Mortal Sins

by Penn Williamson

  The streetcar tracks began to tremble and hum from a car he couldn't yet see. He stood as if lost, with the rain dripping off his hat brim, until the streetcar came rattling past him from out of the night. It stopped at the corner and a couple got off. He could tell by the way they were looking at each other that the streetcar was bringing them to a bed somewhere. They were young, young enough for this to be their first time.

  He watched them walk off arm in arm, leaning into each other to get under one umbrella, bodies cleaving so close they might as well already be one flesh. Rourke closed his eyes and saw the face of Remy Lelourie. Not the face of the flapper girl on the movie screen, or the face of the widow drenched in her husband's blood. It was the face of a girl-woman, flushed from lovemaking, with the sun-dappled shadows of willow leaves floating over the pale skin of her breasts.

  He wondered if that boy, who was on his way to getting laid, understood how the first woman you fucked, you might never forget her. But the first one you loved, she would always own a piece of your soul.

  Light spilled out the tall windows and pooled on the cedar boards of the gallery at Sans Souci. He looked at her through rain-slick glass. She sat on the sofa with her legs drawn up underneath her, reading, with her head slightly bent, her profile to the night. Yet she seemed less real to him than the celluloid image he'd just been watching up on the screen.

  She looked up and saw him—a man standing in dark shadows, watching her. Any other woman in the world would have screamed, but not her.

  She stood up, slowly, and came to him. He heard her fumble with the latch, but his gaze was on her. She was wearing a thin wrapper of white silk. He could see the dark shadows of her nipples and the hair between her legs.

  At last, at last, the window was opening. She took a step back, and then another, and another. “Day,” she said, only that, and he stepped over the wide, low sill and into long ago and far away.

  He came all the way up to her, so close and yet not touching. He looked down at her, and it was like staring into the dark side of the moon reflected in the water at the bottom of a deep well. She was mystery—unfathomable, unseeable, unknowable.

  “What if I killed him, Day?” she whispered, taunting him, daring him. “What if I did it?”

  “Baby, I don't care,” he said, and then he laughed and crossed over with her, into the night.

  He took her there on the floor, with swift, rough lust. Or she took him. Hunger moved in flashes, pure white strokes of lightning flaring across her face, in her eyes. There was beauty in destruction, seduction in fear.

  He breathed in gasps, his body shuddered. He felt the skin draw tight over the bones of his face. They kissed and it was as if they were trying to suck the life out of each other, trying to touch each other everywhere, mouths, tongues, hands, all touching, stroking, tasting all of her everywhere, her breasts, her belly, his hair brushing over her belly, his mouth finding the sweet spot between her legs, his mouth finding her.

  He spread open her thighs, and she lifted her hips as he drove into her, hard, and he caught her cry with his mouth. She wrapped her legs around him, sucking him deeper. He laid his open mouth against her neck, tasting her skin, feeling the wild and plunging riff of her blood. He came high and hard and long in her.

  He came back to himself with his face wet against her hot and shuddering belly. Her fingers tangled in his hair.

  He remembered the moment all those years ago, when she had left him. How he had lain still for a long time, staring at the willow leaves above his head, sweating in the wet heat of the bayou, the taste of her in his mouth, the smell of her on his fingers, in his hair. His body aching all over, as if she had left bruises on all the places she had touched, bruises inside and out.

  He might have cried, lying there after she had left, although he didn't think so. He had been much younger then.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  THE SMELL OF CURDLED MILK FILLED THE KITCHEN OF the Conti Street house as Augusta whipped at the clabber, making Creole cream cheese. She stood at the sink, with her back to the room, and she whipped so hard her skirts swayed around her ample hips and the spoon banged against the bowl, performing an angry counterpoint to the sweet peals of the bells that were ringing for Sunday morning Mass.

  Katie dunked her beignet into a glass of milk and grinned across the table at her father. He winked back at her.

  “You got somethin' in yo' eye, Mr. Day?” Augusta said. “You hadn't oughta be goin' out to no Fair Grounds with somethin' in yo' eye. Wind blowin' today. Might could blow up dirt in yo' face. Make yo' eye worse.”

