Now Let's Talk of Graves

by Sarah Shankman

  “Pretty common, right?”

  “’Specially in North Louisiana.”

  “How come you all say it like that?”

  “North Louisiana? Just snobby, I guess. It really is like another state. More like the rest of the Deep South—Mississippi, Alabama—dare I say, Georgia.”

  “And South Louisiana is—?”

  “New Orleans and Cajun country, up through Lafayette, is more European than Southern. We think those folks up in North Louisiana—Baptists eating white bread and frowning on dancing and anything else that’s fun—well, it runs contrary to our nature.”

  “And they think you’re all going to hell.”

  “That’s pretty much the size of it.”

  “Speaking of going to hell, the word from G.T. is that there’s more to Zoe’s involvement with drugs than Billy Jack. G.T. said she’s dealing.”

  “Oh, crap!”

  “Precisely my sentiments.”

  Harry leaned his head into his hands. “There’s no telling what’s gonna be in that ball of wax, depending on her contacts. Put her in Dutch with the Italian faction, she could be history right before our eyes.”

  “Don’t I know it. I’ll push Zoe, see if I can get her to tell me about her dealing. Girl may have the answer right in her hand, not even know it. Or know it and not want to cop to it.”

  “Great—if you can get her to talk. By the way, I’ve been asking a few questions about Maynard Dupree. Now I know he’s on your list, but I thought it couldn’t hurt.”

  Boy couldn’t be trusted to stick to the game plan. “You’re gonna scare him off.”

  “I never said I was going to do exactly what you wanted. Besides, does it make any sense, when our families run in the same circles, not to use what I’ve got?”

  Maybe she was being too stiff-necked. “Okay. I see your point. So?”

  “So.”

  “So?”

  “So—” He pushed his coffee spoon around on the little table. “So nobody knows nothing about the feud, except that it goes way back.”

  Sam couldn’t help but laugh. “You talked with a bunch of old friends and you got zip?”

  He could feel himself flush. He was 0 for 2 in this meeting and fading fast. “You’re so smart, you try. I’m telling you, Sam, you don’t know anything about Old New Orleans. Even if you’re on the inside, if they think it’s none of your business, they’ll cover for each other until death. After death. There’s no telling what you’d find in those mausoleums uptown in Lafayette No. 1 if you pried them open.”

  “No thanks, I’ll pass.” Then she made him an offer. “Listen, if I promise you we’ll go see Maynard together when the time feels right, will you leave it alone?”

  She could tell from his expression, he wasn’t at all happy about the way she put that.

  “Maybe.” He shrugged.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  She sounded like his third-grade teacher, the one he and some other kids had once locked in the basement. “Get off my back, Sam.”

  “Okay. Okay.” He was right. Why was she pushing him so hard? “Listen, G.T. told me a couple of interesting things about Jimbo. Said, one, he’s too tall to have been driving the Buick.”

  “The driver was short? Is that the way you remember it?”

  “I’m not sure. But shorter than Jimbo, according to her.”

  “Jimbo is pretty tall.”

  “And that Jimbo seems to have a new source of serious income.”

  He hated to have to say it, another point on her scorecard. But he did. “Great. That looks like something, huh?”

  “Worth checking out, I’d say.”

  “I’ll get right on it.”

  Silence hung in the air.

  He leaned back in his chair. “You’re saying you’d rather do it yourself.”

  “Well—” This was very hard for her. One of the lessons of the program was that it served no one to insist on shouldering things all by yourself. It was a lesson she had to learn again and again.

  “You think I’m a total fuckup,” Harry said.

  “I didn’t say that. I just have some trouble with—” Letting you have the good parts. Letting go of the reins.

  “You didn’t have to. Listen, now you listen.” His chair hit the floor loud and hard. He couldn’t help it. His ego was on the line, his young man’s ego. “I never asked you to come here. I never asked you to poke your nose, pretty though it may be, into my business.”

  He was standing, reaching for his wallet.

  She felt terrible about this. “I’ll get it,” she said.

  “Goddammit! Do not tell me that you will pick up the check when I am telling you to go screw yourself. When I am telling you that I have had it up to here with your bossiness and your pushiness and your talking to me like I’m a five-year-old.”

