Jimmy Fox - Nick Herald 01 - Deadly Pedigree (25 page)

“If you live long enough to do what I propose, you’ll have earned my silence.” He slipped the box in a pocket of his corduroys. “I’ll accept that judgment.”

“How do you know I don’t have more medicine here?”

“You would be reaching for it now. Here’s my deal. Make a settlement with the heirs of Ivanhoe Balzar–immediately. Fifty million dollars. Next, establish a foundation at Freret University for the study of the Holocaust. Another fifty million. Donate the documents in the display cases out there to the foundation–call it the Maximilian Corban Foundation. Finally, leave the past alone–never again damage the historical record. That’s it. I drive a hard bargain, remember?”

“You have thought of everything, Nick. I cannot kill you…” Her words trailed off into rapid breaths.

“And you’re having a heart attack,” he said, finishing the analysis of the royal flush he’d laid down.

He wondered if she’d heard him.

At last, she met his gaze. Nick saw in her eyes the helpless power of a dying lioness. Her voice was faint, barely audible.

“You would stop this…broadcasting, this revelation? I have your word?”

“The word of a third-rate hack and a plagiarist? Yes. Zola will never know the truth from me, and I’ll do nothing to make it more likely that she’ll ever find out.”

She put the gun on the desk and dragged her hand from it.

He had beaten her–for Corban, for Ivanhoe, for Ronald, for Shelvin, for everyone whose past she had sought to erase.

She listed to one side like a sinking ship. “I have always thought that fear of financial ruin was exaggerated. One is never truly bankrupt while dignity remains. Death is a broken bench, too, the ultimate bankruptcy. You will allow me to retain my dignity, Nick?”

It’s more than you did for anybody else
.

He watched a moment more. Then he turned and unhurriedly walked toward the doorway, half-expecting to feel a bullet. But if this worked, it would have to work his way.

After all, he was entitled to some dignity, too–dignified revenge.

The blond goon now sat in the driver’s seat of the car, reading the sports section. The door was open. He wasn’t all that interested in Nick’s exit from the chateau.

A human being with the silicon soul of a computer-game demon, Nick thought: he kills only on command. Armiger had not yet instructed him to get rid of the pesky genealogist–and never would, now.

Nick walked past the front of the car. As if a thought had suddenly occurred to him, he took a few steps back.

“Hey, you know CPR?” Nick asked, casually.

“Huh? Yeah. Why?” His head snapped toward the chateau; then he hoisted himself to his feet and ran growling with pain into the building.

Nick removed the pillbox from his pocket and drew his arm back to throw it into the meandering pond of a restful Japanese garden extending back from the parking area. The engraving on the pillbox caught his eye. “Genesis 27,” he could barely make out on the cover. The tiny scene depicted Jacob kneeling at his father Isaac’s bed, receiving the blessing meant for his brother, Esau.

He let it fly. There was no way to be sure, but he wanted to believe that the box, too, had belonged to Jacob Balazar.

.

28

“T
he rumor is he can’t buy a new Mercedes-Benz this year,” Una said.

“Tragic, tragic,” lamented Dion, from deep in his glass of Young’s Old Nick Ale.

The bizarre label on the bottle of English brick-red brew pictured the devil in Edwardian evening clothes.

They had all ordered one to toast the flesh-and-blood Nick on his recent triumphs. The Folio featured hundreds of such odd beers from around the world; for years, Nick and Dion had been trying to drink their way through the list.

“Here’s to Nick,” Hawty said. “
Our
lucky devil.”

“Lucky to have such pals,” Nick added, choked up as they drank.

Natalie Armiger had not outlasted the wail of the ambulance siren that ushered her to the emergency room. Soon, official inquiries uncovered startling facts about Artemis Holdings. Armiger had been a loose cannon not only in her private life, but also in business affairs. The catalog of her securities transgressions and other crimes over the course of several decades ran to more than a hundred pages.

Her death and, in the following weeks, the implosion of Artemis Holdings would not have been earthshaking news in the insular world of Freret University–another high-roller benefactor would be found–except that a professor of high rank in the English department was among those who had lost the savings of a lifetime in the debacle: Frederick the Usurper Tawpie. The student-run newspaper did a hard-hitting issue on the scandal, and the word was that Tawpie lurked about campus confiscating any stacks of the free publication he found.

It was two months after the crash.

“But there
is
something good that’s emerged from these ashes,” Nick said to his friends. “The lawyers have salvaged a generous deal for the Balzars. Twice, the old man, has cable television and all the ice cream he can eat; Erasmus has better health care; and Dora has a new kitchen.”

