“Aye, but look what he did to me! Got me accused, unjustly, so I spent a night confined, as a common thug, in a cell! I refused to pay’m a cent, and last night he renewed his demands — Lieutenant Ball will bear witness for me, how he called me aside in the hotel, wanting payment, and your guard will corroborate that he ordered me, on the street, to report here today, else bear the consequence — he made threats against me.”
“What threats?”
“He questioned me passes, Captain.”
It all matched up, it didn’t sound collusive, and it concealed real motive. It was a masterly job of lying, and I had to get in step. When Hager turned to me, I said: “I doubted, and still doubt, if this man has proper permission to be here — he came when the Reb Army was here, and a Reb permit isn’t valid, it means nothing to a Union marshal. However, that’s not for me to decide. As to what he says in general, allowing for distortion, self-pity, and overpraise of the gentle Pierre, I would say he’s pretty well covered the ground. Now that I know who I killed, I admit he had grounds to dislike me.”
“The passes, Burke? Let’s see them.”
Burke got them out, from the same old stuffed-up wallet — letters, from prominent Rebs in New Orleans, that he’d used on the trip up the Teche to enter the Confederate lines; stuff concerning Pierre, including his French discharge; and a U.S. custom-house permit for the importation of cotton, covering, Burke said, “right of access to me property” — meaning, his presence in Alexandria. While Hager was reading them over, small things happened. Ball, who had snickered at “the gentle Pierre,” looked over and threw me a wink. Sandy leaned close and whispered: “This Mignon package — you like her?”
“Yes, I guess so,” I whispered back.
“I was hoping to lift her skirt.”
“I hope to make her my wife.”
“Ouch — I didn’t say it; you misunderstood me!” And then, for a real fast switch: “Bill, did you notice Ball? How friendly he’s acting toward you? You’re still hot!”
“So? What then?”
“You can still get that receipt!”
“For what?”
“For cotton, stupid!”
“I don’t have any cotton!”
“Goddam it, get some!”
Next off, Hager, Ball, and Dan had their heads together, and just once Dan shrugged. Then Hager reached out and handed Burke back his papers. It was over, with the officers marching out after saluting Mignon and thanking Mr. Landry for his kindness in asking them in. Then there we were, Mr. Landry, Burke, Mignon, and I, drawing trembling breaths. And then: “Frank,” said Mr. Landry, “I couldn’t ever forget what you did just now, in the way of what could be called, I suppose, convenient prevarication. And I hope I never forget the horrible reason for it.”
“The horrible reason,” I told him, “was that knowing a skunk for a skunk, you still partnered with him — for the money. So if you don’t like how he smells, you may smell the same way, yourself.”
“Willie,” she snapped, “don’t be ornery.”
“Sometimes,” I said, “orneriness clears the air.”
“And well the air needs’t,” Burke flung at me with a sneer. “As the author of the idea, you smell a bit yourself.”
“Perhaps,” I agreed. “No doubt.”
“But in a wholesome, mephitic way!”
“Damn it, I owned up to it, didn’t I?”
I sounded hysterical, and slammed out of there.
Chapter 22
In my flat, I had a bad reaction and lay down for a while to think. It was going on noon, and I’d decided to visit the hotel for lunch when a tap came on the door, and I got up to let her in. She had a platter of ham, cornbread, and lentils, all warmed up very nice and covered with a napkin, and a pail of hot coffee. She served us in the dining room, using Schmidt dishes, and as we ate she talked, mainly about Burke and how he’d leave soon, as soon as his head didn’t hurt, for the Sabine to buy in the cotton. She said she’d written a letter for him, addressed to people out there, giving him a “character,” and that her father had written him one, addressed to Kirby Smith, the Reb commander in chief, “as of course that whole country is still in the Secesh lines.” She talked of various things, as though nothing had happened at all, and I found myself wondering if anything really had. She made me eat up every speck, so she could wash the things in cold water, and then when she’d put them away, led on up the hall. But instead of turning off to go out, she kept on to the sitting room and, though I took a seat, kept on marching around, restless. I said again how pretty she looked in the gingham, and she said: “I like red — and it likes me, I think. It’s my color, kind of.”
And then: “What was Sandy saying to you?”
“Why,” I said, “he wanted to know if I liked you. He let drop he’d been hoping to lift your skirt.”
“Well he tried! Did he let drop about that?”
“No, and you didn’t either.”
“Well? In one of the fitting rooms, there at Lavadeau’s, he commenced messing around. It didn’t amount to much.”
“Just practically nothing at all?”
“... What else did he have to say?”
“Nothing. Just this, that, and the other.”
“He was nagging at you about something. What?”
“... I don’t just now recollect.”
“It was the cotton, wasn’t it? What he spoke about before, this morning there in the hall. And how you could get a receipt, after killing Powell’s murderer. That’s what it was, isn’t it?”
“All right, but I don’t have any cotton.”
“Yes, but we have.”
“Who is we?”
“Father and I, Willie.”
“Did Mr. Landry send you to me?”
“No, certainly not — he’s over at Frank’s, packing him up to leave, trying to get him started, he wants him out of the way. And Frank’s going — he thinks, now that that forgery didn’t work, those titles he had are worthless, so the cotton on the Sabine is all that’s left for him. He doesn’t know what we know, that you can get a receipt, that the Navy will give you one. So all we have to do is tear up the papers in his name and copy new ones off, in the name of Willie Cresap. And then, lo and behold, it’s a hundred and twenty thousand dollars!”
“Mignon, I’m sick of this cotton.”
“Well, wasn’t I? Didn’t I say I was?”
“Then what makes you change?”
“You, that’s what. So long as Frank was in it, I was scared to death. I learned to fear him as I’d never feared anyone. But you, Willie, are honest.”
“Dan says this cotton is hoodooed.”
“Hoodoo wasn’t the trouble. Crookedness was.”
“Whatever it was, I’m still sick of it.”
“What about the twenty-five thousand dollars?”
“... It’s what Sandy’s worrying about.”
“You still have to get it, Willie.”
“I don’t care to get it that way.”
“But you do care to get it from her?”
She had nestled into my lap, but now got up and faced me, and when I just sat there and stared, caught utterly by surprise, she charged back into the dining room, then came up the hall with her platter in one hand and her little tin pail in the other. When I barred her way at the crosshall, she banged me with the pail, so it flew out of her hands and clattered to the floor. To keep it from getting broken, I took the platter away from her, then took her by the wrist and dragged her into the bedroom. When I’d flung her on the bed, I said: “Calm down for a change, why don’t you? What’s the idea, flying off the handle this way?”
“You can get other things from her, too!”