Sailor & Lula (36 page)

“What comes next, Don Pericolo?” Santos said to his own reflection. He went into his office and sat down behind the gigantic oak desk that had been built in Palermo more than one hundred years before for Lupo Sanguefreddo, Don Pericolo's predecessor. Santos pressed a button that was on the underside of the right top drawer and the door to an outer room opened, admitting Carmine Papavero.

“Marcello, you look
meraviglioso!
” said Carmine.

“Sit,” Santos said, motioning with his right hand to a chair on the opposite side of the desk. “There is a serious matter that I would appreciate your trying to do something about. A young boy has been kidnapped here in New Orleans, the grandson of an old friend of mine. I want you to find him, if possible.”

“Marcello, I know of this situation already. I have a photograph of the boy.”

Carmine took the photo out of his pocket and put it on Santos's desk.

“Is this the grandson of your friend?” he asked.

“It is. How did you get this?”

“From Eddie Fange, the detective who takes care of the Orleans Parish payoffs. It's his case.”

“Very good, Carmine. My friend is very worried about the boy, as you can imagine.”

“Of course, Marcello. It's a horrible thing, the theft of a child.”

“
Tutto ciò mi preoccupa.
The way the world is today worries me. With all these
pazzi
running loose, nobody is safe, not even a small boy.”

Carmine nodded. “I have a description of the kidnapper. He was
scalzo,
barefoot. An insane person.”

Santos sighed deeply. “I must call the child's grandmother now and comfort her. Go and find out what you can.”

Carmine stood, picked up the photo and replaced it in his coat pocket.

“Please convey to her my sympathies,” he said, and left the room. Santos nodded and began dialing Marietta's number. She answered before the second ring had ended.

“Lula?” Marietta shouted.

“It is I, Marietta, Marcello.”

“Oh, Marcello, I'm frantic. There ain't been no word yet.”

“I just wanted to inform you that my people are doing everything they can.”

“Dal and Johnnie are helpin' me get through this. They're lambs.”

“Marietta, you know I think a great deal of you. Had it not been for my respect for Clyde, things could have been different.”

“Let's not talk about that kind of thing now. I'm way too upset to consider mighta-beens. I appreciate your efforts on behalf of my family. I'm in your debt.”

“No, Marietta, where we are concerned there is no debt, only friendship.”

“Marcello, if some maniacal creature's harmed my beautiful grandboy I'll just die!”

“It is at such moments that my old friend Don Pericolo would say,
non bisogna abbattersi così facilmente
. One should not get discouraged so easily. You must remain strong.”

“Yes, Marcello, you're right, of course.”

“We will speak soon, Marietta. Goodbye.”

“Bye.”

Marietta hung up and wiped the tears from her eyes with a vermilion silk handkerchief that had belonged to her grandmother, Eudora Pace.

“The gangster got a line on the case yet?” Johnnie asked.

Marietta stared hard at him, then said, “Who ain't a gangster these days, Johnnie Farragut? The whole world's nothin' but a big racket, with one murderin', thievin' bunch tryin' to horn in on another. Least Santos is on our side, and I'm glad we got him.”

“Amen,” said Dalceda. “Anybody ready for another cocktail?”

“My daddy murdered a man once,” Pace said. “I heard my grandmama talkin' about it with her friend Johnnie, who's a private investigator and carries a gun. Mama thinks I don't know Sailor really killed Bob Ray Lemon, but I do. He'll get you, too, soon as he finds out what's happened and where I am, which'll be any minute. Him or Crazy Eyes Santos, Grandmama's other man friend, who's a big gangster and kills people all the time. Won't bother him a bit to twist your puny chicken head clean off the neck. You'd best just let me go and run for it, or you'll be fish scum, you'll see.”

Elmer Désespéré was beginning to realize his mistake. He had grabbed an unworthy boy, someone not suited to be his perfect friend, and he was in a fix over what to do about it.

“I done murdered
two
men,” said Elmer, who was sitting in the cane armchair across from where Pace sat on the floor next to the bed. Elmer had tied Pace's hands together behind his back after the boy had attempted to put out Elmer's eyes with the fork part of the Swiss Army knife. “And prob'ly I'll have to murder a mess more before I'm through, includin' you, it looks like.”

