“Don’t be silly, we were over earlier this evening, but you weren’t home. Now, why don’t you and Mr. Young sit down? You know Harry Zack?”
“Know him?” thundered Tench Young in that hearty manner of some Southern men, as if he were about to hand you a check for a million dollars. “Harry here’s my nephew!”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I’d for—”
“My right-hand man. He’s working for me. Even as we speak!”
“You selling insurance, Harry?” Kitty grinned at him. “You here writing policies for wives think the old man won’t make it through the night?”
“Chief bottle-washer,” Harry muttered.
Sam watched the flush creep up his neck. His uncle was embarrassing him.
“Nose like a bloodhound,” Young roared. “Nothing you can hide from that boy. Doing investigations for me. Saves me a shitload—’scuse me, ladies—of money. Kind of young man I want to have on my team. Bring him up in the company. Take over from me someday—when I get all those little fillies of mine married off. Sad, you know, man has no sons.” Young reached across the table and slapped Harry on the back, in the process spilling Sam’s drink. “Oh, I’m so sorry, my dear.”
Sam dabbed at the water on her turquoise silk while politely brushing away his apologies. She ought to have known better than to get all dolled up for a bunch of drunks, she thought. Saran Wrap would have been more appropriate, or combat boots and a raincoat.
Harry was handing her his handkerchief. “Hope you didn’t ruin your pretty dress.”
“Thanks. It’s just water. It’ll be okay.”
“Do you want me to—”
But she never heard what he was going to offer. Another wave of merrymakers crowded into the room, drawing everyone’s attention.
Tench Young punched Church in the arm and pointed. “Hey, bubba. There’s your friend, Maynard Dupree.”
Church turned, frowning in the direction Tench pointed. “That son of a bitch,” he growled. “Look at him. Too bad he didn’t fall off that horse in the parade and break his neck. All dressed up in his captain costume, looked like a fool trying to be Roy Rogers. Did you see his horse rear up, bucking like a bastard in front of the reviewing stand? Zoe waving her little hand off. Thank God he didn’t have the grit to block her being queen. I would have shot him.”
“Now, watch yourself, son,” Tench said, laughing up at his tall friend. Then he turned back to the table. “Every time Church sees that old boy Maynard Dupree, he gets all pushed out of shape. I’ve warned Church to stay away from him. Makes his blood pressure shoot right up and I cain’t afford for this ol’ hoss”—he squeezed Church’s arm—“to be kicking the bucket. Not with all the insurance I’m carrying on him.”
Church laughed, showing lots of pearly teeth. “Don’t you worry about me,” he said. Sam noticed the humor didn’t extend above his mouth. His eyes were somewhere else. They looked like they were seeing something awful. Then he focused back into the room. “It’s not my health I’m worried about. It’s going to the po’house.” He laughed his big empty laugh again.
“Well, I reckon this whole sheebang has cost you a sou or two, hadn’t it, son?” Now Tench slapped Church on the back. He was one of those men who constantly touched, poked, prodded. “Little girl’s debut and on top of it being queen. Ain’t chicken feed, is it?”
That was Church’s cue to laugh again, but instead, he looked away. Sam watched him stare at the mural of Jackson Square for a long count of five. His brow gnarled like a gathering storm. Then he blinked.
“Church?” Kitty frowned at her brother.
He shook his head and turned back with a big grin. “Think somebody just walked on my grave.” He shivered, hamming it up for the effect. “You ever have that feeling?”
Sure, everyone nodded.
“Well, listen.” Church rubbed his hands together. “We better get into the ballroom. Gonna miss my baby’s breakfast.” The man was used to getting the show on the road, Sam thought, a surgeon accustomed to giving orders. “Celebrate the last couple of hours of my baby’s being queen. Come on, y’all.” He hustled everyone out of their seats. “Let’s eat us some breakfast. Drink us some champagne. Make us some merry.” Now he was herding them out of the room. “Put it all on my tab,” he called to the waiter, who nodded. “All of it, Charlie. Nobody’s money is good here tonight. Nobody but Church Lee’s.”
