The Do-Right (3 page)

After their routine, the girls milled sideline while the band marched patterns. Phelan asked for Georgia and found her, said he wanted to talk.

This is who Ricky Toups thought hung the moon?
Georgia
Watson had an overloaded bra, all right, and cutoffs so short the hems of white pockets poked out like underwear. But she was a dish-faced girl with frizzled hair and cagey brown eyes. Braided gold chain tucked into the neck of a white T-shirt washed thin.

She steered him away from the knots of babbling girls. Her smile threw a murky light into the brown eyes. Black smudges beneath them from her gobbed eyelashes.

He introduced himself with a business card. “Ricky Toups' mother asked me to check up on him. He got any new friends you know about?”

She jettisoned the smile, shrugged.

“C'mon, Georgia. Ricky thinks you're his friend.”

She made a production of whispering. “Ricky was helping this guy with something, but I think that's all over.”

“Something?”

“Something,” she hissed. She angled toward some girls frankly staring at her and Phelan and fluttered her fingers in a wave. Nobody waved back.

“This guy. Why's Ricky not helping him anymore?”

Georgia shook her head, looking over Phelan's shoulder like she was refusing somebody who wasn't there. “Fun at first, then he turned irritable. Ricky's gonna quit hanging out with him, even though that means—” Her trap shut.

“Giving up the green,” Phelan finished. His little finger flicked out the braided chain around the girl's neck. Fancy G in 24-carat. “How long y'all had this irritable friend?”

The head shaking continued, like a tic now.

Phelan violated her personal space. “Name. And where the guy lives.”

The girl backed up. “I don't know, some D name, Don or Darrell or something. Gotta go now.”

Phelan caught her arm. “Ricky didn't come home last night.”

White showed around the brown eyes. She spit out a sentence, included her phone number when pressed, then jerked her arm away and ran back to the other girls on the sideline. They practiced dance steps in bunches, laughed, horsed around. Georgia stood apart biting her bottom lip, the little white square of his business card pinched in her fingers.

11:22. He drove back to the office, took the stairs two at a time. Delpha handed him Mrs. Lloyd Elliott's details neatly typed on the back of a sheet of paper. He flipped the sheet over. Delpha Wade's discharge from Gatesville: April 13, 1973. Five foot six, hundred and twenty pounds. Hair brown, eyes blue. 32. Voluntary manslaughter.

“Only paper around,” she said.

Phelan laid a ten on the desk. “Get some. Then see what's up in the Toups' neighborhood, say, the last three months. Thought this was a kid pushing weed for pocket money, but could be dirtier water.” He told her what Georgia Watson had given him: the D name, Don or Darrell, and that Ricky brought other boys over to the guy's house to party. “I'm guessing Georgia might've pitched in with that.”

Delpha met his eyes for a second. Then, without comment, she flipped through the phone book while he went to his office, got the .38 out of a drawer and loaded it. He glanced out the window. Calinda Blanchard, the New Rosemont's proprietress, rag in hand, shooting the glass part of the door with Windex.

When he came out, Delpha had the phone book open to the city map section. “Got a cross directory?” she asked.

Phelan went back and got it from his office. “Run through the—”

“Newspaper's police blotter.”

“Right. Down at the—”

“Library,” she said. She left, both books hugged to her chest.

Just another girl off to school.

The parole office faced the police station. His buddy Joe Ford was in, but busy. Phelan helped himself to a couple glazed donuts from an open box. Early lunch. Joe read from a manila file to one guy Phelan was related to and another he recognized on sight. That one took notes on a little spiral pad. Phelan, toting the long legal pad, realized he should have one of the little spirals. Neater, slipped in a jacket pocket. More professional. Joe closed the folder and kept on talking. One guy gave a low whistle, the other laughed.

Joe stood up, did a double-take. “Hey, speak of the devil. Tommy, come on down.”

Phelan shook hands with Fred Abels, detective. Stuck his hand out to the other, but the man bear-hugged him. “Hey, Uncle E.E.,” Phelan said.

E.E. boomed, “
Bougre, t'es fou ouais toi! T'as engage un prisonnier
.” Which meant Phelan was crazy for hiring himself a convict. Abels, sporting a Burt Reynolds' 'stache and burns, only not sexy, studied Phelan like he was a mud tire track lifted from a scene.

Who said he'd hired anybody?

