Bandits

2

ONE OF THE BARTENDERS at Mandina’s, Mario, a young guy Jack Delaney knew pretty well, said, “You stick the thing right into the person, like you’re stabbing him?”

“How else you gonna do it?”

“You poke the guy all over?”

“No, once you put the trocar in it stays in the same place. You change the angle. See, what you’re doing is aspirating the viscera. You hit the liver and it doesn’t give, you know the guy was a boozer, had cirrhosis.”

“I could never do that. Jesus.”

“You get used to it.”

“You want another one?”

“Yeah, with three olives. Then I’ll switch.”

“Man, I could never do that.”

“There free-lance embalmers that come around, trade men, they get about a hundred a job. What do you think? Make thirty to forty grand a year.”

“Not me,” Mario said, moving off.

Saturday afternoon the plain, high-ceilinged café was nearly empty, too far up Canal Street for tourists. Mullen & Sons was only a block away. After a funeral Jack and Leo would come in still wearing their dark suits and pearl-gray neckties, sit at a table, and gradually begin talking, polite to each other until, oh, man, the relief that would come with that first ice-cold vodka martini going down. Jack’s with anchovy olives, Leo’s a twist of lemon. Leo’s eyes glistening as he’d look up at the black waiter with the beard who had been in that movie Pretty Baby and called them the funeral dudes. Leo would say, “Henry, why don’t you do it again, the same way. Would that please you?” Leo settling in. “It would sure as hell please us, Henry.” Then later on have the artichoke soup and the oyster loaf.

Mario came along the bar with the martini, placed it on the cocktail napkin in front of Jack.

“What I don’t understand, how you can do that every day of your life. Fool with dead people.”

Jack picked up the martini, about to say that for one thing the dead never complain or give you a hard time. But he stopped and thought a moment and said, “I don’t know. I really don’t.” He sipped the martini, put an olive in his mouth, chewed it a few times and took another sip. Jesus, was that good.

“I heard you don’t put any panties on the women, when they’re in the casket.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“I don’t know, I just heard it one time.”

“We dress ’em right down to their socks. Shoes are optional, but everything else.”

Mario picked up Jack’s glass to place it on a fresh cocktail napkin. “You ever get like a real good-looking girl, I mean with a great body, you know, and you have to do all that stuff to her?”

“Now, it doesn’t sound so bad, uh?”

“I still wouldn’t do it.”

“You know what the worst is? You look at a body that came in, all of a sudden you realize, Jesus Christ, the guy was a friend of yours.”

“Brings it home, uh? Somebody you know.”

“Even if you haven’t seen the person in a while. Like this guy today. I see him lying there, I don’t believe it. Not only is the guy dead, he’s eight years older than the last time I saw him. You know what I’m saying? He’s a different person. I look at him, guy named Buddy Jeannette, I know him but I don’t know him. I don’t know where he’s been, what he’s been doing.”

“What’d he die of?”

“See, the thing is, this guy wasn’t just an old friend. This’s a guy when I met him, the first time I ever talked to him, it changed my whole fucking life from then on.”

“Guy was what, like a priest?”

“He was a hotel burglar.”

“No shit.”

“You know I did time.”

“You mentioned it once, yeah. Three years.”

“Well, before that, when I met the guy… Wait, I have to tell you something else first. Right after I got out of school I worked at Maison Blanche, in the men’s department, and they’d use me in ads. They said I was a perfect size forty and I had good teeth and they said they liked my hair. But I quit ’cause it was a bunch a shit doing that, all that standing around in the lights. Now, this time I’m talking about…”

“When you met the guy?”

“Yeah, eight years ago. Now I’m thirty-two years old working for the Rivé brothers, barely making two hundred a week.”

“They come in here. Emile and Brother.”

