Ciji Ware

by Midnight on Julia Street

  Stunned by this response, Corlis watched King stalk through the cemetery gates. He hailed her camera crew and sauntered across Washington Avenue.

  “King!” she shouted across oncoming traffic.

  He turned around near the van and said, “Yes?”

  “I told your mother and your aunt I’d let them know you were okay.” Her voice was tight with unshed tears. “They’re worried sick about you. Will you call them?”

  King nodded brusquely and climbed into the van, leaving Corlis to wonder if Virgil and Manny would remain loyal to her and WJAZ or sell out to their own gender.

  What do you think? This is N’awlings, darlin’!

  It was the same old story with her. What difference did it all make? she wondered, fighting a flood of tears. Her camera crew would probably think her highfalutin’ notions of journalistic integrity were pompous and dumb—given the stakes on the other side of this controversy. As King had said, if the preservationists didn’t win today, those beautiful historic buildings would be reduced to rubble and dust—lost forever. And King would blame her.

  But if she or Virgil or Manny played partisan something equally important would be demolished, she argued silently as she unlocked her car door. Citizens had the right to assume that media organizations will be true to the public trust and have no special ax to grind when it comes to reporting the news. She’d always held a core conviction that America’s very democracy depended on informed voters and unbiased reporting, and that—

  Yada, yada, yada. Jeez Louise, but you sure do sound like some kind of journalistic dinosaur. Just get yourself to that city council meeting, lady, and do your job!

  Chapter 28

  June 1

  Corlis stood by her car and gazed at the postmodern building that housed the New Orleans City Council chambers, along with other government offices at city hall. She dreaded going inside. The sultry afternoon sun beat down on her shoulders, and the hot pavement penetrated the soles of her sling-back pumps. The only incentive for her to enter the building was the promise of igloo-like air-conditioning.

  Reluctantly she mounted a short flight of stairs to the lobby. As far as she could tell, King was about to receive a thorough thumping from Grover Jeffries’s legal goon squad, and she didn’t think she could stomach witnessing the carnage that was bound to result. Even worse, the Hero of New Orleans already blamed her for aiding and abetting the enemy. Once he actually lost the battle, it would likely be impossible for the two of them to sort out what had gone wrong between them.

  And when he finds out that Lafayette Marchand is his father…

  Corlis was still angry with King for his bullheadedness, but her heart ached for him at the thought that, on top of losing the Selwyn buildings, he was about to learn of painful family secrets hidden from him for so long.

  Suppressing a sigh, she entered city hall’s frigid foyer. She couldn’t afford to wrestle with any of this now, she reminded herself. She had a story to cover. Once inside the echoing marble entranceway, however, she turned left and headed straight for the ladies’ room.

  ***

  “Would someone please point out Mr. Kingsbury Duvallon?”

  The faintly imperious old lady asked the question of a phalanx of media people pouring down the aisle into the crowded auditorium. She spoke in a strong, firm voice that belied her fragile appearance—heightened by the fact that one arm was in a sling.

  A large, broad-shouldered African American with a head as shiny as a chocolate malt ball paused and said kindly, “He’s right over there, ma’am. Can I take you to ’im?”

  She nodded brusquely. Despite the sultry temperatures outside city hall, the grandmotherly figure was wearing a vintage navy blue gabardine suit with a nipped-in waist, velvet collar and cuffs, and a matching velvet turban reminiscent of the fashion that famed gossip columnist Hedda Hopper made popular in the forties. She accepted the young man’s proffered arm as they made their way through the milling throngs in the direction of the city council chamber’s first row of seats.

  From beyond the open exit doors came the incongruous sounds of musicians tuning their instruments in the hallway. Inside the hall a platoon of people handed out signs that read “SOS: Save Our Selwyns!”

  Meanwhile, Kingsbury Duvallon, his coalition of architects, lawyers, preservationists, historians, and supporters of the city’s Live in a Landmark program had staked out their turf close to the dais at the front.

