Chasing the Wind (19 page)

With a sideways look at Amalise, Jude shifted the car into gear. "Well, ah . . . thanks."

Bingham settled back as the car moved forward. "You're not a lawyer, are you?"

"No. I work on the river."

"I could tell by your hands, the set of your shoulders. It'll be nice keeping company with someone besides bankers and lawyers." He reached forward and tapped Amalise. "No offense."

Amalise rolled her eyes and folded her arms.

Bingham pointed ahead. "That way, son. Hang a right at the corner, on O'Keefe."

"Yes. I know."

Amalise slumped in the front and sighed as the car moved forward.

The maître d' at Bailey's lit up when he saw Bingham. He led them to a table in the corner by the windows overlooking Baronne. The waiter bustled around like a private valet. Bingham insisted on ordering steaks for everyone, medium-rare, but Amalise, feeling contrary, interrupted and ordered grilled speckled trout, with a small salad on the side.

"Drink?" Bingham looked at Jude.

"Unsweetened tea." The waiter looked at Amalise. "The same," she said.

Bingham ordered scotch. When it arrived, he closed his eyes with a sigh and took a long drink. Setting the glass down, he pulled a pack of Raleighs from his pocket and a gold lighter and looked at Amalise. "Mind if I smoke?"

She shook her head.

He extended the pack to Jude.

"No, thanks."

Bingham plucked a cigarette from the pack, lit it, and set the package and the lighter on the table beside him. With a sigh he took a long draw and turned his head aside, exhaling smoke. Then he turned back to them.

"It's been a long day in that conference room. Cooped up. I'm an outdoor man, myself. Thought I was in for a hard landing tonight before I ran into you two."

"A hard landing." Jude looked at him. "Are you a pilot?"

Bingham shook his head. Smoke drifted from the corner of his mouth. "Paratrooper. World War II." He reached to the center of the table for an ashtray and slid it toward him. "But I fly some now, too."

"What theater?" Jude squared his arms on the table and leaned slightly forward.

"Europe. France. Later on, Germany."

"That must have been something."

"Ever jump out of a plane?"

"No, sir. I stick to boats, myself."

"Call me Bingham. What do you do?"

Jude leaned back and picked up his glass. "I'm a bar pilot, guiding ships." He sipped the tea. "Wouldn't mind trying a jump, though. It sure looks like fun."

Bingham nodded. "Today maybe. But back in the day, those old chutes we had were crude. I'm lucky to be alive with no broken bones." He lifted his drink. "In those days we just jumped and prayed we'd land in the general vicinity. Now they've got toggles to steer. Ten thousand feet, land on a dime, and walk away." He lifted his drink. "Nineteen-forties, we hit the ground hard. 'Pile driving,' we called it." He chuckled. "Hit dirt and roll."

"Well, thank you for what you've done for our country."

Bingham nodded. "We had some good times, too." He lowered his eyebrows and leered at Amalise. "Prettiest girls you ever saw in France. We'd fill our canteens with wine sometimes, in case we got lucky."

They all laughed. The waiter returned with their food and moved silently around them, settling the plates.

Bingham looked at Jude. "Bar pilot, huh? Is that the same as a river pilot?"

Jude explained. As she listened, Amalise grew appalled. Jude and Bingham were getting along.
They liked each other!
Jude went on and on about life on the river and at Pilottown.

"I'd like to see that place sometime." Bingham lifted his fork and waved it toward Jude. "Maybe we could take a quick run down the river in a charter sometime when you're going down there."

Jude's brows shot up. "Sure," he said. "Anytime. It would be better than taking the bus."

Amalise stifled a groan. She didn't want to like the man responsible for destroying the Marigny triangle, and she didn't want Jude to like him either.

But Bingham's eyes glowed as Jude described the hamlet of Pilottown that had protected the river over the years from pirates, the Spanish, the French, and German U-boats in World War II. Bingham asked about hurricanes, and Jude told him how the little place was battered year after year yet still survived, isolated but determined.

"That's the kind of place I like," Bingham said. "A place with character." He glanced at Amalise, eyes crinkling. "A place, perhaps, with soul?"

She smiled. Dipped her fork into the perfectly cooked trout.

Bingham eyed her plate. He turned back to Jude. "Good fishing down there?"

Jude nodded. "Sure. You've got the Gulf and the marsh."

Bingham waved his fork in Amalise's direction, snapping her back to attention. "Give me a freshwater fish in the Pacific Northwest anytime. Coldwater stream beats a swamp, if you ask me."

She looked up. "What?"

"We're still talking about fishing," Jude said.

"I said I'd prefer a rainbow trout over your spec." Bingham nodded toward her plate. Then he looked down at his own, sawed off another piece of steak, and stabbed it with his fork.

Jude let out a laugh.

Glancing at her watch, Amalise's lips curled down. They had wasted an hour and a half sitting here when she had plenty of work left back at the office. When she pushed back her chair and said she'd have to leave, Bingham and Jude both turned to her with surprised looks.

