The Do-Right (7 page)

VII
VII

A THURSDAY EVENING and Depha got on the bus at two minutes after six with a pair of rubber dishwash gloves in her purse. Shared a flick of eye contact with the woman in the first seat, pocketbook and sacks, brown knee-highs wilted at her ankles. She was your average six o'clock rider: that is, homebound, black, and tired. But there could be the rare downtown-bound rider, too, and the second had to be one of those. Unusual to see a white boy on the bus; his car must be broken down. Longish dark hair around a surly face, beads showing in the neck of an oxford shirt, one knee hammering.

Did a boy wearing a necklace mean he was a hippie? The Summer of Love had not ranged so far as Gatesville.

The kid jumped up at the next stop and sailed off the bus, swinging out from the handrail by the door. Another stop and a muscular boy whose Afro had a comb planted in it spanked the pert butt of a girl in an orange mini-skirt. She yelped. They chased each other halfway down the street. Delpha marked each bouncy step they took—the way hands kept grazing bodies, how the girl whirled and buried her face in the boy's chest, walking backwards—until they disappeared around a corner.

She heated up a can of Vegetable Beef, took down the clean tray from the shelf she'd left it on. Servant serving.
Carrying and setting down before. Beers. Tubs of powdered mashed potatoes, tubs of over-floured gravy, canned carrots, tubs of hot washing. Basins of piss, bloody sheets, towels, pillow cases for the infirmary. Finally, last three years, cart of books, library desk, best of all.

Delpha had promised herself patience. Get used to all the clear air around her, the streets stretching out, doors that open open open. Couldn't come all at once. Come slow. She'd have to get used to wearing sky over her head. Would get used to it, like everybody else so used to being free that it didn't even enter into their calculations. But promising and doing were two different things.

She was grateful for Tom Phelan. Polite to her, and it felt genuine. Noticed he was a nice-enough looking man, yes, she did, the minute he met her at the door. The dark hair that was kind of long on his collar had some deep auburn when the light hit it. Seemed like he was used to moving or not as he chose. But these observations she folded away. Without Tom Phelan chancing on her, she'd be eaten up with the problem of keeping herself and dwelling in a world of old people. New Rosemont rented to retirees. Ida Rae topped 40, Miss Doris in her far sixties, Calinda, 70-something. Mrs. Speir, queen of the boardwalk.

Delpha, carrying and setting down before. Right now maybe but not forever. And a
free
handmaiden, remember—she was getting paid for her work.

Don't overlook that, Delpha
.

Don't think you got nowhere. You got where
.

A radio played at the end of the hall, farthest room from Mrs. Speir's. Oldie,
A little bit of soap will never wash away my tears
. Who sang that? Couldn't remember, but she'd heard it. Might or might not mean Ida Rae was at home.

She fed Mrs. Spier every last spoonful of the Vegetable Beef. It was a record player that was playing and a 45 because after the song ended there was a silence then it started again. Ida Rae could have turned off the damn thing before she went out. No more thought than a red-headed woodpecker.

Mrs. Speir's eyes closed. Her knees drew up and her chin curled into her neck.

As Delpha strode into the room where the record player was repeating, her toe kicked an empty bottle, spinning it aside. Large room, chandelier, main feature dead ahead: a brass bedstead fit into an alcove, sheets twisted off onto the floor, pink lightbulbs in the fringed lamps casting a rosy glow. The air smelled like gin, sweat, and…yeah, cum. Delpha did recognize that sea smell. Ida Rae lay splayed naked, letting it air out beside some hairy-butt snorer wearing only striped crew socks dirty on their soles.

Ida had slim white legs but was carrying some thick in her middle from the gin. She raised sleepy lids. “Night nurse, my friend, sweetie, what're you doing in my room?”

“Your grandmother wants me to shut off the—”

Ida Rae pushed herself up. She plucked at the sheet, but it didn't move. “Oh. I'm lying on it. What'd you say you were in my room for?” The man turned over on his side and cupped his balls.

“Just came to turn off your record player. Watch.” Delpha crossed the room to a table by the window and yanked the record player's cord out of the wall. “See?”

“Oh. OK.” Ida Rae knocked the fellow beside her between the shoulder blades, causing him to grunt. “Get dressed. Let's go out.” She reached toward Delpha. “Hand me my robe there, would you? You know, if you have some better clothes than that, we could go out and have lunch sometime.”

