One Must Wait

by Penny Mickelbury

  The muscles in her jaw worked as she fought for control. "I really want you to go to prison for murder, but I'll settle for having you disbarred. I've got enough proof—”

  "Oh, fuck you, Lady!" He exploded but the sound wasn't loud. The words were hissed through jaws and teeth clenched tighter than her own. "You got nothing, and certainly nothing that matters to me!"

  "You fuck yourself, Devereaux, you lying, low-life piece of garbage." Carole Ann was out of control, knew it, and didn't care. She leaned across the table, into his face. "You stopped your work and flew down here specifically because you know good and goddamn well that I've got something and you want to know how much I've got. You didn't make nineteen telephone calls to Louisiana in the last week to check on your poor, sick mother. The one you haven't seen since 1959."

  He reached across the table and grabbed her shoulder and dug his fingers in and pulled her in even closer, close enough that she could see the contact lenses on his eyeballs. "You better have nothing more to say about my mother." Spittle collected in the corners of his mouth.

  "Why not? You don't give a good goddamn about her. Or about any of the rest of your family. Except Leland, your brother in crime and deception. And everybody knows you'd do anything for Leland, including murder your law partner. Isn't that right, Larry?" She made her voice as light and as matter-of-fact as if she were asking if he'd tell her the time of day.

  He blinked once. "You're crazy," he said, just as quietly, the slight widening of his eyes the single signal that his calm exterior was about to fracture.

  "You're right. I am," she said, digging her finger nails into his hand, forcing him to release his grip on her shoulder. "That's really why I wanted you down here. I wanted to ask you, and see your face when you told me, why you murdered my husband. That's how crazy I am. Did you kill Al to protect Leland? Or to protect yourself? Since you've been passing for white since you left Assumption Parish and joined the Marines." She watched his face change and knew that whatever he expected her to say, this wasn't it. First he flushed deep red; then all the color drained from his face, leaving just a bright red splotch on each cheekbone. His breath came in short, shallow puffs, and he closed his eyes tightly, squeezed them shut like a little kid about to throw a tantrum. No other part of him moved. Then he opened his eyes and tried to speak. His mouth opened and closed and his Adam's apple was an elevator in his throat but no words came. Then he sighed and slumped back in his chair.

  "Did Al know about my...background?"

  "You mean did he know that you're passing for white? Yes, he knew." Carole Ann enjoyed the cruelty even as she felt the guilt it brought.

  "He could have exposed me. He could have ruined me," Larry said, his voice gaining strength. "Why didn't he?"

  "You worked with Al for more than ten years. To hell with you if you think that's the kind of man he was." She spat the words at him, the anger fully returned and obliterating the guilt. "You're a first class bastard, Larry Devereaux. Or Warmsley, as the case may be. Which is the only rationale I need to understand how you could think my husband capable of that kind of cruel insensitivity. You could walk away from your entire family and never look back. What could be more cruel than that? And how you could prefer a bastard like Leland to the others."

  "What are you talking about, Lady? Who the hell do you think you are!" He raised his voice in exasperation. "You can actually sit here and discuss me and my family as if you know us? You don't me, you don't know Leland, and you don't know "the others," as you call them."

  "You don't know what I know. So I'll enlighten you. I know that Leland is a murderer."

  "That's a goddamn lie! Leland is a good man and a good friend."

  "But he's dog shit as a brother. And if you don't believe me, why don't you ask good ol' Leland where Lafayette is? And while you're at it, why don't you ask him what happened to Earlene?"

  "Earlene?"

