Ill Will Page 2

  “I’ll talk to them,” I said following her down the stairs. In our silence we understood each other. Talking to them meant a call that could go unanswered for days because they were working on destroyed houses where there was no cell service. Or driving out to that desolate area hoping to find them there. The case should have been closed. I’d done what they asked. They’d paid me—not much, far less than it should have cost, but I couldn’t add to their money woes. This was a half a day, a day, of extra time and work.

  “Why the hell do we always have to do the right thing,” I muttered as she held the downstairs door for me. It was still daylight, an orange glimmer of sun off to the west. At least the days were getting longer. Sunlight made a difference in a city with so many places without power.

  “Because in the end it costs less,” she answered.

  “You sure about that?”

  “How’s Cordelia?”

  “Busy. There aren’t enough doctors in this town.”

  Joanne let the silence hang. I didn’t fill it. Finally she spoke, “Must be hard on you, not seeing her all the time.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Yeah, you did.”

  “I’m supposed to be at the grocery store now. She’s working near Touro Hospital. Half the city closer to the grocery store than I am. But I’m the only one who has time to go grocery shopping.”

  “Sucks to have a partner who saves people’s lives.”

  “Especially when the cupboard is bare.” I didn’t want to talk about this. “How’s Alex?”

  “Loves the job. Hates the commute.”

  After Katrina, Alex, Joanne’s partner, had been laid off, like many other city workers. No residents means no tax revenue means nothing to pay people with. She’d worked with me for a while. I was beyond busy and she was smart and good with computers. But she didn’t want to rebuild a career as a private investigator, so when a job in arts and culture had opened in the lieutenant governor’s office, she’d taken it. It just meant driving to Baton Rouge every day, a trip of about ninety miles each way. She’d talked about taking an apartment up there, but there were none to be had in anything resembling her price range. Baton Rouge, as well as the rest of the state, was bloated full with the dispossessed of New Orleans.

  I repeated to Joanne, “Must be hard on you, not seeing her all the time.”

  “Sucks to have a partner who has to bring dance companies to Louisiana.” Somehow she packed even more sarcasm into it than I had. With a glance at her watch, she said, “She won’t be home for another hour or two. Want to go play pool or something?”

  “You’re welcome to come with me to the grocery store.”

  “Went yesterday. I’m way over my quota for long lines and Uptown ladies who don’t like the little people shopping in their grocery store.”

  “I could so use a beer right about now,” I said.

  “Couldn’t we all?” She looked at me. “Sometimes I almost feel like I’m single.”

  “Sometimes I almost wish I were.” Both our statements hung in the air. Then I blurted out, “You were about to arrest me and now you’re suggesting adultery?”

  “I was not about to arrest you.” She turned and walked to her car, which was parked just in front of mine.

  I followed her. I had to get to my car, after all.

  She turned just as she got to my front fender. “If you forget what I said, I’ll forget what you said. It’s been almost two years, you’d think we’d stop going crazy by now.”

  “You saying sex with me is crazy?” I said with a smile, trying to throw some humor on this.

  “Come on, you know I’m not saying that. What I am saying—attempting to and doing it badly—is that I want what I can’t have—my life before Katrina. A partner who works here in the city, who I can meet for lunch instead of a late dinner. A partner who doesn’t just break down and cry for no reason. I got through the flood waters, but I’m not sure I can get through this.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I knew what I wanted to say, to tell her no, she couldn’t fall apart, because if my friends couldn’t hold it together I wasn’t sure I could. It was the so-called little things, the day after day after day, long lines and longer lines, starting to drive some place and realizing it’s not there anymore, another person who came back but decided not to stay, all those lost pieces of the life we used to have. Katrina was over; the news cycle had moved on. The flood waters had gone away; what they had left was still here—those of us who couldn’t forget because every day in some way, we had to remember.

  “So there are dangerous moments when I long for…I don’t even know what. Not to be here. Part of the most despised police force in the country. Having to take a report on the crooks who stole a new a/c compressor a block from where we’re rebuilding our house. Frozen dinner after frozen dinner because who knows when Alex will get home and I can’t be bothered to cook for myself.”

  “Hey, you get the groceries, I’ll cook for you.”

  “Did I mention the kind, sensitive friends who are always there for you?”

  “We are. As long as you don’t try to arrest us.”

  “I wasn’t trying to arrest you.” She added, “You’d be in handcuffs now if I had been.”

  She needed something from me I wasn’t sure I had to give. I simply said, “Joanne, you’ll be okay.” I put my arms around her and hugged her.

  We held it for a moment. Too long. Then broke away.

  “Gotta make groceries,” I mumbled.