Delpha handed over the robe, went back to Mrs. Speir.
Nekkid people night
.

Ida and her companion finally exited. The front door shut, a Cadillac engine turned over. Telling herself maybe she could spy the Tiffany for Miss Blanchard, Delpha pulled on rubber dishwash gloves and searched.

She rolled up the carpet and the pad beneath. No trap doors there. Delpha knelt to see under the bed with the flashlight. She ran her hands between mattress and box springs. She lifted the gilt-framed paintings, craned up the chimney of the tile-front fireplace, pushed on the oak mantelpiece. Genuine horsehair settee beneath the long window, hard as a pirate's plank. She took off her black flats and walked it, weighing down each section. No bulges or corners or lumps.

Delpha plunged her hands into bureau drawers containing Mrs. Speir's old-lady underwear and nightgowns and fresh sheet sets. These were to be moved, for convenience sake, to the bottom shelves of the bedside night-cabinet. She did this now, transferring one set of flower-sprigged sheets into the lower shelf of the night table so they would be to hand when next she needed them. Sliding out its single drawer, narrow and deep, she saw clippers, Q-tips, Vick's Vapor Rub laid out before an army of plastic pill bottles.

She sat on the chipped-gilt bench at the vanity table to study the sepia photograph of a bride and groom. Ramrod back, cascade of veil, high lace collar, she had a swan's neck on her then, didn't she—young Jessie angled away from the new husband, offering him a chiseled cheek. Young Mr. Speir—high shine to his shoes, boutonniere—had a forward nose and receding chin that might have made him look rat-like
if it hadn't been for his thick legs, the shoulders far wider than the upright chair he sat in.

The old photo was in a black dime store frame. Delpha bet it had replaced a silver one.

Her own face in the three-way mirror. Tired, lines at her eyes, both wary and calm. Way different than a horror-struck girl's mug shot in 1959.

She unscrewed a jar on the mirrored vanity table, cold cream dried to a solid white paste. Pulled open the top side drawer to sniff at the faint sweet of face powder. Peeled off a clumsy rubber glove and slid her flat palm along the ceiling of the drawer, make sure nothing was taped up there. There was a powdery coating over the items in the drawer: lipstick tubes, a deep red called “Honor Bright,” scattering of bobby pins, tweezer and dull brow pencils. Heavy gold compacts with their tiny latches—one containing pressed powder, in the other a crescent of rouge. She bent sideways, peering in. Pushed to the very back, a round box. She grasped it, knuckles grazing the drawer-back, and brought the box out.

It was cardboard but look, painted on its lid—oh, she liked it. Still a bright, cheerful orange, the women drawn on it so clear, a ruffled lady at a vanity and her sharp-nosed hairdresser. Delpha had met those two in prison more than once, the privileged bitch and the sly suck-up you keep your front toward.

Three Blossoms Face Powder
, shade
Naturelle
. “Naturelle,” she said aloud, “naturelle.” Pretty word. Reluctantly, she set the box back, feeling the powder-dust rub between her fingers. Below, in the lower drawer, a comb, a brush, and four jewelry cases, one for a ring, three rectangular. Green leather.

She held her breath. Pried them open, one by one, to satin and velvet. The only gold inside was lettering:
Tiffany and Co. 550 Broadway New York
.

Had Ida sold the jewels or kept them? Sold, according to Miss Blanchard.

The mantel clock read 10:03.

Got her handkerchief out of her purse and wiped the lipstick tubes, the compacts, the jewelry boxes, drawer-knobs thoroughly. Not great but better than her prints on them—she'd be blamed for anything that went wrong here.

Then her fingers darted back in for the pretty
Three Blossoms
box that nobody had used in decades. Her knuckles knocked
tock
against the drawer-back, which fell over them. She froze, the thin piece of wood lying over her fingers.

Delpha reached them both out, the powder box and piece of wood. She set the box in her purse. As for the drawer-back, it was a shorter square of wood that must have been wedged or lightly glued in there. She got down on her knees and craning, saw the true back of the drawer.

Things in front of it.

She reached in and took out a small pad with marks on it.
Grandma
, line down the middle,
Ida
. A scorepad, pencil hatchmarks on it. She peered in again. Pair of dice and a light-colored pouch. A white scrap.

Could put jewels in a pouch.

