Ill Will (17 page)

She came up behind me and put her arms around my waist. “Okay, dinner at eight. We have a little time. I only brought one extra pair of underwear, so perhaps we should spend it looking at the stuff you found.” She cupped my breasts and left a row of kisses on my neck.

“Tease,” I muttered as she let go. But I followed her out of the bathroom and then gently upended the bags on the bed.

She put on her reading glasses and examined the bottles, first looking at the ones from Nature’s Beautiful Gift, then The Cure. She spent several minutes examining them all, even taking out the pills and sniffing them. Finally, she threw the bottle she was holding down in frustration.

She pulled off her glasses and said, “There is no way to tell what these really are. Some of them smell like they have some herbs or something in them. Nature’s Beautiful Gift seems to be on the legal side of the line with its claims; The Cure certainly not. The only way to know what’s really in them would be with lab tests.”

“What if it was something that caused or contributed to Banks’s death?” I asked.

“That might be hard to prove. I have a brief overview of forensics back in med school, so there’s not much I can tell you. If there was some foreign substance in his body that was harmful and that substance could be traced to one of these pills, then maybe something could be done. I’m not even sure that would be criminal, though. Usually if there are enough harmful side effects reported, the worst that happens is that the pills get pulled.”

“Banks didn’t seem to be very well-off. Why spend money on these things?”

She thought for a moment, “He wanted to be cured. Desperate people believe in false hope. Sometimes it’s all they have to believe in.”

“So these might have hurt him,” I said.

“Might have. Certainly in the pocketbook. It’s unlikely they helped him.”

“What if they do the things they claim, provide relief far beyond what conventional medicine offers?”

“Reginald Banks is dead. They didn’t seem to help him much.”

“Couldn’t you say the same about conventional medicine?”

“He died of a massive infection. That shouldn’t have happened. If he’d been treated properly—earlier, he would be okay.”

“So they both failed him,” I pointed out.

“Yes, but in different ways,” she argued. “Reginald Banks was failed by medical care because he didn’t receive it. There are tragic flaws in the system, but mostly with access and affordability. If he’d been in a hospital three days earlier, he’d be alive. But the other stuff,” she picked up one of the bottles, “this promises a cure. It didn’t deliver.”

I looked at the stark white lettering on the bottle. The Cure. No, it hadn’t cured Reginald Banks. “I’m also curious about a denial of service letter he got from his insurance company.” I rifled through the papers until I found it.

She put the glasses back on and read it. “There has to be some mistake. Insurance agencies profit by making errors. The real scumbags automatically deny services or payment on the premise that a certain percentage of people won’t or can’t fight. But Reginald had a clear medical need for his treatment, and this seems to claim he was getting medical tests too closely together. That shouldn’t be true if he skipped an appointment and had fallen out of care. Sounds like someone transposed an account number and sent him the wrong thing.” She handed the piece of paper back to me.

Was a stupid mistake what caused Reginald Banks’s death? His insurance company screws up, denies service they shouldn’t have denied, so he misses a needed appointment. I shoved the pill bottles and pile of papers back into their plastic bags. Maybe his next of kin would want them. I stuffed the bags in the closet where we didn’t need to see them.

Right now I wanted to live furiously in the moment, with no thinking about thugs chasing me, waiting for medical tests, or worrying about a man who could no longer be saved.

I reached out and took Cordelia’s hand. “Would you care to join me in an intimate dinner?”

“I would be delighted.”

We left the hotel room into the clean air of early spring, to vibrant, happy streets and an unhurried, romantic feast.

I made the coffee while Cordelia showered. The world kept turning. Much as we had wanted to linger in last night, morning had come, a gray dawn of off-and-on drizzle. The lingering was over. We weren’t tourists; there would be no beignets or café au lait. She had to go to work. I did, too, I just had more leeway in my hours.

We had done what New Orleanians do, gone out to a wonderful restaurant only to talk about other great places we’d eaten, banter over recipes, decide what we’d try when the weekend came and we could take more time to cook. We focused on good memories and I was relieved to notice that it didn’t feel strained, that one led to another and another as if we could never run out. We stayed away from the bad recollections and the worries of today, an unspoken compact that those could wait until the morning. Perhaps in the morning, Joanne would call to say that Dudley was arrested and Prejean had moved to some other disaster. And Cordelia’s tests would turn out to have been messed up, or more extensive testing would find nothing.

When the words ran out, the physical spoke for us. First with passion and intensity, then more slowly, romance overtaking raw need, creating more memories to add to the pile of good ones. Someday time would run out, our passion seemed to say, but until it was gone, this touching was vital, essential as breathing.

But the night was now a memory and the coffee was brewed and Cordelia was coming out of the shower.

I quickly washed off while she dressed and drank her coffee—the caffeine would be quite necessary today.

When I emerged from the shower, she said, “Some weekend we should do this again, so we don’t need to rush to work like this.”

“That would be nice,” I agreed as I quickly dressed and took a final sip of coffee.

Then we grabbed our duffels and headed for the door. I just barely remembered to snatch the plastic bags from the closet and bring them with me.

Perhaps I should have just left them, I thought as we headed down the hall. Reginald Banks was gone; they were useless talismans of his passing.

I retrieved the car while Cordelia finished checking out.

“I can just drive you to work,” I told her as we got in.

“Then how do I get home?”

“I’ll come pick you up.”

“I’m okay,” she replied to my unspoken implication. “Be there when—and if—I really need you. But right now I can drive myself to work. Then I’ll run Uptown to the grocery store after and come home.”

