Bandits

Every Time they got a call from the leper hospital to pick up a body, Jack Delaney would feel himself coming down with the flu or something. Leo Mullen, his boss, was finally calling it to Jack's attention. "All three times they phoned before," Leo said, "I seem to recall you came down with some kind of twenty-four-hour bug. That's all I'm saying. Am I right or wrong?"

Jack said. "Have I mentioned I'm sick or not feeling too good?"

Leo said, "Not yet you haven't. They just called." He picked up a plastic hose attached to the sink and turned the water on the body on the embalming table. "Hold this for me, will you?"

"I can't," Jack said, "I'm not licensed."

"I won't tell on you. Come on, just keep the table rinsed. Run it off from by the incision."

Jack edged in to take the hose without looking directly at the body. "There're things I'd rather do than handle a person that died of leprosy."

"Hansen's disease," Leo said. "You don't die from it, you die of something else."

Jack said, "If I remember correctly, the last time Carville had a body for us, you had a removal service get it."

"On account of I had three bodies in the house already, two of'em up here, and you telling me how punk you feel."

Jack said, "Hey, Leo? Bullshit. You don't want to (continued on page 169)Bandits(continued from page 141) touch a dead leper any more 'n I do."

Jack Delaney could talk this way to his boss because they were pretty good friends and because Leo was his brother-in-law.

Jack sighed. "OK. I'll go to Carville tomorrow."

"There's somebody wants to go with you to pick up the body," Leo said. "You don't mind, do you? Have some company?"

"Aw, shit, Leo. You know I can't talk to relatives, they're in that state. You're asking me to drive a hundred and fifty miles up and back, my head aching trying to think of words of consolation, Jesus, never smiling.... Shit, Leo."

"You through?" Leo asked. "The one that's going with you isn't a relative, it's a sister, a nun, who knew the deceased when she was in Nicaragua and, I think, brought her up here for treatment."

"The one I'm picking up is a nun? The dead one?"

"Look," Leo said. "The deceased is a young Nicaraguan woman, twenty-three years old. I wrote her name down; it's on the desk in the office. Also the name of the person that's going with you, a Sister Lucy. OK? You pick up Sister Lucy at the Holy Family Mission on Camp Street, tomorrow, one o'clock. It's near Julia."

"The soup kitchen."

"That's the place. She'll be waiting for you."

Jack nodded, picturing the trip. "We run out of conversation, we'll say a Rosary."

•

The bums in front of New Orleans' Holy Family, squinting in the sunlight, shading their eyes, said, Hey, it's the undertaker man. Who died? That ain't for me, is it? I ain't dead yet. Get outa here with that thing, Jesus. Come back afterwhile. Hey, buddy, come back after we've et. They said, Here's one good as dead. Here, take this guy. Jack told them not to touch the hearse. Keep away from it, OK? He walked through them in his navy-blue suit, white shirt and striped tie, sunglasses, nodding with a faint smile, careful to breathe through his mouth. He got inside the storefront mission with only a couple of them brushing against him.

There were bums hunched over shoulder to shoulder along two rows of tables that reached to the serving counter, where a pair of round, gray-haired ladies wearing glasses and white aprons were dishing out the meal. Jack said to a little colored guy in bib overalls and an ageless tweed coat too big for him, "Which one's Sister Lucy?"

The man turned all the way around and pointed to the line approaching the serving counter. "She right there. See?"

Jack saw a slim young woman with dark hair brushed behind her ear in profile. He took off his sunglasses. Saw she was wearing a beige double-breasted jacket, high styled, made of linen or fine cotton, moving down a line of skid-row derelicts, touching them. This was a nun wearing pressed Calvins, a straw bag hanging from her shoulder, long, slim legs that seemed longer in plain tan heels. Across the room in a bare, whitewashed soup kitchen--look at that. Touching them, touching their arms beneath layers of clothes they lived in, taking their hands in hers, talking to them....

She came over with calm eyes to take his clean hand and he said, "Sister? Jack Delaney, I'm with Mullen's." And was surprised again to feel calluses that didn't go with the stylish look.

Though her face did. Her face startled him. The slender, delicate nose, dark hair brushed back though it lay on her forehead, deep-blue eyes looking up at him. She was small up close and now that surprised him; only about 5'3", he decided, without the heels. She said, "Lucy Nichols, Jack. I'm ready if you are."

The derelicts outside told her not to go with him. Stay outa that thing, Sister. That's a one-way ride, Sister. Hey, Sister, you looking good. She smiled at them, put a hand on her hip and let her shoulders go slack, like a fashion model. "Not bad, huh? You like it?" She stopped to look over the hearse, then at Jack and said, "You know what? I've always wanted to drive one of these."

She blew the horn pulling away and the bums sunning themselves on Camp Street waved.

•

"You can handle it all right?"

"This is a pleasure. I used to drive a ton-and-a-half truck with broken springs. Last month, when we had to leave in a hurry, I managed to buy a Volkswagen in Leon and drove it all the way to Cozumel. That was a trip."

Jack had to think a minute. But it didn't do any good. "You drove from where?"

"From León, in Nicaragua, through Honduras to Guatemala. We wore what passed for habits and had papers saying we were going to the Maryknoll language school in Huehuetenango. Then we had to scrounge more papers to get us into Mexico. After that it was fairly easy, from Cozumel to New Orleans and then to Carville. We could have flown out of Managua to Mexico City, but it seemed risky at the time, waiting around the airport. That feeling you shouldn't be standing still. My one concern was to get Amelita out of there, fast, and continue her therapy. You know she's the one we're picking up."

Jack said, "Oh." The one they were picking up. Kind of an offhand way to refer to the deceased. But that was the name Leo had written down, Amelita Sosa.

She said, "You don't know how much I appreciate what you're doing."