It was two-thirty when they piled out of the hotel into waiting limousines, waking drivers who had grabbed the chance for a little snooze.
“Church!” Kitty called to her brother on the sidewalk. “You come on with me and Sam and Zoe. There’s room for you with us. Ma Elise went home a long time ago.”
“Nawh.” He waved. “I left my car in the parking lot ’fore the parade. Here it is right now.” Church slurred, bobbing and weaving. The attendant stepped out of the old black Mercedes, palmed Church’s tip. “I’ll drive it on home.”
“We can’t let him do it,” Sam said. “He’s way too drunk.”
“He won’t listen,” said Zoe in the tired voice of one who’s given up trying.
“Of course not,” said Sam. “You can’t reason with booze. But let me see what I can do. Since I’m not family, maybe he’ll let me drive.”
She was out of the limo and halfway to Church’s car, running over in her mind what she was going to say to him, what she said to other drunks while doing Twelve Step work. She spoke his language, had been where he was more than once. With a lot of luck she might keep him from getting behind the wheel.
But he was too fast for her. There was not even a prayer of grabbing the keys. Bang. Slam. The dark car lumbered out into the street and picked up speed. Its tires squealed as he turned right onto Canal.
“Come on.” Kitty had rolled down her window. “We’ll follow him home.”
Sam jumped in the front seat with the driver. “Do not lose that car.”
“Yes, ma’am!” He accelerated, burning rubber.
Then began a rerun of the drive from the airport the day before. There had been too many movies filmed in this town, Sam thought. Everybody was cruising for a bit part.
“We have got to do something about Church’s drinking,” said Kitty. “He won’t say, but I know a friend of his, a member of the State Licensing Board, has spoken to him unofficially, warned him he’s risking a lot with his behavior. And his malpractice insurance—there’s been a suit—”
Zoe stared out the window. Her reign as Queen of Comus was finally, finally over. And her daddy was drunk again. All that glitter and glory—and none of it was real. Well, maybe the diamonds around her neck were, she thought, fingering them. Nothing had changed. Here they were, rolling down old Canal Street. Next year another girl would sit on the reviewing stand at the Boston Club and watch the Comus parade pass by. Would her life change? Zoe stared out into the soft rain. The streetlights were ringed with yellow halos. She closed her eyes and could still see them behind her eyelids—like golden crowns. They’d be gone at first light.
No one in the long limo noticed the car that pulled in right behind, making them a little caravan. Church in the lead, the long black car full of women now the filling in the middle of a sandwich.
The limo crossed double yellow lines and ran red lights, following Church. Where were the cops, wondered Sam, when you needed them?
Up ahead the taillights of the Mercedes flashed and flashed again as Church fishtailed around Lee Circle, coming into where St. Charles became a boulevard. He was just easing through, sliding by. This drunk was lucky tonight, wasn’t he? At least he had been this far, but he couldn’t count on Lady Luck forever.
Sam remembered, it had been ten years since she’d driven like the man in front of her, her eyes struggling for focus but zeroing in on a little beam of light. She knew Church was holding on to a clear signal, a path that would lead him home. It had to, had to work, because the booze made him invincible. Nothing could stop him. Nothing could even touch him. With enough
booze in him, like every other drunk, he was Superman. He was flying.
Of course, he might fly right over a pedestrian. Or through a stop sign. Or blow an exit, misreading it to mean Come right on ahead, we like your kind.
An incident like that had finally grabbed Sam’s attention. She had gunned it at 105 mph past a STOP EXIT WRONG WAY sign south of San Francisco. She liked to drive fast when she was drunk. She liked to bad-mouth cops too—like the highway patrolman who had run her off the road.
“You could have killed me, you bastard.” She’d lunged at him as he pulled her out of what was left of her Austin-Healy.
“I was trying to, you stupid bitch.” He’d thrown her into the back of his black and white, not caring if she was hurt, snapping the cuffs on her. “Before you kill a real human being.”
