Kiss

19

Carver carried his scuffed leather suitcase to the cabstand at the New Orleans International Airport and took a taxi into the city.

It was as hot here as in central Florida. As the cab drove through the poorer section of town, he saw that most of the women wore shorts or skimpy, loose-fitting housedresses of flimsy material. The men had on sports shirts or sleeveless T-shirts if they wore shirts at all. Quite a few people were out sitting on porches or concrete stoops, trying to take advantage of the somewhat cooler early evening air and get free of ovenlike, stifling apartments that heated up and stayed hot. An obese woman, patiently fanning herself with a folded newspaper, was slumped on a porch glider, surrounded by writhing, half-naked children and grandchildren. Poverty required endurance. The price of oil was low and Louisiana’s unemployment was high. The city was economically depressed. It showed.

The kind of hotel Carver checked into didn’t require a reservation. The Belle Grande was on Belton Avenue near Canal Street, in an old, mostly commercial neighborhood. It was small and retained a certain miniature faded elegance while it did battle to keep time at a standstill. Time would keep moving. The hotel was hanging onto respectability by a fingernail; in five years it would be a flophouse, if it still existed. Unless the neighborhood went the other way, in which case it would probably be an exclusive concierge hotel. It was downtown and within easy walking distance of the French Quarter. It suited Carver. He was paying for this trip.

His room was small and the furniture and carpet were threadbare, but everything seemed clean. The walls were papered in a busy fleur-de-lis pattern. Sound strategy; it would be tough to spot a roach crawling on them. Carver wondered if that was the sort of thing they taught in hotel management school. Probably.

He didn’t really unpack. Hung a few shirts and a pair of pants in the closet. Tossed his shaving kit on the chipped porcelain washbasin in the bathroom. The rest of what he’d require he’d take directly from the suitcase as he needed it. Life on the move.

He wrestled open the dirt-streaked window and checked the view from his tenth-floor room. Beyond the old office buildings across Belton, he could barely see Canal Street sweltering in the summer haze. A man and woman were holding hands and standing in the wide median, both staring raptly at a red light, waiting for electronic permission to cross the street. Even the traffic seemed to be moving slowly, almost dreamlike. Carver turned away from the window and sat down in the room’s one chair to read the Times-Picayune he’d bought in the lobby.

He’d had a reason, in addition to protection for Edwina, for making his arrangement with McGregor. Now he could invoke McGregor’s name and gain the cooperation of the New Orleans police if it became necessary. He might do that to help him stave off the legendary samurai-sadist Raffy Ortiz, or to aid him in finding out what he needed to know about Kearny Williams. He hoped he wouldn’t have to do it for either reason.

He learned from the newspaper’s obituary page that Kearny Williams was laid out at King’s Crown Mortuary before interment tomorrow morning. The death notice listed names of surviving relatives. The New Orleans phone directory contained the addresses and numbers of those relatives, and the address of the mortuary. Carver smiled. Who needed two healthy knees to do legwork?

He decided to postpone supper and shrugged back into the lightweight tan sport coat he’d worn on the plane. Briefly he thought about putting on the tie that he’d brought, then with open collar he limped from the room.

He had to walk all the way over to Canal Street to get a cab to take him to King’s Crown Mortuary.

The cab hadn’t been air-conditioned. Carver smoothed his hair back behind his ears, dabbed at his forehead with the sleeve of his sport coat, and made his way up the wide, shallow concrete steps toward the mortuary’s ornate entrance.

King’s Crown was a fortress of marble, brass, and black wrought iron. It reminded Carver of a bank with a select number of wealthy depositors. Sort of place that routinely turned down small business loans. He was surprised by its opulence.

A solemn man in a dark suit directed him to the “Williams suite,” and Carver walked down a carpeted hall to a large room furnished in expensive and subdued French provincial. There were sofas and chairs in pale blue with cream-colored wood trim. Long, royal blue drapes matched the carpet. About half a dozen people sat around the room talking in soft tones. At the far end was an open casket surrounded by floral sprays and wreaths. The coffin was obviously expensive; it was made of polished mahogany and had fancy brass trim and handles. The propped-open lid was lined with buttoned white satin. The latest in underground luxury.

Carver avoided the registration book, which lay open and softly lighted on its wooden stand, walked to the coffin and gazed down at what had been Kearny Williams.

The undertaker had done expert work. Kearny appeared much as he had the last time he’d talked with Carver. Carver almost expected the corpse to part its rouged lips and speak. Wished it could.

The walk back to the opposite end of the room gave him a chance to look over the various mourners.

There were four men and two women. Two of the men seemed ill at ease. The other two wore expensive suits and looked bored. One of the women was wearing a simple and elegant black dress and sat with one of the well-dressed men on a small sofa. They were staring at the coffin, not talking. As if they were in some sort of suspended animation that allowed only limited movement. The other woman, elderly and black, had on an ill-fitting gray dress with a blue flower design. She was very thin and sat hunched over with her bony hands folded in her lap. Though there was a quiet, subservient air about her, she looked angry. Angry at death? Or maybe something else? Carver changed direction and set course toward her.

She had a lean, seamed face with watery almond-shaped eyes. Her gray hair was carefully combed but thinning and without enough body to stay in place. It flew like wisps of cloud in unplanned directions. She looked as if she’d just stepped in out of a high wind. Carver tried to guess her age but couldn’t. Somewhere between sixty and eighty was the best he could do. Narrowed it down to this century.

He stood near her and said, “Damned shame about Kearny.”

She looked up at him with her large, dark eyes, which seemed to peer into his thoughts. He noticed that her dress smelled like mothballs. “He was of an age to go.”

“Guess that’s some solace,” Carver said. “But I think he’d have preferred a few more years, don’t you?”

