Sailor & Lula (58 page)

“We on this like white on rice, Mr. Ripley,” said Du Du, “and there ain't no quit in a case includes murder, armed robbery, kidnappin' and
car theft. We'll keep you up on the investigation. Call me personal, anytime.”

“I can't just sit still,” Sailor said. “There must be somethin' my son and I can do to help.”

The creases deepened in Du Du Dupre's rubbery face.

“Don't be gettin' no brave ideas here, Mr. Ripley. We dealin' with people ain't shy 'bout shootin' off more'n their mouth. Best you-all remain at home, let us take care of it.”

On the street in front of Louis Armstrong, Pace said, “Daddy, no way I'm waitin' on the blue.”

“I'm with you, too, Sailor,” said Phil. “Why don't we go back to my suite at the Rinaldi and make a plan?”

“Better to stay at the house,” Sailor said, “case Lula calls, or the kidnappers. Might be they'll try to ransom her.”

“You're right, Daddy. Knowin' Mama, it's possible she could talk her way out of this.”

“Anyone can, it's Lula.”

The three men got into Phil's rented white Lincoln Town Car. As Pace drove, memories of all the years that he and Lula had spent together whizzed through Sailor's mind. A picture of Lula at seventeen flashed in his brain and he held that image. Lula was sitting on the top rail of the wooden fence that bordered the yard of the Fortune house in Bay St. Clement. Lula wore a checked shirt and a short white skirt, and her thick black hair was tied back with a ribbon. She was smiling and the longer of her large two front teeth was snagged on her lower lip, giving her face a slightly anxious expression. Sailor could picture the indentation line on Lula's lip caused by her overbite and he felt his heart flutter. He knew he would die before he ever stopped looking for Lula.

Oretta “Kitty Kat” Cross, black female, twenty-five, black hair with two dyed red braids, black eyes—the left with a slight strabismus, or cast—five-five, one hundred ten pounds, no tattoos, rode shotgun.

“Don't see why we had to do this, Kitty Kat. Now we up for kidnappin', too.”

Archie Chunk, white male, twenty-eight, sandybrown hair cut short, blue eyes, five-nine, one hundred sixty pounds, broken nose, two-inch horizontal scar middle of forehead, fire-breathing dragon tattoo right biceps, anchor tattoo with snake entwined back of left hand, squirmed around in the back seat of the Cadillac. He kept turning to look out the rear window.

“You prefer we be walkin'?” said Kitty Kat. “The woman be right there. Nobody chasin' us, Arch. Relax.”

Archie twisted toward her. “How I gonna relax you shot the dude?”

Kitty Kat vaulted into the back seat, shoved Archie over so that she could sit directly behind Lula, shifted the Colt Python she was holding into her left hand, unzipped Archie's trousers with her right, took out his penis and started jacking him off.

“You stay on 23 to West Pointe à la Hache,” Kitty Kat said to Lula, sticking the barrel point into the soft spot at the back of Lula's head, holding it there for several seconds, “then I tell you what to do.”

Archie let his head roll back and closed his eyes as Kitty Kat caressed him. She put her thick lips to his left ear and purred like a cat, making a soft, rumbling growl in the back of her throat. Archie's penis, at first touch tiny and flaccid, soon swelled to its full four-and-one-quarter inches and filled with blood so that it resembled a Montecristo Rojo. Kitty Kat growled louder and increased the speed and intensity of her caress. A few seconds later, Archie came, splattering the back of the front seat and dribbling onto his pants. Kitty Kat released her hold on him, reached over and pulled the gold and black leaf-patterned scarf off Lula's neck and used it to wipe up Archie's emission.

“Feelin' better now, peach?” asked Kitty Kat, cleaning her hand with Lula's scarf, then tossing it on the floor.

“Some,” Archie said. “Wish I could do for you.”

“It okay, I ain' nervous. Seen on
Geraldo
bunch of bitches called theyselfs non-orgastic, or somethin'. They same as me. Ain' like havin' the AIDS or cancer. Bet this old bitch she come easy. Hey, old bitch, you come easy, I bet.”

Lula had not said a word since Archie and Kitty Kat had jumped into the car and the woman had put a gun to her head and commanded her to drive fast. She tried to respond but could not.

“Bitch!” shouted Kitty Kat. “Ask you nice does you come!”

Lula nodded. “Yes,” she said softly, “I do.”