  At the back of the large chamber, a distracted Grover Jeffries was surrounded by several somber gentlemen wearing nearly identical lightweight, blue-striped seersucker suits. This group was conferring with the head of the security detail assigned to the hearing room. The officer’s beleaguered expression indicated that the situation had already clearly gotten out of hand.

  To be sure, the city council chamber was so jammed that the turban-clad woman and her escort had considerable difficulty threading their way down one of the aisles and reaching their final destination. The pair passed by the speaker’s podium beside which stood two easels. The first held a black-and-white rendering of the 600 block of Canal Street as it looked in 1842. It showed the classic architectural features of the Greek Revival structures—long hidden by the ugly aluminum screen erected in the 1960s. The second easel held enlarged copies of nineteenth-century etchings showing the faces of black businessmen labeled “J. Colvis and Joseph Dumas.”

  The old lady paused and stared at the engraved images of the two tailors. “Ah… so that’s what they looked liked. Absolutely fascinating.”

  Her African American escort gently guided his charge a few more feet until they arrived at the first row of seats.

  “King?” he said, tapping Duvallon on the shoulder.

  “Yeah? Oh, hi Virgil,” King responded with a decidedly preoccupied air as he handed out protest signs to his supporters nearby.

  “You have a visitor.”

  King turned and took in the eccentric-looking woman whom he had never before seen in his life.

  “I’m Margery McCullough,” she announced without preamble. “I’m a retired reporter,” she continued with studied emphasis. “I understand from my niece that something I have in my possession might be of use in your fight to save the historic buildings I’ve heard so much about.”

  “Really, ma’am?” King said, intrigued. He glanced briefly at the elderly woman’s royal blue velvet turban. “That sure would be welcome news.”

  “I’ve just flown in from California to deliver the McCullough Family Diary to Corlis in person. I called her television station when I arrived at the airport here, and they told me she was due to be at city hall at four. Do you know where she is?”

  “I expect she’ll be here momentarily.”

  Margery reached inside her voluminous shoulder bag, not unlike the one her niece carried everywhere, and withdrew from its roomy depths a tattered, brown leather-bound volume. “I’ve used these slips of paper to mark the salient passages. I’m sure my niece wouldn’t mind my showing you what I found,” she said, a gleam of mischief in her eye.

  “I’m not so sure about that, ma’am,” King replied with a wry smile.

  “Well… since my niece isn’t here yet, I’ll take responsibility for putting this precious primary source in your custody, young man,” she declared grandly, handing it to him. “And now, may I please sit down? I’m rather tired from my journey.”

  “Of course,” King replied instantly. “Chris!” he addressed his teaching assistant. “Would you please offer Ms. McCullough, here, your seat?”

  “Sure,” Calvert said, moving two seats over as he cast a curious glance at the oddly attired visitor.

  King immediately sat down beside Corlis’s aunt Marge. Without pausing, the pair bent over the McCullough diary.

  “Now… I think this might be useful,” she volunteered, pointing to the page on the right. “And perhaps this passage… and certainly this passage, don’t you think?”

  King scanned the paragraph
s in question, occasionally asking for clarification when he encountered difficulty deciphering the spidery script.

  “This is unbelievable,” he said under his breath. He leaned back in his seat and addressed a handsome African American wearing a three-piece business suit and sitting in the row of seats behind them. “Professor Jefferson, you’ve gotta see this!” He handed him the McCullough diary. Then King glanced over at his unexpected benefactress. “Does Corlis know you were coming to New Orleans?”

  “No,” Aunt Marge declared primly. “I disobeyed doctor’s orders and went straight from the hospital to the Los Angeles airport.”

  “And your arm?” he asked with concern, nodding in the direction of the sling.

  “Only sprained. I can still type with one hand.”

  “Does Corlis know you’ve hurt yourself?”

  “She knows I’ve had a fall and that I didn’t break any bones. I feel remarkably well, considering.”

  “Well, then,” King said, chuckling. “Since you tell me that you’ve retired from the journalism trade… would you consider holding one of our SOS signs with your good hand?”

