Now Let's Talk of Graves Page 7

  “Queen of Comus. That’s right, we’re all old friends.”

  “Guess I have a hard time seeing that, since Kitty says you’re the one going around asking the rude questions, looking for dirt on Church.”

  “And getting precious few answers.”

  “So give it up.”

  He shot her a look. “Do me a favor, Sam. Don’t bust my chops.”

  “You could have said no, thank you very much, Uncle Tench. You could have passed.”

  Harry thought about that for a minute, about that day Tench had called him into his big-as-a-battleship corner office. He’d been running his hands through his blond waves, saying: Son, ol’ Church was a friend, but you understand, this is bi’nis. Big bi’nis. He was chewing on his five-buck cigar. His little eyes were pale and cold, reminding Harry that he’d never really liked his mother’s brother much in the first place. Tench had said, Now, I don’t begrudge his darling little girl that first quarter mil, that’s the kind of bite we’re set up for. But this other three-quarters? No way, son. Tench hitched up his pants, adjusted himself, went on. There’s no way a man takes out that kind of monster new insurance right ’fore he dies, ’less he knows somethin’. Don’t ever’thing show up in the pre-insurance medical. He still could have had a preexisting condition would turn that claim to mush no matter what the cause of death. The postmortem don’t say jack—you know that was a lick and a promise. Now, I know the man was killed by a hit-and-run. I know that. But there’s somethin’ here not on the up and up, either prior to—or in the doing. And you’re gonna find that thing, save us the big bucks. Ain’t you, son?

  It had crossed Harry’s mind to say at that juncture, Thass right, yes suh, boss, to do the Stepin Fetchit routine they’d taught him as the Only White Boy at Grambling. Yeah, Grambling had taught him a lot—which was a surprise, since he’d meant going there as a joke after he’d gotten himself thrown out of Choate, then flunked out of his first year at Harvard, bad, bad boy, Grambling had been his answer to his father’s plea to go to school somewhere, anywhere. But once the brothers had gotten over the fact that he was white, this boy who’d grabbed up a three-year track scholarship—Fastest White Boy in the South, they called him—they’d taught him moves and jive and street smarts. They’d taught him how to lay down a mean, driving rhythm. Taught him if a man keeps calling you out, get the first lick in, no matter what, and make it count. Yes, Grambling had been a four star educational experience. He learned he didn’t know diddle about being bad. Learned a whole lot about being a decent human being. He also learned when to bob and when to weave and when to cut his losses.

  That’s what Harry had really thought, the day Tench laid all that bull on him about Church Lee: He ought to cut his losses. Tell Tench to shove this job and stroll. He’d had his mouth open to do that when he thought, But wait!

  Where’d it gotten him, that decision he’d made when he was a youngster, when he’d thrown over all that Uptown, Garden District, blue-blood bull that was his heritage? Got him fifteen years, three nickels, of driving cabs, working rigs, process serving—all to support his songwriting, music-making jones—what’d he have to show for it?

  A handful of demo tapes, that’s what he had, when everybody he knew was married, renovating double shotgun houses uptown in the Lower Garden, bitching about their 2.5 kids’ tuition, going to tennis camp, working on their serves. Were they so wrong? Maybe he’d screwed up. Maybe he ought to try it, wear a suit and tie, work his way up some ladder, saying, Yes suh, boss.

  Now he looked at Sam, questioning his motivation and thought, What the hell? But instead of saying that, he reached for her bag again, Here, let me take that.

  No thanks, she answered, a pretty woman walking about two steps ahead of him, shouldering a carryon that looked like it weighed fifty pounds. She strutted like a dude in boot camp with something to prove.

  “Are you sure?” he asked again.

  “That’s all right. I got this far.”

  “It’s tough to be a gentleman these days.”

  That slowed her down. She laughed—she had a great laugh—and handed him the bag.

  “It’s been so long since I’ve seen a gentleman, I forgot what y’all look like.”

  Harry relaxed. Maybe she wasn’t going to hold this business against him after all.