  He pulled a wad of money out of his wallet without looking and tossed it on the table.

  “And do not tell me I’m leaving too big a tip. This is my table in my favorite hangout in my town. And from now on I’m working on my case. By myself. Capice?”

  He grabbed the worn backpack that served as his briefcase and flung it over his shoulder.

  “Do you understand what I’m saying, Ms. Adams?”

  She did.

  “Good.”

  He stomped off in the direction of Royal Street, then pivoted and came back. He pointed a forefinger in her face.

  “You are the most infuriating woman I’ve ever met.”

  He wasn’t the first man who’d ever said that.

  “I said I understood.”

  “You are driving me absolutely crazy.”

  “I’m sure that’s what all these nice people wanted to know.”

  “Why can’t you just cut me some slack? Why do you insist on having everything your own way, calling all the shots?”

  “I don’t.”

  She knew she did. Or she almost did. But it was her case.

  Well, his case too. She knew that.

  “You most certainly do.”

  “I do not.” Two beats passed. “You’re right, I do. It’s a serious character flaw.”

  Harry smiled a very wintry smile.

  “Thank you, Miz Adams. Thank you so very much. Call me if you need me. If it’s a matter of life and death. But otherwise, from now on, we’ll pursue this matter, all matters, separately.”

  “Right.” If that was the way he wanted it, good riddance.

  “And good night.”

  He strode away for real this time.

  Good, indeed. She watched the top of Harry’s handsome head disappear down the Royal Street steps.

  Dammit.

  Seventeen

  “MR. DUPREE, I’M sorry, sir, but you’re going to have to stand still.”

  The little tailor sounded like he had a mouth full of mush, but it was just straight pins.

  Maynard was trying, but how could he stand still?

  He stared at himself in the pier glass the tailor had brought into his office along with the fabric samples, the chalk, the tape measure, the pins. He stared at a fat man looking like a fool in his undershirt and baggy Brooks Brothers shorts, black knee-high socks, with blue and white seersucker for a summer suit draped all over him, wondering where the years had gone—along with the beautiful boy he’d once been.

  How could he stand still when his life was crumbling around him? And he sure as hell didn’t mean what Irv Goldblatt, the best Jew internist in the whole South, had told him about his cholesterol. It was the call this morning from Cole Leander that was about to give him a heart attack.

  “Now, what do we think about vents?” the tailor asked. “We don’t,” Maynard snapped.

  Saaaaaaay, ol’ hoss. That’s how Cole had begun. Bastard hadn’t sounded that pleased with himself since he’d fixed the Sugar Bowl.

  Saaaaaay, Maynard, you know there’s a pretty—or so they tell me—girl reporter over from Atlanta asking questions ’bout you snuffing old Church
.

  Maynard had protested, of course, Cole going on like they were talking about a golf game, for chrissakes, like it was nothing.

  Said he heard that that boy Harry Zack had his nose in it too. Of course it was bi’nis with him, Tench Young’s bi’nis. Couldn’t blame Tench, said Cole, wanting to save himself the gold. ’Course it’d be too bad if he did it at your expense, wouldn’t it, ol’ hoss?

  Maynard could hear himself sputtering the whole time like a sprinkler out in the St. Augustine grass gone wacko. Saying he didn’t know what the hell Cole was talking about. Cole laughing, like to bust a gut. The old man was vicious as a rattlesnake; he didn’t care what people said ’bout a pore blind man getting religion. Miserable old cuss, prob’ly killed Church himself. ’Cept, of course, he couldn’t of been driving the car, but he could of paid somebody to. Could of paid ’em a lot. Could of paid ’em in gold, in diamonds. That’s what Maynard bet had happened, God, if he only could remember, oldest scam in the debutante’s book— Honey, I was so drunk I don’t remember, what did we do after we—but he couldn’t remember, he really couldn’t, but now he bet it wasn’t him at all, wasn’t that fool Jimbo either, it was Cole all along—

  “Mr. Dupree, are we going to want real buttonholes on the sleeves as usual?”

