Jimmy Fox - Nick Herald 01 - Deadly Pedigree (6 page)

The subject of his research today was to be the 1880 census. This date would certainly be the latter end of this mysterious Balazar man’s possible life span. If he’d indeed come over in the period 1840-50, as Corban had asserted, he was then probably a young man of about eighteen. Add forty years, and in those days that was getting up there in age.

The government had by 1880 figured out the vast significance of the mandated prying every ten years. It had become clear that descendants of
Mayflower
passengers and of Virginia gentry would thenceforth constitute a diminishing percentage of the country’s populace. Someone in Washington decided it was time to find out who
were
these millions of new Americans Walt Whitman was singing about. Nick always found lots of good information in the 1880 census, though not as much as in the 1900. To researchers’ everlasting sorrow, most of the 1890 was destroyed by a fire in 1921.

But first, Nick needed to check the Soundex, a phonetic index that groups names by first letter and consonants.

The Works Progress Administration during the Depression was given the task of indexing certain censuses. Social Security was starting up, and it was essential to know who might be eligible, who would be turning 65 in 1935 and in the next few years. The census was the perfect place to look for a person’s year of birth. It’s the actual testimony of the person in question, or at least someone who knew him. Sometimes the only testimony.

For a country with a Babel of names from skyrocketing immigration, for vital records where clerks spelled for convenience, out of frustration, or by whim, the Soundex is a good place to start. But one caveat is that the 1880 Soundex includes only those households with children ten years old and under. These children, born between 1870 and 1880, were the ones who most probably would be alive to participate in the new Social Security program.

Nick had seen many amateurs tripped up by this last arcane detail: an ancestor may in fact be in the census proper, even if he doesn’t appear on the Soundex.

Keeping such knowledge to himself was job security, a way of ensuring that there would always be a need for professional genealogists, Nick reflected as he coded the surname Balazar.

In the darkened microfilm room, Nick used the Soundex code for Balazar–B426–to find the Balzar family, living in the old town of Natchitoches, Louisiana, Natchitoches Parish, 9 June 1880. He had already checked the twenty-eight then-existing parishes preceding Natchitoches alphabetically and had been reluctantly about to call it a day.

As always happened when he made an important find, a triumphant smile of discovery spread across his face, and an unmistakable shiver hit him between the shoulders. He sat under the hood of the reader, leaning into the tunnel of light which vouchsafed him a glimpse of a century earlier, savoring the moment, but also questioning his find–as a good genealogist must do, no matter how rock-solid the evidence seems.

The spelling similarity was too close to ignore, he thought, struggling to be the rational researcher. Simply a question of a missing vowel. Worse errors on birth certificates were common, he knew. In such cases, the midwife was confused, the doctor was guessing or too busy or too drunk to care, or no certificate was ever issued because the child was born in a sharecropper’s cabin with just the family around. And, of course, the enumerator wasn’t a detective; he wrote down what he thought he heard.

The rush of discovery flooded through his body again as he studied the projected image of the Soundex card before him. His eyes lingered on the line indicating “Color”: the head of household, Ivanhoe Balzar, was listed as a mulatto; on another card, so was his wife.

Either Nick’s hunch was incorrect, and these were not the people he was searching for, or Corban’s family tree had just become more complicated, even more interesting, and somewhat puzzling. Certainly, it was common for former slaves to take a garbled version of the slave-owning white family’s name, and slavery in the South was alive only fifteen years before this date; but could Ivanhoe Balzar have had a more direct relationship with the family called Balazar?

As he loaded up the appropriate reel of the actual census, which he had slipped out to get without Mrs. Fadge’s helpful interference, he heard several voices near the entrance of the microfilm room. It was Angus, giving somebody a tour. Somebody important, judging from his eagerness to explain everything in the building and beyond. Angus loved to talk, but he was really cutting loose this time.

