South, America

by Rod Davis

  We had taken both possible sets of numbers but she was right, the combination was the second: 16-15-19. It went with the box number: 191316. The sequence of numbers was broken perfectly in half. I guessed he did the combination first and box second because that sequence came closest to a word. Maybe Terrell really was clever, though obviously not in all matters.

  The box was in the middle row on the left wall inside the alcove next to the packing and wrapping counter and copying machines. The teenaged attendant in a blue-and-white-striped company shirt was helping an older woman weigh a package, and nodded at us when we walked by, that kind of chirpy sales clerk thing that had infected the retail world. But if you wanted a job, you did what you had to do, and I was happy to see the kid at work.

  The little store was bright, almost sterile, odd for a neighborhood that was about as rumpled as you could get. It almost didn’t figure except that the world, even this ancient one at the delta of the great river, was becoming transient and people who bore their abodes on their backs, more or less, needed places to get checks and letters and government notices. It was probably a damn good business to get into. And it was the kind of place to be anonymous, unless the cops or the feds were looking for you in a hard way, and then there wasn’t much you could do to hide, anyway.

  No way a painting could have been in that little mail drop, but I assumed—I know that’s always wrong—its contents might lead to another, larger storage box in the same store. But why expect anything to be easy? All that was in the mail slot was a letter, two pages, handwritten either in a hurry or while under the influence of something. It was folded up in thirds, not even put in an envelope, which I also figured to mean it was done in haste.

  When she unfolded the letter, a small brass key fell to the floor. I picked it up. There was no marking other than the name of the company, Yale, that made the lock the key would fit. I showed it to Elle and she gave it back to me. I put it in my pocket. Elle closed the mailbox door and spun the combination dial. She gave the letter a cursory glance and then refolded it and said we needed to leave.

  We went back to the Taurus.

  “Just drive somewhere. Anywhere.”

  I found a street lined with two-story houses that looked as decrepit as they did vacant, the sides of the street lined with old cars and a lime green van on concrete blocks with one wheel missing. I parked.

  She was already reading the letter. She shook her head, pursed her lips, then leaned her head against the seat rest and took a deep breath. “Young Henry, Young Henry.”

  “Does it say?”

  “It says.”

  I reached for it but she held it firm.

  “Read it, then.”

  “It’s to me.” She took another deep breath, and started:

  Ellie: I guess if you get this I’m not going to be around to read it because you wouldn’t need to have it. It also means Elfegito did the right thing. I knew he would, even though he tries to put up a front, he’s not so bad in a jam, and I am in a motherfucker of one, maybe. I’m going to meet Trey later on. He’s going to want that Spanish painting I was telling you about, and thinks I’m going to give it to him, or maybe sell it to him, whatever. But I’m not going to. I hope Lenora has talked to you already and if not you need to call her right away. She can tell you the shit. I can’t. I hope you don’t even need to read this. But if you do, get the painting and take it to this address in Houston: Beldon Gallery, 11120 Shepherd. It’s near Rice University I think. Ask for Jackie Beldon. This is the number: 434-5555. Tell her what you have. She’ll know about it already. It’s worth a lot. Don’t take less than a mill and a half. Minimum. It’s worth way more than that to Trey but without him you just have to take what you can fence it for. Just do it quick, okay, Ellie? Don’t wait. Take the money and get the hell away.

  The other thing, Lenora can tell you about. I’m so sorry. The asshole. But it could be big for you, you little tush-baby, all that money from Junior. But you need to stay away from Trey till you get it, or you never will. If you get this you know what he did to me. Shit, I’m scared big sister but I’m also so pissed off. I really want to fuck him over and this is a good way. Without this damn art he’s in big trouble with the mob, ’cause he owes them a fucking bundle. They’ll kill him, straight up.

  Look, I gotta go. No way Trey could get to this letter but if he does and if that’s who’s reading it, go to hell, rich boy bitch, you’ll never find anything.

  But figuring it’s you, big sister, you can think where it is. We went there one time when I visited. 21. You should remember. Shit, this is the last place I’ll ever be if you’re reading this. I’m a history teacher. I can appreciate it. But it doesn’t mean I like it. If you really are reading this, then at least that means it’s going to be okay and you are and then it was all worth it. Put my ashes in the river, like we always said.

  I love you, Ellie, lord how much I do, but you know that.

  Kick ass, may the Lord watch over you forever,

  Love, T. Henry.

  p.s. to myself: If I get to this on my own, God help me I’m going to wise up.

  Her eyes were moist when she was done and for that matter so were mine. She folded the letter and touched it to her face.

  “You go with God. Blessed are the angels that fly with you.” She kissed the letter and held it in her hands, looking out the window. I could see her lower lip quiver.

  “That was a fine brother,” I said.

  “Amen. Amen. Amen.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” A quick glance my way, and her lips tightened in vain, and then she began a quiet sobbing. “Just drive,” she said. “Anywhere. Just drive and find some music.”

  I dialed up O-Z, which was playing traditional second-line jazz, and drove toward City Park, and then looped around through whatever street came up, and on back to Magazine, where I pulled into the lot at Audubon Park. We got out and walked around the loop, not saying much.

