Looker

by Michael Kilian

  Lanham rubbed the stubble on his chin. “How far are we from Hilton Head?”

  “An hour and a half south of here. At the most.”

  “You’ve been here before?”

  “Yes. I’ve covered the Spoleto music festival.”

  “That’s the Gian Carlo Menotti opera thing.”

  A.C. was surprised—again. “Yes. And I’ve been to Hilton Head on vacation.”

  “This will be a little different. God. Look at all the flowers here. This whole city is a garden.”

  “It’s the most beautiful city in the South.”

  “This is where they started the Civil War,” Lanham said. “This was the capital of slavery—John C. Calhoun and all those guys.”

  “He’s buried here.”

  “Not deep enough.”

  “Not deep at all. This is the low country. Most bodies are entombed above ground.”

  A.C. pulled the car up before a large columned building on Meeting Street. The structure embraced a garden that opened to the street. A large fountain in the middle of it was quietly burbling water, its soft spray a curtain of tiny flashing jewels in the floodlights.

  An elderly black man in a dark uniform coat stirred himself and ambled over to their car, opening the door on Lanham’s side.

  “This is the hotel?” Lanham said.

  “It’s the Mills House. You’ll like it.”

  “I suppose you’d think I’d like Jefferson Davis’s house, too.”

  “Ray, this place is owned by Holiday Inns.”

  The lobby was huge, quiet, and very Southern, decorously furnished and filled with ferns and other potted plants.

  Lanham hung back, letting A.C. deal with the sleepy desk clerk. There was no change whatsoever in the young man’s expression or manner when Lanham took his turn at the register.

  They were given adjoining rooms on the second floor, which they discovered had large French doors that opened onto a wide terrace that ran the length of the building. A.C. strolled out onto it, much taken with the elevated view of the city’s rooftops. There was a swimming pool at the other end of the terrace, glowing green in the night.

  “If your lady friend’s here, she’s not going to hang out a sign saying she’s home,” said Lanham, looking down the street. “Anyway, I want to do a little reconnoitering before we make any big moves.”

  “Some sleep, then.”

  “An early breakfast. Maybe seven.”

  A.C.’s sleep was fitful and filled with dreams. At first, they amounted to repeated, vague images of riding in a car—speeding in a car, an automobile over which he had no control, traveling in changing directions, heading he knew not where. Then voices were calling to him; people were yelling at him. Then he was with Camilla. They were naked, making love, over and over endlessly, but without fruition. She was angry with him, and kept averting her face. He tried desperately to look at her, but all he could see was her long blond hair trailing in the wind. She was running away, farther and farther away, becoming a speck of light in a dark night sky. “‘I have seen starry archipelagoes, and islands, whose heavens are opened to the voyager.’ Rimbaud.”

  He sat up, feeling the room close around him. Because the windows opened onto the terrace, he had drawn the thick, heavy drapes fully across, and now they seemed to envelop him oppressively, like some fiendish enclosure in a tale by Edgar Allan Poe. Tearing himself from his bed, he flung them open.

  Nothing moved outside. He sat in a chair for a moment, breathing heavily. All his guilt was returning in a rush—guilt over what had happened to Bailey, over what he’d been doing to Kitty, over what might now happen to Camilla.

  He wanted desperately to be away from this place, to be away from everything. But even if he’d fled to Brazil when he’d run away from the scene in his apartment, he knew he’d only be in some other hotel room now, suffering this same misery—and fear.

  He forced himself to return to his bed. He lay with the covers off, staring straight up at the ceiling. He was stronger than this. He closed his eyes and kept his body very still, relaxing every muscle. Finally, sleep returned.