  “Why, I’d be delighted,” Aunt Marge replied gaily. “First time I’ve hoisted one of these things in my life.” She smiled conspiratorially. “I’m writing my memoirs, you know. It’s such a joy to finally be able to state my opinion about things. I’ve spent a lifetime being purely objective.”

  ***

  Corlis stared into the cracked mirror in the city hall ladies’ room and couldn’t help wondering if King would press kidnapping charges against Jack Ebert and Grover Jeffries. Even if he did, she considered morosely, that wouldn’t happen in time to save the Selwyn buildings from the wrecker’s ball once the city council had taken the vote. Preventing their demolition was all King really cared about. As he said, he was fighting a war, and as far as he was concerned, the usual rules of engagement didn’t apply.

  That was always where it ended, wasn’t it? she reflected, pulling from the deep recesses of her shoulder bag her hairbrush and lipstick. When you got down to it, the men she had known always thought a crisis was only about them.

  No wonder the magnolias down here resort to underhanded methods to try to even the odds!

  But somehow, Corlis had to admit to herself, that wasn’t the whole story here. There was a piece of the dilemma between King and her that she wasn’t owning up to.

  You’re always so ready to take offense. So ready to be hurt.

  She pulled her brush through her brunette mane with swift, agitated yanks as she gazed moodily at her reflection in the mirror and wondered in her heart of hearts if this unhappy conflict with King was also about… fear. Maybe she put hurdles higher than they really had to be?

  Wasn’t that what her Beverly Hills shrink had said after she broke up with Jay? Was she merely afraid that if she did commit to her feelings without equivocation, there was always the chance she could get emotionally trampled on? Like she had with her warring mom and dad? Like she had with Jay Kerlin?

  Kingsbury Duvallon does not remotely resemble Jay Kerlin. Try again, Corlis. Something else is bothering you, dearie.

  Slowly Corlis began to apply a new coat of lipstick. The fact was King had been born into a milieu of family and southern tradition where women—uppity, outspoken women—were shunned. The truth was Corlis was nothing if not uppity, and always would be. Yes… Cindy Lou Mallory could betray King, big-time, yet, as Corlis had witnessed ties of family and history around here would never be broken. Those connections were sunk deep into the swampy Louisiana soil.

  The magnolia factor would triumph in the end.

  Face it, McCullough… a magnolia you ain’t! Given this unalterable truth, it probably would never work between you and King.

  That’s why King had left her standing alone by the curb in front of Commander’s Palace today. That was probably at the core of their contretemps at UCLA twelve years ago. And despite all the heavy breathing between them, King had come to recognize that truth, and now she must, too.

  Corlis swiftly stowed her makeup kit and hairbrush in her shoulder bag and walked purposefully out of the ladies’ room to face the music. She would get through this, she told herself, by doing what she’d always done: giving her all to the story she was there to cover for her viewers. That never changed.

  When she entered the packed auditorium, she stared straight ahead and made for the section down front that had been roped off for the working press.

  “Hey, whatcha know, boss lady?” Virgil hailed her. “Isn’t this somethin’ else?” He nodded at the full house.

  “Amazing,” Corlis replied curtly.

  “Have you talked to King since you got here?”

  “No,” she said more sharply than she intended.

  Virgil cocked an eyebrow and said no more.

  Corlis inhaled deeply. “Okay. So. You guys ready to rock ’n’ roll here today?”

  “Yep,” Manny replied, exchanging looks with Virgil.

  Corlis glanced at Virgil. Had he leaked to King information Marchand had revealed to the three of them, she wondered? She instinctively knew that Virgil Johnson greatly respected Kingsbury Duvallon and now felt fiercely invested in his own black heritage, as represented by the Selwyn buildings. Who was she to judge the man? she thought.

  “Thanks for setting everything up,” she said by way of a peace offering. “Sorry I was late and… sorry I snapped at you.”

  “No problem,” Virgil said, and grinned.

  “Why are you smiling?” she asked suspiciously.

