Cold Blood (38 page)

“That wretched fat woman, Juda, wanted to speak to Mrs. Caley. I said I would relay the message, but somehow I think it might just slip my mind. I’ve always hated her, she’s a bloodsucking leech and Mr. Caley loathes her as well.”

Phyllis sat opposite Peters as they ate breakfast together, and Peters stared from the window.

“Nice to have the place to ourselves, isn’t it?”

“Are you all right, Mrs. Caley?”

Edward asked, and Elizabeth dropped the magazine.

“Shouldn’t you be at the controls?”

He smiled.

“It’s on automatic pilot, Mrs. Caley.”

She turned away.

“You are paid to fly this plane, Mr. Hardy, not the automatic pilot. Please stay in the cockpit, you know how nervous I am about flying.”

Seated at the far end of the plane, Mario looked up from his book. Edward flicked him a glance and returned to the cockpit.

“Can I get you anything, Mrs. Caley?”

Mario asked.

“No, nothing, thank you.”

She picked up the magazine again, the glossy pages blurring before her eyes. The models in their glamorous poses and gowns only reminded her of the last trip with Anna Louise, and she could hear her voice:

“I like this one, Mama, what do you think?”

She had replied that she simply adored it, not even really looking at it. Just watching her daughter had pained her; she was so young, so very pretty, with her whole life ahead of her. She was envious of Anna Louise’s youth, her athletic talent. She took after her father so much it sometimes unnerved Elizabeth just to look at that fair hair and bright blue eyes.

Elizabeth sighed. The secret of Anna Louise’s parentage didn’t matter in this day and age, nobody would care, but when she had been Anna Louise’s age, and coming from where she did, it had mattered a great deal. She closed her eyes and thought back over her life, knowing without doubt that if she had it to live over again she would not have become involved with the movies or that movie. It had destroyed her, made her dependent on Juda Salina and her kind, and somewhere deep inside she yearned to be free of it all. Perhaps that was why she took so many drugs, gambling with her own life. She longed for freedom, for^ir, for sunshine, the sun she was afraid to let touch her milky-white skinnot because it burned, but because it turned a rich, dark shade of brown.

Elizabeth’s beautiful slanting eyes brimmB-and tears spilled as if in slow motion down her cheeks. She’d used inability to cry on cue often in her film career and had been proud of it, but now there was no

“action,”

no cameras. The tears were for her own empty, silly, frightened life.

All the diners had left the breakfast room, leaving Rooney, Rosie and Lorraine the only people still sitting around their table.

“Okay, let’s get the day started,”

Rooney said, pushing his chair back.

Lorraine stubbed out her cigarette.

“Try Nick’s room again, Rosie. If he’s not back, shove a message under his door, tell him where we’ll all be so he can make contact.”

“Will do, and you take care.”

Lorraine smiled.

“Yes, ma’am …”

“Listen, about this video”

Lorraine walked toward the exit, her arm loosely around Rosie’s shoulders.

CDLD BLOOD

“What about asking Lloyd Dulay? He’s known Elizabeth all these years, and as you’re going to see him, I just thought…”

“Good idea, I’ll ask him, Rosie.”

Rooney was standing by the lobby desk. He turned as the women approached.

“That bastard’s not in his room, he’s been out all night.”

“Well, he’s probably with some hooker someplace,”

Lorraine said, slightly irritated, as she headed for the elevator. Her reaction surprised her; she was jealous, but concealed it immediately. She smiled and told Rooney to let Nick sleep it off, but not for long. They had work to do.

Edith Corbello found Jesse out back on the old car seat. He had been severely beaten, his nose and right arm broken. He was bruised and crying in agony, but when she asked who had done this to him, he just whimpered that he had fallen down the stairs.

She had just started to clean her son up when she heard the front door closing and footsteps shuffling down the corridor.

“That you, Willy? Willy, get your ass in here!”

She believed that Willy had beaten up his brother, and when he came into the kitchen she was sure of it. Both his eyes were black, his nose was bleeding and he had a lump on his forehead the size of a mango. She would have slapped him hard, but he could only just about walk.

“I had enough of you boys fightin’ each other, I’m gonna get Fryer here to sort out the pair of you. I can’t handle you no more, and it’s time he took some responsibility.”