  But so did dreams. He was trapped in his old army dream again. He was in a foxhole on a ridge in Korea at night, all alone. In front of him was a wide, moonlit valley. Its shadows began to stir and from them emerged an infinitely long line of running men. They were shouting and blowing bugles and banging gongs and shooting guns. He fired back, dropping one and then another, killing and killing, but the line came closer and grew larger. The shouting became a din. He pulled himself out of his foxhole and began running. He tripped, and had to crawl. He looked back. The line of soldiers was almost upon him. A single man leapt forward from the others, a long pistol in his hand. He called A.C.’s name. He had a dark, handsome face. He was Jacques Santee.

  A.C. sat up. There was a dark figure at the French doors. A tall man. Where had he left his pistol? In one of the dresser drawers. He rolled across the bed and clambered over the floor, clawing for it. The French doors opened. He had nowhere to turn.

  “Are you okay?”

  It was Lanham.

  “What?” A.C. halted, sitting back on his heels.

  “I said, are you okay? You were shouting. I could hear you through the wall.”

  “Sorry. I’m sorry, Ray. I was dreaming.”

  Lanham, still a silhouette, stared at him. “I’ll be right back.”

  He returned with something in his hand—his pint bottle of whiskey.

  “Here. Get you through the night.”

  “I don’t need that.”

  “In case you do.” He set it on A.C.’s night table and went back to his room.

  A.C. waited several minutes, then surrendered and went to fill a small bathroom glass with the bourbon. The first drink helped. The second put him to sleep—without dreams.

  He awoke groggy, but feeling better. A brisk shower and a shave improved things further. He’d been awakened by the sound of children outside. After he dressed, he went out onto the terrace and saw two families already up and using the swimming pool.

  A.C. went and knocked on Lanham’s door. The detective still had shaving cream on his face when he answered it.

  “When you finish up,” A.C. said, “come out and join me. I want you to see something.”

  Lanham gave him a peculiar squint, but nodded. He stepped outside a few minutes later, dressed in the same tan slacks, sport coat and Izod shirt.

  “Come see the pool,” A.C. said.

  “The pool?”

  “The pool.”

  They walked up to the steps that led to the pool’s level. On the far side, a blond woman sat idly reading the paper while her children, a blond boy and girl, swam and played with two smaller girls. They were black. Their parents, dressed in bathing suits themselves, sat on the nearer side, talking happily.

  “Welcome to the South, Mr. Lanham.”

  The detective grunted. “Let’s eat.”

  As they finished their ham, eggs, and grits in the hotel’s main dining room, A.C. looked down at his shirt. “First thing we do is buy some more clothes,” he said.

  “Guess you can buy all the white pants you want down here.”

  “What after that?”

  “I’m just going to look around town. Maybe chat up the local law.”

  “I want to find the mother.”

  “You want to find Camilla.”

  “If we’re lucky.”

  “That lady’s a lot of things, but she sure as hell isn’t what I’d call luck.”

  Not wanting to wait for the haberdasheries to open, Lanham bought a T-shirt from a local tourist stand, changed into it, then set off on foot. A.C. stopped in the lobby to buy the local newspapers and copies of two Carolina magazines. Taking them to his room, he turned first to the telephone book.

  There were no Delasantes listed in it. He tried information, and was told there was a Delasante, but that the telephone number was unlisted. When he asked for the address, the operato
r told him she was not allowed to give him that.

  Exasperated, he looked through the papers and magazines, and then got a better idea.

  The editor of the slicker-looking of the two magazines was identified on the masthead as a Melanie Bucksworth. A.C. expected an older woman, perhaps a gray-haired lady in picture hat, floral print dress, and white gloves. He got the dress right, but Miss Bucksworth proved to be a girl in her late twenties, wearing tinted glasses and not enough makeup. She’d graduated from the University of North Carolina journalism school, had worked on two small Georgia papers, and then taken this job. A.C. couldn’t tell if she liked it or not.

  She seemed extremely impressed with the fact that A.C. said he was with a New York paper and had contributed articles to Town and Country, but even more taken with his mentioning that he was a friend of Alixe Percy’s, whom she said she had encountered as an important personage at Aiken, South Carolina, horse shows and at the fox hunting there.