He kept quiet. What was he doing? His job. Then looked out the window, trying to think of nun-related things to talk about.

"I had sisters all the way through grade school."

She said, "You did?"

"At Incarnate Word. Then I went to Jesuit High." Hearing himself, he thought it sounded like he was still going there. "I went to Tulane one year, but I didn't know what to take, I mean that would help me. So I left."

She said, "I did the same thing. Spent a year at Newcomb."

"Is that right?" He felt a little better.

This Sister Lucy didn't look anything like a nun; she looked rich. She had on a loose beige-and-white-striped blouse, like a T-shirt, underneath the linen jacket. She was wearing, he decided, about $300 worth of clothes. He wanted to ask her why she had become a nun.

Amazing, thinking that when she glanced at him and said, "How do you happen to be in the funeral business?"

"I'm not, really. I'm helping out my brother-in-law for a while. My sister's husband."

"What would you rather do?"

Jack edged up a little straighter. "That's a hard one. There isn't much I've done I cared for, or wouldn't bore you to tears." He paused, at first wondering if he should tell her, then wanting to for some reason, and said, "Except for a profession 1 got into after Tulane. There was sure nothing boring about it."

She kept her eyes on the road. "What was that?"

"I was a jewel thief."

Now she looked at him. Jack was ready. He nodded, resigned, weary, but with a nice grin.

"You broke into people's homes?"

"Hotel rooms. But I never broke in. I used a key."

There was a silence in the hearse as she passed a semitrailer at 70 miles an hour.

"A jewel thief. You mean you only stole jewelry?"

Other girls, wide-eyed, had never asked that. They'd get squirmy and want to know if he was scared and if the people ever woke up and saw him. He said, "I'd take cash if I was tempted. If it was sitting (continued on page 196)Bandits(continued from page 169) there." Which it always was.

"You only robbed the rich?"

"There's no percentage robbing the poor. What was I gonna take, their food stamps?"

She said, without looking at him, "You've never been to Central America. There, the poor are the ones who are robbed. And murdered."

That stopped him, until he thought to say, "How long were you there?"

"Almost nine years, not counting a few trips back to the States, to Carville for training seminars. There's no place like it. If your purpose in life is the care of lepers--and that's what the Sisters of Saint Francis do--then you have to go to Carville every few years, keep up with what's going on in the field."

"The Sisters of Saint Francis?"

"There're a bunch of orders named for Francis, the guy had so much charisma. He might've been a little weird, too, but that's OK. This one's the Sisters of Saint Francis of the Stigmata."

Jack had never heard of it. He thought of saying, I like your habit, but changed his mind. "And you were stationed in Nicaragua."

"The hospital, Sagrado Familia, was near Jinotega, if you know where that is. On a lake, very picturesque. But it isn't anymore; it's gone."

"You're a nurse?"

"Not exactly. What I did was practice medicine without a license. Toward the end, we didn't have a staff physician. Our two Nicaraguan doctors were disappeared, one right after the other. It was only a matter of time. We weren't for either side, but we knew who we were against."

Were disappeared.

He'd save that one for later. "And now you're back home for a while?"

She took several moments to say, "I'm not sure." Then glanced at him. "How about you, Jack; are you still a thief?"

He liked the easy way she said his name. "No, I gave it up for another line of work. I got into agriculture."

"Really? You were a farmer?"

"More of a field hand. At the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Angola."

She was looking at him again, now with a grin, showing dimples. It inspired him.

"Really? You were in prison?"

"A month shy of three years. Met some interesting people in there."

"What was it like?"

"Sister, you don't want to know."

She said, in a thoughtful tone, "Saint Francis was in prison...." Then glanced at Jack and asked, "But how do you feel about it? I mean committing crimes and then being locked up."

"You do it and forget it." He hadn't heard about Saint Francis' doing time.... But he was talking about himself now. "I have a healthy attitude about guilt. It's not good for you."

He saw her smile, not giving it much, but he smiled back at her, feeling a lot better, thinking maybe they should stop on the way, have a cup of coffee. She was nice, easy to talk to. But when he mentioned coffee, Sister Lucy frowned in a thoughtful kind of way and said they really didn't have time.

Jack said, "I've found one thing in this business, there's very little pressure. You go pick up the deceased, and I don't mean to sound disrespectful, but they're gonna be there waiting."

She said, "Oh," in her quiet way, her gaze lingering, "no one told you."

Jack said, "I had a feeling there was something you thought I knew. What didn't anyone tell me?"

She said, "I think you're going to like it."

He had to admit he liked the idea she was playing with him now, seeing a gleam in those calm eyes as she looked over again, about to let him in on a secret.

"The girl we're going to get----"

"Amelita Sosa."

"Yes. She isn't dead."

•

Seven years ago, when Amelita was 15 or 16 and living in Jinotega with her family, a national-guard colonel had come along and put stars in her eyes. This guy, who was a personal friend of Somoza's, told Amelita that with her looks and his connections, she'd be sure to win the Miss Nicaragua pageant and after that the Miss Universe, appear on international satellite television and in no time at all become a famous film star. "You know, of course," Sister Lucy said, "what he had in mind." This was during the war. Before the Sandinistas took over the government.

Jack understood what the colonel was up to but wasn't exactly sure about the war. He pictured shifty-eyed guys with machetes, straw sombreros, bullet belts crossed over their shoulders, waiting to ambush a United Fruit train loaded with bananas. But then he would see Marlon Brando and a bunch of armed Mexican extras riding into the scene and government soldiers firing machine guns from the train. It was hard to keep the borders and the history down there straight. He didn't want to interrupt Sister Lucy's story and sound dumb asking questions. He listened and stored essential facts, picturing stock characters. The colonel, one of those oily fuckers with a gold cigarette case he opens to offer the poor son of a bitch he's having shot just what he wants in these last moments of his life, a smoke. Amelita--Jack saw a demure little thing with frightened Bambi eyes, then had to enlarge her breasts and put her in spiked heels and a bathing suit cut high to her hips for the Miss Universe contest.