  Rourke opened his mouth to answer back, then got smart and filled it with grits instead. He was off the clock, he was going to spend the day with his Katie, and he was going to stay away from trouble even if it came chasing after him.

  “Miss Katie, you tell yo' daddy how he ought not to be goin' to no Fair Grounds with somethin' in his eye.”

  Katie, who would believe the moon was made of clabber if Augusta told her so, was looking intently at his face now to see if he really did have something in his eye.

  “There's nothing wrong with my eye, honey. Miss Augusta is of the opinion that the racetrack is no place for a daddy to bring along his little girl and she's letting me know about it. It's called being as subtle as a freight train.”

  Augusta sniffed. “Nothing there but trash and gangsters and mens who gamble away the food right out they poor chillen's mouths.”

  Rourke scraped back his chair. “And the day's not getting any younger. So go fetch your hat, Katie, and give Grandmama a good-bye kiss.”

  Katie jumped from her chair and skipped out of the kitchen, laughing in her excitement. Augusta kept her hands busy with the clabber, her back to Rourke.

  “Augusta.”

  She wiped her hands on her apron and turned. Her strong African features were empty of expression, but her eyes were soft with worry.

  “I've got some broken promises I'm trying to make up for,” Rourke said. “I'm only taking her where she said she wanted to go.”

  “An' she only sayin' what she think you want t' hear—she love her daddy that much. But you know it not only that. You haven't been doin' good by her, Mr. Day. Not good at all.”

  Rourke was spared having to answer to that cutting truth when Katie came running back into the kitchen with her fat brown braids flying behind her, her mouth wide with a laughter that was laced with mischief. Sometimes he loved her so much it hurt just to look at her.

  They went out the back door, into the courtyard, and through the carriageway. Conti Street was alive with activity that morning. The prostitutes were out on their front stoops, scrubbing them down with pee and throwing red brick dust on the sidewalk, all of which was supposed to bring them luck for the coming week. The pimps and gamblers, barefoot and in their undershirts, lounged under the shade of the galleries playing poker and cotch.

  A young blind man sat on the banquette, beneath the corner speakeasy's tin canopy, blowing some sweet jazz on a trombone. Rourke gave Katie a dime to throw in the musician's hat. The man turned his head toward her, smiling his thanks, and sunlight flashed off the lenses of his dark glasses.

  They picked up Rourke's Stutz Bearcat speedster at the garage where he parked it around the corner on Basin Street, and drove out to Lake Pontchartrain along the Old Shell Road. On the right the canal bustled with shrimp boats, oyster luggers, and barges hauling bricks and coal. To their left the oleanders rioted with pink and white blossoms. The wind was sun-warmed and soft in their hair, and it was hard to tell which was brighter, the day or her smile.

  He rented a small daggerboard sailboat and they took it out on the lake. The wind sent the bow slicing through the dark green water, tossing up bubbles that chuckled and broke into a song that was nearly as sweet as Katie's laughter. Rourke tilted his head back to watch the pelicans and egrets fly through the sky on sun-gilded wings. He allowed his eyes to drift closed, feeling the sun deep against his eyelids, de
ep inside himself, imagining how it would feel to let it all go, to float on the wind, floating free.

  Last night he had let go. Loving that girl again, that crazy, wild girl, had been like plunging your fist into a fire and not feeling the pain, even as all the flesh melted off your bones. Delirious heat and a terrible price to be paid later, but he would not think of that now. Now was for Katie.

  After their sail, they bought oyster sandwiches and nectar soda from one of the restaurants along the lakeshore and picnicked beneath the shade of a mimosa tree, sharing bits of bread with the shorebirds. Rourke watched her every smile, every tilt of her head, he listened to her laughter, let himself bask in the joy of her, and he wondered how it was that when he was with her, with his Katie, he could feel moments of happiness so intense and pure that they were almost unbearable.

