Charming Grace (2 page)

Poor, brave man.

Bless his heart.

Ask Grace ‘Who’s Boone Noleene and what job does he do for Stone Senterra?’ and she’d have given you one of her solemn, beauty-queen-being-polite-in-the-interview looks while she thought it over.

What would I do to achieve world peace? I’d spread more love, everywhere!

Who is Boone Noleene and what job does he do for Stone Senterra?

“I believe I read in
People
Magazine that he walks Stone’s pig,” she’d have said.

And she’d have been right.

His name—the pig’s—was
Shrek
. He’d been named by Stone’s little girls, who doted on the sway-backed, Vietnamese, pork-bellied snot-snout.

“What’s Shrek’s Cajun name, Boonie?” the girls asked me all the time, just to hear my answer in French. Sweet little darlin’s, just six and eight. They called me
Boonie, Boo, the Boo-man
. They didn’t understand the fading tattoos, the busted nose, the bullet and blade scars from New Orleans street fights. I was just Boonie, the tall man Papa trusted to guard them. Stone knew I’d take a fist in the gut for their sakes. For his sake, too. For his nice-kid teenage son, Leo. For his smart-tough-classy wife, Kanda.

Stone, who liked to brag that he’d played more lawmen than John Wayne and Clint Eastwood combined, had picked me out of Louisiana’s Angola Federal Prison three years ago to be his little rehabilitate-a-paroled-con project. It looked good for his image, he said. Stone never liked to come across as sentimental. But let me tell you what he did for me, and why I respected him.

I walked out of Angola without a penny to my name and nothing but denim blues on my back. There he was, Mr. Superstar, waiting for me in a limo. Him and Kanda. I guess he didn’t want me to think he was hittin’ on me. Anyway, a
limo
. And his
wife
. A man doesn’t just present any old so-and-so to his
wife
. Stone introduced me like I was a regular somebody, and then Kanda, who’s a combination of Jewish Wisconsin farm-girl, Hollywood businesswoman, and soccer mom, hugged me.
Hugged
me—a paroled con she’d just met.

“First we’re going to fly to L.A.,” he said, “and then when we get there, the first thing, we’re going
shopping
. You need some threads, mister. Then, once we get you spiffed up, you and me are going to a private mass in honor of your new life.”

“And then I’m taking you to meet my rabbi,” Kanda added. “If you don’t mind.”

I was dazed, drunk on fresh air and freedom, stunned by the turn my life had taken. All I remember saying to Kanda was, “I got nothing against going to mass or visitin’ rabbis. But I’d appreciate it y’all would have your priest and your rabbi call my brother, Armand, and give him a good word or two, I’d appreciate it,
merci bien
. I kind of hate leaving him here in prison, alone.”

She looked at my kindly. “Of course.”

Stone planted a big, movie-star hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry about Armand. The day he walks out of here, I’ll be waiting for him, too.”

Imagine that.

I kept trying to say thank-you-why-are-you-doing-this? But he brushed me off. He launched into a long, rambling story about how his old man deserted their family when he was a kid, just like mine and Armand’s had, but how he couldn’t complain because at least
his
mother hadn’t died when he was a kid like ours had, no, she’d remarried and kept a roof over the family’s head, although the man she married was a big, mean dockworking bastard, so Stone had had a hard time living with him, the step-papa, growing up, and grown up fighting for everything plus defending a baby half-sister, Diamond, from the old man.

“See?” Stone finished. “You and me, Noleene, we’re both survivors. We’re tough guys. We’re
simpatico
.” He paused. “By the way, if you screw up this chance I’m giving you? I’ll
kill
you.”

“I won’t screw up,” I said.

Even now, three years later, I still didn’t know why Stone Senterra, a wealthy, famous stranger, felt the need to treat me like his new best friend and tell me his personal story, other than the fact we’d both been deserted by our papas as kids, and we both came from good Catholic mamas. Once we got past those basics, he was a movie star born in New Jersey, and I was an ex-criminal born in New Orleans. Not much else in common.

But I knew this much: He’d given me a future. More than that, he’d given me a family—and by association, my bro, Armand, too. Armand would be out of Angola by fall, paroled a year early thanks to Stone’s attorneys. A
family
. One worth honoring, serving, and protecting.

What’s Shrek’s Cajun name, Boonie?

“Le Snout Du Oink, ma petite cheres.”

They laughed every time.

But if you asked
Stone
, the pig’s name changed depending on who the Stone Man’s box-office competition was that season. Lately the pig had been Bruce Willis, Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker, Vin Diesel, and The Rock, but most of all, more than anyone else, forever-and-ever-Amen, the pig was Mel Gibson.

“Mel Gibson took a dump on the Turkish rug again, today.” Stone liked to say. Or, “The maid caught Mel Gibson eating out of the kitchen garbage again this morning.”

Stone envied Gibson the way cheese envies cream. It was a mark of distinction to be Stone’s pig. It meant you were a threat. Mel was the ultimate pig threat; the others were only satellites in Mel’s pig-threat orbit. Arnold Schwarzenegger called once and asked when the hell he was going to be the pig, again.

