by Les Edgerton
“You’re an idiot, Eddie.”
“Now, wait a minute...”
“No.” Reader stood up. “You wait a minute. This whole deal may be fucked up. It’s his wife owns the bank. Her and her granddaddy. If she kicked him out, it may be he isn’t going to be in any position to launder Castro’s money anymore. We have us a situation, looks like. I need to figure things out. First thing we do, we go over to this apartment and see if he’s there.”
“Now? But--”
“Now. This minute. Come on.”
They were halfway to the door when Veronica came around the end of the bar and said, “You gents can’t leave. I fixed you another drink. On the house.” She smiled and held up two glasses.
“Drink ‘em yourself, babe,” Reader said, and the two men walked out. Veronica went to the door behind them, alert enough to grab a pad and pencil. She was able to get both license plates. As soon as she’d written them down, she picked up the phone and dialed Grady’s motel again. After letting it ring, she hung up and dialed another number.
“Hey, Harvey...this Harvey? Yeah, great. Listen, Harvey, do me a favor will you? I got some numbers I want you to run for me...”
Turning out onto the highway, Reader allowed himself the slightest smile. Things were going just about the way he figured. He had a pretty good idea who C.J. had called. He would’ve liked to have listened in on that conversation.
I hope you were creative, St. Ives, he thought to himself, punching the gas and moving out into the traffic.
***
The cops let Reader out the day of his parents’ funerals. Only he wasn’t Reader, not then. He was Charles. The two policemen who took him in the car both called him Chuck, which he hated. “My name’s Charles,” he said, and both cops laughed, and they talked with each other during the ride there. It was one of those typical hot and sultry New Orleans summer days and the car’s air conditioner was turned up to the max, so Charles couldn’t’ve heard them if he’d tried. Mostly he didn’t. Mostly he was bored.
The services for his father and mother were scheduled for the same time, but at different cemeteries. There wasn’t a choice to make. He went to his mother’s.
It was funny. He thought he killed his daddy for what he’d done to his mother, but when he got there and sat in the front row between the two uniformed cops, he couldn’t feel a thing. He couldn’t remember what his mother looked like, only vaguely, though it had been a mere three days since the killings took place. In fact, all he felt was a relief that once he got released--which seemed likely was going to happen by the way the cops talked--he wouldn’t have to go back and live with his mother. He was glad. If she’d been alive, she would’ve picked up another lush like his daddy and it would start all over again. That’s what he told himself.
Before they lowered the coffin, he said to one of the policemen, “C’mon, let’s go. I want to get out of here. Take me back.” On the way back to the detention center, he overheard one cop say to the other, “This is shit, Frank. They shouldn’ta made the kid go if he didn’t want to. Poor fucking kid.”
He began to giggle in the back seat and both cops turned around to stare at him, the one saying, knowingly, before they turned back around, “Shock. He’s in shock. Think we ought to take him by the hospital?”
That got Charles to laughing more. He didn’t know why he was crying at the same time. It didn’t make sense. He didn’t feel sad.
He hated the way his father’s face wouldn’t go away. He hated it worse that his mother’s did. From that day on, she completely vanished from his memory and the only way he could recall her features was to pull out her picture. As soon as he put it away, it was as though he’d never seen it. It was the oddest thing. It bothered him, but he never told anyone.
CHAPTER 21
IN AN HOUR C.J had put down three drinks. In another twenty minutes a scheme was forming itself in his mind.
The bar at the Fairmont was full of people, many of whom he knew. They kept coming up to him, saying hi, C.J., how’s business, trying to tell him banker jokes, business gossip. For once he didn’t smile, didn’t crack jokes, just sat staring at them until they got nervous and walked away.
By his fourth drink he was halfway there and one more put him over the edge. He was feeling good again. He’d figured a way out of this mess.
He ordered another Dewar’s and water and took the drink out into the lobby to a pay phone. He could have used the phone at the bar except he didn’t want anybody to hear this particular conversation.
