Ciji Ware (70 page)

“No. Unlike you, son… I didn’t have the guts. I couldn’t kick ass and take names until the moment I thought you had been left in one of those mausoleums to suffocate. When I heard what Grover had done, I kinda went insane, you know? You’re my
son
!
You could have died, and I…” Marchand’s sentence trailed off. Horror and self-loathing distorted his handsome face. “If anything had happened to you, I don’t think I could have—”

“Well,” King intervened swiftly, “you picked the right reporter to search for me. How much does Corlis McCullough know about all this?”

“Everything. Time was short. I had to tell her the truth so she’d trust me and help me find you.”

“What about Manny and Virgil?”

“They don’t know I’m your father.”

“Well… Corlis kept your confidence. She didn’t tell me a thing.”

“She’s quite a woman, King. But then, I suspect you already realize that.”

“She’s no magnolia, that’s for sure. With Ace McCullough, you know just where you stand.” King took a long draught on his bottle of Dixie. He set it on the table with a thump and abruptly asked, “Why didn’t you ever marry?”

“I didn’t
want
anyone but Bethany. And if I’d married someone else, just to keep up appearances, I honestly think that I would’ve probably put a bullet in my head… or Bethany might have.”

“You broke Bethany’s heart anyway, didn’t you?” King pronounced, taking another sip of beer.

“That, of course, has been my punishment all these years,” Marchand’s voice suddenly cracked. “After Bethany got over her initial shock, that dear lady was relentlessly civil to me on those few occasions when we’d meet, but she wouldn’t have anything to do with me.”

“No… she wouldn’t,” King agreed quietly.

Lafayette turned slightly and gazed over King’s head through the windows overlooking Bourbon Street. “Bethany told me a few years later that she’d forgiven me for what happened, but she wouldn’t accept any of my invitations to see one another. The only way to protect the family honor, she said, was to”—he raised a hand to his forehead, as if he had a migraine—“was to keep a polite distance. I’d created the disaster in our lives, so all these years, I’ve honored her wishes.”

King’s father stared fixedly at his amber glass of bourbon and shook his head. “Not marrying at
all
was lonely, but it was also liberating. As a matter of fact, my refusing to marry some uptown magnolia just to make it up to my daddy for dishonoring the family name was the thing I’m proudest of… except, of course, for what
you’ve
done, taking on the establishment in this town, saving buildings that preserve the historic character of New Orleans.”

“Thank you,” was all King said.

Pain etched Marchand’s eyes. “I asked you to meet me here tonight because I can’t go on living this lie. I am your
father
!
And I’m glad you know it. I need to ask… not for your forgiveness, I guess, because you probably can’t give it after what I’ve done. But because I just want you to know I’ve always recognized you as the son of my heart. That I’ve always
loved
you as my son and worried about your welfare and—”

“I’m grateful for those times we had together when I was a boy,” King interrupted gently. “They were among the few bright spots of my childhood. I do forgive you, Laf. And it helps to know the truth about why you wouldn’t marry my mother. I thank you for telling me ’bout that. Another thing.” Lafayette lifted his eyes from his highball glass and met King’s gaze head-on. “I have a lot of admiration for what you did today. A lot.”

“What do you mean?” Lafayette asked with a baffled expression.

“Standing up to Grover Jeffries like that today took a lot of guts. You risked virtually everything, but you took him to the mat anyway. You were an unbelievably skilled negotiator, wrestling with a real viper. And so, I just want you to know… you
do
have my respect. Now.”

There was a long silence. Then Lafayette leaned across the table, covered one of King’s hands with his own, and said in a voice choked with emotion, “Thank you… thank you for saying that, Son.”

“So,” King declared. He set his glass of beer hard on the table, like a period at the end of a sentence. “I think it’s time I reinstated you as my godfather. That is, if you’re willing to take on the assignment again.”

Lafayette Marchand raised his chin with its distinctive cleft and squared his shoulders. “It’s a start. It surely is a start.”

Chapter 30

June 1

McCullough!” barked a disembodied voice over the newsroom intercom. “You’re wanted in Zamora’s office. Pronto!”

“Jeez Louise,
now
what?” she exclaimed to the walls of her reporter’s cubicle. Exhausted, she rose from her chair and pushed it to her desk. The last three hours had been a blur of activity. By some miracle she’d managed to meet her broadcast deadline with only two minutes to spare before the program went on the air.

“Good job, Corlis,” director Bernard Sinclair said, patting her back as he emerged from the control room. “Your piece tonight actually made me care about a
building
!”
he added, laughing. “My mother’s mother was a Colvis, y’know.” Then he grinned. “Half the Colvises you meet round here are
black
.
My mama’s family had some ol’ plantation upriver that they lost after the Civil War.”

“Really?” she replied. Then something about Sinclair’s dark blond hair caught her attention. Its texture was rather coarse, and it had a distinct wave to it.

Passe blanc…

“Yeah,” Bernie replied. “I’m Scots-Irish on my dad’s side, way, way back.” He gave her a friendly salute. “Anyway… it’s been a great series. See ya.”

In fact, nearly everyone at the station had congratulated her on the Selwyn story tonight. However, Corlis felt utterly drained—and depressed. She’d half-expected a call from King when the broadcast concluded, but she’d heard nothing.

Oh well, she sighed. She imagined him sitting with Lafayette Marchand at a small table at the Old Absinthe House bar, listening to revelations that were bound to turn his world upside down. Wearily she made her way to the station owner’s office. Inside, Marvin Glimp was standing beside Andy Zamora, who sat behind his desk.

“You did a great job,” her boss declared.

