South, America

by Rod Davis

  Then I was aware of Red, towering over us.

  “Can’t we get her off?”

  Before I could answer, he bent down and slapped her on the cheek. She glared at him but also let go of the screwdriver handle. Then he pulled her up and away.

  I stayed down, next to Trey’s body. His eyes were going glassy and out of focus.

  I think he was looking at me. I stared back, maybe with the same expression Tony had expended on Ernie. All my time on the meditation pad, working at the Eightfold Path, changing my life and letting go of past perfect and imperfect—all for naught.

  I pushed down on the screwdriver handle and twisted it sharply to the left, so the tip would slice to the right, inside, into his heart. He gasped. Then—and it may have only been my imagination— seemed to smile.

  But he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking up at her.

  “He was going to kill all of us,” she was saying, almost swallowed up inside Red’s forearms.

  Trey had one last word. I think that’s what it was. It sounded like “Mama,” but not the way some people revert to infantile longings when dying. I don’t know if Elle heard it. It might just have been my imagination. Then he was gone.

  Tony the Barber had put his razor back in his blood-spattered trousers and moved over close to Reggie.

  Lenora, meanwhile, had gotten to her feet. She let the cloth slip off her shoulders but this time wore her nakedness like a suit of regal power, advancing step by step toward me and Trey. She went right past us to the wall shelves and reached for the little framed Red Gator that Big Red had been looking at.

  She pulled the painting from the frame, then, almost slipping on the slender pool of blood spreading from the wound on Trey’s chest, came to kneel on the other side of Trey’s body.

  With the index finger of her right hand, she touched one of the ragged joints on her left, and used the blood from it to mark an “X” on Trey’s damp, clammy forehead. Then she dipped her finger into some of Trey’s blood and made another “X” below the first mark and said something, some African words, I couldn’t make out. Like back in Rosedale.

  She crumpled the Red Gator canvas and crammed most of it into Trey’s mouth, still partly open.

  “Evil grows where evil goes.” Then she got up.

  I did, too. For the first time, I saw her back. In the center was a dark, ugly raw scorch mark in the shape of an iron. Around it, what looked like cigarette burns.

  No one much knew what to say.

  Red let Elle go and she went to Lenora, held her. I went for the drop cloth. We were wet and sticky with his blood, all of us.

  “Damn,” said Tony the Barber. “Damn. You figure it was going this way?”

  “Call somebody,” Big Red told him. “We need to clean up and get the fuck outta here.”

  29

  Big Red took a look at Trey’s body, kicked the legs just to be sure there was no response, then walked over to where Lenora had been strung up. “Jesus,” he said, shaking his head again. “What a fuckin’ freak.”

  Tony the Barber was on his cell phone, talking in a low voice, looking unhappily at his clothes.

  Elle helped Lenora to the far corner of the room, glaring like she was guarding the entrance to her lair.

  Red looked Reggie over, hard. Then went back to the upended work bench, pulled it upright, and sat against it. He dropped his head for a moment, deep in thought. No one moved. Finally he exhaled heavily and looked up.

  I was quietly wiping my hands on my jeans. Red nodded toward a box of disposable utility rags on the floor near the toolbox. I picked one up, wiped myself some more. I tossed a couple to Elle.

  “I know you’re strapped, if you wondered.”

  “I didn’t know what I was walking into.”

  “But you do now.”

  “You want it?”

  “I do, I’ll let you know. Just keep it in your pants, as they say.”

  “Hey, over here.” It was Tony and I threw him a couple of rags.

  “Everybody better?” Red said to the room, but mostly to me. “We need to take care of business now. You got business for me?”

  I dropped my rag to the floor. “I made the deadline.”

  “So you gonna get it? Now?” I was reminded of his short fuse.

  “It’s a short drive from here. Over on Tulane.”

  “You can drive?”

  “I think so.”

  “What about them?”

  “We’re going with you,” Elle said. “I need to find something for her to wear.”

  “I’m okay. Just use this thing,” Lenora cut in.

  “There’s got to be something else.” Elle looked around the cluttered room, as though it weren’t thick with blood and bodies.

  “She okay? Really?” Red asked.

  “Compared to what?” Elle adjusted the drop cloth, now streaked and smeared.

  “Hell, Shakespeare, that’s a tough crowd you run with. All writers like that?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “A guy’ll be here in half an hour,” Tony called out from the back of the room.

  Big Red looked at the watch on his thick, heavily freckled wrist.

  “You stay. I’m going to get our package. With them.”

  Tony looked at him, thinking it over. “Yeah, okay.”

  “You’re finished, you meet me back down on the coast. Call me when you leave.”

  “What about our boy Reggie here?”

  Big Red stood, walked back over to Reggie, who had managed to retrieve his cane. The look on his face was several degrees shy of happy. Other than a spray of Ernie’s blood across his trousers, he didn’t seem to have been harmed. A thought he was obviously processing.

  “So, Reggie. How’s it gonna be? I know you got detailed to this shithead, and shot up for it, but, you know, now you’re in the shit yourself.”

  “It was just a job, Red. I never liked the bastard.”

