Jimmy Fox - Nick Herald 01 - Deadly Pedigree

by Jimmy Fox

  More questions to answer, but a good day’s work.

  Dusk had given way to gentle evening, and the lamplights on the street below had switched on, giving a distinctly nostalgic glow to the smooth river-lake and the French Quarter-like section of buildings that faced it. Nick was hungry and tired. He shuffled his pilfered documents back into his battered briefcase and stood up for a stretch, intending to go downstairs to investigate the possibilities of dinner. He was thinking he was actually earning the obscene fee Armiger had paid him.

  Noises from his now dimly lit room stopped him cold.

  Ah, so this was Natalie Armiger’s plan: let him stumble across the important facts, like an unwitting retriever, and then knock him off. She’d taken care of Corban–maybe; now it was his turn. Was an assassin waiting in his room?

  His paranoia had shifted into overdrive.

  “I knocked…a little,” Sharla said from the dimness, coyly penitent, when Nick confronted her in his room. “I thought you might be in the shower or something, so I just came on in. I brought you a club sandwich. And another bottle of wine. On me.” She gave the last two words a sultry intonation.

  He switched on a bedside lamp and put down the nearly empty, dripping bottle of bubbly he’d grasped as a weapon. Sharla’s flowing floral dress was very sheer, and light from the balcony magically illuminated her young figure to delightful advantage. She wore nothing underneath. Nick couldn’t look away.

  There were two wineglasses on her tray. He recognized the expensive California chardonnay.

  “Guess I’m nuts,” Nick said, “or old-fashioned, but that would seem a reason not to come in.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to worry about me.” She demonstrated with a mock zip of her lips. “My mother teaches all us hotel staff to be the soul of discretion. Don’t you just want to tell me some of your deepest, darkest secrets? I keep my mouth shut…when I want to.” She giggled.

  In spite of his scruples to the contrary, Nick smiled.

  He was just a man, fallible and helpless, ultimately, in the big scheme of things. Why should he fight his nature? Nature with a big “N”?

  He uncorked the new bottle. “How old are you, by the way? Somehow I get the feeling you’re trouble in a pretty package. But a very pretty package, Sharla, I have to say.” He poured wine into the two glasses.

  Sharla gave a throaty laugh that did to Nick exactly what it was no doubt supposed to do. “Why thank you kindly, sir.” She moved even closer, almost touching him.

  He saw the pulse jumping at the base of her neck, felt the warmth of her body, and learned in an instant her distinctive combination of scents.

  She kissed him.

  And when she was through, running a finger around Nick’s lips, she said, “How old do you have to be to have fun, Mr. Nick Herald from New Orleenz? Maybe you should unwrap me and find out.”

  She saved him the trouble and flicked off the straps of her dress; it fell to the floor.

  Nick switched off the lamp. In the final blush of twilight, she eagerly helped him out of his clothes.

  13

  Nick ate breakfast in an airy sun-filled, antique-crammed room downstairs, in the company of ficuses, palms, and about thirty Japanese tourists videotaping each other eating such unfamiliar Louisiana fare as grits and grillades, eggs Benedict, and beignets. Sharla, fortunately, was absent.

  I shouldn’t have, but I did anyway…words for his tombstone. One of these days, he would have to pay for his libidinous lapses; the avenger waiting for him might be some dread disease or a jealous husband. He also worried that maybe he’d shared too much with Sharla the night before, in the way of words, that is; he foggily remembered opening a second bottle of chardonnay, which Sharla just happened to have put in the room’s mini fridge.

  A couple of homemade bagels with gravlax and cream cheese, some fresh fruit, freshly squeezed orange juice, and two pots of steaming coffee and chicory were getting the better of his hangover and his typically gargantuan appetite. He had a lot of work to do. Moping over indiscretions he might have made, but couldn’t now change, wasn’t on his schedule. He had to be back in New Orleans for As You Like It at eight, with Una.

  Una…she would definitely not approve of his fall to temptation. And he cared about her approval. The weight of dishonesty he was lugging around was becoming very heavy indeed.

