Chasing the Wind (18 page)

She said nothing.

Bingham shook his head, straightened, pushed back his chair, and stood. "Souls," he muttered, making his way to the door. Where was the elevator in this place? He needed to escape for a while. Outside where the air was cool. Automobile exhaust was better than the smoke and tension in this conference room.

Anonymous souls. As if he didn't already have enough to worry about. That was the trouble with people in New Orleans: The residents of this city just weren't practical.

Amalise ducked her head to hide her fury. Bingham announced to the room that he'd be back soon as he strode out the door. She fumed as she wrote, imagining his anonymous agents spreading over the Marigny like a fungus. The lead on the pencil snapped, and she felt Raymond's eyes shift her way. Expressionless, she found another sharpened pencil and went back to work.

At the other end of the table, the blueprint Adam had unrolled lay open and unattended, spread out across the table. Those plans mapped each parcel to be purchased for Black Diamond, she knew. She glanced around, but no one was paying her any attention. Doug, Preston, Raymond, and the bankers were in deep discussions. Robert was on the phone. Bingham and Adam were gone.

Setting down the pencil, Amalise pushed back her chair and strolled toward the credenza on the other side of the room. She dropped some ice into a glass, opened a Tab, and poured the drink over the ice. She leaned back against the counter. No one looked up.

Sipping the drink, she stepped over to the plans and casually scanned the squares—the spots where houses currently stood. Each square contained the street address of the property located there and the name of the legal owner of record, whether a lease existed on the property, and a few key points. A phone number was scribbled by hand under each owner's name. With a quick glance down over the surveyed area, Amalise followed the trail of lines along Frenchmen Street to Royal, curving around to Kerlerec Street where Caroline and Ellis lived.

The house was the second from a corner on the plans. The address was there, and she bent closer, looking for Caroline and Ellis's name below. Instead she found herself staring at the name C. T. Realty, Inc. She blinked and looked again.

C. T. Realty, Inc., a slumlord entity well known in this city for its cutthroat tactics.

The full impact of the information took a moment to sink in. Caroline and Ellis were only renting. There was no notation of an existing lease.

As she stood looking down at the paper covering one end of the conference table, the facts raced through her mind in the order she knew they'd occur after the closing—the sale by Caroline's landlord to Murdoch's agent, immediate notice to Caroline and Ellis evicting them from the premises, and the adoption agency's response to the loss of their home, the report citing instability and potential damage to the children. It was a classic "parade of horribles."

She thought of the worn furniture in the house, the children's secondhand clothes, and knew that Caroline and Ellis didn't have the money required to move, not to an equivalent house and neighborhood. Such a move was well beyond their means, and the social workers, already worried about the age of the prospective parents, would realize that too.

Her heart sank. The adoptions were probably doomed. Those children, just adjusting to their new home, would be tossed out into the world again. The landlord on Kerlerec would reap the profit from the sale, and Caroline and Ellis would be left to fend for themselves.

And her job was to make sure that all of this happened.

How had things come to this?

Heart racing, she looked again at the phone number for C. T. Realty, Inc., memorizing it.

Walking back to her seat at the other end of the conference table, she sat down, pulled over her notebook, and jotted down the name and phone number of the owner of Caroline's house, all the while asking herself what she thought she was doing. When she looked up, Robert's eyes met hers. He'd been watching her, she realized. He lounged against the credenza while Preston stood beside him hammering home some point into the speaker of the telephone.

Quickly she looked off. Had he seen her take that name from the plans? She turned to Raymond and asked a question about the agreement he was working on, half listening to his answer. She'd never considered the situation she found herself in now—loving the work but hating the results. That wasn't the way things were supposed to work.

Abba. You know that all my life I've wanted to be a lawyer. I thought law was supposed to be about fixing problems, about serving justice and righting wrongs, like Dad used to do in his courtroom. Now that I've made it this far, I thought I'd have a hand in somehow making the world a better place. But things aren't working out that way this time. Only you can see the big picture, Abba. Please help me think clearly now.

When Bingham Murdoch blew back in and everyone returned to the table, still the shadows remained. Negotiations resumed and hours passed, but Amalise found that she couldn't dispatch the images of Caroline and the children. She told herself that this was just one transaction in a long career. Mangen & Morris had taken a chance in hiring her as one of the first two women lawyers in the firm. She couldn't blow it now.

She wished that she could talk this over with Jude, but she quickly shoved the thought aside. She didn't need Jude's advice. Not now. He was Rebecca's now.

Careful, Amalise,
the observer said.
The path is hidden in the storm. Let the hand of God lift you up, and soon enough you'll see the truth stretching out before you.

A few nights after he'd fixed
the fence for Amalise, Jude sat on the couch, weight on the small of his back, legs splayed, watching the television set. The sound was off, and he'd been thinking. Suddenly he lurched forward, switched off the set, and went into the dining room to the telephone. Festering anger was a losing proposition. If Amalise wanted only friendship from him, at least he'd hold onto that. He picked up the phone and dialed her office. She answered on the first ring.

"Hello?" Her voice was low and tired. It was seven o'clock, and Rebecca had said the team was exhausted.

