Ciji Ware

by Midnight on Julia Street

  “About ten minutes,” Lafayette replied. “This morning, Jack Ebert bragged about what he’d done last night. I… I about leaped through the phone to kick the bastard in the balls.”

  “And why would a man like you, familiar with every venal, self-serving thing that guy has done in this town the last ten years, be surprised he and Grover’d pull a stunt like that?” King asked.

  “I wasn’t surprised, but this time it hit close to home.”

  “I seem to remember relieving you of your godfatherly duties some time ago.”

  “There are certain family ties that simply cannot be severed, and you and I share one of them.” Marchand leaned forward slightly. “King… I’ve wanted to… to tell you something for a very long time.”

  The two men stared across the table at each other for a moment. Finally King said, “Look, Laf…” He hesitated and then continued. “Let me spare you. I already know.”

  “Know what?” Marchand asked cautiously.

  “I’ve known for at least ten years that you fathered me. And that you wouldn’t marry my mother.”

  Marchand stared across the table in astonishment. “How did you know?” he demanded, losing his customary unflappable demeanor. “Did Antoinette tell you? Our agreement was that she’d never do that. She’d let me stay reasonably close to you, posing as your godfather, and—”

  “No… Mother wasn’t the one who told me,” King interrupted. “She doesn’t know that I learned the truth. It was Grandfather Kingsbury.”

  “Ah… the vengeful, almost-father-in-law,” said Lafayette, a bitter edge to his voice.

  “It wasn’t like that,” King said calmly. “I’d just come back from the marines, and he wanted to be sure Waylon didn’t get his hands on the bonds you’d given me at my birth. He gave me the key to a safe-deposit box and said not to open it till after he was buried. Told me that I’d understand everything once I saw what was locked away at the Whitney Bank.”

  “And what, exactly, did you understand?” Lafayette asked quietly. “What had that old reprobate put inside the safe-deposit vault?”

  “The bonds,” King replied with a shrug. “And a short, pithy explanation in his handwriting saying that you and my mother were in the same Mardi Gras court back in the day… that you’d played duke to her queen. That you had sex with her and—I was the result. That was about it.”

  “No context. Typical of him. André Kingsbury liked to keep things simple. It was either black or white, right or wrong. No subtleties for old André—’specially when it came to understanding the differences between his two daughters.”

  “Bethany and Antoinette…” King murmured thoughtfully. “Hard to believe they’re from the same parents, isn’t it?”

  Lafayette absently traced his forefinger around the rim of his highball glass. “I am ashamed even to speak of what happened between your mother and me—mostly because I caused an unforgivable injury to Bethany.”

  “Ah… Aunt Bethany,” King said. “Her voice always gets breathless whenever your name comes up, and then her face has this incredibly sad look.”

  Lafayette inhaled sharply, as if suddenly assaulted.

  “Since we were practically in kindergarten, she and I… had an understanding. As soon as I finished law school, we were going to get married, despite my parents’ objections that the Kingsburys had…” He faltered.

  “Had made a colossal series of stupid financial decisions and lost all their money?” King supplied bluntly.

  “My father’s words, precisely,” Laf said bitterly. “Well… that year of Mardi Gras I was your basic hot-blooded, arrogant southern white boy of twenty-five. Not that that excuses anything… but perhaps it explains things a bit. Well… anyway, I got roaring drunk on the night of Fat Tuesday, like everyone else in New Orleans, and I let myself be—” He stopped short and then selected his next words with extreme care.

  “Just say it,” King said impatiently.

  “Antoinette… your mother… as you might have concluded by now, is a very pretty, very willful, very persuasive woman, and she… well, I knew she’d always been jealous of her older sister. We were thrown together so much that year. She flattered me and played up to me in a major way, ’specially that night, and I did what stupid, arrogant, intoxicated males are wont to do.”

  “In the words of André Kingsbury, you ‘had sex,’” King said coolly.

  Marchand nodded. “The next morning… not only did I have the mother of all hangovers, I quickly realized that I’d been idiotic and would have done anything to turn back the clock. However, as Antoinette soon revealed to me, she got pregnant as a result of that one wild night.”