“I know they do. They’re my uncles… Anyway, this particular night I come out of Felix’s, there on Iberville, had my oysters, couple of beers, and this woman stops me on the street. She wants to know if I’ve ever done any modeling. I go, ‘Yeah, you know Maison Blanche?’ I can tell she’s from out of town, the way she talks. She says they’re here from New York doing catalog layouts for Hollandia sportswear-that’s the one with the little tulip on the shirt-and she’ll give me a thousand bucks for four days. Just like that. The thousand guaranteed plus overtime. But the way she’s looking at me, touching my hair, I get the feeling she wants to do more than take my picture.”

“Yeah, was she nice?”

“Attractive, very stylish, wore dark-tinted glasses all the time, and had the whitest skin I ever saw. She was maybe forty-two or three.”

“That’s not too bad.”

“Her name was Betty Barr, she was the advertising manager. Only the other models and the photographer and his helpers all called her Bettybarr, like it was one name. I don’t know why but I had trouble with that, so I didn’t call her anything. We’d start in the morning and shoot all day, outside, at different locations. Jackson Square, naturally, Audubon Park, the lighthouse on the New Basin Canal, the docks down at Lafitte, Jesus, with the Cajun shrimpers standing there watching. Here we are posing, this group of us, like we’re happier’n shit to have these outfits on, warm-ups, rugby shirts… This other guy, Michael, who never said one fucking word to me, it didn’t seem to bother him at all he looked like an asshole. You see the shrimpers making remarks. Or the girls, it didn’t bother them, they were kids, sixteen, seventeen…” Jack touched his glass. “Why don’t you hit this again. Just vodka.”

Mario stepped down the bar to get the bottle and Jack remembered the girls. The girls had no trouble becoming an instant part of it, slouching into poses with deadpan expressions or smiling or looking surprised. They fascinated him, their studied moves, girls being models, nothing else, able to lose themselves in their poses. He said to the girls, an aside, “You imagine a guy wearing this?” And the girls said, “Really.” He liked them when they were posing and they liked him when he wasn’t.

Mario returned and poured and Jack said, “We’re out by Tulane, I have these real bright green fucking pants on with a pink shirt, the little tulip on it, and right there on Saint Charles Avenue these South Central Bell hardhats are digging up the street. Naturally they start making remarks, yelling different things. My regular job then, hauling around those goddamn organ pipes, I worked as hard as those guys any day. But I can’t walk over and tell ’em that. See, that’s bad enough, but then Bettybarr gets an idea, comes over and cocks this straw hat on the side of my head. I go, ‘Excuse me, but you know anybody who wears a hat this way?’ She goes, ‘You do.’ Sunday, the last day, we’re shooting on the top deck of the Algiers ferry, riding it back and forth. Everybody on the boat was up there watching us. I see these two clowns drinking Dixie beer out of longneck bottles and I know right away I’m gonna have trouble. They come around to my side, I’m standing there grinning at the camera in this all-white outfit, and they start making these kissing-sucking noises, you know, and ask me if I’m dick trawling or what. Just then Bettybarr comes up to me with a yachting cap and I think, Oh, shit, here we go. She’s about to cock the hat on my head and I say to her, ‘Excuse me.’ I turn to the two morons with the Dixie longnecks and tell ’em, ‘I hear one more fucking word somebody’s going over the side.’ Bettybarr looks grim, like she’s frozen, with no expression at all. She says, ‘That’s it for today. Pack it up,’ and gets us all down below.”

“What’d the guys do?”

“Nothing. The ferry docked and we left. But then we’re in the bar that night at the Roosevelt, she asks me, ‘Was that for my benefit?’ Like was I showing off in front of her? I said, ‘No, that was between those guys and me, something I had to do.’ She goes, ‘I see.’ She finishes her drink, looks at me and says, ‘Would you like to go upstairs?’ ”

“No shit.”

“We go up to her suite.”

“Yeah.”

“She undresses me.”

“No shit.”

“She goes, ‘You have a gorgeous body.’ ”

“Yeah?”

