She said, “A man has vowed to kill an innocent young girl and you want to argue the legality—if I understand you right—of placing a death notice in the paper?”
He liked that, the deadpan delivery. Jack said, “Well, I guess it’s not something you could go to jail over.”
“Who would know?”
He nodded at that. “You’re right.”
She said, “What else can I tell you?”
He thought a moment and said deadpan, giving it back to her, “If you saw the colonel right now, would you touch him?”
With just the barest trace of a smile she said, “You’re having a good time, aren’t you?”
“It’s different,” Jack said, with the same hint of a smile. “What’s the guy’s name, the colonel?”
“Dagoberto Godoy.”
“Is he kinda fat and has a little thin mustache?”
“He has a mustache, but he’s trim, you might say good-looking.”
Jack said, “Oh.”
He brought Amelita Sosa out in a plastic body bag on a wheeled mortuary cot, past empty cars parked along the back of the infirmary building, to the hearse standing in the sun, its rear door open. With the cot touching the step plate he squeezed the handles to collapse the front legs first, then the rear legs as he slipped the cot into the hearse, pushed down the lock button on the door, and closed it firmly.
Jack glanced over at Sister Lucy in her Calvins and heels talking to the doctor who had been in Nicaragua and two Daughters of Charity, the little bowlegged one Sister Teresa Victor, who had been here about fifty years. Jack stood for several moments looking off, hands clasped behind his dark suit in a patient funeral director’s pose, thinking that was quite an attractive girl he’d helped into the body bag, not like any leper he had ever seen in pictures. He had touched her zipping up the bag, making sure the zipper didn’t get snagged in her flowery shirt. He hadn’t noticed any brown spots on her face or arms. He gave Sister Lucy another look before strolling up to the driver’s side of the hearse and getting in. By the time he’d started the engine and revved it a couple of times the passenger side door opened and Sister Lucy got in.
“I don’t mean to rush you, but Amelita’s back there in a plastic bag.”
“Oh, my God.” She turned in the seat.
“Not yet. Wait’ll we’re out.”
“Can she breathe?”
“Enough, I imagine.”
A car came from the drive in front of the infirmary and fell in behind them. There were three cars in line by the time they passed through the gate. Jack watched them in his outside mirror.
“Okay. Now.”
Sister Lucy turned to slide open the glass partition, then got all the way around, up on her knees.
“Can you reach it?”
“Barely.”
“Pull the cot toward you.”
She said, “There.” Then began speaking in Spanish to Amelita, hunched over the seat back, her linen jacket pulled up and the curve of her hip in the tight jeans right there next to him. This was different, all right. He glanced at her hip, the neat round shape, without really looking. She was the toucher—what would she do if he touched her? There was touching and there was touching. He could touch the girls he knew bent over the seat and not one of them would think anything of it. They might say, “Hey,” but they wouldn’t be surprised. It wouldn’t mean anything. An affectionate pat. Maybe a little squeeze.
He kept his eyes on the road and began to think about the two movies he had seen on TV in just the past week. In one of them Richard Burton and two other guys are on a life raft with Joan Collins after the ship they were on is torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. She seems to go for Richard, but holds him off when he makes the moves and Richard can’t figure out why this girl in the strange-looking playsuit would turn him down. It’s not till the end of the picture you find out that Joan Collins is a nun and the strange-looking white outfit she has on is probably nun underwear. Joan Collins was pretty young then. The other movie was the one where Deborah Kerr, in a pure white nun’s habit framing her face, her nice nose, is with Robert Mitchum, a U.S. marine, on an island in the South Pacific during the war. Most of the time they’re hiding from the Japs in a cave, Deborah and Robert Mitchum alone, looking at each other. You know sooner or later he’s going to make the moves on her, but you don’t know what she’s going to do. Both movies about guys and nuns in intimate situations facing danger together. Something else occurred to Jack while he was thinking about it. He remembered from the TV listings that both movies first came out in 1957. He wasn’t sure why he remembered it, though he did notice that kind of thing. And in 1957, when he was twelve years old, he was in love with his seventh-grade teacher, Sister Mary Lucille. Lucille? Lucy? Take it another step. Ten years or so later he fell sort of in love with Sally Field, with her cute little nose, who happened to be in that television series “The Flying Nun” and wore that gull-winged wimple, the head covering, that was not unlike the one the Daughters of Charity used to wear, the same Daughters of Charity that were at Carville.