Nick was more like the cantankerous Coldbread than he would have cared to admit: he hated to be interrupted during his research. He prepared a hard face for the intruders. But turning, he was astonished.

Whoever she was, she was beautiful. A grin of adolescent delight settled on his face.

She stood in the doorway of the darkened room, the faint light of his microfilm machine on her face, the stronger light from the building’s interior giving her long dark hair and her enchanting curves a sort of glowing outline. He’d seen lots of pretty female students pass through his classes, but if this woman had been in one of them, he would have been in more serious trouble a lot sooner.

She was taking notes on one of those digital pads Nick refused to learn anything about. Two young fellows behind her watched her every move; each was glued to a cell phone.

She looked Nick right in the eyes; he felt absolutely transparent. It seemed to him that not only did she know him, but also that she had just read his own listing in some psychic census of character.

“Terribly sorry to disturb you,” she said. “Just be a moment. We’re honored that you’ve chosen the Plutarch Foundation for your work.”

Disturb me! Baby, you can disturb me all day and all night!
he wanted to shout. But she was gone already. The two young men were so busy relaying her observations into their cell phones that they missed her departure; finally realizing she was gone, they hurried off to catch up.

This woman was no ordinary tourist, Nick was sure.

Still staring at the empty doorway, he could hear Angus talking about him; he squirmed at this extravagant praise, but hoped she believed at least half of it.

He returned to the spring of 1880.

Sure, he knew he’d be more productive if he just rolled the film to the specific place under investigation; but he never could do it. He was a window shopper, lingering over interesting details and names along the way. Who was related to whom in the household, who could read and write, where were the parents born, age, birthplace, marital status, occupation…each elegant or rudimentary letter from the pen of the enumerator a possible saga in itself, with ramifications that might ripple through centuries.

Nick carefully transcribed the Balzar census information, forming hypotheses as he wrote. Odd thing: in the “Color” column of the “Personal Description” section, the “W” had been overwritten with “Mu” on Ivanhoe’s line. Had the enumerator made a simple clerical mistake, or had Ivanhoe been trying to pass for white under the nose of a public official who knew him in the small community and would have none of it?

Before long, Nick heard a couple of the magnificent clocks in the place chime the hour of four: quitting time. A few other clocks chimed intermittently for the next fifteen minutes. The Plutarch was indeed a welcome refuge from the tyranny of semiconductor exactitude.

When he emerged bleary-eyed from the microfilm room, he saw that Coldbread was packing up, making sure no one got a glimpse of his top-secret project.

Nick made his way to the wide, gracious porch, where Angus stood watching another sudden shower roar down on the steaming street. “Who was that woman?” he asked Angus.

“Oh, I figured you’d want to know, you young wolf, you!” He laughed his belly laugh. Angus considered Nick something of a playboy. On what evidence, Nick wasn’t sure, unless it was his habit of helping attractive women in their research and ignoring others.

“That’s one very important lady, let me tell you,” said Angus. “Miss Zola Armiger. Big executive, manager or vice-president or something or other–I’m not sure what you call her–of the investment company that handles the Plutarch’s finances. You know, the endowment and all that? I forget the name of her company. They say her family owns it. Comes by now and again to make sure everything’s up to snuff, that we have everything we need to stay a first-class place. Better take this.”

Angus lent Nick an umbrella, though it had quit raining for the moment. Nick loudly assured Mrs. Fadge, who had joined them, that he’d take her up on coffee and cookies next time.

Then he walked outside in the stifling late afternoon toward his car, a BMW 2002 that once, in his youthful days of hedonism, had been a hell of a vehicle. He recalled with a sigh how fast he used to drive his metallic blue baby between the empty streetcar tracks on St. Charles, at four in the morning! Highly illegal and dangerous, of course, but once he hadn’t cared. Oh, the idiotic, ecstatic things he’d done in this car…

It wasn’t exactly a collectible now, unless you were a dealer in scrap metal. He accepted total blame for its rust and general deterioration. The oil-change sticker was no longer legible, and didn’t the owner’s manual say to always leave the windows open in the rain?

