The Lazarus Heart (5 page)

When she answers him, she speaks as carefully, as soothingly, as she can manage.

"I know that, Jared."

"Yeah," Jared says, "I know you do." He starts pulling the photograph out of the broken frame, brushing away powdered glass from the image of his murdered lover, her murdered brother. The crow caws again, flaps its wings loudly, but Jared doesn't look. Instead he stares down at beautiful, lost Benny.

"Jared, you
can
understand what it's saying, can't you?"

His head turns very slowly toward her, as if he's reluctant to look away from the photograph for even a moment, as if he's afraid it might dissolve. His eyes are as far away and empty as the sound of his voice, and she wants to hold him again, wants release from all these months she's spent alone, no company but her own selfish, devouring sorrow. But Lucrece does not move, glances instead at the bird.

"It's brought you back," she says, "to find out who did do it, and stop them from ever doing it again."

The crow seems to regard her warily, maybe a glimmer of mistrust in its small and golden eyes, and so she says to it, "Am I wrong?"

"No, Lucrece," Jared says, answering before the bird has the chance. "You're not wrong. I can hear it too. I don't want to, but I can hear it just fine."

"I can help you," she says, still watching the crow, the mistrust mutual now. "If I

can understand what it's saying, then I can help you. I know things about what happened to Benny, things they wouldn't let me say in court."

The crow flies the short distance to the foot of the bed and perches on the footboard above Jared, looks from him to Lucrece and back to him again, its eyes as sharp as its beak, somehow nervous and confident at the same time.

"I can't let you get involved in this, Lucrece," Jared says, hugging the photograph to his chest now, stroking its smooth surface as if there is something there more precious than mere paper.

"Bullshit," she answers. "I'm
already
involved."

He can't think of anything to say to that, nothing that would convince her, but he knows well enough that she can't follow where he has to go. So Jared Poe sits quietly on the floor of the room and listens to the rain falling outside on Ursulines and the less comforting rhythm of his Lazarus heart.

Detective Frank Gray has been watching the Weather Channel for the last half hour, too drunk to give a shit that he's seen the same local weather report three times already; too drunk to bother changing it over to something else. He takes another long swallow of Jim Beam directly from the pint bottle and returns it to the safe cradle between his legs. At least the bourbon still feels the way it should, the only thing left in his life that hasn't found some way to betray his trust. It burns reassuringly in his belly, adds its part to the mist he keeps between himself and the world. There's a tropical storm somewhere in the Gulf, a great spinning swirl of white against blue on the satellite photographs. He's managed to understand that much. But the storm and any threat it might represent are far away from him, like everything else, like the rain drumming steadily against the window of his shitty apartment. Frank takes another drink from his bottle, sweet fire in his mouth, blazing down his throat. He closes his eyes when it reaches his stomach, and in the drunken darkness the hustler is there waiting for him.

The kid
said
he was twenty-one, and Frank knew it was a lie but didn't push the issue. He'd gone into the bar after his shift for a beer, the first drink on his way down into the long drunk of the weekend. It was a nameless place on Magazine Street, just a sign that read bar and a neon four-leaf clover over the door, neon beer signs in the dark windows, Patsy Cline on the jukebox. Frank ordered a Bud and was sipping it at the bar when he noticed the kid watching him from a corner booth, sitting there alone, an army surplus duffel bag occupying the seat across from him. When he looked back a few minutes later the kid was still there, still watching him. There was a bottle on the table, though he didn't seem to be actually drinking from it.

And then the kid smiled at him, a practiced shy smile, and looked back down at the table, picked at the label of his beer bottle.

The pushy, nervous voice in his head said,
No, Frank. We don't shit where we eat, man,
but he'd learned a long time ago how to keep that voice in its place. It was only another minute or two before he went over to the kid's booth.

Up close the kid looked a little bit older than he had from the bar. Blond hair shaved down to his scalp, Huck Finn freckles under his eyes and across the bridge of his nose. His eyes were the vacant blue of an October sky.

"Hi," Frank said. The boy said hi back to him, looked up for just a second, a quick smile for Frank before he went back to picking the label off the half-empty bottle of PBR. Frank pointed at the duffel bag and asked, "Coming or going?"

