Now Let's Talk of Graves (37 page)

You couldn't see it unless you were looking in his eyes, but Lavert was smiling. They were at Elysian Fields around North Dorgenois, Law, Hope. White man in this neighborhood gonna shine. Gonna be a beacon. A light drawing no telling what kind of critters.

He pulled over smartly to the curb, handling the long car like it was a baby carriage. He got out and opened the door for Frankie, not even bothering to look him in the eye, just said, “Good day,” closed the door, got back behind the wheel. Didn't look back.

He didn't need to. It was more fun
imagining
the little weasel darting this way and that. Hopping like a scared rabbit. Hoping a cab would come along. Knowing even if it did, it probably wouldn't stop.

“Now let's go see Mama.” Joey leaned back. He lighted a cigar with the solid gold lighter his uncle Carlos had given him. The one with the notches. “Turn on my music, okay?”

“Okay, boss. You got it.”

Lavert flipped on Joey's favorite tape—Sinatra singing “My Way.”

The big white limo threaded its way northward, the neighborhood changing, past the Jewish cemeteries, turning left on Robert E. Lee. Just on the other side of the University of New Orleans campus, a few blocks away, was the huge flat surface of Pontchartrain. Lavert could smell the water, all the while shifting his mind forward and back between Harry's Billy Jack
Joyner
and that little bastard in the Pic'N'Pac.

Pic'N'Pac dude, G.T.'s dude, was right there. Lavert coulda picked him up with one hand, held him out wiggling like a cockroach. Be one down for Batman and Robin. One to go.

Except for that little peashooter.

A .38 bullet bounce around inside your head, it'll give you pause.

Had
him, though.

“Lavert?”

“What?”

“You hear what I'm saying?”

“Nuh-unh. Sorry. Daydreaming, boss.”

“I said, after we go see Mama, pick up Chéri, you drop us off, you run by that poolhall. Mr.—what Frankie say?”

“Mr. Kush's, boss.”

“You know that place?”

“Sure do.”

“Go take care that little faggot, whatsizname.”

“Joyner.” Lavert smiled to himself. Billy Jack Joyner. He had it.

An hour later, still the middle of the afternoon after a couple cups of coffee and a few jokes with Mama, Lavert was pulling past the guard at Audubon Place. Private, didn't
get
no more private than this, Uptown street off St. Charles right by Tulane.

White boy all dressed up in a silly suit coming out of the guardhouse, saying, “How ya'll doing, Mr. Cangiano?” Not pulling no Uptown AT, knowing attitude didn't get you nothing but sorry with the likes of Joey the Horse, who, anyway, had every right to visit the big old white people's house he'd bought here some time ago for Chéri.

And there was that lady now, running out on her front porch like she'd been sitting right there in the window waiting for Joey for a week.

“Would you look at that!” Joey said proudly, pulling the cigar out of his mouth. Like Chéri was a filly he'd been smart enough to invest in doing her stuff out at the track.

Unh-huh, Lavert said to himself. She was an eyeful okay. Bodacious ta-tas bouncing around in a bright yellow jersey like they were doing la cucaracha. That Chéri sure as hell knew which side her baguette was buttered on.

“Hi, honey!” Leaning in the door Lavert had opened for her. Big smooch. Fuck the neighbors.

“Where to, boss?”

“Where you want to go, sugah?”

“Ummmmm. Maybe I feel like snacking on some shrimp.”

“Barbecued? Manale's, what you think?”

“Joey”—she gave it a giggle—“what would I do without you, baby, reading my mind?”

“Manale's, Lavert.”

“Got it, sir.” Hanging a left on St. Charles, headed back downtown toward Napoleon and the old Italian restaurant. “You like those shrimp, Lavert?”

“The barbecued? Sure do.”

“Good. You come on in with us. I'm awfully partial to 'em too. Maybe you scarf up that recipe?”

“Isn't it great what Lavert can do?” Chéri chimed in. “You 'member that time, Lavert, you drove us over to my daddy's, he made you that guinea hen gumbo?”

“Next week we had it on my table,” Joey gloated.

“Was the andouille did the trick,” said Lavert.

“When you gonna open your own restaurant?” asked Chéri.

“Now, darlin'. Don't you go putting ideas in my man's head.”

As if Lavert didn't already have plenty.

*

“This way, Mr. Cangiano.” The maitre d' smiled, ushering the three of them past the waiting tourists in the bar and seating them at a corner table, Joey with his back to the wall. They ordered a pitcher of beer.

“Now, tell me, darlin',” said Joey. “What you been up to?”

“Nothing.”

“Now I know you been doing
something.
You play tennis today?”

“Uh-huh.” Chéri took a long pull on her beer, licking foam off her top lip like it was cream.

“Over at that club?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You want me to get you a membership?”

“No, sweetie. That's okay. I go there with my friend Marietta anytime I want to.”

“Uh-huh. You sure that's all right? No problem to get you in.”

“Of course. Nobody ever bothers me and Miz Dupree.”

“That's her last name? Dupree?”

Marietta Dupree. As in Maynard Dupree? Harry had said that name. Lavert filed it.

“You know Marietta, sugar. You met her last year, that dance I dragged you to.”

“United Way,” Joey grunted. “Bunch of stiffs.”

“You're so bad.” Her laugh was pearly. “And you met her stupid husband.”

“Who?”

“Marietta's husband. That Maynard.”

Lavert thought, uh-huh. Maynard Dupree, that was the one all right, a player in the tale Harry had told him. Now, how did that go? Maynard was an enemy of Church's, who was the dude who bought it on St. Charles, which was why the pretty Ms. Adams, Harry's dearheart—

“What?” Joey growled. “What about
that
Maynard?”

