A Quiet Vendetta (68 page)

St James the Greater, Ougou Feray, the African spirit of war and iron. Serpent and cross in the same cemetery on All Saints’ Day, the spirited festival of Vyéj Mirak, the Virgin of Miracles, and her voodoo counterpart Ezili, the goddess of love. They drank to feed the spirit. Sacrificing white pigeons to the Petro loa. All Souls’ Day, Baron Samedi, loa of the dead . . .

Carryl Chevron, gold and diamonds in his teeth, a car filled with wisdom – Aardvark through Aix-La-Chapelle to Canteloupe – and somewhere, perhaps even now, a brassy act in high heels with too much rouge and too little class, who waited hours in a dusty roadhouse asking herself whatever might have happened to the trick that never showed . . .

The smell of the swamps and everglades, the canal intersections, the wisteria and hickory and water oak; Chalmette District, the edge of the territories, the edge of the world perhaps . . .

The Havana Hurricane, his red-raw face imbued with alcohol and rage and the madness of sex alight in his eyes.

And she whose name I could even now barely utter without feeling the tension of grief in my throat . . .

And somewhere out there, in a world I had left believing I would never return, was my own son.

There – in a hotel on Lafayette Street, standing on the first floor veranda, behind me on the bed Victor’s clothes scattered as if he had rushed to dress, to leave, to fill himself with the sights and sounds of this place – I stood quietly, my thoughts there for noone but myself, and I wondered how this would end. Seemed to me I had run from every place I had been; there had always been a reason to escape, behind me the deaths of people I had known and those I had not. Pietro Silvino, Giancarlo Ceriano, Jimmy Hoffa, Constabulare Luis Hernández; the dealers and druggies, the pimps and murderers and rapists and psychopaths. People whose lives had meant something of significance, and those whose lives had meant nothing at all.

I asked myself about my own life: if it had been something of value, or if I had truly been no better than those whose lives had been swiftly and expediently despatched. I had never been one to rationalize and introspect, and understanding that nothing would be gained by such thoughts I closed them down quietly and stowed them away. Perhaps those thoughts would surface some other time, perhaps not. It did not matter, what was done was done, and there was nothing I could do now to change it.

I stepped back into the room to get a cigarette and returned to the veranda to smoke. I looked down into the crowd of swelling people, bodies pressed against one another with no spaces in between, and I knew I would not see Victor until he was ready to return. He was a young man now, seventeen years old, headstrong and determined and full of life. There was nothing I could do to contain his energy and élan and neither would I try. He was
my
son, and so there would be something of me within him, but I prayed – once more to a God I hardly believed in – that he had taken from me only those things of worth. Some sense of loyalty, a respect for those who understood more of life than I did, an appreciation of the importance of family, and the knowledge that truth could be found no matter how much it might hurt.

I closed my eyes. My head filled with the sound of music, with the sound of the world and all it had to offer, and I smiled. I had been
someone
. That most of all: I had been
someone
.

I slept like a dead man that night, despite the noise, the heat, and the sound of the real world beneath me, and when I woke and put on my gown and walked through to the adjoining room, I saw Victor lying there on his bed, still fully clothed, beside him a girl, her skirt up around her thighs, her tee-shirt twisted almost to her neck. They were absent from this world, their faces flushed, their hair tangled from sweat, and I stood silently for a little while. Victor had not come back alone, and though my heart felt for him and I was in some way happy that he had found someone here, I also knew that this was the first sign of losing him. He was almost a grown man, and he would have his own dreams and aspirations, his own vision of how his life would be. And once he discovered that life, he would – inevitably – no longer be a part of mine.

I closed the door quietly behind me. I went back to the bathroom, I showered and shaved, and when I called down for breakfast to be sent up I once again returned to Victor’s room to see if he and his friend had woken.

My son was still collapsed on the bed, but the girl was seated in a chair by the window. In the moment that she turned, the way her hair fell across her shoulder, the brightness in her eyes, she could have been Angelina. For a split second she looked surprised, afraid even, and then it was gone in a single, simple heartbeat. She smiled. She was someone different, and I wondered how I could have imagined she looked like anyone I had known.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘You must be Victor’s dad.’

I smiled and stepped into the room. ‘I am, yes,’ I replied. ‘And you are?’

