South, America

by Rod Davis

  “And they came.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And then the police turned the body over and looked at it.”

  “Yeah. I mean, I didn’t see all that. I was staying out of the way and answering questions for Mallory, that cop you got my name from.”

  “So they didn’t say anything else to you.”

  “Not really. I left when they were done with me.”

  “There’s not even a chalk mark.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. “No.”

  “So as far as you know the cops just came because you said you’d found a dead body, and then they wrote it up and had Young Henry picked up; that’s all there was to it.”

  “Well, yeah—”

  She came up close.

  “And what did you take before you called them?”

  I drew back.

  “You heard me. Did you take his money, or his wallet, maybe that silver neck chain he liked to wear? Something to write a story about?”

  “Forget this.” I put up my hands in a dismissive gesture and turned to walk away. I got maybe eight or nine slow steps.

  “That was wrong. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  I turned. She was standing straight, like a reed not bending in the wind. Her arms, down at her sides, ended in fists. They were shaking.

  I went back.

  “He was my baby brother. Young Henry. We played all out in the woods in the summers when my family stayed down in the Delta at Rosedale, you know, where the blues came from. And they definitely do.” She seemed to choke on her breath. “We sneaked over the levee to the river—”

  I had no reason to, but I took her in my arms. She let me, put her head against my shoulder, and cried.

  It didn’t last long. She pulled back, wiped her cheeks, and glanced around as though she didn’t want anyone to witness. Then she looked into my eyes. I would simply say deeply, but it was more like she was the Hubble telescope and I was space, being probed.

  “Okay. I’m okay.” She sniffled slightly, as if doing so made her mad. “Thanks for what you did. It was a good thing.”

  “You don’t have to explain.”

  She turned back to look at the place where I had found him. “I need to get back to Oxford. I have to set up the burial. I want to put him with our family. It was just me and him now.”

  “Look—I don’t know you all that well, but if I can help, feel free to call. I’m not just saying that.”

  She pursed her lips and nodded. “Thanks.”

  She gave a last glance at the spot, then turned and started walking back toward the Quarter.

  I caught up. “I need a way to get in touch.”

  She kept up her pace. “I’ve got your number, remember?”

  “Oh, right—”

  “It’s better that way right now.”

  We went into single file on Royal to dodge some trash cans on the sidewalk and an elderly woman inching along in a walker.

  “I can find my way.” She plowed along.

  “I don’t mind.” I moved up by her side again.

  “I mean, I’d rather just be by myself, you know?”

  We were at Elysian Fields. She stopped at the curb because of the traffic. When it cleared she could have gone on but instead she turned to face me. We were both hot from the walking and our body temperatures reflected off each other.

  She touched my forearm with the slightest of pressure. “Really, you’ve been a big help.”

  A rusty Plymouth minivan with a broken muffler chugged by. Whatever I might have said, or wanted to say, was squelched by the din. Probably for the best. She smiled, removed her fingers from my arm.

  We walked to the median in silence.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, as we waited again for cars in the other lanes to pass.

  She looked at me.

  “I mean about your brother.”

  She nodded in a kind of acknowledgment and crossed over to the park. I stayed in the median, and watched until a stream of tourists from Frenchmen swallowed her from my view.

  3

  On Tuesday I did a little work and called Ray about another divorce surveillance. Ray wasn’t there so I left a message and started working up a query for a profile of a young Nigerian carpenter I had met who had come into the country illegally but was now being blackmailed by a lawyer who was using him as a de facto slave on some housing contracts in Houma. Nobody involved was famous so I doubted I’d get a bite. But there was still enough journalist in me to try. Or maybe Ray would know a lawyer who could take the case.

  Around four, a travel editor in Atlanta called, asking if I could put a rush on that Biloxi story. I said yes, because what else could you say? Later, I felt like cooking and whipped up a light meal of rotini with a splash of olive oil, parsley, red pepper, and fresh Parmesan, and a couple of glasses of Australian Shiraz, and went to bed early.

  I didn’t know if I’d ever hear from Elle again, and short of trying to get her phone number from the police I didn’t even know how to call her. A rookie mistake. She had gotten to me.

  Wednesday, I decided to go down into the Quarter and hang out at a coffee shop on Ursulines, around the corner from the old convent where the nuns had put their stamp on the city. I took my laptop, which had become such a constant companion that I was tempted to give it a nickname.

  I got a Times-Picayune from a machine to which someone had chained a bike barely worth stealing. Inside, I considered the pastries behind the glass counter and asked the Vietnamese owner for some French coffee and a plain croissant. I settled in at a window table and had a quick scan of the paper. Yesterday there’d been nothing, but there it was now, deep in the metro section: “Body Found in Marigny.”

  Terrell H. Meridian was identified as a “frequent visitor to the city” but not a tourist. A police spokesman said there was “no apparent motive or suspect.” The last graf gave the Crimestoppers number for anonymous tips, which they usually ran in all the minor cases. I knew the killers would never be found.