For whatever that was worth.
There were girls he knew who loved to speculate about signs. Helene would say, “Hey, spooky,” if he told her about it. Especially if they were smoking a little dope.
The leggy Calvins came around on the seat.
“Amelita has to go to the bathroom.”
“We just left the place.”
“Does that mean you won’t stop?”
They weren’t even to St. Gabriel. It was there ahead of them, a block of storefronts and a few cars, the town half dead on a Sunday afternoon. He crept through the main intersection and kept going until he saw the Exxon station on the right, no cars at the pumps, and rolled toward the shade of the canopy. Restrooms would be on the other side of the station. He’d pull around and back in, like he was getting air for the rear tires and sneak Amelita into the Women’s.
There was a café across the road, four young guys between a car and a pickup truck, hanging out, looking this way now. He could give St. Gabriel something to talk about all week. This girl, honest to God, gets out of the back end of a hearse . . .
“I don’t think it’s open.”
He braked to a sudden stop near the row of gas pumps and Sister Lucy reached out to the dashboard.
“You see anyone around?”
No, he didn’t and the service doors were down. He should’ve noticed that, no business, nobody home. They’d left a light on inside the station. He could see it through the big spring tire special painted on the window. There were credit card emblems on the glass door and another decal he knew something about: VAS, black letters on a gold field, vidette alarm systems guarding the place against breaking and entering. The place looked old, run-down, not the kind you’d bother with.
Now what? There was the café across the road, the farm boys still looking this way. He glanced at the outside mirror and his gaze held on a car parked directly behind them even with the gas pumps.
A black Chrysler sedan. One of the cars that had followed them out of the center. A guy in a tan suit came out from behind the wheel. Now another guy joined him at the front of the car. Dark-haired guys, Latinos. Now they were out of sight, behind the hearse.
“Tell Amelita to play dead and lock your door. Right now. Quick.”
Sister Lucy did, just like that, without looking at him or asking questions. She straightened around again as one of the Latinos appeared at her window looking in. A little guy. He touched the window and said something in Spanish. She said in English, “I can hear you. What is it?” The guy began speaking in Spanish again, Sister Lucy looking up at him about a foot away from her, listening.
Jack turned as the other one came up on his side, past him and around to the front of the hearse. Both were little guys, 130-pounders. Jack liked that. What he didn’t like were their suit coats and open sport shirts. Not migrant bean pickers, were they? The one on Sister Lucy’s side wore sunglasses, his print sh
irt was silk and his hair was carefully combed. The other one was Creole-looking, a light-skinned black guy with pointy cheekbones and nappy hair. He stared at the windshield of the hearse while the face close behind Sister Lucy continued to speak to her in Spanish.
“He wants you to open the back. He says they’re friends of the deceased and would like to see her a last time before she’s buried. It has to be now because they have business, they’re unable to come to the funeral.”
Jack said, “How does he know who’s in there? Ask him.” He waited while Sister Lucy spoke to the face with sunglasses. The guy said something, one word, and hunched over trying to see into the back of the hearse, squinting, shading his eyes against his reflection in the glass.
Sister Lucy looked at Jack quickly, about to speak. But the face with the sunglasses straightened and began talking again, his expression solemn.
“He says they want to say a prayer for the departed. He says they’re determined to do this, or they wouldn’t be able to live with themselves.”