She rose from the chair and walked towards me. She had on her skirt and tee-shirt, but her feet were bare, dirty from where she must have walked along the street, perhaps dancing, living life, loving all that New Orleans represented in this most passionate season.

‘Emilie,’ she said, and then she spelled it for me. ‘Emilie Devereau.’ For a moment she looked a little awkward. ‘I met Victor last night. We were a little drunk.’ She laughed, and the sound was beautiful, a sound I had perhaps heard too little of in this life of mine. ‘I live upstate, quite a distance away. I was going to get a hotel room . . . we went everywhere but they were all filled up to bursting. Victor said it would be okay if I just crashed here—’

I raised my hand; I smiled once more. ‘There is no explanation needed, Emilie. You are here with Victor and you are more than welcome. Would you care for some breakfast?’

‘Oh hell yes, I could eat a dead dog if it had enough ketchup on it.’

I laughed. She laughed too. She was more than pretty. She carried herself with elegance and grace. She was about the same age as Victor, a little younger perhaps, and there was something about her that told me here was someone who could capture his heart effortlessly. Here was someone who would teach him to forget Elizabetta Pertini.

I turned back to my room. She followed me. Within a minute or two room service came with breakfast – fresh fruit, warm bread, some cheese and baked gammon, eggs Benedict, orange juice and coffee. We sat facing one another at the small table by the open window, the breeze from outside lifting and separating the fine organdy curtains, and with it came the scent of bougainvillea and mimosa.

‘So what do you do?’ she asked as she poured juice into my glass.

I shrugged. ‘I am retired now,’ I replied.

‘And before you retired?’

‘I worked all across America, traveled a great deal.’

‘Like a salesman or something?’

I shook my head. ‘No, I was not a salesman.’ I paused for a moment. ‘More like a troubleshooter perhaps, a troubleshooter for businesses, you know?’

She nodded. ‘So you’d like go somewhere and if something wasn’t working right in someone’s business you’d fix it?’

‘Yes, I would fix things, make them work again.’

She nodded approvingly. ‘Cool,’ she said, and then glanced over her shoulder towards the door to the adjoining room. ‘You figure I should go call Victor or something?’

‘He’s okay . . . let him sleep. Seems you wore him out, young lady.’

She looked at me askance, and then she blushed. ‘We didn’t . . . we didn’t . . . well, you know—’

I laughed. ‘Victor is not used to dancing for hours on end. He has come from somewhere where dancing was not his first order of business.’

‘He’s cool though . . he’s a nice guy.’

I nodded. ‘I think so, yes.’

Emilie looked at me, her expression momentarily pensive. ‘Where’s his mom? Is she gonna come down for the Mardi Gras too?’

‘No, Emilie, she’s not. Victor’s mother died when he was a very young boy.’

‘Oh hell, that’s awful. What happened?’

‘An automobile accident,’ I said. ‘There was an automobile accident and his mother and his sister were killed. It was many years ago.’

‘Hell, I’m sorry, Mr Perry.’

I smiled. ‘Perez,’ I said. ‘It’s Ernesto Perez,’ and then I spelled it for her which she found very amusing, and the moment of sadness was gone.

‘So what you guys doing down here?’

‘We came for the Mardi Gras.’

‘Right, right,’ she said. ‘Me too. You been here before?’

‘I was born here,’ I said. ‘A thousand years ago I was born right here in New Orleans, a little town outside of the city.’

‘And Victor was born here too?’

‘No, he was born in Los Angeles.’

‘Like Los Angeles in California?’

I nodded. ‘The very same.’

‘Wow, that’s cool. So he’s like Californian, like the Beach Boys or something?’

‘Yes, like the Beach Boys.’

She nodded. She paused to eat her eggs. She glanced back over her shoulder towards the half-open door at Victor still collapsed on the bed.

‘Go,’ I said. ‘Go wake him up. Tell him to come and have breakfast with the family.’

She smiled wide. She almost fell off the chair and hurried back through to the adjoining room. She struggled to wake Victor, but finally he slurred resentfully into semi-consciousness, and when he realized that she was up, that I was right through in the next room sitting at breakfast, he rolled sideways off the mattress and hit the floor. She was laughing then, dragging him to his feet, pulling him across the room and to the table, where he sat down heavily. He looked as if he’d gone ten rounds with Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom.