"Coming," the kid answered. "I just got in from Memphis this afternoon. On the bus." "Memphis, huh," Frank said, and before he could say anything else the kid

whispered, "So, you want a blow job, mister? I'll blow you for twenty bucks."

Frank glanced over his shoulder, automatic caution. The place was empty except for the two of them and an old woman sipping a Bloody Mary at the far end of the bar. The bartender was on the phone and had his back to them.

"Jesus, kid, you don't waste any time, do you?"

The kid shrugged, pulled the rest of the label off the brown beer bottle. "What's the point in beating around the bush?"

"I might be a cop," Frank said.

The boy smiled, smoothed the ragged label on the tabletop. "Oh, you're not a cop. You don't even look like a cop. I've given cops head before, and you don't look like a cop to me."

"Really?" Frank sipped at his own beer, glanced over his shoulder again. The old woman was saying something he couldn't understand to the bartender, who was still on the phone and ignoring her. "Maybe you should be a little more cautious."

The boy sighed then, looked up at Frank, and all the flirt and pretense was gone from his face, a hint of annoyed impatience at the corners of his mouth.

"Look, man. I gotta take a piss. If you want a blow, I'll be waiting for you in the John, okay?"

As the boy stood up and pushed past him Frank stammered, "Yeah, uh, sure," but the kid was already halfway to the rest room door.

If asked, Frank Gray would be hard put to think of anything he had ever wanted but to be a cop. He spent his childhood on a steady diet of television police dramas, everything from syndicated episodes of
Hawaii Five-O
and
Dragnet
to
Starsky and Hutch
and
Baretta, Police Story, Mod Squad.
These were his cowboys, his heroes, his models of what was good and what was masculine.

And, if asked, he would also be hard put to remember a time when he was not attracted to men: these men in particular, with their navy blue uniforms and shining badges and forceful self-assurance. He never passed through a time of sexual confusion, the tentative courting of girls he wasn't actually attracted to, the belated discovery that men and only men were the proper object of his sexuality. Everything was clear from the beginning, and he never saw any conflict between the objects of his lust and his desire to be a cop.

But this naivete did not even survive his academy training. He didn't need anybody to pull him aside and tell him, "Frank, faggots are not welcome on the force." He saw the hatred in his fellow cadets and recognized it for what it was, absorbed an acute awareness of the silence he would have to keep like priestly vows of celibacy if he was to have both these things, sex with other men
and
the badge, without having to endure any lessons firsthand. He saw others who were not so sharp, and that was enough for Frank.

By the time he came on the New Orleans PD as a beat cop in the Fifth Ward he understood the fine line he would have to walk, and he kept his arms out straight, placed one foot carefully in front of the other. Shortly after he entered the force two officers were busted after trading leniency for sexual favors from male hustlers in the Quarter. Before their subsequent hearings and dismissal Frank saw the
other
things that happened to them-the threats and beatings and humiliation-and he took note.

Four years later he was promoted to the rank of homicide detective, four long years he'd spent walking the walk, talking the talk, and satisfying his hungers with his hands and pornography, and even the pornography was a big risk. He knew that, and he kept his magazines in a locked strongbox in the back of a closet and never bought anything from the local newsstands or porn shops. Everything arrived at a post office box he kept in Bridge City under a false name, sexual care packages in anonymous brown paper, the magazines and videocassettes that served as surrogates for anything like actual companionship or satisfaction.

He learned the masquerade, the smoke-and-mirrors game, and prided himself that no one suspected a thing. He dated fictitious women. Whenever the guys were going on about some woman or another, Frank was always right up front, his lines as well rehearsed as any actor's on opening night. "Oh, man, did you see the titties on that bitch?" somebody would say, and Frank would clutch at his crotch and grin on cue. He knew every queer slur and joke, excelled in the phony swish and lisp and limp-wristed pantomime. He had looked the other way on more than one occasion when he saw cops beating up on fags. The machismo was just another part of his uniform, after all, just as easy to put on and take off again as his hat and shoes, and if there were ever doubts, well, that's what confession was for.

It was all easy enough to rationalize. If they'd just show a little fucking self-restraint, if they'd act like
men,
nobody would know and this shit wouldn't happen to them.