When he’d bailed out the driver’s compartment enough to navigate, he was already late for his meeting with Hawty Latimer.

.

5

N
ick banged the steering wheel.

St. Charles Avenue was flooded knee deep–big surprise in a city below sea level–and viscous rush-hour traffic had him in its taffy grip.

Kids played in brown water backed up from the heavy downpour, and when a big wave came they retreated with summer squeals to the craggy sidewalks deformed by the roots of old oaks that defined the famous street. Cops with yeah-sure-buddy smirks ticketed hapless drivers who had stalled and had to admit they had no insurance, or worse, had tried to make a left turn–a grievous sin in this city, where murder attracts less notice. Cars looked like boats, complete with wakes.

Traffic oozed on, with the occasional surprise of some urban cowboy barging through an opening in his monster pickup; the cops, of course, never saw
him
. Dark green streetcars rocked along with their roar and clang, packed with sweltering riders, windows raised for a speed-driven breeze in spite of the continuing drizzle. They made only slightly better time than everyone except the joggers who competed with them for the soggy “neutral ground” of grass that separated the traffic lanes.

Nick would have loved a jog about now, to ease the tensed-up muscles of his neck and shoulders, to get the blood moving in his legs.

Along lower St. Charles, he glimpsed well-heeled patrons behind fogged windows in the cool confines of posh bars, ignoring the unfortunate drones outside. Once or twice, he imagined he saw the blurred figure of Zola Armiger, laughing with glass raised, as in some happy Renoir party. Closer to Lee Circle, the bars and the patrons got seedier; befuddled men and women peered forlornly or belligerently from open dark doorways at the parade of those who still played the game.

Maybe, just maybe, Hawty had grown disgusted waiting and had left, Nick thought, his mood brightening. He’d used that ploy often enough with pesky or psychotic students before.

He was certain he wasn’t going to like this girl, much less hire her, no matter what he’d promised Una. He’d already made up his mind, and that was that!

When he finally arrived at his street, he parked in a tow-away zone.

“I just want you to know that I was on time for our interview. See?” she said, pointing to a machine-printed note taped to Nick’s office door. “Mr. Herald, how do you do. I’m Hawty Latimer.”

They shook hands. She had a plump, cheerful face, with wonderfully youthful dark-brown skin and dark eyes like black onyx set in pearl. Self-confidence emanated from her, along with a rather nice perfume. She wore understated jewelry and interview clothes, just like, like…a normal person. Nick figuratively bit his tongue, even though he’d only thought that. Una and Dion and their little devious plots! They had neglected to tell him one significant fact about his prospective employee: she was confined to a wheelchair.

But what a vehicle! Hawty sat in what looked to Nick like a futurist’s wildest conception of a wheelchair for the next century, a cross between an anorexic all-terrain vehicle and a shrink-wrapped physics lab.

“My apologies for being late, Hawty.” Nick unlocked his door and stepped aside to let her in. “Got hung up in traffic. I was just in your neighborhood, over by school: the Plutarch Foundation.”

“Sure! I’ve done research there, on the documents of the
Escudo
, the slave ship. I did an article for the school magazine.”

“There was a revolt during the voyage, right?”

“That’s the one! 1839.” She beamed with admiration at the breadth of Nick’s knowledge.

“I’d like to read your article one day,” he said. “I fancy myself something of a writer, too.”

“I know. Professor Kern has told me
all
about you.”

Just as Nick had suspected. Una had recruited Hawty as a spy and had briefed her accordingly.

“Has she really?” Nick said, amused and not a little perturbed by all the hidden stratagems he sensed at play. “Well, before we talk about the job, Hawty, I’m curious. How in the world did you get up here?” As far as he knew, his building was innocent of an elevator.

