Blood Memory

money going to shrinks.”

“Why do you care?”

He lays his forearms on the roof and leans toward me. “’Cause you think your shit don’t stink. You look in my direction and you don’t even see me. In the daytime, anyway. But at night it’s a different story, isn’t it? At night, I’m just the guy you’re looking for. I’ve heard about you, Miss Cat in the Hat. You like to party, don’t you? People still remember you from high school. The rich girl who loved to have fun. They still remember your aunt, too. Same story, only worse.”

“Exactly what do you do for my grandfather?”

“Things he’s too old to do himself now. Things other people are squeamish about.” Billy lights a cigarette and blows smoke across the roof at me. “I ain’t squeamish.”

I’ll bet. “Have you fired the Remington 700 from the gun safe lately?”

A bemused smile. “You’re a sneaky little piece, aren’t you?”

Suddenly I’ve had all I can take from this grease-slick urban cowboy. “You know what? I’m tired of your act. I think we ought to bring my grandfather into this conversation.”

Billy’s smile only broadens, and I know I’ve made a mistake. “That’s what I was thinking, too. You’ve been pissing him off quite a bit lately. He’s moving heaven and earth to save this town with that casino, and you’re busting your ass trying to smear the family name. He doesn’t appreciate that at all. You could ruin the whole deal, in fact. So let’s go talk to him.”

I open the Audi’s door. “I have to go somewhere first. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

Before I can hit the lock button, Billy yanks open the passenger door and puts a boot on the seat. “Not twenty minutes from now. Now.”

Without thinking about it, I reach behind my back, yank the Walther from the waistband of my pants, and aim it over the roof at his chest.

“This isn’t a pellet gun, Billy. In case you were wondering.”

His eyes focus on the barrel of the gun, and his smile begins to fade. Billy Neal probably carries a gun more often than not, but I don’t think he expected to find himself in this situation before seven in the morning.

“Now,” I say quietly, “take your fucking boot off my seat and back away from the car.”

“You’re one crazy bitch,” he says, laughing softly. “I heard you were, but I didn’t believe it until…”

“Now? Or last night on the island?”

The smile returns. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, I think you do.”

“You and me are gonna have some fun one of these days, honey. Like I said, I know about you. Incest is best, right?”

The blood drains from my face. What does he know about me? I want to ask, but I know he’ll only torture me any way he can.

“Get away from my fucking car!” I yell, brandishing the gun.

Billy doesn’t move. “You haven’t chambered a round.”

“There’s already one in the pipe.”

I’m only quoting jargon I’ve heard from Sean, but it’s enough to wipe the last of the smile from Billy’s face. His boot slides back across the seat and down to the gravel.

“Shut the door,” I order.

When he does, I reach down with my free hand and hit the lock button. Then I climb in, close the door, and start the engine.

Before I can pull away, Billy leans down to the passenger window. He makes a peace sign with his fingers, reverses it, then lays the V over his lips and flicks his tongue up and down between his fingers. My stomach does a slow roll. I’d love to shoot him, but I’d never make my meeting with Malik if I did. Instead, I put the car in gear and spray the asshole with gravel as I peel away from the slave quarters I once called home.

Chapter 41

My drive to New Orleans isn’t filled with thoughts of Nathan Malik, but of my aunt Ann. Though I’ve never spent much time with her, she has left a deep impression. Ann is the beauty of the family-no small feat considering my mother’s looks-and she was an overachiever until her second year of college. Head cheerleader and valedictorian in high school. Winner of the local Junior Miss pageant. Full music scholarship to Tulane. Named Queen of the Natchez Confederate Pageant in her sophomore year of college. Then she entered a profound depression and tried to kill herself with an overdose of pills. Grandpapa had her committed, and when she was released two months later, everyone-including Ann-acted as though she had miraculously been healed.

She wasn’t.

But that breakdown happened before I was born. I knew Ann as the life of every family gathering-those she attended, anyway. Though four years older than my mother, Ann always seemed a decade younger. She knew clothes like nobody else. Her body was built for fashion; she could make off-the-rack stuff look like haute couture. In photos dating from the seventies-when she was just out of high school-she has the athletic body of a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model. But by the mideighties, she was cadaverously thin, and in snapshots from that period her eyes have the glaze I usually attribute to cocaine.

Whatever the source of her energy, Ann was something no one else in the DeSalle family ever quite managed to be-cool. She taught me how to dance, how to dress, how to wear makeup. She caught me smoking my first cigarette-stolen from her pack-and shared it with me. She gave me pointers on French kissing and told me how to get rid of guys whose attention I didn’t want. She advised me always to have a guy waiting in the wings-even if I was married-because the guy you were with could and probably would betray you. Keeping another guy on a string wasn’t cheating on your steady beau, she said, it was just looking out for yourself. And that, I figured, was the way cool girls worked it.

But coolness doesn’t age well. As I got older, I overheard my mother getting calls at all hours of the night, and sometimes leaving to drive hundreds of miles to rescue Ann, who by this time-I later learned-had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Riding the highs of manic episodes, she would disappear for weeks at a time. Once the Mexican police found her working as a waitress in a Tijuana bar, thanks to an international search my grandfather had initiated. I’ve often wondered if waitress was a euphemism for what Ann was really doing when they found her in that bar.

But what I remember most about Ann was her obsession with having a baby. At times this fixation seemed the root of her mental illness. Because I left home for college at sixteen, I missed many of the travails of her quest for infertility treatment. All I know is that nothing ever panned out, and the fault lies with her, not her first two husbands. Only a teenager on speed could keep up with her during her manic periods, and no one-not even my mother-can stand to be with her when she’s in the pit of depression. It’s so unfair, really. I had no desire to become pregnant, yet I’m carrying a child in my womb. Ann was desperate to conceive, but it never happened.

What brought her to Nathan Malik’s door? Was it bipolar disorder? Or emerging memories of sexual abuse? If Malik will stop playing games with me, I could have my answer in ninety minutes.

The sign for Angola Penitentiary flashes past on my right. I usually think of the island when I see that sign, think of it and then shut the memories away. But today the image that comes to me will not be banished. It’s the one-room clinic where Grandpapa treats the black families who live on the island. The clinic where ten-year-old Ann had her emergency appendectomy. A legend in our family, the story is always the same, even in its details. A storm washes away the bridge and the boats…Ann suddenly develops a hot appendix…Grandpapa and Ivy work by the light of a Coleman lantern. Ann has a severe infection, but she survives, and the crowd of laborers standing watch outside cheers in jubilation.

Yet today, a new and terrible connection closes in my brain. What if Ann’s problem wasn’t her appendix? What if my grandfather had been molesting her? Could he have gotten her pregnant? Is it possible that the “emergency appendectomy” was actually an abortion? My God. If it was an abortion-and he somehow botched the procedure-could that have been what ruined Ann’s chances for conception in later life? Before speculating any further, I dial Michael Wells’s cell phone.