“I never had anybody tell me that before. I don’t know what to say about hers. It’s bigger, you know, looser, without any clothes on. And her skin was so white she looked more naked-looking than girls that have that real smooth skin and tan lines. Then when we did it it was weird to see this grown-up woman that smelled of bath powder moaning and carrying on.”

“Yeah, but it was okay, uh?”

“It was fine. Then after, we’re lying there, I bring it up again.”

Mario grinned.

“I mean about the two morons, why I had to say something to them. She tells me to turn out the light. I go, ‘You don’t understand how I felt, do you?’ She goes, ‘Jack, I don’t really care how you felt. If you don’t want to be looked at, don’t stand in front of a camera.’ I try to tell her, look, when guys like that start mouthing off I’m gonna do something about it. And you know what she said?”

“What?”

“She said, ‘Not on my time, you’re not. Now please turn off the goddamn light.’ ”

“Man, touchy broad.”

“You’re right, this’s a tough lady. And she was right. If I don’t like standing around there feeling like an asshole, I shouldn’t be a model. Even with the money they were paying. And I knew I could’ve got more work from her. I was living in half a shotgun double on Magazine with hardly any furniture, a job I hated, and I was thinking on and off of getting married. You remember Leo’s Uncle Al? No, he was before you came here. It was Al’s daughter I almost married. Maureen.” Jack picked up his drink, took a slow, lingering sip. “I was gonna say I wouldn’t be here if I had. But this’s exactly where I’d be, in the fucking funeral business. I’d be over there right now with the rubber gloves on. Anyway…”

“You’re in bed with the broad.”

“Bettybarr. She’s snoring by this time and I’m lying there wide awake trying to figure out what’s more important, money or what you consider self-respect. See, I was leaving myself an opening. Maybe it wasn’t a matter of self-respect. Maybe it was just a matter of being self-conscious I didn’t like. I’m thinking maybe if I did ads for trucks or motor oil, you know, or chewing tobacco, something like that… when I hear a sound from over by the dresser. I raise my head up and, Christ, there’s a guy in the room.” Jack paused, touched his glass. “Why don’t you hit it one more time.”

Mario gave him a quick refill. “You want more ice?”

“No, this’s fine.” Jack took a sip. “I can’t believe it, a guy standing right there by the dresser. Now I see him go past the window and out into the living room. I wait, I don’t hear anything, so I get out of bed, put on my pants, and tiptoe over to the door. The guy has the desk lamp on and he’s taking stuff out of the lady’s briefcase and putting it in this flight bag he has with him. So, I start to sneak up behind him.”

“No shit.”

“He was about your size. What’re you, five six?”

“Five seven and a quarter.”

“He wasn’t too big. Maybe a hundred and thirty pounds.”

“I go one sixty-two,” Mario said.

“So I don’t see a problem unless he’s got a gun.”

“Yeah, did he?”

“Just then he turns around and we’re looking right at each other. The guy says, very calmly, ‘I bet I have the wrong room. This isn’t 1515, is it?’ I said, ‘You aren’t even close.’ Then what does he do, he sits down in a chair, takes out a cigarette, and says, ‘You mind if I smoke?’ I said, ‘Why, you nervous?’ He says, ‘This never happened to me before.’ He lights up. I ask him if he’s ever been busted. He says, ‘Yeah, but no convictions. How about you?’ I tell him, picked up once for scalping tickets at the Superdome and fined two hundred bucks. He says, ‘I don’t want to sound like a whiner, I hate whiners, but this was gonna be my last job. I’m supposed to go in the car-leasing business with my brother-in-law.’ The way he said it you could tell he didn’t want to. See, the thing was my brother-in-law, I’m talking about Leo, was trying to get me to be a mortician even back then. It was like we had something in common.”

“You and the guy.”

“Yeah, Buddy and I. See, that’s who it was, Buddy Jeannette, the guy I just saw dead.”

