Bandits

22

LUCY TOLD HIM SHE LIVED all her life in this house until she went away and that it was wallpapered and redecorated every few years but always looked the same, except for the sun parlor. She said if you didn’t go in the sun parlor it would be possible to live in this house through several generations and never change your attitude. She said you had to be careful living in New Orleans, in this climate, not to let moss grow on you; though it wasn’t just the humidity that might do you in. She said she had no idea what her mother thought about; maybe she’d ask her sometime, approach her as a corporal work of mercy. She said for some reason she was beginning to understand her father more and see him for the first time as a man and not simply as her dad.

They stood in the main hall, in the doorway of the dark formal living room.

“I began to realize I don’t know much at all about men. I’ve never imagined being one.”

“I’ve never imagined being a girl,” Jack said. He paused a moment and said, “No, I don’t think it’s possible.”

“You don’t seem aware of yourself.”

“Well, I catch myself posing every once in a while.”

“You’re aware of it when you’re not being yourself.”

“I’m not sure what we’re talking about.”

“The only men I knew, until I went away, were the boys I knew and some of their fathers. All the boys drank a lot and had a sense of tragedy about them that was theatrical, overdone, when I think about it now. I suppose they wanted attention. They didn’t have anything to be tragic about, so they got drunk and took having a good time very seriously. I didn’t learn anything from them. I knew boys or fathers, but I didn’t know men. Do you know what I mean? I didn’t think of men, other than to lump them all together, until I met you and then began to watch you with Roy and Cullen. I’ve never been this close to men before, to see them distinctly being men.”

“You’ve been watching me?”

“Yeah… I have. You know a lot of women, don’t you? I’ll bet you always have. The one you went to talk to in the restaurant… That was Helene, wasn’t it?”

“How did you know?”

“You told me she had red hair.”

“It’s different though, than when I used to see her. I mean her hair. It’s curly now. She had a perm.”

“I noticed her when she came in, the way she looked at you… You told her about what we’re doing, didn’t you?”

“I had to tell her something, after she helped us out.”

“Did you spend the night with her?”

He said, “As a matter of fact…” He said, “Yeah, I did. But we didn’t do anything.” Jesus Christ. He heard himself and couldn’t believe it. Making himself sound guilty-with all the things he could have said.

“Do you trust her?”

“Yeah, I trust her, sure. I wouldn’t have told her.”

“Did you want her opinion? Was that it?”

“Well, maybe. I don’t know.”

“Do you want to get out of this? You can. All you have to do is leave. You certainly don’t owe me anything.”

“I’m here,” Jack said.

She waited, looking up at him. “Are you?”

He put his hands on the curve of her shoulders and kissed her, her lips soft and slightly parted.

She said, “Are you here?”

She waited and he kissed her again because he wanted to, looking at her delicate face, the dark room behind her, and because he didn’t know what to say.

She said, “What does it mean?”

“You analyze everything.”

“Do you want to go to bed with me? Do you want to make love to me?”

He said, “Wait. Do you mean, have I been thinking about it? Or do you mean, let’s go?”

Lucy smiled. “I always thought you had to be very serious about it. Swept away by desire.”

“Yeah, you can do that. The whole idea… See, you have to like yourself first. If you do, then you’re all set. You don’t have to be serious, it can be a lot of fun.”

“I’ve never made love to anyone.”

He said, “Is that right?” And wanted to take it back; he shouldn’t sound amazed. He said, “Well, no, I wouldn’t think you would’ve. With your vow of chastity, of course not.”

“I’d never really thought of it much.”

“No, you were staying pure…” He said, “But you’ve been thinking about it lately?”

“The first time,” Lucy said, “do you know when it was?”

“Tell me.”

“In the bedroom the other night, when I sat on the side of your bed. I thought about it after and wondered if that was why I came to you, because I wanted it to happen.”

“I thought you just wanted to talk.”

“I did. But while I was sitting there I was so aware that we were alone in a dark bedroom. I realized, this is what it’s like to become intimate. This is the beginning of it and I loved the feeling. I wanted you to touch me, but I was scared to death.”

“Well, listen…”

“I learned something about myself I never knew before.”

“Boy, you come out of the nuns you come flying.”

She was smiling at him again. She said, “I’ll never forget you, Jack. You remind me so much of him…”

He knew who she meant. Not the other day when she said it, but he did now-just looking at her face, her smile, and feeling the goosebumps up the back of his neck.

She said, “Before he took all his clothes off and they called him pazzo and threw rocks at him. That Francis of Assisi. I’ll bet he was just like you.”

