House of Blues (33 page)

"
Thanks."

Skip could hardly believe her good luck. Tanya's part
of Baronne was only minutes away, in Central City, possibly the most
depressed, decrepit neighborhood that wasn't actually a project. It
was an area where it seemed as if every other building was abandoned,
a place where hope was hard to hold on to. No wonder Nikki had left.
She must have had a compelling reason for returning.

Nikki answered the door herself, in baggy jeans and
T-shirt, mouth swollen, a sharp contrast to the neat, prim church
lady of yesterday.

"
I saw you comin' up the walk, said to my
sister, tha's one lady I want to talk to. You call here earlier?"

"Yes—you weren't home."

"
Ha! Thought those assholes tracked me down. How
you find me?"

"
Looked you up in the phone book." Skip
smiled and shrugged. Nikki laughed.

"
Did, did you? Whyn't you come in? I want to
talk to you."

Skip stepped into a dark living room, curtains drawn,
very little furniture, no rug. Though no one was in the room, the
television was going full-blast. A photo of Martin Luther King stood
on the mantel.

Nikki gestured for Skip to sit, and pointed to her
injured mouth: "I'm gettin' mad about some stuff."

"Who did that to you?"

"Who you think? The Rev. Mr. High and Fuckin'
Mighty, tha's who. I'm gon' git that bastard."

Go, Nikki! But she kept her face impassive. "Oh?"

"
You know what they doin' over there? They
plannin' somep'n. What, I don't know. But somep'n. Gotta be. Why else
put together an army of zombies?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Well, tha's just what I call 'em. They ain't
killin' anybody and bringin' 'em back to life. But Daddy—tha's what
we call him—"

"You mean Errol Jacomine?"

"Yeah, him. But that's not his real name."

Bingo.

"Oh, really? What is it?"

"I'm not sure. I jus' know it's not Errol
Jacomine."

"How do you know that?"

"He talks about it. Talks about how he used to
be somebody else, back before he was born again; how he did a lot of
bad things and then he got saved and realized he needed to help
people who were worse off than he was. Said he got a new name to go
along with his new life. We'd be surprised, he said. Shee—it. I
wouldn't be surprised at nothin'. The man's violent." She
paused, fingering her split lip. "Evil. I honestly think he's
evil. I don't know if I ever met anybody else I felt that way about."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because he gets people, like, under his
control. And he makes 'em do stuff."

"What kind of stuff?"

Pigeon lowered her head. "Sex."

Of course. Guru-itis. "What else?"

"Work on, you know, whatever he wants us to.
Causes and shit. Like work the phones for some politician he wants to
get elected. You know? That kind of shit. Then, the politician gets
elected, I bet he makes him do what he wants."

"
Nikki, why'd you decide to leave?"

" 'Cause I've had enough of this shit. See this
lip? You know why he hit me? 'Cause I spilled that tea on you, tha's
why."

"
Oh, my God. I'm so sorry."

"
Well I'm not. Tha's what woke me up. All this
time I've been takin' his shit, just takin' it and takin' it, sayin',
'He' a good man, he don't mean to hurt people, he just does it for
their own good.' Can you believe I could be that dumb?"

"Everybody's that dumb about some things."

"See, what he does, he makes you be a maid if
you transgress somehow or other. I did somethin' he didn't like—oh,
hell, you know what I did? When I look back on it now, I just can't
believe I was so dumb, some of the things I put up with. What I did
wrong, I didn't wear the right kind of perfume when it was my turn to
go to bed with him."

Skip started. "Your turn? Do all the women have
to go to bed with him?"

"Oh, no. Inst the ones he wants. Guys too. He
makes some of them do it too. And he's married! That's the worst
part—he makes his wife get people ready for him—baths with
special scents, nightgowns and shit, perfume. Shit! It wasn't even my
fault about the perfume, it was Tourmaline's—that's his wife. She
was supposed to know what kind of damn perfume he wanted. See, she
has this back problem and can't have sex—tha's what he says—and
he says a man has to have certain things and it's our duty to see
that he's satisfied."

