He stared boldly into Dave’s face. “Everybody has to pay the piper, Dave. All you did was put it off. You think if you can find out who killed Renee Savaria and bring some peace to her family, maybe you’ll have earned a little karma for yourself. But it don’t work that way. Nothing you do is ever going to bring back your little girl.”
Dave looked over at the handprints in the concrete. Titus had told him once they were Melaswane’s, and it was hard for Dave to reconcile the tiny impressions with the teenager he’d seen behind the register earlier.
Ruby would have been fourteen years old last month, no longer a child, but a girl on the cusp of womanhood. Dave would never see her grow up. Never see her fall in love, walk her down the aisle or hold his and Claire’s grandchildren in his arms. And suddenly the loss of what he’d never even known was almost as painful as the memories of what he’d once had.
He glanced back at Titus, and the older man’s smile was sad. “I’m glad you stopped by, Dave. I had you on my mind just the other day and I wondered if I’d ever see you again. But I got to be honest with you. Having you back in N’ awlins feels a little like having a time bomb strapped to my chest.”
It was still too early to show up at the Hotel Monteleone, so Dave walked aimlessly through the Quarter, deciding if he wanted to wait and talk to Angelette or head back home. Ever since his conversation with Titus, he’d felt a strange apprehension creeping over him. As twilight settled across the city, the music and laughter blaring from the bars and clubs became the beckoning song of a very dangerous siren, and Dave knew better than to linger so close to temptation.
He walked back up St. Peters to the square and sat down to watch the sidewalk artists pack up their paints and easels for the night. The crowds of tourists had thinned, and Dave had a little corner of the park to himself. It was a pleasant evening, warm and fragrant. The pink glow on the horizon faded to gray and a breeze blew in off the water.
He sat for the longest time, trying to organize his thoughts into neat little compartments, but his mind was too jumbled. He was tired and depressed, and felt himself drifting into one of those black moods he’d been battling for as long as he could remember.
He wished he could blame all his problems on Angelette the way Titus had earlier, but the truth of the matter was he’d been his own worst enemy long before he’d ever laid eyes on Angelette Lapierre.
From the time his father had ended a four-day bender by running his car off the Atchafayla Basin Bridge when Dave was just fifteen, he’d had a tendency to self-destruct. To this day, he couldn’t say why he’d felt the need to escape his old man’s death by tying one on with his buddies after the funeral. It wasn’t as if he’d been racked with grief. He barely even knew his father.
But after a few snorts of whiskey chased by a couple of six-packs, Dave had discovered he didn’t give a shit about much of anything. Not school. Not work. Certainly not about a mother who, after a few weeks of hysterical weeping, spent the bulk of their life insurance check on a new wardrobe and a second-hand Cadillac that she drove out to a honky-tonk near the airport every night.
At first, she made a point of introducing the men she brought home, as if that somehow sanctified her behavior. But after Dave took a swing at one of her dates, she started making sure he wasn’t home when she entertained. Sometimes he’d go stay with Marsilius, but most of the time he hung out all night drinking and getting into fistfights with anyone who looked at him the wrong way.
And then Claire came into his life. They lived in the same neighborhood and had been friends as kids. But as they got older, Dave had started keeping his distance. Claire was the kind of girl who got noticed by a lot of guys, and Dave had considered her out of his league. Not in social standing, but because he never thought she’d look twice at someone with his reputation.
Then one night he’d stopped in for a burger and fries at the corner restaurant where she worked part-time. He’d looked up from the menu to find her smiling down at him, and that had been it for him.
Marrying Claire had been the best thing that ever happened to him. Because of her, he’d managed to turn his life around, and things had been good for a lot of years before the old restlessness stole back over him when he wasn’t looking. He’d started having a beer with lunch and a couple of drinks after work, just to take the edge off his day. For a long time he’d been able to keep his drinking under control, but then Ruby disappeared and he hadn’t bothered anymore. The beer with lunch became four or five, and he started keeping a bottle in a desk drawer at work.
After he was suspended, he would start drinking as soon as he got up, and keep going until well after dark. Then he’d take his gun and go out looking for Ruby. He’d walk up and down the street, knocking on doors, accusing their friends and neighbors, people he’d known for years, of keeping something from him. Everyone understood his desperation at first, but they eventually got fed up with the harassment, and a couple of times the police were called. The responding officers were always polite and sympathetic, and instead of running him in, would take him home and help Claire put him to bed.
When he got up the next day, the cycle would start all over again, until Claire finally had enough. He’d found a note propped against the sugar bowl one morning, saying she’d gone over to stay with her grandmother while he looked for another place to live because it was over between them.
He had packed his bags and moved out that same day, and he hadn’t seen Claire again until he’d gone down to sign the divorce papers in her attorney’s office. He hadn’t known what to say to her that day, how to tell her how sorry he was for all the hurt and humiliation he’d caused her, so he hadn’t said anything at all. When their gazes finally met, he’d smiled and shrugged and watched her eyes fill up with tears.
Afterward, she’d told him that she just couldn’t stand by and watch while he hit rock bottom. Dave had thought at the time it was a strange thing for her to say, because it should have been plain to anyone that he’d already bottomed out. He had nowhere to go but up.
But Claire knew him better than he knew himself. What came after the divorce were periods of sobriety followed by weeks and weeks of hard drinking, where one day faded into the next. Where he would wake up in a strange place, smelling of sweat and vomit and stale whiskey, and not knowing where he was or how he’d gotten there. He would promise himself each time that it was over. That was it. Rock bottom. But somehow there was always a greater depth of hell that he could plumb.
Finally, Marsilius had dragged him to an AA meeting. Dave never even knew his uncle drank, let alone had a problem, but evidently it was a Creasy family affliction. Marsilius had been lucky enough to get some help early on or else he would have been right there in the gutter alongside Dave, he’d said.
With his uncle’s support, Dave had been sober for eight months now, and before his last lapse, he’d had two years of sobriety. Most days lately he felt stronger and steadier than he had in a long time, but tonight, with the scent of magnolias heavy in the air and the echo of a trumpet drifting on the breeze, he knew he was heading into rough waters.
Fifteen
The temperature dropped in the early evening and the French doors in the ballroom at the Hotel Monteleone were thrown open to allow the crowd to spill out into the courtyard. The well-heeled throng that had assembled to help reelect the Orleans Parish district attorney was an incestuous mix of New Orleans royalty, old-time politicos and a greedy new breed of power brokers that had swarmed into the city after the flood.
A zydeco band played from a dais at one end of the ballroom as white-coated waiters moved through the glittering crowd with trays of champagne and hors d’ oeuvres. It was a semiformal event. Most of the men wore suits and ties, but some were more casual, and Dave blended in well enough in the sports coat and pants he’d brought to change into.
The party was not his kind of thing, but some of the faces looked familiar. He’d lived in New Orleans for most of his life and he recognized the local politicians and some of the old-guard movers and shakers that had been brokering backroom deals for decades. Louisiana politics was serious business, always had been, and the passion cut across all social and economic boundaries. Dave could remember the way his old man would lay out drunk for weeks at a time, but come election day, he always managed to sober up long enough to drag his ass to the polls. He’d cast his ballot for the incumbent because, like so many other Louisianans, he didn’t much cotton to change.
