Mike slipped a card into Scott’s pocket. “My number. Day or night, you use it if you need it.”

  Scott managed an uneasy smile. “The real you? No more aliases?”

  “Yeah. The real me.”

  “What about you, are you gonna be ok?”

  Mike looked toward the SUV. Sanders’s back door was closed again, the dark window raised. “If the line rings out when you try it,” Mike said dryly, “then I guess you’ll have your answer.” He gave Scott a last hug. “Go on. Do what you came to do.”

  Mike started up the path, and when he climbed into the passenger seat, the SUV pulled away from Scott’s view and disappeared into the streets.

  Scott picked up the small wooden cask from the bench and walked to the low guardrail along the river’s edge. He climbed over and kneeled beside one of the large silver mooring cleats. Carefully, he took the lid off and lowered the open cask to the water’s surface. He spilled the ashes onto the Mississippi and waited, watched them sink, dissolve, and leave. He didn’t cry again. It was ok. She’d be back soon. He’d kept his promise. Now she would keep hers.

  “Dammit Jules,” he whispered. “Hurry up and rain.”

  Chapter 57

  He rested. He repaired. He remembered.

  From the 14th floor of the Monteleone, he watched them raise the city from the water, and all that time his thoughts were as yours would be. But they are his and you will not know them.

  On the 33rd morning post-Katrina, he finally descended to the streets.

  At the base of Hilton Tower, a group in American Red Cross vests loaded pallets of bottled water into the deep rear of a delivery truck. Scott went past a few steps, stopped, and came back to one of the women. She had a name badge on her lapel.

  “Hi… Janet? Are you in a position to take a donation from me?”

  “Um… not really. I can give you details for phone or online contributions though.”

  “No-can-do. I’m leaving town today. You have an honest face. I trust you.”

  “Gosh. Ok,” she blushed.

  “It’s not cash so I don’t need a receipt. Wait here.”

  Scott entered the Hilton lobby and got an envelope from the receptionist. Discreetly he dropped the broach inside and sealed it.

  “Here,” he handed it to Janet outside. “Whatever use you can put it to.”

  As he walked away, he couldn’t help the playful smile which broke across his face, imagining Janet’s reaction when she finally opened it.

  Along the covered concourse in front of the Convention Center, the debris and detritus had largely been cleared. Arkansas National Guardsmen operated a checkpoint at the top of the road and men and women in black pants, black tees, and combat boots were stationed at every entrance along the way. They carried M16 rifles and their baseball caps showed where they had come from to offer help: LAPD, DPD
, SLPD.

  Near the Center’s main doors, a blonde reporter wearing an open-neck polo shirt approached Scott, a cameraman in tow. She raised a matching red microphone with an ABC plate toward him.

  “Excuse me, Sir,” she asked in a soft Australian accent, “are you from the city?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Did you lose anyone, then? Are you looking for someone?”

  “No. Yeah. I mean… everyone’s safe. We were lucky.” Scott tried to disengage politely and keep going. She respectfully yielded, still directing the microphone at him.

  “Do you have any stories you’d like to share?” she asked with last-ditch enthusiasm. “Anything?”

  Scott stopped and looked at her expectant face, then into the demanding eye of the camera. An unwelcome stirring of his emotions bubbled just below the surface, feelings he had barely managed to corral on the elevator ride down. He fixed his gaze into the reporter’s blue eyes.

  “I’m sorry. I was just cooped up in my hotel the whole time. You really ought to talk to the people that were here, that lived it. A lot of people had it much worse than me.”

  She lowered the microphone. “That’s good to know. You’re right, of course.” She motioned farther down the concourse. “There’s a whole board of them over there. That’s where all my stories are right now, only none of them is the speaking kind.”

  She led the cameraman away up the sidewalk.

  Scott found who he was seeking in the parking lot across the street: a small wiry man in army fatigues, with a straw bullrider’s Stetson on his head, clipboard in hand, orchestrating a melee of military men and equipment.

  “Are you Bronco Billy?” Scott asked.

  “Sergeant William Hammerstein, yeah. What can I do ya for?”

  “The soldiers up at the Monteleone said I should ask you about getting a ride across town.”

  “Sure. Where ya headed?”

  “Just over the Expressway. If you could let me off just before the interchange.”

  Bronco Billy indicated a large olive transport truck revving in the background. “If you don’t mind going coach?” He yelled to one of the grunts loading supplies into its open back. “Hicks?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Civvy here for a taxi. See the man to where he need to be.”

  “No probs!”

  “Leaves in bout five,” Bronco Billy advised Scott. “Wait til they got the gear stowed, K?”

  “Thanks.”

  Scott returned under the glass awning above the concourse. He spotted a large wooden board fixed between two concrete pillars. The face of it was peppered with notes and small flyers on cheery-colored sheets, most hand-scrawled. Scott recognized it immediately for what it was—a montage of the missing. The ones at Ground Zero had seemed to stretch for whole blocks. This one now was no more than 20 feet across. Manhattan’s had held countless pictures, smartly designed bios and letter-perfect graphics. Not so here.

  Forget about water-destroyed printers, scanners, and laptops—most of the city was still waiting for power even now. No, the board held very few images because most of the photographs in New Orleans had drowned. It was the limitless cruelty of The Storm. If she took a loved one, she had not the heart even to leave a memento of them. She lacked the compassion to leave a home intact, somewhere their spirit could linger. Katrina took the tokens of the beloved—the mirror he shaved by each morning, the clock that told her the day’s work was done, the good china they always produced when we brought the grandkids down—and smashed them all to hell.