  “What? Oh, yeah. Uh-huh. Whatever—”

  Maynard looked down at the top of the tailor’s head. He could reach right over and grab the old silver Comus stirrup cup off the corner of his desk, or better yet, that paperweight, favor from the ball of ’78, ’79, somewhere around in there, bash his head right in. Man wouldn’t ever know what hit him.

  Then Maynard caught his own eyes in the oval mirror. What the hell was he thinking about?

  It was Marietta’s fault. Last night she’d been nagging at him, wearing that smug little look he couldn’t stand. It got all over him, her acting like she knew something. Something he didn’t know and would wish he did. Or something that was going to cost him. Sometimes Marietta got on his nerves so bad he wished she were dead.

  Jesus! What was wrong with him? Some men couldn’t get their minds out of the gutter. He couldn’t get his out of the grave.

  “Mr. Dupree, I told him you were—” Sally Jean Simpson, his secretary, bustled in, her silver wig all in a twitter, turned about halfway around on her head.

  “Well, Sally Jean, honey, I don’t mind if you don’t mind seeing me in my und—”

  “Mr. Dupree! How you doin’, son?”

  And then Maynard realized why Sally Jean was bent all out of shape. It was Jimbo King stiff-arming her as he pushed past.

  “Mr. Dupree—I—”

  “It’s okay, Sally Jean. Just go on out and shut the door.”

  Jimbo flopped, his long legs sprawling into one of two red leather wing chairs. He faced the antique partners’ desk Marietta’s father had given Maynard the day after their engagement announcement.

  “So this is how the rich boys do it,” Jimbo drawled. “New custom-made suit, never even have to leave the office.”

  “Mr. Dupree,” the tailor said, “would you like for me to—”

  “I’d like for you to just keep on keeping on, Herbert.” Then to Jimbo, hoping to edge him out with some class, after all this was his home territory: “You know, most of my callers try to make appointments.”

  “I did that,” said Jimbo. “Yes, sir. I shore did. I called up that old lady out there and she told me you were out. Said that the last time I called and the time before that. I started to get the feeling that you were avoiding me, and, now, well, we couldn’t have that.”

  Behind Maynard’s back, Herbert, who was measuring for jacket length, gave a little laugh.

  Jimbo stood and started circling very slowly around to the side of Maynard.

  “Did you say something, Jack?” He was talking to Herbert.

  “Sir? No, sir. And my name’s Herbert. Herbert Stanley. Would you like my card?”

  “Nope. Don’t think so.”

  And with that, Jimbo swooped down like a great bird on the little man and jerked him up. He held Herbert with one arm across the man’s chest and carried him like a calf he’d wrestled in the rodeo.

  “Now, Maynard, as I was saying, it just doesn’t seem friendlylike to me that after the conversation we had this very morning, and after you promised me you’d get right back to me with an answer, you wouldn’t be taking my calls. Do you know what I mean?” Jimbo threw open one of the office’s tall windows, which opened onto Carondelet, with the other arm, the one that wasn’t holding the kicking and screaming Herbert Stanley.

  “Mr. Dupree, make him put me down!”

  “King, for chrissakes, you’re scaring the man.”

  “That’s what I intend to do.” Jimbo spit out the toothpick that had been sitting in a corner of his mouth and watched its downward progress. “Lord, that thing took a long time to fall. How far is that?”

  “We’re on the fifteenth floor,” said Maynard. “Now, look, King—”

  “Mr. Dupree! Help me! Help me! Oh, my God!” Herbert was more out than in the window now.

  Jimbo went right on as if they were sitting at a lunch counter sharing an order of onion rings. “As I recall, what I said to you this morning was that I really don’t need any more clothes, not even fancy ones like this little dude makes for you—” And then he jiggled Herbert a bit.

  “I’ll make you a suit,” Herbert cried. “A coat. A vest. Anything you want. Oh, sweet Jesus!”

  “That’s right neighborly of you,” Jimbo said. “But as I was saying, Maynard, I don’t need clothes or cars or any of them other things I might be buying with your money. What’s on my mind is I’m getting kind of anxious to get on with the flying-chair business.”

