Bandits

11

TUESDAY MORNINGJack had to pick up a body at Hotel Dieu, an eighty-five-year-old woman who’d spent her last month there at the hospital, light as a feather lifting her onto the mortuary cot. Back at Mullen & Sons he wheeled the cot onto the floor lift, pushed the button, and watched it rise through the opening trapdoor in the ceiling to the second floor. Jack went up the back stairs, wheeled the cot off the lift and into the prep room, where Leo was filling the embalming machine with Permaglo.

“Some guy by the name of Tommy Cullen phoned. I told him you were out.”

Jack said, “I’d like to talk to you after. I want to take some time off.”

“How much time? Few days, a week?”

“I’m thinking of leaving here.”

Leo was lifting the body onto the prep table. He looked up from his bent-over position, the old lady in his arms. “What’re you talking about? You’re gonna walk out on me?”

“Leo, there young guys dying to be morticians. You can get help, easy.”

“After I got you out of prison?”

“You helped and I appreciate it, but you didn’t exactly get me out. I’ve been here three years now and you know I didn’t ever plan to stay.”

“What’re you gonna do?”

“I’ll look around.”

He heard a phone ring, the one in his room, not the business number.

Leo said, “You’re getting yourself into something, aren’t you?”

Jack didn’t have to answer that one. He hurried into his apartment, sat down in a sofa that had spent thirty years in a visitation room before coming up here, and picked up the phone.

Cullen’s voice said, “Jack, they’re gonna throw me out of here, say I have to leave. Soon as they get hold of Tommy Junior he has to come get me. They spoke to Mary Jo and she told ’em to call the prison ’cause she won’t have me back in the house.”

“What’d you do?”

“I didn’t do nothing. I don’t know what’s going on here.”

“What’d they say?”

“Guy, one of the help, comes to my room this morning and tells me to pack up, I’m leaving. I said, ‘What’re you talking about I’m leaving?’ He says Miz Hollenbeck sent him to tell me. That’s the broad runs the place. I go to her office, I’m gonna find out what’s going on. She jumps up, says, ‘Don’t you come in here. Stay where you are,’ and says to her secretary, ‘Evelyn, call Cedric.’ That’s the guy told me I had to pack. One of the colored guys that does the shit work there. I said, ‘What is this? You didn’t get the Medicaid check or what?’ Miz Hollenbeck looks like she’s afraid I’m gonna come over the desk at her, telling me stay right there, don’t move.”

Jack said, “Has this got anything to do with Anna Marie?”

“Well, sort of, yeah. But, see, at this point all she’s telling me is that Tommy Junior signed the contract that says if there’s any kind of improper conduct I have to leave, and they’re trying to locate Tommy Junior. You know he’s a house painter. Only he’s had, well, kind of a drinking problem lately and he isn’t always where he says he’s gonna be. I think it’s between the paint fumes and being married to Mary Jo causing it.”

Jack said, “What’d you do to Anna Marie?”

There was a pause. “What do you mean, what’d I do to her? I never did nothing she didn’t want me to.”

“When was this, last night?” He heard the buzzer sound in the hall; it meant someone had entered downstairs.

“I had the colored guy, Cedric,pick me up a bottle of port wine; nice stuff, cost four dollars and I give Cedric a buck. I had a couple glasses and then later on I stopped by Anna Marie’s room, see if she cared for a glass.”

Jack lighted a cigarette with his hotel matches, listening, staring at a framed print on the wall over the refrigerator: two young ladies in a primeval forest playing on a swing in a time Jack could not imagine. There was nothing in the room that belonged to him; he could pack one bag and be out of Mullen & Sons in five minutes.

“I mentioned she’s got a very nice room of her own here. Anna Marie says well, if I think it’s all right, looks up and down the hall, and I go in. Soon as I pour us a couple of glasses she gets the album out. Here’s Robbie and here’s Rusty and Laurie and Timmy, shows me her kids, her grandchildren, her great-grandchildren, and names every one of them. I said to her. ‘Anna Marie, you can’t be old enough to have grandchildren, huh, come on?’ ”

Jack said, “Cully, I don’t know if I want to hear this.”

“I meant it. She doesn’t look her age. She only looks about seventy… seventy-two, maybe. The hell, I’m sixty-five. What’s the difference? I said, ‘Anna Marie, that’s a swell-looking family and you are a good-looking woman.’ We’re sitting next to each other on these two chairs pushed together. I can see she liked that, what I said. So I lean over, give her a little kiss in the ear. She jumps, scared the shit out of me, and let out a yell. What happened, I kissed her hearing aid. I said, ‘Anna Marie, you don’t need that thing, take it off.’ So she does. I give her another kiss and tell her, my, you’re a good-looking woman and all this shit, you know, and I say, ‘Why don’t we go over and sit on the bed, be more comfortable.’ Everything I say she says, ‘What? What?’ I put my arm around her, get her up, take her over to the bed. We’re sitting there, you know, on the edge of the bed, she doesn’t move or say a word. I mean she did not object once to anything I did.”