He failed to notice the man behind him. A man who came out of the bar behind him and stood there a moment as if in indecision and sauntered slowly over to the restrooms.
“I got a problem,” he said as soon as he heard the voice on the other end.
“What problem?”
Now that C.J. was talking to Castro, he got scared. A minute ago it seemed crystal clear what he would say and how the drug dealer would react. A minute ago though he was sitting in the bar slugging down glass after glass of courage. All of a sudden he was sober and wondering if he could make the man believe him. If he couldn’t he’d be dead. One thing men like Castro didn’t tolerate and that was somebody fucking them over.
He took a deep breath and plunged ahead. There was no choice.
“It’s not a big one, Fidel. Nothing to worry about. Probably my imagination, but I wanted to let you know.”
There was a silence.
“Well?”
“Listen, I don’t know for sure, but I think maybe somebody’s been watching us.”
“Like who?”
“How do I know who! Just somebody...probably nothing. Maybe it’s my overactive imagination. No, that’s not it--I know who it is. At least I think I know who it is.”
“Then who, goddammit!” The receiver felt as if it had exploded. Fidel never talked to him like that. Must have his nose in the coke.
“Hey, there’s no need for...”
“No need for what, St. Ives? You call me up --you’re not supposed to call me up at this number--and you tell me somebody’s watching you--us--whatever--and you fuck around and don’t tell me who you think it is. What am I supposed to do--use fucking ESP? Tell me what the deal is. Dio!”
“I think it’s my wife.”
“Your wife! What the fuck?”
“Yeah. It’s my wife. I’m sure of it. She’s suspicious, thinks I have a girlfriend. I think she’s checking up on me.”
“You do have a girlfriend. You always have a girlfriend. I’ve never known you when you didn’t have a girlfriend. She never worried about it before, did she?”
“Yeah, well, I know. I think that’s it. I think she’s got some detective on me, trying to dig up something. Maybe for a divorce. You know?”
“What’s that got to do with us? With our deal?”
“Well, nothing really. Except if he--this detective--whoever--is snooping around and sees something, tumbles to what’s going on, that could be trouble. Hey, that would be trouble. Trouble we don’t need, eh?”
“So what do you suggest we do, senor?” He slipped into his Cuban accent heavier and the tone was sarcastic.
“Well...to be on the safe side...probably nothing. Like I said, I thought this week at least...maybe it’s not a good idea for you to bring the money to my office. I thought I’d come out there and get it. I’ll make sure nobody’s following me. This guy--if there is a guy--hell, I’m not sure there is, well, another week, things’ll be back to normal. This isn’t the first time Sarah’s gotten bitchy. Probably make me drop Amanda, tell her I’m sorry. You know. So I lose a teller. Glorified teller. So what. I know how to handle Sarah. It’s just that if there’s a guy snooping around trying to take keyhole photos it could mean trouble. Easy to avoid it. Do it different this one week.” Then, like he’d just thought of this, “Hey, maybe I could pick it up out there?”
There was a lengthy silence.
“Fidel?”
“Si, si. I’m thinki
ng. Yeah. You know that might not be a bad idea. Come at nine. I’ll have a couple of the boys watch. If you’re being followed we’ll get him. Yeah. That’s good. Do that. Nine. What’s his car look like? What’s this guy look like?”
Look like?
“Well...he’s easy to spot. Drives a brown car. A Camaro, maybe. Has a big hook nose. Guy’s got short, black, stringy hair. Tries to hide the fact he’s going bald, starts his part above his ear. Greasy black hair.” He blamed the booze for his snicker and tried to assume a sober face.
“Like us Mexicans, eh, senor?”
“No, Fidel, that isn’t what I meant.”
“Good. Because I am Cubano. Between you and me I don’t like Mexicans either. Tell me more. How tall is he? How much does he weigh?”
C.J. gave him a complete description. Of Fred Touschoupe, one of the bank clerks.
“I don’t like this, Senòr St. Ives. If this is a setup, something funny, you’re going down. You know that, eh, senòr?”
