by Lisa Sandlin
Ugo studied him, then Rudy. His upper lip twitched. “All right, you said you were my ally. You should know that he—he wasn’t.” In a falsetto voice, pierced with pent-up intensity, the older Sparrow mocked the younger, “Save me, Mama. Get back, big bad Ugo, little Rudy’s going to run away and hide.”
Rudy barely let him finish. “Oh, c’mon, don’t play like you forgot the hitting, cutting, locking me up in stuff, shoving me out in front of that car. Thighbone’s never been the same since. I couldn’t lindy-hop with the rest of ‘em.”
The puzzlement in Ugo’s face said he had forgotten. He waved it off. “Rough-housing. Far in the past.”
Rudy thrust out his palms like he meant to catch a child tumbling from a third-story window. “That’s what you’re talking about! The goddamn past! Only for you some of it’s over, and some of it’s not. All the shit you did, you call that over. You forgot about it. I’m supposed to forget about it, like it never happened. But whatever—God help me whatever it was you wanted out of me—you decided that’s not over. Screw that, here’s a scoop. The rest of the sane world doesn’t do it that way. Your belfry was always fulla bats.”
“Me?” Ugo punched a finger at his own chest. “I was the workhorse. I was the donkey. I worked all those years in that pen of a shop so you could get an allowance and go off somewhere else. So Ma could send you an allowance. And buy her houses. The one on Prytania with the balcony. The duplex in Marigny. Day after day. Years and years and years. While the leech, the freeloader went bird-watching. You …” Ugo lowered his tone to a growl. “I paid for your entire life.”
Rudy’s lips twisted. “Aw, take it somewhere else. No sale here.” But there was a sale, Phelan could tell. Rudy was banking on his talking game, but he was scared.
“You paid for Ma’s life, Ugo. She wanted those houses. Liked playing the property owner. She sent us rent money, that she did, and I took in bookkeeping and worked it at night. We got by living in dumps. It’s like…like you got this stupid rosy-ass view-finder you see our dear old parents through.”
The older Sparrow lifted his chin. “Papa was stern, I don’t deny that.”
“Stern?” Rudy rubbed his forehead like there was gum stuck on it. “It was stern to break your arm and lock you in a closet all night? And don’t bring up my share.”
Ugo picked up his glass, tilting it to let the liquor pitch back and forth. “Turn him over to me and I’ll leave.”
Rudy’s head fell forward. “You…conscienceless bastard. When hogs fly.”
“I’m his next-of-kin. He’s my son, and I’ve got his birth certificate. With my name on it.”
“And I’ve got your name signed on a custody agreement from St. Vincent’s.”
“Birth certificate trumps that. I’m prepared to tack on kidnapping. All these years, I’ve missed my son—”
“I’ll tell ‘em about you leaving him on the bayou at night. Like a tow sack of kittens.”
“He got lost.”
“Didn’t believe it in ’33, and I don’t believe it now.”
“Your lifelong lack of intelligence is not my affair.”
“It’s Raffie’s lack we’re talking about, that was always the problem. He can’t help it. You know what he did when the search party found him? Musta had a hundred mosquito bites on his arms and legs. I picked him up and he laughed. Didn’t look any different than any other kid in the world. Get this straight”—Rudy’s voice quavered—“you’re not takin’ him anywhere. I got the paper.”
“Where is my son, anyway?”
Rudy gestured toward the bedrooms. “Nap. Before supper. He’s never slept right at night, maybe you remember that. And keep it down. If he heard your voice, he’d run out the back door.”
Ugo’s chest swelled, his mouth popped open.
Phelan rose from the dinette chair and carefully approached the brothers. “Gentlemen,” he said. But the two were hooked into each other.
“Well, she’s finally dead!” Ugo snarled. “You’d better believe I’m contesting the will. You’re not bleeding me one more minute—and don’t you dispute me about that!”
“Dispute…Holy Mother, dispute…” Rudy gave a short version of his wheezing laugh. “Seventy years of your shit, Ugo, che cazzo vuoi? Lemme alone. You know where I am, and I’m not running anymore. Beat it! Don’t come back, or I’m calling the cops. Getting a restraining order. Which I shoulda done the first time your crazy mug showed up.”
