Charming Grace (47 page)

“Here,” a stern looking woman said, standing. “
You
can sit right here beside
me
.” She was dressed in a beautiful lavender suit with a matching hat. A deaconess, or maybe head of the ladies’ auxiliary. At any rate, she appointed herself Keeper Of The Strange White Woman.

I slipped into the end seat of her pew.

“Thank you,” I whispered. “I’m here to talk to Rev. McCarthy after the service. A personal counseling issue.”

The matron gave me a look that wanted to roast my marshmallow over a slow fire. “Why don’t you tell
me
about your problem?
I’m
his mother-in-law.”

“I see we have a visitor!” Rev. McCarthy boomed from the altar. He looked petrified. In terms of being dogged by unwanted visitors, he’d had a bad week already. “Welcome, sister! Why don’t you introduce yourself?”

I stood. “Grace Bagshaw Vance, Reverend. A friend of Boone Noleene’s. He sends his kindest regards. I look forward to speaking with you regarding the road to spiritual enlightenment. I’m sure you can give me all the directions I need, just as you did for Mr. Noleene.”

I sat down.

The former Titter McCarthy, king of the New Orleans chop-shop thieves, now a highly respected citizen with a mother-in-law who looked capable of opening a can of heavenly whup-ass on him if she ever learned the truth, wiped a silk handkerchief across his forehead with a shaky hand. A whiff of Hell fire had heated his air. “The Lord helps those who help themselves, Miz Vance. I look forward to speakin’ with you. I’ll be
glad
to point you along the path you seek and send you on your way as quick as can be.”

I nodded and raised a hand high, palm out, in gospel affirmation. “Bless your heart.”

Armand had never been so mad at me in his life.

“I can’t believe you were stupid enough to come here and get yourself trapped!” he yelled, just about in tears. “Didn’t I teach you
anything
when we were kids? I sweated and slaved to teach you how to survive, but you
still
come here and do something too damned
ignorant
for words.” He grabbed me in a bear hug, and I hugged him back, but then he shoved me away, and then he slammed a fist into the plaster wall of the tiny, hot, dim room we now shared. “If we get out of here alive I’ll kick Titter’s ass for giving you the message about me!”

“Titter’s got Jesus on his side. You best leave him alone and hope he’s prayin’ for us right now.”

Armand staggered and frowned at me. He was still wearing the cheap black slacks and white shirt he’d been given when he walked out of Angola on parole, but his pants were dusty and his shirt bore a big blood stain to match a nasty scrape on his cheekbone, courtesy of our hosts. He was gaunt and had a dark, four-day beard. “Jesus? Titter?” He muttered a long stream of bad things in French then finished up with “
What the hell are you talkin’ about, Bro?
”

I held out both hands. “You think I’d just walk away and let you get killed over a lousy couple million in gambling money?”

“If these assholes hadn’t caught me before I got on a plane, I’d be somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico right now writin’ you a postcard that said, ‘Dear Boone: You don’t have to worry about me, anymore. Don’t even
try
to find me, because I’ll make sure you never do. Go and have yourself a nice life.”

“You were gonna disappear and not tell me where?”

“I
said
I planned to send you a postcard.”

Armand wobbled on his feet, looking like hell. But when I tried to put an arm around him he shoved me away. “Little brother,
I’m
the reason you spent ten years in prison. You think I can ever forgive myself for that?
No way.
But I
can
make sure I don’t ruin the
rest
of your life. So I was goin’ to high-tail it to some Caribbean island and vanish, okay? Do a little gambling, work the docks, hire on as a fisherman, whatever it took to earn a living. As long as you couldn’t find me and try to
rehabilitate
me. I’m not cut out to be a movie star’s babysitter, Bro. I just didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t want to bust your bubble.”

“No bubble left to bust,” I said grimly.

He grabbed me in another hug. We held onto each other like girls, then slapped each other on the back a lot, then wiped our faces and restored some dignity. We had plenty of time to chit-chat. The four ball-wagging, gun-waving blowhards who’d shoved me into the makeshift cell had left us there to stew in our own bad luck. They were none to happy to hear I only brought half-a-million collars in my big leather duffel. They were even less happy when I told ‘em they wouldn’t get the rest of their two million unless they drove me and Armand to New Orleans in the morning and met my ‘associate’ on a corner in the French Quarter.

So suddenly, the issue became a whole ‘nother issue. “Our boss wants the money your brother stashed in the Caribbean,” they kept sayin’. ‘Not this money.
That
money.”

Their point was so damned stupid I tried to ignore it. Like a good politician, I decided to just stay on point.

“All you guys have to do is take me and my brother to the French Quarter and we’ll all stand on the sidewalk like nice tourists tomorrow mornin’ until my associate drives up. Then we’ll stroll to the nearest hotel room, go through a couple of big suitcases he’ll bring along, and you can count the rest of your money. Then we’ll wave goodbye as you tote the money out the door. That’s just smart business, okay? No bullshit, no hidden crap. But you’ll get the rest of your boss’s money in a
public
place, where my brother and I can walk out without little pointy bullets stuck in the back parts of our brains.”

“You don’t understand, asshole.
We want your brother’s money
,” they kept sayin’.

“Money’s money, so what difference does it make?” They looked none too bright, but even morons should be able to understand a simple pay-off.

They didn’t.

So now Armand and I had time to visit while our hosts thought things through using fewer IQ points amongst the four of them than Forrest Gump, total.

Armand aimed a fist at the wall, again. “If it weren’t for me—”

“I wouldn’t have grown up with a brother who tried his best to keep me safe when nobody else gave a damn.” I grabbed his fist and wrestled him until he calmed down. “Now
I’m
here to take care of
you
, and there’s nothing you can do about it, so get used to the idea.”