  “And according to Grandfather, you flatly refused to marry her,” King said, as if he were talking about people he barely knew.

  “No!” he said sharply. “I told Antoinette that I thought it was wrong to marry her if I still loved her sister and didn’t love her. I promised her, though, that I’d pay for everything. See her through her pregnancy, if that was her choice. I’d agreed to place the baby for adoption, if that was what she wanted.” Marchand stared across the table at King, his eyes suddenly moist. “Jesus, King! It’s hard, now, to think I’d never have known you. Up until you went into the marines, I at least had those years as your godfather… doing things with you when you were a boy… trying to be there for you, as best I could.”

  “Amazing, isn’t it, how everybody kept those secrets, avoiding a scandal,” King said with the first hint of bitterness. “And nobody ever mentioned that I shot up to six foot one and my father was barely five ten. Waylon used to call me ‘the Stranger.’ Didn’t he know for sure that I wasn’t his?”

  “This may sound crazy,” Lafayette said, “but I have no idea. Antoinette… your mother… immediately turned around and married Waylon to save face.”

  “At least he was willing to marry her,” King said.

  “Not quite,” Marchand corrected. “Since tonight is truth-telling time, the fact is—not to put too fine a point on it—she trapped Waylon into marrying her, sleeping with him real fast and making him think she was pregnant by him. Of course, she passed off your early birth as premature… but as you began to grow up, Waylon must have noticed how unalike you and he were.”

  “He knows…” King mused, almost to himself, “even if he doesn’t know.”

  “Antoinette agreed to name me godfather, if I’d put some money away for your future—which I wanted to do, by the way. The other reason she went along with it was to put her own friends and Waylon’s family off the scent of possible scandal. I mean,” Marchand added with an ironic smile, “who’d have the gall to name me, in church, before God, as your godparent, if the whispered rumors were true? But then you fired me from the job… and now I know why, after all these years. That note you found in the safe-deposit box must have hurt.”

  “Grandfather’s note wasn’t the reason I fired you,” King said. “I ended our relationship because you went to work for Jeffries. In my eyes, you were no longer an honorable man.” Hearing this, Marchand visibly winced. King continued in a steady voice. “You signed on as the man behind the scenes for a person whose values I despise, orchestrating public opinion so that everyone would think Grover Jeffries was God’s gift to philanthropy. It made me sick to see it was you doing the fixing.”

  “It didn’t start that way,” Lafayette said heavily. “ ’Bout ten years ago, soon after you got out of the service, my life just seemed to hit a brick wall. I had no sense of purpose… little reason to do anything. I got pretty deeply in debt. I like going to the racetrack, and—well… I used to play for some pretty high stakes back in those days… and I got to like those gambling boats Grover had going for a while. When he wanted me to work off what I owed, doing public relations for the proposed Good Times Shopping Plaza, I—”

  “Accepted an offer you couldn’t refuse.”

  “That about describes it. I hated myself even more than you did when I handled damage control for
that fiasco. But when the Selwyn buildings project first started, I thought that Grover had finally gotten hold of something that would benefit the city. I had no idea those beautiful Greek Revivals were behind that ol’ screen.”

  “I didn’t notice you advising Grover to give up his hotel project, even when you did find out about them,” King reminded him.

  “No. Unlike you, son… I didn’t have the guts. I couldn’t kick ass and take names until the moment I thought you had been left in one of those mausoleums to suffocate. When I heard what Grover had done, I kinda went insane, you know? You’re my son! You could have died, and I…” Marchand’s sentence trailed off. Horror and self-loathing distorted his handsome face. “If anything had happened to you, I don’t think I could have—”

  “Well,” King intervened swiftly, “you picked the right reporter to search for me. How much does Corlis McCullough know about all this?”

  “Everything. Time was short. I had to tell her the truth so she’d trust me and help me find you.”

  “What about Manny and Virgil?”

  “They don’t know I’m your father.”

