The Do-Right (12 page)

She'd flared at him. “That hate was rammed into me.”

He held up his hand. “Far be it from me to argue. But here is the point. That man doesn't have the hate now, does he?”

“I don't know. Probably not.”

“Who does?”

“Me. So.”

“It is poisoning you. Not him. You.”

She'd understood that, but had not been able to use it.

Some of the cops had been on her side. She remembered that well. Fontenot. Merriweather. They couldn't do anything. Her word against the old man she had cut, father of a murdered son. Sat up in the court alongside the deceased's drooping mother and a little sister attached like a tick to the mother's side, that was how it'd been. A crime long judged, bought and paid for.

Delpha took Calinda's paring knife and scraped silver scales from the gutted fish. Always came down to the one thing, always did.

She could kill him.

XV
XV

PHELAN HAD IT in mind to score some tacos al carbon and watch baseball on the couch. Atlanta was scheduled to play, and Hank might just smack another homerun. Phelan's '69 Chevelle though, that car suffered from steering issues. It passed the taco place and meandered him out to the refinery part of town, where he located Daughtry Petrochemical at the edge of the industrial zone. Welders, pavers, concrete guys bordering the refineries themselves: great gray cities of pipe, tanks, burning flares like flags flying, acres of cars and pickups in the lots fronting the office building. Blacktop in summer was gummy tar, heat from the operations combining to offer a hundred-twenty degree blast coming at you up down and sideways.

The address he had matched a long low brick building, probably twenty, thirty years old. A faded red on white sign reading Daughtry Petrochemical hung half off its uprights, two workmen lowering it down. Out of business?

He knew it. Enroco killed Daughtry, and they just didn't say so in the paper.

He parked the Chevelle a fair distance away from the only two cars in the blacktop parking lot. Both Ramblers. What were the odds? One was a plain old two-door, but the other was a '58 wagon with braided chrome trim, be flashy if it'd been washed within the last decade. Maybe employees were
inside cleaning out their desks. Or their lockers or lab or shop, whatever was left of Daughtry.

Phelan thought he caught a glimpse of someone by the Rambler wagon, but when he turned to get a good look, there was nobody.

He entered to find an office, wooden counter running across the front. Framed pictures of the place hung on the wall leading up to it. A stout, late-middle-aged woman behind the counter leaned over a desk, setting file folders in towering piles. Boxes sat on the floor around her. Cleaning out her desk sure enough. Daughtry Petrochemical was finished. Mentally, Phelan bent his right hand fingers, blew on them, and buffed his lapel.

She looked up and frowned. “Oh, I wasn't 'sposed to unlock that door. But I'm so used to unlocking it every morning, I forgot. I'm sorry. We're closed today.” The woman wore a black suit, sheened polyester, over a white blouse tied at the neck in a floppy bow. Black patent leather shoes with gold buckles. Pretty formal outfit for packing up.

“Closed,” Phelan echoed.

She wrenched open a sticky desk drawer, rummaged. The motion unbalanced a precarious stack of folders, which began to slide. “Oh no. No, don't you dare.” She threw her hands out, rescuing the top one while the ones below splatted onto the floor, spilling out sheets of paper.

“Oh, my goodness.” She started to kneel down.

Two seconds, and Phelan was through a little gate and behind the counter. “Lemme help you,” he said. “You'll get yourself dirty.” He squatted and stuffed pages back into the manila sleeves, handed them up to her. He smiled while noting file titles—lengthy, nonsense words that might be names of chemicals.

“Aren't you sweet? Wait, let me get a box.” She took the
folders as he handed them to her and set them in the box. “Should of done it this way in the first place, Margaret, you goose,” she said.

“That your name, Margaret?”

“Margaret Hanski, yes.”

Phelan stuck out his hand. “I'm Tom.”

“Nice to meet you, Tom. You didn't come to see Mr. Daughtry, did you? Cause he's not here.”

“No, just intended to check out your products for my company. Maybe meet some personnel. We're branching out down this way.”

Margaret scalded him with a glance. “You from New Jersey? You don't sound Yankee.”

A crash came from somewhere beyond the wall, glass breaking, some muffled exclamation. Phelan turned toward the sounds, but Margaret didn't.

