by Chris Wiltz
Ma didn't ask any questions about Jackie's murder or make any speculations. My mother is the least judgmental person I know. That's probably because the old man makes enough judgments for the two of them. Instead, she tries to find something redeeming in everyone. On the way home from Jackie's wedding reception she made a big deal over what a nice wedding it was and what a polite, nice boy Larry seemed to be while Reenie was practically gagging over Larry's tattoos and the old man was being sour because they served some cheap bourbon instead of Jack Daniel's.
On the way to Jackie's funeral Ma reminisced about the poodle skirts—whatever the hell those were—she and Reenie and Jackie had made, and about the time Jackie, envious of Reenie's reddish-brown hair, had tried to put auburn highlights in her own dark hair. Instead of highlights, she got bright orange streaks which Reenie and Ma helped her cover with dye before Jackie's father saw her and brained her. I remembered that episode, a Saturday night, the three of them over the kitchen sink for hours, Jackie's hair stinking of chemicals when we made love later on.
I thought about making love to Jackie, about the first time, and I was back in the living room of my parents’ house, and sixteen years old again.
Jackie crossed the room in her slow, sensuous way, over to the front door so she could peer through the curtain. I was intrigued. How could a limp, a leg that was a little shorter and just the barest bit thinner than the other one, be sexy? I watched her walk and she caught me watching. She gave me her sidelong look out of eyes shaped into Egyptian cat eyes with black eyeliner, and that seductively crooked smile that ended in two crescent-moon lines at the left side of her mouth, one moon a little smaller and nestled inside the other.
She and my sister Reenie were waiting for their dates to the Redemptorist football game. Reenie was a couple of months shy of fifteen, but Jackie was roughly my age, so my parents had agreed to let Reenie go on a car date if they went straight to the game and back.
The old man and I were watching the Friday night fights. Actually, I was waiting until the girls got off before I went over to Acy's Pool Hall to shoot a few games with Murphy—no football game for us, we were going to be pool sharks when we grew up. The old man was waiting for the girls’ dates with his police .357 Magnum on the table next to his easy chair. I knew he was going to pull something, and I wanted to be there to see it.
Reenie was in the next room, in front of the mirror over the mantel, putting on eye makeup, wiping it off, putting on more. My mother was standing behind her telling her she was putting on too much, then telling her to put a little more on over here or over there. Periodically one or the other of them would call out over the noise of the boxing match to Jackie, “Are they here yet?” They both were nervous as cats.
The doorbell rang and Jackie moved in her slow, deliberate way to let the guys in. They strutted over the doorsill, cool cats in their shirts with pointed collars, shoes with pointed toes, and high-waisted trousers. They smoothed the sides of their Brylcreemed hairdos with their palms.
Jackie introduced them to the old man and then to me.
That was another thing, that voice of hers, husky and breathy all at once, the words slipping quickly, effortlessly, over the tongue, coming out like an expensive whiskey goes down.
I said hello to the dates like any regular person would. Not the old man. He didn't say a word, just scowled harder at the television set, which put those guys on edge right away. The little crescents at the side of Jackie's mouth nestled closer to each other.
Reenie came in, everyone said goodnight, and the guys, more relaxed now, told the old man it was very nice to meet him, snickering a bit, as if they thought he was deaf or dumb. They nodded at me and started to swagger out. Just as they got the door opened, there came a roar like the side of a mountain falling off. Those boys’ pants fell from just below the rib cage to down around their hips. Even the cool and confident Jackie jumped.
The old man nailed them in the doorway with what was actually a watered-down (by Dixie beer) version of his famous Rafferty Laser Eye, meant to cut the confession out of the most hardened murderer. He turned thunder into words—"Not one second past eleven"—and the laser eye came to rest on the Magnum. The second boy out the door scuffed the back of the first one's shoes. The girls were mortified beyond belief. Reenie looked as if she was sure she'd never have another date.