“Okay, but why don’t you come home and we can both go to the store up on Carrollton?”

“Why? Don’t trust that I’ll remember to get lemons?”

“How easily you see through me.” But she agreed to meet me and we’d go together.

The morning traffic was less insane than the evening, at least in the French Quarter. The drunks were either still sleeping it off or nursing hangovers.

I drove back to our place. Cordelia got out of my car to get into hers. I waited until she was in, her doors locked and on her way. I followed her briefly until Rampart, where she headed uptown and I turned downtown.

She’s okay
, I told myself, glancing at her receding car in my rearview mirror.
If Dudley is after anyone, it’s me, not her. And for the other, she’s a doctor, always worrying about getting enough fruits and vegetables in her diet and making sure she exercises regularly. I’m the one who goes out for lunch and gets the burger and fries. She gets a salad. People like that don’t get cancer in their forties.

It was time to concentrate on idiots driving in the drizzle. A big-ass truck was driving like rain-slicked roads would have no effect whatsoever on his brakes. Either he didn’t see the Mini Cooper in front of him, or else he liked to play chicken on his way to work. He managed to stop with about two inches between his bumper and a red, albeit small, car.

I stayed safely behind, turning down a side street to get to my office. As is typical in New Orleans, it wasn’t raining two blocks away, and in another two blocks the sun came out.

Nothing had happened for two days, so I was starting to assume that nothing would happen. The sight of the massive man standing right in front of my door was unnerving. How could he be here now? He seemed to be messing with the lock.

It was earlier than I usually got here. Dropping off Cordelia in time for her to make doctor’s hours had altered my morning schedule.

Just as I was reaching for my cell phone to call Joanne, he saw me.

Thank the fates for a meth-addled brain. He stared just long enough for me to hit the accelerator and peel out down the sleepy block.

I’ll bet the gunshot woke everyone up. It certainly got my adrenaline going. After the shock at his plans going awry once again, Dudley Dude did what he did best—violence. Have gun, will shoot.

The Bywater, where my office is located, is an older neighborhood, well on its transition from working class to artist trendy. The houses are mostly shotguns, close to each other and the street. It’s residential; if people work here, it’s at the local coffee shop or restaurant, maybe some of the businesses on St. Claude.

So not the kind of place to engage in a gun battle and car chase.

Like I was now.

Dudley had only remained in his surprised stupor for a bare second. That had given me just enough time to stomp on the gas and roar past him. He had his gun out firing as I screeched around the corner. The blocks here were short. I started to turn another corner, but saw a big yellow school bus a few blocks farther down.

Must avoid school zones
, I told myself, jerking my car back to straight.

But my altruism gave Dudley enough time to get in his big truck (of course, it would be a big black truck) and sight my car still heading away from him.

In my rearview mirror, I saw him stick his hand out, holding something that looked like a gun.

I was a good two blocks away from him, moving at an insane speed, and he was shooting left-handed, so somebody else’s car now had a bullet hole.

That was his advantage. I could have sped around the school bus so it was between us, but I wasn’t willing to put other people at risk if I could avoid it. Dudley, even without drugs, probably didn’t give a damn about anyone or anything. Throw a little meth into the mix and he didn’t give a damn and didn’t think he could get hurt.

I took a hard right. Maybe if I wasn’t in his sight line, he wouldn’t shoot. It would be luck if he actually hit me—Dudley didn’t seem like the type to spend much time at the firing range—but stray bullets flying around could easily hurt someone else.

I sped left around another corner, trying to zig and zag away from Dudley. That was challenging enough. Add to that trying to open and dial—yeah, speed-dial, but even that wasn’t easy—my cell phone.

I got it open, looked down for half a split second, and almost ran over a dog.

Okay, driving and driving only from now on. I’d have to pin my hopes that someone somewhere would notice that a big black truck was speeding through the neighborhood and firing guns. Or maybe that was too common an occurrence for anyone to even pay attention to.

For my safety I should head into the more traveled parts, go uptown. But there would be more people there and more chance Dudley’s stray bullets or reckless driving would injure someone.

My other choice was to drive to St. Claude and cross the Industrial Canal into the Lower Ninth Ward. It had been inundated during Katrina, one of the most destroyed neighborhoods in New Orleans. People were poor there, often uninsured. Even now there was block after block of overgrown lots, staircases to nowhere peering out of the weeds, the only mark that this had once been an inhabited area.

Fewer people meant less of them to be hurt.

Of course, it also made it less likely that anyone would be around to dial 911 for me. Hell, cell service might not have been restored down there yet.

I deliberately didn’t turn at the next block, heading straight for St. Claude Ave. It was the main artery through the area and a straight shot over the Canal. The bridge was an old one, originally for both car and rail, but the tracks had been long gone, with the lanes dividing inner and outer.

The tricky part would be getting onto St. Claude. No, the tricky part was everything—staying far enough away from Dudley so he couldn’t shoot me, driving through these narrow streets at speeds they were never intended for, avoiding dogs, children or any other living thing, and somehow attracting enough attention soon enough that someone with bigger guns and faster cars could end this. Turning onto St. Claude without causing a wreck was just a subsection of the above.

People were going to work, but would be going uptown, not downtown. At least it was a right turn; I wouldn’t have to scream across two lanes and a median. Oh, the fates were kind to me today.

Dudley was again in my rearview mirror and the idiot was again trying to take potshots at me. There were a couple of pedestrians in the next block. I laid on my horn. I’m not sure if its blare or the sound of a gun was the cause of their hightailing it over a fence, but at least they had some protection. And perhaps even now were dialing those magic numbers, 911.