Wading Home: A Novel of New Orleans (33 page)

Another moment of quiet. Everyone looked at each other with a mixture of curiosity and a measure of satisfaction at their own good fortunes. But eyes lingered on Julian as each one said their goodbyes and left the room.

Moments later, the room was empty except for Cole and Julian.

“Got a minute?” Cole said. “Let me buy you a drink.”

Ten minutes later, Cole and Julian, in Cole’s black Jaguar, pulled into the parking lot of Sherman’s Seafood Grill near Highway 90, less than a mile from Cole’s office. The bar area, separate from the dining room, was paneled in dark wood, and the bar itself was empty; a television behind it noiselessly flashed highlights of a major league baseball game. From a bass-heavy stereo system mounted somewhere in the walls, Louis Armstrong’s gritty voice belted out “What a Wonderful World.”

Cole removed his jacket and draped it across one of the high, tubular chrome bar stools. Julian sat next to him.

“I come here after work a lot,” Cole said. “They make the best martini in town, and their shrimp cocktail is primo.” He glanced at the bar menu, then looked up at Julian. “So I would imagine you’re a little surprised?” He grabbed a fistful of peanuts sitting in a dish on the bar and popped a few in his mouth.

Julian, unsmiling, shook his head. Parmenter. Wow. Did he think, somehow, that this would make up for the injustice to his father? Now, when his father can’t enjoy any of it, when his father is probably dead somewhere,
now
is when Parmenter gets religion.

Julian thought those thoughts, but said only, “Yeah, you could say that.”

Cole got the waiter’s attention and ordered a martini. He looked at Julian, eyebrows lifted.

“I’ll just have a beer, whatever’s on tap,” Julian said.

When the drinks arrived, Cole lifted his glass and took a small sip. “Well, Mr. Parmenter was very concerned about your father, toward the end. At Mr. Parmenter’s request, I have been making calls all over town, trying to find out about what might have happened to him.”

Julian looked at the nut dish, picked out three almonds, and ate them. “Thank you. I really appreciate what you’re doing.”

“Well, I’m just following my boss’s wishes.”

A thoughtful silence passed between them.

Cole held up a finger to the bartender. “Another one of these, please.” And to Julian, “How about you?”

“I’m good.”

The bartender brought another martini and placed it on the bar in front of Cole.

“But now, with your father missing, things are a little complicated. Legally, I mean. As your father’s heir, you, of course, will inherit what Mr. Parmenter indicated—the house and its contents, as well as the profits from the sale of the red beans and rice mix. Oh, by the way, I bought a bag about a week ago. Found it in the airport in Dallas. I cooked it for a couple of friends who came over. Good stuff.”

“Anyway. Sorry to put this so bluntly, but the problem is that your father is not dead. Not according to the law, anyway. And for you to inherit the house, et cetera, it has to be legally confirmed. Which means, we really need to find out what happened to him.

“I talked to someone at the U. S. Coast Guard. The lists of names is very sketchy—some people were in pretty bad shape—so they have no way of knowing for sure whether your father was one of the ones airlifted to the Convention Center or the Superdome, or a hospital somewhere. We do know that he was not on any of the buses that left both those places headed for shelters in other states.”

Julian nodded his head soberly and took a long swig of the beer in his frosted mug.

“But he may have been picked up by someone else. There were so many other groups—Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, volunteers, private citizens with boats. There are all kinds of possibilities. Anyway, I want you to know I intend to hire an investigator, as Mr. Parmenter provided. We’ll find out what happened to him, sooner or later.”

“I’ve got one question.”

“What’s that?”

“Why, after all this time, did Parmenter finally decide to do right by my father? He knew all along that that whole business deal was wrong. So why now? What happened?”

Cole took the swizzle stick from his martini and ate the large olive at the end. He frowned thoughtfully.

“You know,” he said, “Mr. Parmenter wasn’t a bad person. I’ve known him—both him and his wife—for a long time. My father used to work for him, a long time ago.”

Cole’s father, he explained, was a plumber and smalltime contractor who’d met Parmenter through doing some work for the restaurant when the toilets were backed up. He’d ended up working at the house on St. Charles, painting, plumbing, doing small remodeling jobs, and he and the older man had become friends.

It was Parmenter’s wife, Clarisse, who had taken a liking to the bright young boy who hung around the house, giving his father a hand.

“It was just the two of us after my folks got divorced when I was six. I guess I was a smart little kid. When I finished high school, I was third in my class. I wanted to be a lawyer. When Mrs. Parmenter—Clarisse—found out I couldn’t afford to go to college, let alone law school, she insisted Parmenter pay my way all the way to my last year at Tulane. In return, I agreed to work for him on retainer for two years. I kinda liked the gig, and two years turned into twenty.”

Cole looked toward the window as traffic on the busy street raced by. “I’m sure Mr. P.—that’s what I called him—he would never have sent me to school, if his wife hadn’t insisted on it. He just wouldn’t have thought of it. But he would have done anything to please her. He loved your dad like a brother, you know, but he was a businessman to the core. He saw the thing with the red beans and rice mix as a gamble that just worked out better for him in the end than for your father. Simple.

“But when your father came to Mr. Parmenter’s house a year or so after the mix took off nationally and saw how he was living, things changed. Oh, your dad was still kind, they were still friends, but things were different. Then, when your mom got sick and your dad was struggling with medical bills, Clarisse came down hard on Mr. P. She knew your father’s recipe was the real reason they had so much wealth. She insisted that he do something to help, but your dad, he was a proud, stubborn man, he wouldn’t take any money, wouldn’t take any ‘charity.’ Even from a friend.

