Voodoo River

by Robert Crais

  I left the highway at Opelousas, then went north on a tiny two-lane state road following what the map said was Bayou Mamou. It was a muddy brown color and looked more like standing water than something that actually flowed. Cattails and cypress trees lined the far bank, and the near bank was mostly wild grass and crushed oyster shells. A couple in their early twenties poled a flat-bottomed boat along the cypress knees. The man stood in the stern, wearing an LSU T-shirt and baggy jeans and a greasy camouflage ball cap with a creased bill. He pushed the little boat with steady, molasses-slow strokes. The woman wore a pale sundress and a wide straw hat and heavy work gloves and, as the young man poled, she lifted a trotline from the water to see if they had caught fish. The young man was smiling. I wondered if John Fogerty had been thinking of Bayou Mamou when he wrote “Born on the Bayou.”

  I passed a wooden billboard that said THE KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS WELCOME YOU TO VILLE PLATTE, LA. “HOME OF THE COTTON FESTIVAL,” and then the highway wasn’t the highway any more. It was Main Street. I passed gas stations and an enormous Catholic church, but pretty soon there were banks and clothing and hardware stores and a pharmacy and a couple of restaurants and a record store and all the places of a small southern town. A lot of the stores had posters for something called the Cotton Festival. I turned off the air conditioner and rolled down the window and began to sweat. Hot, all right. Several people were standing around outside a little food place called the Pig Stand, and a couple of them were eating what looked like barbecued beef ribs. A million degrees outside, and these guys were slurping down ribs in the middle of the day. Across from the Pig Stand there was a little mom-and-pop grocery with a hand-painted sign that said WE SELL BOUDIN and a smaller sign that said FRESH CRACKLINS. Underneath that someone had written no cholesterol—ha-ha. These Cajuns are a riot, aren’t they?

  I drove slowly and, as I drove, I wondered if any of the people I passed were in some way related to Jodi Taylor. I would look at them and smile and they would smile back, and, with a curious feeling, I searched for Jodi Taylor’s reflection. Were those the eyes? Is that the nose? If Jodi Taylor were beside me, and were not familiar from being on television, would one of these people catch a passing glance of her and call her by another name? I realized then that Jodi Taylor must sometimes wonder these same things.

  If I was going to find Jodi Taylor’s birth family, I would have to interview people, but the question was who? I could check with local medical personnel, but any physician who was a party to the adoption would be legally bound to remain silent. Ditto clergy and members of the local legal community. Also, they would ask questions that I didn’t want to answer and would probably notify the cops, who would come around to ask similar questions. Small-town cops are notoriously territorial. Therefore, ix-nay the more obvious sources of information. Perhaps I could forgo interviews altogether and use the concept of familial resemblance to find said birth parents. I could post pictures of Jodi Taylor all over town. Do you know this woman? Of course, since she was famous, everybody would know her, but maybe there was a way around that. I could have Jodi wear a Groucho Marx nose when I took the picture. That should fool ’em. Of course, then everybody might think she was Groucho Marx. Ix-nay the nose.

  Thirty-six years ago a child had been born and its care relinquished to the state. That would not be a common occurrence in a town of Ville Platte’s size. People would talk and, quite possibly, people would remember, even thirty-six years later. Gossip is a detective’s best friend. I could randomly question anyone over the age of fifty, but that seemed sort of unprofessional. A professional would narrow the field. All right. Who talks about having babies? Answer: mommies. Task at hand: locate women who delivered on or about 9 July, thirty-six years ago. The detective flies into action and it is awesome to behold. A mind like a computer, this guy. A regular Sherlock Holmes, this guy.

  I drove back to the little grocery with the “boudin” sign, parked at the curb, and went in. A kid in a gray USL Ragin’ Cajuns T-shirt was sitting behind the register, smoking a Marlboro and reading a drag boat magazine. He didn’t look up when I walked in. In Los Angeles, you walk into a convenience store and the people who work there reach for their guns.

