“I hear ya. Now, in Louisiana we got all kinds ‘a critters. Critters ya can eat, and critters that’ll eat ya. We got dem in da marsh and in da swamp, in da woods and in da fields. But ‘a all da critters out dere, da meanest and nastiest of dem all – other den a Louisiana politician – is da bear. It lives along da edge of the swamps and it hunts in da woods. It’s a powerful mean hunter. It’s a powerful mean creature. Got dem powerful paws and powerful jaws and powerful appetites. And we got a powerful lot ‘a bears in dose woods. Right?”
The audience agreed by once more rapping their beer bottles against the edge of the tables.
“But, we got da biggest and most powerful ‘a all da Louisiana bears right here on our stage t’night.”
A pulsating rhythm began. Bottles against bottles. Knives against bottles. Bottles against tabletops. The crowd knew what was coming. “Some people, dey like dat grizzly bear.” More noise.
“And some people, dey like dat black bear.” The crowd grew louder.
“And some people, dey even like dat brown bear.” Louder still.
“But dere’s not nobody dat don’t like dat Hebert.” With his Cajun accent, Hebert was pronounced as ‘A-Bear.’
The crowd exploded, and the man on the stage yelled into the microphone to be heard above the commotion, “And we got him for you. Dat’s right – Hebert Lazcarè!”
The noise was intense. Screams. Whoops. Hollers. Wild applause as an immense man entered from behind the stage. He was thickly bearded, dressed in a white shirt and red suspenders attached to baggy jeans. He was carrying something under his arm.
I recognized him. Red Suspenders. The man who had turned me away from the Camellia Industries gate.
Chapter 27
Hebert Lazcarè towered over the three younger men who took their places on the stage, behind the drum set, bass, and fiddle that awaited them.
Lazcarè hoisted the straps of his small accordion and rested the bellows on his ample stomach. He gave three beats with his boot on the wooden stage, and the four- piece band took off in a whirl of notes.
Lazcarè sang in French, nuzzling the microphone. The fiddle danced around the melody. The bass player sang harmony on the choruses, and the drummer beat out a simple waltz rhythm.
The dancers filled the small area in front of the stage. They moved in a circle. Grandmothers gracefully glided along, some escorted by their husbands and others by their grandchildren. Toddlers held their parents’ hands – twosomes and threesomes moving with the counterclockwise flow. In the outer rim of the circle, couples in their teens and twenties performed intricate steps, never letting go of each other’s hands.
Waitresses, who almost seemed to move in time with the music, wove their way through the packed room bearing wide cardboard trays piled precariously high with boiled crawfish and crabs.
The crowd knew the song and sang with the chorus. I recognized it. Jolie Blonde. My parents and their friends used to sing it when I was growing up back in Des Allemands. The song, in French, is about a beautiful heartless blonde. Like Taylor. The words mean ‘look at what you’ve done, you pretty blonde; you’ve left me to go away with another. What hope and what future have I?’
Some of the dancers spread sand on the floor from the buckets placed near the walls, the better to shuffle, and Lazcarè and his band continued on into a Zydeco two- step.
Above the music, I thought I detected a murmuring behind me at the bar. I craned to see what was causing the commotion. It was a black man accompanied by a white woman. They had entered Poirrier’s white enclave, were ordering drinks, and the bartender was reluctantly serving them.
The black man looked around, scanning the room. I tried to avoid his gaze, but it was too late. Rad Doucet had seen me.
Chapter 28
Rad and the girl on his arm worked their way over to our table. He reached out to shake my hand. I politely complied.
“Schex,” Rad said, “running into you here? Who’d have guessed? Weegie, I want you to meet my law school classmate, Schex Schexnaydre. Haven’t seen you in quite a while.”
“Guess you weren’t looking real hard at the gym then,” I said, “spending all your time working up the crowd. Some things never change, do they Rad? You always loved to preach. You were in your element tonight.”