  Red patted him on the shoulder.

  “What I wanted to hear. And as far as that little creep Ernie, all this”—he gestured around the scene of death and gore—“you feel the need to talk about it to anyone back in Memphis?”

  Reggie’s eyes darted everywhere. “I’m just doing a job. You’re the boss. You know I know the play.”

  “Copacetic.” He looked at Tony. “So he stays with you and helps with the crew. Whatever you need.”

  Tony nodded. “Jeez, fuckin’ ruined these pants. That sink over there work?”

  “It works,” Reggie said quickly, then looked at Red.

  Tony rolled his eyes and walked up to the toilet closet at the front of the room.

  “Any problem with what I just told you?” Red asked.

  “Hell no. But Red, I mean it. I was just told to ride with him.”

  Red put up his arm to wave off more analysis. He patted him again, a little rougher. “Good boy.”

  Reggie tried for fake confidence as he walked back to lean against the shelving, his cane between his legs, taking most of his weight now. On the way, he gave me a look.

  I let it go. He no longer existed.

  We heard water running at the sink, then a muttered “fuck” from Tony.

  Red turned to Elle. “So, you wanna tell me how you think this is going to play out from here? How you smoke this little shit right in his own place of business and walk away from it?”

  Elle was helping Lenora into a metal folding chair that had fallen behind one of the tables. Her aunt seemed beyond feeling her wounds. The medical guess would be that she was finally dropping into shock, but her face wasn’t pale and she was breathing fine. It was more like she had other things on her mind and would get to the issue of the defilement of her body soon enough.

  “I’m talking to you, honey.”

  “I he
ard you.” Elle dabbed at Lenora’s face with one of the rags, and continued to fuss with the drop cloth, frustrated that it was far from enough. She turned to look at Red with that wilting stare. Even he looked away after a few seconds.

  Elle patted Lenora on her shoulder, and walked up to the big guy.

  “You were saying?”

  “I’m saying we’ve got two dead bodies here and that wasn’t part of any plan.”

  “Three.”

  “What?”

  “Three bodies. My brother is already gone.”

  Red looked at me, as if I might have a comment. I didn’t.

  “Right.” He shook his head. “Look, I can’t get into that. I’m here to pick up some goods. Period. Shakespeare here says it’s really something. Maybe so. It was enough to get a lot of people killed. So far.”

  “So far.”

  “You not afraid of much are you?”

  “What’s to be afraid of?”

  “Look,” I broke in. “It was a bad thing between them. You didn’t like him anyway.”

  “I had no reason to waste him.”

  “Other than that he was going to rip you off.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know. But business is business.”

  “Like you said, we all need to get going,” Elle said. “I need to get my aunt to a doctor. You have to meet your own people. Somebody needs to take care of all this. What don’t we agree on?”

  Red laughed, looked across at Tony. “In court they call it witnesses.” I think maybe he expected a reaction he didn’t get.

  “To what?”

  Their eyes were locked.

  “Y’all walk out of here, we clean up your mess? You think that’s really all there is to it?”

  “From what I know, this solves a problem for you, too.”

  I could see a vein standing out in her neck, which still bore splotches of Trey’s blood.

  “In a way. In a way, not.”

  “Why?”

  “I have to explain?”

  I stayed silent. It wasn’t me he wanted to hear right now.

  “We can improve your business situation, is what I’m saying,” she said, breaking their stare-fest.

  “Such as?” The hint of a smile through his beard.

  Elle’s eyes flashed my way.

  “Let’s say I could tell you who has been looking for that painting, other than Trey, and wants to buy it back. You don’t go through any middlemen. Make the sale yourself, give the money to your boss to cover his investment. Maybe keep a cut for your trouble.”

  “That’s not my orders. Not my style.”

  “Then give it to your boss and he can sell it to the name I give you. And he owes you one for turning him onto some big money. Or something.”

  Red looked at Tony, still dabbing at his clothes with wet paper towels. Tony shrugged, as though hearing a reasonable idea, and walked to the back of the room.

  “I’m not a witness,” Elle said, walking over to the shelves, leaning against them, cooler than Bacall in a Bogey movie. “I’m the fucking killer. You know?” She held up her hands as exhibit A. “I have no reason to tell anyone on the outside anything. None of the rest of us do, either.”

  “That’s a given.”

  “Then?”

  Red looked at the mess around him. At Reggie. At Tony.

  “I got no interest in adding to this. On the other hand I got no motive not to.”

  I followed Elle’s lead. “Look, think about it. Trey was never going to give the painting to you. He was going to sell it himself and just pay you whatever he owed your boss, and pocket the rest. Then probably kill us. Or at least try to”—I shot Reggie a murderous glance. “He stood to make eight or nine mill profit.”

  Red looked at Tony. “That’s the value?”

  “It’s what my brother said. Up to ten million. He knew.”

  Red looked down at Trey’s body. “What a pop dick. I don’t know how we ever got in business with him.”

  “I think he got in business with us,” Tony said, watching Reggie.

  “Yeah, you could say.” Red looked at me. “But back to my point. Don’t all of us necessarily need to leave this little soiree.”

