on his neck. Now he had one too. Just like Bevode.
A little creative tension maybe. Two widowmakers applying for the same job. Okay. He kept his hands at his sides. He didn’t want to touch anything. The walls probably leaked shit. His move. Hiram did it with Trin’s tiger tooth in the kitchen.
He pushed through the wedding crowd and spied Hiram stooped over, with a platter of finger food balanced precariously on his shoulder. Gracefully the old man sidled up. “Take one of the crabmeats, they pretty good. When this tray empty you follow me back into the house.”
Broker stood like a hard-bitten scarecrow staked to the grass among the whirling finery and bright eyes of the wedding guests. He glowered at a sharp blonde in a black dress with a Nikon who snapped several shots of him. Finally Hiram reappeared with an empty tray and he followed him around the back of the house and through a door into the steaming kitchen.
A young black woman in a drenched white apron and a glaze of sweat stood at a stainless steel sink counter drying and sorting a huge lump of plastic forks, knives, and spoons. Broker tapped Hiram on the shoulder and pointed at the piles of plastic.
Hiram giggled. “Mr. Cyrus use that plastic shit over and over to cut the overhead. Never miss a chance to make a buck. He ’fraid somebody steal his silverware if he put it out there. C’mon, we go in here.”
He pushed open a door and they entered a narrow room with folding chairs and a banquet table. Two waiters were sitting down sipping from cups and smoking. When they saw Hiram and Broker they both quickly rose and left. Hiram pointed to a chair. Broker sat. Hiram took a chair across the table.
The old man dug in his pocket and produced the gold chain. “See, all cleaned up.” The chain and the tooth sparkled in Broker’s hand and he noticed that a narrow sliver of polished bone had been affixed to the chain next to the gold-capped tooth. He raised an eyebrow.
“Maybe that tooth help you up north but down here I give you a little added protection.” Hiram smiled, showing even nicotine-stained teeth. “That a piece out of a black cat’s tail. Go on, put it on.”
Broker slipped the pendant over his head and tucked it in his shirt. He squinted at Hiram and eased back the lapel of his jacket so Hiram could see the Colt.45 slung in the shoulder rig. “You know who I am, old man.”
“Hey, be cool, I just the messenger.” Hiram winked.
Broker opened his mouth to ask a question but Hiram wagged a wrinkled index finger in his face. “Miss Lola hope you a smart man, so be smart and listen to somebody who been breathing and kicking for seventy-six years. She send you down here to listen not play badass dick.” Hiram took the hearing aid from his ear. He grinned. “Yeah, and I still got most all my teeth too.”
Hiram leaned back in his chair and slipped a flat half-pint of Old Granddad from his pocket. He raised it to his lips, drank and sighed. He held the flask out to Broker. Broker declined and handed it back. Hiram put it back in his pocket.
“Now,” said Hiram, as he fished the stump of a cigar from another pocket and put it in his mouth unlit. “Some things you should know. Mr. Cyrus and Mr. Bevode think they real smart, too. ’Specially Mr. Bevode.
“Man is like a child, swing his skinny ass in the bathroom, sing to the mirror like old Elvis Presley. Ain’t hardly a man at all, more like a dog, wish he was a dog too, then he could lick his own balls.
“Mr. Bevode grew up way back in the swamp so he say he can smell things. So right after he come to work here, he always looking for ways to get on Mr. Cyrus’s good side. Problem was, that’s where Miss Lola always was. Well, he sniffed around Miss Lola and think he smell something and so he go diggin’, just like a damn dog.
“He go paw around in this courthouse down in Jack Bayou where she born and he discover that Miss Lola’s maternal grandmother was Octoroon. You know what that mean down here?”
Broker nodded his head.
