by Les Edgerton
He was livid. His granddaughter meant more to him than anyone else, more than his own children. The fact that his son-in-law kept a mistress was barely worth notice. Most men in his position in New Orleans enjoyed a girlfriend or two, but there was an unspoken law that a gentleman kept his affairs separate from his home and family. And since this was his wife’s bank, it was the same as her home.
“Of course I’ll help you, sugar girl.”
“Well, Grandfather...” Sarah took a sip of her sherry. “It might not be that easy. Who knows what a judge might do, the way circumstances are today?”
“The circumstances are fine, darlin’. This is still Louisiana. My state.”
“Well, Grandfather, that’s worse. Did you forget about that old Napoleonic Code? The man is king. The husband can get everything in a divorce even if he doesn’t deserve a penny.”
Titus Derbigny stared without expression at his granddaughter. “Hand me that phone, little girl. Quit worryin’. I want you to dial this number for me. My fingers...shake a bit nowadays. I’m calling William. I want you to tell him you want to sell me your shares back for a dollar. Don’t worry--” He saw the look of consternation that crossed her face.
“It’s only temporary, sugar girl. Until we get the divorce behind us. That won’t take long. When I get finished talking to William, I want you to dial Judge Foster’s number for me. It’s in that book over on the sideboard. I want to make sure he gets your case on his docket. You rest easy, Sarah. It’ll all be taken care of. There’s something else we’ve got.”
“What’s that, Grandfather?”
“His Cajun background.” He looked at her sharply to see how she received that.
“How’d you...why...I didn’t...”
“How’d I know about that? Sugar, it’s my business to know everything that affects this family. I knew about Mr. St. Ives after your second date with him. Want me to tell you where he took you, what you wore?”
“Well, then, how come...”
“Why didn’t I say anything? Sugar, your happiness means everything to me. If you wanted this man and that’s all there was bad about him, I wasn’t going to stand in your way. How do you think he ended up with such a good biography--a complete work of fiction if I do say so--for his Who’s Who entry if it wasn’t for me? Do you think what you two sent in would have been accepted if I didn’t know about it? Handle it myself? No, darlin’ girl, your grandfather has always watched over you and I will again. You can count on it. Now.” He patted her knee. “Let’s you and I make some phone calls, take care of this contemptible coonass. He needs to know who’s in control. Who’s always been in control. I’ll tell you some other things about your husband you didn’t know.”
She went over, bent down and put her arms around her grandfather.
“I knew you’d take care of everything, Grandfather.”
“Now, you’re going to learn how the Derbignys operate, sugar girl. How we got to where we are. It’s none too soon to learn, especially since you’ll be taking over the bank. That’s something you need to do immediately. No use in wasting any more time. Strike before the enemy knows what hits him. That’s the secret of success in any war. And don’t kid yourself, darlin’--this is a war. This is what you have to do. I want you to do this exactly like I tell you.”
She listened, fascinated, as he made a series of calls. One, she wasn’t allowed to hear.
“This one,” he said, apology in his voice. “Is better that you don’t know about. I’ll make this call, and then you go home. Once you kick that no-good husband out, you come back here to be with your family for a few days. We’ll take good care of you.” She left the room dutifully, and only heard her grandfather’s greeting as she closed the doors behind her.
“Buenos dias, senòr. We’ve got a...”
Up till then, Sarah had felt like an equal with her grandfather. When she left the room to let him make his phone call she felt exactly like she had when she was a little girl.
CHAPTER 14
GRADY WASN’T YET IN the mood to start hitting the bars so early in the afternoon. Doing the legwork he planned to do to find out...what? He didn’t have any kind of special plan. Not much of one, anyway. Try to locate Reader Kincaid, that was the only thing he could think of to do, now that he was in New Orleans. Once he found him, then what? Several scenarios presented themselves, most of which involved beating the motherfucker half to death until he confessed to being the one who had stabbed Jack. Maybe go ahead and cancel his ticket.
That was bullshit and he knew it.
