Jimmy Fox - Nick Herald 02 - Lineages and Lies (24 page)

In his new trade, Nick, too, had learned to enjoy cemeteries, as long as he was just passing through.

Mr. Montenay had been Catholic, but Jillian’s mother, the former Mrs. Montenay, didn’t seem to have much tolerance for any kind of ritual. Away from the small group of mourners under the tent, she instructed the compliant, somewhat abashed priest. From Nick’s vantage point, too far away to hear words, Jillian’s mother resembled a baseball ump more than a grieving ex-wife: she used hand gestures and body English to declare anything of comfort out of bounds for
this
funeral.

Nick had her pegged. She would spare no tears for Mr. Montenay. Grief was for sentimental weaklings. She was a woman who, when the time came, would die without a second’s remorse or regret, not because she had pursued worthy purposes in life, but because she had stomped everyone else into the ground with her high heels—and she was goddamned proud of it. Her hat was yellow, with a small fringe of black veil.

“Thought I’d find you here.” Dave Bartly stood next to Nick among the mansions for the dead, out of earshot of the ceremony under the canopy. Bleached vaults lined neat alleys as far as one could see.

“Autopsy on our architecture professor doesn’t give us much,” Bartly said. “The lake is only fourteen feet deep where the sailboat went down. It was royally messed up by the power yacht that rammed it. So, Plumlaw’s injuries are too massive to indicate the exact sequence of events. ‘Chain of causes,’ we call it. Nowell may be telling the truth. I don’t think we could get the grand jury to indict.”

“Some detective you are.”

“Yeah, well, a confession would always be nice. You got anything for me? You keep telling me this Nowell dude is behind it all. Like I said before, give me some evidence.”

“Time, Dave. Just a bit more time,” Nick said.

“That’s what you told me Monday, two friggin’ days ago! I’ve interrogated Nowell three times, and each time he was perfect, very patient and obliging. He’ll have his lawyer with him, if there’s a next time. Everything checked. Sure we found his
prints at the hotel, but he had a reason to be there, along with a lot of other people; and the boat thing—well, it’s looking more and more like an accident. The dude in the river, and this poor bastard, Montenay … nothing, absolutely nothing concrete that points to Nowell. Hell, I may have to put
you
back on the suspect list, if I don’t come up with something soon.”

Nick laughed that threat off, hoping the detective was just kidding. For a while in uneasy silence they watched the ceremony under the canopy.

“Who’s the nice-looking babe next to Jillian?” Bartly asked.

Hmmm. First name basis, eh?
“Her sister-in-law, widow of Jillian’s brother. Those are her kids. Can you spot the mother?”

“She’s a Mrs. Fleam, I’m told. Yellow hat, right? Wow, she freaks me out. Not exactly overwhelmed by grief, is she? What happened to the brother?”

Nick explained. “Bummer,” the detective said. “That’s one very unlucky family.”

Amused, Nick looked at Bartly. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, Dave: in another life, were you a hippie? I think I saw your incarnation in the Woodstock movie.”

“Well, I do play bass in a local band. It’s not the kind of music you grew up with. Not for wimps … or the over-the-hill crowd.”

“I resemble that remark! I just hope you wear ear protection. The rockers from my generation are partly deaf, if they’re alive at all.”

“We do. Money’s pretty good, which might keep me off the take for a few more years.” He winked and grinned. “I’ll let you know where our next gig is, if you think you can handle it. My
wife sings and plays keyboard. Excuse me. I think I’d better give my card to the poor widow. I want to find out what she knows about explosives. I could dig solving at least one murder this week.” He ran a hand through his thick dog-fur hair. “Hear it’s supposed to be ninety-five, but we may get some rain. Later, man.”

Nick watched the priest finish his condensed performance. The mourners dropped dirt and flowers. Jillian was comforted by her sister-in-law; the kids held their aunt’s hands. The group dispersed.

Except for Mrs. Fleam. Nick saw her walking with a superbly dressed white-haired man with gold-rimmed glasses. She was listening, which was probably a Rare event for her, Nick thought. He could not see her face, but something the man said made her stop in her tracks, as if she were genuinely disturbed for the first time today, or ever; the man came back for her, put an arm around her waist with avuncular gentleness and propriety. They walked out of sight, between the tall vaults of prominent New Orleans families.

Nick spent the rest of the afternoon collecting information on birth and death dates, places of origin, relationships, military service, otherwise-unrecorded infants, Masonic membership, and other secrets the determined researcher can discover only first-hand on tombstones. He had several projects going, and his notes from here would help fill in many blanks on client pedigree charts.

One visit to a cemetery can speed a family search and save considerable money fruitlessly lavished on postage, public-records fees, phone calls, books, and website memberships. But he knew not to trust cemeteries too much. They were a notorious source of error, because quite often mistakes were made as information passed from grieving family to attending physician to funeral home to stonecutter.

“Say, my friend, you got some smokes?”

Nick looked up from the family vault he had been studying and photographing—surreptitiously, because he had seen a sign at the gate asking visitors to refrain from taking pictures. This was a remote section of the cemetery, old tombs of long extinct families, seldom visited.