Jack didn’t want to ask, but something made him. “Like what?”

“Like kissing her. You know. Put my arm around her… I undid her robe, she’s got a flannel nightgown on underneath. I kiss her some more. She just sits there. I’m thinking, Jesus, it’s been so long she doesn’t remember what to do. But I’m in no hurry. You go twenty-seven years, Jack, without any quiff what’s a few more minutes when it’s right there? Right? But, I don’t know, I’m thinking either it’s been too long for her or she’s frigid. I put my hand inside the robe…”

Jack felt himself tense.

“I touch one of her tits. No, first I had to find it. It wasn’t where they usually are. I put my hand on it and Anna Marie became it was like she turned to stone, her eyes wide open, staring straight ahead. So I said the hell with it, this is not gonna be my night.”

Jack felt himself relax.

“You didn’t do anything.”

“That’s what I been telling you.”

“Then why’re they making you leave?” He saw Leo standing in the doorway, Leo with the same expression Jack pictured on Anna Marie’s face when she turned to stone, and said, “Cully, hang on a second.”

Leo said, “There’s a man downstairs asking about the pickup you made Sunday at Carville.”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know who he is, I said I was off Sunday but I’d see about it. I didn’t know what to say.”

“What’s he look like?”

“He looks like-I don’t know what he looks like. A normal, everyday person.”

“Take it easy, Leo. Is the guy American or Latin?”

“He’s American.” Leo sounded surprised.

“Did he show you identification?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“All right, I’ll take care of it.”

“He’s in the lounge… You gonna talk to him?”

“Yeah, soon as I’m through here.” Jack waited, his hand over the phone. He watched Leo shake his head before he walked away. Jack raised the phone to his face. “Cully, where were we? Yeah, why’re they making you leave?”

“Remember I said she took off her hearing aid?”

“Yeah?”

“I put it in my robe while we’re sitting there. When I left, I forgot to give it back, and this morning she tells Miz Hollenbeck I stole the fucking thing.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s what I said to Miz Hollenbeck. You serious? The fuck do I want with a hearing aid? I can hear better’n you can and I’m twice your age. She didn’t like that.”

“You packed?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, get ready, I’ll pick you up.”

“Jack? I don’t think you can get laid here.”

“No, I guess not.”

“Jack? I don’t want to stay in a funeral home.”

Jack said, “Who does?”

The man waiting in the Mullen & Sons smoking lounge was the same man who had left the hotel with Dagoberto Godoy. Jack realized it coming along the hall, seeing the man from about the same distance as he did last night, the same heavy-framed glasses, the same dark suit, but now with a necktie. Up close the man was as Leo said, a normal, everyday person; not quite eye to eye with Jack, an inch or two shorter, but twenty-five pounds heavier in the buttoned suit coat.

Jack said, “Can I help you?”

The man cocked his head to one side, appraising him with a nice grin but a very steady look in those glasses. He said, “Are you asking if you’re able to? I think you are, Jack. I might add, it would be in your best interest if you do.”

Jack cocked his head at the same angle and stared back with his own faint grin, believing Roy was right, the guy was the law but not local, some government agency with initials; New Orleans cops might bullshit you, but would never act cute doing it. Jack also believed he could outwait and outstare this guy, and he was right.

The guy put out his hand and said, “Wally Scales, I’m with the Immigration service.”

Jack gave him a dead-fish handshake, a question in his eyes. “I never immigrated from anyplace. I’ve lived here all my life.”

“Except for three years in there.” Wally Scales had straightened his head but continued to grin. “Am I right, Jack?”

“You’re referring, I believe,” Jack said, “to when I was upstate that time?”

“Upstate, that’s good. Well, you seem to have enjoyed a successful rehabilitation.”

Jack put on a reasonably stupid grin for Wally Scales and slipped a little bit of West Feliciana Parish into his sound. “Well, I can’t say it was enjoyable, but I come through it, yes sir.”

“You have a good job here-you like it?”

“Yeah, I do. I work for my brother-in-law.”

“I spoke to him”-Wally Scales began to frown-“asked about a removal you made at Carville Sunday and he seemed distressed by the question. Why would that be?”

“How’d he seem?”

“Apprehensive… nervous.”

“Well, that’s the way he is. Leo’s a nervous type a person. He’s a worry wart.”

“But if he’s in charge here he’d know about a removal.”

“Yeah, he would.”

“Unless the request came in Sunday morning and you handled it yourself and didn’t tell him.”

Jack waited. There was no question to answer.

“Is that what happened?”

“Was what happened?”

“They called and you went up to Carville?”

“They never called, least that I know of.”

“They said they did.”

“Well, I must’ve been on the toilet or someplace, ’cause I never heard the phone.”

“They said you came and removed the body of one Amelita Sosa, deceased.”