He dug out the bottle of Jim Beam he’d packed and poured himself a shot in one of the plastic cups he found in the bathroom. It was quiet in the room, the only exception the noise of airplanes coming in to land. It sounded as if they were ten feet over the roof. That was about right. The Day’s Inn was directly across the street from the airport runways, maybe less than a hundred yards from where they touched down. It was no wonder he’d gotten such a good deal on the room.
He had to admit he didn’t have much of an idea about what he would do, provided that is, that he could find the man. And beating or torturing even someone like Kincaid who had almost killed his brother wasn’t an option for someone like himself.
No, he was that breed of cop...of man...that you applied the word honest to. To a fault. His father’s fault. All his life, all he’d ever heard, ever been taught, was integrity.
“You got to face that mirror each morning, boys,” his father preached over and over. “Play by the rules, and you can sleep at night.”
Well, he’d played by the damn rules, all his life, and what had it gotten him? Broke and half-blind. Some reward. His own father had hardly prospered playing by the rules. Ended up dying of a heart attack and leaving barely enough to bury him. Same with his mother. Even the guy who’d shot Grady in the face--the act that forced him into an early medical retirement--that asshole got out of prison in less than three years. He’d see him every once in a while, staggering out of a bar usually, and once they met face to face. The guy openly snickered at him. He cocked his thumb and finger like a pistol and pointed it at Grady. “Pow,” he said, dropping his thumb, and it was all Grady could do to control himself, to keep from punching his lights out, or worse.
No, it wasn’t fair. Not fair at all. All his life, his father preached to his sons, “Play by the rules, boys. Keep your integrity. Give up your integrity and you give up who you are. An honest man might not have much in the way of material goods, but he can sure face that mirror every morning with a clear conscience.”
Sure. He’d kept his integrity and here he was, your basically unemployable cripple. Great reward. Jack, too, kept his integrity and there he was lying in a hospital bed, probably paralyzed for life.
It wasn’t the first time he’d questioned his father’s credo. But through everything, through all the graft and corruption and the rewards to the practitioners--rewards he saw firsthand every day--he’d held onto that integrity. Why, he asked himself? So I can face myself in the mirror each morning when I shave? Was it worth it? He thought of all the money he’d passed up on the job. There’d been plenty of chances. He knew cops who were set up for life. Had swimming pools in the back yard, and not the above-ground kind. Vacations in the Bahamas. All you had to do was look the other way. An envelope full of money every week, as long as you played ball. Not him. Not Mister Honesty. He could sure use some graft money now. He wondered whether it was still available if he would take it.
It was hard, sometimes. It was damned hard.
Like now, in particular. With a pile of debts that was growing into Mount Everest every day Jack lay in that hospital bed.
When he left his motel room, he slammed the door shut as hard as he could. An elderly couple, coming out of their room a few doors up, looked at him and the man stepped in front of the woman as if to shield her.
“Sorry,” Grady mumbled at them, getting into his car. He left rubber as he whipped the car out onto
Veterans Highway...and went off the side of the road as the shadow of a 707 passed directly over him, so close he swore he could see the passengers’ faces.
“Motherfuck!” he yelled out the wiw, steering back onto the pavement. Who was the idiot who decided to build a runway this close to a highway, he wondered. Planes didn’t look to be any more than fifty feet off the ground when they passed over the traffic. If you didn’t have to worry about somebody shooting you or sticking you in this town, you had to worry about being wiped out by a pilot’s miscalculation when you were out for a Sunday drive. He’d be glad to be back in Dayton when this was over, he decided, feeling the thin film of perspiration on his forehead cooling in the air-conditioning.
CHAPTER 15
“I THOUGHT I TOLD you to stay sober.”
“Reader. Hey, Reader. Where y’at, m’man!”
“Yeah. Where y’at’s right, Eddie. You are a fucking Yat, arentcha? I told you to keep off the sauce, you fucking alki.”