  They got to the Fair Grounds in time for Rourke to use his cop connections and give Katie a tour of the stables, so that she could pet the horses and meet some of the jockeys and trainers. When it grew close to post time they took their seats in a box by the finish line. The fronds on the palm trees and the flags on the grandstand fluttered in the breeze. The noise of the crowd ebbed and flowed around them like sea surf.

  Rourke closed his eyes for a moment and breathed in the smells of horse sweat, manure, and oats, the loamy sweetness of the freshly raked and dampened sod. It was a perfume that could fire up his blood as quickly as the heat from a woman's mouth touching his.

  He gave Katie a program and asked her to pick a favorite for them to root for in the first race. She pointed to number eight, and he had to hug her for the sheer craziness of it.

  “Katie honey, that nag has never finished in the money in her life.”

  “But her name is Lucky Charm, Daddy.”

  Lucky Charm had the luckiest day of her life, winning by a nose. She paid out eighteen to one, for those few lucky fools who had actually bet on her.

  He handed Katie the racing program and challenged her to pick out the next winner. Trying to ignore the money burning a hole in his pocket, the train leaving the station, the fire in his blood as hot as a woman's kiss. No hotter.

  “Hotsy-Totsy,” she said.

  He laughed, feeling a little crazy now. “Hotsy-Totsy probably wouldn't recognize the finish line if he stumbled over it. And besides, what kind of a name is that to stick on a racehorse?”

  “It's hep, Daddy. Don't you know anything?”

  The laughter fled, and a gentle pain took its place as he looked into her shining, upturned face. His Katie. I know I love you, he wanted to say. What he had never known was why those words always came so hard.

  Damn if Hotsy-Totsy didn't come home a winner too. By the time the horse crossed the finish line they were both jumping up and down, shouting as if they'd had a hundred bucks riding on its sleek bay hide. Rourke swept Katie up into his arms and swung her around, singing, “Oh! Oh! Oh, what a gal!” Embarrassing her so that she punched him in the belly—pretty hard for a girl—and told him, “Don't be goofy.”

  She didn't pick any more winners after that, but she didn't seem to care. She took her joy from the horses sweeping around the last turn, thundering down the home stretch, jockeys' silks flapping, torn sod flying.

  Katie laughing, laughing.

  He was too happy and it scared him. Already he could feel it coming, like a cloud floating across the empty blue bowl of the sky on its way to swallowing up the sun. That dark edge of melancholy coming to swallow up his happiness because he knew, he always knew, that anything so good couldn't last, that he didn't deserve for the good things to last.

  With his mood beginning to darken, he didn't realize the sky was darkening as well. The smell of rain was on the wind now, the air growing thick and heavy. Thick purple clouds were building up in the west, swallowing up the sun, swallowing up the day, swallowing up the good moment.

  Katie slid her hand into his and leaned against him, as if seeking the solid weight of him for comfort. “Is it getting to be nighttime already, Daddy?”

  “Not for hours yet, darlin'. It's only a bit of a rain blowing in,” he said. Yet she leaned closer to him still.

  “I don't want the night to come,” she said, so softly he barely heard her.

  He looked down at her, at the button on the top of her Pels hat. The hat was bleached from the sun and grimy with dirt. “Katie, have you grown scared of the dark?”

  “No.” She stared at the ground, pushing her foot through the litter of bet slips and sandwich wraps.

  He put his hand under her chin and tilted her face up. She was trying to look brave, but her mouth trembled. “I'm scared the gowman's going to come back.”

  “Listen to me, baby.” He squatted down alongside her so that she could look him in the eye and he could rest his hands on her shoulders, steadying her, comforting her. “There's no such thing as the gowman. It's just a myth. A made-up story.”

  “But I saw him, Daddy.”

  He tightened his grip on her shoulders, drawing her closer. He kissed her forehead, her cheek, her fat braid where it curled around her neck. It smelled of the sun. “It was a bad dream you had, is all. I know they can seem real sometimes, a body's bad dreams, but if you face them down they go away.”

  And so you lie, he thought, you lie to make a little girl's monsters go away, and you dread the day she's old enough to see all the monsters you haven't faced, all of your own worst failings. Even more, though, you dread the day she discovers for herself that some monsters demand more courage than anyone can bear to give.