“Let me go and you won't have to kill me. I won't tell anyone where you live. You don't let me go, they'll find us and kill you sure. Least right now you got a choice.”

Elmer stood up. “I got to go out, get some fresh water. I'll figure out later what I'm gonna do, when I talk to Alma Ann. She'll guide my hand.”

Elmer took hold of Pace, dragged him into the empty closet and shut the door.

“I wouldn't be surprised she instructs me to twist
your
puny chicken head,” Elmer shouted. “Clean off the neck!”

He went out into the street and headed for the Circle K convenience store. This child was a puzzlement, Elmer thought. He would have to be more careful of who he snatched next. Follow him for a while, maybe, see if he acted right. This one weren't no good at all and likely never would be. Can't trust a pretty face, ain't
that
the truth!

Elmer had been thinking so hard about Pace that he did not realize
he'd turned the wrong way off Claiborne. Somehow he had wandered onto a street called St. Claude and he was lost. It was very late at night and Elmer missed Alma Ann. He wished she were here and he was tucked into bed with her reading to him. He saw some men gathered up ahead at the corner and he walked toward them. Before Elmer had gone halfway, he noticed that three men were walking toward him, so he stopped where he was and waited, figuring if the direction he needed to go in was behind him then he wouldn't need to cover the same ground. The three men, all of whom were black and no older, perhaps even younger, than Elmer, surrounded and stared at him.

“Come you ain't got no shoes on?” asked one.

“Don't make no connection otherwise,” said Elmer.

“Feet's black as us,” said another of the men.

“You heard of the Jungle Lovers?” the third man asked.

Elmer shook his head no.

“We them,” said the first man. “And this our street.”

“You a farm boy?” asked the second.

Elmer nodded. “From by Mamou,” he said. “Road forks close the sign say, ‘If It Swim I Got It.' ”

“Where that?”

“Evangeline Parish.”

The three men, each of whom was wearing at least one gold rope around his neck, began moving around Elmer, circling him, glancing at one another. Elmer stood absolutely still, unsure of what to do.

“You got any money, hog caller?” said one of the men.

“No,” said Elmer.

The man behind Elmer pulled out a Buck knife with a six-inch blade, reached his right arm around Elmer and slit his throat completely across, making certain the cut was deep enough to sever the jugular. Elmer dropped to his knees and stuck all four fingers of his left hand into the wound. He sat there, resting back on his heels, blood cascading down the front of his overalls and on the sidewalk, for what seemed to him like a very long time. Elmer looked up into the dark eyes of one of the men and tried to speak. He was asking the man to tell Alma Ann he was sorry to have failed her, but the man did not try to listen. Instead, he took out a small handgun, stuck its snub nose all the way into Elmer's mouth and pulled the trigger.

“Don't worry about it, Sailor,” said Bob Lee, “I can afford to take the day off. This ain't no small matter, after all, and the police can't be expected to exercise a whole lot of manpower over one more stole child.”

“Want you to know I 'preciate it, Bob Lee,” Sailor said, “extra much. What you and Beany's doin' for me and Lula's special. I mean, you got your own two kids and a new business to worry about. I ain't about to forget it.”

Sailor and Bob Lee were preparing to hit the streets together and search for Pace.

“Just let me kiss Beany goodbye and we can get movin'.”

Sailor waited for Bob Lee in the living room. Lula was still asleep, having taken a medication Beany's doctor had prescribed to help her relax. How he, Sailor, could have been so selfish, so stupid, so cowardly, astounded him. Had he acted like a man six months ago, Sailor thought, this wouldn't have happened. It had been his opportunity, after wasting the dime, to take care of Pace and try to make things up to Lula. They were his responsibility and he'd failed them and himself as well. Sailor prayed now for another chance. Ten years in the joint had proven to him that it wasn't every man who had a choice in life. The fact that he'd blown it twice before with Lula ate at Sailor. It was his fault, he'd decided, that their precious son was in this unholy circumstance. If anything terrible happened to Pace, Sailor knew he would be unable to go on living.