  At a bench, we sat down.

  “So you know where it is?” I hadn’t wanted to press her although I have to say I was pretty sure I knew, at least generically. Maybe I was good at puzzles, too.

  Joggers and walkers passed us on the oval asphalt track and nodded in greeting. We were such a nice couple, if you didn’t look too close.

  “21 is U. It’s where I put some things when I first got my apartment here.”

  “You mean U-Haul?”

  “You’re getting the hang of it.”

  I rolled my eyes. “We’ve got the key. We just need a lock.”

  “Isn’t that a blues song?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Jack, I do know where this lock is.”

  I took her hand. “You think this will be it?”

  She pulled her hand away. “Don’t be like that.”

  I was wrong to have said that. But I was right, too. But mostly wrong.

  Somewhere so far inside I could but feel the first sickening pulse of the electricity of its resurrection, a crack opened. It manifested, as usual, as a laugh line. My life had come down to a children’s math puzzle. But the laughter could no more be expressed than the demons writing the divine comedy. I knew what I wanted to do. I knew why I was in New Orleans. I knew what I needed to do. I knew where I was going. I was going as far south as you can get.

  She started walking again. The leaves on the trees had not yet turned, given the latitude, but it was in the air that they would.

  22

  The U-Haul was on Tulane, not all that far from the mail drop, which made sense. Terrell probably had been in a hurry. I must have driven by the street dozens of times and never noticed, although it was easy enough to spot if you were looking.

  We passed through the gate, surrounded by a high wire fence, and parked in front of the office. The last trick in Terrell’s book had been t
o force the person coming for the painting to show some ID, and for that reason he had listed both his name and his sister’s on the three-month rental agreement. The clerk was on duty alone and at wit’s end with a middle-aged guy wanting a trailer hitch on his SUV, despite a posted notice from corporate headquarters that hitches couldn’t be installed on that model.

  Elle showed him her driver’s license and he gave her the number and the code to get into the “climate-controlled” storage building next door. He asked her if she needed the spare key but she said no. Nice touch, I thought. Leaving an extra. If it all got this far, no point getting hung up on a key that might have been dropped by a sister, presumably, by that point, grief-stricken and frightened. No idea she’d be with a guy who had morphed into a freelance mercenary in a war of no defined length or boundary.

  We left the office as the customer was berating the clerk, who gave us one of those sorry-about-the-asshole looks and a complicit smile as we got out of the way. Elle walked over to the storage building while I parked the Taurus close to the entry. She punched in the code and we went inside.

  A staircase took us to the second level and down a concrete hallway past corrugated, retractable red doors festooned with locks of all kinds. The fluorescent light made everything surreal. Halfway down was the 8x20 unit we sought: 217. I couldn’t figure any significance to the number, nor could Elle, and there wasn’t any. It was just the unit available at the time Terrell Henry Meridian, coked out or freaked out, maybe both, played the gamble that he thought would save his sister’s life. Ended up costing his.

  The key fit. I unclasped the lock and pulled the noisy, roll-up door up and open. The unadorned overhead bulb illuminated a slender, cold space: tin walls and a concrete floor, filled with what at first appeared to be nothing but a square cardboard box at the far end, open at the top and apparently empty.

  I followed her inside, weary with the hide-and-seek. Before my petulance had a chance to blossom, we saw it. Another box, thin and rectangular, about chest high, just right for holding a painting, was tucked against the corner next to the door. Not really hidden, just pushed aside enough that you might not see it right away, focusing instead on the decoy. So that you’d have to go in all the way to find it. I don’t know why. Maybe some kind of half-conceived escape plot. I had learned that there was really no end to the justifiable paranoia in this entire enterprise.

  “It’s here.”

  “It’s here.”

  “Pull down the door.”

  She did.

  The second shipping carton was sealed at both ends. While I was tearing off the tape, Elle went to the first box we had seen and kicked it. Empty.

  I carefully slid the interior part of the carton from the outer shell. I could feel the weight of a heavy frame and the smell of something very old inside, but it was wrapped in a couple layers of dark plastic, also sealed in tape. It was short work to take that off and then we finally were looking at it. The object of so much desire, the suffering for which enables the First Noble Truth.

  I carefully moved it away from the carton and propped it against a wall. We both stepped back, like visitors to a fine arts museum.

  “My God,” she said.

  “Jesus.”

  It was the Virgin Mary, all right, but it conveyed a power I had never seen in anything that called itself art. She was captured inside a thick wooden frame, intricately carved and adorned with gold leaf. She was standing on a narrow trail on a rocky hillside filled with giant cacti and thick bushes of bright red roses. She wore a green cloak with a red-and-black-striped serape draped across one shoulder. The hood of the cloak was fixed over her head. Her face was oval, deep copper skin ringed by dark black curls. She was Aztec. She was European. The perfection of her beauty was impossible: flawless, graceful, sensual. Hovering above and behind her were flights of tropical birds of every color imaginable, and among them scores of winged cherubs. In the background, a golden sun rose from the rim of high desert mountains. Rays of light pierced a sky of purest azure.

