by Steven Clark
It was said deep and tragically.
“Oh, Saul,” Margot lamented. “Really?”
“Yes. That’s St. Louis for you. We do wonders saving building exteriors, but don’t do jack with interiors. Many of us talked to the guy. Pleaded.” His hand gestured like an actor’s soliloquy. “He took the Vitrolite and threw them away. In his dumpster. Those wonderful, priceless, beautiful …”
Saul’s pause worried me. He absently toyed with his napkin, a sign his anger was rising. “I could stare at those walls for hours. They really glowed, Margot. Like a dream. Like dreams we have, and when we wake from them, we’re sad.” His eyes darkened like coals. “I called that guy every name I could think of. I was younger, and I had the passion, and I sure as hell had the names. I pointed my finger at him and called him a murderer, that what he did was a cultural abortion.”
Saul shook his head and stroked his brow. “He’s a friend of the Mayor, this yahoo. Well, now you see why I have no friends at City Hall. I didn’t care.” He recovered, again offered the face of a prince and took Margot’s hand. “But that’s not going to happen to this mansion.”
She smiled her débutante’s smile, graced by pain and life.
“Of course not, Saul. The three of us will stop this, and when I’m gone—”
Our moment of solidarity ended with Rainer’s entrance. He was neither imperious nor stiff, but leaned forward, a messenger in a tragedy.
“Madam, the cook was watching television. You should turn it on. Now.” Margot frowned. I spoke. “What’s wrong?”
Rainer offered his arm to lead Margot to the television in the study.
16
The Cat Lover
The TV was tuned to one of the eye-witless news programs. A newscaster posed in front of the art museum, her delivery urgent.
“A breaking development. The skeletal remains of a body have been discovered below the grounds of the Desouche mansion off South Grand. In a press release issued by Therese Praxos and Pierre Desouche, heirs of the Desouche estate, it has been revealed a possible tomb lies beneath the mansion, one with artifacts that may prove to be the burial grounds of a woman considered by ancient Native Americans to be a goddess. Dr. Sonia Sauvage, the renowned archaeologist—”
“Tomb raider,” gruffed Saul.
“—has detected what might be one of Missouri’s greatest archaeological finds. One expert at the scene says this archaeological find may rival the discovery of King Tut’s tomb.”
The camera cuts to Sonia, dressed in a severe business suit. Obviously her getting-a-grant garb. Next to her, a machine mounted on a tripod kept ringing out Ping! Ping! Ping!
“Dr. Sauvage, how did you make this thrilling discovery?” Sonia’s eyebrow raised at ‘thrilling.’ She gestured to the machine.
“This device is a RE-45. It can “see” below the surface, and I have used it in many of my expeditions, especially in the jungle. I have long been searching for the tomb of the Corn Mother, and the RE-45 detected an oblong form buried below the grounds. It can only be a tomb.”
“Sonia,” hissed Saul. “She was the one creeping around here.” The telephone rang. Rainer picked up the receiver. The reporter continued.
“And who or what exactly is the ‘Corn Mother?’”
Sonia smiled in cold victory. “The primary fertility goddess of the ancient Cahokians. Many of your viewers are no doubt familiar with the Egyptian goddess Isis, or the Sumerian goddess Ishtar. Corn Mother is the Native American equivalent.”
The reporter turned away. Sonia had her in-depth twenty seconds. “The heirs of the estate, along with St. Louis activist Vess Moot and developer Dan Smatters, have appealed to the mayor to enact eminent domain so the search for this archaeological treasure may begin in earnest.”
Sonia snatched back the mic. “Furthermore, Corn Mother’s discovery will prove Cahokia was more developed in its theological and social symbiosis than any comparable civilization in the New World.”
The reporter didn’t like Sonia horning in, but made a quick smile. “Yes, Dr. Sauvage. That’s extremely interesting.”
Sonia was icy. “It is momentous, not ‘interesting.’”
Ping!
The cameraman took the opportunity to cut from the scene and back to the studio. “Next up, the latest trade the Cards had made with Houston.”
Margot frowned. “Eminent domain. The vultures are showing their talons. Lee, you’ve met this Sauvage person. Is she as bad as I suspect?”