She didn’t comment. Her eyes stayed fixed on him.

“Like most of us,” he added.

“Where’d you know Kearny from?”

“He and I drove a lumber truck together a long time ago.”

“Out in California?”

“That’s right.” Carver smiled down at the woman. “My name’s Frank Carter. I suppose you and Kearny go back a long while.”

“Quite some years. I’m Wanda Pichet. My mother used to be the Williams’s maid over on Naval Avenue. Knowed Kearny since he was twelve. Used to throw rocks at each other, hide out when it was bedtime. I guess that’s goin’ back a long while, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’d say.” Carver stooped down as low as he could with his stiff knee, leaning most of his weight on his cane. “I don’t know any of the family; wanna help me out?”

Wanda Pichet studied him with sad speculation. Then she said, “Them two is Kearny’s son Lawrence an’ his son-in-law Jack Lipp. The other two men’s names I ain’t sure of, but they used to drive with Kearny, too. They’s from the union, I think. That’s Kearny’s daughter Melba. She’s Jack’s wife.” Wanda’s voice had grown strained when she spoke of Melba Lipp.

“Kearny never talked much about his kids,” he said.

Wanda shook her head slowly. “Ain’t much to brag on there,” she said. “Lawrence got hisself messed up with drugs an’ still ain’t straightened out, though he’s workin’ steady now at some sales job. Melba, she’s got even less of a mind than Lawrence; does what that husband of hers wants an’ nothin’ else.”

Carver looked more closely at Melba. She was a mousy brunette with a knife-thin humped nose, an underslung chin, and a superb figure. Hers was a dichotomy of beauty that intrigued some men. “I get the impression you don’t care much for Melba.”

“You think that’s any of your concern?” She asked it gently, as if inquiring whether he thought it was going to rain.

“It might be,” Carver said. “If Kearny was your friend.”

“Hmm.” Wanda shifted her frail body in her chair. She seemed out of place in the palatial mortuary, a beggar in the royal court. “Melba’s got no morals nor willpower whatsoever. That’s all there’s to her, Mr. Carter. Clay to be molded by the devil.”

“And her husband?”

“He owns a jazz club down in the Quarter. Melba’s Place. He’s the one did the latest molding.”

“How long they been married?”

“ ’Bout five years. He got her from a trumpet player she was living with over in Metairie. They passed her down like she was so much baggage-not that she didn’t ask for that kinda treatment.”

“Was she married to the trumpet player?”

Wanda’s face puckered with distaste. “Thought she was married to the whole band, but none of ’em seen a wedding ring nor man of God all the time they was spending her money and taking advantage of her.”

“Didn’t Lawrence try to talk sense to her?”

“Ain’t you been listenin’? Lawrence got no sense hisself.”

“How about the mother? Kearny’s wife?”

“Died givin’ birth to Melba. You oughta know that, ’less you forgot.”

“No, Kearny never mentioned it. Never talked a lot about any of his family. Too much pain, I guess.”

“Whole Williams family knowed pain. They was well-to-do when my mother worked for them in the big house on Naval. Financial affairs went all to seed, though. Somethin’ about the commodity market. I don’t know what an’ I don’t wanna know. It caused Kearny’s father to let his health go downhill so he died a few years later. ’Nother five years, then old Mrs. Williams went. She was a fine woman, way I recall. Kept her good spirits right up till the cancer took her. After that’s when they called in workmen and divided up most of the house, ’cept for the wing where my mother and me lived. Kearny made sure we could stay on long as we wanted, sorta kept an eye on the place for him.”

“You live in the house now?”

“Just me alone in the north wing. My mother passed on twenty years ago. Guess I’ll have to find someplace else now, though. Half a dozen roomers live in the other part of the house, come an’ go as they please.”

“Why don’t any of the Williams children live there?”

“Too run-down for ’em. Too expensive to keep decent. Big place like that’s a cross to bear, Kearny left it to be run by Kemper Management, where I send my rent check to. But they couldn’t spend much on it neither an’ still use the income to help keep Kearny at that old-age home in Florida. That an’ the money he borrowed on the house is all he had, way I hear. He was born too late to enjoy any of the family wealth as a man, was poor Kearny.”

Carver’s good leg was cramped and beginning to tremble. Losing feeling. He had to straighten up or he’d need help in order to stand.

He made it with effort, and felt circulation returning to the leg. Pins and needles.

“Goin’ to the funeral tomorrow?” Wanda asked.

“I don’t think I’ll be able.”

“Me neither. Not that I got other matters at hand. Just don’t like to see the end of things. Me and Kearny, we was best of friends,” She fixed those dark, almond-shaped eyes on Carver. “Best of friends.”

Carver dug the tip of his cane into the plush carpet. “Mind if we talk again sometime? About Kearny?”

She looked away. “I mind. Kearny’s over an’ done with. What’s up there in that coffin ain’t him, and even that’ll soon enough be dust. What’s gone is gone.”

Carver started to say good-bye to her, but she seemed to be in a trance, absorbed by the echoes and visions of long-ago summers. Throwing rocks and running through shadows. She was wrong. What she thought was gone would never be completely over as long as she drew breath.

“It’d really be a big help to me if we talked again,” Carver said. “Be honest, I didn’t really know Kearny all that well.”

Wanda Pichet sniffled. He thought she might begin to cry, but she was an old woman years past tears. She might even have smiled. “Think I don’t know that? Kearny never drove no lumber truck in California nor anyplace else.”

“Then why’d you go along with our conversation?” Carver asked.

She slipped back into her memories. Into a kinder world. She wasn’t going to answer.

He took a last, long look at Kearny Williams’s mourners and limped from the mortuary.

Into heat and life.