But sometimes he would catch a glimpse of his thin face in the bathroom mirror or a store window and there would be only the mask, no vestige left of the man hiding underneath. He would have to stop then, would have to lean against a wall or sit down until the vertigo passed. There was a ballooning sense that he was somehow slipping out of himself, that the man he saw reflected had already consumed the
real
Frank Gray. And even this was something small enough to dismiss. Shit, it was a stressful fucking life and he couldn't expect
not
to feel it every now and then. He told himself it was just something else that came with the territory and if he had to have a few drinks before bed to keep the nightmares away, so be it.

The boy in the bathroom stall smelled like sweat and sunlight, and Frank tried hard to concentrate on those delicious smells instead of the sour stink of urine and deodorant cakes. He sat on the toilet seat, his hands savoring the soft bristle of the kid's scalp, holding back, wanting it to last, knowing it might be weeks before he allowed himself anything this wonderful again, weeks before he was desperate enough to risk it.

When he finally came, Frank leaned over and kissed the kid's scruffy hair, tasted salt and Vitalis. Tiny bursts of orgasm still lingered somewhere between his dick and his brain, and he didn't want to open his eyes, let in the ugly light of the rest room, the uglier reality of his situation.

"Jesus, I
knew
you were a fucking cop," the kid said, and when Frank did open his

eyes the kid was holding his service revolver, had slipped it from its ankle holster and was pointing it at Frank's chest.

"So, since you went and
lied
to me, maybe I got a little bit more coming to me than just the twenty, huh?"

Frank swallowed, his mouth and throat gone suddenly dry, feeling like a goddamn fool, stupid enough to let this punk catch him off guard, his pants around his ankles and his shriveling dick dripping cum into the toilet bowl, the barrel of his own gun aimed straight at his heart.

"Just give that back to me before someone gets hurt, okay?" Like he really thought there was any chance of that happening.

The kid shook his head and smiled, used the back of his free hand to wipe his mouth, careful not to take his eyes off Frank.

"What?" Frank asked him, fear and exasperation fighting for control of his voice. "You think you're actually gonna shake down a policeman with his own fucking gun and get away with it?"

"Do all the other little piggies know you're a faggot?" the boy said. Frank punched him hard in the face, sent him crashing backward into the locked door of the stall.

The revolver tumbled from his hand and clattered loudly on the filthy tiles. He grabbed the kid by the collar of his T-shirt, slammed his head hard against the door. The boy slumped into a whimpering heap. Frank moved slowly, reaching for the gun with one hand and pulling up his pants with the other. He shoved the .38 back into its holster before he stood up and kicked the kid once in the stomach, once in the face for good measure.

"You stupid little shit. If I ever see you again... if I ever so much as fuckin'
see
you again, motherfucker, they'll be dragging the river for the parts the alligators didn't want. Do you understand me?"

The kid coughed out a mouthful of blood and Frank Gray kicked him in the guts again.

"Answer
me, fucker."

The boy managed a choked strangling sound and half a nod. Frank kneeled beside him and stuffed the twenty he'd earned into a back pocket.

"I'm going back out there, and I'm going to finish my beer. You're going to stay right here for a while." Without waiting for a response, he left the kid curled fetal and moaning beside the toilet.

Frank takes another drink from his bottle and watches the lazy counterclockwise spiral of the storm tracking across his television screen. The weatherman points to the tattered delta and barrier island coast of Louisiana and says something Frank can't hear because he's turned the sound down all the way. It's better to hear the rain, he thinks, better just to listen to the fucking incomprehensible rain.

He's always heard stories of hustlers robbing cops, stealing guns and badges when the cop wasn't looking, or trying to blackmail them later on.
Fuck that,
he thinks drunkenly, remembering the fear and surprise shining like a fever from the kid's eyes.
Fuck that to hell and back again.
But there's another voice in his head, the voice that tried to stop him from speaking to the boy in the first place. Sometimes the alcohol muffles it to a whisper, but now it's loud and it says,
Yeah, it's easy for you to talk that macho crap now, Frank Gray. But you were ready to shit yourself today, weren't you, buddy?