The Hundredth Man (13 page)

“Don’t get yourself tore up, that’s all I’m saying.”

Harry drove the final few blocks to the next address on our shoe-leather list. We got out in front of Les Idees, an art gallery on Mobile’s near-south side, a slender yellow New Orleans style two-story with scrollwork iron on the balconies and plum-colored shutters. There were flower boxes. A cobblestone walk. A small trickling fountain. The place was precious. Harry eyed the coffee shop across the street; the coffee smell was thick in the air.

“Go grab a cup, bro,” I said. “I think I can handle the interview.”

Harry crossed the street, looking relieved.

Though Deschamps was primarily a commercial artist, he relaxed by painting watercolors, mainly seascapes. Francoise Abbot was the proprietor of Les Idees. She’d exhibited Deschamps’s works for several years and occasionally socialized with him in a group situation, before and during his engagement.

Abbot was a slender fiftyish woman dressed in a red velvet wrap just west of where caftan meets kimono. A smoker, she affected an ebony cigarette holder, a device I’d considered passe to the point of antique. Her black hair had one of those abbreviated anti cuts that sent shaggy sprigs flailing in all directions. She led me to several Deschamps watercolors, workmanlike, but lacking the insight to spark illustration into art. I thought they’d have made decent covers for blank-page New Age journals with titles like My Daily Reflections or Notes From a Life.

Madame Abbot’s low voice matched her conspiratorial demeanor and she punctuated phrases with an elastic assortment of facial displays. I suspected someone once told her she looked cute when wrinkling her nose and she’d decided to diversify.  Customers were absent and we sat at a small ornate table in a back corner. I said, “Everyone I’ve spoken with considered Mr. Deschamps next in line for beatification, lacking only in that he was Baptist. Is that your impression, Ms. Abbot?”

“De mortuis nil nisi bonum,” she stage-whispered with a flaring of nostrils that segued into a squint. “Surely you know what that means.” She gave me three quick expressions that bet I didn’t.

“Of the dead speak nothing but good,” I replied. “That’s inexact but sufficient.”

She dropped her jaw and wiggled it, followed by a wink and a thumbs-up. She pointed the suck end of her cigarette holder at me. “That’s excellent, Detective Ryder.”

I said, “It’s a phrase often connoting ill that might be revealed, but is left unspoken.”

Abbot winked and wrinkled her nose. “Really?”

“Perhaps Mr. Deschamps didn’t quite lead the straight-arrow life I’m being led to believe.”

She shot her brows and pursed her lips. “For the most part I think he did.”

“What about for the least part?”

Abbot went through another series of facial contortions meant to convey, if I’d had to guess, some form of consternation. She said, “Two months ago a friend of mine double-dated with a friend of hers over in Orange Beach. A friend of my friend’s, that is. Her friend. And guess who my friend’s friend brought along as her date?”

While I unlinked the chain of friends, Abbot produced a facial display of such distracting variety I had to turn away to think.

“Was it Peter Deschamps?”

Abbot looked side to side as if crossing a busy street and leaned toward me. “This was two months after he’d proposed to Cheryl.”

“Friends out for an innocent night together.”

“It’s possible.” She winked three times and smiled.

“You believe it was more than that?”

“My friend’s friend is, how shall I put this, an energetic woman, physically energetic.” Abbot batted her eyelashes. “Does that say it?”

“Someone who … celebrates her libido?”

Abbot winked, nodded, pursed her lips, grinned, grimaced, and frowned. I took it as a yes.

“We heading over to see this ‘friend’s friend’?” Harry asked.

“Stop at the morgue first?”

Harry didn’t say a word. He U’d the car to a cacophony of horn blowing while I shut my eyes and gripped the door handle. He pulled up to the morgue a few minutes later.

“I won’t be long,” I said, closing the door and walking away.

“Carson?”

I turned. Harry had his thumb in the air. “Good luck,” he said.

Ava was at her desk doing paperwork. I stepped into her office and shut the door.

“Get out,” she snapped. Her eyes were bagged and bloodshot.

“I’d like to take you to lunch or to supper. If you’re busy today, how about tomorrow?”

She scribbled on a form, pushed it across her desk, grabbed another.

“No way in hell.”

I moved forward to the edge of her desk. “We should talk about Friday evening.”