Jude glanced at his watch. "Sorry, Amalise. I lost track of time."

"No need to break up the party. I can walk. It's just across the street." She dabbed at her mouth, folded the napkin, and placed it on the table beside her plate. When she stood, Bingham and Jude rose, too. Jude held her coat as she put it on, and Bingham waved to the waiter.

"I'll drop you off," Jude said. "I've got things to do."

Rebecca was probably waiting.
The hollow inside opened again at the thought.

The waiter arrived, and Jude reached for the check. But Bingham waved him off, taking it. "I'll get it. You two run along. I'll be here awhile." Jude protested, but Bingham said, "This one's on me." He shook Jude's hand. "I like you, son. I meant what I said about flying down to Pilottown sometime."

On the short ride back to Mangen & Morris she was quiet. When Jude pulled over to the curb at the First Merchant Bank Building, he turned off the engine. Automatically she pulled back. The scent of his body, his clothing were all so familiar, and she longed to throw her arms around him as she would have done not so long ago, before that dinner at Clancy's. She ached to feel his strong arms around her.

But he didn't seem to notice. He stretched his arm across the back of his seat and looked at her. "How are you holding up, chère? Seems to me you're working awfully hard for someone just out of a hospital bed." An expression flashed crossed his face that she couldn't read—a sad, almost wounded look.

She'd hurt him, walking out of Clancy's like that. He'd planned such a fine evening, and she'd been rude. She hadn't even waited to hear the good news. "I'm fine," she said with a bright smile. She should apologize for her behavior that night, she knew. But her throat grew tight, and she couldn't work out the right words.

Jude nodded. "Well, then. I'll see you soon."

She looked at him knowing that everything between them had changed forever. She opened the door.

"Wait."

She turned her head. His voice was casual.

"See you Sunday morning?"

Slowly, she smiled. "Sure. St. Louis Cathedral?"

"Yes. It's your turn."

She entered the building and walked down the empty hallway toward the elevator, heels echoing as they clicked on the marble floor. A rush of happiness caught her by surprise.
Sunday morning
. But the joy was brief. Because relationships change, he'd said.

And then despair crept in, smothering the light, as a storm cloud will on a sunny day.

Jude watched Amalise until she was safe inside the First Merchant Bank Building. Then he turned his head, staring down Baronne through the darkness toward the bright strip of Canal Street one block away where the impressionistic scene moved ghost-like. Blurred, garish colors amid blazing lights. A streetcar rolling toward the river end of Canal. A flurry of automobiles. Two drunks stumbling on the curb, surrounded by ladies of the night taunting, teasing. The images merged and blended as he sat there.

One block closer, yellow lights glittered around the red canopy at the Roosevelt. Vaguely, he wondered if Bingham Murdoch was still at Bailey's Restaurant. He was glad the man had joined them. He'd seemed lonely.

Jude sat there for a very long time. And then he put the car in gear and drove home.

Bingham still occupied the same table at Bailey's, drinking his scotch and gazing through the windows at Baronne. He'd lived amid the razzle-dazzle for so long. But spending time with Amalise and Jude tonight had taken him back to a time when he'd been someone real, someone with hopes and dreams and values. He sat there thinking of the only two people he'd ever loved: Mother and Susan. And both were gone.

He crooked his wrist and raised the drink to his lips, remembering how it had been when he returned from the war. Made it all the way through without a serious injury. A bit more cynical and a lot poorer, perhaps, but there had been Susan. How many soldiers' girls had waited all through the war? His young wife had. He'd carried her letters in his knapsack everywhere, through France, then Germany. She'd been waiting for him in Manhattan at the Hotel Breslin on the day he returned, just as they had planned.

Bingham's eyes found the waiter's, and he lifted his finger again. One more for a nightcap.

Setting the empty glass down on the tablecloth, he turned it absently in circles, thinking of Susan, the way she would pull her hair back and tuck it into a bun at the nape of her neck. He had often kissed that sweet, soft place. Then he would pull out the barrettes and pins, and her hair would tumble down her back like water.

The waiter swapped his empty glass for a full one. He nodded at the man without looking up.

That had been thirty-two years ago, 1945. Hard to believe. Susan had been waiting for him, sitting on the edge of the bed in the corner of the dark room. Windows open to let in the warm night air. Yellow neon lights outside, just above the window, flashed on and off
Breslin, Breslin, Breslin,
just as they had on the night he'd left for the war.

But on the night he'd left, with the ships and planes and trains all waiting and the young men kissing their sweethearts good-bye behind drawn shades, there had been weeping. The streets had been dark and quiet, as though the whole city was holding its breath.

But on the night he returned in 1945, she had come running at him, arms flung wide, laughing, weeping like women will sometimes when they're happy. Car horns were honking below in the streets, with church bells ringing all over the city celebrating the end of the war.

A sheen of perspiration glistened on Bingham's skin as he recalled the touch of Susan's skin, the youth and passion and hope in her smile.