City of Masks

by Daniel Hecht

  Deelie reached across the table and fingered through the stack until she found the one she wanted. "Here - this one."

  It was a close-up of a short stick lashed with strands of long grass or some other plant fiber to a bar of the fence at the corner pillar. Beyond, out of focus, Cree could see the green of foliage and a blur of yellow that was probably a wall of the house.

  "Deelie, I don't know wiiat this means. What's hoodoo?"

  "Shame on you, girl! You come down here, don't do your homework? Call yourself a researcher?"

  "Order up," Henri called. He pushed a couple of paper plates onto the counter. "Som'in' drink wi' dat?"

  They both asked for Cokes. Cree got the food and insisted on paying. A po'boy, she saw, was a big sandwich, like a sub, but in this case a crusty baguette stuffed with deep-fried, battered oysters, mayonnaise, and shredded lettuce. Back at the table, Deelie grabbed hers and took a huge, rapturous bite. So did Cree. It was delicious, the oysters crisp on the outside but hot and juicy inside.

  "Didn't I tell you, best thing you ever ate?" Deelie leaned close and confided, "But you gotta come in early in the week, 'cause he change his fryin' grease on Mondays. By end of the week it get a little funky, you know what I'm saying?" She tipped her head toward Henri, who had settled back behind his paper, motionless but for the cigarette smoke curling up.

  They ate in silence for a moment, and then Deelie was ready to go on."Okay. Hoodoo's folk cures and conjuring. It's not a coherent form of religious observance, like voodoo, but it's connected. It's just the folklore of cures, hexes, charms, potions, herbs, curses, and shit that goes along for the ride with voodoo, about like Santa Claus and Easter Bunny go with Christianity. Roots go back to western African medicine and mysticism of the sixteenth century and probably much earlier. There's traditional general ways of doing things, but hoodoo doesn't have a fixed form, and every old root doctor or conjo woman got a slightly different set of remedies and charms."

  "What does this one mean?"

  "Hold on, I'm getting there!" Deelie held up a hand as she attacked her sandwich, chewed, swallowed. "Take a look at that close-up of the stick, you can see it's about as long as a stubby cigar, and it's got those two notches? I found one on three outside corners of the fence around the Beauforte lot. So I told Bobby G. about it, and, ooh you should have seen that white boy's face wrinkle up! He didn't want another problem to figure in. But he had his boys go retrieve the three outside, and then after I got some advice from this ol' conjo woman I knew about, they went through the house with an eye out for more signs of hoodoo. They found one more stick, up under the overhang of the mantel in the parlor. Just where the old woman said it'd likely be!"

  They ate in silence for a moment as Cree pondered the hex. "So what's it supposed to do?" she asked at last.

  "Oh, man, Bobby G., he wanted so bad for it to be a killing hex! Some person of the colored persuasion put a hex on Chase, then popped him when the hex didn't work? But the old conjo woman, she says it's a hex for 'confusion of mind,' like insanity or maybe forgetfulness. She said if someone got inside to put that fourth stick there, the police should look for other things, too - maybe something like burnt hair from Temp's head, maybe some graveyard dust or these commercial hoodoo oils and shit you can buy. But this was like a month after, they'd had so many people in and out, it was too late for Bobby's techs to go after that. The scene inside had been pretty well compromised."

  "So, Deelie, let me get this straight - do you believe in hoodoo?"

  Delisha hooted and turned toward the counter. "Yo, On-Ree! You believe in hoodoo?"

  Henri's newspaper dropped and with his cigarette he pointed to the air-conditioner above the front door. A fist-sized cloth sack lay flopped there, dust frilled. "B'lieve in b'lievin'," Henri said mysteriously. The newspaper came up again.

  "That hisgris-gris bag," Deelie explained. "His protection charm. Got different herbs and powders and stuff in there. Wards off attack and theft. What he means is, he don't exactly believe, but he believes hoodoo got power over those who do believe, so he keeps his gris-gris there to protect him. You can see he keep a crucifix on the cash register, too. That's how most people do."

  Henri's newspaper dropped. "Tha's how mos' people do," he confirmed. "And I ain't never been robbed by a b'liever yet!" Then he reached under the counter and with a wide grin pulled up a chunky, snub-nosed revolver. "For the rest, I got this here!"