Several hours later, in the dead silence of the night, Jackie appeared next to my bed, and without a word we began our dangerous liaison. In all that silence, our deep hot breaths were like two dragons breathing fire; the catch in her throat was as loud as the beating of the telltale heart; the creak on the stairs froze me, my hand over her mouth.
But it wasn't a creak on the stairs, it was in the bed-springs. We moved to the floor and started all over, and there was nothing like the thrill of all that passion forced to be silent, or the fear that we might be discovered. Danger and desire make strange and exciting bedfellows, especially for a sixteen-year-old boy being seduced by his sister's best friend, with his old man's eagle ears almost directly below him—uh, her.
It was almost too exciting, too dangerous. Almost. Every time we did it, I swore I'd never do it again. After all, I was a good Catholic boy, and maybe I wasn't doomed yet, not unless the old man caught me. Then Jackie would slip into my room in the middle of some lusty teenage dream and I'd think about the nuns at catechism saying I was born guilty and I'd figure I might as well know what I was guilty of, so I'd move over and hold the covers up and she'd get in beside me. It was funny—we'd always start in the bed, until the first spring squealed—just calling out to the old man, an entirely different sound than when you turned over—then we'd freeze, excited as much by terror as anything else, before we got down on the floor.
Danger was the taste and smell of Jackie.
Ma twisted in the car seat and said to Reenie, “We sure had some fun, didn't we?” She lifted the handkerchief to her eyes. “You two were such good friends.”
Reenie tried to smile. She'd answered in monotones every time Ma had asked her something. Otherwise she was staring at me. I could feel her eyes boring into the back of my head. Reenie and Jackie were good friends all right, but that's not to say they had remained good friends. You see, twenty-two years ago, in the deepest dark of a hot night on my bedroom floor, it wasn't the old man who'd caught us, it was Reenie.
The funeral home was a sprawling pale terracotta-colored half mansion–half castle with a turret and gables and archways bordering a veranda, and a lot of decorative tile work. It was like something out of a Disney fantasy. Or the result of a millionaire's whimsy.
We got out of the car, from behind the shield of its tinted glass, and even with my shades on the day was too bright, too beautiful, the funeral home too never-never-landish. It was all unreal. I had this peculiar feeling I used to get when I played hooky from school, a feeling that because I wasn't where I ought to be, where I was wasn't real. I wasn't supposed to be here at this strangely whimsical funeral home. Jackie wasn't supposed to be dead.
For a few moments as my mother, sister, and I made our way to the side door of the funeral parlor, I was dislocated. My legs moved but were not part of me, though my body was following. Any second now something would go Pop! and none of this would be happening. However, the sight of the Impastato twins arriving, dressed in their black suits, with skinny black ties, confirmed that all of this was indeed happening.
Both of them had their hair slicked in place—I'd seen them using combs when they got out of their car, both with the same mannerism, combing with one hand, the other hand sliding over the hair after the comb had gone through it—hair that was shiny with some kind of grease. But as soon as the smiley one nodded at me as he was going in through the door I held open, his front hank of hair fell forward on his forehead. By the time we walked to the parlor, where a short visitation was being held before the funeral, the other one had a matching ‘do.
From the relentless brilliance of the blazing
sun we passed into a wide, softly lit hallway muted by thick carpeting and flocked wallpaper. There was brilliance here, too, in the gold flocking, the beveled mirrors in gilded frames, polished brass sconces with electrically lit white tapers, and red carpeting that flowed into a parlor furnished with satiny upholstered Victorian chairs and sofas, and small highly polished occasional tables with marble tops. It occurred to me that the whole place was a lot like Diana's apartment, except on a much larger scale.
None of us spoke as we went through the hallway to the parlor. The hushed quality of the air forbade it. But I expected the usual murmur of voices in the parlor as people stood around waiting for the service to begin.
Instead there was a hush in the parlor as well. It was a double parlor with an elaborate archway of heavy decorative molding at its center. Large sliding pocket doors that came together under the archway were pushed back into the walls now. Dainty Victorian chairs and loveseat-size sofas were lined up along the perimeter of the big room, equally dainty tables separating them every now and then.