  At the front desk, Rebecca was just a little colder toward him at first, as he checked out. She obviously sensed what had happened between her daughter and him. Maybe, Nick thought, she hadn’t been much different when she was Sharla’s age, and this was just peevishness at the creeping of years, at having to admit to herself that the attention of the opposite sex had shifted to the younger generation. He wanted to tell her he understood, and in fact found her attractive, too–but decided she might take his consolation the wrong way.

  Soon, though, her irrepressible good nature shone once again, and she was insisting on having one of her workers take him to the Balzar building. Finally, he escaped on his own.

  The Balzar building was a post-Civil War beauty, sadly neglected. It sat at the lesser-traveled end of a side street perpendicular to the river. Four floors, herringbone-patterned brown and cream bricks, classical masonry details. The bottom floor once housed other small businesses besides–possibly–Ivanhoe’s barbershop; Nick studied the old torn posters and faded painted signage that remained in the windows or had merged with the brick.

  Did Ivanhoe, the mulatto barber, own this semi-prime piece of real estate? Perhaps the building just became identified with him, as the long-time, popular tenant; perhaps he was a more influential citizen than was usual for a man in his position in the rigidly stratified society of those bygone days.

  The block had the forlorn look of past bankruptcies and sheriffs’ sales, of Louisiana’s roller-coaster casino-mentality business environment–bet it all and throw the dice! A car rolled by, but the driver took no notice of him. Now he was alone on the quiet street. He slid his Freret University laminated library card through the simple door latch.

  “Oh, the manifold uses of the tools of a liberal education!” he said to the silent room he entered.

  Any barbershop once in existence had been succeeded ultimately by an insurance agency, Nick judged from the calendars on the peeling walls, and from the scattered stationery and brochures on Sherman tank-like metal desks. The place had been cleared out in a hurry, unceremoniously, and no one had looked back. February 1963 was when the ax fell for Triple-V Insurance, and nothing much had happened here in the thirty years since. In some places the green-speckled linoleum squares were missing, evidence perhaps of an abandoned refurbishment. He could still see the circular bolt holes in the floor where the barber chairs had once been. Was this Ivanhoe’s place? It was looking good.

  He walked into the back hallway, stirring up dust and breaking cobwebs. There wasn’t much here except dozens of paint cans and jugs of pesticide, a regular toxic waste dump. He hoped the stuff had evaporated years before. He hurried upstairs, holding his breath as much as possible.

  His ascent was a journey back in time, each floor a quarter-century, it seemed. Flashlight in hand, he rummaged awhile among a multitude of boxes in hallways and dry-rotted black holes of rooms. He learned a little about the other businesses that had been here, but nothing especially relevant for his project.

  He made his way to the fourth floor, in increasing heat. Was it just a wild-goose chase? That seemed more and more likely with every step.

  The fourth floor consisted of one large, long room; it would have made a good indoor basketball court, in more temperate months. The naked walls, ceiling, and floor offered a course on the construction methods of the mid- to late-nineteenth century. It seemed this floor had always been the dumping ground for the major debris of decades, and Nick now found himself amid a beckoning archaeological site. Something was here, something crucial. He could feel it.

  Feeble light from the street windows illuminated in color
less relief a blanket of dust covering everything. His slightest movement created minuscule tornadoes that sent galaxies of dust motes swirling up his nose and into his eyes. He poked around several piles of stuff, until a random swing of his fading flashlight found in the far corner of the room the old barber chairs.

  Or what was left of three or four of them. The good chairs had long ago been commandeered, and now no doubt served as decor in some Americana-themed eatery. Other telltale signs of the barber’s trade were evident to Nick: drawers with scissors and combs, razors, brushes, and other implements that Ivanhoe must have used for the minor surgery barbers performed in those days; some bottles of whimsical and ornate design, that probably once held the rainbow array of tonics and scents Ivanhoe splashed on his customers’ faces and scalps; striped poles, and signs advertising the many grooming services available at “Balzar’s Tonsorial Emporium”; an oak file cabinet, which stood sentinel over rat-eaten piles of account ledgers.

  And there, atop the file cabinet, inconspicuous below similarly mildewed and gnawed volumes, was Ivanhoe’s diary, the most momentous impossible gap Nick would ever be likely to discover in a long life of genealogical research, if such were to be his fortune.

  14

  Pacing around downstairs, in what once was Balzar’s Tonsorial Emporium, Nick eagerly plowed into the diary. He couldn’t resist.

