The Saint Louisans (21 page)

“For whom did he cry?”

I finished taking her pulse. “For his mother. For me.”

“You?”

“Men are like that when they die. They never cry out for a doctor. Never. It's always for the nurse. For his Mother. Or a wife. Even though Clyde lost consciousness, a part of him remembered a woman. We lose everything when we die, but keep the elemental things.”

Margot cocked her head and studied me. “Will I do that?”

“Sorry,” I sighed. “I didn't mean to be morbid.”

Margot's soft fingers pressed into mine. “This is how I want my daughter to talk to me. I'm not afraid, not anymore. Not with you by my side.”

I drank the cup of Darjeeling she poured. Steam curled up and vanished.

“Jeanne Cason,” Margot said softly, “one of my old friends. We were maids of honor. She had cancer, and went through an MRI and hated it. When I saw her in that thing, I completely understood.”

My nod was immediate. “Magnetic Resonance Imaging is everyone's least favorite diagnostic procedure. You're encased in what feels like a sarcophagus.”

“Yes,” Margot nodded. “All alone. Shut up. Like death.”

“The silence and solitude inside frightens us. We're entombed. The old fear of being buried alive.” A pause as we sipped.

“Please. Be with me.” Her voice was soft.

“I'm already farming out my other patients. Also, I'm meeting with your attorney. To fight for the estate.”

Margot smiled. “Thank you. Lee?”

“Yes?”

She leaned against the brocade couch and looked at the wall and studied her art collection “If you could call me ‘Mother …'”

Sedately, corners of the drawing room darkened into a deepening brown, like the Mississippi at night.

As I drove home, I studied the clusters of high rises that mark the city landscape, like modern mounds; the heap downtown, a smaller cluster in the Central West End, marking hospitals and the Chase. In the distance is Clayton, the county seat with its banking and government towers. All blank in the winter sky. Smoke from towers of these modern mounds curled and bent in the cold. I thought about Margot, about the end drawing nearer with each passing day. Mother. It was hard for me to call her that.

Finally home, I opened the door expecting Yul to scamper forth and begin weaving around my legs, No cat. I dropped my bags, flipped on the light, looked up, and yelped.

Seated in the easy chair was a man.

He was dark, Mediterranean maybe, and garbed in an Italian suit, its olive color and cut subtle, almost a darker shade of his skin. Yul was on his lap, allowing thin fingers to stroke his cheeks. The man's eyes were cold, like a sheathed sword.

“Who the hell are you?” I demanded, heart thudding in my ears, ready to burst out the door.

He kept stroking Yul. “Siamese are very temperamental. Not like Persians. My mother has two. Persians. Very agreeable cats, but you have to groom their coats daily or they become tangled. Siamese do not have this problem. But there are other problems.” His pause hinted menace. “There are always other problems.”

If he was a burglar, he was doing an incredible job bonding with the cat before he cleaned the place out. Kenyatta's sax tooted across the hall. One good scream would bring armed, although sarcastic, help. “Okay, buddy; what do you want?”

“I am Rasheed. A last name is unnecessary.” He graciously brushed cat hair off his lap. “This concerns Jama.”

I closed the door. Now that the Childe Fantastical's name was invoked, I was on all too familiar ground. “What did she do to you?”

“I want her.”

“You're a boyfriend? By that tone, an ex-boyfriend?”

Rasheed's eyes sharpened. “Do not insult me. I am a man of honor and faith. Your daughter is a treacherous whore.”

His smooth voice didn't rise. He was Joel Cairo, but with a hint of Al Pacino. I sat down, hardly the aggrieved mother. “Enlighten me.”

“My employer is a generous man, especially to women. Western women.” The last said with polite distaste.

He mentioned his employer's name and country, a sheik whose kingdom rimmed the Persian Gulf, a place mentioned in the papers.
Fortune
magazine was quite enamored of it and its new seaside resort; glittering towers and brand names to hide what it had in abundance. Sand and Islam. And, naturally, oil.

“Jama became his … mistress?” Rasheed's stare neither confirmed or denied. Yul scampered between us. “Let me guess. She bilked him. She's good at that. She did a number on me.”

“Two thousand dollars. Two years ago.”

“I see you've done your homework.”

“My research is thorough. That is the way I work.”