The emaciated, scraggly black man with a ragged beard took two more steps toward Nick. He had few teeth, wild bloodshot eyes, and an odor that took Nick’s breath away, even at this distance.

Nick felt something wasn’t right, here. His instincts screamed DANGER! He had always considered the warnings about visiting the city’s cemeteries alone to be just over-cautious advice for the tourists. This was not going to be a pleasant conversation, he could tell.

A pen, his ancient pocket Instamatic, and his fists constituted his arsenal of likely weapons.

“Sorry, no smokes,” Nick said, turning to face the man, who had begun to move forward again, warily, but now without the pretense of cadging a cigarette.

He pulled a knife from a pocket of his filthy pants, which were held up by a motorcyclist’s bungee cord looped twice around his narrow waist.

The blade flicked upright.

“Thas okay. I don’t smoke them things nohow.”

“What do you want?” Nick said, backing up.

“Your life, friend. This a cemetery, ain’t you noticed? And I be the Bruthah of Death.”

He lunged at Nick with the knife but missed and tripped over his own feet.

Nick swung his camera like a sling and landed it on his attacker’s face. The Instamatic shattered on one of Bruthah’s projecting cheekbones, leaving a deep cut that began to bleed profusely.

“Look what you done!” Bruthah said reproachfully. He cradled his injured cheek and then studied the blood on his hand. “I gonna kill your ass good, now!”

Remembering his most effective weapon—his feet—Nick took off between vaults and the wrought-iron fences. The Bruthah of Death staggered after him.

Calling up childhood hide-and-seek evasive maneuvers, Nick felt he must have successfully eluded Bruthah. He stopped to listen, resting on an elaborate corn-stalk iron fence.

Then he heard a noise behind him. He turned and would have been a dead man if a leg with a military boot on the end of it had not tripped up his assailant.

The Bruthah slammed into the fence, barely a yard from Nick. The attacker recovered quickly, but as he lunged again one
S-hook of his bungee-cord belt flapped loose and caught on a fence rail. The cord yanked the Bruthah back hard. Nick took advantage of his attacker’s shock and pain to grab the hand that held the knife, slam it into the fence, and punch the man in the diaphragm twice. The Bruthah of Death doubled over, gripping the fence behind him with one hand.

Nick stretched the two ends of the bungee cord until he could wrap both of the Bruthah’s wrists and secure them to the fence. The Bruthah, obviously pretty spaced out anyway, offered little resistance.

“Hol up, hol up, friend! Don’t hurt me no more,” pleaded the Bruthah of Death, gasping. “I just trying to make some money for rock. For rock, thas all. You ain’t nothin’ to me, I got no arg-yu-ment with you. Old white fucker over there gave me a hunred dolla to take you out. Said he gimme a hunred more when I done it. You know how much rock that be?”

“Where? You mean at the funeral, way over there?”

“Yeah, uh-huh. Old white man, like I said. White hair.”

“Gold-rimmed glasses?”

“I don’t know. I ain’t no fuckin’ newspaper reporter. Said there be another hundred Sunday in a urn on one of these little houses for the bodies if I do what he say.”

“What was the surname?”

“Sir who?”

“The family name. What was the last name on the little house with the urn?”

“Jos—, Jus—, some honky name. I don’t know who, I jus know where. Ain’t gonna get that Benjamin now.”

Joscelyn, Nick suspected. A former Captain-Director, protecting the flank. Nick had never seen him before today, but he remembered reading that two besides Nowell were still living, now that Hugh Montenay had been murdered.

“My stomach hurt,” the Bruthah complained.

“You’re in a hazardous business,” Nick said. “You dish it out, you better be prepared to take it.”

Nick began walking away.

“Wait up, friend! You ain’t gonna leave me here, is you? I gonna die. Gonna die of thirst. Friend, wait up!”

“It’s a cemetery, remember?” Nick said. “You’ll have lots of company.”

Johnny Doe appeared from between two hulking vaults and fell in step with Nick.

“Thanks, Johnny. What are you doing out here?”

“Free enterprise, man.” He opened his coat to reveal fresh flowers stuck in his waistband. “I just take a few from the prettiest bouquets on the graves and go down to the Quarter to sell ’em. Not too many, or else people’ll get pissed off. Especially the ghosts.” He looked apprehensively over his shoulder. “I do like the Indians used to: they didn’t kill all the buffalo, just the ones they needed to eat.”

The sky clouded with time-lapse speed, and bullets of rain began to slam into their heads. The lightning and thunder were enough to send braver men scurrying.

“Come on, Johnny!” Nick screamed, running.

In his car, he found a sour towel among the junk in the back and dried himself off a bit. The rain pounded and the wind shook the little MG.

Johnny stood by his door, in the deluge.

Nick cracked his window. “What the hell are you doing out there, Johnny! Get in. I’ll give you a lift.”

“Nah, man. Thanks, anyway. I like a good storm. It’s the sunny days that get me down. Same old, same old, hour after hour, day after day, year after year. They say Heaven’s like that. Hell, too.” Thunder boomed, but he shouted over it. “You ever notice, the bad things most often happen when there ain’t a cloud in the sky! Oh, yeah, I like a good storm! reminds me I’m alive!”