Jack shook his head. “No, sir, not me. Must’ve been some other funeral home and they got the name wrong. Sunday I was here all day. I washed the hearse. Hey, maybe that was it, I was outside a while.”

Wally Scales cocked his head again, this time without the grin. “We could take a ride up there, Jack. Ask the sister if you’re the one that came.”

Jack said, “Well, if it’s okay with Leo, I don’t mind. I used to go up there when I was working for my Uncle Brother and Emile in the pipe organ business. I’d have to climb way way up there, you know, in the loft when they were tuning the organ.”

Wally Scales said, “Jack, let me ask you a question. I want you to give me a straight, honest answer. All right? Because I don’t want to see you get in trouble and have to go back upstate.” Wally Scales paused. “Are you putting me on?”

Jack frowned, then shook his head. “No, sir.”

“You swear you did not go to Carville.”

“I did with my Uncle Brother and Emile.”

“I mean Sunday.”

“No, sir, I was right here.”

Jack eased his eyes open a little wider so Wally Scales, staring hard, could see the truth in them. It was difficult not to grin at this asshole, but Jack managed.

Wally Scales looked past him, down the hall. He took a step away, turned around slowly to look out the window at the empty parking lot, and came back.

“Who’s here besides you and your brother-in-law, Jack?”

“There’s a dead woman upstairs.”

“There is? What’s her name?”

“I don’t know what her name is. Some old woman.”

“Will you show her to me?”

Jack felt it was safe to grin now, giving the guy a sly one as he said, “You like to look at ’em, too, huh? ‘Specially when they’re bare nekked. Yeah, Leo’s up there hosing her out. You want to watch, come on.”

Wally Scales kept staring with pretty much the same expression except for a tightening around his nose and mouth, like he’d bit into a green persimmon. He said, “Why don’t I believe you, Jack?”

“She’s up there, I’ll show you.”

“Maybe I should talk to your brother-in-law again.”

Threatening him. “Sure, come on.”

“Or I could talk to Lucy Nichols.”

It was sneaky, but it wasn’t a question, so Jack stared back at him with his bare trace of a grin, waiting. It was coming though.

“You know her, don’t you?”

“Who’s that?”

“You’re gonna keep acting stupid, aren’t you? Till I leave.”

“Don’t you want to see the dead woman?”

He watched the man shake his head and give up; maybe not caring that much, one way or the other. That was the feeling Jack had, along with relief.

He showed Wally Scales out and called Roy at the bar.

“You give your notice?”

“Yeah, but I can change my mind,” Roy said, “depending on the numbers, how much the guy’s put in the bank.”

“How about Crispin Reyna and Franklin of God?”

“Who?”

“Franklin de Dios. You find out anything?”

“They’re supposed to be with Immigration, looking for wetbacks. It’s a fact, the radio cars over in the Second District were given a Code Five, they see that Chrysler parked on Audubon, leave it alone.”

“But the two guys are from Florida.”

“So? If they’re federal they can go anywhere they want.”

“Yeah, but they wouldn’t rent a car. They’d get one from some office here. Wouldn’t they?”

“It’s more likely, yeah.”

“Will you check it out?”

“I could.”

“I don’t want to put you out any, Roy, if you’re busy there serving mankind.”

“Fuck you.”

“But if we’re gonna play these guys we better know the names and numbers and how much they weigh. I don’t want to get blindsided, Roy, get my fucking head taken off and I don’t even see it coming. I’d like to know why the fundraiser brought in two guys from Florida who pack guns, wouldn’t you?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“You still haven’t told me anything.”

“I’ll check ’em out. Jesus Christ.”

“You’re in a shitty mood, Roy.”

“So what else is new?”

“Find out about a guy named Wally Scales, also suppose to be with Immigration. He came by looking for the girl, Amelita, and you know who he is? The guy last night with the fundraiser.”

“That one could be Immigration,” Roy said. “Or he could be Internal Revenue or Treasury.”

“Will you find out? Call me at Lucy’s, I’m gonna go pick up Cullen now, take him over there.”

“I’ll tell you where you’re going tonight,” Roy said, “case you didn’t know. You’re gonna go to work for a change, take a look in the guy’s room.”

“Roy, you feeling out of sorts? Didn’t get your period, or what?”

“I have to get out of this fucking place.”

“Now you’re talking.”

He phoned Lucy and asked her if it was all right if he came over with Cullen. She said fine, any time. He asked her if a guy named Wally Scales had paid a visit.

“He phoned this morning, told me who he was. He said, ‘I understand you were at Carville Sunday, to pick up the body of a deceased friend of yours.’ I told him no, that wasn’t true.”

“Your first lie.”

“Of any importance. I asked him where he got his information.”

“What’d he say?”

“He said it didn’t matter, he was sorry to bother me.”

“Good. He was here, but I got the feeling he was just going through the motions. Didn’t have his heart in it.”

“But then he said, ‘Next time you see your dad, give him my best.’ ”