Jack waited because she kept looking at him, her eyes alive, as though she wanted to say more but couldn’t, the face so close behind her. Jack nodded, taking his time, making a decision. “Tell him I wish I could help him, but it’s against the law to show a body on the street.” She started to turn and he said, “Wait. But tell him he’s gonna see one if his partner doesn’t move out of the way, now, ’cause we’re leaving.” He saw her eyes, for a moment, open wider and saw the guy’s face staring at him. Jack said, “He understands, but tell him anyway. Put it in your own words.”
She said, “Jack,” her voice low, “look at me. He has a gun.” The fingers of her right hand slipped inside her jacket at the waist. “Right here.”
The man was talking again and she listened, still looking at Jack. “He wants to know why we’re being difficult.” Translating as the face with the sunglasses spoke through the window. “He says it will only take a minute. He wants you to turn off the motor and get out. With the key.” She listened again and then said, “If you try to drive off someone will be dead in this coach. If there isn’t someone already.”
He saw her eyes and then she was turning away, saying something back to him now in rapid Spanish, fluent, an edge to her tone. The window framed the face with the sunglasses and the BIG SPRING TIRE SPECIAL behind him, lettered on the window of the empty station with the light on inside and the decals on the door.
Jack said, “Don’t get him mad, okay?” He took the key from the ignition and she turned back to him as he opened the door. “But keep talking.” He got out, pushed the lock button down and closed the door.
The farm boys across the street were uncapping beers in the sunlight, still watching, a boy turning his head to remark, speculate, force a laugh, fool with the bill of his tractor cap. Trying to liven up a Sunday afternoon in St. Gabriel. Jack had known some farm boys at Angola, one who’d killed a man with a beer bottle, drunk.
He’d known guys like the face with the sunglasses and the Creole-looking guy standing in front of the hearse, the guy turning to face him as he came around. They’d stand like that in the Big Yard looking for some new guy to turn out, give him that sleepy mean look and not move out of the way. The dead-eyed stare saying, Walk around me, man. But knowing if you did you might as well hand over your balls, they weren’t yours anymore. He would walk around this one; there was nothing to prove. But you didn’t have to walk around any of them in the yard if, one, you walked over them or, two, you used your head. If you knew before they tried to turn you out you were smarter than they were, smarter than at least 95 percent of the entire prison population . . .
Smarter than these two assholes giving him that old familiar look. Jesus, he hoped so, if he had learned anything of value in those thirty-five months. A good rule was, whenever you were with people whose intentions were in doubt, the first thing you did was look for a way out or something to hit them with.
He nodded and smiled at the Creole-looking guy with the nappy hair as he walked past him. “How you doing, partner?” And said to the face with the sunglasses, the guy stepping away from the hearse, “This never happened to me before. Long as I’ve been in the funeral business.” Jack kept moving toward the station.
The guy said, “Hey, where you going?” Coming after him now, the Creole-looking guy closing in, too.
Jack stopped at the door and half turned. “I have to get something.”
The face with the sunglasses, close to him, said, “No, you can’t go in there. Look.” He reached past Jack and tried to turn the knob on the glass, wood-framed door. “See? Is locked. You can’t go in there.”
Jack said, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” He looked around, frowning, and said, “Shit. Now what am I gonna do? I have to go to the toilet and the key’s inside there. See, it’s on the desk. Has a hunk a board wired to it so nobody’ll steal it. Toilet keys being as valuable as they are.”
The face with the sunglasses said, “Go someplace else. Tha’s no problem for you.”
They stood close to each other. Jack said in a quiet voice, “I think we both have a problem. You want my car key and I want the key to the toilet. We’re a couple of desperate characters, aren’t we? Desperadoes. You know what I’m saying to you?” The face with the sunglasses staring at him, not answering. “Only I’m more desperate than you are, partner. You don’t believe it I’ll show you.”
Jack turned to face the door, took a short place-kick sort of step, his eyes on the VIDETTE ALARM SYSTEMS decal, and punched the sole of a black loafer through the plate glass.