  Back on the baking sidewalk, stomachs happily full, they strolled toward Cree's car. There was a walk you did here if you didn't want to die of the heat, Cree realized, an energy-conserving, keeping-cool walk - slow, rolling, loose. It explained the seemingly lethargic gaits of the people on these sidewalks, so different from the comparatively tight, jerky strides of the sweating Northern tourists on Canal Street. An African walk, a Caribbean gait, sensible in this climate.

  She had probed Deelie about the Beaufortes as they finished their sandwiches. Deelie said she'd never met Lila or Charmian, but she had interviewed Ronald to get a little color on owning a house where a prominent murder had occurred. She said she couldn't really imagine any connection between the Beauforte family and the murders or the hex. As for the organized crime connection, Deelie thought Chase definitely had a few shady friends, but she'd never turned up anything sufficient to provide a motive for murder.

  Deelie was an amazing person, Cree decided, an amalgam of the innumerable cultural strains that came together here. Beyond the particular ancestry she brought to this city where French, Spanish, Afro-Caribbean, Acadian, English, and German history converged, she was a woman poised between two modern worlds as well: one predominantly white, relatively affluent, educated, the other black, poor, streetwise. Even her accent and vocabulary reflected the diverse social worlds she moved through, readily mixing academic terms and concepts with Southern black patois. It couldn't be an easy balance to maintain. Yet Deelie walked at her ease here, proud, her beads swinging and clattering softly.

  "So, the hex. What do you think it says about the murder?" Cree asked.

  "Bobby G., he'd say either there's a nigger in the woodpile somewhere, or there's somebody smart trying to make it look that way. Either way, it says this thing's more complex than anybody bargained for."

  And none of it might bear on the haunting at all, Cree thought. So far, nothing she'd picked up seemed to have any connection to Temp Chase. But again, you never knew.

  When they opened the doors to the Taurus, a belch of blast-furnace heat came out, and both women stood back to give it a moment before getting inside.

  "We didn't get too far on your end of the deal," Deelie said. She slapped the sizzling metal of the car roof. "Means you owe me, right? In my line of work, this quid pro quo thing is serious."

  "Girl, you just tell me when," Cree said.

  Deelie grinned at her over the roof. "Not quite," she said. "But you gettin' there. Accent's still a little ironical, but you definitely gettin' there."

  21

  THERE WAS SO MUCH TO think about, so much to try to make sense of. And the house was calling her, compelling her to return: so many questions to ask it and its secret occupant, so much to learn. But after dropping Deelie back at the Times-Picayune office, Cree knew she had a couple of other priorities.

  From a pay phone, she called Paul Fitzpatrick's office to learn the whereabouts of the clinic where Lila should be safely ensconced by now. His secretary patched her through, and the moment she heard his voice Cree realized she'd been hungry to hear it, curious to explore that warmth again.

  But his voice was anything but warm. "She refused to be admitted, Cree. She's at home now. Or maybe she's back at Beauforte House, bouncing off the goddamned walls."

  "What!"

  "Look, this isn't easy for me to say. But maybe we were right the first time around - you can't present a patient with two conflicting modes of therapy. She said you believed her, you knew there were ghosts, you'd seen the damned ghost. She even pointed out that y
our fucking credentials are better than mine! That's pretty hard for me to overcome, Cree - someone validating, endorsing, a patient's delusions - "

  "Paul, I told her she should do exactly as you said! I completely supported - "

  "She didn't seem to hear that part, did she?"

  "I'll go over there now. I'll tell her again!"

  "Well, I'd appreciate that very much," he said acidly.

  Cree stood on the sidewalk, looking at the phone, stunned. "I - I thought we would make an effective team, Paul. I thought we'd worked out ways our approaches could complement each other."

  There were muffled voices on the other end of the line. "I've got a patient. I've got other patients, okay? I have to go now."

  "Paul."

  She wasn't sure whether he'd hung up, but after a pause he answered.

  "Yeah."

  "Is this what you want?" She hoped it sounded ambiguous, but she meant, with you and me.

  Another pause. "Not really."

  "Me neither. I'm going over there now. I'll call you as soon as I can."