  “What else you want?” she said, her tone not alarmed, but insouciant.

  “Whaddya got?” He laughed, looked over at Tony. “I always wanted to say that.”

  “James Dean.”

  “Yeah.” Then he stopped laughing. “So, what do you got?”

  Elle looked at Lenora, who was following the conversation with something like approval. She looked down at the blood all over her. She looked at me. Then to Red.

  “Look, I’m going to come into some money. November eleventh. Veterans Day. That’s my birthday.” Her eyes back to mine for an instant. “I’ll be thirty-five. Let’s say by New Year’s Eve you have one hundred thousand in an account you set up. As gratitude.”

  Red’s sunburned brow furrowed. He glared at Reggie, who did everything possible to pretend he wasn’t listening. Tony was pursing his lips and nodding his head, slowly.

  “Two hundred thousand.”

  Red and Tony shared a quick glance. “You can guarantee that?”

  “It’s guaranteed.” Still leaning against the shelves, she waited for his answer like an impatient, temporarily insane school principal.

  He shook his head. “All this is weird Mississippi shit, ain’t it?”

  “If you say so.”

  He looked down at Trey’s body again for a moment, then, with a slow shake of his head, at his watch. He was back in charge. “We’re here too long. Let’s take a ride. Tony, call me. I’m going with the kids.”

  Tony nodded.

  “That back door okay?” Red asked Reggie.

  “Goes to the alley for deliveries. Streets run off either way from it.”

  Elle and I took a couple minutes to use the washbasin to clean ourselves as best we could. I could hear Red and Tony talking lowly but it could have been about anything.

  We left. The cover of night would help, but it couldn’t avoid being a tough hike for a mixed-race crowd, one of whom was dressed in a bloody white sheet and half-carried by two wild-eyed people with suspiciously stained clothes. On the other hand this was New Orleans.

  30

  Red led, ducking his head into the weather. The rain had some wind in it. We got to the Taurus wet but without incident. I clicked open the lock for Red to get in front and helped Elle and Lenora into the back. While they settled, I opened the trunk, ostensibly to make room for the painting and to get Vicodin from my duffel for Lenora. I had so much adrenaline running through me I didn’t need it. But mostly I wanted to stow the Colt.

  “Smart move,” Red said when I got back in and buckled up.

  I put the key into the ignition.

  “With that psycho, it was okay. But now, yeah, I don’t want to see you with hardware anymore.”

  I looked at him, nodded without comment, and cranked the engine. I squeezed out of the parking space and onto the street. It didn’t bear much speculation, but I had to wonder: Could I have taken all three of them, before Red arrived? If he hadn’t shown? I had counted on it then and I wasn’t going to second-guess now.

  I cut across town toward Tulane, looking in the mirror at Elle off and on most of the way. Lenora, face gray and drawn, was leaning against Elle. Lenora had taken two of the pills with some bottled water.

  “We should go to a hospital,” I said.

  “I’m okay,” Lenora said, ever more weakly. She began to slump down and Elle helped her to stretch out on the seat.

  “That’s your call for later,” Red said. “Now we got business.”

  “Let’s just get this done. She’s stable and she’ll be sleeping in a minute,” Elle said, cradling Lenora’s head in he
r lap.

  In about ten minutes we were pulling into the U-Haul lot. I parked at the front door of the main storage building, like before, and turned to Red.

  “You coming?”

  “Every step.”

  I looked in the back. I thought I saw a change of expression in Elle’s face, some sense the first wave of anger that had propelled her was dissipating. But it might have just been exhaustion. Where she had been, you didn’t come back that quick.

  “They stay. Lock up and bring the keys.”

  “Go on. We’re fine,” she said.

  The rain eased off, or maybe it had been localized down in the Quarter; rain did that in the city sometimes. At the entry door, I stopped, feeling a little stupid, and went back to the car to ask Elle for the code.

  I punched in the numbers and Red and I went upstairs to the unit. I opened the door and turned on the light and showed him the packing box. He wanted to grab it and leave but I told him he ought to see the goods and that I’d feel better if he did. So he’d know I wasn’t shining him on. He shrugged, as if I’d have to be a total idiot to try a switch after all this, and glanced at his watch again. Told me to hurry.

  I pulled the inner box out and unwrapped the painting and stood it near the side of the room, as Elle and I had done earlier.

  He moved a few steps back to get a good look. Maybe I sensed what he would see and maybe I didn’t.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “It’s something, isn’t it?”

  “Not that I’m a big art fairy but I been to a few museums. Hell, it’s like a movie or something.”

  I could see his eyes tracing every corner of it, taking in every frequency of color and light.

  “You Catholic?”

  “No.”

  “I am.”

  He looked a few minutes longer, then exhaled, shook his head as though reentering the planet. “Okay, let’s go. I’ve seen it.”

  “Okay.” I started the repackaging.

  “Trey Barnett. How’s he get stuff like that?” He seemed really to wonder.

  “He was an art dealer, I guess. They’re in their own world.”

  “I figured it was from all the other stuff he was dealing.”

  I kept working. “Can I ask you a question?”