“You tell me whatever you want to tell me. I’ll listen.”
Her cheeks reddened. I waited. She brought out a fresh cigarette, lit it with the dying ember of the last, and tossed the still-glowing butt on the floor. “It was late fall, right after Halloween, when Jake brought Mama home. My brother wasn’t due onshore for months, so it was just me watching her. But I never could keep track of her proper. Anyhow, Jake brought Mama home in the squad car. She carried a little bag from Dillard’s with some lacy place settings in it, or some kind of crap like that. He could have arrested her. But he’d paid for the stuff himself and brought her home.”
F. Gloria looked up at the ceiling, smiling at a memory. “Oh, did I let into him. I was all like, ‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’ I told him we weren’t a charity case for some do-gooder cop to make Sunday school points on.”
“Wait. You yelled at him for not putting your mother in jail?”
“Yeah. It was stupid, I know.”
I nodded. I also struck out at people when I was embarrassed. Or scared. Or hurt. Or pretty much for any reason lately.
“I tell you, though, there was something about him that looked so good. And that pissed me off even more. Like I said, he was a bull of a man back then. Or maybe he looked too much like I always dreamed Papa did. I don’t know. Anyway, there I was shouting at him: fuck this, fuck that, fuck you. Mama tittering around trying to decide where to put what she took. Jake, he just stood there and watched me, all calm-like. I yelled myself blue in the face. When I finished …” Her voice trailed off.
“When you finished?”
“He pulled out a Marlboro and lit one up. Then he offered it to me.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Just like in the movies. He held it out and I took it. I’d run out of cigs that morning. Don’t know how he knew I was dying for one, but he did.” She showed me the cigarette that she was smoking as if it was a legacy. “Then he lit one for himself. He never said a word.”
“And then?”
“And then he left.”
“That’s it?”
“Oh, he came back, from time to time. He even brought me and Mama a turkey one Thanksgiving. He got it from one of those charities that the rich folks put out so they can buy their way into heaven. Mama was so happy. She pulled out our best plates and went to cooking. So I took him in the back room and give him something to be thankful for. At least that’s how he put it. And God help me, but that man knew how to put it.” She chuckled, clearly enjoying the stupefied look on my face. “After that, he’d come by two or three times a week. He’d bring pretty trinkets for Mama and then do me in the back room while she fell asleep in the rocker.”
I thought back to that last night, that fat guy belching out the scent of mustard, meat, and onions. What had happened to bring about such a change? “And you were only seventeen?”
“Near enough to eighteen.” She shrugged. “Hey, I started it.”
I didn’t know whether to be disgusted or charmed. But hell, what did I know about being poor and lonely? Okay, what did I know about being poor? I shook my head, then pointed to her cigarette. “Can I have one of those?”
She flicked her wrist and a Marlboro slid halfway out of the package. I took it and leaned forward as she lit it with a match from the Boot Scoots Bar.
“You don’t smoke,” she said.
“I tried it once.” I took a careful drag, remembering my brother’s warning not to swallow the smoke. I let it swirl around in my mouth and exhaled, but it still didn’t feel right. “My mother wouldn’t keep ashtrays in the house, so I didn’t have any place to put the ashes.”
F. Gloria smiled halfway, not buying my bravado. She knocked her ashes to the floor with a flick of her thumb. I tried to do the same, nearly dropping the cigarette in the process.
I perched the cigarette on the edge of the table and reached into Jake’s lockbox. “I wonder if you could help me with something. There were a few pictures among Jake’s things. Do you know who the woman in this picture is?”
She took the photos, expression neutral. “This one’s Jake’s wife, Corrine. She died of breast cancer about six years ago.” She handed the picture back to me.
“Six years?” That meant Corrine had been alive during Fancy and Jake’s affair.
“That’s right,” she said, her gaze unwavering.
“So, what, then? Jake was unhappy at home?”
She shrugged. “He was happy enough.”
“I mean, like his wife didn’t understand him or something?”