“So, she bedded him and rifled the credit cards.” I went to the door and opened it.

“I'm sorry, but I didn't raise her that way. It was nice talking, but I have a life, and—”

Rasheed remained seated. “Jama stole $100,000 from my employer. He wants it back.”

“I haven't got that kind off money.”

“That is unfortunate for your daughter.” He picked up the jingling plastic ball and tossed it to Yul, who chased it, his tail waving behind the couch.

“You see, Mrs. Bridger, in my part of the world, men are not made into fools. There are consequences for Jama's actions. She is a thieving whore. If the money is not returned, Jama will be taken to my employer.”

I chilled and closed the door. “And what?”

Rasheed shrugged. “Beaten, of course. Nothing that will mark the body
or face, I assure you. Then she will do, as you Americans say, the right thing. She will repay the money she has stolen.” That had a cloud behind it; a tall, anvil shaped cumulonimbus, ready to belch lightning and rain. “How?”

Yul dropped the ball at Rasheed's feet. Smiling, he tossed it again.

“The obvious way. Although Jama is in her thirties, she is still beautiful. Her body is attractive.” He shifted his eyes. “To men of a certain age and need, at any rate. We have many … places where she would be useful.” Rasheed gestured. “At a price of 300 euro a customer … if Jama is as enthusiastic a worker as she is a thief, the debt will be paid in a reasonable time.”

“If this is meant to shock me—”

“No. Mrs. Bridger, despite your hardness, I know you are ashamed of your daughter. My research shows you are a woman of honor and intelligence. I appeal to these virtues. To your motherhood. To save your daughter from this disgrace to your family's honor.”

Butterflies fluttered in my stomach. In my head I did the math at how long Jama would be in the harem at 300 a pop. “How much time do I have?”

Rasheed's face relaxed. He approved of my mother's love, if it could be called that.

“I am, like my employer, a reasonable man. I think a month will be acceptable. Surely you have many friends among your doctors and other gentlemen … among your Jewish acquaintances.” He twisted a smile, and rose from the chair, as did I, and we went to the door.

“How can I contact you?”

“When you need me, I will be available.” He gave me his card. Our heads turned to the corner. Yul gagged and made short coughs that echoed. Rasheed sadly shook his head.

“Fur balls. How they suffer. My mother's Persians do it all the time. Sad.” The door closed.

My search for Jama started with phone calls that began a string of disconnected numbers, surly men who hung up, and a final connection with a dubious voice that sounded like oil smelled. It led me across the Mississippi.

Interstate 64 scoops you into a confusing maze of exit ramps and connector roads, usually clogged with traffic. Once all this was sacred ground to the Cahokians, bedecked with mounds. Henry Marie Brackenridge wrote to Thomas Jefferson about walking on the Mississippi's eastern side amidst dozens of mounds ‘resembling enormous haystacks scattered through a meadow.'

That idyllic land of sacred burial has long been destroyed and now is covered over with rusting factories and warehouses whose smoke and dinginess sour and assault the sky. At frumpy Sauget (pronounced ‘saw-shay.'), six grimy smokestacks puff away in a neat row like the smoking funnels of the
Titanic
. You leave this mud on your shoes to approach riverside Illinois's premier industry. Sex. ‘Gentlemen's clubs' abound here and there in square bunkers of lust, cuddled next to them are little motels whose lights shine like cheap lipstick. Beyond this seam of love shacks lie farms and rolling acres of corn; therein beginneth the Bible belt.

I parked my car at Pookie's, which is Filipino for a lady's South Pole. Taking a deep breath, I went in. It was happy hour, and mirrors reflected the tawdry space like a Trump casino. In the center was the stage and ramp, seemingly held up by shiny brass poles. The girl onstage did a balletic rut on one of the poles, her body writhing to the hoots of the ringside crowd.

I sighed and frowned. It was Jama. “What's yours, Grandma?”

The barkeep's boredom matched his voice, tattoos on his beefy forearms swirls of currents.

“I'll pass.”

“Don't work that way,” he snided. “You buy something or leave. We call it Happy Hour, you know.”

“Hey,” croaked a tipsy drunk, “I'll buy you a drink, honey.”

“Beer,” I said to the barkeep, “and an order of mace on the side.”