  I said, “Howdy. Is there a local paper?”

  He waved the cigarette at a newspaper rack they had off to the side, and I picked up a copy and read the masthead. The Ville Platte Gazette—established 1908. Perfect. Daily. Even better.

  I said, “Do you have a library in town?”

  He sucked on the Marlboro and squinted at me. He was pale, with wispy blond hair and caterpillar fuzz above his lip and a couple of primo zits ripening on his forehead. Eighteen, maybe, but he could’ve been older.

  I said, “You got a library?”

  “ ’Course. Where you think you are, Arkansas?” They’re really into that Arkansas thing down here.

  “Any chance you’d tell me how to get there?”

  He leaned back on his stool and crossed his arms. “Which library?” Score one for the yokel.

  Six minutes later I circled the town square past a red brick Presbyterian church and parked at the library. An older African-American gentleman was behind the counter, stacking books onto a gray metal cart. A young woman with braided hair sat at a reading table and a kid with a limp shuffled through the stacks, listing to the right so he could read the book spines. I went to the counter and smiled at the librarian. “That air-conditioning feels good.”

  The librarian continued stacking the books. “That it does. And how are you today, sir?” He was shorter than me and thin, with a balding head and a prominent Adam’s apple and very dark skin. He was wearing a plaid short-sleeved shirt and a burgundy knit tie. A little nameplate on the counter said MR. ALBERT PARKS.

  I said, “Do you have the Gazette on microfiche?” I could have gone by the newspaper offices, but newspaper people would ask questions.

  “Yes, sir. We do.” He stopped stacking books and came over to the counter.

  I told him the year I wanted, and asked if he had it.

  Mr. Parks grinned broadly, pleased to be able to help. “I think we might. Let me run in the back and see.”

  He disappeared between the stacks and returned with a cardboard box and had me follow to an ancient microfiche unit on the other side of the card catalogs. He pulled out one of the spools and threaded it into the machine. “There are twenty-four spools in this box, two spools for each month of the year. I put in January. Do you know how to work the machine?”

  “Sure.”

  “If the film gets stuck, please don’t force the little crank. These kids from the school use this thing and always tear the film.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  Mr. Parks frowned down into the little box and fingered through the spools.

  I said, “What’s wrong?”

  “Looks like we have a month missing.” He frowned harder, then arched his eyebrows and looked up at me. “May’s gone. Did you need May?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Maybe I put it in a different year.”

  “I don’t think I’ll need it.”

  He nodded thoughtfully, told me to call him if I needed any help with the little crank, then went back to his book cart. When he was gone I took the January spool out of the microfiche and dug around in the box until I found the two July spools. I threaded in the first and skimmed through until I reached the Gazette dated 9 July. The ninth was a Tuesday and had no birth announcements. I searched through the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth, which was the following Friday. Friday’s paper had three birth announcements, two boys and twin girls. The boys were born to Charles & Louise Fontenot and William & Edna Lemoine, the twin girls to Murray & Charla Smith. As I was writing their names on a yellow legal pad, Mr. Parks strolled by. “Are you finding everything you need?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”

  He nodded and strolled away.

  I cranked the little spool back to the beginning of July a
nd copied the birth announcements published at the end of every week, and then I did the same for June and August. When I was working through August, Mr. Parks pushed the book cart next to me and made a big deal out of straightening shelves and trying to pretend that he wasn’t interested in what I was doing. I glanced up and caught him peeking over my shoulder. “Yes?”

  Mr. Parks said, “Heh heh,” then pushed the cart away. Embarrassed. They get bored in these small towns.

  When I finished with August I had eighteen names. I put the little spools back into their box, turned off the microfiche, and returned the box to Mr. Parks. He said, “That didn’t take very long.”

  “Efficiency. Efficiency and focus are the keys to success.”

  “I hear that.”

  I said, “Is there a phone book?”