  It was a meticulously kept, almost-daily journal of Ivanhoe’s life and dreams. A priceless find for a historian, and no mean discovery, either, when viewed from a strictly monetary angle, Nick thought. These things today could fetch four, maybe five figures at auction. He’d never been much a drinker of the collectivist Kool-Aid so often ladled out in academe; profit was just fine and dandy with him. But he suspected that in the case of this little prize, Armiger would never let him reach the auction room.

  Ivanhoe’s handwriting was self-assured, his spelling reasonably good, his attitude proud. From the very first words, Nick sensed that he was a man with a clear-eyed view of what was right, a man who had always striven to keep his conscience clean. He instantly envied and respected Ivanhoe.

  Nick began to carefully turn the pages, pausing at entries that grabbed him. He knew the journal would require months, years of close study; even the first few passages gave him tantalizing hints of what lay deeper within.

  From The Diary of Ivanhoe Balzar:

  Mulatto Barber of Natchitoches

  We buried my beloved Mother in Natchez, her Bible on her chest, this day of our Lord April 14th 1869. She told me before she died,–Son, you are as good as your brother Jacob, and don’t let him take nothing away from you, because your Father, may he rest in Peace, wanted it that way. The law of the land is on your side, now–she said. She been keeping my Father’s letter, ever since he passed, near ten years ago. Just before she passed to her Reward, she gave me the letter, and I have hid it so that Mister Jacob can’t find it, and I won’t show it, no! not for my own life. Some day Providence will make all things right. And til that glorious time I am going to make this rekord so my Children and their Children after them will know Hard Work, Clean Living, and Faith in the Almitey is worth more than the riches of this sinful world, that only causes hatefulnis, pain, and sorow, the which you can see in the way Mister Jacob and his half-sister treat all us others. Remember, my Children, when you are born, to trust in the Good Book, and in your Grandmother’s Eternal Love.