But once he got her to Managua, the colonel never mentioned beauty pageants again. The only feeling he had for Amelita was lust. Good word, lust. Jack couldn't recall if he'd ever used it but had no trouble picturing the colonel, the son of a bitch, lusting. Jack put an extra 50 pounds on him for the bedroom scene: the colonel taking off his uniform full of medals, gut hanging out, leering at Amelita cowering behind the bed. Jack watched him rip open the front of her nightgown, show-class breasts springing free, as Sister Lucy said, "Are you listening?"

"To every word. And then what?"

And then, by the time the rebels had reached Managua, the colonel was in Miami and Amelita was back home, safe for the time being.

The next part brought the story close to the present but was harder to follow, Sister Lucy referring to the political situation down there like he knew what she was talking about. It was confusing, because the ones that had been the government before, it sounded like, were now the rebels, the Contras. Then the ones that had started the revolution back in the Seventies were now running the country.

He got that much. But which were the good guys and which were the bad guys?

While he was still trying to figure it out, Sister Lucy was telling how the colonel had now returned to Nicaragua as a guerrilla comandante in the north, had gone looking for Amelita in the dead of night and had taken her off with him into the mountains.

Say one thing for the colonel, he didn't quit. "Maybe the guy really liked her," Jack said, reserving judgment, still not sure which side the colonel was on, even taking off, briefly, the extra weight he'd put on the guy. And got a look from Sister Lucy--man, a hard stare. "Or he was driven by his consuming lust," Jack said. "That would be more like it, huh? A lust that knew no bounds."

She said, "Are you finished?" Sounding like Leo with that dry tone. He told her he was and she said, good. It was a new experience, the feeling he could say just about anything he wanted to a nun, of all people, and she'd get it because she was aware--he could see it in her eyes--and would not be shocked or offended. He had been to prison, but this lady had been to a war.

They came to the part where Amelita found out she had Hansen's disease. It was while she was still in the mountains with the colonel. Brown spots began to appear on her arms and face. She was scared to death. A doctor in camp--"Listen to this, Jack"--made the diagnosis and told the colonel Amelita would have to go to Sa-grado Familia immediately, that day, to begin sulphone treatments. There was no sensory loss, the disease would be arrested in an early stage and the doctor was confident there would be no disfigurement.

Jack said, "It's hard to imagine a good-looking young girl like that----"

Sister Lucy said, "Listen to me, will you?" It surprised him and shut him up. "Where do you think the doctor was from, he could take one look at her and make the diagnosis? Yes, even before he did a biopsy and saw M. leprae bacilli and confirmed it, she had near-tuberculoid H.D. Jack, he was our doctor, from Sa-grado Familia. One of the disappeared ones."

There it was again.

"Well, he didn't just disappear, then."

"Of course not. He was taken by force, guns at his head. They kidnaped him."

"Then why do you call it disappeared?"

She said, "My God, where have you been? It isn't only in Nicaragua and Salvador, it's a Latin-American custom. It happens in Guatemala; it's popular all the way south to Argentina. Don't you read? People are taken from their homes, abducted, and they're called desaparecidos, the disappeared. And when they're found murdered, you know who did it? Los des-comocidos, unknown assailants."

Jack was shaking his head. "I'm not sure I ever heard about that."

"Listen to me." She snapped it at him. Then continued in her quiet tone. "The doctor, Rudolfo Meza, from our hospital, he told the colonel Amelita was in the early stages of leprosy. And you know what the colonel did? He drew a pistol and shot the doctor four times in the chest. Murdered him, standing close enough to touch him with the gun barrel. A witness told me, a Contra woman who deserted a few days later and came to us. Amelita was there, of course. She saw it----"

"I was gonna ask you."

"And she ran. The Contra woman helped her get to Jinotega, then came to the hospital to warn us, the colonel had sworn to kill Amelita.... And you think maybe the guy really liked her. Is that right, Jack?"

He sat there in his navy-blue suit and striped tie and couldn't think of one goddamn thing to say back to her. This lady was not as nice as she appeared; she could show you a hard edge. They had left the interstate and were approaching the river, past chemical works in the near distance, the sight and smell of them along the flats.

"He murdered the doctor for telling him. Then came to the hospital looking for Amelita. He said she had defiled him." The sister's tone hushed in the quiet of the air-conditioned hearse. "He said she had allowed him to enter her in order to give him the disease and he would kill her for that reason, trying to make him a leper."

•

They passed through the main gate and she came to life, telling him that at one time it had been called the Louisiana Leper Home. Her tone relaxed again, natural. And now it was Hansen's Disease Center. He knew that but kept quiet, still trying to imagine a man's wanting to kill a girl he believed had tried to give him leprosy. Was that possible? She told him the administration building predated the Civil War, had once been the mansion on a sugar plantation, and all those mossy oak trees must be just as old.

He knew that, too.

Now that same girl, Amelita, was supposed to leave here in the hearse. They could have got a limo for the same price. So it must be somebody was watching. Or it was possible and they weren't taking any chances. Make them think Amelita was dead. But would the staff be in on it? How would they work it?

Meanwhile, his tour guide was telling him it amazed her that the world's most advanced training and research center for Hansen's disease was in the U.S. And how many people knew about it?

Well, just about everybody in New Orleans did. He'd heard stories that in the old days, lepers were brought here in a train with the windows covered, nailed shut; the whole place guarded so they couldn't get out and spread the disease. Somebody on his mother's side of the family, her aunt's father-in-law, had been brought here....

