Now Let's Talk of Graves

by Sarah Shankman

“Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “No need to. Kitty already knows.”

  One foot was jiggling now, a long, skinny foot in a white sneaker trimmed in the same pale yellow as the sweats. “Does, huh? She never said anything to me about it.”

  “That’s because she doesn’t know how to approach you. She’s scared.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of losing you. She loves you a lot, you know.”

  “Yeah.” Zoe was playing with a dark curl now, pulling it out, letting it pop back. “I know that. But why’d you say that about losing me? I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

  “Oh, yeah? Where do you think I’m going?”

  “Into a hospital probably. You keep throwing up and snorting, I don’t see where else you think you’re headed. You’re already losing a lot of the enamel on your pretty teeth from tossing your cookies. Have you noticed that?”

  Zoe pulled her top lip down, then said, “Are you here to give me lectures? I thought you were here to help get my money.”

  “I can do two things at once.”

  Zoe was standing.

  “Wait a minute. Let’s talk.” Sam knew sarcasm didn’t work. So why was she popping off? She needed her coffee. Zoe sat, waited.

  “I’m not here to give you lectures. Actually, I probably wouldn’t have mentioned it if you hadn’t brought it up.”

  Zoe’s foot was swinging again. “I just wanted to know.”

  “But I will tell you this.”

  Zoe leaned forward, ready to run right on out of there in those cute sneakers.

  Sam knew what that felt like. “Wait, just listen to this part, and then we’ll go on.” She hit it fast, all in a rush, afraid of stopping. “I don’t know if Kitty told you this, though you’d have picked it up last night at dinner if you were listening—I’m a recovering alcoholic. I was drunk for ten years, already well on my way when I was your age. No matter what you think, it’s pretty much the same thing as your stuffing your face then puking your guts out and your tooting junk up your nose. Addiction all comes from the same place—the same hole in your middle that needs to be filled up. I’ve been where you are. I know you don’t believe me. You think you’re all alone. You’re not. There are millions out there with the same problems, thinking they’re dealing with them the same way you are, and failing. I can help you if you want to be helped, put you in touch with some people. That’s the end of the lecture.” Sam took a quick breath. “Now, one of the things I’m interested in is if there’s any way in which your addiction could be related to your father’s death.”

  “What?” Zoe shook her head as if a bullet had just sped past, which was more or less what Sam intended.

  “Did your dad know you were a user?”

  Zoe shook her curls. “No way.”

  “Are you sure? He was a doctor. He knew the signs, Zoe. He wasn’t stupid.”

  “Yeah, but he wasn’t around much either.” Her answer was real quiet.

  Sam could almost see her, a tiny girl in a big old house on a Sunday afternoon, playing alone in her room. She knew. She’d been there.

  “He knew you were bingeing and purging.”

  “I guess so. Yeah, I mean he used to talk with me about my weight. Said I ought to put a little flesh on. But I think—” She held out a matchstick of an arm and her voice took on an edge. “I think I’m—”

  “You think you’re too fat. Now, I don’t think your bulimia has anything to do with your dad’s death—but drugs are a whole other matter. You never know what rabbit hole they’re gonna lead you down.”

  Zoe stood and walked around the room as if she’d never seen it before. She ran her fingers along silver-framed pictures of relatives long dead, stared out the window for a while. Then she turned. “What do you want to know?”

  “Just tell me how you got involved with coke. Tell me about your dealer.”

  That set her off again. Zoe paced, but this time she was moving her mouth too, starting back at the beginning, or least the beginning as she understood it. She told Sam about faking her dad’s signature on notes to the teacher. Then doing it for other kids for cash. Changing the money into coins, the building blocks for the silver towers in her room. Then, because she thought that was off the subject, she jumped back to the ’ludes, faking prescriptions for them.

  “And then, well, you know, one drug just leads to another. You can’t keep doing ’ludes forever.” She gave Sam a look, as if this were a quiz.

  “’Cause you keep falling down, is that what you mean?”

  “Right.” Zoe popped her a little grin.