“Nothing, darlin'.”

“Don't nothin' me. I heard how you said his name. What's this Maynard?”

“It's nothing. Really. I didn't mean a thing.”

Chéri took out her compact and inspected her face, licking her little finger and smoothing her eyebrows. Joey reached over and lightly grasped her wrist between two meaty fingers.

“Don't shit me, Chéri.”

“Oh, Joey. I don't want you to get upset about every silly man says silly things to me.”

“Said
what
?”

The waiter who was delivering their shrimp jumped back as if he'd been shot. Which, taking a look at Joey the Horse Cangiano with his back to the wall, was exactly what he was afraid of.

“Put it there,” Joey grumbled, grabbing up the bibs that came with the messy shrimp, tying one around his own neck to protect his silk shirt from the butter, patting another over Chéri's pretty chest. Lavert was on his own.

“You know how men are.”

“Tell me what he said to you, Chéri.”

“Oh, just the usual.”

“Said he wanted to fuck you?”

“
Joey.
Shhhhh.” Chéri did the embarrassed ingénue better than almost anyone Lavert had ever seen. “I'm sorry I said anything.”

Joey cut dead eyes at Lavert. Eyes like ice-cold marbles. They always looked that way when he was serious, when the word in the front of his mind was hurt—as an imperative. “Add him to your list.”

“Joey.”

“Hush, darlin'. It's done. Now let's suck up some shrimp. There's a good girl.”

Thirty-One

MR. KUSH'S BILLIARD Parlor and Café was a throwback to the twenties, left like an oxbow lake deserted by the Mississippi in the terribly chic neighborhood of Riverbend, where St. Charles ran into South Carrollton, and Uptown stopped short.

Kush's was hard by the corner of Plum and Dante—a more felicitous pairing Lavert couldn't imagine. He found a parking spot right in front, wheeling in his little old Fiat Spider with precision—a Tinkertoy after the limo which he'd dropped off along with Joey and Chéri back at the house on Governor Nicholls.

Full of shrimp and lust, they wouldn't be needing him for the rest of the evening.

Which gave him time for his own pursuits.

His and Joey's, he amended.

Never let it be said that Lavert wouldn't just as soon do a twofer if the opportunity were presented, and now that both Harry and Joey had asked for the head of Billy Jack Joyner, well, why not oblige?

Especially if he and Harry snagged G.T.'s little sucker along the way.

Keep going like this, he'd win six ways to Sunday. G.T.—he sighed at the thought of her—being the prize. Then Lavert stepped into the cool gloom of Kush's parlor, sporting his favorite soft khakis and an old cream-colored linen sport jacket over a blue workshirt, the shirt a throwback to his peapicking days up at 'Gola. He grinned in the mirror at the free man intended to stay that way. Mr. Entrepreneur-in-the-Making, Jr.

Overhead, fluorescent lights battled it out with curls of cigarette smoke. The crack of one brightly colored ball hitting another was the only sound—other than an occasional muttered
damn!

Kush, actually Kush III, proprietor like his daddy and granddaddy before him, ran a tight ship and a clean hall. As high yellow as a man can be without turning white, he gave Lavert the welcoming nod.

“Doin'?”

“Fine. You?”

“Hanging. Wanna dog?”

Well, now. He'd already downed enough shrimp over at Manale's to satisfy your ordinary sixteen-year-old linebacker, but then, look at it carefully, the matter under consideration here was a Kush dog. The kosher frank grilled with unsalted butter. The roll crisped for just a sec. The chili, no beans, with hand-chopped meat, perfect seasoning. Two kinds of mustard: yellow French's, then a soupÒ«on of Zatarain's creole. Fresh coarse-chopped onions.

“Don't mind if I do.”

“Dixie?”

“Please.”

“Be a minute.”

Around the big room sat twelve pool tables, mostly occupied by young men wearing tight jeans, some with cigarette packs rolled in their T-shirt sleeves, trying awfully hard to be cool. The billiard table, off to one side in an alcove of its own, made it a baker's dozen.

Prowling the billiard table were two white men in expensive suits. On a bench tableside, two old women perched like pigeons.

Lavert did a double take, then went back for thirds. He stopped Kush, strolling by, with a chin jerk. “That old black woman?”

“Aunt Ida. You know her?”

“G. T. Johnson's granny?”

Kush grinned. “I heard that voudou woman got her hooks in you.”

“Says who?”

“Says the grapevine, son. You think them drums be still on you just 'cause you got all fancy, don't hardly come by no more? That don't stop them drums.”

Now it was Lavert's turn to grin. What could he say? “And the little old white lady?”

“Ma Elise Lee.”

Ahhhhh. It all fell into place. But what were they doing here?

“I tell you you ain't been coming 'round near often enough. Two little old ladies my chief billiards aficionados. Come in here nearly every afternoon.”

“They play?”

“Clean your clock, you want to try 'em.”

“You kidding.”

“Ma Elise taught Ida. She say she learned in Europe. You know that's where all the good players come from.”

Lavert and Kush watched for a minute as the two suits demonstrated a proper game, making ordinary pool look like the pedestrian occupation it was. Three balls—red, white, and yellow—rolling around on what looked like a pool table with no holes. Balls with no home.

The task was to tap the white cue ball into either the red or yellow ball, which must then touch at least three cushions before striking the third ball. The proper sequence of hits results in a point, or billiard. Fifty billiards, you're in the money.

The two little ladies leaned forward, their heads close together as they studied the older man's technique. Oooh, Ida whispered. Shhhhh, warned Ma Elise, who was feeling
so
much better, Ida'd got her out of the house away from her Zoe troubles.