“And Shelvin’s much better,” Hawty added. “I visited my family over Thanksgiving break, and I stopped by Natchitoches. I think the boy’s gone crazy, but now he wants to be a cop! He’s already applied to the police academy here in New Orleans…can you believe it? After what those”–she clamped her mouth shut until her anger allowed her to continue in civil language. “After what
they
did to him and Ronald.” She looked intently at the beer bottles on the table, perhaps to hide the mistiness in her eyes; but after a moment, she sniffed away the outward signs of her sorrow. “Dora puts fresh flowers on Ronald’s grave every Sunday, rain or shine.”

Ivanhoe’s heirs had indeed won a substantial settlement; though considerably less than the fifty million Nick had demanded from Armiger, it was an impressive figure, nevertheless. There was to be no Max Corban Foundation; but Nick hoped that, through his efforts, the old man’s soul was now at peace.

In a separate matter, the state highway department had re-examined a certain land deal in Natchitoches and had discovered old and more recent fraud. Several Chirkes were headed to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. An anonymous call–from a K&B payphone–to the attorney general’s office had done the trick.

“Let’s not forget the diary,” Una said, bragging about Nick’s latest literary feather in his cap.

He’d persuaded Coldbread to finance publication. The day before, he’d received a letter from the quixotic, crotchety scholar, who was in Paris, hot on the trail of his obsession. Coldbread had found that the man he was searching for had actually been called Balayeur, not Balazar; a series of transcription errors was responsible for centuries of misidentification.

“Thus, you must not expect half, or indeed ANY, of MY TREASURE!” Coldbread had written Nick. “However, if OUR book about Ivanhoe Balzar does well, I would be amenable to employing you on other such NON-SENSITIVE projects.”

Dion leveled a searching gaze at Nick. “You’re going to have to tell us one day. We can’t be put off forever. Were you working for the Bad Witch or the Good Witch or the family in Natchitoches or the old Holocaust survivor? Come now, we’re your friends.”

“Yes, and how did you know so much about the old man’s demise?” Una said.

The two goons were arrested not long after Armiger’s death. Nick had given a tip to the detectives working Ronald’s murder; Hawty later provided positive ID on the suspects. They were, in fact, rogue cops, with reputations much worse than the tarnished norm of NOPD. Now they were ratting on each other, competing for plea bargains on murder raps and a few dozen other charges. There would be cells at Angola or a federal prison waiting for them, as well.

Nick had scrupulously kept Zola’s name out of everything.

“Hey, I plead client-genealogist privilege,” he said.

His three questioners groaned in disappointment.

A series of beeps emanated from Hawty’s new chariot.

“E-mail,” she said. “For you, Nick. The computer system we ordered is ready. The shop wants to know when we’ll be at the office for delivery.”

Una and Dion looked at Nick in silent raillery.

“Your apostasy shocks and grieves me,” Dion said. “How many times have I been witness to your philippics against the growing hegemony of the Almighty Gizmo? Yea, even here in our beloved Folio, in this hallowed retreat”–he spread his arms wide in practiced Shakespearean hyperbole–“the very name of which suggests our guiding humanistic ideal of the unique glory of the individual in history. Nick, you were one of us, once! Have you now abandoned us, your erstwhile fellow humble servants of knowledge?”

“Forgive him,” Una said. “He hasn’t been able to flex his rhetorical muscles today. His first class isn’t until this afternoon. But tell us, seriously–you haven’t mentioned your Miranda. What happens to her now that she’s cast out of her island paradise?”

“I’m not sure,” he answered. “I got a letter about two weeks ago, from one of her secretaries. She wanted to know the appropriate places to send all that genealogical source material I told you about, all the stuff in those cases. Since then, nothing.”

“Oh, so it was a professional matter?” Una said. “You aren’t…seeing each other?”

“Seems that way,” Nick replied, making sure to give a lovelorn sigh.

“Look,” Hawty said. “Is that who I think it is?” The Usurper, in a dark far corner, gesticulated impressively in intimate conversation with an enthralled female student probably less than half his age.

Nick caught the attention of a waitress. She wore the current youthful uniform of drab castoff clothing hanging from her like skin in the process of being molted. There was a shiny ring threaded through a hole in her nostril.

“See that red-haired man way over there?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Please take him and his companion another round, and leave whatever money’s left.” He gave her a bit too much money for the drinks, along with a generous tip. “And tell him–now this is important–‘Keep the change. You need it.’ You got that?”

“Uh-huh.” She wandered off.