Ugo Sparrow stood up so straight his heels rose off the floor. Liquor sloshed from his glass. He banged it onto the side table and fumbled in his jacket, withdrew a silver cigarette case, lit a cigarette, a ready-made. He began to pace, dragging deep. The blue and green parakeets were chirping and swinging on their triangles, ruffling their wings.
Phelan could see it was costing Rudy not to track Ugo. His hands were more clenched than folded, and their tremor wasn’t age, it was fear.
“I can’t help it Ma left it to him. I never asked her to! Ask Louis. I mean Sebastian, ask the son-in-law. The will was a goddamned surprise. I expected her to leave him something, yeah, for upkeep. We gotta eat. But not everything. I didn’t expect that, and I never asked her for it. Think Raffie cares about a duplex in Marigny? Sell her houses, take half the money. You’ll outlive me and Raffie both.”
Rudy stood up, one of his knees jolting in a St. Vitus dance.
“You don’t have to worry about me telling. Who’d I tell? Who’d care? Sixty-five years ago. Dio mio,” he groaned, “that little baby. Amalia, piccola.”
Ugo flicked away the cigarette butt. His facial expression said he was about to scream, but he spoke softly, relentlessly, “But you did tell, Rudy. I always knew you would eventually. You told Ma. And she changed the will. But first…first, she called me to her house. Said she was dying of shame that she gave birth to me.”
Ugo walked heavily over to his brother and waggled his hand, two middle fingers folded, index and little finger straight out like horns. “She made the sign, Ma made the mal’occhio against evil. Against m-me, Rudy. Because you told.”
Flecks of sweat on Rudy’s upper lip. His jaws moved, wordlessly.
Phelan stepped in between them, speaking to Ugo. “Enough. Time for you to head back to New Orleans. We found your brother, you said your piece. Your brother’s offered you half of everything. Talk to that family lawyer and let him take it from here.”
Ugo slithered a hand toward the inside breast pocket of his jacket, and Phelan was instantly beside him, gripping his right elbow so that his hand came away empty. Ugo threw him a savage look and attempted to shake him off. With an effort—the old man was strong—Phelan prevented that. Ugo’s eyes darted to Rudy, then his head turned as he apparently scanned the birdcages, the kitchen, the hall that led to the bedrooms. He stood, rigid. Phelan could feel the man’s tension in the arm he was grasping.
“All right,” Ugo said hoarsely, “all right. Let the law decide. Take your hand off me, Phelan. See to my brother. He looks…indisposed.” This time Phelan let Ugo Sparrow shake him off. The man smoothed his suit jacket and left the house, closing the front door, allowing the screen door to slam.
Rudy half-fell into an armchair, clammy and panting. “Thanks for running him outa here. Earlier woulda been better, though.”
Phelan took the other chair. Feeling like a guard, or a nurse, he sat with Rudy while the old man tried to calm himself. The goddamn parrot chose this moment to blurt a high-pitched scream that quavered like a kid being shaken. Rudy lurched up from the chair.
“Take it easy.” Phelan had mashed a hand over his ear, then he rose and settled Rudy down again. “Man, you got one rude pet there.” Thumps came from the back room, probably Raffie getting up from the nap. Phelan glanced at his watch: 5:24. He was more than ready to leave but couldn’t go without asking. Delpha would want to know.
“Hey,” he said, as soon as Rudy wasn’t breathing open-mouthed like a fish on a dock, “you saw it…when he killed your sister?
What happened?”
“Didn’t know I did. Till later. Ma and Papa, the whole neighborhood, they were downtown Mardi Gras night. Comus’ night—you know Comus? High-falutin’ krewe—the float, the costumes. We had these pointed hats Ma had made, and we were jumping around. Papa tripped over me, hurt his knee or something, ordered us to stay home. They went off without us. Ugo, he lived for those parades. Loved Comus best of all.”
Rudy’s gaze shifted inward. “Like Papa loved Amalia best. Who wouldn’t? We all did. You shoulda seen her—this baby cherub.” He clawed his chest suddenly, crumpling the cloth of his shirt. “God have mercy, Father of mercies, forgive me, I been sick for sixty-five years, thinking about it. I was looking for her, went over to the courtyard next to ours. Looked through the arch and saw my brother brushing himself off. Under the stairs, there was a sandpile by a pallet of bricks. That’s what I saw.”