Stone told him to get in line.

“I feel like a fool, Noleene. This ambush of Grace Vance had better work.”

Beside me, squatting in the Dahlonega woods on the heels of Burmese snake-skin cowboy boots, Stone was muttering. He’d been muttering for an hour. Let’s just describe the Stone Man this way: Picture John Wayne playing Vito Corleone on a hike wearing an Armani suit.

When ten of your films have made 300 million dollars—that’s each, not total—you tend to start thinking you deserve anything you want, including the right to film the life story of a dead GBI agent you admire, even if the agent’s widow keeps threatening to kill you. So the Stone Man was not happy to be hiding in the bushes like a wuss, waiting for an introduction.

“The hell with this. I’m just going up there and talk to her. She
wants
to like me. She
wants
to be happy that I’m here to make a movie about her husband. I know she does. What’s not to like?”

I shook my head. “Boss, you agreed to let me handle the introductions. You promised Kanda, too. For her and the kids. Besides, if you go up there and Grace Vance shoots you, it’ll make me look bad. I might have to give up my parking spot at the bodyguard union hall.”

Stone glared at me the way gorillas do when they’re about to rip a banana off a tree, but he knew I was right. I’d done a good job taking care of his and his family’s safety at home, on movie sets in jungles and on mountaintops, and even at the Oscars (he was afraid of Joan Rivers, so I had to body-block her while he walked up the red carpet.) Finally, he sighed and nodded. “All right, but this better work. I’m getting an itch in my hair plugs. You get up there and sweet-talk Grace Vance. Get the gun away from her, then I’ll pop out of the woods and make nice. Go.”

I got up and began climbing through the laurel. Inside orthopedic Hush Puppies, my left foot ached like a hangover. A beady-eyed parish cop had shot me in the foot when I was twelve. The bullet broke the joint of my big toe and it never healed right. Armand had cried over it. Ah, the glamour of the criminal life. Twenty-five years later, my foot throbbed its
Hail Mary’s
.

When I reached the edge of the road I stopped in awe. Grace Vance. My first unhindered look at her.
Mon Dieu
, she was incredible—a long-legged redhead in hip-hugger jeans and a heavy blue sweater that held on like a glove, with a face like a good-looking stripper, a houseful of body with plenty of back porch and attic, and the smart green eyes of a bayou wildcat. She’d been crowned
Miss Georgia
in the late 1980’s. If she hadn’t ducked out on the pageant biz to marry Harp Vance, she’s have probably won
Miss America
, too. I didn’t doubt it. Grace Vance was every fine woman I’d ever regretted losing. Every classy meal I’d ever stolen from a New Orleans dumpster as a kid. Every ideal I’d hung onto in prison. Every dream of the good life I still dreamed.

La femme, la joi, la vie
. Woman, joy, life.

But armed. Sad-looking. Dangerous. Beautiful. Maybe crazy. Sitting on a queenly mountain of pulverized stone. Next to a wild pink orchid. In a pot.

I took one life-changing breath in rhythm with her, then stepped into the open road and headed for her gravel pile.

If she shot me, it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad way to die.

We turn our best face to the world every morning. We look toward what we expect is coming our way, and we put on a stoic smile, and we hope no one guesses how scared we are. Every day since Harp died, I’d been afraid to look at the future. So I focused on the road below my gravel pile, waiting for the Senterra limo caravan I expected.

“Mrs. Vance. Your husband only killed to save other people, and so I’m bettin’ you won’t shoot me in his name. I
hope
.”

I jabbed the stock of G. Helen’s shotgun into my shoulder and swung toward the voice. Its owner stood at the base of my gravel mountain, his long legs ending in the gravel-dusted weeds. He’d walked out of the forest like a hunter, without rustling a leaf, big and lean and dark-haired, dangerous-looking. His face was both rough and handsome; everything about him was a little tailored but rumpled, from his wrinkled brown leather jacket to his dark trousers, ending in suede lace-ups that would have looked tame and academic on a man who didn’t have an alligator tattooed on the back of his right hand.

A man.

You have to understand—there was no such thing as a
man
in my world anymore, only people of the opposite sex who weren’t Harp.

The stranger seemed just as transfixed by me as I was by him. He frowned up at me sadly, more troubled looking than aggressive, as if someone had forced him to wash his dirty laundry in front of me. “If you shoot,” he drawled, “make it a clean kill. I’m a fan of old-fashioned open-casket funerals. I want to lay there lookin’ pretty while a street band plays Dixieland jazz and my friends get drunk on bourbon. If you shoot me in the head, it’ll put a damper on the festivities.”

The voice was deeply Southern but not mountain-grown; dialects and accents in the South are as varied as chocolate, and this one came from some lowland coast where English duked it out for dominance. It made an exotic melody on a cold Thursday morning atop plain gravel.

“Who
are
you?” I demanded.

“My name’s Noleene. Boone Noleene. I work for Mr. Senterra.” He slid a wallet from the pocket of his jacket. “I have I.D.” His hand stopped in mid-air when I raised the tip of the shotgun toward his head. He looked from it to me. “You can take my word for it.” He put the wallet away.