The 13th Fellow: A Mystery in Provence (26 page)

Oh, yes. Talba was not only under thirty, but well under twenty-five, and already she knew everything about eyes like that— everything except what they meant when they were underscored by velvet-soft pouches so big they needed a bra; so bloodstained, so seemingly bruised you wanted to order emergency ice. What they meant when they sometimes sparked like small fires and peered from the head of an old white man who said “dese” and “dose.”

When Eddie Valentino spoke again, interrupting her silent ocular love song, she nearly did a double take. “I’ll think about it, Ms. Wallis.”

“You’ll think about it? Here I stay up half the night to show you what I can do, and then I get here before sunrise, and you’ll think about it?”

And for the first time in the interview, sad, soulful Eddie Valentino really did smile— a broad, amused, gotcha smile. “I thought it only took you ten minutes. Hour and a half at the most.”

“I’m making a point, Mr. Valentino. I tend to exaggerate when I’m making a point. And the point is, I’m your hotshot. Who else was here before your door opened with a complete dossier on you? I mean, what’s the definition of a hotshot?”

He smiled again, “You’re a ball of fire, all right. I just gotta sleep on it, that’s all.”

“Oh. Well.” Twice Talba had made him smile. Maybe that’s what her mission was; maybe that was all she was meant to do. Of course he had to sleep on it. What was she thinking?

I’m believing my own P.R., she thought, and felt embarrassed. What did I think he was going to do? Welcome me like a long-lost daughter?

Chapter 2

Eddie rubbed his eyes. Whoa, he thought. Pushy. I better get some more coffee. He watched her indignant tail switch out of the office, and thought how tired he was; how much he wished he had Talba Wallis’s energy. How much, in fact, he wished he were her age again.

He forebore to ask Eileen to bring him a cuppa joe— lately everything he did was construed as being old, infirm, or otherwise messed up— and limped in to get one for himself.

Hell, he thought. Just hell. And tried calling his daughter. Of course he didn’t get her. He never got her. He tried her on her cell phone.

“Yeah?” she said. Just like that.

“Ya gotta talk like a truck driver?”

“Dad, I’m in court. Judge Hart’s gonna ream me out— I forgot to turn my phone off.” She hung up.

What the hell was up with girls anymore? Or maybe it was just Angie. Maybe she was a dyke. There were people who said so. Hell, he thought again, not sure why he was in such a crummy mood.

He figured he’d wasted enough time. Sighing, he turned on the damn computer. He’d lost his zest for the job, really lost it. These days, fifty percent of it— thirty, anyhow— had to be done on a computer— and the damn thing made his eyes hurt. Made his wrists hurt. Oh, yeah. Carpal tunnel, the whole thing. It gave him the worst headaches he’d ever had in his life. So bad Audrey and Angie kept hounding him to go to the doctor.

Yeah, right. He was sure gonna go to some pansy-assed doctor. When hell froze over. He didn’t even want to go when he got hurt; figured the leg would heal on its own, and it might have. He just would have bled to death first.

Well, Angie was right about one thing— something had to give. He just didn’t know what.

On the whole it turned out to be an okay morning. He’d done two employment checks and one premarital when his daughter breezed in. He was glad to see her. It meant he could turn the damn machine off, rest his eyes a little.

“Angie! Help yaself to coffee.”

“No thanks. My damn client didn’t show. Hearing got postponed.” She was wearing a black tailored suit. That was all she ever wore these days— all any women ever wore, seemed like.

He passed her yesterday’s Times-Picayune, the section with his ad circled. He knew she wouldn’t have seen it— nobody reads classifieds unless they’re looking for a job.

“Daddy! Don’t tell me you ran this.”

“Ya didn’t want me to? Ya wrote it, didn’t ya?”

“I was just trying to illustrate that the person you claim to want doesn’t exist.”

“I happened to interview a very qualified applicant already.”

“Oh, yeah?” She brightened up, smiling like the old Angie, the little kid he never wanted to lose. It really pissed him off that she grew up. “What’s he like?”

“Kind of like God,” he said. He’d been waiting to deliver that line.

“What?” She spoke in the tone of a mother whose kid has just told another tall one.

“You heard me.” He was enjoying this.

“What in the name of all that’s holy does Eddie Valentino find godlike about a computer nerd?”

“She’s black.” Eddie couldn’t help it, he had a weakness for dumb jokes. The older the better.