“You were there, Schex? Well, wonders never cease! First, Carter Herrington thinks he can sweet talk a crowd down here in my territory, and then you show up. Certainly not a coincidence, I bet, not with Taylor Cameron here with you. Hello, Ms. Cameron; I recognize you from the newspaper photo, although it didn’t do you justice. This is Weegie Melton, and we’ll just join you, if that’s all right.”
Once Taylor left me and my career tanked, I slid below the quality rungs on the romance ladder. I had dropped down to one-night stands with cheap skanks whose primary attributes were enhanced breasts and unenhanced brains.
Weegie Melton did not fit any of these categories. She was petit, small-breasted and fine-boned. Her oversized grey T-shirt, worn khakis, and scuffed hiking boots accentuated her natural beauty rather than disguising it, and intellect and refinement seemed to project outwards in her every movement.
“Schex, last time I heard,” Rad continued, pulling up two chairs and squeezing himself and Weegie in at the table, “you had left that big firm and had been working for some financial something or other that closed. If you were at St. Bonaventure High School tonight, you must have been there on business, and seeing Ms. Cameron here I can bet what that business is.”
Taylor took a sip from her bottle and said, with an icy sweetness, “Mr. Doucet, I certainly know that you think you can stick your nose into my business, getting temporary restraining orders without notice. I heard that you made a speech against my company tonight, creating a commotion and disrupting a meeting. It’s so nice to see that you don’t confine your repertoire to instigating trouble in the courtroom.”
Rad shot right back. “‘Confine your repertoire’? That’s a fancy turn of phrase designed to insult. Well, no fancy language will save Camellia Industries in court when I get that permanent injunction shutting it down for good.
Taylor’s eyes glinted steel, but her smile remained fixed.
This conversation had no way to go but in the wrong direction. I couldn’t risk Rad taunting Taylor into saying something I’d have to explain in court next week at the injunction hearing. I pushed my chair back from the table. “Sorry that we have to depart, but . . .”
“Why hurry?” Rad responded. “Come on. Let me buy a round. Here, I’ll start again, and I’ll even change the subject. Did you know that Weegie here is the renowned
Washington, D.C. coordinator from EarthResponsible?”
“Really?” said Taylor, injecting saccharine irony into every word. “Is ‘EarthResponsible’ a euphemism for a liberal do-gooder group of environmentalists who team up with local scum lawyers to support shutting down plants that give employment to hundreds of folks?
I hit Taylor on the thigh under the table, trying to get her to shut up. She just glared at me.
“Actually,” Weegie responded calmly, “I’m coordinating a group that’s visiting the state on an environmental inspection, among other things. In fact, tomorrow morning, at eight sharp, we’ll be getting a tour of Wholesale Flesh and Fur. We’re going to see the whole operation.”
The mention of Wholesale Flesh and Fur reminded me again what a failure my life had been until G.G. appeared at my door.
“Do you think,” Weegie continued, addressing Taylor, “you could set up a tour of Camellia Industries? If and when it ever reopens? I’m sure our folks would love to see it.”
“I bet they would!” Taylor said. “Not a chance in hell!”
I stood up, pulling Taylor out of her chair. “Hope you and your group have a good trip. Well, we’ve really got to get moving . . . .”
Taylor made a show of linking her arm in mine. She said loudly, “Schex, I bet if I offered a big enough settlement, h
e’d dismiss the temporary restraining order in a second in exchange for his contingency fee. Well, you’ll show him in court, Schex. You’ll show him how to knock out a claim that’s nothing but air and insinuation. Were you counting your money already? How much are you getting? Fifty percent? More?”
Rad looked up at her. “Here I am, trying to be nice. But you want to cast aspersions on my integrity? All right, lady. Let’s talk. Let’s talk about putting plants where they harm my people. Let’s talk about racism.”
Taylor was indignant. “Racism? You’re fighting a war that already has been won. Look around.”