  “On the reference table next to the card catalog.”

  I went over to the reference table and looked in the phone book for the names I had copied. I was on the fourth name when Mr. Parks said, “Seems to me you appear to be looking for someone.”

  He was standing behind me again, peering over my shoulder.

  I put my hand over the names. “It’s rather personal.”

  He frowned. “Personal?”

  “Private.”

  He peered at my hand as if he were trying to see through it. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m from the government. Central Intelligence.”

  He looked offended. “No reason to be rude.”

  I spread my free hand.

  He said, “You were copying birth announcements. Now you’re looking for those names in the phone book. I think you’re trying to find someone. I think you’re a private detective.” Great. The big-time Hollywood op gets made by the small-town librarian. He started away. “Perhaps we should call the police.”

  I caught his arm and made a big deal out of looking around. Making sure that the coast was clear. “Thirty-six years ago, the person I’m working for was born in this area and given up for adoption. She has now contracted leukemia and requires a bone marrow transplant. Do you know what that means?”

  He answered slowly. “They need a blood relative for those transplants, don’t they?”

  I nodded. You toss it on the water and sometimes they take it, but sometimes they don’t. He was a knowledgeable man. He’d know more than a little about marrow transplants. He could ask to speak with my client or my client’s physician, and, if I were legitimate, they’d be more than happy to speak with him. He could ask me if the leukemia was acute or chronic, or he could ask me which type of white blood cells were affected. There were a hundred things he could ask me, and some of them I could scam but most of them could blow me out of the water.

  He looked at my hand over the list of names, then he looked back at me and I saw his jaw work. He said, “I saw some of your names there. I know some of those folks. This lady, the one you’re working for, she gonna die?”

  “Yes.”

  He wet his lips, then pulled over a chair and sat down beside me. “I think I can save you some time.”

  Of the eighteen names on my list, Mr. Albert Parks knew four, and we found another three listed in the phone book. The rest had either died or moved away.

  I copied addresses and phone numbers for the seven still in the area, and Mr. Parks gave me directions on how to find those people who lived in the outlying areas. He offered to phone the four that he knew to tell them that I’d be stopping around, and I said that that would be fine, but that he should ask them to respect my client’s privacy. He said that he was certain that they would. He said that he hoped that I could find a donor for my client, and asked me to give her his very best wishes for a complete recovery. His wishes were heartfelt.

  Mr. Albert Parks worked with me for the better part of an hour, and then I walked out of the cool quiet of his library into the damp midday Louisiana heat feeling about three inches tall.

  Lying sucks.

  4

  Of the seven names on the list, four lived in town and three lived in the outlying area. I decided to speak with the townies first, then work my way out. Mr. Parks had recommended that I start with Mrs. Claire Fontenot who, as the widowed owner of a little five and dime just across the square, was the closest. He said that she was one of God’s Finest Women. I took that to mean that she was kind and caring and probably easy to manipulate. Sort of like Mr. Albert Parks. As I walked over I thought that maybe I should just cut out this manipulation business and proclaim for all the world who I worked for and what I was after. If I did, I would probably feel much better about myself. Of course, Jodi Taylor probably wouldn’t, but there you go. Her privacy would be violated and her confidence breached, but what’s that when compared to feeling good about oneself? Elvis Cole, detective for the nineties, comforts his inner child.

  Going into Fontenot’s Five & Dime was like stepping backward in time. Cardboard cutout ads for things like Carter’s Little Liver Pills and Brylcreem—a little dab’ll do ya!—and Dr. Tichnor’s Antiseptic were taped and retaped to the door and the windows, filling the same spaces that they had filled when they were first put up forty years ago. Some of the cutouts were so faded that they were impossible to read.

  An overweight girl in her late teens sat on a stool behind the counter reading a copy of Allure. She looked up when I entered.

  “Hi. Is Mrs. Fontenot in?”