‘Dad,’ he said matter-of-factly.

‘Victor,’ I said, and smiled. ‘I think perhaps you should drink this.’ I handed him a bowl of hot black coffee. He took it, held the bowl between his hands, and then he looked sideways at Emilie and smiled sheepishly.

‘You met Emilie then?’ he said.

‘That pleasure I have had already, yes,’ I replied.

Victor nodded, looking at me as if he figured I might need an explanation. I smiled at him. I sensed him relax. ‘I’m gonna take a shower,’ he said. ‘If that’s okay with you guys.’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Emilie and I will sit here and talk for a little while.’

I watched Victor head back to his own room. At the doorway he glanced back and smiled at Emilie. She waved him through the door and turned back to me.

‘We went everywhere looking for a hotel,’ she said. ‘Everywhere was booked out completely and I didn’t have anywhere to stay. My uncle is gonna be tearing his hair out.’

‘Your uncle?’ I asked.

‘Sure, my uncle. He brings me down here every year.’

‘And where is he?’

She shrugged. ‘Back at the hotel cursing me like God only knows what . . . probably have called the cops by now or somethin’ equally stupid.’

‘He’s at the hotel?’ I asked.

Emilie looked awkward. ‘Well, er, yes . . . at the hotel. It was quite a way from where we were and there was no way we could have gotten a cab at that time.’

‘I see,’ I replied. ‘Of course not.’

There was a moment’s awkward silence between us.

‘You should call him,’ I said, feeling the first sense of tension. The very last thing in the world I needed was to be tied up in some missing persons report with the New Orleans PD.

Oh sure, Officer, it was fine. I was over in the hotel with Victor and his dad. I slept there, and then I had breakfast. Sure, I’m telling the truth . . . go over there and ask them for yourself
.

Emilie looked at me sideways. She smiled coyly. ‘Helluva liar I make, eh?’

I was silent for a moment waiting for her to explain.

‘Okay, okay,’ she said. ‘I could have called my uncle and he would’ve come and fetched me, but . . . well, I like Victor, he’s cool an’ everything, and I figured what the hell, you know?’

‘
Chi se ne frega
,’ I said.

‘Key senna what?’

I laughed. ‘It’s an Italian expression. It means what the hell, who gives a damn, that kind of thing.’

‘Exactly!’ she said. ‘I thought that very thing . . . not like I thought that we might—’

I raised my hand. ‘I believe your intentions were nothing less than honorable, Emilie.’

She smiled. ‘Right, Mr Perez, my intentions were honorable.’

‘Ernesto.’

She nodded. ‘Right, Ernesto.’

She reached for the coffee pot and refilled my cup. She was charming, bursting at the seams with life and energy, and I was pleased that Victor had found someone his own age here in New Orleans so quickly.

‘So you should call your uncle,’ I reminded her. ‘Use the phone here. Give him a call. He’ll be worried.’

Emilie was hesitant for a moment and then she nodded. ‘I can use your phone?’

‘Of course . . . over there on the stand.’

She rose and padded barefoot across the carpet. She called information and asked for the number of the Toulouse Hotel. She scribbled the number on the jotter pad and then dialed.

‘Mr Carlyle, please.’

She waited a moment.

‘Uncle David? It’s me, Emilie.’

For a second she looked surprised, and then she held the receiver a few inches from her ear and looked across the room at me.

I could sense the explosion that was occurring at the other end and I smiled to myself.

‘I know, I know, and you have no idea how sorry I am, but I’m okay . . . I’m fine, and that’s the main thing—’

Another blast from the uncle.

‘Okay, enough, Uncle David. I know you’re pissed beyond belief, but the fact of the matter is that I’m okay and no-one will be any the wiser. You let up on me and I won’t tell Dad that you let me get away from you, okay?’

There was silence for a moment. The girl was bartering for her freedom.

‘Okay, I promise.’

Another few words from Uncle David.

‘No, I promise, I really do. Cross my heart and hope to die . . . never again, okay?’

Uncle David seemed placated.

‘Okay, I will. Maybe an hour or so. I’ll get a cab and we can have lunch or something, alright?’

There were a few more words and then Emilie wished him goodbye and hung up.