On one side of the room sat Jackie's parents and people I assumed were relatives. Squared off on the other side were Jackie's husband and friends, among them her next-door neighbor Pam, Jeffrey Bonage, and Bubba Brevna. The group was split the same way it had been at Jackie's wedding, with the addition of some new faces.
Bubba sat on a chair the seat of which was half the size of his. He had his arms crossed over his chest, his legs open and his feet planted securely in front of him to keep his balance. He was directly across from Jackie's father. They both had deep frowns imprinted on their foreheads.
The East Bank side and the West Bank side were divided by a sea of red carpeting. My mother went straight across it to Jackie's parents without hesitation. Reenie hesitated, then followed her. I was actually more interested in the West Bank side.
Larry Silva was sitting fairly close to the doorway. I let my hand rest on his shoulder. I started to tell him what you're supposed to tell bereaved people, but I didn't. He looked away from me before I could, his mouth struggling to keep control within his beard, his eyes brimming. I tightened my grip on his shoulder a second and let my hand slide off, then went after Reenie to pay my respects to Jackie's parents.
Mrs. Guillot, Jackie's mother, kissed Reenie and took my hand, but all the time her other hand was on Ma's arm, not letting her go. She and Mr. Guillot were on a loveseat, but she squeezed over and pulled Ma down next to her. I felt sorry for her. She looked old and faded and alone, getting no comfort from her husband, whose only reaction was to set his permanent disapproving scowl deeper.
Mrs. Guillot introduced us to her sister and her husband, who were sitting next down the line. The sister had a relatively unlined face, made-up flawlessly. I guessed she'd made a happier marriage than Mrs. Guillot, and judging by the jewelry she wore and the way both she and her husband were dressed, a more affluent one as well.
But remember how I said this story really began the morning before Jackie called me, in Maurice's office? Remember I told you that the reason for this is because New Orleans is really just a tiny town? This is something I can go on about at length—about how sometimes it seems not more than a couple of hundred people live here and they all seem to be related; about how if you should happen to go somewhere and meet someone new, given fifteen minutes’ worth of conversation, you find out your second cousin's wife is the new acquaintance's niece's husband's sister-in-law or something.
Well, here it was happening again, at Jackie's funeral. But nothing so far removed. Mrs. Guillot's sister and her husband were Mr. and Mrs. Greene, and next to them sat their daughter Nita, Jackie's first cousin.
I hadn't noticed her when I first walked in—I was too busy checking out the talent on the other team. Not only that, she looked different, all dressed up in a dark green dress with a white collar, white stockings, patent leather shoes with grosgrain bows, her hair pulled back with barrettes.
Her eyes were red and swollen behind her tortoise-shell glasses. We murmured something to each other, at about the same time, about it being a small world, then I walked with Reenie to the end of the parlor where we stood slightly away from another group of people who'd just arrived.
I assumed they were people who had frequented The Emerald Lizard. That's because, a couple at a time, they went over to Jeffrey Bonage, though a few of them stopped in front of Larry. One, a woman of ample build, braved a walk down the middle of the room to the casket, which was closed. She stood for a few moments with her head bowed and walked back. Mr. Guillot didn't seem to like her. Maybe it was the penciled-in beauty mark high on one cheekbone and the bright red hair done up in a beehive, or the way her shoulders were thrown back and her chest thrust out. Bubba, however, followed her walk with his eyes until he would have had to turn his head. His eyes snapped back to Mr. Guillot, who glowered at him.
Into the middle of this face-off strode a newcomer, a man in a dove-gray suit with Western details and a ten-gallon hat. It was Clem Winkler. He went right up to Jackie's parents, stood before her mother and took off his hat.
“Ma'am,” he drawled, “sir,” with a nod at Jackie's father, “I sure am sorry about your girl Jackie. I loved her.”