Roy called at five to ten. Lucy spoke to him for a minute and then handed the phone to Jack, her eyes wary as she said, “He’s at the hotel,” and continued to watch him as he took the receiver.

“Roy?”

“Listen, I’m almost directly across the courtyard from the guy’s room. I sit in the dark with the door open a speck I’m looking at the elevator and can almost see 501. They put their new car in the garage across the street, carried five bank sacks into the room, and they been in there ever since. Little One’s been going in and out-he says they’ve drunk three bottles of champagne and now they’re working on cognac and talking about girls. If you could get what’s her name, Helene, to bring ’em out for two minutes we could have this done.”

“No, there’s no way-”

“Knock on their door bare-ass and when they open it she runs over here and we take ’em.”

“She’s not in this.”

He glanced at Lucy watching him as he heard Roy say, “Well, shit, everybody else is but her and she’s done a lot more than most.” They were in the sun parlor; Cullen across the room in his favorite chair, looking this way over the top of a magazine.

“Jack, is that Roy?”

Jack nodded and said into the phone, “What about the Indian?” As Cullen was saying, “I want to talk to him.”

“He was downstairs a while,” Roy said, “but he must’ve put the Chrysler away. Last time I checked, it was gone.”

“He followed us to Gulfport.”

“Yeah, what happened?”

“Nothing, I lost him.”

“Well, what’d you find out?”

“Alvin Cromwell’s got a banana boat lined up. He thinks he’s going with ’em, tomorrow.”

“Well, you did good, didn’t you?”

“So they’ll stay put tonight… Roy, you drinking?”

“I had a couple. How’d you tell?”

“You aren’t bitching about anything.”

“Hey, well, listen. You don’t like my first idea, I got another one. Little One goes in to bring ’em something or clear their mess, we go in with him. Shit, all four of us could hide behind Little One.”

“Roy, I went into the presidential suite of a hotel one time-I’d been trailing this couple around for five nights and they were loaded, the woman with a different set of jewelry every time I saw her. She was advertising herself. Look at me, you all, how rich I am. I went in their suite and you know what I found?”

“You’re making some point,” Roy said, “but I don’t see it yet.”

“I found nothing. She kept her jewelry in a hotel safe deposit box. The guy even put his cash in there. The moral is, when you see one that’s too good to be true, it ain’t.”

“Jack, you can’t get five bank sacks in a deposit box or even the hotel safe.”

“Did you look in the sacks, Roy?”

“All right, where would they hide it?”

“I don’t know, but when they advertise it, come parading in with the sacks, you know it isn’t in the room. We march in behind Little One and we don’t find anything, then what? It’s over with. We walk away, the cops pick up Little One, look at his printout, make him a deal, and we’re back at the farm. Be there in time to plant soybeans.”

Roy said, “I want to know where they could hide it.”

“We wait till the morning,” Jack said, “we’ll find out. Don’t use Little One for anything, okay? The man’s clean and wants to stay that way.”

Roy said, “You’re no fun. Shit. Listen, send Cully to spell me and then you and Lucy come sometime after midnight, with both your cars. So we’ll be ready at peep of day. Tell the guy at the desk we’re having a party up here, 509. Shit, we may as well.”

As soon as Jack hung up the phone Lucy said, “Who did you mean, ‘She’s not in this?’ Me?”

“He was talking about Helene, using her again as bait.”

“And you didn’t like the idea?”

Cullen said, from across the room, “I wanted to talk to him.”

Jack glanced over. “I’m gonna drive you down there, right now.”

Lucy said, “If you’ve told her everything and you did use her, isn’t she in it?”

“She did it as a favor, that’s all. I’m gonna take Cully and then stop off at Mullen’s and change my clothes. How ’bout I’ll meet you at the hotel in a couple hours? Park in the underground garage, right across the street.”

“Will she do anything you ask?”

He looked at her face raised to his, waiting, and said, “What do you want to know, Lucy? What she would do for me or what I might ask her to?”

The body Leo had prepared that morning occupied a moderately priced Batesville in one of the smaller visitation rooms. Jack studied the man’s face in lamplight, surprised at his ruddy complexion and the way the man’s sparse gray hair was combed down on his forehead like a Roman senator and fixed there. This was not Leo’s work.

But Leo should be here. Or someone from the security service. Jack looked in the other visitation rooms. Raejeanne had said Leo must’ve received another body; otherwise why was he going to be late for dinner? It seemed, though, the man in the visitation room was the only customer. Unless the second arrival was up in the prep room and Leo was in his office. Jack had come in the side entrance. He could check, see if Leo’s car was in back. Or he could run upstairs and look. He was going up anyway. Somebody was here. Jack knew that. There had to be. What he didn’t understand was why, after having lived in this funeral home the past three years, he felt an urge to look over his shoulder. To turn around, quick.