  A soft, fragrant rain fell out of the purple twilight as they walked home from the garage. Light leaked out of the slatted blinds and doorways. Where a window had been left open, lace curtains stirred like a beckoning hand.

  As they turned onto Conti Street, they heard the crack of billiard balls and the low strumming of a banjo coming from the corner speakeasy, but the block was mostly deserted. A lone cop stood in the carriageway of their cottage; the other must have been lured into the kitchen for a cup of Augusta's coffee and a plate of her red beans and rice.

  The blind trombone player was packing up for the day. He knelt on the banquette, huddled close under the leaky canopy, trying to keep himself and his horn dry while he pocketed the coins from his hat and unlatched his instrument case.

  The smoky incandescent sign of the speakeasy pulsed blue light onto his face. He turned his head, and the light glimmered in his eyes.

  His eyes.

  Rourke snatched Katie around the waist and dove, rolling as he hit the bricks so that he bore the brunt of the fall while he struggled to pull his .38 out of its holster. The trombone man reached into the instrument case and came up with a machine gun, firing, and the bullets streaked at them from out the dusk, like heat lightning jumping across the sky.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  THE MACHINE GUN HACKED FIRE. BULLETS BIT INTO the banquette bricks, shattered glass, and ripped into a pile of garbage cans with a ringing, pinging racket.

  A door banged in the house across the street, and a man in a black fedora ran out onto a sagging upstairs gallery, sparks flashing from the hogleg in his hand, and more bullets stapled the wall above Rourke's head.

  He crouched lower. He had wedged Katie into the corner, between their neighbor's wrought-iron stoop and the brick wall, so that he could shield her with his body. Rourke braced his gun on the railing and shot at the trombone man, who was running toward them, his tommy gun still spewing metal. The man's head exploded in a gout of blood and bone.

  Rourke twisted around and fired up at the gallery, once, twice, at the same time as the cop who'd been in the carriageway dropped to one knee and also emptied his gun at the man in the fedora. The man's head snapped on his neck, and his back arched as red blossoms burst open on his chest. He pirouetted on his toes and fell over the gallery railing, through a rotting canvas awning, and onto a box of geraniums that splintered beneath him.

  Running steps slapped on the wet banquette, a
nd another man in a black fedora charged around the corner from Burgundy Street, the tommy gun in his hand roaring, its barrel lifting. Street lamps and windows exploded in a hail of glass.

  Rourke and the cop in the carriageway were already both twisting, spinning, firing. The man whirled and ran back toward Burgundy, but not before he let loose one more burst with his machine gun.

  The cop jerked once as a red mist sprayed from his throat. He seemed to hang suspended in the air before he sagged, as if falling gently asleep, onto the banquette.

  Smoke drifted slowly through the air, thick with the smell of cordite and brick dust. Glass tinkled, a garbage can rolled and banged into a lamppost. All was silent for a moment, and then the cathedral bell began pealing the Angelus.

  Katie had yet to make a sound. Rourke was running his hands all over her body, feeling for wet blood, for ripped and broken flesh and bones. Her eyes stared wild and wide, then they focused on his face and she screamed and went on screaming.

  The second patrolman burst out of the carriageway at a run, his gun drawn, and Rourke came within a reflex squeeze of his trigger finger from killing the kid.

  The young cop skidded to a stop and looked around him, his eyes bulging white in the falling dusk. “Jesus,” he whispered. “Oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus…”

  On Burgundy Street a car revved its engine and tires squealed, spewing dirt and gravel. A horn blared.

  Rourke thrust his screaming daughter into the other cop's hands. “Get her inside. All the way in the back. And get more men over here.”

  Rourke waited only the seconds it took to ensure he would be obeyed, then he whirled and ran down the street, snatching up the machine gun from the hand of the dead trombone player. He rounded the corner and saw a black Lincoln driving off, its taillights disappearing into the misty rain.

  The fleeing Lincoln had sent a cherry-red Cadillac touring car up onto the banquette and into a fruit stand. Rourke ran up to the car and snatched open the door.