Phelan zeroed in on Joe, who raised his eyebrows, pulled down his lips, shook his head to indicate the purity permeating his soul.

“OK.” Phelan set hands on his hips and broadened his stance. “All right. So my friend here appeals to my famous heart of gold. So I interview his girl. So she stuck some bad-doer. So what.”

“Minced that one, yeah. I worked that case.” E.E. wagged a finger. “I'm ona tell you, cher, lock up the letter opener.” He punched his nephew's arm, nodded at Joe, and he and Abels ambled off, chortling.

“You loud mouth bastard,” Phelan said to Joe. “Give me the dopers and perverts north side of town.” Commandeering Joe's chair, Phelan reeled off some street names.

“That's confidential.”

“Could have my secretary call you.”

“Hand full a
Gimme
and a mouth full a
Much obliged
—that's you.” Joe squinted, put-upon. “Not my territory, but old Parker lives in the can.” Joe stalked over to his co-worker Parker's vacant desk, the messy one next to his clean one, and rambled through its file drawers.

Phelan phoned Tyrrell Public Library. He asked the librarian to get a Miss Wade, who'd be in the reference section, going through newspapers.

“This is not a bus station, sir. We don't page people.”

Seemed like, Phelan thought while locating his desperately-polite-but-hurting voice, one bad crab always jumps in the gumbo. “I'm just as sorry as I can be, ma'am. But couldn't you find my sister? We're down the funeral home and our daddy's lost his mind.”

Clunk
. Receiver on desk. Joe was still pulling files.

Footsteps, then Delpha came on. “Hey, Bubba,” she said.

Phelan grinned.

She told him she'd call him back from a pay phone. “Call Joe's,” he said.

In three minutes, Joe's phone rang, and Delpha read out what she had so far. “Check this one from last night.” A Marvin Carter, 18, wandering down Delaware Street, apparent assault victim, transported to a hospital. Then,
outside of husband-wife slug fests, thefts, one complaint of tap-dancing on the roof of a Dodge Duster, she'd found seven dope busts and a missing child report. She gave him names and addresses, phone numbers from the cross directory.

Joe set files on his desk, neatened them up, said “Vacate my chair, son.” Phelan ignored him, boring in on each mugshot as he scribbled names on his unprofessional legal pad.

One of the names was a Don Henry. Sprung from Huntsville two months back.

Some D name, Don or Darrell
.

There you go. Cake.

No mud, no grease, no five-hundred-pound pipe, no lost body parts. Man, he should have split the rigs while he still had ten fingers.

2:01. He drove back to the office and hit the phone. Got a child at the Henry number, asked for its mother.

“She went the store. Git away, Dwight, I'm on the phone.” A wail from the background.

“Honey, your daddy there?”

The child scolded Dwight. Dwight was supposed to shut up while the child had dibs on the telephone. But Dwight wasn't lying down. He was pitching a fit.

“Honey? Hey, kid!” Phelan hollered into the phone.

“Shut up, Dwight! I cain't hear myself talk. They took Daddy back Satiddy.”

“Saturday? Back where?”

“Where he
was
. Is this Uncle Merle?” The child yelped. Now two wails mingled on the other end of the line.

A woman's harsh voice barked into the phone, “Low down, Merle, pumping the kids. They pulled Don's paper,
OK? You happy now? Gonna say ‘I told you so'? You and Ma can kiss my ass.” The phone crashed down.

Saturday was six days ago. Frowning, Phelan X'd Don Henry. Next, mindful of the tender volunteers in pink smocks on the end of the line, he inquired feelingly for his cousin Marvin Carter. Baptist Hospital, strike. St. Elizabeth, long wait, transfer, and strike. Hotel Dieu, single to first.

He parked in a doctor's space in front of the red brick hospital by the port. Eau de Pinesol and polished tile. A nun gave him the room number.

The face on the pillow was white-whiskered, toothless, and snoring. A pyramid of a woman in a red-flowered muumuu sat bedside. Phelan checked the room number. “Marvin Carter?”

The woman sighed. “It's Mar-tin. Cain't y'all get nothing right?”

Phelan loped back to the desk and stood in line behind a sturdy black woman and a teenage boy with a transistor radio tinnily broadcasting the day's body count. The boy's face was lopsided, the wide bottom out of kilter with a narrow forehead. He nudged the dial and a song blared out. “Superfly.” The woman slapped shut a checkbook, snatched the transistor, and dialed back to the tinny announcer spewing numbers and Asian place names.