  A.C. had told Miss Bucksworth that Alixe had recommended he do a piece on the old homes and families of Charleston, and this had sufficed for her to agree to meet with him over coffee to talk to him about it. Alixe’s name was all he needed for introduction.

  Miss Bucksworth was a small, thin woman, with bad legs and a pretty face. Her friendliness bordered on flirtation, but A.C. supposed that had more to do with local custom than any unique response to him. Though he was anxious to learn as much as he could as quickly as possible, A.C. worked hard at being courtly and charming. The girl responded with considerable gush.

  “Charleston is such a fascinating story, Mr. James. There’s simply no place like it on earth. I’ve been here more than three years, and I haven’t figured it all out. People here are a little slow to accept strangers, don’t you know?”

  Having said that, Miss Bucksworth launched into a discourse on the history and social life of the city intended to impress him with the vast extent of her knowledge. She chattered on endlessly about how well Charleston had survived both the American Revolution and the Civil War, urging him to visit all manner of local landmarks—the Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon, the Powder Magazine, the Edmondston-Alston House, the Heyward-Washington House, the Nathaniel Russell House, the Calhoun Mansion.

  “The hurricane was probably the worst thing ever to happen to Charleston, but we all emerged intact,” she said. “The same indomitable spirit that stood up to General Sherman prevailed again.”

  She laughed in a fluttery way, and touched A.C.’s arm the way Camilla had done.

  They were in a small, sunny restaurant about four blocks from his hotel. The scars of the hurricane were visible out the window. There were wide stumps where once there must have been great trees.

  A.C. then inquired about the famous families of the town, but quickly wished he had not. She began with Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, who had founded the place as a small colony in 1670 and established the only nobility in the history of America, granting plantation owners noble titles as barons, landgraves, and caciques—a system that had endured another half century. It took her nearly a half hour and two cups of coffee to work her way up to the present. Though inwardly maddened with impatience, he encouraged her, wishing desperately that she’d get to what he wanted to hear.

  But in none of this did she mention the name Delasante. A.C. wondered if Alixe had told him one of her enormous fibs, wondering if Camilla’s Delasantes were really of no account, or if they were even in residence. There might be no reason to be here at all. He and Lanham could end up making fools of themselves, trying to make a connection between the murder of a one-time Times Square black hooker and this arcane museum of a city.

  There was more wish than logic to this thought. Camilla could come walking along the sidewalk at any moment. So could her cousin or her brother. There was no other place from which they could have come.

  “Alixe said something about a family called Delasante,” A.C. said. “Are they of consequence?”

  “As a family, no. They’ve only been here four generations. Bought up a lot of land after the War Between the States, and more during the Depression. But Mrs. Delasante, why, yes indeed. She’s of the Dutarques and the Beaugerards and …”

  Miss Bucksworth went on much as Alixe had done. A.C. decided to try a gambit.

  “Alixe said there was some trouble in the family, something dark and mysterious.”

  The girl flushed a little, glancing apprehensively at the other tables in the small room. Only one was occupied, and by tourists—people wearing shorts and boating shoes, with plastic shopping bags set on the wooden floor beside them.

  Miss Bucksworth leaned close to A.C., peering at him over her tinted glasses.

  “Mrs. Delasante’s husband was murdered, don’t you know,” she said, in a near whisper. “Years ago. The matter was officially listed as an accident, but it’s said he was stabbed to death, in Niggertown … I mean, in the black section. There was no investigation. It was commonly understood that he had a fancy girl down there, and no one wanted that to become public knowledge. In the days of slavery, that sort of thing was fairly commonplace—with one’s own chattel. But since then, consorting with a black girl—it isn’t countenanced. Not at all.”

  “Would you have anything in your files about that, about the ‘accident’?”

  She sat back abruptly, briefly placing her hand over her mouth.