“It wasn’t easy,” she replied. “I’m going to write your landlord and request a ramp the first thing. The LIFT-bus driver helped me up the front steps–that’s the city handicap bus. Then, after a while, I found the freight elevator at the end of the hall. This place is awfully lonely; hardly any tenants. Anyway, if you want to know what I did for an hour and a quarter, I read as many articles on genealogy as I could access on my computer. I was just about to call the bus back when you showed up.”

She wasn’t chastising Nick, he realized; hers was the tone of a determined person who often confronted doubts. She had obviously seen other people’s hang-ups become self-fulfilling prophecies for her. She seemed accustomed to defending herself.

The marvelous machine she rode moved with humming precision around Nick’s modest daylight quarters. She directed her chair with a joystick, using her arms with the wheels for subtler movements. As much as he disdained technology, this seamless union of human being and machine fascinated him.

Her chair brushed a pile of books, manuscripts, and journals leaning against a wall; the pile collapsed, setting off a domino effect that took a few moments to run its course.

“Oh! I’m so sorry!”

“Don’t worry about that, Hawty. Happens all the time to me.”

“How long have you been here, Mr. Herald?” she asked, continuing her excursion around the room. Nick got the distinct feeling that she was sizing
him
up. He heard a hint of disapproval, maybe even derision.

“Well, I, uh…I’m sort of still in the transitional stage. Used to work out of my apartment in the Quarter, but things got a little tight there. Been about a year, I guess.”

“A whole year! And the place still looks like
this
?”

Nick was soaked; his briefcase weighed a ton; he was tired. He invited Hawty to roll over to his desk, where he dropped his cargo, causing another minor avalanche. But she wasn’t quite ready and drove around the cramped office a bit more. She even checked out the bathroom.

Gutsy, if a little too blunt, he thought, beginning to like her. He’d come from a long line of smart-asses himself; sarcasm was a second language to him. Hawty seemed to be a member of the same club. She talked fast, and obviously thought faster. As she joined him at his desk, he looked at the putty-colored computer, about the size of a thick magazine, mounted on a pivoting metal arm, like a tray table on an airliner seat.

Unbidden, she bombarded Nick with technical terms, explaining that a cellular modem hookup allowed her access to the entire world and even some other planets. At least that’s what Nick thought she said. He was lost in jargon. She also said that her actual given name was Harrieta, but that she kept it secret because she hated it; she asked him not to tell anyone because her friends would probably start using it to tease her.

Guilt ambushed him as he listened. He should have been here to help her. No, he corrected himself, that wasn’t the right attitude. He’d taught many handicapped students, some in wheelchairs, some in much worse shape than Hawty. He knew that pity usually enraged them. But he’d always found it difficult to hide the pity he felt for them. Or was it really fear of one day losing some vital capacity himself? He tried to make his face blank of expression as Hawty chattered on about her wheelchair.

Nick hadn’t much bothered to keep up with the current politics of vocabulary. How was he supposed to refer to her condition? Was she “differently abled,” “physically challenged,” “motor-skills impaired,” “special-needs,” or simply “disabled”? He would have to do his best to treat her as he would anyone else; he had a sense that this is what Hawty would want.

“…it’s all part of a project undertaken by the computer-sciences department at Freret,” Hawty was saying. “We’ve made some pretty amazing discoveries, Mr. Herald. I predict there’ll be lots of patents from this project of ours–maybe even a Nobel Prize. Not to mention the doctorates on the line. Guy I’m dating is one of them; he’s already had job offers from NASA and a bunch of commercial heavyweights.”

Nick interrupted the unbounded optimism and ambition of youth. “Look, Hawty, I don’t want to keep you too long. I have no doubt you’ll be right for the job. You come with great recommendations. So consider yourself hired. But, I’m sorry to say, the pay will be nothing to write home about.”

He mentioned the low figure he’d settled on, skeptical she’d agree. There was a pause. She didn’t laugh in his face, at least.