She was saying how it reminded her of a small college campus. There, that view of the main buildings.

It looked to Jack Delaney like a Federal correctional facility, minimum security, once you got past the older buildings that had that New Orleans look.

She told him the last time she was here, there had been about 300 live-in patients.

Did he know there was a golf course? Yes, he did, and studied her calm expression, her smile as they passed a couple of sisters in white nurse uniforms. She waved....

While he sat here wired, trying to second-guess what was going on. Even a little annoyed. The sister giving him leper facts and the tour while a girl waited to be taken out in a hearse so a freaked-out Nicaraguan would think she was dead. That had to be it. Now she was waving to a guy in a lab coat.

And he thought, Yeah, but she got the girl out of Central America by herself under the gun and brought her all the way here, didn't she? So leave her alone. Don't rush her. She knows what she's doing. Look at her, Jesus, with that movie-star nose and lower lip he wouldn't mind biting....

They were on the tree-shaded drive that led to the infirmary building, Sister Lucy's gaze on the entrance, directly ahead of them.

He said, "You touch them, too, don't you? Not just the drunks at the soup kitchen; I mean lepers, at the hospital where you worked."

She came to a stop and turned off the ignition before looking at him with those quietly aware eyes.

"That's what you do, Jack, you touch people."

•

They sat in the hearse, parked in the shade of old oak trees, while she smoked a cigarette, Jack deciding it was no more weird for a nun than the way she dressed.

He said, "You want the colonel to think she's dead, I can understand that. But why go to all this trouble if he's busy down in Nicaragua?"

"He isn't down in Nicaragua," Sister Lucy said, her voice quiet, in control. "He's in New Orleans."

"Guy's fighting a war, he drops everything to come after the girl, what'd you say, defiled him?"

"Jack, he was military attaché at the Nicaraguan embassy in Washington. He came here in Seventy-nine, to Miami, when Somoza's government fell, and we know he was in New Orleans before he went back to Nicaragua. He has friends here. You must know they're getting all kinds of support from the U.S." She paused and said, "Don't you?" Frowning a little. She blew out a stream of smoke and said, "What we know is that the colonel traced us to Mexico and then here. Now he's here and has inquired about Amelita. He hasn't sent flowers, Jack, he wants to kill her."

Listen to the nun. He watched her mash the cigarette in the ashtray and close it.

"There's a doctor here, on the staff, who spent years in Nicaragua and was a friend of Rudolfo Meza----"

"The one the colonel shot."

"Murdered. At the time I arrived with Amelita, I told him the whole story. So he knew the situation and got in touch with me as soon as he found out the colonel had called, asking about her. Right after that, she had a visitor, not the colonel but a Nicaraguan. Sister Teresa Victor told him Amelita was seriously ill and couldn't see anyone."

"The whole hospital's in on it? What we're doing?"

"No, not administration; some of the staff. I think a few of the doctors and, of course, the sisters. There won't be a death certificate. But if anyone inquires, the sisters will say they're not permitted to give out information about the deceased, well, other than she was taken to a funeral home."

"Wait a minute."

"Then all you have to do is put a notice in the paper that Amelita Sosa was cremated. She doesn't know a soul here, so anyone who inquires would have to be the colonel or a friend of his."

"I put a notice in the paper...." He thought about it and said, "Well, I guess it's not something you could go to jail over."

"Who would know?"

He nodded at that. "You're right."

She said, "What else can I tell you?"

He thought a moment and said deadpan, giving it back to her, "If you saw the colonel right now, would you touch him?"

With just the barest trace of a smile, she said, "You're having a good time, aren't you?"

"It's different," Jack said, with the same hint of a smile. "What's the guy's name, the colonel?"

"Dagoberto Godoy."

"Is he kinda fat and has a little thin mustache?"

"He has a mustache, but he's trim, you might say good-looking."

Jack said, "Oh."

•

He brought Amelita Sosa out in a plastic body bag on a wheeled mortuary cot, past empty cars parked along the back of the infirmary building, to the hearse standing in the sun, its rear door open. With the cot touching the step plate, he squeezed the handles to collapse the front legs first, then the rear legs as he slipped the cot into the hearse, pushed down the lock button on the door and closed it firmly.

That was quite an attractive girl he'd helped into the body bag, not like any leper he had ever seen in pictures. He had touched her zipping up the bag, making sure the zipper didn't get snagged in her flowery shirt. He hadn't noticed any brown spots on her face or arms. He strolled over to the driver's side of the hearse and got in. By the time he'd started the engine, the passenger-side door opened and Sister Lucy got in.

"Can she breathe?"

"Enough, I imagine."

A car came from the drive in front of the infirmary and fell in behind them. There were three cars in line by the time they passed through the gate. Jack watched them in his outside mirror.

"OK. Now."

Sister Lucy turned to slide open the glass partition, then got all the way around, up on her knees.

"Can you reach it?"

"Barely."

"Pull the cot toward you."

She said, "There." Then began speaking in Spanish to Amelita, hunched over the seat back, her linen jacket pulled up and the curve of her hip in the tight jeans right there next to him. This was different, all right. He glanced at her hip, the neat round shape, without really looking. She was the toucher--what would she do if he touched her? There was touching and there was touching. He could touch the girls he knew bent over the seat and not one of them would think anything of it. They might say, "Hey," but they wouldn't be surprised. It wouldn't mean anything. An affectionate pat. Maybe a little squeeze.

The leggy Calvins came around on the seat. "Amelita has to go to the bathroom."

"We just left the place."

"Does that mean you won't stop?"