"Hi. Thought you might want to take a break, get something to eat."

There was a pause on her end of the phone. He gazed out the window. The street was dark, and he saw out there only ghosts of the children he'd hoped to have with Amalise. The others, the flesh-and-blood ones, were now all indoors.

"Sure."

Lights in the house next door flicked on, and the ghosts disappeared. Jude leaned against the wall, picturing her sitting in that office as he looped a finger through the coiled telephone cord.

"I'm still working," she said, "but I could take a break."

He slipped his finger from the cord and it sprang away. "All right. I'll pick you up and bring you back to the office afterward."

"That sounds good. What time?"

He glanced at his watch and pushed off the wall. "How about one hour?"

"See you then. Park at the corner of Baronne and Common, and we'll find a place nearby."

He went back to the living room, stretched out on the couch, hands behind his head, looking at the ceiling, and thought about the two cottages in the Irish Channel that he'd bid on earlier in the day. Should hear something on them tomorrow. He'd like to seal the deal before he left on watch next week. Then he could start planning the renovations. A thrill of adrenaline ran through him at the thought of this new venture. He'd do the work himself until he got further along.

He shifted his back and relaxed again, still staring at the twelve-foot ceiling, one reason he'd bought this duplex. He focused on the light fixture; the light up there had never worked. He'd been using lamps in this room, but he'd get after that tomorrow. Old houses like this all had some electrical problems.

Amalise had always liked old houses. He glanced again at his watch. Another half hour and he'd go pick her up, try to smooth things over after that fiasco at Clancy's the other night.

By eight o'clock only Bingham, Amalise, and Adam were still working in the conference room, although Bingham seemed to be doing nothing more than passing time. Raymond and Preston had returned to their offices earlier to draft changes to the loan agreement. Robert was off in a meeting somewhere with the general contractor. Doug and Frank Earl had gone home, the prerogative of senior partners and their clients.

Amalise glanced at her watch and set down the pencil she'd been using, marking her place in the investor's placement memorandum describing the transaction. Consistency was the watchword with respect to the two lending group's documents, the bank syndicate, and Tom and Robert's investors. Briefly, she wondered when Tom would arrive in town.

She rose and went to a chair in the corner and retrieved her coat. "I'll be back in a while," she said when Adam and Bingham looked up.

Adam raked his hand through his hair, pushed back his chair, stretched his arms wide, and yawned. "I'll stick it out a little longer," he said.

"I'm going to eat," she said. "Would you like me to bring something back? A sandwich? Or a salad?"

"No, thanks."

But Bingham rose too and slipped on his jacket, a herringbone tweed with thick double seams that looked expensive, yet also looked as though he'd been wearing it for fifty years. He clapped his hand down on Adam's shoulder and said he'd see him tomorrow. Early. Adam nodded.

Amalise nodded toward the paperwork she'd left strewn across one end of the table. "If you finish up before I return, just leave the lights on so the night crew will know not to lock up."

"I'll be here."

Bingham pulled open the door. Amalise walked through and he followed. They stood together in front of the elevator, waiting. "So you're foraging for food?" He stepped into the elevator right behind her, punched the button for the first floor, and watched her reflection in the mirrored wall.

She nodded as the elevator descended. "I'm meeting a friend for dinner. We'll find someplace close by."

"Looking for soul food?" Bingham erupted at his joke.

Amalise gave him a weak smile.

When the elevator doors opened, Bingham tucked her arm through his, patted the top of her captured hand, and trucked toward the lobby door. She stiffened, but he'd caught her by surprise and there was nothing to do but to go along.

"Look," he said, peering down from his height. "I'm at the Roosevelt just down the street." He jerked his head in the general direction. "You and your friend come have dinner with me. Be my guests."

But she wanted Jude to herself. Besides, every time she looked at Bingham now, she saw Caroline's house torn to rubble. She shook her head. "I don't want to impose."

His voice turned insistent. "You won't find anything else open nearby. Not this side of Canal Street on a weeknight. Anyway, I could use the company. We'll go to Bailey's. Good food. Good service. Close by."

His hand pressed the small of her back as he steered her through the door and out onto the sidewalk. "You'll be doing an old man a favor." He flashed a grin. At the corner curb she saw Jude's car idling, windows down, headlights on.

From the driver's seat, Jude waved.

"Ah. Your friend has a car. I'll get in back. Save me walking a block." Her eyes widened as he freed her and headed for Jude, greeting him as if he'd known him all his life. "Hey there." He motioned back toward Amalise, trailing. "Got your girl with me." Standing on the curb, he ducked down and stuck his hand through the open window. "Bingham Murdoch." Amalise hurried up behind.

"Jude Perret. Glad to meet you, sir." They shook hands as Jude glanced behind him at Amalise. She shrugged.

Bingham walked around the back of the car, trailed by Amalise, and opened the passenger door for her. Amalise slid in. As he shut the door behind her and she looked at Jude, Murdoch yanked the back door open and climbed inside. He leaned forward between them. "I've invited you two for dinner at my hotel, Jude. The Roosevelt." He flipped his hand in the direction of the hotel. "It's just over there."