Babylon Sisters (23 page)

65

Of course, Louis tried to talk me out of it, but I wasn’t listening. Etienne was in Atlanta, and Ezola knew where. It seemed pretty simple to me. We had to make Ezola take us there, and nothing Louis had to say was going to change that.

When he realized I wasn’t listening to him at all, he stopped talking and took the phone out of my hand before I could finish punching in the number. “And how exactly do you plan to do that?”

“Call that sergeant who was over here last night. Send the police over there.”

“Is that why you’re calling her? To tell her the cops are on their way?”

Why was I calling her? Because I was angry, the same reason I had called her the last time after B.J. asked me not to. That one worked out so great, I was going to do it again. Bad idea.

“We’ve got to do something,” I said. “They’ve moving them tomorrow night.”

“We’re going to do something, but calling Ezola half-cocked won’t be it.”

He was talking to me hard, trying to bring me back to the question at hand, which was how to find and free these girls, not my having a chance to tell Miss Ezola Mandeville all about her sorry, fake-sisterhood-spouting self. This wasn’t about
me.
This was about
us.

“I’m sorry. What do you think we should do now?”

Since cussing out Ezola was out of the question, I was open to suggestion. Louis started pacing up and down like he always does when he’s thinking. “They don’t want us to publish B.J.’s next article because it’s going to mess up their deal with these Miami guys and bring everything into question, legitimate and illegitimate. That’s what brought them over here with those gasoline cans last night.”

“Are you going to hold the series?” It was inconceivable to me that Louis wouldn’t run the story—he’d been looking into Etienne’s eyes on that poster all week just like the rest of us.

Louis shook his head. “I won’t have to hold it, but you’re going to tell Ezola I’m not only going to hold it—I’m going to kill it.”

“I am?”

I could see B.J. closing his reporter’s notebook. Louis saw it, too.

“Hang on a second,” he said. “B.J. needs to hear this, too.”

Miss Hudson stood up and walked with B.J. out of Louis’s office. She was still deep in conversation with B.J., and at the front door she smiled shyly, shook his hand, and headed back to Thelma’s. Confession must be as good for the appetite as it was for the soul.

“Her story is airtight,” he said. “All we have to do now is find the house.”

“Damn the house,” Louis said. “We don’t have time for that. We need to get them to bring us the girls.”

“Tell B.J. what you want me to do,” I said as we filed back into his office. We were all too agitated to sit down, so we just sort of stood around while Louis outlined his plan.

“We’re going to offer Ezola a trade. We’ll kill the story in exchange for the girls.”

“Do you think she’ll go for it?”

“She’s got to come up with something to buy some time with these guys. She’s worried enough to burn us out. What’s she got to lose?”

B.J. frowned. “Everything?”

“Exactly,” Louis said. “But only if that story comes out linking her and Sam to the missing girl. Nobody’s looking at her operation except the
Sentinel.
Without the light you’re shining, she can go back to business as usual, pay off the Miami boys, and expand her operation just the way she intended to do all along.”

He turned to me. “She trusts you, Cat. That’s why you have to make the call.”

“I thought you didn’t want me to call her.”

“Not to cuss her out—to schedule a meeting.”

B.J. immediately looked concerned. “A meeting with who?”

“A meeting with Cat. She has to take her our offer and make the arrangements.”

“No way,” B.J. said. “It’s too dangerous. These guys aren’t playing.”

“So let’s tell her we have to meet in a public place so I’ll be comfortable. How about Paschal’s?”

“What makes you think they won’t snatch you out of the restaurant? Then we’ll be looking for you, too.”

“Because,” I said calmly, “I’m going to get Blue’s guys to drive me over and wait to bring me back.”

“Perfect,” Louis said. “Ezola will know who sent them and won’t try anything. Once she goes for it, you set a meeting place, and I’ll tell Sergeant Lawson to stake the place out. As soon as you walk out with the girls, they’ll move in.”

B.J. was still worried, but I wasn’t concerned about Ezola snatching me. The only thing I was scared of was that they’d whisk Etienne and the others away before we had a chance to stop them. I picked up the phone again, and this time Louis didn’t stop me.

