Maybe it was time to mess with a couple of people’s heads as well as set things straight with somebody who thinks it’s all right to pop other people in the face, Bertrand thought.
He changed the last five dollars of the money his grandmother had given him into silver and used the pay phone on the front of the grocery store to call long-distance information. “Yeah, Kovick’s Flowers in Algiers, that’s it, you got it,” he said. “Snap it up, too, okay? This is an emergency situation.”
He looked at his watch. It was 4:56. Come on, come on, he thought. “Hey, ain’t y’all heard of computers? What’s the holdup?” he danced up and down on the balls of his feet. “All right, say it again.” he wrote the number on the grocery store wall. “Tell your supervisor to give you a raise. Tell her Bertrand Melancon give her the green light on that.”
He punched the number into the pay phone, his ulcers singing, his head light as a balloon with the adrenaline pumping through his system.
Be there, be there, be there, he prayed, because he knew if he didn’t connect with Kovick now, his courage would wane and fail him later, as it always had.
After the eighth ring, Bertrand almost gave up. Then someone picked up the receiver and said, “Kovick’s Flowers. Could I help you?”
The voice at the other end of the connection made Bertrand’s bowels turn to water.
“Could I help you?” the voice repeated.
“No, you can help yourself, motherfucker.”
There was a pause, more of fatigue than surprise. “Is this who I think it is?”
“Yeah, Bertrand Melancon, the brother of Eddy Melancon, if that name mean anything to you. Know a cracker drives a blue Merc, looks like somebody beat on his face wit’ an ugly stick when he was a kid?”
“No.”
“Think hard. Carries a PI badge. Thinks the niggers are gonna start tap-dancing and spitting watermelon seeds when he rolls the gold on them?”
“You seem to be a slow learner, kid. Why don’t you drop by and let’s have a talk?”
“No, this time you listen to me. Your man was here with a fat envelope full of dead presidents. Guess what he was doing. Cutting his own deal for them blood stones and selling your sorry ass down the drain. Maybe you ought to hire a higher class of circus freaks to do your dirty work.”
“Where can I get in touch with this guy?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care. I called for another reason. Maybe I deserved what you done to me. Maybe I went there axing to get bitch-slapped and kicked in the ass in front of people. But I learned something there you ain’t gonna understand. I learned I ain’t no killer. I couldn’t cap you, no matter what you done to me and Eddy. So I come out of this wit’ something you didn’t figure on. I know I ain’t like you, a killer done cut off a man’s legs, and that’s worth more to me than them blood stones.”
The line was silent.
“You there?” Bertrand said.
“Where are you?” the voice said.
“In your head, just like you been in mine. But not no more,” Bertrand said, and hung up.
Wow, he thought, his skin tingling like he’d just walked out of an igloo.
Chapter 25
THE WHITE FLICKER of lightning in the trees surrounding her house made Melanie Baylor think of the summer storms she had known as a child growing up north of Chicago. The family had lived on Lake Michigan, in a neighborhood of hardwood trees and elevated lawns and sailboats tacking in the wind against a background of azure water that seemed as large as the sea. The storms could tear at the lake’s surface and torment the trees, but the big two-story house she had lived in was a safe place, one where her father, a stockbroker, smoked a pipe in front of the fireplace and was always full of good cheer. Even during the winter, when the boathouse was locked up and the lake plated with ice, the house and the small town where they shopped were safe places, far from wars and urban unrest. Melanie knew she would marry and move away one day, perhaps to the East Coast, but she would always remain a midwesterner and her real home would always be located inside chestnut and beech and maple trees on the shores of Lake Michigan.
That was before her father had a massive coronary in the bed of his mistress in Naperville. That was before the Securities and Exchange Commission investigated his brokerage service. That was before his creditors sued the estate and took every cent the family had, including the home on Lake Michigan.
Melanie lifted the bottle of bourbon from the cupboard shelf and poured an inch into her glass. Then she poured again and got ice from the refrigerator and placed three cubes in the glass and added water. She could hear rain on the roof now and the trees in the backyard were wet and dark green when the lightning flickered in the clouds. Otis and Thelma were still at the grocery store in New Iberia. By Melanie’s estimate, the combination of bad weather and driving distance and the amount of groceries they had to buy ensured they would be gone for at least an hour and a half. She would enjoy her bourbon and her solitude until then, and perhaps fix one strong drink just before they arrived back home, and that would be it for the evening.
She wasn’t an alcoholic. That’s what her first husband had been. One thing was for sure. She would never be like him. That was not up for debate.
Otis didn’t take her to task because she had lost her abstemious ways, nor did he monitor the amount that was gone each day from the Chianti bottle in the pantry or the decanter of brandy in the dining room. Otis was a good man, she told herself with a degree of self-fondness, proud of the way she had come to accept him and his physical ways and the smell of testosterone his clothes sometimes carried.
She showered and washed her hair and dried herself in front of the mirror. She turned sideways and raised herself slightly on her toes and looked at the flatness of her stomach, the firmness of her breasts, the sun- browned, almost tallowlike smoothness of her skin. She felt an imperious sexual urge that made her wet her lips and tilt back her head, creating an erotic self-image in her mind that made her wonder if indeed she wasn’t a narcissist. She bit down sensuously on her lower lip and removed a strand of hair from her eye. Then she slipped her feet into her sandals and, while she watched herself in the mirror, carefully blotted the drops of water off her cheeks and forehead.
She picked up her drink from the top of the toilet tank and drank. Otis thought he knew everything about her, but the reality was otherwise. Maybe she would give him a little lesson one of these nights. Her erotic power was far greater than he knew. The men who looked at her with an adventurous eye were never made to feel they were acting inappropriately. Maybe Otis should become a little more aware of the desire she could stir in others.
She put on her fluffy robe and wrapped her head with a towel and took her drink into the living room. She turned the stereo to the University’s classical music station and opened a book on her knee and sipped from her glass. Outside, the rain was blowing in a vortex that looked like spun glass in the porch light. The two-lane road in front of the house was black and slick, and across the bayou she could see lights in a backyard and a Negro man on a ladder redistributing the bricks that held down the blue felt and canvas that covered a hole in his roof left by Rita.
When would this bad weather end? When would all the problems wrought by the hurricanes just go away?
A car leaking oil smoke went by the house and turned around by the drawbridge. A moment later the car’s headlights went out. Melanie set down her drink and book and went to the window, unconsciously closing her robe at the throat.
The car was barely discernible in the darkness created by the overhang of the trees. She strained her eyes but could not tell if the driver was still inside or not. In the background, up on the drawbridge, a vehicle she never expected to see in a rural area of southern Louisiana suddenly appeared in the glow of the bridge’s overhead lights. A lavender Rolls-Royce clattered across the grid, turned by the plantation house next door, and headed down the bayou road, in the opposite direction from the parked car and the Baylor house.
She checked the lock and chain on the front door and lowered the blinds. Then she sat quietly in her chair and