“No, ma'am. Beaumont boy.”

“Thought so. It's just lotsa the big companies have headquarters up north, and they just barge down here and tell people what to do. Mr. Daughtry would never have let anyone tell him what to do with his company.”

“You sound sad about Daughtry's closing.”

“Oh, just the lab's closing. Not the office. We're moving the office over to Broadway. Old house that's been restored—my lord, the woodwork! Oh, I meant to give you this.” She plucked a card from the drawer.

“Then, would you say…business is booming?”

Her chin turned. “Yes, moving. I already said that.”

“Booming,” Phelan said, louder.

“The business is doing very well,” she said stiffly. “We're becoming more financially-orientated. It's just that it's happening so fast.”

Phelan unpatted his own head. Daughtry not slaughtered. Moving. Figure that.

The folders were boxed. Phelan stood up. “Can I help you with anything else?”

“Oh no, thank you. I'll be leaving soon for the reception. Let me give your card to Mr. Daughtry. I'll make sure he gets it,” she said. “And I'll tell him how helpful you were.” She smiled.

“Thank you, but I'll just catch him at your new…place,” Phelan said, tucking the card into his jacket pocket.

“No, please. I'll be glad to do it.” Her hand was out.

Phelan tried a charming smile. “Don't bother, ma'am.”

“No bother at all.” Mock-sternly, she said, “Just give me that card, boy.”

Fake cards. Damn, he should have thought of this situation before
.

Her hand kept reaching toward him.

“You know, that's a handsome suit. Elegant.”

She looked down, spanked on a piece of skirt that covered her thigh. “Thank you. There's the reception this afternoon. Plato and I're going—”

“Plato?”

“Plato Willis is our assistant chemist. Little smart aleck's somewhere round here.” Focusing on the black suit darkened Margaret's chipper mood. “You know, they say bad things happen in threes. We lost our head chemist, Mr. Robbins. Terrible. Been expecting it for some time. Then my daughter-in-law just up and lost her baby, like to cried her eyes out and me with her. I swear. They got all boys, and they just knew this one would be a little girl. Samantha, they were going to call her.”

“I'm so sorry. Was there a third sorrow?”

“Well, yes. Mr. Daughtry's been under the weather, and a few days ago, just like that, he's gone. You hadn't heard that?”

Phelan hadn't. “My condolences, ma'am. What was it that…what did Mr. Daughtry die from?”

“Oh, he's not dead, he's in Arizona. With his daughter. I would've heard if he'd died, why, John Daughtry and I have worked together thirty-four years. He's always suffered from sugar diabetes, and when he got this awful bug that swam out of his stomach into his bloodstream, his daughter moved him out there. John's wife's passed, you know. His son—” Flick of her eyelashes. “And with us so depending on foreign oil. This gas crisis we have. You know how much oil this country is importing now? Thirty-six percent from foreign countries and Mr. Daughtry—”

“And Mr. Daughtry sick, you say. Must be tough for him.”

“After forty-two years in his business, business he built with his own two hands, well, I shouldn't say this, but he handled it better when Marjorie died. That was his wife. Having to leave the business broke his heart in two.”

“Since the company is relocating, you said”—he didn't want to bring up the card again—“who's taken over for him? Not that anyone could fill his shoes but…”

“You don't know? Mr. Wallace Daughtry.” A hitch of her upper lip. “He restored that place on Broadway to live in, piled it full of pricey antiques. Now he's decided it's going to be his office. And his father's chair still warm.” Margaret shook her head. “Excuse me, that was uncalled for. Now, I know I was about to do something, wasn't I?” She narrowed her eyes.

Before she could remember his card, Phelan formed a sandwich of the secretary's hand between his. “Thank you for your time. Privilege to meet you, Margaret.”

She was responding “And you too,” when a car braked hard outside, making her startle toward the window.

The man appeared in the office so fast he might have
Star Trek
-teleported. Lanky guy, 30s. Bolo tie with a hunk of turquoise. Western-cut suit, tight to the butt and a flare to the trousers. Looked like he was sewed in it.

“I thought I told you to keep the office locked today.”

Margaret blinked rapidly, her lips parted. Her jaw moved a couple times before she said, “I'm sorry, Wallace. I just forgot for a minute.”