  “In our files? Mr. James, I could lose my job for suggesting such a thing.” She came close again. “I’m told there were some at the time who suggested that, well, that the Delasantes shouldn’t be welcomed too warmly in some places after the—the incident. They paid very dearly for that suggestion. I mean, Mrs. Delasante belongs to every social club and organization in town, and she runs the most important one. The social community rallied around her and it was those who’d made the suggestion who ended up being cut and snubbed and dropped. After all, it wasn’t as though she’d slept with a black man.”

  A.C. smiled with all the charm he could muster, waiting for her to continue as though completely dazzled by her intimate knowledge of her subject.

  Miss Bucksworth’s voice became even more conspiratorial. “Not that she didn’t have a few gentlemen callers of her own in the evening—gentlemen of quality, to be sure—when her husband was off on his adventures. Or so I’m told. He was a very handsome man, Mr. Delasante, but I think she mostly married him because he had so much money. Her own family was in rather reduced circumstances back then. I’m told they’d even considered selling their house. She’s been a very tragic figure since her husband’s death. Her daughter Danielle committed suicide shortly after. And her other children moved off.”

  She took a sip of her now cooled coffee, then quickly set it down, somewhat nervously.

  “Why are you so interested in the Delasantes, Mr. James?”

  A.C. smiled again, and shrugged. “Alixe told me a bit about them. I guess I’m just looking for a little gossip to take back to her.”

  “You’re not thinking of putting any of this in the article you’re going to write?”

  “Oh, no. Of course not.”

  She reached quickly for her straw handbag.

  “Well, it’s been altogether lovely chatting with you, Mr. James, but I have to get back to the job.”

  “May I walk you to your office?”

  “No, no,” she said, sliding back her chair. “That won’t be necessary. You just sit here and finish your coffee.”

  “I’ll send you a clip of whatever I write.”

  “That’s very kind of you, but please don’t bother.” She lingered only to say, “Do enjoy yourself during your stay in Charleston.” Then she was out the door and hurrying along the street.

  Although he hadn’t learned it from Miss Bucksworth, it turned out to be easy to get the address of the Delasante house. One of the black porters in the hotel lobby told him, providing careful, polite directions. At the mere mention of the Delasante name, the man became extremel
y deferential.

  A.C. set off again down Meeting Street, walking slowly, respectful of the heat, and savoring the experience. This end of the city was indeed an enormous museum. Were the English governors of the eighteenth century to return from the grave, they would be surprised only by the automobiles.

  The porter’s elaborate directions took him down some cobbled side streets and then along the wrought iron fence of an old, small cemetery. At its end was the large, yellow house the porter had promised. A number of cars were parked along the street in front of it, among them a very old, highly polished Cadillac sedan—its black driver lounging against a front fender, chatting quietly with two others.

  A.C. crossed to the other side of the street, pausing to pretend to study the back of an envelope he took from his pocket, as though it were a tourist’s map or guide. The house, set close to the sidewalk behind an iron fence only slightly more ornate than the cemetery’s, was fronted by four white columns. A balcony ran along the second floor just behind them. In Charleston style, the house’s verandah was at the side, running back to the garden.

  The verandah was exactly as it had looked in the photograph on Camilla’s mantel. Even the furniture seemed to be in the same place. All that was missing was the people.

  Moving quickly, he recrossed the street and stood at the Delasantes’ fence. There was movement back in the garden, bright color glimpsed through the distant trellis and adjoining hedges, summer dresses and picture hats, a garden party.

  A sudden sound, the opening of a screen door, startled him. He looked up to see a tall woman come out onto the verandah. She wore white gloves and matching hat and a blue and white polka-dotted dress. She paused, and looked at him, with both curiosity and disdain. Her face was fuller than Camilla’s, but bore much resemblance. The wide, blue-gray eyes were the same.

  “Good morning,” A.C. said, with much courtesy.

  He might as well have called her a nasty name. She descended the steps quickly and hurried on toward the garden.

  A.C. moved on. At the next corner, he turned to study the parked cars from the safety of his distance. None looked like Camilla’s.