I shrugged. “After the Bastille fell, I’m sure her ancestors ran a booking agency for the guillotine.”
Rainer put down the receiver. “That was the press, Madame. I said you have no comment.”
“Thank you,” said Margot.
Saul’s shoulders rose and fell with a long sigh as he looked out the window. Over his shoulder, I saw news vans arrive.
“They’ve come to see the elephant.”
The next day I lost Mr. Daimus.
Clyde Daimus was in a nursing home in the nether world of mid-suburbia, where car dealerships dribble off into strip malls and subdivisions of west county. He had prostate cancer, and after two weeks of pain came the morphine. He began to shut down. Wednesday at 10:32 p.m. my fingers closed Clyde’s glassy eyes. Nurse aides slipped him into the body bag, then ambulance attendants wheeled him out to the back door past darkened rooms where TVs chattered.
An hour before his heart stopped, Clyde cried out. And then he was gone.
The mansion’s west windows glowed with sunlight, edges of frost on the corners, like the half-moons of fingernails. Margot leaned forward after I told her Clyde’s story.
“For whom did he cry?”
I finished taking her pulse. “For his mother. For me.”
“You?”
“Men are like that when they die. They never cry out for a doctor. Never. It’s always for the nurse. For his Mother. Or a wife. Even though Clyde lost consciousness, a part of him remembered a woman. We lose everything when we die, but keep the elemental things.”
Margot cocked her head and studied me. “Will I do that?”
“Sorry,” I sighed. “I didn’t mean to be morbid.”
Margot’s soft fingers pressed into mine. “This is how I want my daughter to talk to me. I’m not afraid, not anymore. Not with you by my side.”
I drank the cup of Darjeeling she poured. Steam curled up and vanished.
“Jeanne Cason,” Margot said softly, “one of my old friends. We were maids of honor. She had cancer, and went through an MRI and hated it. When I saw her in that thing, I completely understood.”
My nod was immediate. “Magnetic Resonance Imaging is everyone’s least favorite diagnostic procedure. You’re encased in what feels like a sarcophagus.”
“Yes,” Margot nodded. “All alone. Shut up. Like death.”
“The silence and solitude inside frightens us. We’re entombed. The old fear of being buried alive.” A pause as we sipped.
“Please. Be with me.” Her voice was soft.
“I’m already farming out my other patients. Also, I’m meeting with your attorney. To fight for the estate.”
Margot smiled. “Thank you. Lee?”
“Yes?”
She leaned against the brocade couch and looked at the wall and studied her art collection “If you could call me ‘Mother …’”
Sedately, corners of the drawing room darkened into a deepening brown, like the Mississippi at night.
As I drove home, I studied the clusters of high rises that mark the city landscape, like modern mounds; the heap downtown, a smaller cluster in the Central West End, marking hospitals and the Chase. In the distance is Clayton, the county seat with its banking and government towers. All blank in the winter sky. Smoke from towers of these modern mounds curled and bent in the cold. I thought about Margot, about the end drawing nearer with each passing day. Mother. It was hard for me to call her that.
Finally home, I opened the door expecting Yul to scamp
er forth and begin weaving around my legs, No cat. I dropped my bags, flipped on the light, looked up, and yelped.
Seated in the easy chair was a man.
He was dark, Mediterranean maybe, and garbed in an Italian suit, its olive color and cut subtle, almost a darker shade of his skin. Yul was on his lap, allowing thin fingers to stroke his cheeks. The man’s eyes were cold, like a sheathed sword.
“Who the hell are you?” I demanded, heart thudding in my ears, ready to burst out the door.
He kept stroking Yul. “Siamese are very temperamental. Not like Persians. My mother has two. Persians. Very agreeable cats, but you have to groom their coats daily or they become tangled. Siamese do not have this problem. But there are other problems.” His pause hinted menace. “There are always other problems.”
If he was a burglar, he was doing an incredible job bonding with the cat before he cleaned the place out. Kenyatta’s sax tooted across the hall. One good scream would bring armed, although sarcastic, help. “Okay, buddy; what do you want?”
“I am Rasheed. A last name is unnecessary.” He graciously brushed cat hair off his lap. “This concerns Jama.”