  Before Virgil could answer, a door opened, and a few council members strolled in. The clock on the wall said it was five minutes past four. The meeting was late getting started. Corlis gazed around the hall, now chock-a-block with a churning, noisy mass of picket-toting protesters. Sprinkled around the hearing room were gaggles of downtown businesspeople, lobbyists, council staff, and curious onlookers, as well as a squadron of grim-faced lawyers and technical advisers who represented Grover Jeffries and the Del Mar Corporation.

  And sure enough, even Cindy Lou Mallory and her mother had taken seats in the second row. Out of the corner of her eye, Corlis caught a brief glimpse of King’s tall, dark-haired figure, but she quickly looked away.

  Eyes front! Keep your concentration, McCullough!

  The remaining members of the city council finally began drifting toward the dais. One by one they took their places behind their name plaques. She saw Lafayette Marchand rush through the double doors into the chamber as city council president Edgar Dumas loudly banged his gavel.

  “This meetin’ will come to order!” Dumas shouted above the noise. He glanced around the packed chamber with a frown. “The clerk will please commence the final readin’ of the proposed ordinance and use permits we have before us,” he announced as the television cameras began to whir. “Then we will allow time for public comment in the order in which everybody signed up.”

  The room was silent as the clerk recited the legal language granting an ordinance that would allow for the “upgrading of the 600 block of Canal Street.” Then she read the accompanying proposals for demolishing the existing “derelict buildings” and various use permits that would allow “developer Grover Jeffries and the Del Mar Corporation to erect a twenty-eight-story high-rise.”

  As the clerk wound up her recitation, Corlis’s attention drifted once again to the first row of spectators seated around Kingsbury Duvallon. Suddenly her jaw went slack, and she stared in amazement. Sitting next to him was a turbaned octogenarian dressed in an outfit that Margery McCullough had worn in the days when she’d worked for William Randolph Hearst.

  “Aunt Marge!” she breathed, astonished beyond words.

  Virgil uncorked his eye from the camera’s eyepiece and grinned. “I was wonderin’ when you’d notice your aunt was here. Now I see why you’re such a slave driver,” he whispered hoarsely. “Chip off the old block, huh?”

  “What’s she doing sitting next
to King?” Corlis whispered.

  “She asked to sit there,” Virgil said with a faint shrug, and returned to his eyepiece. “Shh… the testimony’s startin’ from the good guys.”

  What followed was King Duvallon’s well-orchestrated presentation by the coalition of community leaders who vehemently opposed the Del Mar project. Slated to speak first was professor of black history Barry Jefferson, a veteran of the Vietnam War and Purple Heart recipient. The conservatively attired academic rose from his seat and strode confidently to the podium carrying a leather-bound volume in his right hand. He smiled pleasantly at the city council members seated before him.

  “These eleven buildings you’re proposing to tear down represent a golden age in this town when real diversity existed in New Orleans,” he began, gesturing with his pen at the easel on which stood the rendering of the Selwyn block as it had looked in the mid-nineteenth century. “The year was 1842. I have submitted, to the council’s secretary, copies of census documents that prove that forty-five percent of African Americans in this city were Free Men and Women of Color,” he reminded the black majority sitting on the dais. “That’s right, Mr. Council President… a proud time in our people’s history when we have solid evidence that almost half of us were free before the Civil War. Not slaves!”

  Shouts and whistles erupted spontaneously from the audience.

  “Order! Order!” Council President Dumas shouted above the tumult, hammering his gavel. “We will have order in these chambers! This is testimony we have already heard, Professor Jefferson. If you have nothing new to enlighten us about—”

  Barry Jefferson’s booming voice soared over the heads of his audience. “And two of those free African men, Messieurs Colvis and Dumas, were among the owners of these historic buildings whose fate is being decided by you today,” he declared, making a jabbing motion with his pen toward the second of the two easels. “I beg you on the council to consider this. Today, not one building on this city’s main thoroughfare is owned by a black citizen, even though we make up seventy-two percent of the city’s population. Not one!”