Now Let's Talk of Graves (26 page)

“Is
that
enough to make him want to hurt you—or your dad?”

“I don't think so. Would be pretty stupid, wouldn't it? Well, except he is kinda stupid. No, not stupid, exactly. He's great with numbers, has a thing about them. But he's trash.” Zoe gestured, one hand palm out, as if that explained it all.

“Most drug dealers are not exactly aristocrats.”

Zoe laughed. “I am.”

Sam had to give her that.

“But I would suppose you haven't seen much of Billy Jack since your dad—”

Two beats. “No. I haven't. I haven't been doing any business at all.”

“Have you heard from him?”

“He's called a couple times, left messages on my machine over at the house. I left word for him that I was shut down.”

“Does he know why?”

“I can't remember exactly what I said. Probably just that I wasn't dealing now.”

“Do you have his phone number?”

“Yes, but it's a machine too—somewhere. No one ever answers except the machine. I don't even know if he lives there.”

*

Right outside Zoe's room at Ma Elise and Kitty's house, Billy Jack was sitting in a tree staring in at them.

He could make out only a word now and again, but then, he hadn't come to listen. He'd come to watch the little show he'd planned for Zoe.

He'd gotten the idea for the show after he'd gone to Patrissy's and talked to Willie, the maître d' who'd said nuh-unh, it wasn't Frankie Zito was doing the asking after him, was some good-looking young guy in a trench coat, didn't look like anybody in the organization. That weirded him out, so he'd stomped out of Patrissy's and jumped in his car. When in doubt, it was best to get moving.

As he drove, he came to some conclusions pretty fast. It was a cop who was asking after him. Or the DEA. He knew it. And he didn't have time for that crap right now. He needed to do
more
bi'nis, not less. No time to be laying low, Easter Sunday right around the corner and the man at Adler's still holding his mama's diamond cross in his fat little hands.

With that, Billy Jack's suspicion had coiled tight around itself. Okay, who'd ratted him out?

Well, take a look.

Who'd been acting funny?

He'd sat dead still in his Lincoln Town Car at a green light, horns honking all around him. Fuck 'em. Hold on a minute. He wanted to get this right.

His mind had flipped through his customers.

A-Z.

Bingo.

Zoe Lee.

It didn't take him but a few minutes to formulate a plan, throw the Town Car into gear, start rolling again.

He loved it—a natural.

Now, sitting in his ringside seat waiting for it to happen,

Billy Jack rubbed his hands in anticipation. He couldn't wait to see the expression on Zoe Lee's face.

The phone rang just then and Zoe jumped.

Like that.

Like when she was six years old and Chloe's big brother, Malcolm, had caught the two of them, her and Chloe, playing doctor and said if they didn't do a rerun for him—that's it, little girl—he was gonna call her father. Like
she
had done something bad. Just a little kid, she'd believed him, had jumped
that high
for years every time the phone rang, thinking it was Malcolm gonna narc on
her.

Like that.

But then, somebody
had
been calling off and on and hanging up. But she didn't tell Sam that.

“Hello?” she said. “Hello? Hello?”

The caller on the other end hung up.

*

Out in the tree, Billy Jack grinned. That call was the signal. All systems were go. Now.

*

Within minutes Zoe's phone rang again. Sam reached for it, but Zoe was too fast.

Billy Jack, with a handkerchief over the mouthpiece of the portable phone he had up the tree with him, said, “You rat.”

“Who is this?”

Sam was shaking her head. Hang up, she whispered.

Zoe mouthed: Billy Jack.

That was different. Sam looked around for an extension, but Zoe shook her head, then turned the receiver out. They listened cheek to cheek.

“You shouldn't rat on your friends,” he said.

“I know that's you, Billy Jack,” said Zoe. “Don't try to be so creepy.”

Silence. Then: “You rat!”

“I didn't rat. I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Cross your heart and hope to die?”

“What?”

“Cross your heart and hope to die?”

Zoe thought, what was this hope-to-die crap? He'd said it twice. Zoe'd never said it even when she was a little kid, just like she'd never prayed
If I should die before I wake.

People who said stuff like that were nuts.

And then she got it.

“Are you threatening me?”

Billy Jack laughed really loud—like thunder out over the lake on a summer afternoon. “Why, what makes you think that?”

“Then why did you say it?”

Before he could answer, the downstairs doorbell rang.

Sam signaled to Zoe to get the door, she'd hold the phone.

“I have to go. Doorbell's ringing.”

“Let somebody else get it.”

“Nobody else is home.”

“Are you sure?” The bell rang again. “Oh, yeah. I can hear that. Listen, why don't I stay on the phone while you see who it is? These days you never can tell.”

“Like
you're
gonna protect me,” Zoe laughed.

“Go get it.”

“Oh, all right.”

Zoe threw a quilted satin robe over her nightclothes and ran barefooted down the stairs.

Sam could hear Billy Jack's excited breath on the line.

Downstairs Zoe stood behind the locked door. “Who is it?”

“Delivery, ma'am.”

“From where?”

“Commander's.”

“Commander's Palace? I didn't order anything.”

And she didn't know they did takeout. Though, of course, Ella Brennan would do
anything
to make you happy if you gave her enough lead time.

“I think your grandma did. I think that's what they said. It's getting cold, ma'am.”