She pointed at the dancers and the band and bartenders and those eating at the crowded tables, all white. “You’re here. No one has denied you a drink. No one has denied you a table. There’s no sign saying ‘We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to Anyone.’ The civil rights battles have been won.”
Rad sighed. “When Justice Thurgood Marshall was asked by a white reporter why there was still a separate black lawyer’s organization – separate and distinct from the white establishment American Bar Association – when he was asked why it was separate ‘at this late date,’ Justice Marshall’s response was, ‘It’s not that late.’”
Taylor shot back. “You’re so last century. Now, just how many decades has it been since Marshall was on that court?”
I again tried to urge Taylor toward the exit, but Rad stood up and blocked our way. “There’s racism here. Right now. You’re blind to it. Let me open your eyes.”
Chapter 29
Rad grabbed Taylor’s hand. “Come on. I’m going to teach you a Creole step to go with Cajun music.”
Taylor resisted but Rad was insistent. To avoid making a scene, she allowed herself to be drawn toward the dance floor where couples were already moving to the Zydeco music. A waitress was weaving around the dancers, a metal bucket in her hands, tossing more sand on the wooden floor.
Rad put his arm around Taylor’s waist as they walked. Eyes turned. The crowd parted to let them through. Rad held Taylor tightly to him as they joined the circular movement of dancers.
I went back to the table and sat next to Weegie. There was nothing I could do now to extricate Taylor from Rad’s grasp without causing a disturbance. Besides, I knew that Taylor was a great dancer and would quickly put Rad to shame. So, I used the time to ask Weegie more about her planned tour, but she simply smiled and said, “No, watch this.”
I was surprised. Once they were out on the floor, Rad moved agilely around Taylor, leading her in an intricate pattern through the dancers. No one left the floor. No dancer stopped. The music didn’t change. But the mood of the room did. It grew noticeably quieter.
People at the tables pointed and spoke in low whispers. Dancers created an invisible enclosure of space around Taylor and Rad on the dance floor, a barrier between the mixed-race couple and themselves.
As the number ended, Rad spun Taylor. She did a triple turn and started to dance away from him, but Rad put his arm around her waist and walked her back to the table, accompanied by turned heads.
Taylor didn’t sit down. She grabbed her beer off the table and said, peremptorily, “I agree Schex, it’s time to go.”
The music started up again. Now that Taylor and Rad were off the dance floor, the room returned to normal. The dancers crowded in around each other. The Cajun squeezebox of Lazcarè wove its magic.
“You see,” Rad said, “this society’s not colorblind. It’s color conscious. Color is not something they ignore. Color is everything. Oh sure, they’ll serve me. And they’ll seat me. But they still see my skin, not me. I’m not a person to them. I’m a black person. That’s the difference. That’s racism. Did you see the way they looked at me dancing with a white gal?”
Taylor snapped back. “You think you’re the one in charge here? Men! You’re going to use me as an example? What’s this supposed to be? Lie back and enjoy it lady? You drag me on the dance floor. You treat me like an object. You treat me like I’m nothing. You treat my Camellia Industries as if it’s evil. Well, fuck you and fuck your organization and fuck your high and mighty ways.”
She turned on her spiked heels. “Schex!”
As we departed, the gravelly voice of Hebert Lazcarè sang the song’s refrain over and over:
“C’est que c’est le premiere?
L’Oeuf ou poulet?
Eh las bas.
Laissez les bon temps rouler.”
What came first, the egg or chicken? Who cares? Let the good times roll. Laissez les bon temps rouler. Louisiana’s unofficial motto. Let the good times roll.
But G.G. was dead, Taylor was facing a murder charge, Spider was off to who knows where, and Rad Doucet was leading the move to shut down Camellia Industries.
The times were rolling along all too fast, and the only good thing left was for me to legally get as much of G.G.’s $2.8 million as I could before Taylor found out about it.
Chapter 30
I checked my door as I entered the house. It was locked, just as I had left it.