“Well… thanks,” Corlis replied, surprised by Andy’s unqualified compliment. “Manny and Virgil deserve a lot of credit. The pictures they shot really told the story.” There was no point in repeating tales about Virgil making King an unauthorized duplicate disk of what happened in the cemetery and then erasing the digital master. The buildings were saved, and the story was finally at an end.

Zamora patted her on the hand. “Yeah, but you were the one to decide where to point the camera, and you told ’em to keep rollin’,” Andy insisted. “And one more thing…”

“Yes?” Corlis said.
Here it comes
,
she thought grimly.

“I wanted Marvin to be here when I apologize to you for even suspectin’ that you might have leaked the Jack Ebert invoice to King Duvallon’s crowd.”

Corlis shrugged. She didn’t care anymore
who
leaked the invoice.

“How do you know I didn’t?”

“ ’Cause Virgil came in tonight and told me that
he
did.”

“
Virgil
leaked the Ebert invoice?” Corlis replied, amazed. “Wow.”

“And he thinks that mentionin’ to another cameraman at a bar last week that he got a shot of Grover’s campaign contributions memo on videotape tipped off the
Times-Picayune
reporter that such a memo existed.”

“‘Loose lips sink ships,’ as my great-aunt Marge is fond of saying,” Corlis said blandly.

But why was she surprised?
she asked herself. Virgil was a cameraman, not a reporter. He had no scruples about giving his friend King a little boost by getting him a copy of Ebert’s invoice off the video and dubbing an extra copy of the cemetery fracas when he made one for Lafayette Marchand. Like Althea LaCroix, Dylan Fouché—even Cindy Lou Mallory—longtime New Orleanian Virgil Johnson obviously cared passionately about the fate of the Selwyn buildings and had done what he could to help save them.

Zamora laughed and said, “By the way, Virgil told me how you saved the day at Lafayette Number 1.”

“That stuff’s strictly off the record,” Corlis said, alarmed that Marchand’s confidentiality had been breached.

“I haven’t described the gory details to anyone else,” Zamora said with a glance toward the company lawyer.

“I promised Marchand certain conditions in exchange for getting information about what Jeffries was doing behind the scenes today.”
How much of the story did Virgil tell Andy?
she worried. Then she had another terrible thought. “Did you fire him? Virgil, I mean?”

“I suspended him for two weeks. I told him to use his vacation time and get the hell out of town for a while.”

“Boy… are you ever tough,” Corlis replied dryly. She held up her hands in front of her face. “I know… I know… This is New Orleans.”

Marvin Glimp spoke up for the first time. “Tell me something, Corlis. How did Grover Jeffries ever come around to agreeing to revitalize those derelict old buildings? My sister told me that Grover said he’d go to jail before he’d ever let those building-huggers tell him what he could do with his property.”

“Sorry, Marvin…” Corlis replied with a certain amount of relish, relieved to know Zamora truly hadn’t passed on what Virgil had told him about events at Lafayette Number 1. “I
do
happen to know why Jeffries agreed to save the buildings, but that’s part of the story I agreed to embargo, so I can’t divulge what I learned from my sources.”

Then she suddenly wondered… Who leaked the actual memo to King with Jeffries’s handwritten instructions about campaign contributions? She had no idea how King had somehow been given
that
little bombshell before the city council meeting in time to make two hundred copies to wave in Grover’s face.

As Aunt Marge taught her, when there’s a leak, ask yourself who had immediate
access
to the document in question.

Only Grover and Lafayette Marchand had physical access. At WJAZ we didn’t realize we had the Grover-Marchand memo on video until much later. The digital editor couldn’t have cared less. Virgil only blabbed about it, and I certainly didn’t hand it over to King.

Corlis judged that Jeffries obviously wouldn’t have been the one to give it to King. That left Lafayette Marchand. She’d bet her breakfast beignets that when Lafayette got wind that Grover had King kidnapped, he took action that would insure his son’s cause would triumph in the end and slipped the incriminating memo under the door at the Preservation Resource Center. After all, blood was thicker than water, wasn’t it? Especially in New Orleans.

What a day,
she groaned silently, turning to leave her boss’s office.

“Take a week off, McCullough,” Zamora suggested. “Since your cameraman’s on suspension, you might as well take advantage of it.”

“Thanks, I
will,” she replied. “My eighty-eight-year-old great-aunt’s in town. It’ll give me a chance to show her around.”

“Gonna take her to the Mid-City Rock-N-Bowl?” Zamora teased.

Corlis smiled at the mention of the celebrated bowling alley on Carrollton Avenue where patrons not only slung balls at ten pins, they danced the night away to a pulsating zydeco band.

“If only you knew Margery McCullough, you’d realize that’s a very good suggestion. See ya.”

“Hey, Corlis!” Zamora called after her. “If you wanna take King Duvallon along on your little sightseeing junkets—it’s okay now. Virgil said you two behaved yourselves the whole time,” he added with a sly smile.

Well, not quite…

“Gee, thanks,” she replied, and rolled her eyes.

She walked down the corridor toward the newsroom attempting to put her boss’s quip out of her mind. She sat down at her desk in a mood of free-floating melancholy. All the places around New Orleans that she wanted to cast before her aunt like precious pearls were the spots she’d also love to see with Kingsbury Duvallon. By all rights, she and King should be out celebrating tonight.

Corlis stared at the clock in her cubicle. It was a few minutes after 11:00 p.m. No light blinked on her voice mail. King hadn’t called, and from the looks of it, he wouldn’t. He could be as stubborn as she was about digging in his heels. He judged that when the fur was flying, she’d let him down as a friend—never mind, as a lover—and that probably ended it as far as their relationship was concerned.

Just then the phone on her desk rang, startling her from woeful thoughts. Her heart racing with hopeful anticipation, she picked up the receiver.