Nothing had grabbed her attention before. Shattered glasses, lost shoes, rolled cars, broken friendships and promises, hangovers, dry heaves, hallucinations, black-outs—none of it had jerked her up and made her face the fact that she was an alcoholic. She couldn’t handle her booze, it was running her life, and that was a problem. But that next morning when she woke up in the women’s drunk tank in San Mateo County with her license lifted and narrowly averted disaster staring her in the face, she hit bottom. She called her lawyer, then her doctor. Get me out of here, she said, and into a treatment program.
That had been her first step on the long road back.
In front of them, Church was weaving over into the streetcar tracks in the neutral ground, looking like he might not make it till tomorrow.
She wondered how many years he’d been drinking.
She thought about Zoe too. The apple never fell far from the tree. Sam remembered the look on the girl’s face when she’d walked in on her earlier that evening in the ladies’ room at the Fairmont. Zoe, wearing the simple white slip of a gown she’d changed into for the breakfast, was startled. She spilled her coke, looking like a little girl with her hand in the cookie jar. How long would it take for Zoe to hit bottom?
Then suddenly from behind them a car blinked its lights once, twice, and roared past.
It was a heavy car, a very old Buick, a make Sam could identify from the little holes down its side.
The Buick flew by, honking at Church, who swerved sharply to the right, missing another parked car by millimeters. Then the Buick kept going, squeezing past a cross street at the beginning of a red light, picking up even more speed and disappearing into the wet mist.
“Oh, my Lord!” said Kitty.
“Fool ain’t gonna see dawn,” said the driver.
“You’re probably right,” Sam agreed. “How much farther till we’re home?”
“Six or seven more blocks,” the driver guessed.
“Pray.” Kitty punched Zoe. “Sit up and pray that your daddy makes it home in one piece.”
Zoe, who had dozed off, groaned, “Oh, lordy.”
*
G.T. didn’t know what had come over her.
Usually she just followed the calls on the ambulance’s radio. That’s what she was supposed to do. But tonight, for the past half hour, she’d had this itchy feeling. A little voice inside kept whispering things.
“G.T., where the hell you think you’re going?”
That wasn’t the little voice. That was Arkadelphia Lolley, who was her partner tonight. The 300-pound white man from Tallulah bit down on his words real hard, the way people from north Louisiana did.
“We supposed to be sitting right here till we get a call to go. Covering our section. What exactly is it you have in mind? You hungry? Is it some oysters that you want? A po’boy?”
“That’s what’s on your mind, Ark. I can’t even begin to explain what’s on mine.”
“Well, I just hope you tell ’em it was you who was driving when they call us in and chew us out for not being where we supposed to. What we gone do we get a call we can’t get to in time ’cause you got some weird bug up your butt? ’Specially after we lost that little bitty sucker yesterday got up and ran? You think we ain’t got enough trouble?”
“It’s me who’ll do the explaining,” G.T. said, thinking that that was going to be awfully hard to do. She could just hear herself saying: Unh-huh, and then this voice in my head said: This here’s the goddess speaking, get yourself on over to Uptown. Right. Left. Left. Right. Now keep on heading toward St. Charles. Good girl.
Like I was her baby child.
*
All of a sudden Church stopped. He gave no signal, no warning, just braked right in the middle of an intersection.
“Oh, my God,” Kitty moaned as they pulled on around, double-parking a little way up in the next block of St. Charles. “Oh, Lord, what now?”
Kitty and Sam and the driver jumped out. Zoe stayed put.
Church stumbled from the Mercedes, leaned against its side.
“He’s two blocks from home,” Kitty muttered, lifting her pink silk that was already ruined in the quickening rain. “You’d think he could wait to take a leak.”
“And that he could get out of the middle of the street,” said the driver.
It was then that the Buick charged from out of nowhere. Or at least that’s how it seemed in the wet, moonless night. The thirty-year-old car with the grille full of chrome teeth lunged from the river side of St. Charles like a charging dinosaur.
“Church!!!” Kitty screamed.
And then there was a long silence, the kind that goes hand in hand with disaster.
