“We get to New Orleans, Roy says he has some business to tend to and wants me to come along. We take a cab over to the projects, you know, off Rampart? We go up to a door, Roy bangs on it with his fist… I forgot to mention, Roy Hicks was a New Orleans cop at one time, but that’s another story.”
“What was he doing in prison?”
“That’s what I mean it’s another story; but a good one. We’re in the projects, this black guy opens the door I think I recognize. He doesn’t invite us in, but he knows us and we go in, and I see three more black guys sitting there. The place, I find out later, is a dope house. I’m thinking, what am I doing here, as Roy says to the black guy that runs it, ‘Shake hands, dude.’ But the guy doesn’t want to. By then I realize I know the guy; he was at Angola and got his release about six months before us. He ran a still while he was inside, made home brew out of fruit cocktail, rice, raisins, whatever he could find. It was terrible stuff. He’d sell it and give Roy a cut, something like half, ’cause Roy had given him permission to make it.” He saw Lucy frown and said, “Roy ran the dormitory we were in, Big Stripe, medium security.” He didn’t know what else to tell her. “It’s the way it is, part of the convict social structure… Anyway, Roy goes, ‘Shake hands, dude.’ Says it a couple more times and finally the guy sticks his hand out. Roy grabs it, gets an armlock on him, pulls a gun out of the guy’s pants, a P .38, with the three guys sitting there watching. Roy tells the guy he’s got in the armlock he left owing Roy money, and with accumulated interest the amount was now two thousand dollars. The guy told Roy he was crazy, couldn’t he see they were outside now? That kind a deal was over with. Roy goes, ‘It ain’t over till I say it is. Pay up, dude,’ never raising his voice or threatening the guy, and the guy finally gave him the money.”
Lucy was staring at him. “Amazing.”
“You understand, the guy might’ve owed him a few bucks, but this was a shakedown. Or with the gun you could even say it was a thinly disguised stickup. We get in the cab I ask Roy if he’s flipped out. He goes, ‘It’s like you fall off a bike you have to get right back on it again.’ I said to him, ‘Yeah, we took a fall, but I don’t see ripping off a dope house the same as getting back into what we were doing.’ Meaning neither of us, strictly speaking, had ever been into armed robbery. Roy goes, ‘What difference is it what statute you break, B and E or going in with a gun? You think you’re ever gonna live like a civilian?’ I told him I had every intention of trying. He goes, ‘Well, here’s a start.’ Counts out half the money, a thousand bucks, and hands it to me.”
She said it again. “Amazing.”
“I was thinking, that kind of scene is enough to curl your hair, if you don’t want to pay to get a perm.”
Lucy’s eyes raised. “It looks fairly straight now.”
“Yeah, well, that’s from working in a funeral home, seeing unexpected sights that get it to stand on end.”
“What’s your friend Roy doing?”
“He’s a bartender. Works in the Quarter.”
She took his glass and poured another vodka before looking up at him again. “Let’s sit down. I want to tell you something.”
“When my dad put up his new office building in Lafayette, he told me this at dinner, it was going to cost just over three million dollars. But they’d have to remove a live oak that was about a hundred and fifty years old. So my dad had the plans changed. He built his office at right angles, sort of around the tree, and it cost him another half million… What do you think that says about him?”
It was quiet in the room. Jack could feel the vodka, a good feeling in soft lamplight. He liked the fit of the deep-cushioned wicker chair; he could fall asleep here. Lucy waited, not far away, on the end of the sofa close to his chair, legs crossed. She leaned forward now to reach her sherry. He thought of ways to answer, moved only his arm, slowly, to raise the glass, and gazed at banana trees before taking a sip.
“He loves nature.”
“Is that why he’s contaminating the Gulf?”
“I thought he leased helicopters.”
“He’s in the oil business. He’s been in the oil business all his life. My mother calls him Texas Crude. Men in her family wore white linen suits and owned sugar plantations in Plaquemines.”
“I’m not good at environment,” Jack said. He could fall asleep by closing his eyes. “Or, what’s that other word, ecology. I’m weak in those areas.”
“You see my dad as a nice guy.”
“I think he works at it some. Wants to give you that impression, one of the boys.”
She said, “Then you know he’s not just good old Dick Nichols, he’s Dick Nichols Enterprises. He sings Cajun songs, eats squirrel and alligator tail, but he’s also been to the White House for dinner, twice. He loves nature as long as he and his pals can suck oil out of it and he doesn’t give a damn about that tree. He’s using it. He’s the guy at the Petroleum Club with the live oak that cost him a half million dollars. Not a yacht or a plane, they all have those, including my dad. No, this is a tree.”
Jack said, “Well, it’s nice to be rich.”
“Buy anything you want,” Lucy said. “My dad came to visit me in Nicaragua, seven years ago. An embassy limousine arrives, a long black Cadillac, and my dad steps out, the last person I ever expected to see. Except that he loves to surprise you and act very nonchalant about it. ‘Hi, Sis, how are you? Nice day, isn’t it?’ He knows he’s obvious, so it’s funny. I showed him around and he seemed interested enough, he was cordial. But he’d pretend not to see the lepers, the ones who were crippled or disfigured.”
“Wouldn’t shake hands with ’em.”
“Not even with the staff. He kept his hands behind his back. He said, ‘Sis, this place is awful. What do you need?’ I said, ‘How about giving the patients a ride in your car?’ I told him it would be an experience they’d never forget. He gave me a check for a hundred thousand dollars instead.”
Jack took a sip of his drink, wondering if her dad had kissed her when he arrived. He could understand her dad not being a toucher. How many people were? He said, “I know what you’re getting at.”
She said, “No, you don’t.”
“It’s easier to give to ’em than go near ’em.”
She said, “Jack,” not reacting, but with her quiet manner, knowing what she was going to say, “last week he wrote another check, this one for sixty-five thousand.”
“For the hospital?”
“For the man who destroyed the hospital, the man who burned it to the ground and hacked ten of the patients to death. I was there, Jack. I saw them drive up in a truck… The men got out and began firing, all of them with automatic weapons. They shot our dogs, they shot out the windows of the hospital… I came out of the sisters’ house and heard him yelling at them and thought he was trying to stop the firing. He was, he was yelling at them in Spanish, ‘With machetes! Do it with machetes!’ Some of the patients ran or were able to hide. I brought a few of them into our house. But the ones in the ward, who couldn’t run, were hacked to death in their beds, screaming… You know who I’m talking about, Dagoberto Godoy and his contras. When he came to kill Amelita and didn’t find her.” She paused and said, “I had never laid eyes on him before that day, and now I’ll never forget him.” She paused again and said, “Excuse me,” getting up now. “I’ll say good night to Amelita and fix you something to eat, if you’re hungry.”
She came back with a pack of Kools, tapping one out. Jack picked up the silver table lighter and held it to her cigarette. He watched her sit back blowing a slow stream of smoke, relaxing in the green cushions of the sofa, and he said, “You mind?” Picking up the pack of cigarettes and getting one for himself. He’d have one, and inhaled for the first time in nearly three years, telling her he still wasn’t hungry, not the least bit. He was keyed up and told her he was a little confused, trying to get all of it straight in his mind. He said it seemed like whenever she told him something else he’d have more questions and not know where to start.