  “Well… Corlis kept your confidence. She didn’t tell me a thing.”

  “She’s quite a woman, King. But then, I suspect you already realize that.”

  “She’s no magnolia, that’s for sure. With Ace McCullough, you know just where you stand.” King took a long draught on his bottle of Dixie. He set it on the table with a thump and abruptly asked, “Why didn’t you ever marry?”

  “I didn’t want anyone but Bethany. And if I’d married someone else, just to keep up appearances, I honestly think that I would’ve probably put a bullet in my head… or Bethany might have.”

  “You broke Bethany’s heart anyway, didn’t you?” King pronounced, taking another sip of beer.

  “That, of course, has been my punishment all these years,” Marchand’s voice suddenly cracked. “After Bethany got over her initial shock, that dear lady was relentlessly civil to me on those few occasions when we’d meet, but she wouldn’t have anything to do with me.”

  “No… she wouldn’t,” King agreed quietly.

  Lafayette turned slightly and gazed over King’s head through the windows overlooking Bourbon Street. “Bethany told me a few years later that she’d forgiven me for what happened, but she wouldn’t accept any of my invitations to see one another. The only way to protect the family honor, she said, was to”—he raised a hand to his forehead, as if he had a migraine—“was to keep a polite distance. I’d created the disaster in our lives, so all these years, I’ve honored her wishes.”

  King’s father stared fixedly at his amber glass of bourbon and shook his head. “Not marrying at all was lonely, but it was also liberating. As a matter of fact, my refusing to marry some uptown magnolia just to make it up to my daddy for dishonoring the family name was the thing I’m proudest of… except, of course, for what you’ve done, taking on the establishment in this town, saving buildings that preserve the historic character of New Orleans.”

  “Thank you,” was all King said.

  Pain etched Marchand’s eyes. “I asked you to meet me here tonight because I can’t go on living this lie. I am your father! And I’m glad you know it. I need to ask… not for your forgiveness, I guess, because you probably can’t give it after what I’ve done. But because I just want you to know I’ve always recognized you as the son of my heart. That I’ve always loved you as my son and worried about your welfare and—”

  “I’m grateful for those times we had together when I was a boy,” King interrupted gently. “They were among the few bright spots of my childhood. I do forgive you, Laf. And it helps to know the truth about why you wouldn’t marry my mother. I thank you for telling me ’bout that. Another thing.” Lafayette lifted his eyes from his highball glass and met King’s gaze head-on. “I have a lot of admiration for what you did today. A lot.”

  “What do you mean?” Lafayette asked with a baffled expression.

  “Standing up to Grover Jeffries like that today took a lot of guts. You risked virtually everything, but you took him to the mat anyway. You were an unbelievably skilled negotiator, wrestling with a real viper. And so, I just want you to know… you do have my respect. Now.”

  There was a long silence. Then Lafayette leaned across the table, covered one of King’s hands with his own, and said in a voice choked with emotion, “Thank you… thank you for saying that, Son.”

  “So,” King declared. He set his glass of beer hard on the table, like a period at the end of a sentence. “I think it’s time I reinstated you as my godfather. That is, if you’re willing to take on the assignment again.”

  Lafayette Marchand raised his chin with its distinctive cleft and squared his shoulders. “It’s a start. It surely is a start.”

  Chapter 30

  June 1

  McCullough!” barked a disembodied voice over the newsroom intercom. “You’re wanted in Zamora’s office. Pronto!”

  “Jeez Louise, now what?” she exclaimed to the walls of her reporter’s cubicle. Exhausted, she rose from her chair and pushed it to her desk. The last three hours had been a blur of activity. By some miracle she’d managed to meet her broadcast deadline with only two minutes to spare before the program went on the air.

  “Good job, Corlis,” director Bernard Sinclair said, patting her back as he emerged from the control room. “Your piece tonight actually made me care about a building!” he added, laughing. “My mother’s mother was a Colvis, y’know.” Then he grinned. “Half the Colvises you meet round here are black. My mama’s family had some ol’ plantation upriver that they lost after the Civil War.”