Sam had seen hideous things happen before. They were always in slow motion. They took forever. You could reach out and stop them.
If you could just make yourself move.
If you could only get there in time.
Sam ran.
She pulled up her skirt, kicked off her high-heeled silver sandals, and sprinted full out.
The face of her lover Sean, killed four years before by a drunk driver, flew through her mind.
She couldn’t save Sean, but she could save Church. If she could just run faster. Faster. Faster.
But she wasn’t Superwoman. She couldn’t reach Church in time.
He was leaning over—maybe to throw up, maybe to tie his shoe. Whatever it was, it was the last thing Church Lee would ever do. The lumbering dinosaur of a Buick chewed right into him and took his head in one bite.
*
“Jehoshaphat!” said Arkadelphia as G.T. pulled up to the intersection. “Did you see that? Man popped up, his head squashed just like a watermelon. Holy jehoshaphat!”
*
The driver of the dark Buick threw the car into reverse. Rubber fried. The big car swerved, just missed a royal palm. It grazed the rear of G.T.’s ambulance. There was the sound of tinkling glass.
“Oh, my Lord!” Arkadelphia groaned. “We’re in for it now.”
G.T. threw her door wide and jumped out.
The Buick straightened, tapped the ambulance again in a second pass, then roared across the grassy boulevard divider which locals called the neutral ground. The Buick crossed the streetcar tracks running down the middle of the neutral ground, turned, and headed back the other way, back downtown.
“Did you see him?” Sam yelled at G.T., who nodded. The two of them stood on the streetcar tracks with hands out empty, rain pouring down their faces.
They had both seen the driver for an instant, for a flash, inside the big, mothering Buick. Wearing a carnival mask.
Seven
SIX WEEKS LATER Sam found herself once again on a plane about to land in New Orleans. They were almost in—the flat, timbered terrain giving way to the huge saucer of Lake Pontchartrain.
She hadn’t thought she’d be back so soon, though her thoughts often turned to the city, to Kitty and her family, who’d been doubled over with grief when she’d left—and to Harry.
He’d called her a couple of times in Atlanta, had sent her flowers once—violets, which she thought was awfully sweet, as was he—but he was also far too young, even for a flirtation, and fa
r too far away.
But now, as soon as she stepped off the plane, he was going to be right in her face. He’d called and said he’d meet her at the gate, and she’d said fine because there were a few things they needed to get squared away.
Kitty had called the week before, an absolute wreck. It seems as though in settling Church’s estate they’d found he had a million dollars’ worth of life insurance payable to his daughter Zoe—but Tench Young, his old friend who’d written the policy, said, unh-uh, no way. Tench would be happy to pay the quarter-million policy Church had carried for many years, but the additional three-quarters Church had bought six months before he met his Maker in the middle of St. Charles, forget it.
Tench said any policy held less than two years was subject to investigation.
Investigation of what? Sam demanded.
Church’s death, Kitty answered.
Does he think he killed himself? Does he think Church was driving the Buick? What the hell do the police say?
Death by misadventure. They’re working on it.
And until they catch the bastard who perpetrated the hit- and-run, Tench gets to keep his money?
He’s sicked Harry Zack on us.
What?
Harry’s running Preferred Reliance’s investigation.
“It’s a hell of a thing, Harry,” she said to him, now walking down your standard gateway-to-hell airport passageway.
He tried to take her garment bag, but she shrugged him off. She didn’t need someone who looked like JFK, Jr., in a beat-up old raincoat doing her favors, not if he was going to be on the other side. Because that’s why she was here—to see what she could do to help Kitty get Tench (and Harry) off her back, settle this issue, get Zoe her money, let the Lees get on with their lives.
He kept walking, then finally shrugged.
“It’s only business.” Though inside he wasn’t thrilled about Uncle Tench’s assignment either, except it had brought Sam back.
“I thought you were an old friend of the Lees’, of Kitty’s. Wasn’t your big sister in Kitty’s court when she was—doo-dah—Queen of the May? Doesn’t that make them like blood sisters?”
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