“Mr. P. told Clarisse that. ‘He won’t accept any money from me, not now,’ he said. But she wouldn’t buy it. Before she died she told him, ‘Promise me you’ll do the right thing.’ That’s one of the reasons he wanted so much to see your dad before he went. It was her wish. And her wish became his.”

Julian remembered the day Clarisse came to their house. How out of place she looked in his neighborhood—ramrod straight spine, pale white skin clothed in white linen, blue eyes luminous against the backdrop of shotgun houses and barbecue grills. A picnic basket on her arm holding a salad of tuna on lettuce leaf, a pot for clove and sassafras tea. The way his mother smiled when she walked into her sickroom.

“Finally, not too long ago, Parmenter got your dad to come over; he’d invited him several times over the years, but your dad kept refusing, always ‘too busy.’ It was just the two of them. Parmenter brought out a bottle of his special ninety-five dollar port, and he and your dad got pretty plastered.”

Parmenter, Cole said, talked him into playing dominoes, for money, nickels and dimes. They were having fun, a couple of old friends, when after about the fifth glass of port for both, Parmenter had an idea.

“Let’s play for something big, just for fun. I’ll put up my house against your land, your Silver Creek. It’ll make the game more exciting.”

“Your dad thought it was just a joke, all in good fun, so he said OK. Well, you know your dad, he was a domino player from hell, a demon, and Mr. Parmenter had never played before that night. Of course, your dad won, like he’d been doing all night long. It was just for fun, they both had a good laugh and Mr. P. said, ‘Well, take a look around, it’s all yours now!’ Your dad cracked up, said something like, ‘You got two weeks to get outta my place!’ and never gave it another thought. But Mr. Parmenter—I think he knew his time was short. This was his way. This was the way he could do ‘the right thing’ in a way your dad would have to accept.”

Julian stared into his beer. You just never know. Never know what’s behind people’s actions. He had to give it to Parmenter, he had craft, and even a little bit of style. And considering the deathbed promise to his wife, he even showed a little bit of heart.

Something still puzzled Julian. “So what was it that my dad owed Mr. Parmenter? He told me, ‘I want to see your dad. He owes me something.’”

Cole thought a moment, taking a sip of his martini. “Oh, that. Well, Mr. Parmenter lived for your dad’s red beans and rice. Not the dry mix, because it wasn’t nearly as good, but the real thing. Parmenter had never tasted anything like it before he met your dad, or since. He was always raving about it. He’d not had any since the restaurant closed, and he begged your dad to—just once more—cook him a pot. Even offered to pay him like two hundred dollars! Your dad would smile, and say, ‘Sure, I’ll do that. And you don’t have to pay me.’ But he never did.”

“Hmm,” Julian said, nodding, lost in thought, not saying what he was really thinking. For his father, cooking was an act of love—if he didn’t feel it, he didn’t do it. For Julian, there was sweet irony in the fact that Parmenter, who could afford any indulgence, was to be denied the very thing—the simplest thing—he most desired.

But Julian had his own ideas about what Parmenter believed Simon owed him. Absolution. That’s what the old man wanted from him—the chance to die with his heart and mind at peace.

When the two men stepped out into the sunshine of the afternoon, it was after four. Julian had told Sylvia he’d meet her at 4:30. Blessed Redeemer, her church (as well as Simon’s), had organized a volunteer group to take homemade boxes of essentials—canned goods, toiletries, soft drinks, bottled water, Tylenol and other first-aid supplies, Kleenex, and even a few Creole-flavored MREs—to deliver to parishioners who’d returned to deal with their flooded houses. Julian had offered to help with the deliveries.

Cole drove Julian back to his car in the parking lot near his office. They shook hands, and Cole said, “Oh, let me give you this.” He reached inside the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a stack of white envelopes. “The checks, for you and the band. You guys did a hell of a job.”

“Thanks,” Julian said, opening the door of the car and putting the checks in the glove box. “The guys—all of ’em—they’ll really appreciate this.”

“Tell me something, Fortier,” Cole said. “You ever think about moving back here?”

This caught Julian off guard. Everyone who knew him knew not to ask this question, mostly because the answer was so obvious. He loved his hometown; it had made him the man and the musician he was. But a musician who wanted a world-class career, like him, had to leave. It seemed it had always been that way. That’s what he thought before the storm, and now, with the city’s future in dire doubt, returning seemed foolhardy indeed.

He quickly censored his first impulse—
Are you kidding?
—and instead said, “I think New York is where I’m supposed to be right now.”

Cole nodded, then looked up and squinted at the sun. “Yeah. Too bad. The city’s in for the fight of its life. It could use all the help it can get.” He looked at his watch. “Well, gotta run. I’ll make some more calls tomorrow about your father. Keep the faith, man. We’ll find him.”

By now, Julian’s hope for finding Simon alive, which had shifted between abundant and minimal all these weeks, had dwindled to almost nothing. Optimism was a fabric easily worn thin by unrewarded use, and his had become so thin it was transparent. Now, he just hoped Simon hadn’t suffered too much. And that he could give him his final wish—to be buried on Silver Creek land, next to his wife.

It was the least he could do.

A half-hour later, Julian pulled up to the parking lot of Blessed Redeemer in the Bywater section of the city, a low-slung modern structure of terra cotta brick that looked a little out of place in a neighborhood of century-old shotgun houses and elegantly ornate cottages. Situated close to the river on slightly higher ground than the more damaged neighborhoods of the city, it had been spared the ravages of the floodwaters. A portable marquee on the lawn advertised a sermon never given, the last one planned for the Sunday before the flood: “The Dark Hurricane of the Soul.”