“Sandpile. That’s it?”
“Till we couldn’t find her. Till the whole neighborhood was turned upside down, and Ma and Papa were crazy. And all a sudden the picture’s just there in my mind. I see Ugo in his pointed hat, standing back from this sandpile. Brushing himself off. That’s where they found her. Two days later.”
“He see you?”
“Didn’t seem like it. One night, though, Papa beat us bloody for letting Amalia out of our sight. Ugo caught me looking at him. He saw I knew.”
“Why didn’t you tell them then?”
“Never had the nerve.” Rudy dragged his fingers down his cheeks, fingertips scoring his weatherworn skin. “Everything woulda been different, God help me—”
He rambled on a while, but the screech of a car’s tires reminded Phelan that his Chevelle was parked on the street, and he truly wanted out of this house. Case closed. If Rudy Sparrow decided to go after Ugo Sparrow for a sixty-five-year-old killing, well, the New Orleans lawyer could handle that, too. Phelan was damn sure Louisiana rode with Texas on this one: no statute of limitations on murder.
XLII
DELPHA HAD BEEN touched by Phelan’s urgent request that she go home to the Rosemont, but she was too wound up to go. She parked the Dart at a distance from Rudy Sparrow’s house. A little before five o’clock, a gold Galaxie rolled to a stop at the curb, Louisiana plate 59R498 Sportsman’s Paradise, and a thickset, pale man, white hair beneath a bald dome, walked up the ramp. If he was Xavier Bell, he’d got rid of the brown hair and the mustache, the sunglasses and the panama. The whole costume. She couldn’t swear the man was Xavier Bell, but he must be. Phelan turned down the street seven minutes later. He parked and got out of the Chevelle, pointed toward the house for Delpha’s benefit, and went that way, up the ramp.
Would Tom witness some overdue peacemaking or referee a ring-tailed fight? She wouldn’t lay a bet either way. Good thing she had a full tank. Delpha started up the Dart and let it idle, whew, made the car even hotter. Occasionally, other cars passed. Not much traffic down this side street. She could have been lounging in the Rosemont’s medium-cool AC, watching Watergate hearings. Instead, she’d sat here since four o’clock with the car windows rolled down. Delpha’s armpits were soaked, her blouse damp to the waist. Sweat had her glued to the seat.
At twenty minutes till six, the man with the stark white face stalked out of the trees, to the left of the wooden ramp. He heaved himself into the gold car and burned rubber.
She threw the Dart into gear. She’d never tailed anybody but supposed it would mean not losing the car and not having the driver catch her following him. The first was the important one so she kept no more than a car length away from him. Followed him downtown on I-10E, like she was going to the office. The Louisiana car peeled off the freeway onto Willow Street, then drove through downtown and took a left on Fannin into a parking lot next to the Jefferson Theatre. Delpha drove past, a car behind her honking and then charging around her.
No one got out of the Galaxie. Smoke drifted from the driver’s window.
Trying to keep her eye on the car in the lot, she waited till traffic let up and U-turned, coasted over to the side of Pearl where she could park, and twisted around in her seat. She waited, cursing when a bus came by, worrying that maybe after it passed, the man who’d hurried out of the trees would have fled the car.
But close to six-thirty, the car door opened and he got out. Definitely the right age. Once he’d stepped onto the sidewalk and headed toward the theatre, Delpha slipped out of the Dart and ran on her toes across the street. He paused at the ticket window under a marquee that advertised Opening Night High Plains Drifter Clint Eastwood. Delpha walked, head mostly down, toward the Jefferson’s flashy vertical sign.
She stopped at the posters displayed behind glass, pretending to take in the beach-strolling lovers in this evening’s Sneak Peek late show: The Way We Were. Then she gave up being cagey and peered hard at the ticket-buyer. The man took his change, flicked a glance both ways down the street. As he turned in Delpha’s direction, she caught his face straight-on and raised a hand in front of her own, fingers spread, fluffing her hair. Angled away and exaggeratedly checked herself out in the glass reflection of the poster, registering: Xavier Bell.
Hugh Sparrow.
Ugo Passeri.
Tom.
