Also Philip said he like talking to me whenever I come by to work for his mama in the garden since I understand the two of us is in the same boat — a couple of mens waiting around for the rest of their life to happen. Philip, he couldn’t get enough of that sad sack talk and start coming by to drink with me at the Star Lounge, my little briar patch by good old St. Bernard.
I always feel sorry for Philip when he come slumming, a puffy little white guy in there with us Negroes. But I don’t feel sorry enough to forget about asking him where do they hide the money up to his place on St. Charles. And he told me. Told me his mama keep a wall safe in the very last place I’d ever think to look, which is the garden shed behind the tools.
Also, he told me how he steal money from the evil lowdown old bag first as a boy, then as a grown man when he hide it down to the bank on Poydras Street where he keep a safety box in the vault on account of he trusts banks even if his mama don’t...
Because Frank had secured them so carefully in a false compartment he’d constructed in the back of the chifforobe, the only thing in the room that wasn’t ruined by greasy water were the Big Chief pages of his long letter. Oh — and the money, which made me nervous on many levels and which trembled my hands to the point where I couldn’t help but spill the cash over the muck of cans and butts.
What especially unnerved me was my own larcenous first impulse on seeing all that green: how I’d spend it on my own selfish self, or at least pay off my bills. Which is not the way a sworn man of the law such as I am, after all, is supposed to think. The first thing I am obliged to do under the circumstances of tainted money is turn it in lickety-split, along with anything else incriminating, such as Frank’s letter of a singular confession to theft in this particular instance.
But somehow I knew I wasn’t going to feel so obliged. Maybe this was because of the crappy trial that Frank endured; not quietly, as they often tied him down on the defendant’s chair and stuffed a bailiff’s hanky in his mouth when he cursed the judge too much. Maybe it was because of my own rage that I had to keep bottled up since I myself am part of the crappy system, prosecution side. Maybe it was because of the parade of incompetent drunkards Frank kept hiring, since that’s all he personally knew of the city’s criminal defense bar and refused to consult me on the matter of his defense.
“Sorry, my Wussy Wally, but I ain’t about to trust nobody who work for the Man going to get me needled for a lawyer reference — not even my own brother.” Frank had told me this on the one occasion he agreed to see me in his cell.
Or maybe I was feeling rebellious against the whole crappy system, because once again Aunt-tee Viola spoke for the whole bunch of my cold relations when she came on the bus to the D.A.’s office on South White Street, right in the middle of my brother’s highly publicized axe-murder trial, for an approving look-see. She told me, “Walter, we’re so proud of you for rising above your brother’s miserable failure of a life.” I bottled up what I thought right then: In my brother’s case, the words South and white were not harbingers of justice.
No doubt I was seriously conflicted because of my guilt for spiting Frank. It was a guilt settled in for life after I read through the transcript of his trial in the Superior Criminal Court of New Orleans, especially the part I can’t help but remember by heart:
Mr. Masson: I want another attorney.
The Court: Well, I don’t think I’m going to do that.
Mr. Masson: Y’all go ahead and have your trial if you want, but leave me out of it. You can sentence me, hang me, stick a needle to me, do what you want. If you don’t give me no other lawyer, I ain’t taking part in this stupidity. I already told you I didn’t steal no money and I didn’t bash the brains out of no white lady. Go on now, have court without me. I don’t care.
The Court: It’s your life that’s involved. Don’t you care about that?
Mr. Masson: I care about my life just as much as you care about it.
The Court: Don’t you want to protect it?
Mr. Masson: Do you want to protect it?
Late as I was, I was finally doing the right thing by Frank, and set about business.
First, I confirmed with the senior barflies at the Star Lounge that a puffy-faced white guy used to pal around there with my brother.
“Oh, he still comes by here,” according to somebody called Shug. “Real wormy kind of a man, just sit over to the end of the bar and complain. I ain’t saying we don’t got our share of complainers, but things that guy said — well, seems to me he was creeped by his own life.”
Before I left, Shug told me, “Your brother was all right, you know? Sure, I know what they say he did. But that’s lawyers making the charge. You know what your brother said about lawyers one time?”
From whispers of a long-ago night I had a fair idea.
“The Devil makes his Christmas pie with lawyers’ tongues,” said Shug. “That’s Frank’s own words. Oh, but he could talk some.”
Next, I searched for a record of a safe deposit box rented to one Philip Malreaux, after which I pulled a few strings, thanks to my official capacity as a lawman, and quietly obtained a court order to open it up and inspect the contents. I had a fair idea what I’d find.
It was not difficult to crack Malreaux after a long talk at the Star Lounge, accompanied by a fifth of Johnnie Walker Red, which mostly he drank while softly weeping as I told him what I’d found — and what I made of it. As I was looking into Malreaux’s white face, I saw my dead brother’s own black dog face; it was as if the two of them, Philip and Frank, were some old married couple who came to resemble one another.
I asked Malreaux if he’d care to tell a detective to back up my theory of what really happened to the lowdown woman who shattered his life as bad as Katrina shattered the city. He took a long pull of Johnnie Walker before saying, “Yeah, that’d be all right.”
As we rode in a taxi together down to police headquarters on South Broad Street, Malreaux said, “You being Frank’s brother, I offer my word of honor — I’ll protect you like Frank protected me.”
That’s when I realized we both knew the all-around score: He knew that I knew that he knew.
“Deal,” I said to Malreaux. “Just say what I tell you to say.”
Finally, I had a little talk with the boss — the man who had hired me and sent Frank to Angola.
“You found what?” he said, annoyed. I had interrupted the tuna sandwich he was eating at his desk.
“The axe.”
“Don’t matter about a murder weapon all this time after the fact.”
“It matters if it’s new evidence — grounds for a new trial for my brother.”
“Who is a dead and gone man.”
“True, but that doesn’t mean the case is. Besides the axe, there was a whole lot of cash in Philip Malreaux’s box.”
“I don’t see how that matters.” The boss used the back of his hand to wipe a string of tuna off his lip. “That money could have come from anywhere, anytime.”
“Including it could have come from Eugenia Malreaux’s wall safe, a strong possibility I’m having the forensics squad consider.”
In the worst way, I wanted Frank’s name cleared. Frank might have said I wanted this in the best way.