St. Gabriel was there ahead of them, a block of storefronts and a few cars, the town half dead on a Sunday afternoon. He crept through the main intersection and kept going until he saw the Exxon station on the right, no cars at the pumps, and rolled toward the shade of the canopy. Rest rooms would be on the other side of the station. He'd pull around and back in, like he was getting air for the rear tires, and sneak Amelita into the women's.

There was a café across the road, four young guys between a car and a pickup truck, hanging out, looking this way now. He could give St. Gabriel something to talk about all week. This girl gets out of the back end of a hearse ....

"I don't think it's open."

He braked to a sudden stop near the row of gas pumps and Sister Lucy reached out to the dashboard.

"You see anyone around?"

No, he didn't, and the service doors were down. He should've noticed that--no business, nobody home. They'd left a light on inside the station. He could see it through the Big Spring Tire Special painted on the window. There were credit-card emblems on the glass door and another decal he knew something about: Vas, black letters on a gold field, Vedette Alarm Systems guarding the place against breaking and entering. The place looked old, rundown, not the kind you'd bother with.

Now what? There was the café across the road, the farmboys still looking this way. He glanced at the outside mirror and his gaze held on a car parked directly behind them, even with the gas pumps.

A black Chrysler sedan. One of the cars that had followed them out of the center. A guy in a tan suit came out from behind the wheel. Now another guy joined him at the front of the car. Dark-haired guys, Latinos. Now they were out of sight, behind the hearse.

"Tell Amelita to play dead and lock your door. Right now. Quik

Sister Lucy did, just like that, without looking at him or asking questions. She straightened around again as one of the Latinos appeared at her window, looking in. A little guy. He touched the window and said something in Spanish. She said in English, "I can hear you. What is it?" The guy began speaking in Spanish again, Sister Lucy looking up at him about a foot away from her, listening.

Jack turned as the other one came up on his side, past him and around to the front of the hearse. Both were little guys, 130-pounders. Jack liked that. What he didn't like were their suit coats and open sport shirts. Not migrant bean pickers, were they? The one on Sister Lucy's side wore sunglasses; his print shirt was silk and his hair was carefully combed. The other one was Creole-looking, a light-skinned black guy with pointy cheekbones and nappy hair. He stared at the windshield while the face close behind Sister Lucy continued to speak to her in Spanish.

"He wants you to open the back. He says they're friends of the deceased and would like to see her a last time before she's buried. It has to be now, because they have business; they're unable to come to the funeral."

Jack said, "How does he know who's in there? Ask him." He waited while Sister Lucy spoke to the face with sunglasses. The guy said something, one word, and hunched over trying to see into the back of the hearse, squinting, shading his eyes against his reflection in the glass.

Sister Lucy looked at Jack quickly, about to say something. But the face with the sunglasses straightened and began speaking again, his expression solemn.

"He says they want to say a prayer for the departed. He says they're determined to do this, or they wouldn't be able to live with themselves."

Jack waited because she kept looking at him, her eyes alive, as though she wanted to say more but couldn't, the face so close behind her. Jack nodded, taking his time, making a decision. "Tell him I wish I could help him, but it's against the law to show a body on the street." She started to turn and he said, "Wait. But tell him he's gonna see one if his partner doesn't move out of the way, now, 'cause we're leaving." He saw her eyes, for a moment, open wider and saw the guy's face staring at him. Jack said, "He understands, but tell him anyway. Put it in your own words."

She said, "Jack," her voice low, "look at me. He has a gun." The fingers of her right hand slipped inside her jacket at the waist. "Right here."

The man was talking again and she listened, still looking at Jack. "He wants to know why we're being difficult." Translating as the face with the sunglasses spoke through the window. "He says it will only take a minute. He wants you to turn off the motor and get out. With the key." She listened again and then said, "If you try to drive off, someone will be dead in this coach. If there isn't someone already."

He saw her eyes and then she was turning away, saying something back to him now in rapid Spanish, fluent, an edge to her tone. The window framed the face with the sunglasses and the Big Spring Tire Sale behind him, lettered on the window of the empty station with the light on inside and the decals on the door.

Jack said, "Don't get him mad, OK?" He took the key from the ignition and she turned back to him as he opened the door. "But keep talking." He got out, pushed the lock button down and closed the door.

He'd known guys like the face with the sunglasses and the Creole-looking guy standing in front of the hearse, the guy turning to face him as he came around. They'd stand like that in the big yard, looking for some new guy to turn out, give him that sleepy, mean look and not move out of the way. The dead-eyed stare saying. Walk around me, man.

He nodded and smiled at the Creole-looking guy with the nappy hair as he walked past him. "How you doing, partner?" And said to the face with the sunglasses, the guy stepping away from the hearse, "This never happened to me before. Long as I've been in the funeral business." Jack kept moving toward the station.

The guy said, "Hey, where you going?" Coming after him now, the Creole-looking guy closing in, too.

Jack stopped at the door and half turned. "I have to get something."

The face with the sunglasses, close to him, said, "No, you can't go in there. Look." He reached past Jack and tried to turn the knob on the glass, wood-framed door. "See? Is locked. You can't go in there."

Jack said, "Yeah, I guess you're right." He looked around, frowning, and said, "Shit. Now what am I gonna do? I have to go to the toilet and the key's inside there. See, it's on the desk. Has a hunk a board wired to it so nobody'll steal it. Toilet keys being as valuable as they are."

The face with the sunglasses said, "Go someplace else. Tha's no problem for you."

They stood close to each other. Jack said in a quiet voice, "I think we both have a problem. You want my car key and I want the key to the toilet. We're a couple of desperate characters, aren't we? Desperadoes. You know what I'm saying to you?" The face with the sunglasses staring at him, not answering. "Only I'm more desperate than you are, partner. You don't believe it, I'll show you."

Jack turned to face the door, took a short place-kick sort of step, his eyes on the Vedette Alarm Systems decal, and punched the sole of a black loafer through the plate glass.