“Easy? It easy comin'?”

“Not always.”

Kitty Kat poked the tip of Archie's shrunken penis with the barrel of her Python.

“Zip up, peach,” she said. “There ladies present.”

“This situation brings back some bad memories,” said Sailor, “about the time Pace was kidnapped.”

Sailor, Phil and Pace were sitting in the Florida room of the Ripley home in Metairie, drinking Jameson's straight from shot glasses and waiting for the telephone to ring.

“You've never mentioned that episode, Pace,” said Phil. “What happened?”

“I was ten years old,” Pace said, “and a crazy teenaged boy grabbed me while I was playin' in Audubon Park. He hid me in his room in a boardin' house located in a bad part of New Orleans, told me how he'd been searchin' for the perfect friend, which he hoped I'd be, but I wasn't, of course. He'd murdered his father and brother and cut 'em up in a hundred pieces, then buried their parts on the family farm in Evangeline Parish. I escaped, though.”

“Jesus,” said Phil, “how'd you get away?”

“Elmer—that was his name, Elmer Désespéré—went out one night after lockin' me in a closet, so I made a fuss, kicked at the door and stomped around, until the landlady, I guess she was, came in and let me out. I hightailed it straight down the stairs and into the street, found a cop and that was the end of the ordeal.”

“What happened to this Elmer?”

“Street gang chewed him up,” said Sailor. “He wandered into the wrong neighborhood and he got took apart. Tell you, though, the up side to Pace's abduction was that it brought me'n Lula back together.”

“How so?” asked Phil.

“I'd done some hard time, ten years to be exact, for armed robbery, durin' the commission of which a man was killed. Pace was born while I was inside, and when I got out things was kinda overwhelmin' for me'n his mama. Lula never did come to visit me durin' my stretch, which didn't much please me, though she did write a lot and send photos of her and Pace.”

“I didn't know this, Daddy,” Pace said. “I mean, that Mama never once came to see you.”

Sailor nodded. “It weren't all her fault, though. See, I was put away at the prison in Huntsville, Texas, and Lula and Pace were in North Carolina, with her mama, Marietta. Marietta never did think real highly of me, and due to the way I was actin' in them days I can't say how I could blame her. I'd done a couple years before that at a work camp in North Carolina for manslaughter, so Marietta pretty much had me pegged as a worthless badass from the get-go.”

“But you got nailed unfairly, Daddy, what Mama's always said. You were defendin' her in a bar and the man you hit banged his head on a table or somethin' and died. Man name of Lemon, right?”

“Bob Ray Lemon, right. Anyway, Lula's mama was dead set against her takin' up again with me when I got out, but Lula was eighteen by then and there weren't nothin' really legal Marietta could do about it, though she tried. After my release, Lula met me at the gate and we took off for California, though of course we didn't get more'n half that far. Marietta hired a private detective friend of hers to track us down, but by the time he did I'd pulled the dumb stunt in West Texas that subtracted a decade of my freedom. Marietta pretty much kept Lula prisoner for a while, which weren't too difficult for her to do, seein's how Lula was pregnant at first, and then with Pace bein' an infant it weren't so easy for Lula to travel. After Pace was growed some I guess it was just too hard for Lula to face me behind bars.”

“This is a wild story, Sailor,” said Phil. “How did Pace's bein' kidnapped figure in your getting back together with Lula?”

“I went to see Lula and Pace soon as I got out, of course, but like I said, we couldn't neither of us handle it. There was too much hard feelin's and pain and all on both sides, though I didn't blame nobody but myself for what'd happened. I took off and went to Mississippi for six months, worked in a lumberyard by Hattiesburg, but I couldn't stop thinkin' about Pace here, and Lula, and how we should all be together. I was in my thirties by then and was finally beginnin' to understand a bit about how the world really works and what a man's gotta do to be a man and find his way. It's one real strange voyage.”

“I remember meetin' you, Daddy, with Mama, right after you got out. You just walked away from us.”

“I couldn't help myself, Pace. I didn't know what else to do. You didn't
know me, weren't used to havin' me around, and I thought maybe you'd be better off without me. I was dead wrong, naturally, and it was just luck that brought me and Lula in contact again. I quit the lumberyard job and took a bus to New Orleans. I got a newspaper to look for a job and there was the article about Pace bein' abducted. Lula had come to N.O. with him to visit her childhood friend, Beany Thorn, whose husband, Bob Lee Boyle, later hired me to work for his company, Gator Gone, which is now the world's largest manufacturer of crocodile and alligator repellent. Wound up workin' for Bob Lee for thirty-ought years.”