“Hey...hey, man. I’m not drunk, Reader. I had me a few beers t’clear my head. I’m on top of things.”
“Yeah.” Reader looked around the room. Beer bottles everywhere, on the floor, in the kitchen sink, one in a potted plant over by the window. He saw another room like this in his head. A room in his youth. Bottles in that room, too, only they were usually whiskey bottles. The day his daddy died, his own hunting knife sticking out of his stomach. Lying on the floor, twitching, blood-shot eyes looking up at his son, pleading, begging, afraid to move. Reader knowing at fifteen what was going through his father’s head. If I keep from moving, breathing, this didn’t happen--I’m not dying. There were whiskey bottles all around that day. He remembered picking up one, the one his father last drank from, and taking a slug. He remembered the cops and one cop in particular who thought nobody saw him. Remembered watching the cop pick up a bottle that was three-quarters full, and stick it inside his shirt. That was the same cop who stuck up for him. The one who helped convince the others that the killing Reader did was justifiable.
“Look at the woman,” he’d said. “Fucker killed the kid’s mother, what you expect? Looks like he kicked her to death. I’m this kid, I’da done the same thing. You too.” This he said to the others, uniformed cops at first and later to the guys in suits. Prosecutor, too, in some room uptown.
That cop helped him get that first rap knocked down. The prosecutor wanted to give him life. Thanks to the cop and his testimony on the stand, he ended up getting sentenced to a year in a Mickey Mouse detention unit and from there to a series of foster homes until he turned eighteen. One home in particular he remembered.
“You got any coffee?” he asked, going into the living room. “I mean coffee, not that other shit.”
Eddie stumbled after him, rubbing the stubble on his chin. His hair was greasy and dirty, but short. At least he’d done that right, got it cut like he’d told him, Reader thought.
“Fuck an A, Reader. Community dark roast. I’ll put it on.”
He heard Eddie stumble back to the kitchen and thought he heard the word “bastard,” but he let it slide.
***
Eddie sat and studied what Reader was laying out. This was the first time he knew there were others involved. He knew Frenchie all right. Guy was okay maybe, but a bit of a lush. He didn’t consider his own predilection for drink in that assessment, nor did he even stop to wonder why a smart guy like Reader was surrounding himself with guys with a weakness for booze.
Fucking Reader was planning to double-cross the guy it looked like. He saw how the wind blew. He didn’t doubt for a minute he’d do the same to him. He’d have to be on his guard every minute. Maybe he’d better get another gun just in case. He wondered what else Reader had “forgotten” to tell him.
Reader stretched his lips back, teeth and gums showing, at the instant Eddie looked up and the smaller man jumped.
“What?” Reader stood up, looked around the room.
Eddie stared at him a minute. “Nothin’. I...it...you...you looked like one of those damned rings you usta get in gum machines. We called them ‘Doctor Death’ rings. Christ! You shoulda seen your face!”
Reader sat back down and showed his teeth again. He spoke softly.
“Eddie, I am Doctor Death.” He gave a little snort through his nose.
Eddie made up his mind to get a second gun for sure. Strap it up under his arm. Motherfucker like this, he thought, you needed to be extra sharp yourself. Don’t get caught with your pants down.
It’d be hard, but he wasn’t going to touch another drop until this deal was done. Reader was smart. Scary-smart.
He lifted his arms a little and felt warm drops of perspiration roll down. Fuck me, he thought. What have I got into?
CHAPTER 16
EARLY AFTERNOON—IT WAS the day after C.J. picked up the passports and other IDs--it was such a broiler outside that he and Amanda sat inside for the air-conditioning, sipping iced coffee at their usual spot, the Cafe du Monde. They both stared outside on the sidewalk where at that moment, the Duck Lady was roller-skating with her pet ducks behind her. She ran smack into a light pole, grabbing it with both arms to keep from going down and Amanda laughed. C.J. didn’t share her amusement. The freak was an embarrassment to the town in his opinion. Once, she’d been the subject of a Mardi Gras poster. Good God, he thought, remembering that; what was on their minds, putting a lunatic like that on a poster for visitors to gawk at and think this was representative of New Orleans? First thing he’d do if he was mayor would be to get rid of her. Put her in a home somewhere. Second thing he’d do is close all those tacky Takee Outees that littered the Quarter. Eyesores. Third thing--
“C.J.,” Amanda was saying, forgetting the Duck Lady and toying with her stirrer, not looking him in the eye. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. I don’t think it would be a good idea for me to go with you on this Europe thing.”