“A minute. Only takes a minute to lock the damn door. The files are sensitive stuff.”

“I am really sorry.” Her miserable expression lightened momentarily. “Oh. Oh, I forgot. I had copies cut of your new office keys, like you asked me to. Didn't know exactly how many you wanted, so I had Sears cut—”

“You keep saying
forgot
, Margaret.”

“Only twice,” Phelan put in quietly.

“Who's this joker?” Wallace hooked his thumb at Phelan, who smiled and stuck out his hand, murmured an indecipherable company name.

“This is a salesman happened by—” Margaret trailed off.

“And waltzed right in the front door. A salesman.” Wallace Daughtry had eyes like black ball bearings. He head-butted the air. “Hit it, buddy. Plato back there?”

“Yes, he's in the lab. I
do
apologize, Mr. Daughtry, for forgetting to—”

“You still have all our keys, don't you?”

“Course I do. In my purse like always. Including those spare keys for the new office, like I just said. Or wait, maybe I put those ones in my top desk drawer. Surely not. Oh dear, I know it's one or the other. Let me look—”

“No.”

The snapped order stilled Margaret.

“Later. You know, Margaret, your game needs upping. You—” Wallace Daughtry glared at her. “Oh, never mind.” He spun on a boot heel and went out the door again, passed in front of the window. There was the sound of a door opening and some voices.

Once Phelan had determined that he couldn't make out the men's conversation, he turned to Margaret, who stood precisely as she had when Daughtry, Jr. had spoken to her, pale, her neck above the floppy white bow beginning to blotch in squarish red patches. He said a quiet “Thank you again, ma'am,” lightly touching Margaret Hanski on the shoulder, and navigated his way outside, where he cut around, taking a last survey. The Daughtry Petrochemical sign lay prone in the parking lot. But out front of a house on Broadway Avenue, there'd be a new sign.

A side door was propped open, and Wallace in his tight Western suit was haranguing into it in a low tone, index finger out, arm chopping. Phelan slipped into the Chevelle and started it. Messed with the visor and a polishing rag on the inside windshield until young Daughtry slammed himself into a shiny Datsun 240Z, metallic blue, and did as he'd advised Phelan to do—hit it.

Phelan climbed out of his car and walked over to the side door. A small man with his arms around a cardboard box was backing out. He turned, breeze scattering his pale, flyaway hair, and Phelan caught a startled glint behind the wire-rimmed glasses before the man scuttled back over the threshold.

Janitor, mover, assistant chemist, first name Plato? Phelan shaded his eyes to peer in at the man hugging the box. Wallace
must have scared all the blood south to this guy's Earth shoes because he had the chalkiest face Phelan had seen outside of a Johnny Winter album. Sweating too.

He offered his hand. “Good afternoon. Plato Willis? Assistant chemist, right?”

“You are?”

“Salesman. I was sorry to learn John Daughtry was sick, but my time's not lost if I make a few contacts. That was Mr. Daughtry's son that just left, I take it? Man in a hurry.”

“Yeah, that was Moondark the Soulless.” The guy studied Phelan's hand, looked him up and down and said, “Salesman? And I'm John Carter, Warlord of Mars.” He kicked loose the doorstop and pulled the metal door shut.

Phelan slipped his spurned hand into his pocket and walked back out to the Chevelle which, surely now, would agree to stop at the
sabroso
Tacos La Bamba. He just might get home in time to watch Hank hammer number 690.

XVI
XVI

DELPHA, SHOWERED AND dressed for Mrs. Spier's house, met Mr. Rabey slogging up the stairs. He stretched out a hand to peck her arm. As this right hand spent its day caressing his pants' zipper, she took her arm back while lowering her ear to him.

“Today's Hettie's birthday,” he said direly. His eyebrows perked with significance.

She understood she was tipped. “Well. All right.”

“Delpha! Delpha, come here.” Mrs. Bibbo was waving from the sofa by the television. Delpha swerved from her route to the kitchen and went over to her.

“Evening. How's the hearings?”

Mrs. Bibbo was the New Rosemont's Watergate expert. Banks of men in suits filled the screen. A young man with a steep forehead was bending his neck to a microphone.

“Nothing new. But…thirty-five times,” said the old lady, shaking her head tightly.