Ezola answered before the first ring was complete. “Yes?”

“It’s Catherine.”

“I’ve been expecting your call.”

Celine Hudson was too valuable an employee not to be missed immediately.

“Then we won’t have to waste any time pretending,” I said. “You have something I want as badly as you don’t want that
Sentinel
story to run. I think we can do business.”

“Now you sound like one of us,” she said in that wispy voice that covered so much evil. “What kind of business?”

“The kind you don’t do over the phone. Meet me at Paschal’s on Northside Drive at noon.”

“I’ll be there.”

And I took her line to show her I wasn’t kidding. “Don’t be late.”

66

Paschal’s is always crowded at lunchtime, and today was no exception. I had gone home to shower and change and sit still for a minute to get ready for this exchange. Ezola was a kind of evil I hadn’t encountered very often: a black woman who had no special feeling for other black women. I’m sure she’s not the first; she’s just the first one I’ve seen in a long time, and it’s always weird. It isn’t that I think black women are perfect. It’s just that I always think, deep down, there’s a little spark of sisterhood that binds us together, no matter what. Sometimes we don’t nurture it like we should, and sometimes we let other people abuse it, but I always think it’s in there, waiting for the right moment to leap out, warm your heart, feed your soul, and save the day.

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe sisterhood doesn’t always survive everything intact and come out unscathed. Maybe it can be twisted and warped to the point where you think you deserve a throne and everybody else is just a
sorry black bitch
who can’t—and won’t—do better. Maybe Ezola had looked around at her sisters and said,
Who wants to join up with a powerless group like that? Who wants to spend a lifetime trying to play catch-up with a bunch of females who don’t even know enough to tell the difference between love and abuse, rape and reciprocity?

Maybe that was when Ezola decided it was easier to cash in on our misery than try to correct it, and that choice always belongs to the woman who makes it, since nobody has to be Condoleezza Rice if they don’t want to, but it’s still weird. The protective coloration that makes us fight so hard for
Brother
Ruben after he already won the prize is the same thing that made me believe working for Ezola could somehow bring some balm to Bessie’s long-suffering soul, but I was wrong. That was why I was here to make it right.

Blue Hamilton’s guys drove me over without requiring conversation. One stayed with the car and one took a seat at the bar inside, where he could see me as well as all other entrances and exits in the room. I was fifteen minutes early, and Ezola was already there when I walked in. She was seated in a booth in the back. The man with the ponytail was at the bar, four stools away from my guy. Neither one acknowledged the other.

When I slid in across from Ezola, she gave me a tight little smile. She was dressed in her usual dark dress and pearls, but she looked much smaller out of the environment she controlled. Smaller, but still dangerous. This was no time to underestimate her.

“I’ve told the waiter not to bother us,” she said. “One of those is for you.”

There were two glasses of ice water on the table. I didn’t touch either one.

“Our business won’t take long,” I said. “Etienne St. Jacques’s sister is a friend of mine. I know you’re holding her and three other girls. My friends are prepared to kill the series of articles you’re concerned about in exchange for the safe return of those girls.”

Her lips curled in a mean little smile. “I told Sam that girl would be trouble. Her sister, too, but he wouldn’t listen to me, and now look where we are.”

“I want to pick them up tomorrow, and if I do, those stories you’re concerned about will not run.”

She narrowed her eyes. “For how long?”

“Forever,” I said. “The
Sentinel
is prepared to stop the series.”

“What makes you think that hotshot reporter will go along with this?”

I had anticipated the question. “He’s leaving town. He took a job at the
New York Times.
”

She sneered. “White folks got more money, huh?”

“White folks always have more money, but we’ve still got the last two stories he wrote. The one about Sam and another one all about you.”

I said it as threateningly and nastily as I could, and she knew I wasn’t kidding.

“What if I give these girls to you and that editor changes his mind and runs the stories anyway?”

“He won’t.”

“But he could.”

“Why? So you could burn his office down?”

She was looking at me trying to decide whether or not to take the deal I was offering. I laid it on a little thicker.

“Or maybe so you can send Sam back to my house to remind me of the terms of our deal?”

