The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear (17 page)

“I'll do a zip sort of the delegates and match it with my key opinion leaders list. You'll get the media types, mayors, Rotary Club chairmen.”

“Perfect.”

“You got a questionnaire?”

I handed her a piece of paper with six questions typed on it. For an instant I worried about fingerprints, but then realized that was silly—if Sandy wanted to screw me, she had plenty of ammunition without fingerprints.

“Short,” she said. “I like that.”

“I want maximum hits. Few hang-ups.”

Sandy Morrison read from the list of questions. “ ‘If you knew that Vice President Hilda Smith had once had an abortion, would it make you more or less likely to support her for president?' ” Sandy whistled. “Nice. You know my position on abortion,” she said.

“No, Sandy, I can't say that I do.”

“I believe in the college rule.”

“Yes?”

“Until they go away to college, a parent ought to have a right to reconsider.” She continued to read. “This true?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not as long as my check clears.” She smiled.

“It will.”

There was always a long line in front of Galatoire's, which was just one of the reasons I hated it. The place represented just about everything I'd come to resent about New Orleans: it was old, self-congratulatory to a fault, stuck in its way for no purpose, and celebrated its dullness. This idea that you get great food in New Orleans has always been sort of a fraud concocted by gluttonous locals as an excuse to glorify the fact that they were just like everybody else: they liked to eat and did it too much. But if you hung a nice picture frame of supposed gustatory greatness around the out-of-control hunger, it made it somehow chic and high-minded, not just another bunch of folks who loved to stuff their faces. It was sort of brilliant, like the lazy turning sleeping into a much valued art. Instead of
Food & Wine
you could have
Napping
. But there weren't a half-dozen restaurants in New Orleans that could bump up against the top fifty in LA or New York or even Miami, another overheated hellhole but at least one that had a lot more vitality than New Orleans. Sure, there was better food than, say, in Jackson or Baton Rouge, but “New Orleans as a food heaven” was a lot like the city itself: better if you didn't look too close.

Jessie Fenestra, the oh-so-famous local columnist, was standing by the door to the side, chatting with the maître d'. Seeing her in person, I recognized her right away, very tall and thin, standing with a cigarette in hand, her head held at a quirky angle, as if she were always on the verge of asking a question. She wore oversized sunglasses, like Jackie O at Hyannis Port.

It was a sight I remembered well from the parking lot of our high school in Metairie. She was always surrounded by a cluster of girls, prettier than she was in a typical way, but she had a flair that clearly made her the leader. To a skinny sophomore like me, obsessed with bikes and guitars, she seemed as distant and unapproachable as a queen in a horse-drawn carriage. There were rumors about her, too, that she was “hot,” a term that seemed oddly inappropriate and thus all the more appealing for this cool creature who was always so composed.

“J.D.,” she said now, dropping her cigarette and grinding it under her heel, “you look like a million goddamn bucks. I knew you'd come.” As if I had a choice after she'd called me and told me how good it was to hear my voice, and how proud she was of me, did you read my column on you, and, by the way, somebody tells me the FBI has been talking to you and maybe there are some problems? Could we talk? The deep, rough voice didn't match the elegant figure. She leaned down and kissed me on the cheek, roughing my hair slightly. It felt like I was meeting an affectionate aunt, not a reporter who had threatened to tell the world that some wacko at the FBI had me pegged for a cynical bomber.

She pulled me by the arm into the high-ceiling cool of Galatoire's, past the two dozen or so waiting in line, since Galatoire's made it part of their charm not to accept any reservations. “They love me here,” she said by way of explanation. We settled in a corner table for four. “What's the point of being a big deal in New Orleans if you can't get a good table? I have reached the height of New Orleans ambition. I can eat at Galatoire's without waiting in line.” She laughed mockingly.

“Jessie,” I asked, “could you take your sunglasses off? I feel like we're in an old
Sopranos
episode.”

She smiled but didn't move to take off the glasses. “It's part of my local color. It's important when you are a minor celebrity in a small town like New Orleans to cultivate eccentricity. Believe me, the glasses are the most harmless way I've come up with yet.”