  The girl called out, “Miss Claire,” and a stately woman in her early sixties appeared in the aisle, holding a box of Hallmark cards. I said, “Mrs. Fontenot, my name is Elvis Cole. I believe Mr. Parks over at the library might’ve phoned.”

  She looked me up and down as if she viewed me with caution. “That’s right.”

  “May I have a few minutes?”

  She viewed me some more, and then she put down the box of cards and led me to the rear of the store. She seemed rigid when she moved, as if her body were clenched. “Mr. Parks told me that you want to know something about a baby that was given up for adoption.” She arched an eyebrow when she said it, clearly suspicious of the practice and disapproving.

  “That’s right. Somewhere around the time that Max was born.” She had delivered a son, Max Andrew, sixteen days before Jodi Taylor’s birth.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know anything about that. I kept all my children, believe you me.” Daring me to deny it. When she spoke, she kept both hands folded together between her breasts, as if she were praying. Maybe you did that when you were one of God’s finest.

  “Not one of your children, Mrs. Fontenot. Another woman’s child. Maybe you knew her, or maybe you just heard gossip.”

  The eyebrow arched again. “I don’t gossip.”

  I said, “Ville Platte is a small town. Unwed pregnancies happen, but they would be rare, and babies given for adoption would be still more rare. Maybe one of your girlfriends at the time mentioned it. Maybe one of your aunts. Something like that.”

  “Absolutely not. In my day, that type of thing wasn’t tolerated the way it is now, and we would never have discussed it.” She clutched her hands tighter and raised both eyebrows, giving me All-knowing. “Now, people don’t care about this kind of thing. People do whatever they want. That’s why we’re in this fix.”

  I said, “Onward Christian soldiers.”

  She frowned at me. “What?”

  I thanked her for her time and left. One up, one down. Six more to go.

  Evelyn Maggio lived alone on the second floor of a duplex that she maintained six blocks south of the five and dime. Her duplex was a big white clapboard monster set high on brick piers in case of flood. Evelyn Maggio herself was a vital woman in her late fifties, twice married and twice divorced, with tiny teeth and too much makeup. She showed me the teeth when she let me in and latched onto my arm and said, “My, but you’re a good-lookin’ fella.” Her words were long and drawn out, sort of like Elly May Clampett. She smelled of bourbon.

  I was with her for almo
st forty minutes and in that time she called me “sugar” eleven times and drank three cups of coffee. She drank it royale. She put out a little tray of Nabisco Sugar Wafers and told me that the very best way to eat them was to dip them in the coffee, but to watch because they could get too soggy and would fall apart. She put her hand on my arm and said, “No one likes a limp sugar wafer, honey, especially not lil’ ol’ me.” She seemed disappointed that it wasn’t what I wanted to hear, and, when it became clear that she knew nothing about a child being given to the state, she seemed even more disappointed when I left. I took two of the sugar wafers with me. I was disappointed, too.

  I spent the next twenty-two minutes with Mrs. C. Thomas Berteaux. She was seventy-two years old, rail thin, and insisted upon calling me Jeffrey. She was quite certain that I had visited her home before, and when I told her that this was my first time in Ville Platte, she asked if I was sure. I said I was. She said she was certain that I had asked her about this adoption business before. I asked if she remembered her answer, and she said, “Why, of course, Jeffrey, don’t you? I didn’t remember anything then, and I don’t now.” She smiled pleasantly when she said it and I smiled pleasantly in return. I used her phone to call Mrs. Francine Lyons, who said she’d be happy to see me, but that she was on her way out and could I call later. I said that I could, but then she volunteered that Mr. Parks had mentioned something about a child given for adoption and that she just didn’t know anything about that, though, as she’d said, she’d be happy to see me later in the day. I told her that that wouldn’t be necessary and scratched her off my list. You either remember or you don’t. Mrs. C. Thomas Berteaux, watching from her chair, said, “What’s the matter, Jeffrey? You look disappointed.”