  "Okay." Just one word. She wasn't sure if she'd heard a slight softening of his tone or not.

  Cree's tension eased slightly when Lila opened the door at the Warrens' tidy neoplantation home. Her panicked flight through Beauforte House had left her battered, with bruises purpling on her face and several bandages on her arms.

  "Are you going to yell at me, too?" she asked as she led Cree back into the house. "So many people to try to please."

  "You don't have to please anybody. But you do have to take care of yourself. How are you feeling?"

  "Sore. Aching. A hundred years old."

  She looked it. She looked like a gray balloon someone had let most of the air out of.

  Lila led Cree to the dining room, where she swept her hand toward a chaos of loose photos, albums, cards, yearbooks, and clippings spread out across the big dining table. "I was looking at some things. You'd said you'd want to see our photo albums and such, so I started getting them out. There's a lot. There're still a couple of file cabinets over at the house, but when Momma moved over to Lakeside, she gave most of it to me damn sure wasn't going to give it to Ron, with his lifestyle. This is just the recent stuff. If you want the whole Beauforte history tour, I have a whole closetful."

  "Do you enjoy it?" It sounded stupid the moment it came out of Cree's mouth.

  Lila looked at her with a failed attempt at a smile. " 'Enjoy' isn't quite the word. Not at the moment."

  "You want to show me some of it?"

  They sat side by side at the table. The room was cool, half darkened, its windows dimmed by curtains. At one end, an antique-replica colonial hutch displayed decorative plates propped up in little brackets, and Audubon prints hung on three walls wallpapered in a muted fleur-de-lis pattern. Eight matching tall-backed dining chairs surrounded the table, which was lit by a small chandelier. Again, Cree was struck by the anonymity of the decor - with the exception of Lila's tiny watercolors, this could be a room in an upscale hotel suite. There were no mirrors, and the observation reminded Cree of the question she'd been meaning to ask.

  "Lila, did you break the mirrors at the house?"

  Lila's hands shuddered as she arranged loose photos and albums.

  "Yes." A tiny voice.

  "Can you tell me why?"

  "It was . . . mainly it was when I was . . . running. When I was fighting him."

  Having seen Lila careening through the house in blind panic, Cree could easily understand how things would get broken. Still, she was sure there was more to understand here. "Did they . . . frighten you?"

  "Yes."

  "Was there something in them, or - "

  "There was me, Cree! There was me!" She spat the syllable with disgust, looking at Cree with eyes beseeching understanding. She held both hands open, palms up in front of her chest, as if the explanation were self-evident: Because I am this.

  Cree took the hands and brought them together in her own. Lila looked away, but Cree cradled them until, after a moment, the tension ebbed from them. When Lila's breathing had steadied, Cree gently freed the hands and began scanning photos.

  "That's your mother," Cree said. She pulled over a black-and-white photo of Charmian, posed in a Jackie Kennedy-era dress and pillbox hat. Though she looked much younger, the imperious and slightly predatory look was the same. "She was pretty! She's still a beautiful woman."

  "I've always thought so. Momma and I aren't what anyone would call close, we never have been, but I've always been very proud of her." Lila put the photo aside and pulled a scrapbook over. "She was very prominent in society, very active with all the civic organizations and clubs. She had the style for that. I know I sure never did - it was about all I could manage to be a housewife and a mom."

  Lila flipped the plastic-sealed pages. There were a few photos of Charmian in domestic circumstances: in the kitchen at Beauforte House with baby Ron, in the garden with baby Lila. But most showed her at one social function or another - meetings, speeches, balls. One, clipped from a newspaper, showed her on a tennis court, dressed in whites, winging what looked like a savage backhand.

  Cree drew over another photo. "And this one - your father?"

  "Yes."

  Richard Beauforte had a staid, boardroom look to him. In several photos, he stood at Charmian's side in a tuxedo, with a sober smile and dark eyes beneath heavy browrs. One photo showed him in front of a small boat, dressed in a checked shirt, khakis, a billed cap. He was handing a couple of fishing rods to a slightly younger man who grinned rakishly at the camera. Behind him, a scrawny, towheaded, T-shirted Ron showed an eager gap-toothed smile.