  It wasn’t exactly cute, Sam thought, letting her feel smug, like knowledge about drugs was cool, but as all of the Lee women had let her know in one way or another, Zoe’s problems weren’t exactly why she’d been invited here today, were they?

  “So coke became your drug of choice?” For lots of good reasons, Sam was tempted to add, the primary one being that it also suppresses your appetite, an extra added attraction for a bulimic. But she didn’t.

  “Right.”

  “And who’s your dealer?”

  Zoe gave her an even look, but her mouth stayed closed.

  “Okay. I’ll tell you why it’s important. Let’s say your dad did know you were using. Let’s say he found out who you were buying the stuff from and he decided he was going to track down the son of a bitch, and I’m sure that’s what he would have called him, and beat the doowaddy out of him. Do you think then maybe this person might have had reason to drive a Buick into your dad’s head?”

  “You bitch!”

  Zoe was standing again, ready to roll.

  “Sit down,” Sam barked.

  Zoe didn’t budge.

  There were times to be cool—and times not to. “Sit the fuck down!”

  Zoe sat down with a big pout on her face. Her very very pale face.

  “Call me what you want, but I’m also a realist. And though what I’ve painted for you is a highly unlikely scenario, it might also be the truth. And the truth is what I came over here from Atlanta for. Not to waste my time or yours. Not to be jerked around. Do you know what I mean?”

  Zoe nodded.

  “So let’s get to it. Just tell me the name of your dealer, and I’ll check him out. I won’t tell him that you told me—”

  “You promise?”

  “—unless I absolutely have to. Like I said, there’s probably nothing there. But I’d just like to close that door for myself. Okay?”

  Sam was trembling a little inside. Playing the heavy wasn’t her favorite game.

  “Okay.”

  “So?”

  “Billy Jack.”

  “Jack’s his last name?”

  “I guess so. That’s all I ever heard anybody call him.”

  “Where do I find him?”

  “He’s a waiter at Patrissy’s on Royal.”

  “Good. Thanks.”

  “Can I go now?”

  “You may.”

  Sam thought it was the better part of wisdom not to remind Zoe that she’d invited herself in. She hadn’t called this meeting in the first place.

  Ten

  MARIETTA DUCHAMPS DUPREE, wife of Maynard Dupree, Esq., mother of his three sons, former Queen of Comus, and president-elect of the Orleans Club, an Uptown ladies’ social organization whose members met in its lovely mansion on St. Charles to lunch and talk about needlepoint, Audubon prints, Paris boutiques, and good works, had watched Maynard struggle into his clothes early that morning—forbearing to tell him that he needed to either get a new suit or lay off the cream sauces. Then Maynard heaved himself into his brand-new Lincoln and peeled out of their driveway.

  The minute he was gone, she dialed her lover’s number. “He’s off to the wars. Wanta come over?”

  “I’d love to, darlin’, but I can’t. Got business to tend to this morning.”

  “I remember when I used to be your only business.”


  “Now, sugar, don’t be that way.”

  “Now, sugar,” Marietta growled deep in her throat, and they both laughed. Then, “I sure do wish I knew what he was up to.”

  “What do you care?”

  “You know I don’t really. Except, if I get the goods on him—well, I could use another trip to somewhere nice. Like Barbados.”

  “Aren’t you bad?”

  “You loved Barbados. Especially knowing that Maynard was paying for it.”

  “I did. Ain’t I bad too?”

  “You are terrible.”

  “So what you think?”

  “I don’t know. But he’s been busting a gut to get out of here every Wednesday morning for about the past six weeks. Up at the crack of dawn. I know he’s meeting whoever it is over in Lafayette Cemetery.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not. I followed him one morning. But I can’t exactly trail him into there. He’d see me in a minute.”

  “You think that’s where they’re screwing?”

  “Honey, I don’t know. We know Maynard’s weird, married me only ’cause my family’s even better’n his, but, like I told you, after the three boys, bang, bang, bang, I zipped it up. Said, No way, son. I’m off to Spa Land, staying six months if that’s what it takes. You hire a nanny and nursemaid for those chi’rren. I am getting svelte. And staying that way.”