“What?”

“That's what he said all last week—thirty five times that young man there talked with the President about covering up the Watergate break-in. That Nixon says he never heard of even once. Not even Al Capone's mob was as bad as this gang. Capone was just bootlegging liquor. This is not whiskey. This is America the brave! These men lie, and they cheat, and they show no
shame. Just so they can have all the power. Every one of them will tell you they deserve what they have. But when they're alone in the dark”—Mrs. Bibbo tapped her own chest, the gentle slope above the magnificent breasts at her waist—“they know.”

The young man's top lip glistened in the TV camera.

“Oh, and,”—now her finger wagged like a teacher's—“it's Hettie's birthday.”

Delpha nodded gravely.

Mr. Finn and Mr. Nystrom, at the game table, had already put aside their playing cards and were waiting, bright-eyed and courteous, for Delpha to draw even with them. They both cleared their throats, then glanced at each other with irritation.

“Afternoon, Mr. Finn, Mr. Nystrom.”

“Afternoon, Miss Wade. Did she tell you? You should know.”

“Well, I hear it's somebody's birthday today.”

“She heard, Harry. No need to chew her ear off,” said Mr. Finn, but that answer did not stave off Mr. Nystrom.

“Are you hungry? Because we have some cheese and crackers in our rooms. Simon and me'll share with you. Cheddar cheese. Not that Swiss stuff with holes.”

“That's nice of you. You two not eating dinner?”

“There's no dinner. It's Hettie's birthday.”

She had to ask but experience had taught Delpha that, with these two, asking beckoned to a herd of randy stories. Some were even worth hearing. Mr. Finn there had been a high school science teacher become doughboy in the Argonne Forest. But Mr. Nystrom had sold restaurant supplies, napkins, forks, eggbeaters, what have you. Never knew which one would get the floor—and she had her heart set on a cup of coffee before catching the bus out to Mrs. Speir's. Nothing out there but instant. She thanked them and headed toward the kitchen.

Oscar burst out of the door still in his cook's whites.
Dapper type with a solid fan club in the sisterhood, Oscar liked his bellbottoms, his broad lapels and cologne. Now he was booking for the street wet, in a sudsy apron.

“Any coffee left?” she asked him.

“Everybody for their ownself.” He untied the apron behind his back. Mrs. Bibbo scatted her hand at Delpha, who almost followed Oscar out the door. No, she could just run in and get a cup. She'd be quick. Thinking about the four hours at Mrs. Speir's mausoleum, she turned back and entered the kitchen.

No electric lights on, just the slant light of a summertime evening. The kitchen was black and gray and yellow-white, the grill and stove cold. Ten-inch bread knife lay on the floor not far from her shoes. Delpha angled back to the kitchen door, then to the knife again. Could have been thrown, bonked off the door, landed where it was.

On the chopping table, a low-tide bottle of Four Roses and another lined up touching, its bosom friend.

Delpha surrendered the coffee idea.

Down past the end of the table, between it and two refrigerators, Miss Blanchard was folded over a guitar, playing a melody on the bass strings and strumming on the high ones. Delpha had heard the tune—even before she'd listened to the Grand Old Opry broadcasts with a bunch of other women at Gatesville, carried on the radio. A voice rumbled, and she wouldn't have recognized the blue of it for Calinda Blanchard's had it not been that this here was her kitchen, and there she sat on a kitchen stool.

       
I never will marry or be no man's wife

       
I expect to live single all the days of my life

       
My love's gone and left me, the one I adore

       
She's gone where I never will see her anymore

Mother Maybelle's song. Miss Blanchard sang the tune even lower, but with more breath than lift on the high notes. The guitar stopped as she came up for a swig of bourbon.

“Can I make you up a plate?” Delpha murmured, careful to put no more tone in her voice than a stray gust of wind. “Sandwich? Leftovers? Get you anything?”

The old woman reached, tilted the bottle long and banged it back on the table, wiped her lips on the shoulder of her shirt. “Yeah. 1942. 1943. Go get me 1944, how 'bout.”

Dim light. Dark of the open pantry stretched back without end.

“If I could fetch back missing years, Miss Blanchard, I'd do it for you. Fetch back fourteen for me.”