  "Your baby sister, Larry. I know it's been a long time, but even you must remember that you had a younger sister whose name was Earlene. She followed in your footsteps, Larry. Left home after high school graduation and enrolled at LSU. As a white student, of course. And excelled. Won all kinds of academic and social honors, including homecoming queen, Larry. Imagine that! And then there was the biggest prize of all: Engagement to a first year medical student, a member of Chi Alpha-something fraternity. She must have been delirious with joy—and fear, don't you think? That it could all unravel? Or perhaps she viewed all of her accomplishments as confirmation that she'd made the correct choice. In any case, she couldn't know that her fiancée’s fraternity would announce their engagement in its newsletter, or that said newsletter was received by all its members, including State Senator Leland Devereaux. And Earlene most certainly could not know—could not have imagined—that Leland, her own brother, would feel a deeper kinship to his fraternity brother, who, after all, was white."

  Larry was shaking his head back and forth, funny, choking sounds coming from his throat. "No. No. No!"

  "Oh, I think so, Larry. From what I've been able to piece together, it certainly seems that Leland told his white fraternity brother that his betrothed was really a Colored girl from the wrong side of an Assumption Parish bayou. Old newspaper clips about the story, which was a very big deal at the time, make oblique references to a "Chi Alpha-whatever brother now living in another state who supplied information about the girl's family." So the angered and embarrassed groom-to-be gathered together all his brothers and they gang raped Earlene. For three days."

  Larry Devereaux could not prevent the escape of the anguish that rose from his throat because it was propelled by the power of thirty-five years of remorse and sorrow and fear and pain and self-hatred. He neither noticed nor cared that the handful of happy hour imbibers in the massive lounge all turned to stare at him, to be embarrassed for him at his unmanly loss of control. He merely felt something akin to gratitude that some of what he'd kept corralled within for so long finally had been released. He grabbed the glass of ice water before him and drank it down in a long gulp. Then he drank Carole Ann's water, wiped his face on a napkin, and looked up at her.

  "She was fifteen when I left." He blew his nose on the napkin, crumpled it, stuffed it in his pocket, and looked around, as if surprised to find himself in a lounge of the Doubletree Hotel in New Orleans. A waiter appeared as if delivered by a genie and Larry ordered a double vodka on the rocks. Carole Ann asked for more water.

  "Big Brother Leland is garbage, Larry, and I'm going to see to it that he joins you in prison. For killing Al and perhaps for killing Lafayette. God knows I'd like to nail him for what he did to Earlene. If that happened today, he'd be just as guilty as the rapists, not a one of whom was punished, by the way. After all, she was just a nigger, passing for white. Got what she deserved.”

  "Fuck you!" Larry hissed at her. "How dare you judge me! You don't know what it was like! You could never know."

  "That's what Lil said. Do you remember Lillian, Larry? She's your niece. Your sister Ella Mae's daughter. She'd have been just a little kid when you ran away from home."

  "God damn you! So fucking pious. So self-righteous. Just like your saintly husband. So sure you're right."

  "No, I'm not, Larry. I'm not sure I'm right, but I am sure you're wrong."

  "How could you be? You can't possibly know what it was like to look at three of your siblings and know that life for them could be whatever they wanted it to be, and knowing at the same time that no matter what you wanted, your life would be hell. Because you were Colored. You looked white, but everybody knew that your Daddy had some Black and Indian blood in him. He looked white, too, but he wasn't and everybody knew it. So you and your brother and two sisters who had this Colored man for a Daddy were Colored and everybody treated you like you were Colored. Everybody knew your Mama was white, and that you had white brothers and sisters. But you were Colored. And you had that one very definitely brown sister, Ella Mae. Prettiest girl I ever saw but she definit
ely was not white. And you know what? Ella Mae was the only happy one. She knew what she was. She despised Leland and Lafayette and Jeanette because they were white but she never saw...I don't really know how she saw Eldon and Earlene and me. I just know she loved us. She was our big sister and she took care of us and she loved us."

  Carole Ann tried to feel it, tried to put herself in that place that Larry had just described. She knew very well how it felt to be Black. Every child born Black in America knew what that felt like and what it meant. She tried to imagine what it would feel like if her Aunt Gladys or Uncle Buddy or Uncle Gary just vanished, and could not. Could not imagine being born into Larry Devereaux's world, though she was beginning to understand how and why Lillian and Warren and Eldon did not readily or easily divulge the secrets of their family connections. "You're right, I don't know, and I owe you an apology."