“Oh, that’s wonderful, Mr. Herald! You don’t know how much this means to me.” Her eyes filled momentarily with tears, but she quickly rubbed them away. “I’m having a little trouble making ends meet, and that really, really bothers me. I had some unexpected medical expenses. Another kidney infection. Going to Freret is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. My education is more important than eating. I’d starve if I had to.”

Moved by her gratitude and inspired by her commitment to her schooling, Nick pressed his lips together to keep himself from offering triple the figure he’d just mentioned; he knew that would be impossible.

He said, “To start, I’ll ask you to handle mostly clerical tasks. As you learn more about genealogy, I’ll expect you to do substantial research. Your, uh, electronic gizmo-wheelchair-thing can type–I mean print, right?”

She pointed to Nick’s hulking old black IBM Selectric typewriter, adopted from a Goodwill store. “Makes that old clunker look like a Model T.”

“Good. Tomorrow, you can do a much better job with this than I did. It’s a draft of an article I’m working up on the yellow-fever epidemic of 1878, and how to use the death lists in family history research.”

“No problem,” she said. “Sounds interesting. Oh, there are a few other things I’d like to get started on, too–if it’s okay with you. Maybe figure out some system for all this,” and she made a sweeping motion with her arm to indicate the sea of paper and books around them. “I bet your files could stand some attention. There’s no toilet paper. And most of the lights are burned out around here. I was thinking maybe I could put a desk–if I can find one–in that other room. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything. I bet there’s lots of spare furniture in this building.”

“Hey, chill out,” Nick said, smiling, trying to show her how hip he was.

She made a comical face and covered a giggle. Oh, well, so much for being hip, Nick thought.

“Let’s not rush things, okay, Hawty? Tomorrow morning, say ten, we’ll get to work. I don’t like time clocks, and I don’t expect you to work under the tyranny of one.”

“If I waited on people to help an African American woman in a wheelchair, I’d be dead of frostbite or boredom or something else already.
I’ll
be here at eight. Got another key?”

Nick searched for one in several overstuffed drawers.

“Here we go,” he said. “Better take one to my apartment, too. I think of it as a large filing cabinet. If I’m on the road, I may need you to go over there.”

He briefly explained the most pressing current project, Max Corban, telling her the old guy might kick off at any moment. She was eager to get started.

Nick asked her to search current Natchitoches phone books and city directories for a living Balzar in Natchitoches, and to find the libraries and archives in that area of central Louisiana that have material on local family history.

“No problem,” she said, her fingers dancing over her computer’s keyboard.

That must be her motto, Nick thought.

When Nick asked about her arrangements to get home, she assured him a special cab would be around in a few minutes for her, driven by a friend who didn’t charge her. She would wait in the entryway downstairs.

He noticed the sun outside making one last orange encore through the clearing slate-colored clouds. He was glad Hawty would have good light while she waited for her taxi.

Nick was impressed. The girl was a dynamo with more contacts, schemes, and chutzpah than a crooked Louisiana legislator.

They rode the abominable freight elevator down together. In the entryway she said, “They were wrong, Mr. Herald. About the plagiarism thing.”

“Call me Nick. It’ll save time. Fewer syllables. Sure, I know; I didn’t do it.”

“No, I mean empirically. They used faulty data, a flawed program. That was a few years ago. Programming has come a long way since then. Over at Computer Sciences, we ran the two articles through our own new program–kind of a test case. I wrote a paper on it, found fifteen fewer identical phrasings. See, the first time they counted some hyphenated parts of words as whole words. That makes a big difference. Shouldn’t trust those over-the-counter programs too much. Lots of bugs.”

Not sure whether to be grateful or insulted that he had been a “test case” for some brainy hackers, Nick realized that what she had just told him might have made all the difference in the world.

“Hawty, you’re about four years too late, but I’m damn glad you’re here now. See you tomorrow–at eight.”