  "This is Ron, but who's this?" Cree asked. "He's handsome! He looks like Brad Pitt."

  "It is Brad. My uncle Bradford, Momma's brother. He and Daddy were good buddies. We all loved him so. Uncle Brad. For Ron and me, he was more like, I don't know, our older brother or something."

  "He's the one who - " Cree started to ask, then thought better of it.

  "Yes. Who died in the fishing accident." Lila faded suddenly, then quickly flipped several pages. This was clearly not a good moment for recalling family tragedies. She turned a page, waited a few seconds without saying anything, then turned again and again. Snapshots of people and places past, little windows into bygone worlds. Richard and Brad in front of a new Thunderbird car. A black groundskeeper high in the branches of a fulsome magnolia, Ron and Lila grinning from the ladder beneath him. Various nameless faces whose resemblance revealed them to be Beauforte or Lambert uncles and aunts.

  Another page showed a tall black woman bent over Lila and doing something to her hair while Lila grimaced. "Josephine," Lila explained.

  "I told you about her, didn't I? Our nanny."

  The second photo on the spread showed Lila and Josephine standing together. Lila looked to be about twelve and was wearing a graduation gown and an excited, rather blitzed smile. Josephine was a slim, sinewy woman with a faint friz of gray in her hair, wearing a black dress with white polka dots and prim white collar. She looked at the young Lila with an expression of pride, possessiveness, and something else - concern, or maybe protectiveness.

  Lila put her hand to Josephine's face. "Sometimes," she said quietly, "when this has been really bad? And all I want to do is go run to somebody, like I'm a baby again? It's her I want to run to." Lila's eyes went wide at the admission. "Don't ever tell Momma I said that! Please!"

  Cree would have liked to ask about Josephine, but Lila had begun flipping pages again. Then Cree spotted a face she wanted more time with, and she put her hand on Lila's arm to stop her.

  "That's you."

  "Yes." Reluctantly, Lila let the page fall open. "I was somethin', back then, wasn't I? Uncle Brad always called me a real firecracker, and I guess I was."

  One photo was a grade-school-era portrait of a clear-eyed, pretty girl looking straight at the camera with an expression of confident amusement. Another showed her on stage with a
cello between her knees, sawing away intently.

  "I had no idea you played the cello! Do you still?"

  "Haven't touched it in . . . oh, so long I don't remember. I guess I gave it up when I went off to Excelsior — that's the boarding school they shipped me to over in Mobile. I did love it so, but I . . . didn't have the talent." Again Lila began turning pages as if fleeing the images, and then stopped abruptly. "Oh, I am so rude! I didn't offer you anything. Would you like something to drink? Coffee? Iced tea?"

  "Actually, tea would be nice. I'm sure not used to the heat."

  Lila stood up and went quickly to the doorway. But she paused there and looked back at Cree. "Everything hurts," she said, as if explaining her sudden retreat. "It's all lost! When life takes a turn like this, it's all. . . frightening. It's all pain. Every page, every face. I can't touch it. I can't go near it." And she turned away and fled into the hallway.

  Cree sat alone in the air-conditioned cool, feeling overwhelmed by the sad feast of memories spread on the table. / can't go near it: Cree remembered too well the day she had boxed up the photos of Mike. Into the closet went any image that would remind her of their wedding, their vacations, the innumerable impromptu moments, the dogs, the parties, the new cars, the dinners with friends. The odd ones that really hurt: Mike lying on that awful plaid couch in their first apartment on some hot day, sleepy-eyed, naked beneath the newspaper he'd been reading. That Polaroid taken by a stranger they'd corralled for the job: Mike and Cree together on Cadillac Mountain with the misty depths of Mount Desert Island behind them — Mike's accidental look of tenderness.

  She'd come to the point of locking things away only after, what, three years or so. But it never really worked. After that, she thought about that box all the time; she could feel it in the house, those years compressed inside it, as if it glowed with heat and pressure. Sometimes it seemed it was about to blow open again on its own like an undetonated bomb left over from some war, and then she'd flee whatever house or apartment she lived in to get away from it. Or she'd give up and spread it out like this and spend weeks of renewed grieving, trying to reassemble anything like a life. She couldn't blame Lila for her reluctance.