Tom Phelan was back in that house. Tom and Rudy and Rudy’s laughing friend, Ugo’s son. The meeting could have been upsetting for the brothers—Ugo had gunned away from the house—but surely nothing worse, she told herself. Here he was now at the movies.
Still, she thought of Tom’s theory, everything Ugo might have done in his life. A toddler buried in sand, soldiers butchered, a wife disappeared, the cut bones of a store clerk. It was the end of September, hot as a plate left on the stove, and a chill began to slink along her ribs.
For a few moments after he’d entered the glass doors of the theatre, she stood on the sidewalk with its sparkling mica chips, fake-primping. Then she stepped over and leaned in to the ticket-seller, a brunette with salt-and-pepper roots.
“’Scuse me, I just caught sight of my uncle that’s been promising my aunt he’s going to A.A. meetings every night. He just bought a ticket.” Delpha showed an unhappy face to the woman behind the window. “Don’t tell me he comes here a lot.”
The woman lifted only her eyes to look up at Delpha. “All the time. Watches ‘em twice. Says he goes to the Gaylynn Twin too. Listen, hon, no A.A. meetings here, and no liquor allowed either. I hope your uncle hadn’t been toting a flask inside.”
A line of people was forming behind Delpha. She made her face look even more unhappy. “What time’s this movie get out?”
“Eight fifty-five. Then there’s the Sneak Peek. Oh, sugar, it’s a tearjerker. You wanna see this Clint Eastwood? Kinda a cowboy movie, but it’s real mean.”
No, even if nothing had happened at Rudy’s house, she didn’t want to go into the theatre and loiter around watching a man who’d maybe smothered his baby sister. She still carried the bulk of Dennis Deeterman. Carried him so that Aileen—however the girl did it—had spotted or sensed or smelled or been brushed by the grasp of his presence. Deeterman barging into the office, thick arms swelled out from his trunk. Head swiveling to make sure Delpha was by herself. Vacant eyes two minutes away from igniting.
Her backward steps.
The heavy man looming, heft and knife.
This time she was not trapped. But the spreading numbness returned, even as the sidewalk’s heat radiated through the soles of her black flats. This time help was reachable. Wasn’t it?
“Customers behind you, hon. You want a ticket or not?”
Delpha shook her head no.
XLIII
SHE PARKED THE Dart in Visitor Parking under a live oak and hated every step up to the Beaumont Police Department’s front desk.
The desk man was a middle-aged cop whose starched shirt could have worked the shift without him. No, Sergeant Fontenot was not on duty. And no, Chief Guidry was not here, either. It was…his crewcut head cut to his wrist…almost
quarter till seven in the evening, and the chief worked regular business hours unless there was an emergency. Delpha was about to give this desk officer her information when he narrowed already-narrow eyes and shot her a thought bubble. How stupid was she not to know that? Whyn’t she get outa his range of vision?
Delpha shoved back at him with a level stare, something she’d known better than to do in prison.
The cop’s jaw hardened.
The door from the squad room opened, and two young cops burst out. A shaggy-haired white one ranging backwards, hands sawing back and forth in a Kung Fu fakeout maneuver. Next, a black one had to be the same age, with a stealthy crouch in progress. The white one angled around. His eyes bulged.
“Hey, I know who you are. Saw you in the squad room that day in your bloody shirt.” He settled his cap and hit his full height. “Officer Wilson. And this is my partner Officer Johnson. Can me and him assist you?”
Bypassing the desk man, Delpha spoke fast. She needed a house checked out, if they would do that, and gave them the address, a house where there might or might not be a need for the police. She told them there’d been some suspicious happenings connected to a visitor to that house. The desk cop looked back and forth between her and his juniors, partially doffed his attitude, and picked up the phone. After muttering into it, he asked her, “You know where this visitor is?”
“I don’t know for sure he’s done anything. But I followed him outa there to the Jefferson Theatre.”
The black cop’s nose scrunched up. “Went to the picture show?”
The white one hooked his chin at a car out past the glass doors. “Whyn’t you wait for us at the cruiser, Miss Wade. Turns out anything’s wrong, we’ll need you to I.D him. Be right there.”
She paced by their police car under the live oak while the two did whatever they did. The light latticed between the sinuous black branches blazed copper and copper-red and then red at the horizon before the two young cops came loping out. The white one skidded up beside her. “We already got a unit out there.”