“Sugar, let me tell you something. Most men who screw around do it because they can. More often than not it doesn’t have anything to do with their wives, or jobs, or any of that crap. They just fucking do it. Yeah, some guys invent excuses when they get caught, mostly because they don’t have the balls to ’fess up. Maybe Jake told his wife, maybe not. All I know is that he was nice to me, and I was nice to him. We were friends. Sex was a bonus, and it didn’t need to be more than that for either one of us. Even when his wife died, things didn’t change between us.”
“He never talked about his family then?” Disappointment welled up in me. Interesting as it was, nothing in Jake and Fancy’s love life seemed relevant to who had tried to kill him.
“He talked about his daughter. She was a couple of years younger than me. He didn’t go into detail, just bragging on how beautiful she was, how smart she was. God, he doted on her.”
I handed her the picture of the young woman holding George. “Is this her?”
F. Gloria took it and nodded. “Uh-huh, that’s Adalida. What else you got there?”
I handed the third picture across the table. She flushed, taking it as if it were some fragile artifact. “He kept my picture with theirs? He really did that? With his wife and kid? No shit?” Tears played at the corner of her eyes, but she wiped them away with a thumb. She brushed the burned-out cigarette that she’d propped on the edge of the table onto the floor and slowly went through the ritual of lighting another.
I waited for her to take a few puffs, watching as background light scattered off the smoke particles, tinting the cigarette smoke blue. I considered telling her the effect was caused by Rayleigh scattering, then decided the explanation would cost me whatever “cool points” I might have gained. “Do you know where I can find Adalida?” I wondered again why Jake hadn’t left this box to her and why Hunter hadn’t mentioned her either.
Fancy drew her brows together, scowling as if confronting a memory she’d run off once and had no patience to do so again. “Not going to happen. She killed herself three years ago.”
I stared. Man, I really need to work on my comeback repertoire.
“Things between me and Jake had slowed a bit by then. I still saw him once a month or so. But with me trying to go back to community college, I got real busy.”
It was my turn to take a drag. “Fuck,” I said.
F. Gloria nodded appreciatively. “There you go.”
“Why did she kill herself?”
“Don’t know. Jake wouldn’t talk about it. And I didn’t know anyone else in his life, so I couldn’t ask. Jake went north soon after. He didn’t come back for any funeral. I don’t even think there was one. He wrote to me on and off, but he wouldn’t talk about it.”
“But there were rumors?”
She considered me carefully. Finally, she said, “They say it was because of Adalida’s beau. Jake didn’t like the boy.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t know that either. Jake wouldn’t talk about it. But I tell you one thing: it was more than him thinking no one was good enough for his little girl. From the look in Jake’s eyes the few times the subject came up … Whew! Jake was really pissed! I figured there was something bad wrong with the kid, like he was married. Or a Yankee.”
So Jake—a married man having an affair with a teenager—got upset about his daughter possibly having an affair with a married man? That’s pretty hypoc
ritical in my book, but I remembered the old saying that everything a cat does makes sense to the cat, and reflected yet again on how that seems to apply so well to men. “How did Adalida feel about her father?”
“She worshiped him to death from what little I knew. Rumor was she couldn’t live without her beau, but she couldn’t bear to disappoint her Daddy neither. So she did herself in.”
“Adalida actually killed herself for that?”
Fancy picked a piece of tobacco from the corner of her mouth. “Worked for Juliet.”
“That’s true.” We smoked while I thought. So there’s an irate boyfriend out there. Someone irate enough to want to kill Jake? I thought about the letter tacked on the door in the alley. “Tell me something, Ms. Smith—”
“Call me Fancy, Sugar.”
I realized I’d never introduced myself. “Madison McKenna.”
She raised an eyebrow, smirking. “Madison? Like the avenue in Monopoly?”
“It’s a family name,” I said, raising an eyebrow defensively.
“Yankees got strange names.”
Smiling pointedly, I said. “Tell me something, Fancy, on the back of your picture, you called Jake ‘Big D.’ Did everyone call him that?”