“But if he wasn’t too big, why didn’t you belt him?”

“For what?”

“And call the cops.”

Jack paused, took a sip of his drink. “It was like-didn’t you ever meet someone, right away you like the person, you feel a rapport, you feel you have something in common?”

“Yeah, but the guy broke in.”

“And he starts talking like we’re sitting in the lobby. This is something new; play it, see where it goes. At that point, why not?”

“Did he take any of your stuff?”

“I didn’t have anything worth taking. He tells me he’s been scouting Bettybarr ’cause she wore expensive clothes and had some gold that was nice. Then he tells me he was in this room once before, during the day. I ask him, ‘What’d you come back for?’ He goes, ‘There’s nothing in the room when the people are away. That’s how you do it, man, get a reading of the layout. See, then I come back when she’s here, she’s sleeping, her wallet and jewelry are on the dresser, and I don’t go around bumping into things.’ He even knew I wasn’t with the group, when they came from New York. I asked him, I said, ‘What do you do, size people up?’ He goes, ‘I appraise them. Downstairs in the bar, different places. You can generally tell who’s got it. This one’s borderline, but it would still be worth the trip. She’s got over a grand in cash.’ I asked him how he got in the room, he says with a key. Then he turns it around. He says, ‘What happens if the lady comes out of the bedroom?’ I said, ‘I guess you’d be fucked.’ He says, ‘What happens if she doesn’t come out?’ I said, ‘That’s different. But tell me about this magic key you have.’ ”

“He got one at the desk,” Mario said.

“No, what he does, he checks in, gets a room. Then late at night he pulls the lock out of the door, takes it all apart and figures out how to make a fire key.”

“What’s a fire key?”

“What it sounds like. It’ll open any door in the hotel, in case of fire or some emergency they have to check every room. The guy use to be a locksmith. So I ask him, ‘And how many fire keys do you have?’ He says, ‘You understand a fire key would be worth upwards of five grand or more to certain people.’ I said, ‘Yeah, or you might want to give it to somebody who’s in a position to do you a favor.’ He says, ‘I thought you had something else in mind. You put the cash in your pocket, I leave with everything else, and she thinks that wad in your jeans is ’cause you love her.’ ”

Jack smiled, shaking his head. “Guy was something. High-class professional burglar, wore a suit and tie-it was like meeting a movie star and you find out the guy talks and acts just like a regular person.”

“You took the guy’s key,” Mario said, “and let him go.”

Jack held up his hand. “I said to him, ‘First, you put everything back.’ He says, ‘You could still take the cash and I walk out with a few items.’ I said, ‘But then my name’s in a burglary report, huh? Stuck in a police file they might happen to look at some time in the future. No, I don’t think so.’ Buddy goes, ‘You might do okay, you’re not dumb. But have you got the balls to walk in a room where you know the people are sleeping?’ ”

Mario shook his head. “Not me, man.”

“Yeah, but what was funny, the guy’s talking about balls while I have his right in my pocket. Still, I never threatened him. Give me the keys or I turn you in. Never, not a word. Later on, the next time I saw him, he said he was impressed I never tried to act tough. It showed class.”

“Jesus,” Mario said.

“And now he’s dead.”

“You want another hit?”

“No, I’m gonna switch.”

Jack was at a table now, tired of standing. He looked up to see Leo coming away from the bar and noticed they’d turned the lights on. It was raining and looked greenish out on Canal Street, through the big plate-glass window, the sky pale green and everything else dark. Leo stopped and took a sip of the martini so he wouldn’t spill any of it. His thin hair was pasted to his head, his raincoat soaking wet, his expression, Jack saw, concerned, very serious.

“You okay?”

Jack thought of saying, Compared to what? But kept it simple and said, “I’m fine,” giving it just a hint of innocent surprise. He felt himself alert, his body floating comfortably while his mind buzzed with words and pictures, wide awake. He said, “How’s Buddy doing?”