Angie didn’t even laugh, way too snotty to even be bothered. She was so staggered by the information she just repeated what Eddie had said: “She’s black?”

“What’s wrong? Ya prejudiced?”

“No, but you— uh—”

“Ya got me wrong, Angie— I’m not prejudiced. I don’t like pushy broads, that’s all.”

“What about Mama?”

“I’m stuck with her.”

“What about me?”

“Can’t stand ya.” He swatted her face ever so gently, and gave her a half smile.

“Oh, Daddy.” Like a fourteen-year-old. He liked it. “Tell me about the applicant. What’s her name?”

“Hell if I know.” He shuffled some papers. “Talba Wallis.”

“How old is she?”

“’Bout twenty-two. Twenty-three, maybe.”

“That’s way too young to have the experience you wanted. She must have gone to Harvard.”

“Xavier.”

Angie was looking exasperated. Eddie hadn’t had so much fun in a month. Teasing his daughter was one of his greatest pleasures, especially since she hated it so much. It kind of got her back for having the gall to grow up. “Well, what the hell was so qualified?”

“She passed on faxing a resumé. Showed up at my door before I did this morning. With this.” Eddie handed over the dossier Talba had compiled on him.

“Holy shit.”

“Angela. There’s no need for foul language.”

“Is this what I think it is?” She ignored him. Went right about her business as if he’d never spoken. He didn’t know what to do about it when kids got out of control. Nothing he’d ever tried had worked worth a damn.

“Yeah, it’s what you think it is. Said it took her an hour and a half.”

“Holy shit,” she said again. “Did you hire her?”

“No, I didn’t hire her. She’s pushy.”

“In a good way, it sounds like.” She was treating him like he was the child.

“I been workin’. I haven’t even had time to do a background check.”

“Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s do it now.”

He liked that idea. Angie could do a background check as well as he could— better, probably. She was about ten times as good as he was on the computer, which would have intimidated him if he had any respect for the damn machine. A video camera— now that was a piece of hardware he could love. Computers were just something outside his purview, like sewing. He could work fine with Angie without feeling like a sack of shit. But what appealed to him about the idea, if she was going to help him, she was going to stay with him a while. Maybe she’d even have lunch with him.

He got up and gave her his chair. “I’ll just be in the video room.”

Angie was leaning forward, her fingers racing. “Hey, Dad, wait. I’ve got something. She’s got a website. Your little applicant’s got a website, and you don’t even have one yourself! You gotta get this girl. She’s hot stuff.”

“Yeah, yeah, she mentioned it.”

“Her website? I should think.”

“No, the hot stuff part.”

“Holy shit.” She was leaning intently, as if she didn’t care if she fell into the screen.

“Angela. Language.”

“She’s a poet. Omigod, I’ve heard of her. Is this woman for real? Why would she want to work for you?”

“Whaddaya mean, poet?”

“Take a look at this.” She turned the computer screen toward him.

Slowly, his bullshit detector turned on “high,” he walked back around his desk. “What the fuck? (Excuse my French.) AKA The Baroness de Pontalba, for Christ’s sake? She’s been dead for a century. And she was white.”

Angela was looking way too amused to suit him. “Did you say something about foul language, Daddy dear?”

“I got a double standard; you know that.”

“Yes, Daddy.” He hated it when she gave him that suppressed-grin thing. “Listen, I know about this woman. They call her the Baroness— it’s her nom de plume.”

“I’m gonna nom her plume,” he said automatically, and finally looked at the screen. There, sure enough, was the applicant in some kind of purple flowing thing with a turban on her head. A goddam turban. “I guess she’s an African baroness,” he muttered. “Why in the hell does a poet want to be a detective?”

“No money in poetry,” Angie said. “They have to have day jobs. Hey, look, here’s a schedule of readings. There’s one tonight. Shall we go?” Evidently, it was a rhetorical question. Her fingers were working again. “Ah. Here it is. I thought I remembered this.” She’d somehow, in the flash of a fingernail (Angie wore Mandarin Red) pulled up a Times-Picayune story. “Great big piece by Jane Storey.”

“Let me see that.” Eddie pulled the screen toward him and read the piece aloud, as naturally as he’d once read his daughter The Cat in the Hat. “Yeah, she said she worked for Allred.”