  “You want to go by the Central Grocery, grab some lunch, sit down and talk about this thing?”

  She nodded yes.

  They were down the escalator now, across the lower level, passing the civilians at the luggage bays who hadn’t learned yet how to pack.

  The automatic doors slid open, and they stepped out into the warm Gulf air. Sam took a deep breath. The air felt like hot sheets and warm perfume.

  Down, girl, down, she reminded herself. This was business.

  But New Orleans air made you think like that. Whereas back in Atlanta, an hour earlier, it had been chilly. A piss-and-vinegar late-March morning, it was the perfect kind of day to fly over to New Orleans, take names, and kick a few asses. She’d help her friend Kitty get this insurance mess straightened out, chomp down some crawfish, and be back in her own bed the next night, night after at the outside.

  She was still holding to that plan. And if the cute man who represented the guys in black hats wanted to take her to lunch, well, why not? There was no reason you couldn’t get down to brass tacks at the same time you were getting on the outside of a muffuletta.

  In the parking lot she learned that Harry drove a beat-up VW Rabbit convertible the color of a Campbell’s soup label that had been lying in the sun for about ten years.

  “They didn’t have one with bullet holes?” she asked, giving him two Southern gentleman points for handing her in, shutting her door.

  There was litter on the floor, wires where the radio used to be, no inside handle on her side.

  He grinned. “You have to hustle to get those. At the police auction, the baby drug dealers snap ’em right up.”

  The Rabbit became more compact as Harry jammed it into a parking spot right near the Central Grocery on Decatur, across the street from the French Market. A huge tanker loomed on the river just behind the market and the seawall.

  A few mintues later they were sitting at the counter inside the old Italian grocery store, sharing a thick, round Italian loaf stuffed with ham, Genoa salami, provolone, and garlicky olive salad—a muffuletta.

  Halfway through the sandwich Sam sighed. “I think I’m gonna live.” She took a long swig on her cream soda, then looked Harry straight in the eye: “So what’s the deal?”

  “The deal is I’m trying to dig up something to save Tench the $750,000.”

  “You paid the first quarter.”

  “Yeah, but Zoe can kiss the rest good-bye if I find anything fishy. Preexisting medical condition. Suicide. Any kind of stink.”

  “You know, I saw Church get smacked by that Buick. Suicide would have been real hard to pull off, driving the car himself. Give it up, Harry. It’s open and shut. Hit-and-run.”

  “Well, I know it looks that way. But as we say—it’s my job. Considering all the possibilities. As you say, asking the rude questions. Snooping around.”

  Actually, it sounded like her job as an investigative reporter. “You know you’re making the Lees very unhappy. Especially Ma Elise.” She wasn’t above beating him about the head with an eighty-three-year-old old lady.

  “Look, this is no day at the races for me either. But I couldn’t duck this. Tench dragged me in special.”

  “You should have stayed in rock ’n’ roll. Country ’n’ western.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he barked.

  She jumped. Boy, he did have a temper! Tourists stared from their stools down the counter. Well, she was pushing a little hard. “I’m sorry. Calm down.”

  No sweat. He shrugged.

  She filed away that sore spot. “Fine. So what’ve you got?”

  “Whoa,” he laughed. “Hold on. You think I’m just
gonna lay my hand on the table?”

  “Why not? You got something big, I’ll check it out. It holds water, Kitty and I’ll talk about it. See if it’s worth giving a couple of lawyers new Mercedes for battling it out. I don’t think she’s in it for the money though.”

  “You’ll check it out! Not in it for the money? What have you been smoking?”

  “Really, Harry, she’s not. You of all people should know this is about honor. Son, we’re talking several generations of Lee pride you’re stepping on.”

  She saw him flinch at the son. That was okay. After all, she was a woman with business to attend to, a grown-up who’d been sniffing out leads when he was still shagging flies in junior high.

  He wasn’t backing off. “Horse manure! We’re talking green, lady. Lots of things change when you’re talking green. People’s eyes light right up, whirl around like pinballs.”