The blast of sound from the burglar alarm was so immediate and loud, he barely heard the glass shatter. Even louder than he'd expected. He looked around at the guy in the sunglasses edging away. The Creole-looking guy didn't move, and the other one had to gesture to him. Jack watched them move off in a hurry, turned and there was Sister Lucy's face in the side window, staring. And beyond the hearse, the farmboys across the road, their heads raised to the clanging racket, heads turning now to follow the black Chrysler peeling its tires out of there, from shade into sunlight and gone, down the blacktop toward the interstate. Jack watched, too, thinking, Well, there are other roads home, with bathrooms along the way. He had not felt this good in...he couldn't remember.

The sister had a different look for him as he slipped in behind the wheel. Not exactly wide-eyed but sort of stunned, lips parted, eyes staring in what he would like to think was respectful amazement. She didn't say a word. He didn't, either, until they were pulling away from that urgent sound and he gave her his nice-guy smile.

"That's why I only went into hotel rooms."

•

Jack took Lucy and Amelita in through the rear door of the funeral home and up the stairs without running into Leo. They could hear a Rosary being recited in one of the front parlors, the mechanical drone of 50 Hail Marys delivered by family and those friends who hadn't got out in time.

Upstairs, Jack showed Lucy into Leo's office so she could use the phone, Lucy anxious now, nibbling at one of her fingernails. For something to do, he took Amelita into the casket-selection room and watched her browse. She ran her fingers over the parquet finish of a Batesville casket done in solid oak, and Jack said, "That's your Homestead model, with your Tawny Beige interior. We can give you fiberboard, plastic, metal or hardwood, from sixty to sixteen thousand dollars, depending on your budget and how sorry you are to see the loved one go. I'm glad we're not putting you in one; you look too healthy." She did, the overhead light shining in her dark hair, down to the middle of her back in the flowery shirt, reflecting in her dark eyes as she looked at him.

"They so nice inside"--touching the tawny crepe now--"so soft."

"Like you could sleep forever in there, huh? Do you know where you're gonna be staying?"

"I'm going to L.A. sometime, but I don't know when. I hope soon; I always want to go there."

"To Los Angeles?"

"Yes, I have two of my aunts and a grandmother live in L.A. I hear is pretty nice there. When you put people in this, do they have all their clothes on?"

"Yeah, they're completely dressed. Did Sister Lucy say where you'll be staying in New Orleans?"

"She said she find a place. I like this pink color inside, very nice."

"Well, Sister Lucy seems to know what she's doing. You've known her a few years----"

"Yes, a long time."

"She told me what happened to you. That was awful, the guy taking you away from your home. Twice, in fact, huh? The first time, you must've been just a kid."

"You mean Bertie?"

"What's-his-name, the colonel."

"Yes, Bertie. Colonel Dagoberto Godoy Diaz. He was very important in the government. I mean before, the real government. He could buy one of these, even the one you said, sixty thousand."

"Sixteen, not sixty. He killed a guy. The doctor."

"I know. He had so much anger, it was terrible."

"And you saw him do it."

"Tha's what I mean, to see him like that." She hugged her arms and seemed to shudder. "Not the same man I knew in Managua." She reached into the casket to feel the pillow, once again relaxed. "He was going to enter me in the Señorita Uni-verso, but the war became worse and he had to leave, so I went home." She seemed fascinated by the pleated material covering the pillow.

Jack took his time. "But now, the way I understand it, he wants to kill you."

"She tol' you that, uh? Yes, he was so angry he thought he would get leprosy, but he won't. You don't give it to a person that way, you know, like that disease now is popular, or the old one they call the clop. Someone has to tell Bertie he won't get it."

Jack said, "Wait. OK? This guy kidnaped you. I mean before. He disappeared you, came at night and grabbed you and took you up in the mountains. Is that right?"

"Yes, of course," turning to him with a look of surprise. "He want me to be with him." Her gaze softened then as she said, "When you like a girl very much, don't you want her to be with you? You have girlfriends, I bet all kinds of them." She smiled, moving closer. "Good-looking guy with expensive clothes," taking his seven-dollar striped tie between her fingers, feeling it. "I saw your nice rooms you have, with a big refrigerator has beer and a bottle of vodka in it. Sure, I bet you bring girls here for the evening. Maybe stay all night. Tell me the truth."

"Once or twice I have."

"You ever get in one of these with the girl?"

Jack said, "Are you serious?"

"I jus' wonder. It so nice and soft," touching the Tawny Beige crepe again.

He said, "Amelita, that's a casket."

"Like a little bed, uh?"

He said, "Why don't you go sit down, take it easy."

She gave him a sly look over her shoulder. "In your room? Yes, I think that would be nice."

He thought a moment and said, "If I was the one pulled you out of the situation you were in...."

"Yes?"

"I'd seriously consider throwing you back."

She frowned. "You mad at me? Why?"

No, he wasn't, really. Why bother? He told Amelita not to wander off and left her there to dream among the caskets.

Jack walked down the hall and entered the office to see Lucy seated on Leo's old leather sofa, her legs stretched out, ankles crossed. One sandal hung loose, and he could see the curve of her instep. He wondered what she had been like when she was a girl, before she became a nun. She seemed relaxed, smoking a cigarette. Looking up at him now, her eyes were calm. Maybe because she trusted, she had faith in something.

"They'll know Amelita's here, won't they?"

"I imagine they'll come and look."

"I have to get her on a flight tonight to Los Angeles."

Jack watched her draw on the cigarette, then turn her head to exhale a slow stream. He waited a moment before he said, "And"--feeling himself alive but not wanting to move and ruin the mood--"you're wondering if a person with my experience, not to mention the kind of people I might know, would be able to help you."