Her hand stayed where it was, and her stomach hitched. Find a necklace in a nice leather case, she'd tell Miss Blanchard. That was big, and her connection with it would be big too, if anyone went looking. Find a handful of loose gemstones, well, a problem. A situation. Was that the right word—a dilemma, maybe.

There could be one ruby less inside a pouch somebody'd hid away.

She would not go back to prison. Would not go. That prohibition sharp as a whack to the jaw, real as a concrete
floor under a pair of bare knees. Pawnbroker give her a penny on the dollar for any diamond she'd set on his counter, and he would learn her face.

Delpha's hand moved. She rolled the pouch until she could grasp it and lifted it out over the dice, all the time her fingertips were squeezing the loose-weave burlap for stones. Felt none. When she got a close look, her breath freed itself in a rush. She sat back on her heels. A damn tobacco pouch. Somebody hiding their smokes in a secret place. That's all it was.

She loosened its yellow drawstring, stirred her finger around inside, sniffed again. Its faint odor spoke of age, this was old leaves, and not tobacco exactly—she guessed dried hemp. Wild hemp grew in the Big Thicket, but this had to be the kind made reefers. Explained the hiding. She'd known a woman in Gatesville serving seven years for it, and five kids at home.

Little orange paper glued to the pouch held the rolling papers. RizLa+. Lacroix Fils. 24 papers. Some left. The loose scrap back there—she plucked it out—yep, it was a rolling paper too.

With handwriting on it.

Don't smoke all this without me sunshine
.

Sweet. Mrs. Jessie smoking reefer. With her husband, Mr. Sunshine Speir the stockbroker. The thought tickled Delpha.

Moselle, the day nurse, bored out of her mind?

Smart money would be on Ida. The scorepad, the dice, the pouch, Ida must have known about this compartment, maybe fixed it up herself. Forgot about it. Shorted out the brain cells that remembered this hidey-hole.

But wait, what Ida said about her mother. Went away with a morphine-fiend. If the couple liked morphine, might
have liked reefer too. And
sunshine
—sweet on each other, sweet on hemp, not enough sweetness for their baby daughter.

All happened back in the shadows of the long ago. Shame that shadows were so damn long.

Delpha fitted the
sunshine
paper in with the others in the orange placket and replaced the items in the drawer. Wiped off the wood piece, tapped it in, closed up the drawer. She straightened and leaned over the vanity table. Who'd care if she touched the prickly-glass atomizer. Be more
naturelle
if she had—she squeezed its bulb. She expected it to be dry, but a burst of flower petals picked sixty years ago bloomed out, rich, oily, diffusing over the stale room. Delpha sprayed her wrists, then rubbed them together, sprayed a blast toward Mrs. Speir, bless her old heart, curled like a shrimp drying on a plate.

She dropped the handkerchief in her purse, then snatched up the rubber gloves, which she stowed away under the kitchen sink, and left.

VIII
VIII

PHELAN MADE THE rounds of the motels, looking for the black Seville. Nothing the first few nights, but he felt useful, employed, and he kept circling, following the list Miss Wade had typed up, starting with the ones closest to Elliott's office. Beaumont, smack on I-10 between Houston and New Orleans, had a shitload of motels. Tonight he'd found three black Sevilles but not with the right plate. On the whole, he preferred cruising the tourist courts where people had their doors propped open, some standing outside swapping cigarettes, beer and conversation, ice machines doing a steady business. The pricier the place, the quieter, except for kids hooting in the swimming pools.

He got a burger at the Pig Stand, grease soaking through the crinkly white paper. Lined his lap with napkins and ate. Made a pit stop at a 7-11, came out keys in one hand, large coffee in the other, package of dessert Twinkies clamped in his teeth.

Two empty spaces over, a pudgy teenager jawing into the passenger window of a Dodge Coronet bellowed, “You know what. Just forget it, Diane.” He straightened, then bent into the window again and shoved the girl's head. She pitched toward the steering wheel.

Phelan detoured over and booted the guy in the ass, at the price of jogging hot coffee over his left hand. Dropped the
Twinkies into his key hand and said, “Cut that shit out. Mean little turd. You're embarrassing yourself.”

The teenager twisted around to him, the surprise on his face giving way to the death stare without any matching death moves.

Phelan found Lloyd's car at 8:09. The red brake lights of a black Seville. J5489,
jackpot
. The driver was alone, arm stretched over the seat back. Just sitting there, windows rolled up, AC deployed. The Seville was parked in front of room number 111. Phelan circled around, parked by the office with the Caddie in view.