Once inside, I made sure that the back door was still latched and all the windows were undisturbed. Everything was fine.
Only then did I bring in the boxes Spider had put in the trunk of my car. Each appeared to be identical. Cardboard, unlabeled, sealed firmly with tape. Using a knife, I slit the tape and opened them.
Three of the boxes held file folders. The fourth held canceled checks bound with rubber bands. The fifth was filled with loose papers, like trash ready to be taken to the curb.
The file folders were relatively easy work. Contracts for equipment purchases and leases. Construction documents for various parts of the plant. Letters to parish officials requesting this and that. Brochures from companies selling machine tooling devices, incineration ovens, and conveyor belts. The ordinary dross of industrial business.
There were a number of forms and applications for various types of bond financing, with documents relating to potential loans through commercial mortgage- backed securities pools and real estate investment trusts. There was correspondence about applying for loans. But, there weren’t any actual loan documents, not even a letter confirming that a loan application had been approved.
Then there were the insurance files. I reviewed these quickly. All the casualty, extended coverage, and liability policies were current. G.G. had maintained a full scope of coverage. The loss payee on all the policies, however, was only Camellia Industries; there was no lender listed as an additional insured. Did that mean there was no mortgage on the plant? These materials didn’t answer that question.
Then there were the files containing bank statements with images of processed checks, but these were all at least a year old. Nothing current. When Taylor first came to see me – was it only two days ago? It seemed like much longer, but then any time spent with Taylor can seem longer than it is – she led me to believe that the business only had accounts at one bank, and that was the one G.G. had cleaned out. But, there were files from a number of different financial institutions. That was unusual. A business gets lower loan rates and all kinds of extra services when it places all its operating accounts, payroll accounts, and cash management accounts with the bank that is granting it line-of-credit financing.
Most of the accounts were in the name of Camellia Industries, although there were accounts of other corporations whose names I didn’t recognize. Why were these mixed in with the Camellia Industries’ files? I couldn’t figure that out.
There was only one box left, the one that looked like it had been used as a trash bin. It was crammed full of receipts. Hundreds of them. Cheap paper; scrawled handwriting, mostly in pencil, some with smudged ink. Receipts with no dollar amounts listed, no itemization, just cryptic numbers and letters, like “150 sy” and “25 bb” and “3 t.”
When I had been with Walker, Thibodeaux, LeBlanc & Adkinson doing litigation with Catch, many of the cases involved accidents, liens, or contracts at petrochemical plants. The plants w
ere always worried about being sued by someone, and they carefully tracked everything that came in and went out. Every shipment had a detailed log of contents, supplier, and source. Today, most everyone keeps things electronically. But, apparently not G.G.
These receipts were strange. They had no addresses, no dates, no phone numbers, no names. A paper trail without a guide.
I dumped the entire contents of this box onto the conference table to see if there was anything else among the receipts.
There it was. The corporate binder had been hidden at the bottom of the box. This was what I had been looking for. It contained tabs for articles of incorporation, bylaws, minutes, stock ledger, and stock certificates. I glanced through them all quickly, confirming that the only two owners were G.G. and Taylor, each with a 50% interest. The bylaws gave each owner the right to purchase the shares of the other in the event of death. And there were two stock certificates, one in each of their names, each for 500 shares of Camellia Industries.
So Taylor had been telling the truth – she was a 50-50 owner. But, with a first right on G.G.’s shares, she also had a motive to get rid of him.
I didn’t care about Taylor’s criminal case. I had all the information I needed about the corporation so that I could put my legal straw into Camellia Industries’ jeroboam of money and suck away.
I put the corporate binder back in the bottom of the box and started jamming the receipts back on top. As I did so, I noticed something strange. There were several that, unlike the other receipts, were printed on light red paper, with only shipping amounts. No dates. No names. No phone number. Only a tiny stylized crawfish in a circle in the upper left-hand corner of each slip and the letters “WFF” in bright red across the top, and below that, “SBP.”
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