Her eyes moved, the quiet gaze coming back to him. She said, "It crossed my mind."

•

Roy Hicks was putting together an array of pastel-colored drinks in stem glasses along the inside edge of the bar, topping them off with cherries, orange slices and tiny parasols.

Jack watched him from the front end of the bar, near the entrance to The International Lounge, "Featuring Exotic Dancers from Around the World."

One of the International girls took the stool next to Jack, saying, "Hi, how you doing?" With an accent that would make her an exotic dancer from around the East Texas part of the world. "My name's Darla. You want to pet my monkey?"

Roy was at the cash register, punching keys. He looked over his shoulder and said, "Hey, Darla? Get your hand off his dick. That's a friend of mine."

Darla thought a moment. Maybe that's what she was doing; Jack wasn't sure. She swiveled around on the stool, looking over the room, raised both arms to adjust the halter holding her tired breasts and left him.

Roy came down the bar, holding a bottle of vodka by the neck. He poured a shot into Jack's glass, then twisted off another one, Jack saying, "Darla's got bruises on her arm. You notice?"

"Bumping into the wrong guys. That girl's a sack of roaches."

"I read in the paper that in the U.S., I think it was just this country, a woman is beaten or physically abused something like every eighteen seconds."

Roy said, "You wouldn't think that many women get out of line, would you?"

Jack wondered why he remembered a short piece in the paper about women being abused but hardly anything at all about Nicaragua.

"Still hate women, huh, Roy?"

"I love women. I just don't trust 'em."

"I met one you can."

"Yeah? Good for you."

"And heard an amazing story you aren't gonna believe."

"But you're gonna tell me it anyway."

"You'd be hurt if 1 didn't. You'd pout and probably never speak to me again. It's an opportunity story, shows you how you can perform a service to humanity. The kinda thing that makes you feel good."

Roy said, "You understand I serve humanity every day for eight hours and it doesn't make me feel worth a shit."

"You're too sensitive, Roy, for this kind of life you're in."

"Tell me what we're talking about, will you?"

"You've never heard of anything like this, Roy. I'll bet you a dollar."

"It has to do with the funeral business?"

"Not unless somebody gets shot."

"This doesn't sound like you at all, Delaney."

"I told you, I'm a different person. You want to know what it is, or you rather guess?"

"I know every kind of scam or heist there is grown men have tried to pull and fell on their ass doing."

"This's different."

"You met a woman you say you can trust and she told you an amazing story I'm not gonna believe about...?"

"About lepers," Jack said.

Roy paused. "Lepers, huh? You know why lepers never finish a card game?"

"They have to quit," Jack said, "when they throw in their hands." He looked at Roy with the same deadpan expression, because he knew he had him and knew they were going to play this one and might even have a pretty good time.

He said, "What I need at the moment is a police officer. Or someone who knows how to speak in that same ugly, obscene way they have of addressing offenders."

•

Jack drove the Scirocco, rumbling in second gear, up to the funeral parlor, the street full of trees and the dark shapes of big homes, warm lights in windows here and there, a few porch lights showing through hedges and shrubs.

Roy said, "Get Lucy to buy you a muffler. I think she can afford it."

"There's the car. What should I do?"

"Keep going."

"It's the same one, the Chrysler."

"Go down the end and turn around."

"The guy next to the driver, he's the one had the gun."

"I love that kind," Roy said. "Come on, turn around."

"I have to get down there first, don't I?"

Near the river end of the street, the dark mass of trees opened to show bare telephone poles and vacant lots that extended to the levee, a grassy barrier against the night sky. Jack circled one of the poles and his headlights again probed the aisle of trees.

Roy said, "Ease up behind them."

"I get out, too?"

"You come up on the curb side. Stand close to the car but a few steps back, so they can feel you but can't see you. It might confuse 'em otherwise. What is this guy, an undertaker or a cop? Before you get out, write down the license number."

"I don't have a pen."

Roy said, "Jesus Christ," took one out of the inside pocket of his corduroy sports coat and handed it to Jack. "You pull this kind of official shit, you carry a pen and a notebook. And you wear a suit or sports coat."

Jack said, "What do you think I have on, pajamas?" He was wearing a tan-cotton blazer with jeans.

"You look like an undercover Fed trying to pass as a fucking Yuppie. I get their I.D.s, I give 'em to you. You come back to the car like you're gonna call it in, see if they're felons or they're wanted for anything."

"You gonna show these guys a badge or what?"

"Why don't you wait and see what I do? Then you'll know. Go on, pull up right behind 'em."

"Should I give 'em a bump?"

"Yeah, whiplash 'em. They'll be more cooperative."

Jack could see the two guys inside looking back this way, into his headlights. He said, "Louisiana plate," stopped close behind the Chrysler's shiny black rear deck and wrote down the number as Roy said, "It's a rental," and got out. By the time Jack approached the curb side of the car, Roy was asking the driver, the Creole-looking guy, to see his operator's license. The other one was leaning forward, saying to Roy, "He don't have to show you no license. We have the permission. Who the fuck are you, you don't know that?" He was the dude in the sunglasses at the Exxon station.

Jack heard Roy say, "Sir, he may not want to remove it from his person and show it to me him self. But I'm gonna see it, one way or the other. Are we clear on that?"

The Creole-looking guy took out his wallet, saying something to the other guy Jack couldn't hear. And then Roy said to the other guy, "You, too, sir, if you don't mind. I'm curious to know who you assholes are you think you can sit here any time you want." The guy on the passenger side began talking about "the permission" again, mad. Jack didn't catch all the words. Now the two guys were talking to each other in Spanish, Roy waiting. Finally, the guy in the passenger seat took a billfold out of his coat and Jack looked up the street toward the funeral parlor.