“Hey, you three,” Nick complained, “what’s happened to the communicative skills of the students since I left? They’re sliding back into a pre-verbal stage. You’re teachers of English, remember? Aren’t you supposed to be the life preservers keeping our civilization afloat in the rising tide of imprecision, claptrap, and technobabble?”

“Thomas Carlyle lives!” Una said. “Would you, sir, consider lecturing my classes on your theories of social decline? That is, if we can disguise you sufficiently to get past dear Frederick, who hates you almost as much as you hate him.”

The waitress, for all her seeming earlier inattention to Nick’s request, was now delivering the drinks and the message across the crowded barroom. Tawpie at first seemed to think there was some mistake; but he soon realized someone was making fun of him. He scrutinized the dark, cavernous barroom for the culprit.

Nick waved, flashing a big phony smile. He could just detect Tawpie’s jowls jiggling as he launched a fusillade of invective his way.

Tawpie’s curses were drowned out by the laughter of the four friends and by a new song whining at high volume about the difficulties of being twenty.

“All right! The Rotting Fish-heads from Pluto!” Hawty shouted, waving her arms to the frenetic beat. And then to Nick, who was the only one close enough to understand: “I played that. A local band. They’ve really hit it big. I think they’re hot!”

Una and Dion put their fingers to their ears.

Nick almost explained that he’d seen the band live–with Keith Richards–in the company of Zola, and that he now owned the entire Rotting Fish-heads output on cassette…but he decided to keep quiet. He just smiled and nodded, tapping his foot under the table. After all his elaborate lies, they probably wouldn’t believe the simple truth from him.

.

29

N
ick walked down Zola’s street in the cold drizzle.

The latest catalog bauble of the rich dripped limply from porches–large boldly colored flags with cutesy elves, Santas, and evergreen motifs.

Human beings are the flag-waving species, Nick was thinking. Even in our fads, even when there’s nothing worth dying for, we declare allegiances, choose sides, form tribes. It’s innate.

Other than the flags, the houses were about evenly divided in displays of Christmas and Hanukkah decorations, blinking at him in syncopated costliness.

The for-sale sign in front of Zola’s house seemed to Nick at odds with the clubby cheerfulness of the neighborhood. Here was someone who wanted out of the game, or perhaps was no longer welcome. The house itself seemed to have lost its purpose, its unity and personality, now merely a collection of boards, bricks, and nails.

Inside, he dodged moving men as they made their way past, hefting boxes or last pieces of furniture. The place looked even bigger than he remembered it, now that it was empty. He looked into the study, to see only depressing barren shelves.

“You’ll be getting a box of those books next week,” Zola said, behind him. “I know there were some you especially liked.”

He turned to face her. She wore blue jeans, a man’s baggy button-up shirt over a black turtleneck, and work gloves. She might have been any woman moving out of her apartment, except for the fact that few women have the luck to look so good, so artlessly. Nick detected a new dimension to her hazel eyes, reflecting the clarity of mind and serenity of spirit that often follow the purifying fires of illness. She was certainly grieving for her mother, but had the innate grace to keep her grief as private as she could.

“Thanks,” Nick said. “Weren’t you going to say goodbye?”

“No. I thought this would be better. After the way I treated you. After I refused to believe that Mother was…not what she seemed to be. I’m ashamed of her, ashamed of myself for not realizing how out-of-control she was. She did terrible things, Nick. The police have finally run out of questions. But I haven’t. I know there’s more that needs to be exposed.”

Nick shrugged. No point in making her suffer for her mother’s wrongs, those she suspected, those she didn’t. As far as she and anyone else knew, her mother’s crimes were the desperate attempts of an unbalanced mind, first to hide the family’s Jewish ancestry, and then to defuse the Balzars’ suit.

Maybe, Nick thought, the ancient harvest of sour grapes has ended for this family; there would be no more teeth on edge.

“You were good to me, Nick,” she said. “You tried to protect me from the pain of the truth as long as you could, but not from the truth itself. When you offered to show me, I ran away. I was a coward.”

There’s more pain out there for you yet, Zola. You’re on your own now–no revolving office in the sky, no more lackeys cringing in your footsteps, no more cocktail parties with disingenuous corporate do-gooders with their hands in your bank account, no more Mother-in-shining-armor.

They had walked over to the large living room, where two shrouded wing chairs faced a cold fireplace. They sat down.

“I’m leaving New Orleans,” she said, looking around the barren room as if she missed it already. “I don’t know when–or if I’ll ever come back. Nick, I just keep seeing the image of Mother, all alone out there in that beautiful setting, physically sick, obsessed with protecting the family name, in her disturbed way. If she’d only confided in me.”