“It was Fryer that done it,”

Willy said, and Jesse kicked him so hard that he howled in agony. He had so many bruises to his body it was hard to miss one.

“You tellin’ me that bastard did this to you both? Yes?”

Jesse shook his head.

“No, Mama, we done it to each other, honest, we just started foolin’ around and …”

Edith glowered.

“You git your brother to a hospital right now, you both lookin’ all beat and your sister about to be crowned. I’m wiping my hands of you both. I am ashamed, you hear me? Ashamed!”

Edith banged out. She wanted to weep; what with Raoul gone and Juda screaming at her, it had been a bad day and it wasn’t even nine o’clock. But she knew it would get worse, a whole lot worse, when she had to tell Ruby that there was no money for her gown, already half stitched up and nearly finished.

Ruby was lying on her bed, in the best bedroom of the tiny run-down house, with a treatment pack on her face. She was being photographed tomorrow for one of the hair-trade papers, just a promo for the salon where

she worked, but it was a start. When she heard what her mama had to say, she got off the bed in a rage.

“You tellin’ me Raoul stole all Aunty Juda’s money, he stole it?”

“That’s what she said, and she don’t even have the money for the plane ride for the parade.”

Ruby screamed with rage; she was damned if her crazy crackhead brother was going to stand in her way out of this house and away from everyone in it. She sobbed and clawed at the walls with her nails, her tears making trickles on her white mask until at last she hunched up in a corner like a little girl, the fight gone out of her.

“Ah, Mama, what are we gonna do, what are we gonna do?”

Below, Sugar May listened up and grinned from ear to ear. Served that mean stuck-up bitch right. Ruby Corbello always got everything she wanted, never had to wear anyone’s cast-off clothes like she did. She skipped out of the house in delight as an old yellow cab drew up to take Jesse and Willy to the hospital.

Edith sat on her daughter’s bed, near to tears herself. She felt worn out by it all.

“Maybe ask Leroy, Ruby?”

Ruby shook her head.

“With a wife and two kids he needs his money, Mama. There ain’t no fortunes to be made in the kind of investigation work that’s on his level. You know who the only one with money is, you know.”

Edith shook her head.

“I’m not asking Fryer, J^vouldn’t ask him to spit in a jam jar.”

BT

“I didn’t mean Fryer,”

snapped Ruby.

“Why don’t we ask her lady friend, one who’s been paying out all that money for years? We ask her direct, she’s rich, isn’t she?”

Edith shook her head.

“No, we don’t cross Juda’s territory, Ruby. That Mrs. Caley is her wages and it’s her money been keeping us all. I wouldn’t go behind Juda’s back.”

Ruby stood in front of her mother.

“I know you done things for money, things you’ve always been against, I know that, Mama.”

“You shut up now,”

Edith said with a warning slap.

Ruby dodged aside.

“I saw you making it, Mama, I saw Juda coming here for her socalled tea. I know.”

Edith hit out again.

“You saw nobody come in here, girl, you hear me? You say one word about that business to anyone and I am warning you

“

Ruby stood her ground.

“No, Mama, I am warning you because my day is gonna be the best day in my life and nobody will mess it up for me.”

Ruby ran out of the room and Edith covered her face. She heard the front door slam hard and crossed to the window. There was Ruby striding down the street, arms swinging, still with treatment cream all over her face. It was a terrible morning, like some kind of train running out of control. And there was more to come.

As she made her way heavily down the narrow staircase, Sugar May passed her with a rolled-up newspaper. She swatted a fly with it.

“If that is today’s paper, Sugar May, don’t you go screwing it up like that before I’ve even cast my eye over it.”

The young girl chucked the paper at her mother.

“I’m gonna run away, I’m gonna find Raoul and share in all his millions.”

She stuck out her tongue, and her mother used the same paper to hit her across the side of the head. Sugar May just laughed and ran out.

Halfway down the front page was an article headed FORMER DEBUTANTE COMMITS SUICIDE. Edith sank onto the stairs, her eyes popping out on stalks as she read the detailed article about the suicide of Tilda Brown. She felt as if there were a noose around her throat, getting tighter and tighter, taking the breath out of her body.

