Thirty

Wilson Lamar’s chauffeur—Jack thought he’d heard Lamar call him Ben—clicked off his cell phone and dropped it into his pocket. The man drew back into a doorway not far from the entrance to Galatoire’s, and remained there until he saw what he’d obviously been waiting for: Neville and Bitsy Payne hurried onto the sidewalk and immediately entered a waiting taxi.

When the taxi had pulled away, the chauffeur started toward Lamar’s silver Mercedes parked at the curb. Jack, with his head behind a newspaper and feeling like a character in a bad movie, prepared to go to the restaurant. He’d known Celina was already there, and he’d seen Lamar enter. There was no doubt that she didn’t like the wanna-be senator, yet Jack would wager a good deal that the man had gone to Galatoire’s to seek out the Paynes.

Α dark-haired woman, more running than walking, hurried to cut Lamar’s chauffeur off from entering the Mercedes. Jack had a better angle on the woman than on Ben, but there was no mistaking that the man’s body tensed, and muscles in his jaw jerked.

The woman gripped his arm and clung on despite his efforts to dislodge her. “Did you think if you ignored us we’d just go away?” she said, her voice carrying clearly over the few feet that separated her from Jack. He leaned against the side of the building and kept the paper high. “You are just like your dreadful daddy.”

“Go home,” was the terse response. “And take that man you live with. And don’t come back. You’ve already gotten more out of this than you had coming.”

“If it hadn’t been for us, you wouldn’t be here. We gave you your opportunities.”

“I was in the right place at the right time and I took my opportunities.”

“If that man hadn’t come snoopin’ around, tryin’ to find out some dirt about Errol, you’d still be passin’ the basket in Baton Rouge.” The words were issued on a hiss.

“Keep your voice down,” Ben said. “This isn’t the place for this.”

Jack noted that the man’s voice had lost its Cajun inflection.

“Don’t you tell me what to do. You came back to me because you couldn’t make it on your own. Just like that no-good daddy of yours.”

“Whatever happened to him, Mama? Was he another step to your success—such as it is? Gettin’ rid of someone never did bother you, did it? Not as long as someone else did it for you.”

“Shut your mouth, boy,” the woman said, sounding close to hysteria. “You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. We got a lot comin’, Walt and me, and you’re goin’ to make sure we get it.”

“Or?” Ben said calmly. “What will you do if I don’t?”

Jack turned a page and risked looking at the pair. He raised the paper again immediately. Mrs. Reed. Mrs. Reed with dark hair graying at the temples and pulled back into a band at her nape. He should have known the blond do was a wig, only he hadn’t taken much notice. She was Ben’s mother. And Ben was Lamar’s chauffeur. And the Reeds had been Errol’s supposed guides to salvation. And Mrs. Reed was waiting not only for the reading of Errol’s will, but for some sort of payoff from Ben. Who did she mean when she said someone had gone to Baton Rouge looking for information on Errol?

“Wilson Lamar’s got the most to lose,” Joan Reed said. “What d’you think the newspapers would make of a man who took a fancy to a boy half his age, then brought him to New Orleans and pretended he didn’t know him?”

Wilson Lamar.

“Mama, shut your mouth.”

“You won’t hit me here, boy. What would the people who vote make of the candidate arranging for a pretty boy to work in his house, to be his constant companion? Are you helpin’ him get over his wife carryin’ on with that pagan priest? And then there’s the dead man who led your sugar daddy, Lamar, tο us in the first place. There’s a lot here that’s worth good money, boy, and we’re gonna get us that money.”

“You,” Ben said, his voice so flat that Jack looked at them again, “you will do nothing I don’t tell you to do. You understand?”

The big, too smoothly handsome boy “held” his mother’s hand. Her face contorted and Jack was certain that if he stood closer, he’d hear bones grind together.

“Do you understand?” Ben repeated.

She had the guts to raise her chin defiantly. “If we go down, you go down with us, Ben Angel.”

“If I go down the way you mean,” Ben said, his voice husky and menacing, “they’ll need a mass grave for the victims, but I won’t be one of them. I’ve got myself a woman who can hardly wait to help me bury the rest of you.”