C.J. St. Ives looked at her in amazement. This response wasn’t in any of the scenarios he’d imagined.
“What’re you saying, sweetheart? I thought you were excited about it. You said...”
“I know what I said.” She pushed her glass away from her and looked up. “I guess it sounded like fun at first, but what happens when we get back?”
C.J. was puzzled. What does she mean?
“I’ll lose my job.”
“Your job? I don’t get it.”
“My job, C.J. You don’t think I can just take off like that and come back and everything’s the way it was? Your wife will have my ass. I won’t only lose my position; she’ll see to it I never work in another bank in Louisiana. Hell, probably the entire country. You know how her family is. With the clout her family holds in this town, I’ll be lucky to be making change at Mickey D’s!”
“Sugar, sugar, I told you not to worry about your job. I’m leaving Sarah. I’m going to marry you. We’ve been through this. Why are you starting this all up again?”
She set her jaw. He knew that look and didn’t like it.
“I know what you say, C.J., but I also know how the world works. That woman has you by the short hairs. You think she’s going to let you walk away and keep on working at the bank? You’re nuts if you think that. No, you go and I’ll keep my job, thank you. That, I can depend on.”
He stared out at the sidewalk. The Duck Lady was gone, replaced by a troop of six or seven black kids with a boom box and a big square of cardboard that they were laying down on the sidewalk in front of the outside tables. That’s the way the yokels from Missouri see us, he thought. Break dancers and Duck Ladies. He felt his lip curl and turned his attention to Amanda.
You little idiot, he thought. You wouldn’t be a teller if it wasn’t for me--they wanted to fire your ass months ago. It won’t be Sarah keeps you from another job, it’ll be your own sorry ineptitude. He didn’t say aloud what he was thinking, but he knew what his face looked like, stony and hard.
He softened. He wanted this woman more than any other woman in his
whole life. Hell...he wanted her right this minute. She just needed to listen to reason. He reached for her hand, closed his fingers over hers and squeezed.
“Baby, you don’t have to worry about your job. Trust me on this--you won’t have to worry about anything ever again. I can’t tell you any more than that, only that money is going to be the least of your problems.”
He’d said too much. But, what else could he do? He needed to convince her to come with him. Once she saw the money she’d thank him for taking her. Thank him? She’d fuck his socks off!
“Come on,” he said, helping her up, his hand under her elbow. He’d get her in the sack, give her some good loving. She’d change her mind. He knew what she liked, the way she liked his tongue to move. Nobody eats pussy like you do, C.J., she’d said more than once. He didn’t know quite what to make of that--be proud she’d called him the best or be jealous because she was comparing him to others.
“Where?”
“You know.”
She hesitated, but only for a moment.
In the car she said, “Miss Jane told me your wife called yesterday looking for you.”
“So?” he said, pointing the car for Riverbend and the apartment.
“So, somebody called and asked for me, too, Miss Jane said. The way she said it, I know it was your wife.”
“Baby,” he said, slightly exasperated. “At this point, I don’t care if Sarah comes up and watches us making love. I tell you, I’m divorcing her. It doesn’t matter. You’ll see.”
CHAPTER 17
IN THE APARTMENT SHE started up again while C.J. made drinks for them, Dewar’s and water for him, Jack Daniels and Coke for her. He asked her one time why she asked for a brand name since all she used was Coke to mix it with. You could put gasoline in there and not know the difference, he told her.
He carried over her drink and sat down beside her on the couch.