“I see,” I said, then asked what I knew she wanted me to. “What were the other ways?”

She shrugged and pulled out a cigarette. It was a moment from a French film, Jean Seberg in
Breathless
. “The usual.” She thought for a moment. “Wore a see-through gown to the Bacchus ball, dated the Saints' starting defensive tackle for a while. Black. Three hundred and forty pounds. That was after I divorced Wayne and swore I'd never wake up with another football player. I lied. Was seen all over town with a certain Hollywood actress when she was in town shooting a film. Everyone whispered that we were lovers. They were right.” She took a long pull from her cigarette. “You know, the usual.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“It was. But then you run out of new stuff. You know this place, J.D., it's a total cul-de-sac for those of us who never got out. We're doomed to spend our lives trying to shock the same people every day. It gets old.”

Food started arriving, though we had never ordered. Two martinis appeared.
My God,
I thought,
martinis. This is a town where people still drink martinis at five o'clock in the afternoon.

“They know me,” she said, by way of explanation. Then, tiredly, “Everyone knows me. I'm famous.” She sighed. “Just so famous.”

She took a long drink from the martini and seemed to visibly perk up. “Like you, J.D. You saw my column? My yearly wet kiss. You don't know how lucky you are. I rarely write anything nice about the living. The dead, I like the dead. This is a town that celebrates the dead, and I am the number one celebrant.”

She raised her martini glass in a salute and downed it with a flourish. I had a feeling I wasn't the first one to see this little act—the martinis, the death spiel—but it still had a certain sparkle.

“Jessie,” I said, looking around the restaurant, wondering how many people there knew who I was, either delegates or New Orleans friends or, worse yet, reporters. What in God's name would they think of me sitting across from this woman drinking martinis the day before the convention began? I couldn't even remember the last time I had actually sat down to a meal in a restaurant.

“You know what a tornado and a southern divorce have in common?” she asked suddenly. “Somebody's gonna lose a trailer.” Another martini had appeared on the table and she took a long sip from it. “That one was the hit of the newsroom this morning. Such wits surround me.”

“Jessie,” I began again. “I have this distinct memory of you on the telephone telling me that you were going to write a column about me and some FBI rumors. I got a few things on my mind, but I do distinctly remember that conversation. Or tell me I made it up. That's fine. I don't really care. But let's not pretend it never happened.”

When I finished, I realized people were staring at me and Jessie had a shocked and bemused look.

“Wow. You've changed,” she said. “Do you shout a lot now or was that just a show?”

A few people were taking pictures of us with their phones. I slumped back in my chair. I was so used to shouting at everybody that it seemed normal. I was beginning to act like some barely domesticated animal that easily fell back into its feral ways. Jessie took a long drag of her cigarette and stared through her oversized sunglasses. “I like that. Passion. How's your brother?”

“My brother?” Which brother? I had been crazy to agree to see her. Of course she would know about Tyler. She lived in New Orleans. She was a reporter. She loved New Orleans characters. Probably used to go out with Tyler, part of his little network of wackos. Oh, this was just great.

“What's wrong?” she asked. “You know he was big pals with my husband. Football heroes together.” She took a drink of her martini and I swear I could see her glow a little. “My ex-husband, that is,” she clarified.

I took a long drink from the martini in front of me. It was icy and delicious. I felt lightheaded almost instantly. It made me want to drink all of it at once.

“Good, huh?” she said, catching my reaction. “It's what we do best in this town. Make and consume high-quality alcoholic beverages.” She said this as if reading from a chamber of commerce brochure. “Wayne Thibodeaux went into alcohol rehab, you know.”

I wondered if it was possible to get drunk from only a quarter of a martini.

“My ex. Don't tell me you don't remember Wayne Thibodeaux? God, that would kill him. It was what he was always afraid of, that people would forget him.”

“I think I might be drunk,” I said.

“No excuse. Wayne Thibodeaux? The football player? He played with your brother.”

“Sure. I remember.”

“No you don't.”

“Well, I'm sorry about the rehab thing, anyway.”