I closed the door. Now that the Childe Fantastical’s name was invoked, I was on all too familiar ground. “What did she do to you?”
“I want her.”
“You’re a boyfriend? By that tone, an ex-boyfriend?”
Rasheed’s eyes sharpened. “Do not insult me. I am a man of honor and faith. Your daughter is a treacherous whore.”
His smooth voice didn’t rise. He was Joel Cairo, but with a hint of Al Pacino. I sat down, hardly the aggrieved mother. “Enlighten me.”
“My employer is a generous man, especially to women. Western women.” The last said with polite distaste.
He mentioned his employer’s name and country, a sheik whose kingdom rimmed the Persian Gulf, a place mentioned in the papers. Fortune magazine was quite enamored of it and its new seaside resort; glittering towers and brand names to hide what it had in abundance. Sand and Islam. And, naturally, oil.
“Jama became his … mistress?” Rasheed’s stare neither confirmed or denied. Yul scampered between us. “Let me guess. She bilked him. She’s good at that. She did a number on me.”
“Two thousand dollars. Two years ago.”
“I see you’ve done your homework.”
“My research is thorough. That is the way I work.”
“So, she bedded him and rifled the credit cards.” I went to the door and opened it.
“I’m sorry, but I didn’t raise her that way. It was nice talking, but I have a life, and—”
Rasheed remained seated. “Jama stole $100,000 from my employer. He wants it back.”
“I haven’t got that kind off money.”
“That is unfortunate for your daughter.” He picked up the jingling plastic ball and tossed it to Yul, who chased it, his tail waving behind the couch.
“You see, Mrs. Bridger, in my part of the world, men are not made into fools. There are consequences for Jama’s actions. She is a thieving whore. If the money is not returned, Jama will be taken to my employer.”
I chilled and closed the door. “And what?”
Rasheed shrugged. “Beaten, of course. Nothing that will mark the body or face, I assure you. Then she will do, as you Americans say, the right thing. She will repay the money she has stolen.” That had a cloud behind it; a tall, anvil shaped cumulonimbus, ready to belch lightning and rain. “How?”
Yul dropped the ball at Rasheed’s feet. Smiling, he tossed it again.
“The obvious way. Although Jama is in her thirties, she is still beautiful. Her body is attractive.” He shifted his eyes. “To men of a certain age and need, at any rate. We have many … places where she would be useful.” Rasheed gestured. “At a price of 300 euro a customer … if Jama is as enthusiastic a worker as she is a thief, the debt will be paid in a reasonable time.”
“If this is meant to shock me—”
“No. Mrs. Bridger, despite your hardness, I know you are ashamed of your daughter. My research shows you are a woman of honor and intelligence. I appeal to these virtues. To your motherhood. To save your daughter from this disgrace to your family’s honor.”
Butterflies fluttered in my stomach. In my head I did the math at how long Jama would be in the harem at 300 a pop. “How much time do I have?”
Rasheed’s face relaxed. He approved of my mother’s love, if it could be called that.
“I am, like my employer, a reasonable man. I think a month will be acceptable. Surely you have many friends among your doctors and other gentlemen … among your Jewish acquaintances.” He twisted a smile, and rose from the chair, as did I, and we went to the door.
“How can I contact you?”
“When you need me, I will be available.” He gave me his card. Our heads turned to the corner. Yul gagged and made short coughs that echoed. Rasheed sadly shook his head.
“Fur balls. How they suffer. My mother’s Persians do it all the time. Sad.” The door closed.
17
From Striptease to Strawberries
My search for Jama started with phone calls that began a string of disconnected numbers, surly men who hung up, and a final connection with a dubious voice that sounded like oil smelled. It led me across the Mississippi.
Interstate 64 scoops you into a confusing maze of exit ramps and connector roads, usually clogged with traffic. Once all this was sacred ground to the Cahokians, bedecked with mounds. Henry Marie Brackenridge wrote to Thomas Jefferson about walking on the Mississippi’s eastern side amidst dozens of mounds ‘resembling enormous haystacks scattered through a meadow.’