In Huntsville, Sailor had come in contact with the most hard-luck boys he ever could have imagined. Most of them were murderers or had been involved, as he'd been, in the commission of crimes during which one or more persons had died. One fellow, Spook Strickland, a tough nut from Anniston, Alabama, where he'd been a Grand Dragon or Imperial Wizard in the Ku Klux Klan, had told Sailor his belief that God's message was that nobody
deserved
to live. The gospel according to Spook Strickland maintained that staying alive was an option not available to everyone, and that's why people like him existed, to destroy the least worthy among them. Sailor had asked him why God had created billions
of people in the first place, and why He continued to produce more, a question that gave Spook Strickland a good, long laugh. After he'd settled down, Spook had told Sailor that most human beings were provided for target practice. Those people were slaves, Spook said, disposable and without redeeming value. Organizations such as the Klan and the Great Whites, the prison gang Spook led at Huntsville, were placed on earth as reminders of the true nature of homo sapiens, and to maintain a necessary order. Each member of the Great Whites had on the underside of their upper right arm a tattoo of a shark with the words ORDER AT THE BORDER OF HELL etched around it. Spook Strickland had tried to get Sailor to join but Sailor resisted, even though things might have gone easier for him while he was inside, since Spook's gang controlled many of the more worthwhile and profitable functions in the prison, including drugs, cigarettes, and the machine shop. Sailor had hung out with the Great Whites, though, more for protection from the Mexican Mafia and Uhuru Black Nation than out of subscription to their ideas. He had needed to stay alive, that's all. He had, and now it was up to him to act right.

“Ready to roll, fella,” said Bob Lee, putting a hand on Sailor's right shoulder. “Beany'll make sure Lula's all right while we're gone. Told her we'd call in a couple of hours or so.”

Perdita Durango had parked a few houses away behind a silver Ply-mouth Voyager. She watched Sailor get into the passenger side of Bob Lee's black and tan Lincoln Town Car, and started the engine of Poppy's BMW as Bob Lee backed down the driveway into the street. She followed the Lincoln onto Veterans Memorial Boulevard and headed east two cars behind, turning right on Pontchartrain, then going east again on 610. Bob Lee got off the Interstate at Gentilly Boulevard and back-tracked to St. Bernard Avenue, where he pulled into a shopping center and parked in front of a storefront office that had the words GATOR GONE, INC. stenciled on the tinted window glass. Perdita brought the BMW over near the shopping center entrance and kept the engine idling. Bob Lee got out of the Town Car and went into the office of Gator Gone, Inc. Sailor stayed in the car.

Perdita picked up the Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum from the floor between her feet, shifted the BMW out of neutral into first gear and
glided toward the black and tan Lincoln. She pulled into the parking space to the right of Bob Lee's car, shifted the BMW into reverse, keeping the clutch and brake depressed, and lowered her window. Sailor was staring straight ahead as Perdita raised the gun with both hands and aimed at his right ear. The instant she pulled the trigger Sailor leaned forward to pull his left pantsleg over his boot. The bullet went behind Sailor's head through the Lincoln's windows into the roof of a pink Acura parked on the other side, ricocheted off the Acura and to the right into the yellow wood facing of the building. Sailor hit the deck and kept his head covered with his arms while Perdita peeled the BMW backward out of the parking space, spun a one-eighty, braked hard, shifted furiously into first and floored the gem of Bavarian engineering, fishtailing her way out of the shopping center. Sailor opened his door, rolled on the pavement and looked up in time to see its blue butt with the words PAPA UNO on the license plate streak away.

Bob Lee came running out of Gator Gone, Inc., saw Sailor stretched out on the ground, and yelled, “Ripley! You all right?”

Sailor rolled over on his back, saw the frightened look in Bob Lee Boyle's big brown eyes, and closed his own.

“I'm fine, Bob Lee,” he said, and grinned, feeling the sun on his face. “Just never know what part of your life's liable to open up again at any particular time.”