Miss Blanchard was peering toward Delpha, but it didn't seem like she was seeing her. The old woman finished the bottle and heaved it straight-on at Delpha's head. A rush of air riffled the hair by her left ear. The bottle smashed on the kitchen door, Delpha raring back from its flying glass. She slid on shards as she scurried from the kitchen.

Mr. Finn and Mr. Nystrom were standing shoulder to shoulder outside, out of the range of the door. One clutched a white sleeve of Saltines and the other a block of orange cheese. “We told you,” Mr. Nystrom scolded.

“Hettie was her sweetheart, huh?” Delpha said.

Mr. Finn said, “Jack that used to rent #313 told us she was a service pilot, or training to be, over at Ellington Field. During the war. There was a fire.” Mr. Finn's head was lowered. “C'mon, Harry. The girl didn't know. It's her first birthday here.”

To a one, the inhabitants of the New Rosemont's lobby stared toward her balefully. Well, she'd drink instant tonight. She called up Isaac on the pay phone and put him off till tomorrow.

*

They had drunk two plastic water glasses of beer apiece, she and Isaac, because Oscar had been running out to the store for butter, and Delpha had held out two dollars and asked him to buy some Pearl.

“Correct me now, baby, but I'm believing you old enough to buy beer,” Oscar said.

So Miss Blanchard had not told her cook about Delpha's record. That was an interesting thing to know about her landlady. She extended the dollar bills.

They looked each other in the face until Oscar's chin went up and his eyes half-closed like a cat's. He took the money.

Delpha and Isaac had done it three times, the second time pulling and shoving, and the third, just as they started to get up from that fight, they went back down. He lay flat on his back when they finished, breathing so you could hear it. Delpha slid off and over sideways. Tears bolted from her eyes. There was no stopping them, the way there would be no stopping if you stumbled into a hole you never saw as you approached it, a hole wider than your own flailing arms, that offered no handhold, no ledge to hinder your fall. Delpha rolled and buried her face in the pillow, pressing the flat thing to her ears with both hands, helpless as the surge pumped through, as it poured.

Isaac was kneeling on the bed, trying to turn her around. “Did I do something wrong? What can I do?”

She shook her head, rubbing her face against the pillow.

“If it's me you can tell me, and I'll try to fix whatever it is. But if it's something else, let me help, OK? Is it your family? You never talk about them. Is someone sick or in trouble?”

She pushed the pillow up to her forehead. It was OK now. Gone. “It's not you.”

“Delpha. Delpha, turn over. No lie, I would do anything for you. Or for anyone in your family. I have some money saved. You can have it. I'd do anything.”

Delpha turned toward him. He was looming over her, all that dark hair tumbled around his smooth, bony face, the wide shoulders caved in.

“Thanks.”

“Tell me.”

“I don't know, I can't really. Lemme up.”

“Wait. Go somewhere with me. We're always here in this room. Not that it isn't my favorite place to be. But I want to take you somewhere. Wherever you want. I don't mean right now but another time.”

“You hungry?” Delpha rose, took the slip from the chair back and put it over her head, pulled on her dress.

“I'm not three and distractible, I'm twenty. And capable of helping you. If it's something that can be helped.”

“It's not, Isaac. I'm hungry. Be right back.”

Fifteen minutes later, Isaac had his jeans on, and they were sitting on the floor of her room with forks, eating out of a saucepot of spaghetti and meatballs she'd heated up in the kitchen. No use in dirtying up two plates to wash, she told him. He twirled the spaghetti, stuck mounds of it into his mouth. Starving, naturally. He talked about where they might go. He could take his mother to work and have the car all day. Or he could drive his dad's car.

Something after two in the morning, in a room in the New Rosemont Hotel. Crickets singing through the screen. Spaghetti a mite gluey. She ate the last spoonfuls of Oscar's savory, garlicky sauce, licked the spoon, and smiled at Isaac's offer. “Your dad's.”

Dark, but she could see, and he could see, they were used
to it. She and him had traded bodies, given them, taken them, she'd unburied an old channel of sorrow that opened up, that poured, and she wasn't acting.

Hesitantly, Isaac asked her about the scars on her neck. Delpha swallowed a mouthful of sauce and replied that they were from a childhood accident.