That idyllic land of sacred burial has long been destroyed and now is covered over with rusting factories and warehouses whose smoke and dinginess sour and assault the sky. At frumpy Sauget (pronounced ‘saw-shay.’), six grimy smokestacks puff away in a neat row like the smoking funnels of the Titanic. You leave this mud on your shoes to approach riverside Illinois’s premier industry. Sex. ‘Gentlemen’s clubs’ abound here and there in square bunkers of lust, cuddled next to them are little motels whose lights shine like cheap lipstick. Beyond this seam of love shacks lie farms and rolling acres of corn; therein beginneth the Bible belt.
I parked my car at Pookie’s, which is Filipino for a lady’s South Pole. Taking a deep breath, I went in. It was happy hour, and mirrors reflected the tawdry space like a Trump casino. In the center was the stage and ramp, seemingly held up by shiny brass poles. The girl onstage did a balletic rut on one of the poles, her body writhing to the hoots of the ringside crowd.
I sighed and frowned. It was Jama. “What’s yours, Grandma?”
The barkeep’s boredom matched his voice, tattoos on his beefy forearms swirls of currents.
“I’ll pass.”
“Don’t work that way,” he snided. “You buy something or leave. We call it Happy Hour, you know.”
“Hey,” croaked a tipsy drunk, “I’ll buy you a drink, honey.”
“Beer,” I said to the barkeep, “and an order of mace on the side.”
An indifferent brew was placed before me. I pointed to Jama. “I need to talk to her.” The barkeep nodded.
“What,” mused the drunk, “that hottie your gal pal or sumpin’?” The drunk scowled. “An I thought you was one’a dem cougars.”
A Marge Simpson rumble came from my throat as I nursed my over-priced beer and watched my lovely daughter perform. Jama’s bump and grind was impressive; all of those ballet lessons and middle school gymnastics finding a practical, if sordid application. I averted my eyes from her frontal nudity that brought hoots and whistles.
To behold thy daughter’s nakedness. Jama put me in a King James Bible mood. She took her bow and strutted off through a glitzy curtain, clothed only in a thong and tips of bills sprouting from her crotch like monetary cabbage. The barkeep nodded to me as he polished a glass, and I went through the curtains.
“Hey, blondie,
” slurred the drunk, “what’cha hurry?”
A brunette cruised past me as she entered the stage, and the bump and grind music revved up again. I passed down a narrow corridor amidst smells of perfume, cigarette smoke, and disinfectant, passing two girls clad in panties and bras, tips of their cigarettes like orange dots. They looked at me as if I was going to be the novelty act. I asked for the girl who just finished. They pointed.
At a dressing room whose bulbs could double for headlights, Jama re-checked her makeup. Sweat gleamed from her workout. She was still undressed. I sidled in. She bent to the mirror, concentrating on more eyeliner.
“I thought that was you,” she said, not looking up.
“We need to talk.”
“So talk.”
“In my apartment, I had a visitor. Rasheed.”
From the stage came ragged cheers. Jama fluffed her hair.
“Rasheed? Did he talk about his mother’s fucking cats? I bet Yul liked him.”
“They got along famously. He also talked about the 100,000 you stole.”
Her brows arched as her pencil darkened them. “I didn’t steal a damned thing. It was only 80,000. He’s skimming.”
I smelled baby powder. Strippers use it to mask the smell of sweat. Jama nodded at her image, passing inspection. “It was an investment for a film. An indie.”
“A film, which I take it never got made, and would you mind putting on some clothes?”
Jama shrugged as she pulled on a Dollar Store kimono. “I was in Prague,” she said, looking at the mirror, not me. “In the old Barrandov studios. The Czech cinema. So, I met Marek. He’s kind of artsy and lives in Vinohrady, the ritzy part of town. Marek’s done some projects—sci-fi, Gothic—when Dreamworks shot the flashbacks for Astral Vampire, they used Prague. When he’s not doing donkey work at the Ministry of Bullshit he works for, he parties and tries to get his projects green-lighted.”
Jama licked her lips, then felt under her chin for excess fat. So far, so good. “So, you hooked up with the sheik?”
“I spent a long weekend in his digs. Where I got the cash. Did you know he has gold toilet seats? Incredible experience.”