Twenty-six years ago I killed a man. I was playing detective in those days, and I was pretty crazy back then too, so I guess I must have been trying on some half-imagined role as avenging angel. Like other roles I’ve tried, before and since, it didn’t fit.
The thing is, I rarely think about it. Though from time to time, walking these shabby streets (especially at night, it seems), I’ll glance into a stranger’s face and something there, in his eye, takes me back. Dostoyevsky said that we’re all guilty of everything. And while I never could bring myself to accept Christian notions of sin and atonement, there’s definitely something to karma. The things we do pile up on us, weigh us down. Or hold us in place, at very least.
Chapter Four
I tried to call Boudleaux after reading through the report, but his machine told me he was in Lafayette on business and would be away “indeterminately.” I could have tried motels up there, but he was almost certainly staying with family. And that spread it pretty thin, since one way or another he seemed to be related to just about everyone in Lafayette and Evangeline parishes.
Six months old now, the report was, like all his reports, thorough, concise and poorly spelled, typed on a Royal portable he’d had since college and to every appearance never once cleaned in all that time, e’s and o’s indistinguishable, a’s little blobs of ink atop frail curved spines. And valuable, like most documents, as much for what it did not say as for what it did.
The map is not the territory. The limits of your language are the limits of your world. Catchphrases from the fifties and from circa 1921.
Apparently Alouette, as Boudleaux discovered (hard upon stone-walling from Guidry and a pride of lawyers, and a call from that same judge, who casually inquired concerning the status of his PI license), had not been in her father’s home for some time.
Early spring of last year, one of her teachers, Mr. Sacher, homeroom and American history, began reporting her as nonattendant. Per procedure, he notified his supervisor and principal and attempted, on his own, to reach Alouette or her parents at the phone number listed in school files. Repeatedly, there was no answer at this number. Nor does any record of administrative response exist, though the principal is certain that he and Mr. Sacher “discussed the matter.”
Parents were listed in Alouette’s file as Horace and L. Guidry, and above Occupation (the forms were filled out by the students themselves) was entered Fuzzician. Sacher checked the phone book and found no home number (assuming it was unlisted) but in the yellow pages a Horace Guidry, Internist, with offices in the Touro area. When he called and finally talked his way past the receptionist and a nurse, Dr. Guidry listened a moment and told him he would have to get back to him. And when, later that afternoon, he did, it was by way of a conference call, their two phones looped into an intercom phone at the downtown offices of Bordelon, Bordelon and Schmidt.
Stating his concern, Sacher was informed by one of the lawyers that Alouette had upon her own volition and without notice, some weeks previously, departed her father’s board and care. Her present whereabouts were unknown, though efforts were still under way to locate her.
Had there been family difficulties? Sacher asked. Was Alouette under any unusual pressures?
You are her teacher, am I correct? a third voice inquired. And upon Sacher’s assent, went on: Then I’m afraid I see no compelling or appropriate reason for us to answer such an inquiry.
Boudleaux had found his way to Mr. Sacher within three hours of being engaged by Chip Landrieu. As it happened, he had a couple of cousins who worked in the mailroom at Bordelon, Bordelon and Schmidt. And so, not long after closing that same day, a Friday, Boudleaux knew what there was in B, B amp;S’s file concerning Alouette. Which wasn’t much.
Following a couple of practice runs, absences of two or three days the first time, then several weeks, from both of which she returned properly sorrowful and acquiescent, one Tuesday morning she headed off to school and to all appearances fell through a rabbit hole. Police were properly notified. Friends interviewed. Malls, clubs and other teenage water holes scouted. All to no avail.
The Guidrys had themselves engaged a local agency, South-East Investigations, to conduct a search for the girl. Clyde South and Michelle East were married, and Boudleaux knew them both. They were running into stone walls too.
To his report Boudleaux had appended a list of others he’d interviewed and (before being taken off the case) planned to.
On second or third reading, one of the attributions caught my eye. Counselor, it gave as occupation, then: Foucher Women’s Shelter. Where Verne had been working the last few years. The name above was Juan Garces.
I called to be sure he was in, then walked over to Tchoupitoulas and grabbed a White Fleet cab. An elderly woman behind a minuscule desk in the lobby (it had once been the foyer where residents had mailboxes, and I hope there weren’t too many of them) directed me upstairs.
He was sitting before a computer monitor and swiveled partway around, hands staying on the keys, when, in the absence of a door, I knocked at the frame. He swung back to the keyboard, hit Save and Exit, came all the way back and got up. We shook hands.
“Sorry,” he said. “But you have to do what they want you to. You must be Mr. Griffin.” He waved me into a chair.
Uneven stacks of folders and stapled papers all but covered the table space around keyboard and computer. To the right at shoulder level, beside a narrow window, a plastic board was lined with yellow Post-It notes in a tiny blue script. Garces reached over and peeled off the top one, dropped it into the trashcan under the desk. The other wall was taken over, above, by a reproduction of Matisse’s Blue Frog/Yellow Nude (or is it the other way around? I can never remember) and, below, by a shelf of books running to Robert Pirsig, Genet, Laing and Szasz. I took note of Delany’s Dhalgren and The Motion of Light in Water.
Garces was fair-skinned with light blue eyes, and somehow gave the impression of being short and gangly at the same time. His dark hair was close-cropped. He wore a black T-shirt, pressed slacks, a linen sportcoat with the sleeves turned up a couple of times, cordovan loafers without socks. Fortyish.
“So what is it that I can help you with, Mr. Griffin? Something to do with a friend, you said on the phone.”
“LaVerne Landrieu.”
“Of course,” he said after a moment. “You’re Lewis: that Griffin. I didn’t connect, when you gave me your name earlier. I’m sorry, Mr. Griffin-”
“Lew.”
“Lew. It’s a loss to us all, you know. She made a difference in a lot of lives around here. But you must know that.”
“No. I don’t.”
“Oh. But whenever she spoke of you … You two haven’t been in touch, then?”
I shook my head.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Do you mind my asking if there was any particular reason for that?”
“What I keep telling myself is that I didn’t think her marriage needed ghosts like me showing up on the stairs.”
“Did you meet Chip Landrieu?”
“Afterwards, yes.”
He nodded. “Things so often happen in the wrong order in our lives.”
“How well did you know Verne, Mr. Garces?”
“Richard.”
I pointed inquiringly back toward the doorframe, the name plaque beside it.
“No one outside my family ever calls me Juan. And no one, period, calls me Mr. Garces. But I’m afraid I don’t understand.”