"
So he got mad at you and made you be his maid."

"Not his maid, exactly. The church's. Like what
I did yesterday. Servin' tea for dignitaries; that kind of shit."

"Speaking of that, how did he happen to know so
much about me?"

She looked surprised. "I don't know. I just got
a message to be over there at two-thirty, dressed in white and
lookin' like a nice church lady. I used to be a stripper, you know. I
was doin' fine—a lot better than before I met Daddy—but my
boyfriend beat me up real bad and I couldn't dance, and then he
kicked me out of the apartment, and by then I didn't have a penny and
I was homeless.

"
I had this girlfriend, Carla; her cousin was in
the church; and she made a phone call and they said they'd take me
in." She shrugged. "Simple as that. They took care of me
while I healed, and then I was part of the church family. Tha's what
they called it. Church family!" She stopped and thought about
it. "Yeah. Incest is best."

Skip winced, but Pigeon emitted peals of wild, sharp
laughter, evidently letting off steam.

"I bought it. I really did buy it for a while. I
thought it was great to be a part of this community, you know? I
never was a part of anything, never, you know, like worked toward
anything. This was—you know, holy work. Cool. Me. Doin' holy work.
I thought I was hot shit. Brought my sister's kids to church and
everything. Tanya, she always said there was somethin' wrong—but I
didn't see it. Said Daddy gave her the creeps.

"Then yesterday after you left, he called a
house meeting—about fifty people were there—he called it for the
sole purpose of humiliating me. (Look at this girl! The white honky
po-lice come, and she make us look like we ain't even out of the
trees yet. There we are tryin' to look good in front of the community
and Miss Nikki Pigeon pours hot tea all over 'em, jus' like she was
drunk.'

"Then he falls in love with that one. He goes,
‘Nikki, I b'leeve you were drunk. Were you drunk, Nikki? You were
prob'ly on dope, weren't you? And now the whole community's gon' have
to suffer for it. Everybody here's gon' have to do sixteen hours of
work this week.

"'Those who're employed.

" 'Those who aren't, you gon' do sixteen hours
over what you normally do'—most of us do about forty-five. Either
that, he says, or put in two hundred dollars. 'That's gon' be pretty
hard on some of y'all, idn't it? Nikki Pigeon, I want you to be
aware—l want you to be aware of the havoc you've caused.'

"And tha's when he slap me.

"In front of all those people—can you believe
it? Even Joel, my ex-boyfriend who beat me up, never did it in front
of nobody. And he say, you gon' have to wear sackcloth, like in the
Bible, all week to atone for your sins.

" 'Wha's sackcloth, Daddy?' I say, and he say,
'Burlap, girl. And it's gon' hurt you. It's gon' make you itch real
bad. And what's more, you gon' have to make your garments. I herewith
order you to make yourself a pair o' underpants, one of those—you
know, chemise things'—camisoles, somebody in the audience say, and
he say, yeah, camisoles, and a burlap dress to go over it. Somebody
say, ‘Whoo, tha's gon' be hot,' and Daddy, he say, 'Yeah, gon' be
hot. Hot and itchy too. Miss Nikki's gon' be sorry she ever disobey
her daddy,' and I say, ‘But Daddy, I didn't disobey; it was a
accident,' and he slap me again.

"Well, I went back to my room and I just lay
down on my bed and cried and cried, feelin' like the lowest worm in
the world, thinkin' it wadn't fair, wadn't fair at all. Then I
remembered pore Evie. And I thought, 'I don't have to take this
shit.' And I called my sister to come get me.

"
See, what they do, they get you dependent on
'em. You can't go do nothin' on your own. I thought about that when I
was lyin' there. I wanted to go, but where was I gon' go? The church
wouldn't let me go back to dancin', and tha's the only way I know to
make a livin'. Tha's when I thought about Evie and how she left
'em—just flat-out up and left 'em—so she could do what she
wanted.