She didn’t really have much choice. If I was lying, she’d know soon enough, and then all bets would be off. “All right,” she said, finally. “Tomorrow morning the office will be empty. Meet me there at seven
A.M.
Come alone and don’t try anything. If I see any evidence of cops around, Sam coming to your house won’t be what you’re going to have to worry about.”

“Anything else?” I said.

She looked at me. “My secretary will meet you at the door; then I’ll send her home and it will just be the two of us. That’s the only way this is going to happen.”

She was trying to intimidate me, as always, but I wasn’t a scared refugee a long way from home. I knew exactly where I was and who was standing with me. “If I don’t come back, people will come looking for me, and they will bring the police.”

“That won’t be necessary,” she said. “We’re not murderers. This all got out of hand. I’m only interested in providing the services people will pay for regularly. Some people need maids. Some people need cheap whores. It’s all the same to me.”

She sounded so matter-of-fact, and her voice added a touch of innocence to her words that was so out of place it made my skin crawl.

“What kind of black woman are you?”

“A successful one,” she hissed at me. “A rich one. An independent one who doesn’t have to take orders from any white man on this earth.”

“You’re selling people,” I said, unwilling to grant her race-pride points for outsmarting the white man by betraying black folks.

“This country was built on selling people.”

“Yes,
us
!”

“Then be glad for progress,” Ezola said, standing up and offering me that twisted little smile again. “At least this time a sister gets to be involved.”

67

I went straight from Paschal’s to the
Sentinel
office to let Louis and B.J. know that everything was set and Ezola had gone for the deal. Louis listened to everything, then left us there while he went to meet Sergeant Lawson to finalize their plans for tomorrow. All I had to do was meet Ezola at her office at seven
A.M
., take her a notarized statement from Louis saying the series was off in case she had any last-minute cold feet, and then walk the girls outside.

B.J. turned to me after Louis was gone. “Why do I think it’s not going to be this easy?”

“She’s very pragmatic,” I said. “What works better for her than this exchange? Nothing. All she loses are four girls, when what’s at risk are all those other girls and all those millions of dollars you keep talking about. Not to mention her reputation. Why wouldn’t she take the deal?”

“Because she’s not used to being told what to do.”

“Well, that makes two of us.”

“Be careful, Cat. This isn’t the movies. People do get hurt.” His concern was real, but his tone was wrong.

I looked at him. “Do you realize that if Celine Hudson is telling the truth, Etienne hasn’t had to go through the circuit yet?”

“I know.”

“And if we get to her in time, she won’t have to, ever.”

“I know that, too.”

“Then you know I’m going to do this, right?”

“I just don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Neither do I,” I said. “So stop telling me to be careful and start making sure nothing does.”

He was looking really serious, but this was serious business. He didn’t have to tell me this was real life. I was the one living it.

“You weren’t kidding, were you?”

“About what?”

“About being able to take care of yourself.”

He still wasn’t listening.

“Didn’t I just ask for your help?”

He nodded and then gave me a slow smile. “Yeah, but first you made me beg.”

I smiled back. “Just wanted to make sure you were paying attention.”

“All right,” he said. “You do your part, and I got your back.”

68

Miriam was still staying at Miss Iona’s, so I went by there when I left the
Sentinel
office. B.J. was going to meet me at the house later, to go over the plan for tomorrow one moretime, but I wanted to tell Miriam. At first, I thought it would bebetter not to tell her anything until I actually had Etienne in thecar with me, headed home. Then I started thinking about what she might have been through in the last five months. B.J.’s description of the lives these girls were forced to live was swirling around in my mind, and I wondered how damaged and drained Etienne might be. I wondered if she would still bear any resemblance tothe smiling girl in Miriam’s locket or if her captivity had robbedher of all that. The more I thought about it, the more I thought Miriam needed time to prepare herself for this first meeting. She would have to be the strong one for both of them until Etienne had time to heal.

Miss Iona was putting a roast in the oven when I knocked on her front door. Her steady beau, Mr. Charles, came to answer it, looking right at home.

“Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes!” he said, leaning down to kiss my cheek. “Come on in!” He was neatly dressed in a sport coat and a nice pair of slacks. Still handsome at seventy-plus, Mr. Charles had always been a little vain. A dinner invitation from his sweetheart was a perfect excuse to dress up.

“You, too!” I said. “Something smells good!”

“Iona’s in the kitchen working her magic. She’s got Miriam working on the rice.” Mr. Charles was originally from Charleston, and he ate rice with every meal. The first time Miriam had made him a pot of perfect rice, just the way her mama taught her, he wanted to adopt her. “Why don’t you go out there and tell them there’s a half-starved Negro gentleman out here who’s looking for his dinner?”

“I’ll tell them,” I said, as he sat back down in front of the TV. Mr. Charles liked the Discovery Channel, and this was Shark Week.

Miss Iona and Miriam were buzzing around the kitchen like they were already aware of the hungry man in the next room.

“Hey, girl,” Miss Iona said, peeking into the oven to check on the roast. “You’re just in time for dinner.”

Miriam smiled a greeting and crumbled some herbs into a pot of rice that was just beginning to boil. Haitians eat almost as much rice as South Carolinians, and she could cook it so that every perfect grain stood alone.

“I wish I could stay,” I said. “But B.J.’s on his way to my house. I just needed to talk to Miriam for a minute.”

“Go ahead,” Miss Iona said, picking up the glass of wine she had been nursing while she prepared the meal. “I need to go out here and check on my sweetie anyway. Watching those sharks all day always makes him feel frisky.”

And she rolled her eyes so Miriam would giggle, but Miriam wasn’t even smiling. She was looking at me. “You have news about my sister?”

“Yes,” I said. “We’ve talked to the people who are holding her.”

The air seemed to leave her body, and she leaned heavily against the counter. “She’s . . . all right?”

“I haven’t seen her yet, but we’ve arranged to pick her up tomorrow.”

She looked at me like she couldn’t believe the words I was saying. “Tomorrow?”

The rice bubbled over on the stove, and I hurried over to turn down the flame and put the top on it. Miriam hadn’t moved a muscle. I pulled out one of Miss Iona’s kitchen chairs and guided her to it. “Sit down.”

She did, and I sat across from her and took her hand.

“You are going to have to be strong, Miriam,” I said gently. “Etienne has been through a terrible ordeal.”

Miriam put her head in her hands like she couldn’t bear to think about it.

“She’s going to need a lot of support from all of us, but you know what she’s going to need from you?”

Miriam sat up slowly and straightened her back, trying to pull herself together for her sister’s sake. “What?”

“She’s going to need all the love you’ve got.”

Miriam’s eyes filled up, but she didn’t cry. I didn’t expect her to.

“Okay?”

She nodded. “Whatever they have done, she is still Etienne. There is nothing they can do to change that.
Ever!
”

“Good,” I said. “I’m going out early tomorrow, so let yourself in at the usual time. I’ll be back there as soon as I can.”

“Can’t I come with you? She doesn’t know you. She might be afraid.”

She was right.
Terrified
would probably be closer to the truth. They all would be, but there was no other way.

“You can’t come with me,” I said. “I have to go alone.”

Her eyes flashed. “With no one to protect you and my Etienne? I have to go.”

“The police will be there already. As soon as I walk outside with Etienne, they’ll move in.”

“No shooting?”

“No shooting.” I hoped I was telling the truth. “Don’t worry.”

Her fingers were tugging at the locket around her neck when she suddenly unfastened the clasp and took it off. “Here! Take this!” She pressed it to her lips and then handed it to me. “If you show her this, she’ll know it came from me.”

“I will,” I said. “I promise.”

“Catherine?”

“Yes?”

“You’ve done so much for us already, but may I ask you one more favor?”

“Of course.”

“Will you pray with me?”

Her face was scared and hopeful and brave, and so young to be so far from her mother’s arms. I hoped if my child ever had to ask some less-than-perfect woman to pray with her, that woman would have sense enough to say yes, and get on her knees. Which, of course, was what we did, right there in the middle of Miss Iona’s pots and pans and perfect roast. We asked God to help us sing the Lord’s song in a strange land, and then we asked for the strength to bring our Babylon sister home.

Amen.