by Chris Wiltz
“I saw Quiro today,” I said.
She looked at me in the mirror. “Where?”
“Across the lake. He was playing dress-up in the gown Paula wore at her party, lip-synching in front of a mirror to Billie Holiday.”
The wand stopped mid-stroke. “Life in the country isn’t simple anymore, is it,” she said.
While she used another wand to make her eyelashes look twice as long, I told her about the rest of the day.
I followed her back into the bedroom, watching how her pants stretched, then loosened over her rear end as she walked. It was fascinating.
“You’re sure Quiro didn’t see you?” she asked.
“Pretty sure.”
She opened a dresser drawer and took out a sweater. “And you really don’t think the same person broke into your office and Mr. D.’s place?”
“I don’t think so.”
She swung the sweater over her shoulders and looped the arms of it around her neck. She checked her watch. “I’ve got to go, love.”
Outside the wind was stronger. I kissed her good-bye under the streetlight, her hair whipping around our faces, and walked across the street to my car.
“Neal,” she called to me, her voice pitched high against the wind. I turned from the opened door. She was standing where I’d left her. I imagined the way her body would move if she were to throw a knife across the distance between us. “Be careful,” she said.
The wind died momentarily, and came up again to whistle in the dark.
27
* * *
Rain
The rain started early the next morning. The night before I’d gone home from Lee’s and tried to think about Callahan, Mr. D., Richard, but my brain was in an exhausted stupor, and I’d fallen asleep shortly after nine o’clock. I woke up to the sound of wind howling around the side of the Euclid and rain lashing up against the windows. By ten that morning half the city was under water.
I made it to the office without swimming. In fact, the only problem I had getting downtown was the traffic, which was snarled even where there was no standing water; but any kind of unusual weather in New Orleans causes a traffic jam, and there’s a lot of unusual weather in New Orleans.
Gabe hustled over to park the car as I entered the garage at the Père Marquette. I could tell he was energized by the way he spryly hopped off the conveyer belt that brings the attendants to the upper levels of the garage. Also, the toothpick that normally hangs in one place off his lip was moving rapidly from side to side of his mouth.
“Some weather!” he called to someone walking through the garage as he bounded up to my car.
Floods—hurricanes, too—seem to charge up some people, especially if they haven’t been or aren’t in particular danger of being victimized by the wiles of nature. I remember Mrs. Tim, my parents’ next-door neighbor, standing out on her porch just before Hurricane Betsy hit, saying over and over again, “It’s beautiful! Isn’t it beautiful!”
Gabe opened the car door for me, and then he saw the bandages on my face. The toothpick stopped its rapid transit while he chewed on it. He started to say something, but changed his mind. “You must be part duck, Mr. Rafferty,” he said instead.
“Sitting duck,” I replied, and left the car to him.
I was going through the mail when the telephone rang. It was the elusive Mr. Cotton.
“Where’ve you been, Richard?”
“Thinking,” he said. “I’ve decided not to run for district attorney. I want you to stop looking for anything Solarno might have had on Callahan. There’s probably nothing to it anyway.”
“I already know what Solarno had on Callahan. The drugs were distributed from the Bucktown Tavern.”
He paused about a beat and a half. “Do you have proof?” he asked, not too excited. Desperately hopeful, maybe.
“Not yet. I’m going to find a way to get him.”
He actually laughed. “How? He’s a very powerful man. He’s pulled off a brilliant operation, nabbing those judges, and I would say, very effectively closing down the tavern.”
“Yeah, but he’s in very deep. I’m pretty sure he had a cop gun down a young kid who was running the drugs and decided to dip into the cache and deal some for himself. You know, the busboy at the tavern.”
“And how are you going to make the cop talk? I’m sorry, Neal, but I don’t believe there’s any way of stopping him.”
“There’s more. First, Callahan bothered to call me to his office and tell me to lay off. Then my office was broken into and your file was taken. Callahan knows you hired Solarno, Richard. Solarno must have gone to him, and that’s when he probably decided to plan the raids, shut down the tavern. And get rid of Marty Solarno.”
“And get somebody else to get rid of Marty Solarno. Don’t you see? It’s all too far away from him. Callahan’s too smart. There’s no way to get to him.”
“There’s always a way, some mistake, some chink. I want you to help me find it. I want you to help me build a case against him.”
“I can’t, Neal. I wanted to get him out of office, but I know that I can’t. That’s as far as it goes for me.”
“Then it should go further,” I told him. “Callahan isn’t a man who should have a grain of power. If all he did was abuse it by taking a few bribes here and there, maybe I’d be willing to say it wasn’t worth the trouble. But he kills people. You know as well as I do that he had Marty Solarno killed.”
“Solarno was scum,” Richard said, irritated. “And, anyway, you have absolutely no proof that Callahan had anything to do with his murder.”
“Has Callahan threatened you? Is that it? Or Paula? Is he threatening your wife?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Have you talked to Callahan, Richard?”
“No.”
“Then what is this?” I practically yelled into the phone. “Am I the only person left who believes Callahan should be stopped before he decides someone else should be removed?” I told him how close I’d come to not having this conversation with him.