That was weird; it didn't sound like something Ma Elise, her great-grandma to be precise, would do. Through the peephole she stared at a tall young man with sandy curls who was wearing black pants and a white waiter's jacket.

He was holding a white cardboard box in his hands. What the hell? She opened the door.

“Maybe your grandma felt guilty about not making you any supper,” he smiled.

His front teeth were a little crooked. He was sort of a wonk.

“How do you know she didn't?”

“I just guessed.”

Zoe signed the receipt which he slipped into his pocket. The guy was still standing there. “So, Miss Lee, you better go eat this 'fore it gets cold.”

And then she remembered her manners. “Oh, let me get you a little something.” She started back into the house to find him a tip.

“No, ma'am. That's all right.”

Quick as that, he was back down the brick walk. She didn't see a car. Well, Commander's was right around the corner. He probably walked.

Zoe ran back upstairs with the box, waving it at Sam, who handed her the receiver.

“So what was that?” said Billy Jack.

“Listen, thanks for baby-sitting me, but it was just a delivery boy.”

Billy Jack smiled.
His
delivery boy, but she didn't know that. Yet. “What'd you get?”

“Somebody sent over something from Commander's.”

“That's nice. What is it? Shrimp?”

“Oh, I don't know.”

She eyed the box resting on her dressing table. If Sam didn't want a snack, she'd bury it deep in the kitchen garbage, where Ma Elise and Ida would never see it. She didn't want to hear any more lectures about her eating habits.

“Whyn't you open it up?”

“Look, Billy Jack,” she said, “thanks a hell of a lot for calling and trying to weird me out, but I've got to go.”

“Open it.”

“You like surprises? If it'll make you happy, I'll open it.”

She reached past Sam, who was staring at her with raised eyebrows, snagged scissors out of a drawer, and cut the red and white string.

Inside, in a little basket like fried chicken came in was—Jesus, she didn't know what it was. But it sure didn't look like something from Commander's.

“What is it?” Billy Jack asked.

“I don't know. Something fried. Something fried whole. Yuk,” she said, backing away from it now. She'd gorged so much today that food in general was disgusting. Fried food was especially disgusting. And this, it looked like a little squirrel or something, was revolting. What could Ma Elise have been thinking about?

“It's Willard,” offered Billy Jack.

“No, it's not Will—who the hell's Willard?” What was he talking about? “It doesn't have a
name
I told you, it's something fried.”

“Don't you remember that movie?
Willard
?”
he repeated. “No, I don't. I don't have time to go to—” And then, click, she did. She remembered. Willard was a rat.

Zoe screamed. She screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed and grabbed the box and tossed it out the window. She was so freaked out, she didn't even see Billy Jack sitting in the tree right there. She was about to throw the phone out, too, when she heard the Billy Jack's voice, low and slow, come slithering out of the phone like a snake.

“No more ratting. Billy Jack don't like ratting. Okay, darlin'?”

Darlin'
was what Uptown bitches like Zoe called everybody. Billy Jack smiled. He liked that.

Twenty-One

HARRY'S SLAVE QUARTER cottage behind a big house fronting on St. Peter was minuscule, but it sported its own courtyard and a few other sweet advantages.

He'd rented it ten years earlier from Allan Jaffe of Preservation Hall, and it abutted the hall, so if he was early to bed, he could drift off to Percy Humphrey's “Lord, Lord, Lord.” Also, because Jaffe had had a soft spot in his gigantic heart for musicians of whatever stripe, the rent was less than the square footage.

Now it was after midnight, and Humphrey's band across the way had already packed it in. Harry was sitting in a canvas chair out in his courtyard dressed in a faded T-shirt and his shorts, staring at a half-empty bottle of gin. Harry was royally pissed. He strummed his old Gibson and tried it again.

I thought I knew how angels flew till you stepped off the plane.

Smilin'.

Oh, baby, I ain't lying.

Said, Lord, this is heaven, let me lay my head right now front of

that moaning train.

Moaning? Moving? Morning?

Harry banged the flat of his hand across the strings, which made a sound like a glass smashing if you throw it up against the wall hard enough. It was sort of like the sound of a man's breaking heart.

Sheeeeit, Harry, come off it, he said to himself. You ain't known the goddamn woman long enough she could inflict that kind of pain. You've seen her three times? Four? Maybe five you count that first time at the airport.

Yeah, well, how did you factor in those five/six weeks in between she'd come and gone and come again? All that time he was lying in his bed every night imagining her face right over his. Flying. Same thing every morning, waking up to her name.

He'd even found his feet out of control, walking him into a shop out on Magazine called Divine Light, where he'd asked the man behind the counter for a gris-gris to bring your lover back. Wait, wait, he'd explained. I
want
her to be my lover.
Then
come back to me.

The Divine Light man didn't even blink, just drew pictures and arrows with colored pens on a piece of parchment, rubbed it with sweet-smelling oil, tied it in a little red bag with a drawstring, then said, Five dollars, please.

Harry had been sleeping with it under his pillow ever since. God Almighty! The things he'd been dreaming. Now he reached for the gin bottle and topped up his drink.

So he was going to feel like shit tomorrow. He flashed back to Sam at the Royal O this afternoon, talking to him like he was a kid. The blood had rushed to his head. He'd felt like shit then. He felt like shit now.

He tried the verse again.

I thought I knew how angels flew till you stepped off the plane.

Smilin'.