“Buddy’s done,” Leo said, “ready to receive visitors.” He looked at Jack’s glass. “What’s that you’re drinking?”

“It’s a Sazerac.”

“When’d you start drinking Sazeracs?”

“I think about an hour ago. I don’t know-what time is it? It’s getting dark out.”

“Half past five,” Leo said. He placed his martini on the table, pulled out a chair and sat down. “I’m driving over to the Bay. I told Raejeanne I’d be there for supper.” With his serious expression. “You gonna be all right?”

“I know I’m safe here,” Jack said. “I go outside I’m liable to get run over by a car.”

“You’re going to Carville tomorrow. You won’t forget, will you?”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

“I’ll be back by seven. There’ll be a rosary for your friend Buddy. Some priest from Kenner, Our Lady of Perpetual Help.”

“Something he always wanted,” Jack said, “a rosary.”

Leo said, “Oh, I had a call from Sister Teresa Victor at Carville a while ago. There’s somebody wants to go with you to pick up the body. You don’t mind, do you? Have some company?”

Jack said, “Aw, shit, Leo. You know I can’t talk to relatives, they’re in that state. You’re asking me to drive a hundred and fifty miles up and back, my head aching trying to think of words of consolation, Jesus, never smiling. Going to the cemetery’s different, you don’t have to say anything. Sometimes they even seem happy… Shit, Leo.”

Leo sipped his martini. He said, “You through?” and took another sip. “The one that’s going with you isn’t a relative, it’s a sister, a nun, who knew the deceased when she was in Nicaragua and, I think, brought her up here for treatment. I was still prepping your friend while Sister Teresa Victor’s telling me this on the phone. Then something came up, she had to cut it short.”

“The one I’m picking up is a nun? The dead one?”

“Look,” Leo said. “The deceased is a young Nicaraguan woman, twenty-three years old. I wrote her name down, it’s on the counter in the prep room. Also the name of the person that’s going with you, a Sister Lucy. You got it?”

“What’d she die of?”

“Whatever it was you can’t catch it. Okay? You pick up Sister Lucy at the Holy Family Mission on Camp Street, tomorrow, one o’clock. It’s near Julia.”

“The soup kitchen.”

“That’s the place. She’ll be waiting for you.”

“We run out of conversation we’ll say a rosary.”

“There you are.” Leo finished his martini. “You gonna be all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“You won’t forget. One o’clock.”

“No problem.”

“Wouldn’t be a bad idea you stayed in tonight.”

“You still worried about me?”

“You see your old pal on the table, the next thing I know you’re eighty proof. Who drank the Sazeracs, Buddy or Helene?”

Jack smiled, feeling relaxed, wise, confident, in his favorite place to drink at the end of the day; rainy outside and growing dark, ideal conditions. He said, “You want me to tell you about Helene, don’t you? What it was like seeing her again. You’re dying to know, aren’t you?”

“I told you,” Leo said, “I was somewhat apprehensive when I heard.”

“Then you’ll be glad to know my heart didn’t leap.”

“How about any other area on your person?”

Jack shook his head. “The thrill is gone. She’s got curly hair now and it makes her look different. Hey, but, Leo?” Jack smiled. “Mmmmm, did she smell good. Had on a kind of perfume I know is expensive ’cause I picked up a bottle off a dresser one night in the Peabody Hotel, in Memphis, and gave it to Maureen.”

“Guilty conscience,” Leo said.

“Maybe. Maureen goes, ‘Jack, this costs a hundred and fifty dollars an ounce. You bought this? Tell me the truth.’ You know how Maureen looks you right in the eye? It was after I’d left Uncle Brother and Emile-”

“After they fired you.”

“And everybody thought I was on the road selling coffee. There was a friend of mine did that, sold La Louisianne. I’d say good-bye to Maureen Sunday night and not see her again till Friday. I’m back in New Orleans or at the Bay while some conventioneer in Nashville is asking hotel security, ‘But how could anybody get in the room when the chain’s still on the door, when we woke up this morning?’ ”

“How did you?” Leo said.

