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…”
Jack said, “I don’t think so.” Her dad’s driver, standing by the car, was watching him. Young black guy with shoulders in that tan double-breasted suit.
“Way the oil business is causing heart attacks those people stay busy, I mean to tell you.”
Sister Lucy said, “My dad lays pipe,” with her dry tone, “and builds those offshore platforms.”
“Uh-unh, I got shuck of that, Sis, before I had to eat it.” He grinned, shaking his head, and looked at Jack. “There was a time-see, I started out I was selling oil leases, then I got into drilling and lost two, what you might consider, fortunes before I was thirty years old. Blowouts, both times, wiped me clean. But back starting out, man, I scraped, borrowed, signed notes on everything we owned to put two hundred fifty thousand in a lease block. Sis’s mom says, ‘But, honey,’ “-changing his tone to sound vague-” ‘if the deal goes bust how do we eat?’ I said, ‘We eat it, sweetheart. That’s the business.’ ”
When Sister Lucy said, “How is mother?” Jack looked at her. She didn’t sound too interested.
But then when her dad glanced at his driver and said, “Clovis put her on the plane to New York this morning, she’s just fine,” Sister Lucy seemed to perk up. Jack caught it.
She said, “To buy clothes, I imagine.”
Dick Nichols said, “She isn’t going all that way to buy toothpaste. You see the light on in my office late at night, that’s me turning out hundred-dollar bills. Hey, but it’s fun. I’m in the helicopter end of the business now.” He said to Jack, “Tell you what, I’ll lease you a 214 Super-Transport Bell for ninety-five grand a month. How’s that sound? Mullen could be the first funeral home in New Orleans to offer burial at sea. Take ’em out over the Gulf a few miles, the priest reads the prayer, sprinkles on some holy water, and out they go. Listen, I’d rather have that’n get taken to Saint Louis Number One and stuck in a vault. All those people crowded in there with their statues and monuments, uh-unh. I like the country, Sis, I always have.”
She said to Jack, “My dad lives in Lafayette and my mother lives here in New Orleans.”
“I have visiting privileges. If I call first and talk sweet.”
She said to Jack, “My dad can get you into Galatoire’s without waiting in line.”
Giving him that quiet look, something between them he could feel, as her dad checked his watch and said, Hey, he’d told them seven, and told Jack he and Sis were going over to Paul’s and have them some crabs and shrimp and good conversation; stay away from politics they might just find something they could agree on-her dad grinning-now that she had her head on straight again. What did that mean? Jack wanted to look at her, frown, make a face, but her dad had him locked in, shaking his hand, saying it was awful nice talking to him and hoped they could do it again real soon. There. When that was done and Jack was finally able to turn to her, she was still looking at him with that quiet look. She said, “My dad can even get into K-Paul’s without waiting in line,” touched Jack’s hand and said, “What do you think of that?”
Buddy Jeannette’s rosary was going on in the small parlor, the mechanical drone of fifty Hail Marys recited by family and those who hadn’t got out in time. Jack, watching from the front hall, counted thirty-seven sitting and kneeling, the priest leading the rosary from the prie-dieu at the casket-a Batesville made of hand-rubbed walnut with the Cameo Crepe interior. Buddy had apparently left his widow in good shape. She was older than Jack had imagined her, a petite little thing, sitting on the edge of a wing-back chair saying her beads, somewhat apart from the others. What was she thinking about with that faraway look, lips barely moving? He wanted to hold her hand and say something to her. He had seen more than a thousand people in these visitation rooms and was never sure who was mourning and who wasn’t. He wanted to tell her what a nice guy Buddy was, that everybody liked him, a lot…
Leo said, “You want to tell me what’s going on?”
Jack turned from the doorway. “What’s wrong?”
Leo said, “I go up to the bathroom, there’s a girl in there brushing her hair’s supposed to be dead. I’ve never had that happen before.”
“If I remember correctly,” Jack said, “you’re the one sent me to get her. You said you’d talked to Sister Teresa Victor.”
“I did, yesterday. I was prepping your friend in there.”
“Well, you better talk to her again.” He took a step to walk off.
“Jack, I’m busy, I’ve got people here.”
“Then call her later. If I tell you why I picked up somebody who isn’t dead you’ll say it was my idea. Talk to the sister and I’ll see you after while.” Jack walked across the hall and up the stairway.
He found Amelita in the casket selection room, browsing, running her fingers over the parquet finish of a Batesville done in solid oak. Jack said, “That’s the Homestead model, with your Tawny Beige interior. We can give you fiberboard, plastic, metal, or hardwood, from sixty to sixteen thousand dollars, depending on your budget and how sorry you are to see the loved one go. I’m glad we’re not putting you in one, you look too healthy.” She did, the overhead light shining in her dark hair, long, down to the middle of her back in the flowery shirt, reflecting in her dark eyes as she looked at him.
“They so nice inside”-touching the tawny crepe now-“so soft.”
“Like you could sleep forever in there, huh? Do you know where you’re gonna be staying?”
“I’m going to L.A. sometime, but I don’t know when. I hope soon, I always want to go there.”
“To Los Angeles?”
“Yes, I have two of my aunts and a grandmother live in L.A. I hear is pretty nice there. When you put people in this, do they have all their clothes on?”
“Yeah, they’re completely dressed. Did Sister Lucy say where you’ll be staying in New Orleans?”
“She said she find a place. I like this pink color inside, very nice.”
“Well, Sister Lucy seems to know what she’s doing. You’ve known her a few years…”
“Yes, a long time.”
“She told me what happened to you. That was awful, the guy taking you away from your home. Twice, in fact, huh? The first time you must’ve been just a kid.”
“You mean Bertie?”
“What’s his name, the colonel.”
“Yes, Bertie. Colonel Dagoberto Godoy Diaz. He was very important in the government. I mean before, the real government. He could buy one of these, even the one you said, sixty thousand.”
“Sixteen, not sixty. He killed a guy. The doctor.”
“I know. He had so much anger, it was terrible.”
“And you saw him do it.”
“Tha’s what I mean, to see him like that.” She hugged her arms and seemed to shudder. “Not the same man I knew in Managua.” She reached into the casket to feel the pillow, once again relaxed. “He was going to enter me in the Señorita Universo, but the war became worse and he had to leave, so I went home.” She seemed fascinated by the pleated material covering the pillow.
Jack took his time. “But now, the way I understand it, Amelita, he wants to kill you.”
“She tole you that, uh? Yes, he was so angry he thought he would get leprosy, but he won’t. You don’t give it to a person that way, you know, like that disease now is popular, or the old one they call the clop. Someone has to tell Bertie he won’t get it. Though I heard the Commandante Edén Pastora, also with the contras, has mountain leprosy, but I don’t know what kind that is. Perhaps only from insect bites.”
Jack said, “Wait. Okay? This guy kidnapped you. I mean before. He disappeared you, came at night and grabbed you and took you up in the mountains. Is that right?”