“No, only me and Adalida, as far as I know. It means Big Daddy. I got it off a note she left him, used it before I knew what it meant to him. It surprised me that he didn’t mind. I don’t think anyone else could’ve gotten away with it. Why?”
“A note at the ambush addressed Jake as ‘Big D,’ so his would-be killer knows his nickname. I have to wonder how many people he could have gotten that from.”
Fancy shrugged.
“Did you ever hear of a man called Octaviano Lathos? Or a woman named Tina?”
She thought for a moment. “His name doesn’t ring a bell. I guess I might have met a Tina sometime in my life, but I can’t think of anyone now. You got a last name?”
Exhaling in frustration, I said, “I wish I did. But can you think of anyone who might have known Adalida’s nickname for Jake?”
“Jake had a partner—a real badass.”
I grimaced. “Yeah, Maxwell Hunter. I know him.”
“Lucky you.”
“Tell me about it.”
She ground her cigarette out on the plastic top of the table. I followed suit. “There’s got to be someone. How about an old girlfriend of Adalida’s or a confidante?”
“A what?”
“Someone she would have told everything to.”
“A girl tells everything to her mama.”
I scoffed mentally. “Not in my house. But never mind that. Anyone else?”
She considered a moment. “There’s Miss Livy.”
“Who’s that?
“Adalida’s old piano teacher. I heard they were close.”
“Do you know where she lives?”
“I think she lives up toward Slidell, off the Lake.”
“The Lake?”
“Lake Pontchartrain. You can look her up in the white pages under L. Brouchard.”
“Or in the Yellow Pages under piano instructors.”
“Hah! A lady like Miss Livy don’t advertise in no Yellow Pages. She don’t need to; she’s teaching second and third generations now.” Fancy looked down at her simple shift and pulled the neckline closer together over her braless chest. “The likes of me don’t go to the houses of the likes of her. Classy out on the sales floor is one thing, but that don’t erase who I am.”
So that’s still how things were down here: “The Likes of Me” and “The Likes of Her”? It burned me to think that Fancy didn’t feel she could go anyplace she wanted to. But as I looked at her, I realized that my grandmother wouldn’t have been comfortable inviting Fancy into her home. And, I realized to my embarrassment, up to a few moments ago, I probably wouldn’t have either. Suddenly, the likes of me didn’t seem good enough to be talking to the likes of her. I stood. “Thanks for the help.”
She stood too. “I want to go see him.”
“Of course.” I ripped a piece off the fish wrapper and wrote down the name of Jake’s hospital and room number, as well as my own address and Nestor’s cell phone number. “If you think of anything that could help, call me. Or if there is anything you need, ever, just ask.”
“I always wanted to see Chicago.”
“I hope you visit us. Oh, don’t be surprised if the cops show up asking questions.”
“About Jake or about you?”
“Probably both. But if they ask, I’d appreciate it if you never saw me before.”
Her smile radiated innocence. “Never laid eyes on you in my life.”
I smiled back. “Thanks.”
Her brows furrowed—the dangerous look returned. “But if you find out who hurt Jake, you’ll let me know?”
“I promise.”
“A couple of my brother’s old buddies still work the heavy booms. They’d be happy to help that son of a bitch find Jesus. We might even let you watch.”
I felt a rush in my stomach: a tumbling combination of hoping to see said sight and guilty realization that doing so should bother me but wouldn’t. “You have a deal.”
Fancy followed me to the door. I cracked it open and my breath caught in my throat. Maxwell Hunter trailed another powder-perfect saleswoman, not twenty yards away! I ducked back into the room. “Damn!”
Fancy came up beside me. “What’s the matter?”
I jerked my head toward the door. “See that guy?”
She peered out the portal. “The dick in the Armani suit?”
“How did you know he was a private detective?”
“He is?”
“Don’t you recognize him? That’s Hunter.”
“I never met him.”
My diaphragm muscle tightened, my fists clenched, and my jaw set hard with the visceral desire to fight or flee; the decision, swiftly made, pegged my “flee meter” to the wall. “Well, I don’t want him to find me. He’s tried to get me thrown in jail once. I have a feeling he’d succeed this time around. Is there a back way out?”