She started to initial a form but the pen tore the paper. She threw the pen into the wastebasket and glared at me.

“There’s absolutely nothing to say.”

I said, “I’m scared.”

“You’re what?”

“Maybe worried’s a better word. Listen, Ava, I consider you a friend “

“And I consider you a snoop and a meddler. I suppose you’ve already told half the town.”

“I’ve told no one. It’s not their business.” I didn’t mention Harry; telling him was like writing her secret on a slip of weighted paper and dropping it into the Marianas Trench.

“Oh, I’ll bet. I’ll just bet.”

“Listen, Ava, I know some people who’ve had experience in things like this. Good people. Maybe you could use a little assistance with “

She stood with such force it rocketed her chair backward to the wall. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about with this ‘assistance’ business, Detective Ryder. Maybe I had too much to drink the other night. It was a mistake and it’ll never happen again. I didn’t like your insinuations then and I like them less now. We have to work together professionally, I can deal with that. But I want nothing from you on a personal level and that means conversations, insinuations, prevarications, advice, or lunch. If you really want to be helpful you can close the door from the outside. If you can’t figure out how it’s done, I’ll call security and they’ll be glad to help you.”

“How’d it go?” Harry asked when I dropped into the passenger seat.

“What’s that big-ass river in Egypt?” I asked, shutting my eyes against a too-bright sun.

“De Nile,” he said, not missing a beat.

Abbot’s friend’s friend was named Monica Talmadge. She was in her mid-thirties and lived in an expensive brick home in West Mobile with a perfectly manicured lawn and a canary-yellow Beamer in the drive. Monica was not happy to see us.

“I’ve never heard of Peter Deschamps. You’ve got to believe that.”

She wore open-toed high heels, lavender jeans, and more makeup than midafternoon generally required. Her bra made the most of small breasts, the tight, scoop-neck pink shirt not hurting either. Auburn waves of hair hung halfway to the out swooping of her derriere, as round and succinct as an orange.

“Look, guys, officers, whatever, my husband’s going to be here any minute.”

Harry looked at his watch. “Maybe he can help us with the Deschamps question.”

“No! I mean, he doesn’t know anything.”

“Doesn’t know anything or doesn’t suspect anything, Mrs. Talmadge?” Harry asked softly.

Monica looked down like memorizing her toes for a test. I could have given her the answers: perfectly tanned, pedicured, and pinkly lacquered. I knew she was debating whether or not to tell the truth. When she looked up her face held harder eyes and harsher shadows.

“Peter and I went out a few times, a friendly kind of thing.”

Harry said, “Discreetly friendly?”

There was a long silence and her eyes narrowed.

“Look, my husband’s what they call a man’s man. That means when he ain’t in fucking Montana or Canada with a bunch of other men hunting for mooses or beavers or whatever, he’s out fishing the blue water for days at a time. When he’s not being the American Sportsman, he’s halfway across the world selling generators. I grew up in a single-wide in Robertsdale and I like all this a lot” she gestured around her, meaning the car, the house, the neighborhood “but there are a few other things I like too. I’m just trying to keep a little balance in my life, y’know? So when Peter answered my ad “

I said, “Your ad?”

“I put an ad in that ratty paper, NewsBeatf Personals. Semi-attached woman looking for a semi-attached man. Someone for intelligent, adult fun, no strings and no tales.”

A vehicle approached and Monica froze. When she saw it wasn’t her husband she released her breath. Harry said, “What happened after the ad ran?”

“I got a bunch of responses. More than I ever thought I’d get. Peter enclosed a photo, and he looked and sounded nice. It fit perfect he was engaged and had to be careful too. We had a few dates, nothing serious, just good fun, you know?”

“Did you get the impression this, uh, dating was something he’d done before?”

“No. I think he wanted a final fling before getting married. He as much as said so. Made sense to me.”

“Did you get any sense Mr. Deschamps might have orientation other than heterosexual?

“God, no,” she said. “He was very masculine. You’re not telling me he “

“No. But in any murder we have to ask all sorts of questions.”

“I cried when I heard about it. Such a good guy. Great body. I feel so sorry for his girlfriend.”

“Why’d you break the relationship off?”

“We both sorta did. I think we just ran out of things to say.”