Ruby knelt in front of the high white tomb in the First St. Louis Cemetery. On the ground in front of it she had drawn the ve-ve of Marie Laveau, the swirling hieroglyph that would invoke the spirit of the voodoo queen, and now she drew another cross to add to the hundreds already on the monument, pressed her hand flat against it, and knocked on the tomb. She was so intent in prayer to the dead priestess’s spirit, straining every fiber of her being, that she did not hear Leroy Abie’s soft-footed approach. Her face was still streaked with white cream, and for a moment Able thought he was seeing a woman risen from the tomb, and he froze.

“Ruby?”

She turned around.

“I thought you didn’t believe in all that.”

It had been one of Edith’s great griefs that her older daughter seemed to have no time for her heritage, sneering at it as a lot of superstitious African rubbish that would keep her in the ghetto and foil her plans for going to New York and being the new Veronica Webb.

“Well,”

said Ruby gruffly, embarrassed to have been seen.

“Can’t do no harm, I don’t reckon. Something terrible has happened. Raoul run off with the money for my gown and it’s half stitched, I only got two more fittings.”

“Come out of sight here, quickly now, the place is full of tourists corning around looking at the graves. Hurry up, get out of sight.”

Ruby let Leroy draw her away from Marie Laveau’s tomb to a less frequented part of the cemetery where the brick-oven tombs of people too poor to afford a-private sepulcher lined the perimeter walls. She took the handkerchief he offered her and sank down to sit on the ground, cleaning her face and stretching her long slender legs out in front of her. She had changed since the last time he saw her, and her beautiful oval face, deep slanting black eyes and waist-length wavy hair had begun to look more and more like those of the great queen; she could have been her daughter, or Marie Laveau herself come back to life and youth a second time.

“We’ll find the money, Ruby, everyone will give towards the gown, you don’t have to worry about that. The krewe won’t let you go without. You’re just being a silly girl.”

She sighed.

“Maybe, but things are bad at home, Leroy, really bad, and my brothers are all messed up. Even my sister is going to get herself in trouble, she hangs out at that shit bar, they all do.”

He bent down and stroked her soft hair.

“But you don’t?”

“No,”

she said softly.

“Because you’re different?”

“You know I’m different. I have more in front of me than that neighborhood or this whole damn cityleast I had till Raoul fucked things up, but there’s nothing I won’t do to get that money and have my day. I even told Mama to call up …”

ť

She bit her lip and turned away. He frowned.

“Call who?”

Ruby shook her head.

“I said too much.”

“No, Ruby, you haven’t said anything aAl. Who did you tell your mama to contact?”

Ruby kept her head down.

“Mrs. Caley.”

Leroy stood up, towering above her.

“No, you don’t do that, you hear me? Since her daughter disappeared thereVe been police inquiries, private-investigator inquiries, and they’re still going on, you hear me? You stay away from all that. I mean it, Ruby, you don’t ever get involved.”

She looked up rebelliously.

“But what about my gown, Leroy? If we don’t pay Alma Dicks, she won’t finish it.”

He drew her to her feet. She seemed so light, so fragile.

“Your gown will be ready, Ruby, and you will be the most beautiful queen Mardi Gras has ever seen.”

She smiled.

“Wanna see something, Leroy?”

She began to move her body sinuously.

“I can do the snake dance, Leroy, like Mama used to do.”

She twisted her hips and rolled her head. She was as lithe, as hypnotic as a serpent, and he wanted to reach out and draw her into his arms, but she danced toward the high tombs and suddenly she had passed between two of them and was gone. It was as if she had never been there. Leroy sighed. He had changed in so many ways since he came back from LA. It was not just the responsibility of having a wife and two children; he had come back and found his roots, rediscovered himself and his beliefs, but sometimes it was hard to lose that other Leroy that would fuck anything that swayed in front of him in a skirt. And being confronted by beauty such as Ruby Corbello’s was a real test of his faith.

Nick Bartello’s naked body was in the morgue, his clothes folded into paper bags. They found no identification on him, and as his pockets had been stripped, it was surmised that it had been a mugging, even though he didn’t look like a tourist from the main routes, more like a drifter coming in for the Carnival. There were a lot of Nick Bartellos found and never identified, and they would have left it that way but for a tattoo on his left forearm: a shield, the LAPD badge.