“Me too. If he hadn't quit drinking, we'd still be married. Drinking together was the best thing we had going for us.”

She smiled broadly and took another deep sip of her martini.

“Jessie,” I said evenly, or at least I thought I said it evenly, “what I'm going to do is take another sip of this drink, and then I'm going to get up and leave and go back to my sad little life of trying to get somebody elected president. Okay? But tell me first, off the record, was it Lisa Henderson who told you the FBI had called me in?”

“Lisa Henderson?”

Behind her sunglasses, it was impossible to tell if she was lying.

“A woman who doesn't like me.” I paused. Was it possible that there was a human alive who didn't know who Lisa Henderson was? It was a very pleasing idea. “She's also Hilda Smith's chief of staff.”

“And she's trying to screw you over? Great. I love stuff like that. How come she's after you?” She leaned forward seductively. She was good at this, getting people to tell her secrets. It was how she made her living.

Except this wasn't a secret.

“Sure. Hilda Smith hired me and fired her as campaign manager after Hilda lost Iowa. Lisa went back to the White House as chief of staff. She hates me.”

“That doesn't sound so bad. I mean, being in the White House.”

I shrugged. “It was humiliating, I'm sure.”

“A subject you know something about,” Jessie offered.

I stood up. It seemed to me that everybody in the room was watching me. This was nuts, absolutely crazy, to agree to meet this woman in a place like Galatoire's. I might as well have held a press conference.

“Well, J.D.,” she said, watching me stand, calm as could be, “if you tell me there isn't a story, I believe you. It was really just an excuse to see you. Come on, I'll walk with you.”

I pulled out my wallet but she waved it away. “They put it on my account,” she said with gravity. “It is my one remaining perk as a writer in this town. I have an eating expense account.”

When we emerged from Galatoire's, a man standing in line yelled out, “Hey, J.D., come here for a second.” He stepped out of line and motioned for me. He was handsome and tanned and looked vaguely familiar. But everyone was looking vaguely familiar to me these days.

“Bobby Simmons,” the man said, with some annoyance in his voice, when he realized I didn't recognize him. “Saw you in the elevator over at the Windsor Court. Talked to you about my daughter, Ricki.”

I nodded. “Of course. Yeah. Great.”

A short, dark-haired girl emerged from the line and held out her hand. “Ricki,” she said, grasping my hand in a terrifically strong grip. “Thanks for your help.” She was pretty, in a sleeveless dress with a small tiger tattoo on her biceps. I wasn't sure what I'd done to help, but I was glad I had. “Somebody from your shop called and got me that floor pass. I hope I'll see you on the floor.”

“Ricki is a poli-sci major,” the father chimed in. “Dean's list, Stanford.” She looked embarrassed but pleased.

“Sure,” I told her. “Have to show you our war room.”

“I'd love that. I can't believe how you brought Hilda back after she lost Iowa. Your New Hampshire campaign was the most amazing thing I've ever seen.”

Behind me, I thought I heard Jessie snort. Or maybe she was clearing her throat. “Got to run,” I said. “See you on the floor.”

I nodded and started walking away. Jessie fell in beside me and said, in an overly loud voice, “God, does she want to fuck you.”

“I wish,” I said, without thinking. Was I crazy? She was a reporter. Had I told her we were off the record? Of course we were off the record. We were talking about sex. How can sex be on the record? I had to be drunk.

“Don't worry,” she said. “It was a compliment.” Jessie took my arm. “So why does the FBI think you are up to something?” she asked.

“I don't think it's really the FBI. It's more like just one moron at the FBI.”

“There's a difference?” She was smiling.

“Yeah, there's a difference. This was just some idiot—”

“Joey Francis,” she said.

I looked at her. A woman like this—a reporter who was good—was incredibly dangerous. You never understood what she knew and didn't know, so you never knew when to lie or tell the truth. This was a disaster for somebody like me, who always skated between truth, almost truth, might be true, and downright lie. She was playing with me. She had been playing with me for days, since she wrote that article about me. That was the set-up. Draw me in. Now what did she want?