The idea was, Lucy would drive off with Amelita in the hearse, run her out to the airport, while they kept the two guys busy. He had phoned Lucy with the plan after talking to Roy. Lucy said, as long as they left by 9:30. It was now about 20 after.

Roy handed him both guys' driver's licenses and the rental-car envelope across the roof of the Chrysler, the one who'd been talking saying something now about calling the district commander of police.

Jack walked back to his car and got in, leaving the door open so he'd have light to see the I.D.s. Crispin Antonio Reyna. This was the dude, not the driver.

The Creole-looking guy was Franklin de Dios--the hell kind a name was that?--42. His address was in south Miami.

Jack got out to approach the Chrysler. He saw Roy look back, then step away from the side of the car and come to meet him at the rear deck.

Roy said, "They're trying to tell me it's an immigration matter and they have police permission to sit there all they want."

"You believe it?"

"That's neither here nor there. We'll go on the assumption they're full of shit. Don't say a word if they ask you anything, if you talked to the captain. OK?"

Roy walked back to the driver's side as Jack moved between the cars to the curb. He looked up again at the funeral parlor. Not a light showing. He heard Roy telling the driver, "You're giving me a bunch of shit, aren't you? I think you better step out of the car."

Jack heard Roy's voice, with that easy cop drawl he put on, and looked at the hearse all of a sudden popping its lights and coming out of the driveway. Jack watched it turn into the street going away from them, toward St. Charles, its red tail-lights becoming tiny dots up there in the dark, almost to the point of disappearing, gone, when one of the two guys began yelling in Spanish. Jack turned to see Franklin de Dios of south Miami hunched over the steering wheel, reaching for the ignition.

There was no doubt they were leaving, with nothing in front of the car to keep it there. Until Jack saw Roy reach in, grab a handful of nappy hair and pull Franklin de Dios' head out to lay it on the window sill, Roy saying, "You trying to run on me?" Roy was reaching in again, now with his left hand, and came out holding a pistol, saying, "Uh-oh, what have we here?"

Jack was moving toward the other one now, Crispin Reyna, having seen how it was done. He heard Roy telling Franklin de Dios he could step out of the car or get pulled clear through the window, heard that and saw Crispin Reyna's hand on the glove box, punching the button to open it. Jack reached in and grabbed a handful of Crispin Reyna's hair and yanked him back against the seat, hard. He changed hands then, learning how to do this as he went along, pressed the palm of his left hand against the guy's face, to hold him there, while he felt inside the glove box with his other hand. Jack stepped back from the car with a blue-steel automatic, holding it lightly, looking at its dull sheen in the streetlight. He liked the feel of it. He stepped back in when he saw Crispin Reyna turn to look at him. Jack motioned for him to face straight ahead and touched the barrel to the guy's right ear.

Roy had Franklin de Dios out of the car now, telling him to lean against it and spread his legs apart, "Come on, spread 'em," the guy doing what he was told without expression, his Creole-looking face with its pointy cheekbones carved from some kind of smooth, hard wood.

"Should we take these fuckers to Central Lockup and then have to do all that paperwork, or what?"

Jack said, "I hate paperwork."

Roy said, "It perturbs me off, too. What do you think? The river's right there."

Jack saw Franklin de Dios' calm eyes staring at him, and he put his hand to his face, elbow on the roof of the car. "The mighty Mississippi, that's a thought. The current'd take 'em clear down to Pilot Town. If they can swim."

"You wouldn't want to weight 'em down none?"

"I thought we might give 'em a chance."

Now Crispin Reyna was speaking, saying they were fucking dumb cops and they had better call their superior right now. "I tell you we have the permission to be here."

"On second thought," Jack said, "how about drop 'em in the Outlet Canal? They'll be in the Gulf before morning." He saw Roy, taller than Franklin de Dios, nodding.

" 'Less you want to take 'em to the graveyard of strangers."

"Where's that?"

"John the Baptist Parish, in the swamp. They say if all the bodies dumped there ever stood up, man, you'd have a crowd could fill the Superdome."

"It's hard," Jack said, "isn't it?"

What they couldn't do was let them go just yet. Lucy would need an hour or so free of worry and looking over her shoulder. So they put Franklin de Dios and Crispin Reyna in the trunk of the Chrysler, Crispin bilingual in his protests, but finally got them spooned against each other like a couple of Angola sweethearts in the Big Stripe dorm, Roy telling them to mind and he'd let them out after a while.

They discussed the guns for a minute, both nine-millimeter Berettas. Beauties, Roy said, better than those six-shooter Smiths cops had to pack when he was on the force. They stuck the guns under the front seat of Jack's car, then had a discussion on the best place to leave the Chrysler, with the key in the ignition. Jack mentioned City Park, West End. Roy mentioned out toward Chalmette in St. Bernard Parish there were a lot of good places. Jack said, yeah, and nobody would ever find them. Why go to all that trouble? Drop 'em off on the way downtown.

That's what they did. Roy drove the Chrysler, with Jack following behind, and left it on Tchoupitoulas near Calliope, where they used to park cars for the world's fair. As Roy got into the Scirocco, Jack was grinning, waiting to tell him, "It's too bad we can't stay and watch. Some guy's gonna come along and take off with that Chrysler. Be driving down the street and wonder what in the hell that noise is, coming from the trunk. Like somebody pounding to get out. Or he hears a voice calling to him like it's from far away, 'Help, señor, help.' "

Roy said, "Delaney, you're a weird fucker, you know it?"

Jack didn't say anything. He felt pretty good. Whether or not Amelita deserved all this didn't seem to matter.

"This Sister Lucy didn't look anything like a nun; she was wearing about $300 worth of clothes."

" 'There's no percentage robbing the poor. What was I gonna take, their food stamps?' "