  And when you’d lost everything and everyone, when all you wanted to do was sit down and pour the fragments of your heart into your hands, Katrina would not even give you a chair. What kind of badness was that, that would hang a chair tauntingly in the high branches, something she had no Godly need for herself? A fucking chair, so simple and basic. Was that so much to ask?

  One of the few apparent people-pictures was tacked near the edge of the board. In it a man stood alone on large stone steps leading to a metal-railed walkway. The blue sky behind him was broken only by leafy tree tops and ornate antique street lanterns. A battered suitcase rested at his side. He smiled broadly toward the camera, a wide grin of porcelain-white teeth set in a squirrel-grey beard. His eyes were bright and their dark centers twinkled with sunny good humor.

  The grey in his beard and the deep lines around his eyes are the only indicators of his age. You have to look close to see them. Even then, exactly how old he is you cannot say. Look closer. 94? 49? Do you care? He doesn’t. He’d rather you see them as evidence of a life gratefully lived. He’d prefer you measure him by his summers, not his winters. You might notice the tatty state of his shirt, the scuffed ends of his pants, but I bet his smile beguiles you from them. Equally, his tried and tired shoes will hide beneath the radiance of his joy.

  Frozen in this moment of bonvivant, the smile tells you he is happy; nothing more to know. Not that you’d care to ask anyway. But if you did, if you could somehow manage to pass through the image and find yourself in the scene—and in New Orleans, who’d dare say such a peculiar thing was impossible?—if you approached him, introduced yourself politely and sat him down over coffee and a Tastee’s king cake, he might talk to you; you might learn than his name is Harold Kennard, that he was born in 1931 in Mileston, Mississippi to poor migrant parents who labored on the Marcella Plantation where Harold saw the cotton float heavy across 17 summer skies.

  And though he might not offer it freely, you could always consult the records at the Defense Department, where you might find the letter which recommended him for the Bronze Star. Harold saved the lives of three of his battalion on a humid moonless night on Battle Mountain, during his service in Korea.

  After the war, he came home and I doubt Harold could properly describe how hard his heart raced as his bus pulled up in the Winter of ’52 and he swept the waiting Marie Bennett off her feet, took a knee, and asked her to be his wife. As Harold slipped the ring he’d picked special in Hong Kong onto Marie’s finger, I doubt either of them could scarce say anything; for the heart speaks but seven words and only Heaven hears them.

  The children came. The children went.

  Ticha died in ’77: bad dope that fried her brain. She rotted for three days after her boyfriend panicked and fled their grubby apartment up at the Calliope Projects. Marie herself got the cancer in ’91 and it took her quick. Now Harold is a daily visitor to both his girls at St. Louis Cemetery #3, never missed a day, even through the bad stretch after Marie passed, where Harold lost his job, his home, and his way without her.

  Timothy is alive at least, not that Harold knows that. Father and son are estranged by 28 years and 300 miles. Timothy’s in an eight-by-twelve box up at Parchman, serving the back end of a 15 stretch for armed robbery. It is no matter to Harold though. In his mind, the ten-year old boy climbs on his father’s back as they listen to Reverend King speak from the steps of the Montgomery State Capitol. The memory of it carries Harold now, its shoulders as broad and mighty as his were on that single perfect day.

  There is likely only one other photo of Harold remaining, taken back on the Plantation by some famous photojournalist. Harold remembers her easy smile and how her bright red headscarf stood out against the swathes of white cotton where she’d hunker down so’s not to be distracting folk from their work while she did hers.

  Where Harold is now, we may never know. Only these two images remain: the restless youth on Marcella Plantation and the spent but unbroken man at the Moonwalk—the bookends of Harold’s life, not the book.

  The undocumented photo was pinned against a full sheet of paper. It was meant to accompany the neat handwritten script on the page which Scott now read in a quiet whisper.

  A Prayer For The Lost Unknown

  She is The City that Care Forgot

  She is The City that Never Forgot To Care

  For those whom no one else would call their own

  The souls unseen in the
Crescent’s shadow.

  Until that night when winds and waters

  wrenched from Her grip those who clung only to Her

  Those with no other family, no other home

  No other care than She bequeathed them.

  We pray for our lost unnamed, Her loved unknown

  Taken from Her arms and carried on Her tears

  Into the eternal and ever-binding grace

  And embrace of God The Father.

  You have no names to us but your spirits light

  The beaconed avenues of our fortune’s future

  And we will ever take care never to forget you

  Our sisters and brothers of Mother Orleans.

  Sleep now.

  You have come home.

  Scott reached into his jacket and retrieved a photograph of his own. It showed Julianna and him, cheek-to-cheek. Her nose nuzzled tight to his face and her gaze was drawn up to his. Out of frame, he wrapped his arms around her waist. In frame, hers were folded tightly around his neck, her fingers threaded in his hair. His eyes were her anchor in the frozen moment.

  Scott found a spare tack and pinned his photograph to the board beside the homeless man’s. He leaned forward and kissed her fiercely.

  Behind him, Bronco Billy yelled time on his ride.

  The truck stopped beside a high wire fence along the Expressway and Scott lowered himself carefully off the back. The ache on his whole right side flared as his foot reached for the road but he kept a poker face for the soldiers watching him.

  He waited on the grass verge until they drove far enough away. Then he grabbed one of the wobbly metal posts and began climbing. After much grimacing, pauses, and curses, he dropped safely on the far side.

  He crossed the railroad track and picked his way down the steep embankment until he was finally on a level path; somewhat level—the path was overlaid by a coarse mantle of dried mud along its entire length. He pulled the written directions from his pocket and started hunting for the spot.