  “Just tell me what you got.”

  He leaned back on his stool and took a long swig on his Dixie beer, deciding how to play this.

  “Church was a bad boy,” he said finally. “We specialize in bad boys in New Orleans.”

  “How bad, and you’re stalling.”

  “Stalling? I’m withholding.”

  He let his left eye droop down to match the right, like shades drawn. It was a cute trick.

  “Why do you keep assuming I’m gonna lay down?” he said.

  She stuffed the last bite of sandwich into her mouth and talked around it. “Look, if you had something really hot, you wouldn’t be here, having lunch with me. You’d be down at your uncle’s office, letting him put another gold star on your report card.”

  Harry flinched.

  “I’d say you don’t have diddly,” she continued. “You think if you sniff around me, I’m gonna help you.”

  “What!” He reeled back on his stool so hard, she thought he’d fly. “Help me?”

  “You’ve got a fair-to-middling record as a process server. Sure, I know you’ve found a couple of big ones, but that doesn’t exactly make you a private dick. You know what I mean?”

  He socked himself in the forehead. “I can’t believe you checked up on me.”

  When he got excited, he did nice falsetto. It was probably very effective in the right song. Too bad this wasn’t it. “Of course I did. You think I’m gonna fly over here empty-handed? Without doing my homework? This is not the minors, honey.”

  “Do you know your attitude stinks?”

  Harry stood, stalked to the front counter, snagged himself another Dixie, and plopped back down. “It could really get on a person’s nerves.”

  “Really?”

  She was smiling her good smile, which was about the equivalent of his slow one. She’d figured if things were going to be like this, she might as well use everything she had in her arsenal. “So you’re doing all the background, right?” she said. “Just poking around on a fishing expedition, hoping against hope something’s gonna turn up?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “You found out Church was a drunk. BFD.”

  That got him. “Well, it is a big deal. His drinking was getting him into some deep dooky.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as a friend from the State Licensing Board had been giving him some advice that he ought to try to quit the sauce.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s not the same as his confessing to or being tried for an offense, is it? I mean, he was still innocent until proven guilty, wasn’t he? Or has the AMA thrown out that little tenet of our system of jurisprudence?”

  “You know damned well they haven’t.”

  “So, it wasn’t like he was subject to action by the AMA’s review board?”

  “No, he wasn’t.” And then Harry realized he was being snookered, that he was already well into the little card file he’d compiled on Church.

  She could see it on his face, and then his shoulders collapsed a little. Good. Maybe he’d cooperate, drop this nonsense, or at least work with her on getting it settled. That would be great because she didn’t have much time. She needed to get in, out, and back to Atlanta. She’d told her boss, Hoke, she’d be gone a couple of days at most.

  Hoke had accused her of going on an interview. Said she was another rat deserting the paper. Said she had no loyalty. No grit. No stand-and-fight-the-good-fight.

  Hell, now that she thought about it, why was she in such an all-fired hurry to get back to that? Skull and crossbones flying in the city room. She didn’t know what she wanted to do. There were tough decisions ahead about her career, her brilliant career. No wonder she was over here in the Big Easy, playing at saving a damsel in distress.

  “Yeah, probably,” Harry said.

  Sam gave him a blank look.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “Am I boring you here?”

  “Church’s drinking. Check. What else?”

  “Well—”

  The way he slid into it, she could tell he thought this was hot.

  “—there’s a doozy of a malpractice still hanging fire.”

  “Retinal surgeons have screwed up before. I’m sure it happens every day.”

  “And somebody ends up blind.”

  “I’m not being the heavy here, Harry. But what does the price of rice have to do with Church’s life insurance?”

  “Let’s say a former patient he hadn’t been so successful with held a grudge. Offed him.”

  “Okay, let’s say. He’s murdered, you still pay.”

  Harry waggled a hand.

  “What do you mean maybe? Murder cancels the payoff? It makes him dead, doesn’t it?”