“Oh God.” His voice cracked.
“I need your help, Richard.”
“I’m not able to help you.” I could hardly hear him.
“Talk to me, Richard. I need you to see this through with me. You set something in motion, and we have to finish it before someone else gets hurt. We have to try.”
“I’m a broken man, Neal. My life is falling apart around me. I don’t seem to have any control anymore. I didn’t want it to come to this. I’m very sorry you were hurt.”
I didn’t want to hear this kind of whimpering bullshit. I wanted information. “Is there anyone on Callahan’s staff or anyone he uses for outside work who has a gravel voice?” I asked him.
“No one I know of. I need to go now, Neal.”
“Not yet. I want to know what Christopher Raven was doing inside your house.”
“I don’t know. I’ve told you that. I didn’t know him.”
“You don’t know too much. Raven worked at the Bucktown Tavern, too. Another busboy,” I said sarcastically.
Dead silence now. Then, “At the tavern?” He was completely, believably incredulous. “How do you know?”
“Mr. D. told me.”
“Who?”
“Danny Dideaux. Mr. D.’s Laundry. Don’t bother to tell me you don’t know him. He told me himself that you and Quiro both have been to the laundry. Why didn’t you ask him if Solarno had a film?”
He stopped whining and came alive. “That’s right. I’ve been to the laundry and so has Quiro, and Dideaux’s a worse piece of filth than Solarno was. I wouldn’t ask him for anything. I’m sorry you did. I can tell you’ve put a lot of time into this, and it’s caused you a great deal of trouble. I never should have asked you to do it. Figure out how much time you spent, and I’ll write you a check.”
Now I lost control. “But you did ask me to do it, goddamn it, and I didn’t do it for money. I did it because
I consider you a friend. I did it for you. And for me, too.”
“Please forgive me,” he said, and the phone went dead.
I was still fuming an hour later.
28
* * *
Come Live with Me
By three o’clock in the afternoon a lot of the floodwater uptown had subsided. I called Lee’s office and got the answering service. When I tried her apartment, I got a recording that the phone was temporarily out of service. It was probably because of all the rain, but I thought I’d better go check.
The streets were full of debris from the storm. Limbs of trees had been knocked down by the wind, and wires hung from poles or lay coiled on the sidewalk like snakes ready to strike. At one point I had to circle a block because a large tree had been split almost in half, its length blocking the street when it fell.
I drove into the side street next to Lee’s that dead-ended at the park and pulled up behind her Mustang. Ripples of dirt lined the concrete like sand rippled by the surf. Lakes of water stood in the park, the water level too high, the earth too saturated to absorb them. More dirt made gritty sounds under my shoes as I stepped up on the porch. It was obvious what had happened. It seems like every time the rains come, another part of town goes under.
Lee came to the door dressed in the same clothes she’d had on the night before, except that she was barefoot and the bottoms of her pantlegs were wet. Her face was expressionless, but her skin more cream than honey, and her eyes, yellow in the filtered light that is sometimes a part of the aftermath of such weather, were sad. The skin around them looked bruised in contrast to her pale cheeks.
The floor of the apartment was much the same as the floor of the porch. I could see along the baseboards how high the water had risen. It was only a couple of inches, but enough to cause a lot of damage, especially the way the place was furnished. The futon that was her sofa had a dirty water mark around it; the cushions surrounding the lacquered table were sodden.
I put my arms around her. “I’m sorry, baby,” I said.
She leaned against me a minute. When we separated, she said, “It doesn’t matter so much,” but she wouldn’t look at me. She started walking toward the back. “There was only one thing I really cared about.”
I followed her into the bedroom. At the foot of the futon was a small prayer rug, thin as silk with age. We both stared down at it, at the delicate colors of the vegetable dye all running together.
“It was my father’s,” she said. “He carried it with him for years.” I could see her eyes blinking rapidly. “It wasn’t supposed to happen here, was it?” she asked, but she wasn’t really asking me.
She straightened her shoulders. “He warned me about being sentimental. Now there’s nothing left to be sentimental about. I’m sure I’ll be relieved.”
I bit my tongue—I wasn’t the right guy to be talking to about sentimentality.
There was a mop leaning against a wall in the bathroom. When I’d arrived, she had apparently been getting up the last of the water with it. She picked it up and wrung it out, then wiped the tiles a few more times.
I pushed down on the futon with the palm of my hand. A little water squished out underneath the place I pushed. “Your bed is ruined,” I said inanely.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said once again. “There’s a smaller one in a storage closet upstairs. I can use that until I replace it.”
Together we squeezed as much water out of it as we could and lugged it out of the apartment. Lee was as remote and inscrutable as a Buddhist monk while we worked, which wasn’t for long.
“I appreciate your help,” she told me, “but I’d like to be alone for a while.”
“Will you come stay with me tonight?” I asked.
“Maybe. I’ve got a few things to tie up first. Maybe after that. I’m not promising.”
“The Cottons?”