  What the hell, Maynard wondered, was he was going to do now? It wasn’t like he could just pick up the phone and call the police. Jimbo was crazy. He’d probably just drop Herbert. That was all he needed. First Church, his lifelong enemy, getting squashed like a pumpkin, and then his tailor taking the big dive out of his office window. After a while, if it got to be just one thing after another, even he couldn’t keep it out of the Times-Picayune.

  “Help!” Herbert was yelling. “Help! Please, somebody help me.”

  “Now, Herbert, you hush!” Maynard ordered him. “You’re going to draw a crowd.”

  The little tailor’s eyes got that big as he realized the true nature of the fix he was in. He began whimpering and sniveling.

  “Look, Jimbo, I told you I’d do what I could and get back to you,” Maynard said. “These things take a while.”

  “I want TV.”

  “I’ll get you TV.”

  “Guaranteed coverage. The news at six and ten.”

  “Now, that may be—”

  Jimbo started jiggling Herbert up and down.

  “Oh, Jesus. Bless Jesus. Help! Help!” The tailor was hysterical now. Spittle was flying everywhere. “God! Jesus! Mary! Help meeeeeeeeee!”

  “Would you stop that!” Maynard said.

  “I think you ought to know I cain’t hold him out here all day. Any minute now I’m liable to let go. My arm’s getting tired.”

  “Okay, okay,” Maynard said.

  Then Jimbo returned to his plan. “We’ll need some announcements ahead of time on the TV. Like coming attractions. Make sure they’ll be a bunch of folks watching. And maybe we could have the mayor, the chief of police. Hey! The governor could come down from Baton Rouge.”

  “The governor?” Jesus! The cracker’s ambitions knew no bounds.

  Jimbo frowned. “By helicopter it’s only ’bout fifteen minutes. Not such a big trip. ’Course, on the other hand, we could just let this little old fellow drop. We could tell people about what happened to your other friend. We could—”

  “Stop!” Maynard yelled. That’s all Jimbo had to say, and he was wet all the way through his drawers, through his undershirt. He was sweating like a pig. His heart was beating about two hundred times a minute. He just knew
he was about to have a coronary, if not a stroke.

  “Mr. Dupree?” It was Sally Jean on the intercom. “Are y’all all right in there? I heard—”

  “Get off the box, Sally Jean. We’re fine!”

  “As I was saying,” Jimbo drawled, “tell everybody ’bout what happened to your friend Church.”

  Maynard’s mind was reeling. What had happened to Church? Jesus! Jimbo kept playing him like the fool he was. Fool to ever let this thing go this far. Here he was, about to get in the middle of another mess, Herbert splattered all over his sidewalk, he still didn’t have a fucking clue if he’d killed Church or if Jimbo had done it because he’d paid him to.

  “Mr. Dupree?” It was Sally Jean again on the intercom. “Your wife is on the phone. She wants to know—”

  “Shut up, Sally Jean!”

  On the other end there was a squawk, and then the line went dead.

  “You know,” said Jimbo, “I been thinking maybe we ought to have official launching ceremonies out at the lake. What do you think, Herbert?”

  Herbert was sobbing now. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Jimbo, good God, have mercy!” Maynard said. “Yes! The mayor. The police. The president. Whoever you want.”

  “The president?” Jimbo turned, pulling Herbert back in a little bit, and gave Maynard a big grin. “I never even thought of that.”

  Eighteen

  BEULAH LAND TABERNACLE, the big sign said outside, but Sam didn’t think Sister Nadine’s church looked like any she’d ever seen. From the scruffy street it resembled a block-square four-story warehouse except for the first-level colonnade trailing blue tile. On top sat a golden onion dome that the neighbors hadn’t peeled, yet.

  Sam stepped through the open front doors into a Moorish lobby that soared three stories high, lighted by two over-wrought iron chandeliers. Old movie theater was the style of decor—and a clue to what the tabernacle must have once been. But the usual Greco-Roman-Egyptian-Chinese statuary had been replaced with figures of the Christ Child and the Virgin Mary. There was something strange about these Marys, though. They were either pregnant or obese.