“So you and Lula found each other again and lived happily ever after,” Phil said.

“Couldn'ta guessed you was from Hollywood, Phil,” said Sailor. “There been a few detours along the way but we been able to hold our own.”

“Quite a romance, Sailor. Like Romeo and Juliet only nobody dies.”

“It ain't over, Phil,” Sailor said, and swallowed two fingers of Irish whisky. “Lula always used to say the world is wild at heart and weird on top, and sometimes it's tough stayin' out of the way of the weirdness. Kinda like a tornado, you never know where it'll set down or what'll be left in place after it blows through.”

“We'll get Mama home safe, Daddy,” said Pace.

“You'll pardon me for thinkin' out loud, Sailor,” said Phil, “especially at a time of crisis like this, but I think there's a marvelous story here that would make a great film. It's a true romance, Sailor, and there aren't many of those. I came down here to research an incident that took place back in 1957. A black GI shot and killed a prominent white businessman during Mardi Gras and wound up on death row for twenty-five years. Through the efforts of a young white attorney who had never even tried a case, it was finally proven that the victim had provoked the shooting. Witnesses had been suppressed, paid off, and the black man spent more than half of his life in prison for defending himself. The attorney got him out.”

“Sorta like you, Daddy, defendin' Mama against Bob Ray Lemon.”

“Not quite, son, but maybe if I'd been black they woulda tried to fry me, too. Sounds like a good one, Phil. And you got yourself a happy endin'.”

“It's been done before,” Phil said, “which doesn't mean the picture shouldn't be made, but you and Lula have something special, Sailor, and I think the world should know about it.”

Sailor smiled slightly. “ 'Preciate your sayin' that, Phil. You want to take a run at it, go ahead. Pace here can help you out on the details. You'll forgive me, though, I don't seem too enthusiastic at the moment, seein's how I'm mostly concerned with gettin' my wife back from the Lord knows who's got her.”

Phil poured himself a fresh shot of whisky and took a sip. Flower Reynolds would be perfect for Lula, he thought. That snake Clark Westphal could be a problem, though. He might try to influence Flower against working with him. A movie about the Romeo and Juliet of the Deep South could do it, thought Phil, it could put Philip Reãl back on top. What was it Sailor said Lula used to say? The world is wild at heart and weird on top, that's it.
Wild at Heart
would be a great title, all right. Phil nodded to himself as he sipped the Jameson's. Or maybe just
Strange Voyage.
His private title, though, would be
Revenge of the Leopard Man.
It would pave the way for him to make
Cry of the Mute.
Even Arnie Pope, Phil knew, if he was still at Five Star by that time, would be begging to pay for it.

Lula looked around the room. Tacked to the walls were pictures severed neatly from magazines, books, calendars and newspapers of different types of lightning. There was one of a rainstorm with a single vertical bolt of cloud-to-ground lightning in a purple sky and a bright pink spot atop the bolt that marked its exit spot; a flame-like ribbon of ball lightning looping through a bloody backdrop; triple ground lightning over Las Vegas that looked like a flaming match head waved over a black bat wing; lightning striking behind a ridge line, its meandering main stem resembling the Mississippi River; an anvil-shaped, violet-tinted storm cloud disclosing a scorpion-like excretion onto a barren landscape; double ground lightning with the secondary channel striking more than five miles away from the primary route; slow-moving air discharge lightning outlining the state of Florida; and double bolts from a monstrous magenta thunderhead.

She sat on a nude, high-backed wooden chair, the only chair in the room, which she guessed to be about fifteen feet by fifteen feet. It was devoid of any other furniture. There were three windows, one in each wall other than the one containing a door, which was closed and, Lula presumed, locked. She was unbound but sat still, waiting for her abductors, to whom she had not spoken excepting the brief exchange with the woman in the car. Lula thought about opening one of the windows and running away, but she was not young anymore, she certainly could not run very fast or very far, and she did not want to antagonize the two captors, who, it seemed to Lula, were unpredictable types. She needed a cigarette. Her Mores were in her purse, which she had last seen on the floor under the front seat of the Cadillac. The door opened.