  November 3rd 1870. Jacob, my half-brother, came in to my shop this afternoon. It was not a plezant meeting, though I cannot say that such meetings ever been so, and espeshly since dear Mother died and I bought my place with the money she left me. Jacob–I don’t call him Mister anymore, or even Captain, like some folks do, because he carry himself so high. I don’t like to give him the plezure of such titles. Sometime I call him Brother, and that makes him madder than a rattler. Jacob, he marches on in and everything just stops. Mister Fabergas from the hat store was in my chair and he just gets up real quick and pays and leaves, and don’t even wait for his change. James was doing Mister Flaneur’s fine English boots and he just slip out the back door. There were some other men sitting inside and outside, smoking cigars and spitting and jawing about this and that, like they always do, and they all tucked tail and left the two of us alone. Everybody knows Jacob carries a sord in his cane, and a gold and pearl litel pistol, because he has used it twice since the War. Once on Blane Paternoster when he blamed Jacob for losing that fite outside of town with the Yanks back in ’64 (shot him through the throat and he died in a most awful way, I seen it). And once on my half-brother Jeremiah, when Jacob said–Your mother, Mulatta Belle, wasn’t nothing but a common whore and a nigger!–and Jeremiah lit into him like a hericane. But I was not around for that one, or I might have stopped them. Poor Brother Jeremiah. He is alive, but he don’t know his name. Lost an eye, too. After all he been through, to come to this! Jeremiah is the son of my Mother and a slave called Putnam on my Father Hyam Balazar’s plantation, Mitzvah. After my Father died and before the War, Jacob sold Jeremiah to a planter in Missippi! The hardhearted scowndrel! Selling my half-brother to spite me! Father wanted Jeremiah to be free, and said so in his own will and testament. Such paper don’t mean nothing to Jacob. He tore that will in peeces, rite there at my Father’s deathbed! My Mother never spoke a kind word to Jacob after he did that and sold Jeremiah. Father took care of all of us while he lived. He made sure we got some learning. Me espeshly, cause he liked me and let me read many a time in the library out at Mitzvah. He taught me to speak French. He even had a fine portrait of the two of us painted, and it used to hang in the library where he taught me. But Jacob he slashed it up with his sord. Just like he do to anything he don’t like. He kill it. So, Father promised Dear Mother on his deathbed that my Mother’s children would be free and get our Portion after he died, no matter what happened in the war he could see coming. I was there, I remember. He talked to her in French, that nobody else in the family but her and me, a little bit, could understand. Course, lots of folks around here talk French, still, and Spanish, too. He told her, I think,–My dear, I have loved you more than the two white wives who gave me Jacob and Euphrozine.–And then he said some words in a langage I could not understand. I guess he was raving by that time, for he was very old. But Mother said he was praying. Then Jacob, he said–Bout damn time the old Jew died.–Well, I don’t know what he meant by that, cept he always hated Father, because Father was a good Christian man and never missed a Sunday, at one church or another. Father was a man of Honour and Compassion and Charity and Christian Love. Jacob and Euphrozine call theirselves Christian. Make me want to laugh out loud! But Jacob didn’t know rite off about those three letters Father gave to Mother. One for me, one for Jeremiah, and one for my other half-brother Chapman Winn. He was born a free man, like me. Chapman is the son of a white gambler and my Mother, and almost white himself. They say his father had Choctaw in him. Around here, we all mixed up like Missippi mud. I hope the Good Lord keep it strate! Father left me 1000 acres of good land, Jeremiah got his freedom & 500, and Chapman got 250. Jacob has never rested since my Father died. He got poor Jeremiah’s, and he paid a little for Chapman’s. Chapman just want money to gamble. He is no good, like his father before him. That one don’t care about what’s rite. Don’t like me, neither. Now, my Father loved my Mother very much, seeing as how he gave the three of us what he did. Jacob near lost his mind when he heard. He do what he like around here. But my birthrite is safe and I don’t care how long it takes, I will have Justice! I will set the story strate without help from nobody, and my children will know the truth about who they are. Now, Jacob says–Got a mitey nice place here, Ivanhoe.–He takes his cane and swings it down my counter. Broke eleven dollars worth of tonics and French colone. Bent my best two dollar German razor. I just about jumped on him, but he looks so pitiful and thin, with that hole in his chest you can hear like boiling gumbo. I think he was drunk, like usual, because they say he spits blood and drinks whiskey all nite and ne
ver eats and never sleeps. He wanted a fite, I reckon, cause he has his hand inside his coat just itching to pull out that mean litel gun. Lucky there was some men looking in the window from across the street. Jacob may be crazy, but he ain’t dumb. He says–Lots of folks don’t appreciate you putting on airs, Ivanhoe. Figure you must have stolen that money you got all of a sudden. Lots of powerful people, who can take action when it is necessary. They don’t like you setting yourself up white, they don’t like you calling yourself by my Father’s name, or almost, they don’t like you thretning to go to those traitor tirants in the Yankee Legislachure in New Orleans.–Times have changed–I say–You can’t do like you did before. The War is over, Brother.–He come rite up close to me. His breath put me in mind of those breezes we used to smell coming from the east after Vicksburg, carrying the odor of dead men. He says–Give me that letter nigger because you sure won’t live to benefit from it.–I just stare, don’t move a musel. He wanted to shoot me rite then and there, but something stayed his hand thank the Good Lord. I suspect I’ll be having trouble from the Thanes of the Gardenia soon. They a bunch of white nightriders who look to Jacob for their money. They do their drilling out on Mitzvah, I hear.

  December 10th, 1870. Today I bought 30 acres from the old Chirke place. Chirke, he think he was being foxie telling me how good the land is, when I know it is full of rocks and mostly scrub and bog. Five dollars an acre, too much by half, but I have a desire to be a farmer one of these days, and have something my children can feel beneeth their feet. My children’s Portion is safe, but it don’t put food on the table yet. I hear that Mrs. Devlin died, on account of a bad midwife. They say the collera is breaking out again in the south, round New Orleans. Loaned Newman Judd eight dollars for three months at four percent, for him to buy some milk cows. I get as much milk as I need, too. Business is good, and I mite hire another barber. Know of a young colored boy working at the Stable, of good carriage and manners, if I can get him for the rite wage. Guess if he can groom a horse, he can a man, just as easy. They say Jacob getting more crazy every day. He chase the sheriff off the place with a shotgun, who just come to see how he was, like he chase Mr. Roberts off last spring when he come to do the census taking. Jacob think everybody out to cheet him, so he cheet everybody else first.