“I tried to just disappear—”

“Yeah, well, you should’ve just told me you had a debt to pay off. Where’d you stash this two million you skimmed off the top of your gambling enterprises for the Dixie mob?”

“Nowhere. It doesn’t exist.”

I stared at him. “You didn’t steal the money?”

“Hell, yes, I stole it. But I didn’t squirrel it away in a Caribbean bank. I gave it away. To charity.”

“Armand—”

“I’m
serious
. I considered that two million to be my financial penance for a life of crime. I sent it to good causes. Churches, shelters, orphanages, save-the-whales—”

“You sent stolen mob money to the whales?”

“Sure. I like whales.”

“All right. So there’s no stash of cash. Did you tell these goons that?”

“Of course I did. But they don’t believe me. Look, they’re knee breakers, not geniuses. They were told to get the money I hid off-shore. They want
that
money. They can’t wrap their little brains around
any
change in plans. But maybe we’ll get lucky once they think it over and talk to the people who sent them.”

As if they were smart enough to be psychic, or even eavesdrop, the Gump Squad pounded on the door then banged it open. The leader stepped in with the other three crowded around him, pointing guns at us.

The head Gump shook a fist at Armand. “All right, Noleene, here’s my final offer, you shit-for-brain Cajun. You sit here tonight with your brother and
you
decide how much y’all want to live, you shit-for-brains. ‘Cause by six a.m. tomorrow mornin’ either you give me the account number and the password for that Caribbean bank of yours, or I’ll keep the half-a-million your bro brought
and
I’ll kill both of you shit-for-brains. Deal?”

“Man, I’m tellin’ you, there isn’t any Caribbean bank account.”

“Stop lying, shit-for-brains!”

I stepped in front of Armand. “Look, I’m kinda confused, here. I said you can have the rest of your money in the morning. I’ve got it. Waitin’ in New Orleans. With my associate.”

“No, we want
his
money.” Head Gump gestured furiously at Armand, again.

“
Money is money.
”

“We’re pissed now. It’s a matter of pride. We want him to confess.”

“This isn’t an episode of
Law and Order
. You want the rest of the two million dollars? In cash? Gimme my cell phone back and I’ll make a call and we can settle this tonight. See? I’m willin’ to compromise. All you have to do is meet me halfway.
Capice?
”

“
Capice?
” Armand whispered. “When did you become Italian?”

“It works for Stone.”

The head Gump shook his head. “I want the two million from the Caribbean bank. I’ll be damned if this fuckin’ bro of yours is gonna walk outta here and go live on some island with my money to back him. I want
that
money.” He scowled at Armand. “All you gotta do is call your fuckin’
bank
.”

Armand sighed. “I’m tellin’ you, I’m swearin’ on my mother’s name, that I gave the money away to good causes and it’s not in any bank, anywhere. Take my bro’s money, man. Tell your boss it
came
from the Caribbean. Hell, we can spray some pineapple scent on it, if you want to.”

That idea confused the dummy for a second, and he stood there frowning and thinking. Then he went right back to his simple-minded argument. “You got until 6 a.m. tomorrow morning to call your fuckin’ bank. Or else we kill ya. We take the money your bro bought as a payment, and the boss writes off his losses, and then we fuckin’ blow your brains out and use you for gator bait. End of story. End of deal. End of fuckin’ Noleenes.”

He and the other Gumps backed out of the room and slammed the door.

Armand and I sat down side-by-side along a dusty wall with peeling paint, our knees drawn up and our arms propped on them. Armand looked at me wearily. “Who’s this ‘associate’ you told them about. Anybody I know? Think he’ll come through?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“So tell me about him.”

I sat there a minute, thinking. There was no easy way to drop a bombshell like Jack Roarke. I waded in slowly. “He’s somebody who cares about us. Somebody we haven’t seen in a long time. Somebody we never thought we’d see again. Somebody who’s been keepin’ track of us from a distance but didn’t want to tell us he cared. He figured either we didn’t need him or might hate him for being away so long. He’s somebody you remember but I never got a chance to know. He wasn’t much more than twenty when he did hard time up north for robbery.

“Up there, he had a baby son and a wife. The wife divorced him and never told the son his papa ended up in prison. The son thought his papa had just disappeared and died somewhere. Then, some years later, the papa—the robber con—tried to go straight and got married again—in, hmmm, another part of the country, under a new name—and he did fine for a few years, respectable citizen and all, and he had himself another couple of sons with the second wife. But he just couldn’t keep his old ways behind him, so he knocked over a few banks, and eventually he got caught. Sentenced to fifteen years.

“He begged his wife never to tell his boys he was in the slammer, and she gave him her word. So he had two sons down South who didn’t know what became of him—and one up in New Jersey. By the time he got of prison, his second wife was dead and her two boys were wild-eyed teenagers, out on their own. He tried but he couldn’t even find ‘em. His older son, up north, was grown and in the army. That son seemed to be doing fine, do the ex-con stayed away from him. But the con cursed himself for losing two good women and three sons, and he vowed to make something of himself and find a way to make it all up to his sons, one day. He’s spent the twenty years since then working toward that goal.”

Armand stared at me a long time. What he was thinking was hard for him to believe, much less put into words. I understood. Finally, he said in a low, hoarse voice, “Are you tellin’ me you found our papa?”

I put a hand on his arm. “No. I’m tellin’ you our papa found
us
.”

Chapter 20

Hang on, Boone. I’m coming.

My hands shook as I drove a rental car into the yard of the old warehouse. The sun had set; a muggy summer night seeped into the damp earth, black creeks, and lonely swamps of the Louisiana pine forest. A light showed through one murky window. A pair of bronze SUV’s was parked nearby.

Everyone’s home, and the lights are on. Very cozy. Good.