  "And you know what's really sad?" He spoke as if she hadn't, as if from an only partially awakened state. "I could have stopped it. As soon as I saw that as bad as things were, it was worse being Colored in Louisiana in a lot of ways than it was in the rest of America. I could have been Black and gone to the Army. I could have been Black and gone to the University of Pennsylvania and to law school at GW. But I didn't know those things. I've met people who looked like me—men and women—who identified as Black and who never dreamed of passing as white as a way to survive or succeed." He picked up the drink that he hadn't noticed the waiter deliver and drank half of it in deep swallow, welcoming the pain of the liquor burning his throat. For a brief moment, it gave him something else to think about.

  Carole Ann, well-seasoned in the art of emotional manipulation, recognized his need to harness his thoughts and feelings, and did not begrudge him sufficient time. She sipped at her water and wandered around the room with her eyes, returning them at intervals to assess Larry's restorative process, and to try to see him as Al had seen him: This man had been her husband's colleague for more than ten years, and his boss for half that time, and she knew practically nothing about him. Partially because Al hadn't liked him; partially because of their practice of not intertwining their professional lives; and partially, she was surmising, because of what must be Devereaux's need to distance himself from Blacks. Did he fear that the astute observer would discover his secret? Carole Ann thought it unlikely. How many Black people walk around looking at white people and wondering how many of them are really passing? Absurd, she thought.

  "I know the Parish Petroleum history, Larry. All of it. And I know what you are Leland and trying to do. And I intend to stop you. I plan to turn my proof over to the appropriate authorities in Washington."

  "Then why did you call me, why did you have me come down here?" he asked wearily, drained of his anger and his fight and his belligerence. "What do you want from me?"

  "I told you, Larry. I want to know why you killed Al."

  He shook his head and covered his face with both his hands and rubbed, hard, as if wanting to obliterate something there; and when he removed them, his eyes were sad and vacant. "I didn't kill Al. I've done some stupid things but I haven't killed anybody. I helped Leland with the Parish Petroleum business because he helped me. He got me my first job in Washington, while I was still in law school. I was waiting tables at The Palm and he came in for dinner one night with a group of congressmen. I tried to avoid him but he saw me. Jumped up from his table and rushed over and grabbed me and hugged me. Wanted to know what I was doing all the way up in D.C. And when I told him he laughed. A big, hard laugh. Said he didn't know I had it in me. Then he asked me if I was married. Strange question, I thought at the time, though now I think understand why. He wanted to know if I'd married a white woman. But my wife is from the Philippines, though she grew up on California, so I guess that was all right with him. Anyway, he made me write down my telephone number and the next day he called and told me I had an interview at a high-powered K Street law firm, and I've been on K Street ever since."

  "And you've been killing people ever since, Larry." She held up her hand to halt his protest. "Parish Petroleum has been killing people for as long as it’s been in operation. Parish Petroleum and all those other companies that dump and bury and burn poisons that have never and will never be compatible with the earth and the air and the water. That's why Al was getting out. It wasn't personal. It had nothing to do with you, except to the extent that you represented all that was wrong with how he earned his living." Carole Ann stood up and backed away from the table. "And if you didn't kill Al, then Leland did."

  "It was a mugger, for crying out loud! The cops told you that! What is your problem, Lady?"

  "Leland. If it's not you, then Leland is my problem," she said slowly, the possibility planting itself in reality. "If you didn't kill Al, then Leland did."

  He looked at her, shaking his head as if at some hopeless case. "Why do you keep saying that?"

  She told him why. Told him about Jake Graham's witness in the park and what he saw and heard—the tall white man with the Southern accent who chased and caught and shot Al Crandall in the back. Told him about the bullet in Graham's back that halted his investigation of the case. Told him about the transfer of the case from D.C. police to Park Police. "You are familiar with Leland's committee assignments, aren't you, Larry? You do understand the power he has over the Park Police and the EPA?" And she walked away from him just as his face was registering the impact of the implication. Her face already wore the look of one registering the notion of a member of the United States Congress as a murderer.

