Now Let's Talk of Graves Read Online Free Page A

gossip, bets on sporting events. The clientele is mostly male, though not exclusively, New Orleans being an equal opportunity drinking town.
    The Pelican on Magazine was such a bar, a few blocks downtown and riverward from the house in the Garden District that Kitty Lee shared with her grandmother, Ma Elise. In fact, the Pelican was the very spot where Kitty’s husband, Lester, the well-bred prize who had come her way after she was Comus queen as easily as if he popped out of a Cracker Jack box, had literally lost his mind. On the eve of their first wedding anniversary, Lester Lee, Kitty’s second cousin as well as her husband, had pulled a .38 out of his jacket and splattered said mind all over the Pelican’s well-oiled mahogany. Right now, at just about that very spot, sat the red-haired Chéri whom Harry Zack had followed.
    It had been easy to tail the big white limo from the airport to Chéri’s house on the very private Audubon Place—a location so private, in fact, Harry had had to park his car outside the gate and do an end run around the guard on foot. He’d strolled by Chéri’s great cream-colored Victorian extravaganza just in time to see the lady jump out of the big car, pop in her front door. No sooner had the white limo pulled out of sight than she’d popped out again. While Harry watched from across the street, she backed out of her driveway in a blue Mercedes coupe, a twin, except for the color, to the one she’d cracked up. Probably a loaner—or, who knew, maybe the lady had a spare. Then she wheeled over to the Pelican, a place Harry knew but didn’t frequent, tending to do his hanging out in the Quarter near where he lived.
    As Harry had sauntered in, about ten beats after Chéri, the barman had stopped polishing glasses to greet her. She’d leaned across the bar for the big buss, working that pretty neck again, and kissed him on both cheeks.
    Now, down at his end of the bar, Harry signaled for a Dixie draft. Chéri gave him a quick glance with nothing on it, then turned back to the barman, who was named Calvin. “You would not believe what happened at the airport. Here, at Moisant, I mean. My friend picked me up, and just as his car, his limo, pulled in, this little bitty guy who was crossing the road on foot, like, took offense. Thought the limo had cut him off. Beat his little tiny hand on the window. My friend’s driver, who is this gigantic black dude, got out and I thought, Oh, Jesus, sucker’s bought the farm now, driver’s gonna turn him into mah nez. Then right next to us this car backfired, and that little dude, he—”
    “Crapped his pants,” said Calvin.
    “No!” Chéri shrieked, getting high off the telling of it.
    Harry looked around the room. The whole bar’s attention was focused on her, which it would have been anyway considering that she was the only pretty woman there and certainly the only one in a too-tight white jumpsuit unbuttoned to East Jesus.
    “No! Lissen! What he did was, he fainted. Fell out right there in the middle of the road. Thought he’d been shot, I guess. The driver just picked him up like he was a little old kitten and held him in his arms till this cop car made it on around the circle and they called an ambulance. I tell you, the traffic was a mess. We stayed there, couldn’t get out till the ambulance came.” Chéri flopped her red mane. “Hit me again, Calvin.” She paused for a moment, downed the drink. “Did you know,” she continued, “they have women ambulance drivers? I didn’t know that. But this one was. Pretty black woman, young, about my age give or take a year or two.”
    “You thinking about getting yourself a job driving an ambulance, honey?” asked a portly, red-faced Uptown lawyer whom Harry knew to be Maynard Dupree.
    “You think I ought to, Maynard?” Chéri dimpled.
    “I don’t know. You did, casualties might get up off their stretchers and walk on into the emergency. Healed by the sight of you.” Maynard let his