C.J. was sweating when he put down the phone and it wasn’t the drinks. For a minute he thought he was going to get sick right in the lobby of the Fairmont, but the feeling passed and he drained the rest of the drink he’d brought with him.
You’re a slick son-of-a-bitch he told himself. This is going to work out perfectly. Absolutely.
He thought about the place where he was going to have to spend the night and wondered if he could do it.
As he left the hotel he passed right by the man who’d followed him out of the bar and once again didn’t notice him.
Out in Chalmette, a Cuban-American picked up his ringing phone and listened to a friend of his. A very powerful friend.
“Si, Senor,” he said, his head nodding vigorously. “I just got a call from him. I told him to come out here.” He listened some more, nodding occasionally, but not speaking. After the other party was done, Castro said, “Si. I understand. That’s what I was thinking also.”
CHAPTER 22
LAST WINTER, WHEN C.J. was driving around with one of those real estate booklets on the car seat looking for an apartment to rent, he fell in love right away with the duplex on Burthe. Smack on Riverbend, the place where the streetcar makes its only turn from St. Charles onto Carrollton, the area was New Orleans at its best. Just off the mansions on St. Charles near Tulane and Loyola Universities. Scattered for blocks around were arty little shops, dress designers and intimate tiny cabarets, along with the student bars and bookstores. Lines of students waited on street corners for the streetcar, while equal numbers got off.
“Charming,” he said to Amanda the first time he’d brought her to the apartment. “I like this area better than any place in town. This is New Orleans. No fucking tourists. Welure, some, just not the same ones you get in the Quarter. It’s...well... charming.” Amanda wasn’t the first girl he’d brought to the apartment, but it looked as though she’d certainly be the last.
He felt queasy, trying to sleep with Amanda’s dead body in the closet in the same room . It was hard enough to sleep as cold as it was. The air-conditioning was down as far as it would go to keep her corpse from smelling. He also slept with every blanket on in the place except the one he had thrown over Amanda’s rapidly decomposing body. He shuddered when he saw how white her skin had become.
When the doorbell rang on Thursday morning he almost jumped out of his skin. Still in bed at ten in the morning, though he’d awakened out of habit at six, he couldn’t force himself to get up. He lay with the covers pulled up to his chin, trying to consolidate his thoughts, trying to get it together for what he meant to do the following evening, but he couldn’t concentrate.
Still in his clothes to help keep him warm, he tiptoed to the front door and looked out through the peephole. Man! Fucking mailman. When he saw the uniform, at first he thought it was a cop coming to arrest him for killing Amanda and then he saw it was only a mailman. Stupid! he thought. No one knows about Amanda. He went to the door.
It was a special delivery. A signature was required for what turned out to be a bulky package from Sarah. Well, from her lawyer, William S. Bottoms, Jr., LL.D., Attorney-at-Law. Harvard grad. Lots of shit in raised black letters on the cover letter. He hated the button-down asshole with his black suits in the winter, his seersucker grays in the summer. His fucking fake Harvard speech when he said “idear” for idea. His ceaseless, boring fucking cocktail party stories about the prep master at Choate. C.J. laughed out loud. No more of those goddamned cocktail parties! No more sucking up to assholes with the I.Q. of a gerbil. Assholes with more money than they could ever get rid of if they stood at the door of a furnace shoveling it in all day long. Always standing around talking about fucking coming-out parties, which Mardi Gras balls were the best and which Krewes were for the nouveau riche and not worthy of anything but their disdain.
He gave the old man grudging credit. Sarah’s grandfather was good. There was no doubt in C.J.’s mind as to who was running the show. How’d he find out about this place so soon? Of course. He remembered Sarah’s mentioning it the night before. Maybe she did have a detective on him.
He opened the packet knowing what it was. The bitch sure didn’t waste any time. Yes. Notice of decree of divorcement, notice of dismissal from Derbigny State Bank and injunction against entering same. Some other shit that amounted to the same theme. He tossed it on the dresser.