The security man would be right here in the hall or in the small reception office, his thermos of coffee on the desk. But since he wasn’t…

Jack went up the stairs, reached the dark hallway, and stopped when he heard the sound. Like a door closing quietly, with a faint click. The double doors to the prep room were closed. So were the doors to the casket selection room. He thought of the Beretta he’d lifted from Crispin Reyna, beneath the front seat of his car, and the colonel’s Beretta, Jesus, that he’d had in his hand and put back in the drawer with the Indian in the bathroom, vowing never to go into somebody else’s room again, ever. He was home now, but it was the same kind of feeling, that he shouldn’t be here. Or somebody shouldn’t. He turned on the hall light. It didn’t help much.

He’d check the prep room first because that casket selection room-shit, it was too easy to hide in there. He never liked that room. All those crepe-lined empty caskets waiting for people.

He opened the prep room door and jumped and made a sucking-in strangled kind of sound and then said, “Oh, shit,” looking at Helene standing there with a put-on surprised expression on her face. Helene in jeans and a UNO sweatshirt, Helene’s hair catching the fluorescent light as she stepped out of the dark.

She said, “Hi, Jack. What’s wrong?”

“What’re you doing here?”

“I’m on this weekend, till Monday.”

“You’re on something, I know that. Jesus.”

“I don’t do drugs anymore, Jack. My body is clean.”

“Come on-what’re you doing here?”

“What do you think I’m doing here, you jerk? I work here. Monday you’ll have to have all your stuff out, ’cause I’m moving in.”

“Leo hired you?”

“You know he’s been looking, since you ran out on him. I did that man downstairs’s makeup and he loved it. I mean Leo. He drove me home to get a few things, we came back, he asked me if I’d consider working here, and I said sure, I’ll start right this minute.”

“Last night you didn’t even want to come in here.”

“Yeah, well, I got over it. You know, maybe I just thought I was afraid. But once you get used to it… I saw you drive up, I thought, let’s see if old Jack still has it together. You want a drink? Step down to my apartment. It isn’t much, but I’m gonna fix it up. Do something with Leo’s office, too. Upstairs, this place looks like it’s been condemned. Leo said in a year maybe we could start on the downstairs, trade in that crappy furniture. He’s nice, isn’t he? Jovial.”

“He’s a peach of a guy. How much is he paying you?”

“I’m afraid that’s none of your business. Actually he asked me how much I’d need.”

“Leo?”

“I told him I’d let him know. I’ll be doing the cosmetics and the hair, too, not just driving.”

“Helene, this is no place for a girl like you.”

“What kind of girl am I, Jack?”

“Wait’ll a bad one comes in, person that was in a horrible wreck. Or you have to go to the morgue, pick up a floater they pulled out of the river, all bloated, eaten by fish…”

She said, “Jack, you’re gonna make yourself sick. You want a drink or not?”

“I want to take a shower and change my clothes.”

“I hope it helps your disposition. God.”

Helene followed him to the apartment.

When she came into the bedroom she placed his drink on the dresser and leaned against it and watched him as he got out of his clothes.

“You have two and a half bottles of vodka on ice, but no beer.”

“That can happen.”

“You still have a nice body, Jack.”

“What do you mean, still?”

“You aren’t getting any younger, kid.”

“I’m sure glad I came.”

She said, “After you take your shower, you want to be friends?”

Asking him with a tone that was soft, familiar, the same mood in her eyes, watching him. He dropped his shirt on the bed and walked over to her.

“We’re friends now.”

“Are we good friends?”

“I think we’re better than good friends.”

“Do you know how long it’s been since we made love?”

“A long time.”

“Two thousand, two hundred, and fifteen days… give or take.”

“No wonder I’m ready.”

Close to him she said, “You sure are.” She said, “I’ve missed you, Jack. Boy, have I missed you.”

He shaved in a hot shower and washed his hair, turned the water off and came out to the sink, the steamy mirror. They’d have at least an hour. Taking the towel from the rack he opened the door half expecting to see Helene in bed or on it, waiting in some kind of put-on seductive pose, remembering her this morning-just this morning in her thin-strip panties doing her twist exercise, her breasts trying to keep up… She wasn’t in the room.

Rubbing his hair with the towel over his face he heard her voice and then heard it again. “Jack.” He brought the towel down and was held by her expression, her eyes, with no trace of flirty funny business in them now.

“Someone’s downstairs.”

“You’re sure?”

“I heard glass break.”