At 8:30, Lloyd put it in gear. So…they must have a plan in place. Didn't get here by 8:30, she wasn't coming. Lloyd didn't seem devastated. His lips were moving. Practicing a speech?

Phelan had his info—Holiday Inn for sure, approximate time. Jazzed, he watched as Lloyd drove past him. Guy was singing.

Phelan turned the opposite direction, took a right, was passing St. Elizabeth Hospital's bright ER entrance when he heard the whoop of a siren. Firing closer. He nudged over to the shoulder behind a pickup and monitored his rearview.

A shrieking vehicle charged into sight, red lights flashing. Pontiac station wagon painted orange and white busted a sharp left into the horseshoe drive too fast to hold the curve leading to the ER doors. The ambulance took out a corner of a concrete bench, tight-spun in the opposite direction as the driver overcorrected, and plowed—bull's-eye—into a pillar of the port cochére. There was a bang like a transformer had blown, a rush of steam, and the bent pillar slumped.

Phelan slammed out of his car and ran the twenty yards. Pulled up when, like an afterthought, the port cochére gently shifted downward.

He was wary of the structure collapsing but he circled
round and peered through the driver's open window. The man's bald head had spidered the windshield, which had returned the favor probably a quarter-second before the steering wheel crushed in, hooked him under the chin and rammed upward. Slack as a sack, no gasp, no shudder, no blink.

Phelan loped to the ambulance's back door window. On the gurney lay an elderly man wearing a useless black oxygen mask—its hose was torn loose. The attendant, on knees and elbows, had snagged a shelf on the way down and was bleeding from temple to jaw. Shiny stripe of blood dividing off into separate rivulets.

Phelan opened up the back door. “Y'all all right?”

“Scraped the side of my head off. Fucking Marshall. You hear me, you wino son of a bitch cocksucking bastard.”

“Your driver's wasted,” Phelan said, climbing in and bending over the old guy on the stretcher.

“No shit, Sherlock,” the attendant snarled. He crawled over to the window to the front seat. “You just got us both fired, Marshall. I told you—”

Phelan said, “No, I mean he's wasted.”

The attendant jerked around.

“Look, get the head, I'll get the foot.” Phelan leapt lightly out of the ambulance. His fists closed on the gurney rail like they used to on stretcher handles dozens of times before, and he was sliding it out, unsurprised at the weight of the emaciated man, knowing bodies were heavier than they looked, specially the ones he was used to, the bony ones that belonged to boy soldiers. The only different element here was this gurney's undercarriage, wheels and crossed metal legs like at the bottom of an ironing board—handy, these'd pop down and turn hefting into rolling. Could maybe manage this by himself, which was a good thing because the idiot
attendant, apparently not believing Phelan's call, was jabbing his index finger into the driver's pulseless neck.

A tiny nurse, long hair escaping from a bun on her neck, appeared at the back of the ambulance. She turned a scrunched-up face to Phelan. “Who are you?”

Phelan's chin jutted toward his car. “I was driving by.”

Her face scrunched further, but four hands got the gurney land bound. Then, as Phelan pushed, she latched onto the gurney and guided its foot-end over the threshold.

Inside the ER, genuine medical personnel relieved Phelan of his temporary job. He lingered there, watching the elevator after its doors closed till he got a gleam that he was waiting for it, like a Huey, to lift off into the sky.

Numbnuts
.

He eased onto the freeway and drove. By the glittering refineries with their smoke and fiery flares, by the low ricefields, down reedy back roads leading to the bayous. Turned and headed for the neighborhood off Concord, beginning a ritual he would keep.

Drove by Deeterman's house near the woods, the dingy white ranch that he was convinced Dennis Deeterman could show up at sometime. He wanted to check. Establish a baseline. See if there was any sign of habitation.

Orange mailbox under the streetlight. Police tape across the door. Same grass and weeds grown up there and on the path back into the woods. Longer now. The tire tracks could still be picked out.

House was dark.

Phelan drove by the Toups'. Light on in the living room.

He got home to a ringing phone, chose to get a beer from the icebox rather than answer it, and snapped on the television. Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth, all elastic and
firecrackers, skipping and sliding loose-jointed, twirling and tapping in two-tone shoes. He answered the phone a half hour later. His older brother Fuller, pissy because he'd been calling all night, barked at Phelan that their grandmother Lila had passed.