The blast of sound from the burglar alarm was so immediate and loud he barely heard the glass shatter. Even louder than he’d expected. He looked around at the guy in the sunglasses edging away. The Creole-looking guy didn’t move and the other one had to gesture to him. Jack watched them move off in a hurry, turned, and there was Sister Lucy’s face in the side window, staring. And beyond the hearse the farm boys across the road, their heads raised to the clanging racket, heads turning now to follow the black Chrysler peeling its tires out of there, from shade into sunlight and gone, down the blacktop toward the interstate. Jack watched too, thinking, Well, there were other roads home, with bathrooms along the way. He had not felt this good in . . . he couldn’t remember.
The sister had a different look for him as he slipped in behind the wheel. Not exactly wide-eyed, but sort of stunned, lips parted, eyes staring in what he would like to think was respectful amazement. She didn’t say a word. He didn’t either until they were pulling away from that urgent sound and he gave her his nice-guy smile.
“That’s why I only went into hotel rooms.”
5
* * *
AS SOON AS JACK turned onto Camp Street he saw the white Cadillac stretch limo in front of the soup kitchen.
Right away he tried to think of a clever line, a quick, offhand comment. He would have said to Helene the first thing that came to mind: “Boy, you must really cook good.” For Lucy he’d try a little harder.
But then, when he saw the way she was looking at the car, not the least bit surprised, curiosity messed up his concentration. So he didn’t say anything. He angled across the one-way street to bring the hearse in close behind the limo. Then, just as Sister Lucy was saying, “That’s my dad,” a black guy in a tan chauffeur suit was getting out.
Giving Jack a crack at another line. There was another obvious one. But now he was thinking that if her dad rode around in a stretch limo this was a nun from a very wealthy family. Which he’d never heard of before. But could explain how she’d bought the VW in Nicaragua—something he’d been wondering about. Except she would have taken a vow of poverty along with chastity and obedience. . . . And by this time it was too late to think of anything clever. She was out of the hearse as her dad made his appearance.
He came ducking out of the car quick and agile, that wiry kind who reaches his fifties with still a lot of boy in him. Jack saw his energy, then his confidence in
the relaxed way he stood: arms open to his daughter but with the elbows tucked in, cocking his head now, holding that pose as he called to her. “There’s my girl. Sis, I mean to tell you, you look just great.” He seemed easy to type, coming out of a limo in his soft calfskin jacket and tailored jeans down on his hips, his cowboy boots. But Jack wasn’t sure if he looked like a retired rodeo star or a movie producer. He had seen movie producers on location in New Orleans, had watched them shoot in the Quarter realizing, shit, that’s what he should be, a movie actor. It was strange to see Sister Lucy going into a man’s arms, giving him a kiss on the cheek. He held onto her, patting her back with big hands for a man his size, a ring gleaming there, which Jack squinted to appraise. Now they were talking face to face—she didn’t have his nose—her dad keeping a hand on her arm.
Jack turned to slide open the glass partition. He could see the crown of Amelita’s head, her body encased in the plastic bag. “You okay?” She murmured something and he saw her move. “Hang on. It won’t be long.” Amelita seemed like a very patient girl. She didn’t have Bambi eyes, but they were nice ones, a liquid brown.
The plan was to drop Lucy off so she could get her car. She’d said “my car,” which had sounded strange, vow-of-poverty-wise, another one to add to the list of questions he might ask her sometime. He’d take Amelita to the funeral home and Sister Lucy would call later with the next move. Some plan. Leo would be there by seven. It was now a quarter to—
Sister Lucy was motioning to him, her dad looking this way. Jack got out and walked over. She said, “Jack Delaney, my dad,” letting it go at that.
Her dad put his hand out and said, “Dick Nichols, Jack. It’s a pleasure.” Rough hand and a rough face up close; he had curly hair going gray but a dark mustache. Rodeo star, not a movie producer. “I don’t envy you your job, caring for the dead, but I guess somebody has to do it. My broker and’n accountant I had one time were buried from Mullen’s. I ‘magine you’ve heard of the Saint Clair funeral people in Lafayette . . .”