  I had seen Guadalupes and Virgins. I had seen beauty to break your heart. But nothing like this.

  “No wonder,” I finally said.

  “It’s perfect.”

  “How could anyone ever steal something like this?”

  “How could Trey get to be somebody who would?”

  We couldn’t stop staring.

  “It’s worth a lot more than we thought.”

  She reached forward to touch the surface, slightly. Then she said something that broke the spell.

  “Young Henry said it had been in Mexico City. On loan from some Mexican oil guy.”

  “What?” I looked at her hard.

  She looked at me sharply. “I wasn’t hiding anything.”

  “I didn’t mean . . .”

  “Yes, you did.”

  I settled down on one haunch. “Okay, I did.”

  She looked me over, and then let it go.

  “Anyway, he supposedly loaned it out again as a kind of penance to a cathedral and it got stolen. Drug lords. I gather that’s how Trey got wind of it. Look, I don’t know. Seeing this now. It’s powerful, you know. Things are popping into my head.”

  I stepped forward to touch the surface, too. The oil was hardened, and almost certainly needed a cleaning. Nothing popped into my head that wasn’t already there. But I knew what she meant. It was like being in a presence.

  “Can you see the signature?”

  I let my finger glide just above the brush strokes, working down to the lower right corner. “There it is. Echave.”

  I moved back and she air-traced her finger over the name. We studied the painting more. That is to say, allowed ourselves to be captured by it.

  “It’s psychedelic.”

  “No. It’s like being possessed by the spirit. It’s what people experience when they are taken. I’ve seen it a hundred times in churches. Jack, it’s why I’m remembering.”

  With that, Elle moved the frame a little to the left, carefully, to reduce the glare from the overhead bulb. She cradled the edges, as though she were holding the most breakable of bones, and tilted the frame toward her. “Look,” she said, indicating the thick, yellowed canvas in back. A protective backing of padded brown paper was badly torn.

  “What is it?”

  Gently, she pulled back one of the torn strips of paper. Then she propped the frame against the wall.

  “I don’t know.” She shifted her weight to stand akimbo, lost in a thought.

  “What?”

  “What Young Henry said. Maybe there was something to it. I wish I’d talked to him more.” Her glance told me she hadn’t truly let go of my earlier comment. “But with the coke. . .”

  She shook her head. “This is the really goofy part. He said it was an art dealer, that one in Houston probably, said there’s been a rumor for years that this really might be a paint-over of another oil underneath. Wouldn’t that be wild?”

  I looked at it more closely.

  “Okay, here’s the story. So there’s the Aztec peasant—”

  “—Juan Diego—”

  “—up on the hill in Mexico City, seeing the Virgin, and all the legend that came out of that, like we talked about. The usual kind of thing you see in these Guadalupes all the time.”

  “But?” I dropped to one knee, trying to follow the color lines in the work.

  “But what if there was somebody else on that hill?”

  I glanced up at her. She was like a docent with a pet theory. If that docent were inside a U-Haul storage shed. Running from killers. But none of that was real to Elle in the presence of the Virgin.

  “A Spanish trader, nobody remembers who, brings home to Madrid a painting by another Aztec peasant who also claimed to have seen Mary. Not Juan Diego. This Aztec knows how to paint. A priest had given him some brushes and oils
. Somehow the trader gets the Aztec’s painting. He smuggles it back to Spain to give to his wife. But before he gets home, she dies. The trader ends up giving it to his friend, the painter Echave, in return for his doing a portrait to remember the late wife.”

  I stood. “And that’s this?”

  “It’s just something my brother told me. Like I said, maybe it was coke. Echave was either crazy jealous of the peasant’s work or ultra-devout and thought it was a sacrilege. Whatever, he painted over it with his own version of the Virgin.”

  “On the back, you think maybe there’s an original underneath.”

  “It seemed far-fetched at the time. I didn’t even remember, until . . . but now, standing here, in front of it . . . I mean, Jack, can’t you feel it?”

  Suddenly a loud “bam” rattled the building. We both jumped.

  “What the hell?” I looked quickly at the door. Still closed. She took a step toward the painting.

  In the next second a rush of cool air came in through a vent in the ceiling. Climate control had kicked on.

  “Jesus.”

  She was trembling. I took her in my arms and held her. She nestled her head against my chest. Whatever energy was rippling through the storage unit was coursing through us, too. Good and bad.

  “So, you felt it?”

  We unclasped, walked back to the painting.

  “I used to pray to her all the time. Now, I don’t know what that ever meant.”

  I started picking up the wrapping bags and padding and parts of the shipping carton. “I think we need to go.”

  “Yeah.”

  She helped me. She took in a final, long draught of the roses, the birds, the sun rays, the mother of God. Then we covered the painting with the bags and re-tied them.

  “I need to go outside,” she said.

  “Go. I’ve got it.”

  I continued with the packaging as she pushed up the roller door and walked down the hall to the stairwell. Her footsteps on the naked concrete echoed like a death-row inmate’s last stroll. I resealed the box with the tape. I turned out the light, pulled the door back down, and locked up.