New Orleans Noir

by Julie Smith

  Now all that beauty was submerged, replaced by debris and rainbow slicks of chemicals floating on the muddy water. The carefully placed objects and lush growth had become nothing more than hidden hazards. For the first time, Sonny wished the route to the grotto was more direct.

  At a place where the arc of the path took it closest to the street, something caught Sonny’s ankles, sending him plunging into the water. For a heartbeat or two, he panicked, certain that he’d encountered a cottonmouth. That its curved fangs would soon plunge into his ankle, delivering its lethal poison.

  Urgently, Sonny kicked himself free of the tangle, flailing his arms wildly as he scrambled back onto his feet. That was when the section of flexible drainage hose, dislodged by his movements, drifted to the surface. Still sputtering and coughing, Sonny cursed the hose, cursed his pounding heart and his irrational fear. Though he’d admitted it to few besides Tam, snakes terrified him. Especially vipers. He ran his hands over his face and his crew-cut gray hair, slicking away the worst of the water. And then he stood quietly, concentrating on his breathing as he struggled to regain his sense of calm.

  Deliberately—almost defiantly—he ignored one of the customs he’d had since childhood. Though Tam would have disapproved, he did not pray to the Virgin for courage. Instead, he lifted his chin, turned his back on the grotto, and focused his attention on the ruined landscape.

  Debris was everywhere. The screeching wind that had twisted signs and toppled trees had also shattered windows and torn away whole sections of houses. Power lines hung like thick, twisted vines, dangling down into the water, no longer sparking as they had when Katrina swept inland. Only the roofs of a few drowned cars made it possible to separate street from front yards.

  One of those cars, Sonny saw, belonged to his neighbor on the corner.

  The car was a distinctive color. Blackberry, its owner, Charlie Pham, had informed him just a week earlier. The presence of the expensive car in front of Sonny’s modest house puzzled him. No doubt the five members of the Pham family would have evacuated New Orleans in their minivan. But why, Sonny wondered, wasn’t the new Cadillac parked in the relative security of Charlie Pham’s brick garage? Sonny pondered this briefly, then shrugged, confident that there was some simple explanation.

  His wandering gaze moved on, taking in the flood-ravaged houses of neighbors and friends. Abruptly, he looked back in the direction of the grotto, grateful that Tam had not lived long enough to see another home—another community—devastated and abandoned. They had been little more than children when they’d fled the Communists, abandoning their village in the North for the safety of South Vietnam. Then, when Saigon fell, they’d left Vietnam behind forever. And they’d come to America. Where their lives had been blessed.

  Until now.

  Once again, Sonny felt a stab of anger toward the Virgin. He used that feeling to push aside his fear and waded forward again. As he neared the grotto, he made an even greater effort to stay on the path as tangles of thorn-laden rose tendrils broke the water’s surface all around him—reminding him that he’d left Tam’s roses untended and untrimmed for a long time.

  Sonny considered the possibility that the flooding was punishment for his neglect. But in the space of a few steps, he dismissed the idea as superstition and turned his attention to the task confronting him. He elbowed aside debris that had collected in front of the grotto, then firmly closed his eyes and mouth, held his breath, and plunged into the water. His fingers slipped over the smooth, rounded stones that lined the grotto’s interior. Then they encountered the statue. He wrapped his arms around the Virgin, reminded himself to use his knees rather than his back to bear the weight, and hefted the statue upward, out of the water.

  It was heavier than he remembered.

  He hugged the statue tightly against his chest, staggering beneath the weight, and moved back along the path. By the time he reached the place where he’d bumped into the hose, he was breathless from exertion. And he knew that he’d have to rest before carrying the statue the remaining distance into the house. But it felt like failure—and, though he hated to admit it, a lot like sacrilege—to drop the Virgin back into the muddy water. So, now more tired than cautious, Sonny left the path and headed for a nearer goal—Charlie Pham’s Cadillac.