Fucking old man Derbigny. Always fucking with him. He knew beyond any doubt that this wasn’t Sarah doing all this. It was her grandfather. Fucker thought he ran everything. Not this time.
Maybe he should light out. Call the pilot and tell him he wanted to leave a day early. Christ, there was a Cayman bank account with over a million dollars free and clear waiting for him. But, how far would a million dollars go in today’s world? In his world? No, he was going to be more than comfortable. He was going to be rich. All he had to do was wait one more day, keep his nerve and he’d be like one of those assholes at those cocktail parties, have more dinero than he could shovel in a lifetime. He knew the investments he’d put it into that would double his money. Metals. Copper, iron, zinc, stuff like that. Limited resource, growing demand--profits. That was the Midas formula.
He got back in bed still clothed, pulled up the covers and thought about the money he was going to make, at the same time wondering if he needed to stock up on Community Coffee. Every so often he gave a sniff to see if he could detect any aroma from the closet.
***
Veronica figured that if she didn’t get an answer this time she probably wouldn’t get another chance to try again until later on, after the after-work rush died down. A kazillion people were in the bar, blue-collar types for the most part with only a few suits sprinkled among the crowd, and the only good thing about Sally not being available to help out was that it was mostly beer and shots this crowd wanted. Anybody who yelled out anything that required a blender, she ignored and served the beer and shot Joes first. The women would be along in a little bit, she knew. Most of ‘em wanted to make an entrance, collect whistles. Damn that Sally! He knew to be at work this time of day. She was about to hang up when there was a click on the other end and a male voice said, “Yeah?”
Veronica shouted into the phone. “Fogarty!”
“Who’s this?”
“Veronica. Sally’s wife. Where the hell you been?”
Grady held the phone away from his ear. It was mid-morning and he must have slept ever since Whitney had dropped him off. She had offered to stay with him longer but he told her no, you have a job to take care of, and she’d finally acquiesced and left, promising to come over as soon as she was off at five.
“You don’t have to yell,” he said, bringing it closer, saying it in a friendly way.
“It’s loud in here. I can’t hear you. Listen, I’ve been trying to reach you for hours.”
“My brother died,” he said. “I was out last night most of the night.”
There was a silence. Then, “I’m sorry, Grady. That sucks.”
“Yeah,” he replied. “It sure does.”
“Well, hell!”
“Yeah, I know. What’d you call about?” He hoped it was something to do with Reader Kincaid. He was going to catch that fuck if it was the last thing he ever did. He was going to pay for his brother and pay in spades.
“Oh, yeah. Listen, they were here.”
“They?” He was pretty sure he knew who “they” were, at least he hoped he did.
“Eddie Delahousie and his friend Kincaid. I remember him. Bad customer, that one. I got their plates. Got you an address. Kincaid lives over in Algiers, across the river. Got a reputation as some half-ass master criminal. People think he’s a genius, something. I knew him as soon as he walked in the door. This guy’s something else, Fogarty, but I guess you knew that. Armed robbery, banks, supermarkets, stuff like that. He likes violence. I talked to a friend of mine downtown, he read me his rap sheet. Two suspicions of murder besides his father, but nothing ever proved. This guy’s a psycho. Enjoys killing. Loves to use a knife. He’s very creative with something sharp.”
“I know,” said Grady. “That’s what he used on Jack. That fits with everything I know about the guy. Thanks.”
“Who? Oh. Your brother. Yeah, well, this is a bad dude for sure. Listen, Fogarty--you want him pulled in? I got friends on the force that owe me favors. I can make a call, have him picked up, use a little persuasion, open him up. We got some good interrogators. Very professional. If he killed your brother, I know some guys who can get it out of him. You give me the word. We know how to take care of punks like that down here.”
Grady nixed that idea right away. He thought differentlyhis guy was too together to open up from a little hose job, no matter how expertly applied. He didn’t want the slightest mistake made in this. There was no way he was going to do something to cause this fuck to walk.