She jerked her thumb right. I headed in that direction. “It’s blocked off,” she called out.
I stopped and stared.
“Inventory just arrived,” she said calmly.
This was no time to be calm! “That’s a fire-safety violation!”
She raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, I’ll bring that up at the next meeting.”
I glanced around in desperation.
Fancy pointed to boxes stacked several feet tall. “Hide there, and wait for my signal. Then slip out.”
Hunter would hit the door at any second. I ducked behind the boxes. “What signal?”
“You’ll know.” Her tone made me wish I could see her face.
The door opened, and I slipped further between the boxes and the wall, banging my bad shoulder. I stifled a yell. I heard Hunter’s voice, muffled by the stack between us, and squeezed myself tighter into the narrow opening. I stuck my head out as far as I dared. Fancy led Hunter past the stack and kept his back to me.
They spoke, their voices low. I settled in against the wall and thought about my next step: finding Miss Livy. If Fancy was any indication of Jake’s associates, the meeting should be interesting at least. The slow, deliberate sound of a zipper interrupted my musings.
Wide-eyed, I leaned forward and took a look.
Hunter’s back still faced me. Fancy stood in front of him. He had both hands on her upper arms, but I couldn’t tell if he was holding her off or keeping her in place. One way or the other, I figured I’d received my signal. I slipped out, silent as guilt.
Nearly to the escalator, as I lagged behind a woman balancing three toddlers and sporting a look that spelled doom for her husband, a scream of “Rape!” rang out through the store.
I burst into laughter and ran the rest of the way down.
Jake sure knew how to pick them. Fan-Glorious indeed!
CHAPTER TEN
I called Miss L
ivy on Nestor’s cell. She spoke with the balanced sweetness of a grand Crú Chardonnay and called me “my dear” as if she meant it. And she agreed to see me despite my vague explanation.
I rented the cheapest car I could: a baby-puke-green subcompact, the size and frailty of which made me wonder if it would grow up into a real car someday. Fortunately, I only needed to coax the Matchbox lookalike as far as the eastern bank of Lake Pontchartrain. This was good, considering the last person who’d rented the car apparently had penchants for cheap cigars and fishing. Worse, though, the radio buzzed. I took this as long as I could before pulling over.
You see, I have this thing about static. It dates from childhood, when I decided I heard a pattern in the snap, crackle, and pop from my Rice Krispies. Mom tried to set me straight by explaining the difference between structured and nonstructured noise, which, of course, I didn’t appreciate. But, hey, I was seven; I wasn’t quite mature enough for the white noise discussion. Plus, my oldest brother kept flicking soggy Cheerios at me every time Mom turned around to draw on the kitchen white board. Thus, I ended up feeling both overwhelmed and soggy.
So, the static problem had to be fixed. After a little troubleshooting, I tracked the problem to the speakers. In the process, I found a wad of gum under the driver’s seat. I can use that. But when I picked up the gum with a paper napkin, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. Something about the gum, or at least the texture of it, was disturbingly familiar. I searched my memory but nothing came to me, so I removed the panel, reseated the wires leading from the amplifier onto the hook-up jacks, and got back on the road. I’d fixed it in ten minutes, but I was unable to shake the feeling that I’d just missed something important.
Following Miss Livy’s instructions, I went east on I-10 toward Slidell, a drive that carried me over the vast stretch of Lake Pontchartrain. The water, an unremarkable gray, reflected a quiescent sky as a light wind pushed low, lazy crests across the surface. I found my exit and wound my way through the narrow streets of a well-groomed suburb. Miss Livy’s was a modest, one-story plank house painted butter cream with porticos the color of vanilla icing. The door was a crisp green, inlaid with cut-glass, and the lawn as squarely kept as Great Uncle Sammy’s crew cut. A weed-free flagstone path led from the porch to a freshly painted picket fence.
The Last Best Lie Page 15