“Well, Mr. Bevode got out his pencil stub and sat down at the kitchen table and do his multiplying on the back of a grocery bag and come up with Miss Lola having one sixty-fourth Nigra blood. Tongue hanging out he scoot to Mr. Cyrus. And alla sudden Miss Lola look less like some pretty Baton Rouge white trash gal who better herself and she start looking more like Lena Horne. And there go Miss Lola’s plans to have a family in this fine big house. Mr. Cyrus been trying to get rid of her ever since. They have separate bedrooms for five years so it don’t surprise me she let you know she a bit lonely.” Hiram grinned lasciviously.
“Why doesn’t he divorce her?” asked Broker.
“What if everybody know Mr. Cyrus a dumb fool marry a nigger gal. And she say half all this hers. They deadlocked. I said she smart. Didn’t say she was ever gonna make saint. But you be gentle with her, not force her like Mr. Cyrus used to do.”
Broker cocked his head. “Used to do?”
“Uh-huh. She won’t let him touch her no more. Not after what happened.” Hiram paused and studied Broker’s face. “Now this either goin’ scare you away or it gonna piss you off. I hope it piss you off.”
Broker wiped sweat from his chin and lit a Spirit. The cigarette turned soggy in the humid air.
“You sure sweat a lot,” said Hiram. “You gonna carry that piece down here, get you a baggy sports shirt…”
Then Hiram’s words sliced the steamy air into cold autopsy slices. “Mr. Cyrus got likkered blind drunk one night and beat her with that whip he keep and then he get the urge to fuck her when she bloody…push her down the stairs. After that night Miss Lola find out she can’t have no baby ever.”
“Why does she stay?” asked Broker.
“Man hate hot and forget. Woman hate ice cold forever. She been waiting for Mr. Cyrus want something as much as she want a child. And now that he’s found his heart’s desire maybe she been waiting for someone to appear who could help her deny it to him.” Hiram squinted. “She think that man might be you.”
“Why in the hell do
Hiram shrugged and rolled his cigar stub across his broad lips and said frankly, “Mr. Cyrus and I attached, like a cancer. Problem run in both our families.”
Broker slipped his hand in his pocket and palmed one of Nina’s hundred-dollar bills. He slid it across the table until their fingers touched. Hiram smoothly drew his hand back and dropped it in his lap.
“Royale LaPorte’s hand really in the safe in the study?” asked Broker.
Hiram’s eyes popped, polished hard as marbles. A gleam of fire deep inside. “Marie Laveau pack that dead hand in a special jar way back. Mr. Cyrus check on it every morning.”
“Where’s the key?”
“Never leaves his body. Wear it on a cord around his neck.”
“He a sound sleeper?”
“Like out cold when he been drinking and lately he been drinking, especially with Mr. Bevode gone.”
Another hundred-dollar bill moved swiftly across the table.
“That kid, Virgil, he any good?” Broker asked.
“Little dope fiend. Surprise Mr. Cyrus let him have a loaded gun. His big brother slap him up alongside the head more than once for blowin’ that toot.”
“So, not real alert.”
“Not after midnight.”
Broker stood up and walked to the small rectangular louvered window and cranked it open a few inches more and squinted at a patch of fitful sky. “Storm tonight,” he said.
Hiram grinned. “Big one. Probably tip over some of them brick and mortar graves around town. Scatter bones. Dogs be busy in the morning.”
“What would scare the shit out of Mr. Cyrus?”
Hiram grinned broadly and extended his withered right hand and delicately squeezed the shiny clip of bone on the chain around Broker’s neck. He winked elaborately.
Broker tucked the tiger tooth charm into his shirt, buttoned his sports coat, and reached over and shook Hiram’s hand.
The old man opened his palm and saw a third folded hundred. He leaned back and grinned. “Be nice if Mr. Cyrus and Mr. Bevode be gone and Miss Lola be in charge in this house. Maybe we chuck that plastic shit and be polishing the silverware again.”
Broker was out the door, pushing through the broiling kitchen onto the lawn but there was no fresh air, just a poisonous steam of magnolias and azaleas against the sticky iron lilacs. Head down, he shouldered through the