  “I love your knobby little knees.”

  “Get on with you.” Then her laugh erupted. “Can you see Maynard huffing and puffing up against one of those old tombs?”

  “Or inside. Maybe they got into one of those giant economy-sized numbers—the ones that look like a little temple—they’re in there doing the dirty deed.”

  “Oh. That’s disgusting. Gives me the shivers.”

  “You wouldn’t think so if it were the two of us. You want to try it sometime? Don’t you have the key to your family’s mausoleum?”

  “Oh.” Marietta gave a little sigh. “I’m fanning myself. You have the nastiest mind in Orleans Parish. Chéri, you old sugar tit, you.”

  *

  Maynard was humping all right, but not in the way Marietta envisioned.

  He was busting a gut, trying to figure a way out of this mess. He was a lawyer, for chrissakes. How could he have let this dumb peckerwood get him into this can of worms? It was a disaster.

  And it wasn’t like he could go to somebody and talk about it.

  What the hell was he going to say?

  He looked down at his gold Rolex. As usual, he was late. He didn’t know why the son of a bitch insisted on these crack-of-dawn meetings. Except he didn’t want anyone seeing them either. But wouldn’t you think they could meet somewhere normal? Up ahead, he could see one of the bastard’s boots sticking out. He was always doing that, hiding behind one of the tombs and then jumping out. Boo! He was gonna kill his golden goose with a heart attack, he wasn’t careful.

  Maynard could just see himself sitting down with his father. Saying, Dad, there’s something I need to talk to you about. The bulldog-faced bastard’d throw him right out of his study. Ever since his dad had gone head to head with Huey Long—Dad, being one of the Old Guard, tried to teach that country boy about city ways—he’s never had a moment’s patience for what he called pantywaists.

  You wuddn’t such a pantywaist, you’d have run that bastard Church Lee through, he’d always said. You never should have let him get away that day out under the oak in Audubon Park. Let yourself get stopped by an old bitch with a dog and a couple of cops who were on my goddamn payroll, for chrissakes.

  Well, Maynard should have. He should have had it over with some honor when he was young. His father would have fixed it for him then. But not now. No way.

  And now, finally, Church Lee was dead. He’d got his wish at last. But boy oh boy was there the piper to pay.

  “Counselor, oh, Counselor.”

  Goddammit to hell. The trash was playing with him, calling him from behind that tomb with the flying angel on top, like he was some kind of fish on a line.

  If only he hadn’t been so drunk. He couldn’t remember much at all of that afternoon in the Pelican that led to this day.

  Oh, sure, there were some things that stuck with him. He’d already had a few shots, he remembered that, crying in his beer and trying not to show it, pissed at himself that he hadn’t stopped Church’s kid, Zoe, from being queen the next day. He remembered how he was trying to think of something to embarrass her with, some stunt to pull in front of the reviewing stand or at the ball, when he’d gotten into that conversation with Jimbo. They were talking about Jimbo’s beating up his wife. That was it—the part that suckered him in, that he liked, that dirty little secret down inside himself that he would never tell anyone—what really turned him on. Not that he’d ever slugged a woman—but it was the idea of it.… And then there were a whole lot more drinks. He was buying, he remembered that part, and that semitrashy redhead, Chéri, the one who played tennis with Marietta sometime, anyway, Chéri came in, twitching her butt all over the place, and then there was some joking about Jimbo killing somebody.

  Killing that nigger ambulance driver, that’s what it was. Lots of joking. Everybody knew they were joking, right? And then they threw Chéri in the pot. He’d said something about just doing it, not talking about it. It gave him a headache to think of that now.

  And then Church.

  Calvin was the one who said that. Something like—throw Church Lee into it and you got yourself a deal.