"She's a real pretty girl, see? You ever seen
her?"

Skip shook her head.

"Pore thing, I bet she had to get all perfumed
for Daddy every now and then. Anyway, everybody said she should be a
model, she was pretty enough, and that gave her the idea to go to a
modeling agency. You know you can make good money that way? You don't
even have to take your clothes off or nothin'. You get jobs like
handin' out stuff at conventions, shit like that. No sex. No nothin'.
just handin' shit out." She shrugged, as if it were too much to
fathom.

"Well, Evie did that, and he did the same damn
thing to her."

"I don't follow you."

"Humiliated her; held her up as some terrible
example of a hussy in front of everybody. So then she had no way to
make a livin'—or she wouldn't of if she hadn't seen through it a
lot faster than I did. She just went, ‘I'm outta here,' and that
was that. So I thought, 'I can do that.' And you know what? I'm outta
there."

"
I'm happy for you, Nikki, I really am."
Skip smiled. "Tell me, do you have Evie's forwarding address?"

Pigeon looked surprised. "No. She didn't leave
one."

"
Oh. Well, do you know what agency she worked
for?"

"Agency?"

"Didn't you say she worked for a modeling
agency?"

"
Oh, yeah. No, I guess I don't know. If I did,
I'd go right down there myself."

"Okay. Do you want to file a complaint about the
battery?"

"What battery?"

"Jacomine hitting you."

"Oh, no. No way. He'd kill me."

"
Kill you? You really think he'd kill you?"

"I wouldn't put it past him."

"Nikki, are you trying to tell me something?"

"You mean, like, he kills people? Well, I don'
know of any, but I'm just sayin' he could, tha's all. He's that
evil."

Skip went back to her desk and started calling
modeling agencies.

The fifth one, fancifully named Cygnet, said Evie
Hebert no longer worked for them, and twenty minutes later she was in
their office. Another ten minutes and she had Evie's address.

Just like that. St. Expedite was working overtime.

Or, she thought, every now and then things just go
right.

Something shifted inside her, and she realized it was
depression beginning to lift. She hadn't yet experienced it as
depression, only as a heaviness; unnamed baggage she'd carried since
that night in the Iberville project. There had been a sense, she
realized, that nothing would ever go right again, a low—energy
feeling that affected her self-esteem.

She had a sense now of victory, almost an elation,
far out of proportion to the tiny fact she'd uncovered.

I'm going to get Sally back. She knew she hadn't
really believed it for some time.

Things are going right. They really are. Tricia found
Dennis; that fell into my lap. Though not really, she knew, because
she had found Tricia and had set in motion Tricia's need to prove
something to her.

And now this.

Evie lived near Claiborne, in a run-down building in
a rundown neighborhood. Whether it was mostly black or mostly white,
Skip didn't know; demographics changed from block to block. There
were a few cars parked out front, but not the Heberts' beige
Mercedes, the one Reed had left in. The place looked deserted.

She found a phone and called Cappello. "I got an
address for Evie, but it looks like no one's home."

"I'll send you some backup."

"I think I might try the Avon lady routine. If I
don't call back in twenty, assume the worst." She hung up before
Cappello could answer.

She had no bag of cosmetics, but she always kept a
clipboard handy, along with a copy of an opinion survey she'd picked
up from a genuine surveyor, and some product brochures.

She rang Evie's doorbell and waited.

Nothing.

She rang it again, and stood there.

She was about to slip a brochure under the door, to
discourage suspicion, when someone shouted down from upstairs. "Hey!
You lookin' for Evie?"

Skip consulted her clipboard as if unsure. "Does
Evelyne Hebert live here?"

"Yeah. I mean I guess that's her name—I call
her Evie. She hasn't been home in days."

"Are you the building manager?"