“Jus keep listenin'. Cause you keep runnin' nights, thas where you gonna be, in that war don't never end, you hear me, Marvin? What
you
lookin' at?” She scowled at Phelan.

The boy turned so that Phelan verified the lopsidedness as swelling. He ventured, “Marvin Carter?”

The woman guided the boy behind her as she asked who Phelan was. He told her, emphasizing that he was not a policeman. He told her he was looking for Ricky Toups, kept his gaze on the boy.

The boy's eyebrows jumped.
Bingo
.

“Les' go.” The woman pushed the teenager toward the glass doors.

Phelan dogged them. “Did that to you, Marvin, what's he gonna do to Ricky, huh? Want that on your slate? Could be a lot worse than the dope.”

The boy tried the deadeye on Phelan. Couldn't hold it.

“We talking
dope
now?” The woman's voice dropped below freezing. “You done lied to me, Marvin Carter.” Her slapping hand stopped short of the swollen jaw.

Marvin grunted something that was probably “Don't, Mama,” enough so Phelan understood his jaw was wired.

“Ricky got you there promising dope,” Phelan said, “but that wasn't all you got, was it?”

The boy squeezed his eyes shut.

“Wasn't white kids did this to you? Was some grown man?” Marvin's mother took hold of his skinny waist.

“Listen,” Phelan leaned in, “if he said he'd hurt your mama here, I'll take care of that. It's just a line. But Ricky's real. You know him, and he's wherever you were last night. Help me find him, Marvin.”

“Eniss,” the boy said.

“Ennis? The street near the municipal swimming pool?”

Shake from Marvin.

“That's his name? Ennis?”

Head-shake, cupping his wide jaw.

“Dennis?”

A shudder ran through the teenager. “'Sgot evertang dere. Air's a vig ache, man.”

Phelan didn't press for a translation, he was scanning his list of parolees. One Dennis Deeterman. One D. Harold Holdrege. He squinted at his own handwriting. He'd jotted
down an identifying mark for Deeterman. “Tattoo of a knife on his arm?”

Marvin lifted up his shoulders and let them fall.

“OK, OK. Concord Street? Lucas?”

A hard-K sound indicated Concord. Marvin muttered directions, minus some consonants. The mother glowered Phelan away. Marvin bent down and shook against her neck.

Phelan dashed back to the hospital's two payphones, called Delpha Wade, told her where he was heading. If she didn't hear from him within the hour, call E.E. Guidry down at the station. “That's G-U-I—”

“Know how to spell it,” she said. “Got time for one question, Mr. Phelan?”

“Shoot.”

Throat-clearing. “You think you might hire me?”

“Miss Wade, you were hired when you called me Bubba.” He hung up the silent phone and jogged for the doors.

3:15. The house with the orange mailbox painfully described by Marvin was a dingy white ranch. It was set deep in the lot, backed up to tall pines and oak and magnolia, pockets of brush. Rusty brown pine needles and dried magnolia leaves—big brown tongues—littered the ground. With oil shot up to twelve dollars a barrel, somebody'd be out here soon, hammering up martin-box apartments, but for now wildlife was renting this leftover patch of the Big Thicket.

No car, but ruts in the grass where one had parked.

Phelan knocked on the door. Waited. Tried the knob, no dice. He went around the back to a screen porch that looked to be an add-on. Or it had been a screen porch before plywood was nailed over its large windows. A two-by-four had been pounded across the door; the hammer lying there in the dirt
suggested that Dennis Deeterman might be recently away from his desk. Maybe. Phelan could hear something. He beat on the door. “Ricky. Ricky Toups, you in there?”

He put his ear to the door.
Something
. Phelan pounded again, louder. “I'm looking for Ricky Toups.”

A low huffing, rhythmic. Intermittent creak. What
was
that sound? Like a rusted rocking chair.

He jogged back to his car, shoved a flashlight from the glove compartment into his pocket and snagged a pry bar. Ripped off the two-by-four. Opened the door. Directly across the porch was the door that led into the house. Phelan stepped over there, .38 drawn, and rattled it: locked. Already he was smelling piss in the hot, dead air. Then herb and cigarettes and some kind of dead-fish bayou stink. That creaky noise came from the far left, high up. He found a switch by the locked door and flipped it. Not a gleam.