  Well, it was a joke. Everybody knew about the feud between him and Church, how they’d been jacking each other around for years. Actually, they’d grown kind of comfortable with it, kind of affectionate toward each other, in a grudging sort of way, the way you do with a toothache you just keep chewing on. Something almost pleasurable about it.

  The next thing he knew, Church was dead, squashed like a bug on St. Charles Avenue, a couple of blocks from his house.

  How did that look?

  Well, it didn’t look good, he could tell you that, even if he could prove that he’d been sitting with a couple of boys in a suite upstairs in the Roosevelt after the Queen’s Breakfast, having a nightcap. At least that’s where he thought he was.

  It was true that lately his drinking had been scaring him a little. He needed to cut back. Boy, he and Church had had that in common, all right. Blood boozers. Ha! But recently, every once in a while, it had gotten to where he just couldn’t remember things. He’d have these little bitty blips of blackout, and then, a big one. The truth was, he wasn’t really sure how he’d gotten home that evening. He remembered going into that hotel suite. But he couldn’t form a picture of himself coming out. However, he was damned sure he hadn’t stolen an antique car, that’s what the papers had said, an antique car, and run over Church. Nope. He’d been having a nightcap upstairs with—well, he couldn’t exactly remember who. But if anyone asked him, that was his story and he was sticking to it. So far nobody’d asked him. Oh, people gave him some funny looks, knowing about him and Church and their history. But nobody’d come sniffing around. The cops had kept a pretty low profile and a pretty tight lid on this thing.

  The cowboy boot jiggled again and Maynard jumped, sick of it. He hadn’t lost all the speed he’d had at the University of Virginia. He landed on that sucker with all fours.

  Came up empty.

  Nothing in the boot.

  And then the son of a bitch jumped him.

  Grabbed him around the neck.

  Wrestled him back and forth on the ground.

  Crook of an elbow holding him, choking him.

  Jimbo saying, “You give? You give?”

  Getting grass stains all over his good gray suit. Goddammit.

  “I give!”

  “Say it again.”

  “Give!”

  “Like you mean it.”

  “I mean it, you son of a bitch!”

  “Now, now.” Jimbo turned him loose. “There’s the old May
nard.”

  Maynard sat up, a fat boy hunkering up out of the grass, humiliated.

  Jimbo was laughing fit to bust a gut. He leaned back on his heels in his stocking feet, a hole in one sock. He rested his hands on the thighs of his jeans.

  “You bring me something?” he asked.

  That’s what he’d said at the end of that first conversation he and Maynard had had after Church had got himself squashed like a bug.

  Now, Mr. Dupree, us knowing what we know, what you gonna bring me?

  Eleven

  HARRY WAS WAITING for Sam in the Esplanade Lounge of the Royal Orleans, a wide, sunny atrium with windows onto the old Wildlife and Fisheries Building. On the St. Louis side paraded four little tables and comfy wing chairs, where anybody who looked halfway presentable could rest awhile.

  For the past decade this part of the Esplanade had been Harry’s unofficial office when he was in town.

  There were a couple of pay phones tucked back beside the checkroom which some people knew to call, ring twice, hang up, call back, and if Harry was there, he’d answer.

  More than once when he was with a date he wanted to impress he’d taken her into the lounge, slipped out, called the bell captain from one of those phones, and had himself paged.

  Harry liked to think he’d grown out of that.

  But with a woman like Sam, who knew? He might try anything.

  Look at her there, swinging up the steps from the Royal Street side. Her short curls bopping, she was wearing a red silk top that stopped right at her waist above a short black-and-white polka-dot pleated skirt that showed off her legs. She had great legs. If he could write a song about the way that woman made him feel, he’d have Nashville eating out of his hand.

  How would it begin?

  I thought I knew how angels flew till you stepped off the plane.

  Not bad.

  She was striding toward him, hipbones first, shoulders back, head last, like a model.

  “Hey, sport.” Sam was snapping her fingers in his face.

  “You look like you’re off on a slow boat to Tsingtao.”

  *

  Harry ordered another cup of coffee. Sam was drinking iced tea.

  “Shoot,” she said.