I heard the roar of a big diesel engine. Her eyes looked past us to the street. “Oh, my God, it’s Larry. Please don’t say anything about this, please, please, please.”

I saw a black truck gearing down for the driveway, eyes glaring through the windshield.

“Smile and shake your head, Mrs. Talmadge,” I said.

“What?”

“Smile real wide but shake your head no.”

She caught on and did it, adding a little tinkle of laughter lost in the shuddering engine sound at our backs. I winked at Harry and we waved farewell to Mrs. Talmadge. We turned to see her husband leap from a dual-tracked 3500 Dodge Ram diesel with a tailpipe like a howitzer muzzle. What wasn’t painted was chromed. Lettering on the door proclaimed; ATLAS INDUSTRIAL GENERATOR SALES, YOUR INDEPENDENT POWER COMPANY

Larry left the door open and the engine running. He went an easy six three, two fifty, with a neck to match Harry’s. Clouds of graying hair puffed from the collar of his Polo shirt. His face was red, his chest expanded in full turf-protection mode; we were probably walking places he’d pissed.

“Hey,” he bellowed, “what the hell you guys doing?”

“Thanks again, Mrs. Talmadge,” I called over my shoulder. “Sorry to bother you.”

“I asked what you’re doing here?” Larry growled.

I smiled, Nice doggy. “You must be the mister,” I said politely, flipping open my badge wallet. “We had a bad hit-and-run in the Bankhead Tunnel yesterday. A witness got a partial tag number and said it was a yellow sports car ” I talked loud enough for Monica to hear me.

“You wouldn’t believe how many yellow vehicles have similar numbers,” Harry said, sounding exasperated. The Harry and Carson show.

My turn. “We’re going to all possibles looking for damage to the right front fender. Obviously” I looked at the Beamer “it wasn’t your wife’s vehicle.”

“Well … damn right,” Larry huffed.

We drove away as Larry pulled suitcases from the monster truck. Monica and I shared a glance. She mouthed, “Thank you,” then turned a warm and welcoming face to man’s-man Larry, home from the hills and home from the sea.

CHAPTER 13

S
ave for me, the Church Street Cemetery was deserted. Behind Mobile’s main library on Government Street, the small cemetery was a place to walk slow beneath ancient trees, ponder headstones, and count the passing of years. Harry’d needed to drop a couple books at the library, and I’d been drawn to the cemetery’s hushed commitment to the past.

When the Adrian case was an explosion of sirens in my head, rats and fires and the burned-out cinders of a young girl’s eyes, I often came to sit beneath the trees and listen to the quiet. The death of Tessa Ramirez had been unspeakably violent, yet the graves here seemed so peaceful, as if Death paused in its journey between whatever worlds it traverses to let the chosen cast off the memories of dying, gathering themselves in cool shade and simple surroundings. Though Tessa had been buried in Texas, I felt one graveyard was all graveyards, conjoined beneath or beyond the ground. I’d hoped the Church Street dead called the petite dark-haired girl to their midst; perhaps this was where they mentored her, gave her understanding.

There must be understanding, I thought; why else for the universe to utter us into existence than to allow our individual voyages of discovery detection, if you will with the threads of all passages finally woven into the Ultimate Understanding, a great cosmic cooing of “Yes. Why didn’t I figure it out? How elegant. How simple.”

Or maybe it’s all random. Our most brilliant lies are those we reserve for ourselves.

“Invisible lines everywhere,” Harry said, jolting me from a reverie about reverie. He was back from the library and bending to study a grave laid thirty years into the nineteenth century. Invisible lines was Harry’s term for lines connecting seemingly unrelated events in homicide cases. Invisible at the onset, they gradually revealed themselves until we saw we’d been tripping over them all the time.

“It’s in the words on the bodies,” I said. “They’re messages with meaning and purpose.”

The messages had been withheld from the media and public to weed out those who exorcised God knows what past horrors by confessing to every bizarre killing. No one admitted killing street-corner dope boys, but let a woman be found steeped in savagery and the wild-eyed confessors lined the block.

“Meaning and purpose if you’re balls-to-the-wall nuts,” Harry said. I sat on an elevated grave and Harry sat beside me. He sighed and looked up and studied the clouds or the treetops. When he turned back to me his eyes held a sadness and concern I hadn’t seen in a long time.

“I’ve been worrying about you, bro.”