An indifferent brew was placed before me. I pointed to Jama. “I need to talk to her.” The barkeep nodded.

“What,” mused the drunk, “that hottie your gal pal or sumpin'?” The drunk scowled. “An I thought you was one'a dem cougars.”

A Marge Simpson rumble came from my throat as I nursed my over-priced beer and watched my lovely daughter perform. Jama's bump and grind was impressive; all of those ballet lessons and middle school gymnastics finding a practical, if sordid application. I averted my eyes from her frontal nudity that brought hoots and whistles.

To behold thy daughter's nakedness. Jama put me in a King James Bible mood. She took her bow and strutted off through a glitzy curtain, clothed only in a thong and tips of bills sprouting from her crotch like monetary cabbage. The barkeep nodded to me as he polished a glass, and I went through the curtains.

“Hey, blondie,” slurred the drunk, “what'cha hurry?”

A brunette cruised past me as she entered the stage, and the bump and grind music revved up again. I passed down a narrow corridor amidst smells of perfume, cigarette smoke, and disinfectant, passing two girls clad in panties and bras, tips of their cigarettes like orange dots. They looked at me as if I was going to be the novelty act. I asked for the girl who just finished. They pointed.

At a dressing room whose bulbs could double for headlights, Jama re-checked her makeup. Sweat gleamed from her workout. She was still undressed. I sidled in. She bent to the mirror, concentrating on more eyeliner.

“I thought that was you,” she said, not looking up.

“We need to talk.”

“So talk.”

“In my apartment, I had a visitor. Rasheed.”

From the stage came ragged cheers. Jama fluffed her hair.

“Rasheed? Did he talk about his mother's fucking cats? I bet Yul liked him.”

“They got along famously. He also talked about the 100,000 you stole.”

Her brows arched as her pencil darkened them. “I didn't steal a damned thing. It was only 80,000. He's skimming.”

I smelled baby powder. Strippers use it to mask the smell of sweat. Jama nodded at her image, passing inspection. “It was an investment for a film. An indie.”

“A film, which I take it never got made, and would you mind putting on some clothes?”

Jama shrugged as she pulled on a Dollar Store kimono. “I was in Prague,” she said, looking at the mirror, not me. “In the old Barrandov studios. The Czech cinema. So, I met Marek. He's kind of artsy and lives in Vinohrady, the ritzy part of town. Marek's done some projects—sci-fi, Gothic—when Dreamworks shot the flashbacks for
Astral Vampire
, they used Prague. When he's not doing donkey work at the Ministry of Bullshit he works for, he parties and tries to get his projects green-lighted.”

Jama licked her lips, then felt under her chin for excess fat. So far, so good. “So, you hooked up with the sheik?”

“I spent a long weekend in his digs. Where I got the cash. Did you know he has gold toilet seats? Incredible experience.”

“Yes, I'm sure you drooled at the thought of diarrhea. What happened?”

Jama rolled her shoulders, doing her sultry warm-ups. “In Prague, it all tanked. The production money got funneled into a front doing drugs in Moldova. I didn't get a call from Marek, so I went to the office in the Stare Mesto, that's the old town, they got castles like we got Walgreen's, and it was empty. The cops are still looking for Marek.” Jama put on a new shade of lipstick, from cherry red to Vegas blood. “Last I heard he was pitching a script to one of Putin's buddies. Good luck with that.” She nodded at her lips. “Pisses me off because I was going to use $20,000 as seed money for
Lallah Rookh
.”

I stroked my forehead. “The elephant movie? You're still trying to get that rolling? Of course you are. So you did take one hundred thousand.”

“Not a hundred thousand. Eighty, and Marek screwed me.” She checked her profile. “I needed that twenty thou. Kimbelmann was really nibbling at the script. He usually films dolphins and sharks. He's wanting to branch out, and Lallah Rookh does swim.”

“Oh, for God's sakes,” I muttered. “Listen. Rasheed—”

“Did he go on about the ‘harem'?”

“To an alarming extent.”

“He's always auditioning. Real drama llama.”

“Where are you going to get the money?”

“I'm working on it. I just won $300 here. In the pole dance competition.”

“Great,” I sighed, “only 99,700 to go. Jama, this is serious shit.”