  Carole Ann walked the three blocks back to her hotel in double time and was dripping perspiration when she arrived. Her heart was thudding and she was light-headed and her mouth was as dry as the California desert. She rushed into her room, stripped off her clothes, and collapsed on to the bed. Tears burned her eyes and she swiped at them, angry at their intrusion. She'd invested so much in hating Larry Devereaux and in constructing his downfall and it wasn't he who had killed Al! She believed his denial just as she believed the look of betrayal on his face when she'd confronted him with Leland's history of evil. It was Leland Devereaux who had murdered her husband. A man she didn't even know. Didn't know what he looked like or sounded like. But it didn't matter. She knew what kind of man he was. Southern white man who shot her husband in the back after cursing him in a foreign language. The language of the bayous. The language of swamp babies.

  She awoke to the simultaneous ringing of the telephone and an insistent pounding on her door. She answered the phone first and was walking with it to the door when she realized that she was not dressed. "Hello?" she said into the phone and heard a click and a dial tone. She slammed the phone down, cursed under her breath and, stepping into her jeans, crossed to the door. "Who is it?" she asked, peering through the peephole. The fisheye lens provided an oblong view of an empty hallway. She hurriedly zipped and fastened her jeans, pulled a tee shirt over her head, and slipped her feet into her sneakers. It was dark and she was disoriented. She'd obviously been asleep for several hours, and she was recalling why when the knocking resumed at the door. This time it was a waiter with a tray resting in the palm of his hand. Instead of asking anything, she said, "You've got the wrong room. I didn't order anything."

  "Compliments of Mr. Sevier, Miss Gibson," he said, hoisting the tray higher above his shoulder. Randy Sevier was the concierge and he'd taken it upon himself to keep her supplied with her favorite beer. She opened the door and closed it quickly behind him, standing well away while he uncovered three bottles of beer and arranged them in a silver ice bucket. While she was watching him the warning sirens in her brain exploded. He'd called her "Miss Gibson." She was registered as "Mrs. Crandall." He was no waiter. Keeping him in view, she backed up to the door, reaching behind herself for the handle. She lifted the handle and the door swung in with a powerful force, knocking her backward. The waiter grabbed her, twisting her arm behind her back at an upward angle, completely immobilizing her. She knew that if she attempted any d
efensive action, the bones at her arm would be shattered at the elbow and the shoulder. She marveled at her own stupidity and was about to curse herself when Leland Devereaux oozed around the corner and into the room. She cursed him instead.

  He slapped her hard across the face and she cursed him again. He hit her again, across the mouth this time, and harder, and she tasted blood with the pain. He turned away from her as if she didn't exist and strolled around her room. A third man followed him in, followed him around the room, picking up the things that Leland touched: Her computer, her legal pads and all of her notes, and the cardboard box of Al's files. He hadn't been in the room a full thirty seconds when he strode out, followed by the man carrying her belongings. She and the waiter followed, keeping pace, Carole Ann grateful for the pain in her arm that diverted her nervous system's attention from her face and mouth, which were burning and swelling. Instead of turning right and taking the hall leading to the passenger elevators, they turned left and marched down a long hallway which was unfamiliar to her. At the end of it, a freight elevator stood open and waiting. They entered and Leland started it with a key, and Carole Ann understood with a clarity that weakened her the full extent of the width and breadth of the power wielded by men like Leland Devereaux, and why they will go to such great lengths to protect that power.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  "I know something is wrong and I know what that something is and if you'll kindly give me the opportunity, I'll tell you all about it."

  "Who the fuck do you think you're talkin' to you snotty son of a bitch!"

  "Gentlemen, please!" Even on a telephone conference call, Dave Crandall was the kind of man other men listened to and heeded. Even men of the temperament of Warren Forchette and Jacob Graham.