  “It gets pretty murky. Open to discussion.”

  “I see. Open to settlement is what you mean. If the circumstances make the dearly departed look like a big enough ass, maybe the family would settle for a little less, and you all wouldn’t yell about it so loud. Like maybe you’d yell so softly, the papers wouldn’t even hear of it?”

  “Something like that.”

  “But you’d have to prove it. Get a conviction.”

  Again Harry’s hand made like a sick fish.

  “Oh, really? Speaking of conviction, what are the police doing? The call was hit-and-run, right?”

  He nodded.

  “They have any interest in finding out who, or they’ve got better things to do with their time than investigate the slaughter of a prominent citizen in the street?”

  “Couple guys working on it.”

  “Which couple guys?”

  “Blackstone and Shea are their names.”

  “That sounds like a magic act. Is one of them a short guy, never talks? Other one a big guy you can’t shut up?”

  “Very funny.”

  “So what do they say?”

  “They say nothing so far. There’s no trace of the car.”

  “It wasn’t exactly your everyday Honda Civic. Shouldn’t be that hard to find, thirty-year-old Buick big as a boat.”

  “Yeah, but if it’s disappeared into a garage somewhere, the bottom of a bayou, what good is that?”

  “What about the trace?”

  “Found two that fit the ticket in the city limits. One up on blocks in a collector’s garage. Cherry. No dents, no nothing. The other is missing in action. The last registered owner, a little old lady across the river in Algiers, died six months ago. Nobody knows what happened to her car.”

  “Well, that’s very handy, isn’t it? Now, what else on Church besides the drinking and the malpractice. Other possible enemies?”

  “You heard the same thing I did.”

  “What thing?”

  “In the Sazerac Bar, Mardi Gras night.”

  “That’s right.” Sam’s eyes lit up. “I’d forgotten about that. That guy your uncle was talking about with Church, he came in the Sazerac, hail-fellow-well-met, Church bristled up. Delacroix. Duchamps—” She snapped her fingers a couple of times. “Help me out here, Harry.”

  “Dupree. His name’s Maynard Dupree.”

  “Righ
t. Church got his back all up. Didn’t he say something about wishing Dupree’s horse had fallen on him? What was he talking about, a horse?”

  “Dupree is the captain of Comus. He rides a horse in the Comus parade.”

  “So they’re both in Comus, the same carnival—what do you call it?”

  “Carnival organization. Krewe.”

  “And they hate each other? Or, at least, Church hated Maynard?”

  “Yeah. I asked Sudie, my sister, about it.”

  “Don’t you belong to Comus?”

  “My dad does. I dropped all that stuff years ago.”

  Sam raised her eyebrows. A man after her own heart—at least when it came to the social razzle-dazzle. But that wasn’t the point here, was it?

  “So what’s the scoop on their feud? What’s Sudie say?”

  “Nothing. She said I should ask Mama.”

  “And?”

  “She gave me the big brush-off. Pretended she didn’t remember. You know, the way people do when they don’t want to talk about something. My folks are famous for that. They think I’m still six years old.”

  “So?”

  “I’m asking. I’m asking. You hear one thing here, one thing there. I think it goes way back, to when Church and Maynard were kids, maybe.”

  “Well, Kitty will certainly know.”

  “Right. But she sure as hell ain’t telling me.”

  “Well, she ain’t telling you diddle, is she, darlin’? That’s why you want to team up with me, get the inside track.”

  “Wait a minute—”

  But there was no slowing Sam down. “That Church-Maynard Dupree business is definitely worth seeing about. I mean, assuming that the thing to do here is to follow through on your plan of just stirring up every possible little old pot and see what comes of it.”

  “Thank you so very, very much. You make our work sound so scientific.”

  “Our work!” she snorted. “And this isn’t exactly the FBI lab, in case you haven’t noticed. Just two pore little old dumb Southerners doing what they can with their limited abilities. By the way, was Church into anything kinky? Do you know?”

  “You mean like boys?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Or little girls.”