  Across the street, a minivan pulled up. A half-dozen people climbed out and started looking around. They were German, probably on a package tour through Lufthansa, which often put up people at the little guesthouses along this block. A porter of sorts lurched out of Le Fleur, a hostel at which I had once stayed myself. I liked it because it wasn’t fancy and overpriced but it wasn’t a dump, either—the two general modes of Quarter lodging.

  The tourists were chattering excitedly, and most of them gave up on the lone porter, picked up their own bags and disappeared inside. I knew that they would be down in the lobby presently, hashing out what to see next. Invariably they would decide that New Orleans was where people came to be somebody else, and they would hit one of the Bourbon Street bars for a pre-lunch drink, which would turn into many, and with jet-lag they’d be back in their rooms crashed out until the evening. Then they would go to Pat O’Brien’s and it would start again.

  Or maybe not. Maybe they would walk up to St. Louis Cathedral and look around Jackson Square, then up the levee to the river, and watch it flow along past the barges and the cruise ships. They might mosey on past the bend where the casinos perch like beached sharks, unable to really take a bite from the city but staying alive with nibbles.

  Like me.

  I heard a phone ring and gradually realized it was coming from my pocket. I’d only recently started carrying a cell phone. I didn’t recognize the incoming number, but it was from somewhere in the city.

  “Are you at work?”

  “Is that you?” As if that voice could have been mistaken for any other.

  “I didn’t want to bother you if you were busy.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You can talk?”

  “Yeah. I’m down here in the Quarter, actually.”

  “Oh.” />
  “Gets me out of the house.”

  “Mmm.”

  A silence long enough for me to breathe.

  “Jack, I wonder if I could ask you for one more favor.”

  “Of course you can.”

  “It’s about Terrell—Young Henry. I need to go down to the funeral home later today.”

  “You’re in town? I thought you were going to Oxford.”

  “It was easier to stay over to finish up the arrangements.”

  “Oh, right. Sure.”

  “Anyway, about the funeral home—”

  “So where are you now?”

  “At the moment I’m at a stop light on Broad Street. I have a lot to do.”

  “I was just going to suggest coffee, or lunch.”

  “That would be nice. I’ll take a rain check.”

  “Done.”

  “What I was calling about, though, is that one of the things I had to do was go to the coroner’s. They had the autopsy.”

  “That was fast.”

  “I didn’t have to see the body again, though.”

  “Because you had already made the ID?”

  “That’s what the sergeant said. Taylor, I think his name was.”

  “What, they interviewed you?”

  “It was okay. Mostly he wanted to go over the autopsy. He said it was routine. I was just wondering, as a reporter and investigator and all, does that sound right?”

  “Like I said, it was fast, but if they had a slow day not too unusual.”

  “Really?”

  “From what I know, anyway.” A bar buddy named Ronnie once told me it could take all day on some bodies but the routine ones they could crank out. Ronnie was a waiter in a hotel on Royal but had worked in the coroner’s office over on Tulane Avenue, using skills he’d learned as a mortician’s assistant in the service. He’d quit, though, and now only wanted to be around live people, live music, live anything.

  “He had cocaine in his blood.”

  I didn’t know what to say so I left it alone.

  “And it was like you said, a blow to the back of the head. They said it was wood. They found some splinters.”

  “That’s all I could see. You know. When I came across his body.”

  “I know I was out of line back there.”

  “Forget it. So they’re going to release the body?”

  “They already have. The sergeant said it was okay, since I wanted to send the body to Oxford and bury him quickly. I told him my brother visited here a lot but needed to be laid to rest at home. He was a big help.”

  I would be too, I thought to myself. “Forensics doesn’t need the body?”

  “He said they’re still investigating, but they’re done with Young Henry’s body. They said he was probably killed somewhere else and left there. He said that meant the search would be harder.”

  “You never know what any of that means.”

  “I think it means they might not look very hard for whoever killed a gay black man if it didn’t even happen in their city.”

  “I wouldn’t go there just yet.”

  “You’re white.”

  “What?”

  “I mean, you see these things differently.”

  “Maybe.” I knew she was right but I didn’t want to make her feel any worse than she did. I decided to change the subject. “Did they give you a report or anything?”

  “I asked but he said the case was still open.”

  “It would have to be at this point.”

  “I sort of feel like a suspect.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Then why couldn’t I have a report?”

  “Maybe they didn’t have it worked up.”

  “I guess.”

  “Look, I know what you’re saying. But some of those cops are okay. If you want, later on, I can make a call to a detective I know, just to see how things are going.”

  “Sure, if you think that would do anything. It’s just that—you know.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “They did find one other thing.”

  “What, on his body?” I looked around the café. A couple of people seemed to be eavesdropping. I shot them a glare and they looked off, but I turned my head away, speaking a little softer.

