“I’m sure that’s a great comfort to him,” I replied.
I returned to my hotel. There was a message from Louis, confirming that he would be arriving the next morning, a little later than expected. My spirits lifted slightly.
That night, I stood at the window of my hotel, drawn by the steady, repeated hooting of a car horn. Across the street, in front of the cash machine, the black Coupe de Ville with the shattered windshield idled by the curb. As I watched, the rear driver’s side door opened, and the child emerged. She stood by the open door and beckoned to me, her lips moving soundlessly.
I got a place we can go
Her hips moved, shimmying to music only she could hear. She lifted her skirt, and she was naked yet sexless beneath, the skin smooth as a child’s doll. Her tongue moved over her lips.
Come down
Her hand moved over the smoothness of herself.
I got a place
She thrust herself at me once more before she climbed back into the car and it began to pull away, spiders spilling from its half-closed door. I awoke rubbing gossamer from my face and hair and had to shower to banish the sensation of creatures moving across my body.
21
I WAS AWAKENED BY a knock at my door shortly after 9 A.M. Instinctively, I felt myself reaching for a gun that was no longer there. I wrapped a towel around my waist, then padded softly to the door and peered through the peephole.
Six feet six inches of attitude, razor-sharp dress sense, and gay Republican pride looked me square in the eye.
“I could see you looking out,” said Louis as I opened the door. “Shit, don’t you ever go to the movies? Guy knocks, skinny-ass character actor looks out, guy puts barrel of gun to glass and shoots skinny-ass in the eye.” He was dressed in a black linen suit, offset with a white collarless shirt. A wave of expensive eau de cologne followed him into the room.
“You smell like a French whore,” I told him.
“I was a French whore, you couldn’t afford me. By the way, you maybe could use a little makeup yourself.”
I paused, saw myself in the mirror by the door, and looked away again. He was right. I was pale, and there were dark smudges under my eyes. My lips were cracked and dry, and I could taste something metallic in my mouth.
“I picked up something,” I said.
“No shit. The fuck you pick up, the plague? They bury people look better than you.”
“What have you got, Tourette’s? You have to swear all the time?”
He raised his hands in a backing-off gesture. “Hey, glad I came. Nice to be appreciated.”
I apologized. “You checked in?”
“Uh-huh, ’cept some motherfucker-sorry, but, shit, he was a motherfucker-try to hand me his bags at the door.”
“What did you do?”
“Took them, put them in the trunk of a cab, gave the guy fifty bucks, and told him to take them to the charity store.”
“Classy.”
“I like to think so.”
I left him watching television while I showered and dressed, then we headed down to Diana’s on Meeting for coffee and a bite to eat. I ate half a bagel, then pushed it away.
“You got to eat.”
I shook my head. “It’ll pass.”
“It’ll pass and you be dead. So how we doin’?”
“Same as usuaclass="underline" dead people, a mystery, more dead people.”
“Who we lost?”
“The boy. His guardians. Maybe Elliot Norton.”
“Shit, don’t sound like we got anybody left. Anyone hires you better leave you your fee in their will.”
I filled him in on all that had occurred, leaving out only the black car. That I didn’t need to burden him with.
“So what you gonna do?”
“Push a stick into the beehive and rustle up some bees. The Larousses are hosting a party today. I think we should avail ourselves of their hospitality.”
“We got an invite?”
“Has not having one ever stopped us before?”
“No, but sometimes I just like to be invited to shit, you know what I’m sayin’, instead of havin’ to bust in, get threatened, irritate the nice white folks, put the fear of the black man on them.”
He paused, seemed to think for a while about what he had just said, then brightened.
“Sounds good, doesn’t it?” I said.
“Real good,” he agreed.
We drove most of the way to the old Larousse plantation in separate vehicles, Louis parking his car about half a mile from the gates before joining me for the rest of the journey. I asked him about Angel.
“He workin’ on a job’.”
“Anything I should know about?”
He looked at me for a long time.
“I don’t know. Maybe, but not now.”
“Uh-huh. I see you made the news.”
He didn’t reply for a couple of seconds. “Angel tell you somethin’?”
“Just gave me the name of the town. You waited a long time to settle that score.”
He shrugged. “They was worth killin’, they just wasn’t worth travelin’ too far to kill.”
“And since you were on your way down here anyway…”
“I figured I’d stop by,” he finished. “Can I go now, Officer?”
I let it drop. At the entrance to the Larousse estate, a tall man in a flunky’s suit waved us down.
“Can I see your invitations, gentlemen?”
“We didn’t get invitations,” I said, “but I’m pretty sure somebody is expecting us.”
“The names?”
“Parker. Charlie Parker.”
“By two,” added Louis, helpfully.
The guard spoke into his walkie-talkie, out of earshot from us. We waited, two or three cars lining up behind us, until the guard finished talking.
“You can go ahead. Mr. Kittim will meet you at the parking area.”
“Surprise, surprise,” said Louis. I had told him about my encounter with Bowen and Kittim at the Antioch rally.
“Told you this would work,” I said. “That’s why I’m a detective.” It struck me then, my worries about the consequences of the Caina incident aside, that I was already feeling better since Louis had arrived. That wasn’t too surprising, since I now had a gun, thanks to him, and I was pretty certain that Louis had at least one more on his person.
We followed half a mile of live oaks, palmettos, and palms, much of it overhung with Spanish moss. Cicadas chirped in the trees and droplets from the morning’s now departed rain kept up a steady rhythmic patter on the roof and road until we emerged from the trees and onto an expanse of green lawn. Another white-gloved flunky directed us to park the car beneath one of a number of tarpaulins erected to shelter the vehicles from the sunlight, the canvas shifting slightly in the currents of cold air cast by one of a number of huge industrial air conditioners arrayed on the grass. Long tables had been arranged along three sides of a square and covered by starched linen tablecloths. Huge amounts of food had been arrayed upon them while black servants in pristine white shirts and trousers hovered anxiously, waiting to serve guests. Others moved through the crowds already gathered on the lawn, offering champagne and cocktails. I looked at Louis. He looked at me. Apart from the servants, he was the only person of color present. He was also the only guest dressed in black.
“You should have worn a white jacket,” I said. “You look like an exclamation mark. Plus, you might have picked up a few bucks in tips.”
“Look at them brothers,” he said, despairingly. “Ain’t nobody here heard of Denmark Vesey?”
A dragonfly glided across the grass by my feet, hunting for prey among the blades. There were no birds to prey on him in turn, at least none that I could see or hear. The only sign of life came from a single heron standing in a patch of marshland to the northeast of the house, the waters around it seemingly stilled by a carpet of algae. Beside it, amid rows of oak and pecans, stood the remains of small dwellings, equidistantly spaced, their tiled roofs now gone and the miscast and broken bricks used in their construction weathered by the elements over the century and a half that had probably passed since their original establishment. Even I could guess what it represented: the remains of a slave street.