Jack heard the clink of silverware-Henry the waiter setting a table-and in that pause realized he had never talked to Leo about details. Or told anyone before how he’d met Buddy Jeannette. Well, Buddy was dead. It was okay to tell about that night. But was he talking too much? He said to Leo, “The point I was making, I always felt Maureen suspected I was into some other line of work. I didn’t know shit about coffee other than you drink it. But I know she never said a word to anybody.”

Leo said, “Unlike another girl we could mention that we happen to be talking about, as a matter of fact.”

“You get something in your head, Leo, that’s it.”

Leo said, “Jack, you’ve always been a little crazy, but you were never dumb. The Jesuits taught you how to think to some degree, put things in their proper order. What I’ll never understand is how you could let that redheaded broad lead you around by your privates-”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“When you had a wonderful girl like Maureen dying to marry you. A girl that has everything, looks, intelligence, a good Catholic upbringing, she even cooks better than your mother or Raejeanne.”

Jack said, “I saw you working for your dad and her dad, Leo. I saw if I married her I’d become a Mullen and Sons son-in-law, and I wouldn’t need a Jesuit education to tell me I’d be stuck for good, committed. Like doing time.”

Leo said, “Maureen wouldn’t a cared what you did for a living. She was crazy about you.”

“Maureen wants security and everything to be nice. That’s why she married the doctor, that little asshole with his bow tie, his little mustache. But that’s beside the point,” Jack said. “You want to know why I didn’t marry Maureen? It wasn’t ’cause she was so sweet and nice. Hell, I could’ve changed that, got her to lay back and recognize the difference between bullshit and real life. You want to hear the real reason? Since I’m telling you my innermost secrets?”

“You mean since you’re shitfaced,” Leo said, “and won’t remember it anyway.”

Jack glanced around before leaning in close to the table. “I had the feeling Maureen, once she married and settled down, would have a tendency to get fat in her later years. I felt I could change her attitude about life, but not her metabolism.”

Leo stared at him. “You serious?”

“I say that knowing my sister, Raejeanne, is no lightweight. She’d get me pissed off about something and I’d tell her, ‘Raejeanne, you know what you look like? A waterbed wearing tennis shoes.’ ”

“That wasn’t nice.”

“No, and I don’t mean to offend you, like it’s something terrible. It’s just I felt Maureen was gonna put on size.”

Leo said, “I never heard of anything so dumb in my life.”

Jack said, “Our preferences are different, Leo, what I’ve been trying to tell you. Our likes and dislikes, what we enjoy, what lights up our eyes… You want me to tell you what attracted me to Helene? The first time I saw her? The very first thing I noticed about her?”

“I’m dying to know,” Leo said.

“It was her nose.”

Leo stared at him.

“That classic, what you’d call aristocratic, kind of nose. The most perfect fucking nose, Leo, I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Leo said, “Do you hear yourself?” He said, loud enough for Henry and Mario to hear and look over from the bar, “You’re gonna sit there and tell me you went to prison on account of this broad’s nose?”

Jack said, “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

Even half in the bag, talking too much, he didn’t dare mention the fine spray of freckles or try to describe that pert tilt, that fragile beauty, her brown eyes…

Or the bare legs that went up into her skirt. Long slender legs, the high instep another delicate line with the high heel hanging from the toe, the young lady’s legs crossed on the bar stool in the Sazerac Lounge of the Roosevelt Hotel. Or the Monteleone or the Pontchartrain, the Peabody in Memphis, the Biltmore in Atlanta. It was never just the nose. But why try to tell all that to a man who prepared dead bodies, read novels that took place in times gone by, and was not drawn to live girls in cocktail lounges?

Leo would still have said what he did. “You’re never gonna grow up, are you?”