  The flooding had caused him to misjudge the car’s location. But it was still closer than the side porch. Struggling to maintain his balance and his hold on the statue as he stepped off the curb, Sonny waded forward into the street. He ignored the water that crept up his shoulders and tried to ignore his growing dread. Maybe the car had simply broken down and been left where it stalled. Heading away from Charlie’s house.

  But heading where?

  With his last bit of strength, Sonny hefted the Virgin onto the roof, laying her on her back. The rigid blue folds of her cast-stone robe scraped the pretty dark purplish paint of Charlie’s pride-and-joy as Sonny pushed the statue into a secure position. Then he finally admitted to himself that only a catastrophe—and nothing so small as an approaching hurricane—could have prompted Charlie to leave his new car in the middle of the road.

  Free of the statue’s weight, Sonny almost bounced as he walked in the deep water around the car, seeking an explanation for why his friend had abandoned his Cadillac.

  Just as he noticed that the driver’s door was open, Sonny also saw the top of a human head. It bobbed a few inches above the water, in the V where the door hinged to the car’s frame. The bald dome with its distinctive, monklike fringe of longish dark hair was definitely Charlie’s.

  Sonny’s first thought was that Charlie was the victim of an unsuccessful carjacking. Or a robbery gone wrong. Periodically, the streets of Village de l’Est spawned violent gangs—gangs encouraged by the Vietnamese immigrants’ reluctance to call the police. Before Katrina, neighborhood gossip had centered on just such a group. A few greedy, alienated young men intent on victimizing their own people. Charlie, Sonny suspected, would be an obvious target. Everyone in Village de l’Est knew that he owned a jewelry store on Alcee Fortier Boulevard, the heart of the Vietnamese business—and tourist—district.

  Sonny moved reluctantly toward the body.

  When he fought beside American GIs in Vietnam, death had been familiar and unavoidable. But decades in America had conditioned Sonny to leaving death to others. And now, thanks to Katrina, the roads were impassable, the phones didn’t work, and the police … Sonny shrugged. No doubt the low-lying Versailles District Police Station was also underwater. And anyway, the NOPD would be too busy with the problems of the living to worry about the welfare of the dead.

  There is no one else to rely on, Sonny told himself.

  So he took a deep breath and went down into the water again, this time deliberately opening his eyes. Trying to peer through the muddy water. He sought the dark shape of Charlie’s body, used eyes and hands to discover that Charlie’s legs—clothed in loose-fitting jeans—were caught beneath the car door. Sonny freed the body, let it float to the surface, came up beside it, and gulped air. Charlie was face down in the water, and Sonny scanned the length of his friend’s back, seeing nothing that indicated how his friend had died. Comforted by that, he rolled Charlie over. Briefly and against his will, Sonny recoiled at the sight of the distorted, waterlogged features. But he could see there were no marks of violence on the front of Charlie’s body either.

  Almost relieved, Sonny considered a more natural cause of death.

  For a moment, he ignored the body floating beside him and looked carefully around. Noticed, for the first time, a few leafy branches jutting from the water not too far from the front of the car. He glanced upward at the canopy of trees shading Calais Street. Easy enough, now that he knew what to look for, to spot a splintery wound on a storm-battered magnolia. To guess that the thickest part of that fallen limb was now underwater, blocking the street. Blocking the car.

  Obviously, he reasoned, Charlie had been driving away from his house in the hours just befor
e Katrina made landfall. Too late, really, to be evacuating if the wind had already grown strong enough to tear away tree limbs. Sonny wondered now if the older van had failed mechanically. Stranding not just Charlie, but his entire family. Delayed for some unknown reason, they would have hurriedly piled into the Cadillac with the storm breaking all around them. Then, still within sight of their home, a tree limb had crashed to the pavement, blocking their way. Charlie was middle-aged, extremely fit, and one of the most determined people Sonny knew. Instead of turning around and taking the slightly longer route to Michoud Boulevard and Chef Menteur Highway, Charlie would likely have hurried from his car, intent on pulling the branch out of his way.