  “A napkin. In his pocket. From some club in the Quarter. Rio Blanche. You know it?”

  I thought a moment. “Yeah. I don’t really go there.”

  “Is it gay?”

  “It is. But it’s a hard-drinker kind of place. Depressing.”

  There was silence, then she said. “Young Henry didn’t drink all that much.”

  “Well, maybe he liked it. You know how people find a place they like and just keep going there.”

  “The sergeant asked me if I thought it was . . . the way he put it was, ‘a lovers’ quarrel.’”

  That was how I was afraid they’d peg it. “They just ask questions. However dumb they might sound. It’s what they have to do.” She probably knew I was lying.

  “It wasn’t that.”

  “Did you tell that to the cop?”

  “I said I doubted that’s what it was, a quarrel, that my brother didn’t hang around with people who would get that violent.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said sometimes you don’t know what people will do until you put together the pieces later.”

  “A cop said that?”

  “Anyway, I didn’t stay long. I hated being there.”

  “I understand.”

  “So I left. The sergeant said they’ll call from time to time.”

  “I’m sure they will.”

  “So could you come meet me at the funeral home later this afternoon? It’s called Orman Brothers. In Gentilly.”

  I watched some people passing outside on Ursulines. The eavesdroppers were talking to each other. “You know about funeral homes in New Orleans?”

  “I have a friend that does. A priest.”

  “I see.”

  “It’s where I go to church.”

  “When you’re in town?”

  “Yeah.”

  I thought on that.

  “So you’ll be there?”

  “Tell me when.”

  “They said any time after two this afternoon.”

  “Sure. I can be there.”

  “I have to go over early to do some paperwork but mainly I’d like company after.”

  “Sure.”

  “With you seeing him and all, I feel like it’s a connection. I guess that sounds stupid.”

  “There is.”

  “What?”

  “A connection.”

  “I guess I wanted to call you.”

  “I wasn’t sure after the other day.”

  “I wasn’t, either. But you were there for me. A total stranger. Is that weird?”

  “Not to me. I’m glad you thought enough of me to call. I’m sure you have other people.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I mean I do know some people in New Orleans but they’re not really friends. More like from work.”

  “I can understand that. But I’m glad you called me.”

  A slight pause. “Jack?”

  “I’m still here.”

  “When we’re done I want to go have a drink. Maybe a couple.”

  “Definitely.”

  She told me the address for Orman’s. We decided on 3 p.m. I worked a while longer at the coffee shop, then went to my apartment and did about thirty minutes on my treadmill. I had a quick sandwich even though I wasn’t particularly hungry. I’d had low blood sugar since I was in the Army and had been warned to get protein more or less on schedule. I showered and made some coffee, and went over m
y checkbook. When it finally was time to go, I put on a freshly laundered white shirt and some dark trousers and went to meet a beautiful woman with a dead brother and a troubled mind.

  Orman’s was easy to find, converted from a stately, Spanish-style two-story with moss-draped oaks overhanging a circular driveway in front. I parked in a visitor space on the side next to a few other cars and a hearse and went up to the door. Knocking seemed kind of foolish so I just opened and went inside.

  The foyer was large, sedate, furnished mostly with antiques, dark wooden colors. A middle-aged woman in a black business suit came out, introduced herself as Mrs. Sutter, an assistant, and told me Elle was still talking to Mr. Orman. She asked if I needed coffee, which I didn’t, and showed me to a floral-patterned chair. I sat down and picked up a copy of People from an end table. I thumbed it without interest, looked for something else to read. Southern Living, Ebony, Smithsonian. I wondered about periodical choices in funeral homes, and then drifted into other thoughts, some taking me back to Dallas and the memorial service for Ben Lutz, a TV reporter friend who died at age thirty-one from a bee sting. Wife and kids. House with big oak trees. Chocolate Labs. Loved by all. I cried at his funeral and on the spot decided I wouldn’t waste any more time with my life. Not long after that I got in the fight in the newsroom.

  A door off the far side of the foyer opened and Elle came out, talking to a man in his forties dressed in a dark blue suit and a shirt so white it almost glowed around his neck. She shook his hand and said she’d call later and he disappeared back into the other room. He glanced at me and nodded but there was no need to say anything.

  Elle took a breath and turned to me. She walked over, clutching some paperwork.

  “Thanks, Jack.”

  “Sure.”

  “We can go. It’s taken care of.”

  I took her arm, as though escorting her, but I could tell she didn’t want that so I let go and we went outside.

  “Where now?”

  “You choose.”

  “Where’s your car?”

  “I took a cab. My car’s back where I’m staying. You bring a ride?”

  “That green Explorer.”

  She looked at it, then me. “It fits.”

  We got in, buckled up, and headed to a little bar on I liked on lower Decatur, the Urban Bayou. Nicer than Berto’s and not too crowded in the early afternoon. I found a parking place on Esplanade right away.