Angie nodded. “I guess it was around the time he had that unfortunate collision with a hunk of hot lead.”

He stared at her. “What you been readin’? You’re talkin’ funny.” Without waiting for an answer, he kept putting things together. His head started bobbing, as if a puppeteer were running it. “Yeah. Yeah. She checks out. Looks like she’s who she says she is. Damn. She helped break the Russell Fortier case.”

Angie leaned back in her dad’s chair, looking smug— as if the entire female sex had been challenged and had passed the test. “Dad, you’ve got a problem.”

“What’s that, baby?” He was still staring at the screen, distracted.

“She’s not going to go for those slave wages you’re offering.”

“Who’s offerin’? I don’t know if I could work with a woman like that.”

“A woman like what? Black or female?” His daughter’s voice was cool, but her eyes were hot and dangerous. She could turn on him like a snake— she had a history of it.

“I’m not prejudiced, Angie.”

She said, “I ought to know whether you are or not,” and walked out, scooping up her purse on her way.

I could call her back, he thought. Maybe she’ll go to lunch, anyway. But physically, he couldn’t. His throat had closed. When that chasm opened between them, that Grand Canyon of a thing that cracked open as suddenly as a fissure in an earthquake, he felt as if someone were sitting on his chest, squeezing the air out of him. The world turned gray, and he floated above himself, watching his body, shriveled and ancient, lying in a hospital bed and facing a wall, a gray wall in a gray world, perhaps for all eternity.

It hadn’t always been this way. He didn’t know what was happening to him, exactly, except that it was a form of hopelessness and it wasn’t about Angie. Or wasn’t all about Angie. He sensed that it was partly about his impending birthday, and wondered if it happened to everyone, and if so, if it ever went away.

He decided against lunch; it would only prolong life.

***

It was three when Audrey called, and his stomach was sour from too many cups of coffee. “EdDEE,” she said, the way people in their old neighborhood called each other. He’d say “AuDREE” if he wanted her. “Ya want meat loaf and red gravy tonight?”

His stomach growled. He wanted some now, he realized. He wanted some bad.

“Come home early,” she said. “The poetry readin’s at seven.”

“What? The what’s at seven?”

“The thing Angie’s taking us to. I thought y’all talked about it.”

Damn, he thought. Why bother thinking up a good name for your kid? We might as well have called her Devila. He said, “Okay, Audrey. I’m leavin’ early, anyway.”

“Why? You don’t feel well?”

He almost said, The goddam screen. It’s giving me a headache. But he caught himself. By now, Angela would have rounded her up; the two women would be irrevocably locked into a conspiracy against him, a mission to get him to hire a nerd to save him from himself. This nerd, apparently. The one who thought she was royalty. Why the hell Baroness Pontalba? he wondered, and thought with resignation, I bet I’m about to find out.

Some four hours later, full of the promised protein and tomato concoction as well as a mountain of mashed potatoes, he and his wife and daughter (who’d not-so-coincidentally been invited to dinner) found themselves at a restaurant on North Carrollton it would never have occurred to them to patronize in other circumstances. Or Audrey and Eddie, at any rate. For all Eddie knew, it was Angie’s favorite hangout.

Reggie and Chaz was a black-owned restaurant for starters, a gay-owned joint for a follow-up. It was fairly new as well. All those facts added up to a hip restaurant, a multicultural, happening kind of restaurant, of a sort that would normally have merely bewildered the elder Valentinos, who leaned more toward the likes of Mandina’s. Tonight, they got the hang of it, though; it was a venue for Art.

If that was what poetry was: Eddie really wouldn’t know.

He looked around him. The place had a little bar, which was fortunate, since the three of them had already eaten dinner and would certainly be expected to spend money for the privilege of this great artistic experience. Aside from that, though, to say it was simple would be bragging on it. Ah, no, Eddie thought. That’s not fair. It was simple, but it had flair. The walls were tastefully dotted with masks, most of them grotesque, some of them African, presumably; some Indonesian; some Mexican, certainly. Not expensive, but, boy, did they make a statement. Woven Guatemalan belts hung from the ceiling like so many colorful snakes— or like confetti, Eddie thought.

Grudgingly, he had to admit there was something festive about it.

The crowd was mixed— salt and pepper, young and old, hip and conventional. Sure, Eddie thought. Poets and their parents. You don’t have to be a detective to get the hang of that one.