She nodded. “They had a terrible fight this morning. Paula called me afterward and asked me to take her across the lake. It’s been an exhausting day.” But she didn’t look exhausted. She had that quiet readiness about her, like she was up to handling anything, and could handle it alone. I supposed, though, she was holding all of the emotion inside her very carefully, not about to let the smallest amount leak out until she’d gotten done what she had to do.
I felt bad for her, for her aloneness, for all our aloneness when we’re faced with loss, no matter how much comfort is offered. I left wanting to insist that she come to me after she did whatever she had to do for Paula Cotton and her loss, but I knew better.
My hand crunched the piece of newspaper when I got in the car. I had carried it around with me for a couple of days, but I’d more or less forgotten about it. I picked it up now, though, and looked at the listing for the apartment in the Garden District.
There was a pay phone in front of a Time-Saver on Prytania Street. I hoped that the apartment hadn’t already been taken. An elderly-sounding lady answered the phone and told me I could come look at it now if I wanted to.
It was on Philip Street, the renovated carriage house behind the mansion the lady lived in. It hadn’t been taken because the rent was obnoxious, but I figured it wasn’t much more than what Lee and I were paying together. For the price, you could probably get a four-bedroom house in another part of town, but it was close to our offices, and set back a nice distance from the main house. And the Garden District didn’t flood—not yet.
Downstairs there was a kitchen big enough for the two of us, a living room, and another room for the weights. Upstairs the two rooms were airy and full of windows. I looked out of them into the treetops. I thought Lee would like it there. I wanted to show it to her in the morning. I was sure she’d offer a lot of resistance, and I knew that her reasons would be good, but I wanted to convince her that we should give it a shot. I wanted to know what it felt like not to be alone.
The lady was too well bred to snort derisively at my occupation. Instead she asked me for two personal references, and let me have a glance up her nostrils. I gave her Maurice’s and Richard’s names. When she heard the name Cotton, her nose stopped trying to be the first human parts satellite. Actually I liked her—she didn’t talk my ear off, she didn’t say anything about noise, and she didn’t ask me about my face. She said it would be okay if I dropped a check off first thing in the morning.
The one problem was that I had to get through the night.
29
* * *
The Trade-off
All day long I’d wondered if Mr. D. would get the message I’d put out on the street. When I hit the Euclid just before five o’clock, the phone was ringing off the hook.
“Goddamn,” Uncle Roddy snapped, “don’t you ever check your answerin’ service?”
“I’ve been gone less than two hours!”
“I gotta body here,” he said, supremely irritated. “I gotta feeling you know who it is.” He told me to get myself over to the Seventeenth Street Canal pumping station. Now.
The surging waters had topped the canal at Palmetto Street and run down to flood out homes in the area between Palmetto and Airline Highway. On the other side of the canal, though, is Metairie Ridge, which was high and dry. I followed the canal along Orpheum Street, across Metairie Road, to where a levee keeps the water back. At the end of the levee the canal widened out to a large pool. On the other side was the pumping station. I parked at the side of the levee because of all the police vehicles further on, and walked down a narrow strip of asphalt to the station. He was lying on a stretch of grass, away from the action of the rotating filters that churned noisily in the water, removing the trash and tossing it to a space above at the side of the station. He had on the same polyester shirt, but he’d lost his shoes, to the canal, I guessed, where they would be the only kind of reptile that could survive in the slimy, murky depths of the bottom mud. His collarbone and hairless chest were exposed, but instead of being sinewy and tough, he seemed juvenile now. There was a knife wound in his too wh
ite, too bony ribs.
Uncle Roddy limped slowly to where I knelt at the side of the body.
“Your friend at the motel?” he asked over the grind and churn of the filters.
Uncle Roddy amazed me sometimes. I stood up. “How’d you know?”
“Friends in vice,” he said, and I didn’t know if he was trying to be funny or was just still irritated. “We know the confiscated films were his.”
Fonte had sauntered up, chewing gum so ferociously that his jowls were puffed from exertion. ‘"You shoulda let us go get him, Rafferty.”
I wished I had, but I’d be damned if I was going to say so in front of Fonte. Uncle Roddy motioned to the guys with the stretcher. We walked away from Mr. D.’s body and all the noise of the water being filtered and sucked by the pumps.
“Why didn’t you go back to the motel right away?” Uncle Roddy asked.
“I went to the hospital.”
“After that.” Not quite a bark, but he was definitely still irritated.
“I went home to get some clothes that weren’t full of blood. I was tired and hurting and I figured he was safe at the motel.” It was the truth, but I hated saying it.
“Hard to leave the little nest, isn’t it,” Fonte said and let go with a humor-filled snort.
I wanted to punch him out.
I would like to say that if Lee hadn’t come over I wouldn’t have gone back downtown, anyway, but it probably isn’t so. It doesn’t matter, I still wanted to slug Fonte.
Tight-lipped, I said to Uncle Roddy, “By the time I got my face sewn up he was already gone.”
Fonte answered with, “How come everybody you talk to gets dead and you stay alive?”
I punched him square in his gum-swelled jaw. He staggered back and Uncle Roddy let out a roar that made the noise behind us sound like music boxes.