“Yes. A terrible thing,” Nick said. Armiger deserved everything she got; but of course he couldn’t tell Zola that.

“If only I’d known how devastated she was by the difficulties–and that’s what they were, really. Just difficulties. None of this needed to happen. Our more sophisticated clients didn’t give a damn about that suit, or the story behind it; they also happened to be our most important ones. And the $10 million figure I finally agreed on with the Balzars was better than I’d hoped for. The media had exaggerated the scope of the whole affair. In fact, I’ve sold the company for just a bit less than it was valued before all of this. We’ve always had buyers waiting in the wings. Maybe you read about it.”

Nick had. He’d been pleased to learn that the division over which she’d exercised direct control was untainted by fraud. He could tell she was proud of her deal-making abilities; but sadness returned to displace her momentary swagger.

“I just don’t have the heart right now to run that kind of organization.”

Zola was quiet for a few moments.

“She kept so much inside, so many secrets,” she said. “How can a mother and her daughter be so close and know so little about each other?”

“Some people are like that,” Nick replied, trying to be sympathetic and opaque at the same time.

“I loved her; you know I did,” Zola said. “But now I realize what a frightened woman she was. Frightened of the past. I don’t want to be like that…oh, damn it!” Her eyes squinched shut and tears seeped out; she found some tissues in a shirt pocket. “I didn’t want you to see me doing this.”

Nick unclenched her hand from the chair arm. “Here’s my final lecture for this semester,” he said. “You have the power not to be frightened of your past; it can’t hurt you unless you think it can.”

“Like those monsters under my bed when I was a child,” Zola said.

Nick wiped away a rolling tear she’d missed. “Lots of people stop me in family history research when I uncover the first scoundrel. They think a bad apple in the ancestor barrel is a curse, condemning them to misfortune. I don’t believe in curses–not that kind, anyway. It’s all chance and necessity: some things we can change, some we can’t. And we don’t know which are which; that’s frightening sometimes, yes, but it’s also
liberating
. I say learn and live. Begone, all monsters under the bed! Scram, all you skeletons in the closet!”

He’d produced the intended reaction in Zola. She smiled tentatively.

“So what’s going to happen to the little chateau?” he asked.

“Do you know, she didn’t allow me out there? Her ‘special place,’ she called it.” She sighed, shaking her head. “Oh, I’ve given it to Freret University, along with those atrocious pictures and sculptures. Part of the deal with the government. But I’m really not supposed to talk about that.”

“Hey, I know how it is. Got a few secrets, myself. What about the genealogical treasure trove in those cases? The European stuff. I suppose you’ll be sending that to the places I suggested.”

He wanted it all himself, but he knew it had to be repatriated. Zola had solved his anxiety over returning the Natchitoches material by offering to pay for the relocation of the courthouse’s neglected subbasement archive to the Plutarch Foundation in New Orleans, where future genealogists would have the opportunity to scurry around in it like happy dung beetles. Nick’s pilfered Balazar documents were unobtrusively added, and no one was the wiser.

“Well, not exactly,” Zola said. “My lawyers have told me not to reveal where I’m going, or what I’m going to do, but between us,” she drew closer, continuing in a whisper, just a glimmer of her old fun-loving self in her eyes, “I’m bound for Europe to deliver those items myself. I’ve decided to take some time off, figure out a new direction. In the meantime, I intend to devote my energies to the study of–drum roll please!–genealogy. Learn and live, isn’t that what you said?”

“You know,” said Nick, “maybe I should have been a teacher.”

She gave him her address in the small alpine country where she would be setting up house–or castle, rather–and made him promise to visit.

“Oh, wait.” She ran into another room and returned with a gift-wrapped package. “Merry Christmas
and
Happy Birthday! I was going to send it to you. Go on, open it.”

It was a Breitling wrist chronograph so complex he was afraid he’d never be able to make out the time, much less the altitude–a negative number in New Orleans, anyway.

“No microchip. Excellent!” he said.

“Slightly antiquated, but very charming. Like you.”

“Hey, no fair. I didn’t get you anything.”

“This is all I want,” she said, and kissed him.

Eventually the moving men gave them unsubtle hints that they were about to be loaded onto the truck.

Nick crossed the street, heading for St. Charles and the downtown streetcar. His car had received terminal injuries in its joust with the iron gate. He stopped on the opposite sidewalk and faced the house.

He recalled a particularly important passage from Ivanhoe’s diary, possibly written on a typical dreary Louisiana winter day like this one.

“Zola, my love,” Nick said softly, “may you safely cross all the impossible gaps on your journey.”