  Suddenly, Sonny found significance in the power lines dangling in the water. The city’s electricity was still on when Katrina made landfall. If Charlie hadn’t noticed a live wire making contact with the wet ground nearby or if a power line tore loose just as he stepped from the car …

  Charlie would have been electrocuted.

  And if there were passengers …

  Now Sonny was imagining a car full of victims. People he cared about. Charlie’s five-year-old twins, Magdalene and Michael. Agnes, who was three and nearly as tall as her brother and sister. They would have been strapped into their car seats. And Nga. A kind woman who had moved in with her son-in-law after his wife died. To help with the children.

  Maybe she’d tried to help Charlie during the storm.

  Sonny’s stomach twisted with dread as he pictured all of those bodies inside the car. Or floating somewhere nearby. Bloated after days in the water. He shook his head, thinking that this was too much to ask of any man. That nothing—not even the war—had prepared him to face this horror alone.

  That’s when Sonny began praying to the Virgin again.

  Not to the statue on the roof of the car, but to the sainted ancestor who had once been a flesh-and-blood woman. A woman who had remained quietly and steadfastly brave in the most horrific of circumstances.

  “Please, give me courage,” he said aloud.

  Then, without giving himself an opportunity to lose his nerve, he went below the water again.

  He couldn’t see well enough to search the car from the outside. So Sonny crawled into the front seat, felt around for a body in the passenger seat. No one. He left the car, stood long enough to drag in another lungful of humid air, then resumed. Quickly, he ran his hand along its frame and located the rear door handle. Locked. So he went in again through the open driver’s side door, struggling to hold his breath as he leaned between the bucket seats. Real leather, Charlie had told him—not really bragging, simply pleased. Sonny kept his eyes open, seeking small shadows, his outstretched arms moving through the water that filled the rear compartment, bracing himself for the moment he would feel a small body.

  He found nothing. After thanking the Blessed Virgin for his courage, Sonny decided that Nga and the children must have evacuated in the van after all. Maybe only Charlie had been delayed. The jewelry store he owned was no more than two miles away. It was possible that Charlie had spent too much time securing the store, then foolishly returned home for one last look or to fetch one last possession. That was when fate must have dealt him an unexpected and lethal blow.

  It took Sonny only a moment to decide that he owed it to his friend—to his friend’s family—to secure the body until it could be claimed and properly buried. It took a little longer to figure out how, exactly, that could be done. In the end, he decided to return Charlie to the Pham house. There, he would find some dry place to lay the body, say a final prayer for his friend, and then turn his back. Walk away. Return to his own high-and-dry attic—to the now almost irrelevant task of moving the statue—until the water receded and civilization returned to Village de l’Est. Then he would contact the authorities and make sure that Charlie’s family was notified and his body taken care of.

  It didn’t seem like enough, but that was all he could think to do.

  He grabbed a handful of Charlie’s sodden shirt, ignored the unnatural coolness of the flesh below the fabric, and waded down the center of Calais Street, towing the body behind him. He guided it up the front walk that led to the Phams’ big white house with its wraparound porch and pretty green shutters. Once on the porch, Sonny was left standing in water that was little more than calf deep. His friend’s body, no longer anchored by Sonny’s grip or buoyed by several feet of water, rested on the porch floor with the water nearly covering it.

  The door was locked, but Sonny knew to tip back one of the terra cotta lions to retrieve the extra key. He unlocked the door, bent back down to take hold of Charlie, and dragged him inside. Left him stretched out on the tiled foyer floor as, more from habit than necessity, Sonny closed the door behind them. Time spent in his own devastated home had prepared him for the sight of Charlie’s. Except for the children’s toys floating in the water.

  Almost angrily, he grabbed Charlie’s shirt again, grunting just a little as he slid the sodden weight across the foyer and into the flooded living room.