Larry Silva let out an audible sob and Clem turned on the heels of his cowboy boots, which looked as if they'd been kicking cowpies all morning. He went off to do some time in front of the casket. Bubba and Mr. Guillot stopped staring each other down and had a fast, dead heat draw to see who could shoot the angriest glare at Clem's back. I noticed that Jeffrey Bonage was in on the action, too, glaring at Clem, but Clem was wearing his glare-proof vest. Impervious, he situated a chair so he was closest to the casket and sat his slim hips down on its slippery, rose-embossed upholstery.
Nobody seemed to like all this very much except one of the Impastato twins, the one who did all the talking, smiling and nodding while the other followed along. He elbowed his brother and the two of them stood up and crossed over to Jackie's parents where he said, “We're sorry, too. We are Frank and Vincent Impastato and we both were very good friends of your daughter's.” He emphasized “very good friends” and led his brother to the casket. Together they mumbled a prayer.
Now all of this was very interesting and I, frankly, was on tenterhooks wondering what was going to happen next. Jackie's mother had been very polite, thanking both Clem and the Imps. Jackie's father, however, had taken on a perceptibly reddish hue about the neck and lower face. I think the appearance of Rodney Nutley at that moment would have sent him into a seizure. But I didn't imagine that Bubba thought Godzilla was presentable enough to let out of his cage to attend a funeral. I was thinking that everyone else was here, though. Then I took it right back—Aubrey Wohl wasn't.
The Imps were sitting down and Reenie was putting her hand on my arm. She looked distraught. “Should we?” She nodded toward the casket. I shook my head.
It was Bubba's turn. He stood up looking extremely hostile, bypassed the speech to the parents and headed straight to the casket. Not to be outdone, he plopped himself down on the prayer rail that had been placed alongside it. His rounded shoulders seemed to heave a bit.
Jackie's father could stand this no longer. He seared his wife with an accusatory eye as if to say this was all her idea, got up and left the room. Bubba got up and reclaimed his seat. Mr. Guillot returned a couple of minutes later with a priest. The priest began the service, cutting the visitation short by nearly fifteen minutes. From what he was saying, he obviously didn't know Jackie, but still he referred to her, at least once in every sentence, as “Jackie,” as if that made her more familiar to him. I don't know why it irked me. I guess it always irks me the way they talk about someone they didn't even know.
“Wouldn't you think he'd call her Jacqueline?” I whispered to Reenie, thinking the occasion called for at least some formality.
“No,” she whispered back, “that wasn't her name. He named her Jackie.” She meant Jackie's father. “He wanted a boy.”<
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13
An Arresting Interment
I spotted the car as soon as I pulled out on Canal Street in the tandem of cars going to the cemetery. It was a pale putty color, unmarked. Apparently everything he owned, even what he drove around in, was the same nondescript color he was. That isn't really fair since most unmarked cars are beige it seems, but I don't consider it unfair to accuse Dietz of being monochromatic or monomaniacal. not after what he did.
The deputy was with him, at the wheel. I wondered what the hell they were doing—tailing someone in a conspicuous line of hearse, limousines, and cars on the way to an interment? Sure enough, the car started up, made a U-turn, and joined the procession.
Jackie was being buried in the St. Louis Cemetery Number One, which is downtown just off the French Quarter. It's the oldest cemetery in the city, hundreds of crumbling, whitewashed tombs like tiny buildings, standing above the ground, safe houses for the dead so they're kept high and dry in a city that barely keeps itself above sea level.
Two police escorts, New Orleans police that is, on motorcycles, got us through the traffic in one unbroken line all the way to the cemetery. I wondered what they thought of the tail end of the line.
Once we got to the cemetery, though, the police stuck around instead of taking off as they usually do. I figured Mr. Guillot had given each of them a twenty to make sure the mourners weren't mugged during the service since the cemetery is in one of the roughest, most dangerous neighborhoods in town. All manner of trouble happens around there, including every now and then, a voodoo murder. Marie LaVeau is supposedly buried in St. Louis Number One, near the Basin Street entrance where we were entering. Gris-gris potions, bones, hair, dolls—you name it—are left at her tomb. And once in a while, nearby, a body will be found with some kind of gris-gris on it or next to it. Most of those murders are never solved.