  “Really?” she replied. Then something about Sinclair’s dark blond hair caught her attention. Its texture was rather coarse, and it had a distinct wave to it.

  Passe blanc…

  “Yeah,” Bernie replied. “I’m Scots-Irish on my dad’s side, way, way back.” He gave her a friendly salute. “Anyway… it’s been a great series. See ya.”

  In fact, nearly everyone at the station had congratulated her on the Selwyn story tonight. However, Corlis felt utterly drained—and depressed. She’d half-expected a call from King when the broadcast concluded, but she’d heard nothing.

  Oh well, she sighed. She imagined him sitting with Lafayette Marchand at a small table at the Old Absinthe House bar, listening to revelations that were bound to turn his world upside down. Wearily she made her way to the station owner’s office. Inside, Marvin Glimp was standing beside Andy Zamora, who sat behind his desk.

  “You did a great job,” her boss declared.

  “Well… thanks,” Corlis replied, surprised by Andy’s unqualified compliment. “Manny and Virgil deserve a lot of credit. The pictures they shot really told the story.” There was no point in repeating tales about Virgil making King an unauthorized duplicate disk of what happened in the cemetery and then erasing the digital master. The buildings were saved, and the story was finally at an end.

  Zamora patted her on the hand. “Yeah, but you were the one to decide where to point the camera, and you told ’em to keep rollin’,” Andy insisted. “And one more thing…”

  “Yes?” Corlis said. Here it comes, she thought grimly.

  “I wanted Marvin to be here when I apologize to you for even suspectin’ that you might have leaked the Jack Ebert invoice to King Duvallon’s crowd.”

  Corlis shrugged. She didn’t care anymore who leaked the invoice.

  “How do you know I didn’t?”

  “ ’Cause Virgil came in tonight and told me that he did.”

  “Virgil leaked the Ebert invoice?” Corlis replied, amazed. “Wow.”

  “And he thinks that mentionin’ to another cameraman at a bar last week that he got a shot of Grover’s campaign contributions memo on videotape tipped off the Times-Picayune reporter that such a memo existed.”

  “‘Loose lips sink ships,’ as my great-aunt Marge is fond of saying,” Corlis said blandly.<
br />
  But why was she surprised? she asked herself. Virgil was a cameraman, not a reporter. He had no scruples about giving his friend King a little boost by getting him a copy of Ebert’s invoice off the video and dubbing an extra copy of the cemetery fracas when he made one for Lafayette Marchand. Like Althea LaCroix, Dylan Fouché—even Cindy Lou Mallory—longtime New Orleanian Virgil Johnson obviously cared passionately about the fate of the Selwyn buildings and had done what he could to help save them.

  Zamora laughed and said, “By the way, Virgil told me how you saved the day at Lafayette Number 1.”

  “That stuff’s strictly off the record,” Corlis said, alarmed that Marchand’s confidentiality had been breached.

  “I haven’t described the gory details to anyone else,” Zamora said with a glance toward the company lawyer.

  “I promised Marchand certain conditions in exchange for getting information about what Jeffries was doing behind the scenes today.” How much of the story did Virgil tell Andy? she worried. Then she had another terrible thought. “Did you fire him? Virgil, I mean?”

  “I suspended him for two weeks. I told him to use his vacation time and get the hell out of town for a while.”

  “Boy… are you ever tough,” Corlis replied dryly. She held up her hands in front of her face. “I know… I know… This is New Orleans.”

  Marvin Glimp spoke up for the first time. “Tell me something, Corlis. How did Grover Jeffries ever come around to agreeing to revitalize those derelict old buildings? My sister told me that Grover said he’d go to jail before he’d ever let those building-huggers tell him what he could do with his property.”

  “Sorry, Marvin…” Corlis replied with a certain amount of relish, relieved to know Zamora truly hadn’t passed on what Virgil had told him about events at Lafayette Number 1. “I do happen to know why Jeffries agreed to save the buildings, but that’s part of the story I agreed to embargo, so I can’t divulge what I learned from my sources.”