  He heard Nga gasp as he came through the entryway. Heard her gasp and then let out a sound that lay somewhere between a sob and an abruptly muffled wail. With his eyes, Sonny searched for the source of the painful sound, saw her sitting halfway up the staircase to the second floor, illuminated by the light coming in through a broken window.

  She was dressed, as was her custom, in a traditional ao dai. Her flowing black trousers were topped by a fitted gray-and-white patterned overdress whose long front and back panels were slit to the thigh. Sonny recalled how Tam—who was short and round—had always been good-naturedly jealous of Nga’s beauty. But now Nga’s large brown eyes and bow-shaped lips were stretched wide with shock. Her long, glossy hair—which Sonny had never seen except wrapped tightly in a bun—was caught in a limp braid. And there was nothing graceful in the way she moved down the stairs.

  She hauled herself into a standing position, then leaned a slim shoulder against the wall as one of her delicate hands dragged reluctantly along the railing. When she drew closer, Sonny could see that there were dark circles beneath her eyes. And that her right cheek was bruised and swollen.

  When she reached the body, Nga took Sonny’s outstretched hand and used it briefly for support as she knelt in the water beside her son-in-law. She ran her hand lightly over Charlie’s face, then sketched a cross in the center of his forehead with her fingers.

  “I knew,” she murmured in Vietnamese, her eyes still on Charlie. “He was a good father, a dutiful son-in-law. When he didn’t come back, I knew that he had to be dead. Or terribly injured.” Then she switched to English as she looked up at Sonny. “Where did you find him?”

  Her voice remained calm despite the anguish that touched her face. Though she and Sonny usually conversed in Vietnamese, Sonny understood that concentrating on an adopted language—no matter how well she spoke it—made it easier for Nga to control her emotions.

  He matched the language and tried to match her calm. Despite his desire to find out why she was still in New Orleans, he quickly explained what he’d seen and how he thought Charlie had died.

  “It would have been a quick death,” he said finally, hoping to give her some comfort.

  To his surprise, Nga had another concern altogether.

  “Which direction was the car facing?” she asked.

  Though Sonny wondered if shock had compelled her to focus on such a triviality, he answered her question.

  “Then he didn’t make it to the store,” Nga said flatly. At that, her voice broke, and she pressed her hand to her mouth again. But even as she muffled a sob, her eyes widened and Sonny saw something he interpreted as relief touch her features. “Unless …”

  She scrambled to her feet.

  “We must search the car,” she said, her voice suddenly stronger. “You told me where you found it, but perhaps the floodwater turned the car around. Maybe Charlie was returning from the store.”

  Almost before she fini
shed speaking, Sonny was shaking his head against such foolish hope. But, suddenly energetic, Nga ignored his reaction, abandoning her son-in-law’s body to rush through the foyer to the front door. She made it as far as the porch steps before Sonny was able to catch up with her. He grabbed her wrist, stopped her from plunging forward into the deeper water.

  “Let me go!” she cried.

  Sonny ignored her attempts to pull free, ignored the small fist pummeling his chest.

  “Stop it, Nga!” he demanded, fearful that grief had driven her to madness. “Charlie is dead. Now you must think about the children. Are they upstairs?”

  Abruptly, she stopped struggling and, for a moment, stared at him. As if surprised by his question. Then she spoke.

  “They are gone. Held for ransom. They took them on Sunday.”

  At that, Sonny released Nga’s trapped wrist, and he knew that his face reflected his shock.

  Absentmindedly, she rubbed her arm as she continued speaking, seemingly oblivious to the water soaking her slacks and lapping above the hem of her dress.

  “The children were already in their car seats. Waiting to leave. Charlie and I were in the house, grabbing just a few more things. We came outside in time to see two men in our van, backing it out of the driveway. And another in a car in front of the house. All wearing masks. The man driving the car shouted at us in Vietnamese. ‘Stay by the phone! No police or the children die!’

  “Magdalene and Michael and little Agnes were crying, screaming in the backseat. Charlie begged the men to please, please give the children back. That he would pay now. Whatever they asked.”