  “Yeah. I hear a microwave calling my name.” She took a step away, then said, “I mean it. Forget what I said. I think something and it sounds like an escape, then I say it and realize it’s just another trap.”

  I watched her get in her car, then didn’t want to watch her anymore. I knew too well what she meant about dangerous thoughts. For one horrific moment, Katrina had unmoored all of us, thrown us helter-skelter, a terrifying freedom. If we couldn’t come back to New Orleans, where could we go? But some of us had fallen to earth here, on the flooded ground. Much as we tried to reclaim our old lives—or build new ones—we weren’t sure the ground would hold us. Everything had changed, and maybe it had changed so far and in ways we couldn’t even see that we’d never find our way back.

  As she pulled away, I took out my cell phone. There would be no grocery run tonight. I was at the point that I’d shoot myself before I’d cross Canal Street today. A small grocery store in the French Quarter had opened, but parking was impossible. I occasionally made forays there on my bike, but it was near dark and I knew myself well enough to know I would not go home and leave again. I called a place on Frenchmen Street and ordered two shrimp po-boys. If Cordelia didn’t like it, she could go to the grocery store.

  That was part of what we’d lost and were yet to come to terms with. Before Katrina, there were two grocery stores within about ten blocks of our house. It was no problem for me to swing by them, even on busy days. That was our pattern. I’d get the food and do most of the cooking, since my hours were more flexible than hers, and she’d take the major part of the cleanup.

  With her clinic destroyed and rebuilding still up in the air, she’d taken work where she could find it. There was a need for doctors, so great it was part of the problem. Cordelia worked longer hours than she had before the storm. So from her point of view, it probably still seemed like I should continue to do what we’d always done. It just wasn’t working for me.

  She was tired more often—or so she claimed. But her tiredness had stretched since before the holidays, now months past. I’d suggested depression, but she’d blown that off.

  Just one more fucking thing to deal with in a fucked-up city. Cold shrimp po-boys wouldn’t make anything any better. I started my car and drove away.

  Chapter Two

  “I thought you were going to the grocery store,” Cordelia asked as she entered the kitchen and saw me unwrapping po-boys. She had been home long enough to have changed into sweatpants and
a T-shirt, opened a beer, and finished a third of it.

  “I work downtown. The only open grocery store is way uptown,” I said.

  “Oh, okay. Are you going to make it tomorrow? We’re running low on toilet paper,” she said, taking another swig of her beer.

  “Do you have some grocery store disability?” I snapped. “Is there a reason I’m the only one to go even though your work is half a city closer than mine is?”

  “You’re angry,” she ever-so-perceptively noticed.

  “I’m tired,” I said tersely. “I guess you haven’t noticed I’m working a lot of hours, sometimes more than you. And that I’m the only one who goes to the grocery store. And that—”

  “I’ve noticed,” she cut in.

  I got a beer out of the refrigerator and opened it.

  “I don’t guess you noticed when I took our car out to be serviced,” she said.

  “That was your car.”

  “That you were driving more than I was.”

  “It was two weeks ago,” I pointed out.

  “I had to drive out there in the morning, get Kathy to pick me up on her way to work and drop me back again in the evening to pick it up and I had blood on my clothes when I went back out there because I didn’t have time to change and—”

  “I was working that day. And I hate Metairie.”

  “It’s not my favorite place in the world.” In a softer tone she added, “I know. That’s why I went there.” For a moment we were both silent, “Please, Micky, let’s not fight.” And then very quietly added, as if to herself, “I can’t do this if we’re fighting.”

  Oh, no you don’t, I started to say. But didn’t—even I’m not that much of an asshole. This was her usual way out of the argument, to be too tired, too overwhelmed, too bruised and battered by what she’d been through in Katrina and what she faced afterward. I couldn’t call her on it because it was true. But it was true for me as well, just not as ragged and messy. I hadn’t been trapped in Charity Hospital for almost a week, waiting for rescue, helpless in the festering heat as patients who should have lived died. I had evacuated, watching my city and every part of my life torn apart on a TV screen. That was what we struggled with—we were all battered and no one was left whole to lean on.

  “We need to find a better balance,” I finally said. “I can’t do everything I did before.”

  “Let’s eat. Someone told me there’s a new store up on Carrollton, that it just opened. I’ll go after we’re done.”

  “And stick me with the dishes?” That got a wan smile from her. I was trying to be funny. “Let’s eat and then we can both go. A new grocery store on this side of Canal Street—even if it is up by City Park—is a good excuse for an outing.”

  “Thank you.” She didn’t move for a moment, the beer motionless in one hand, the other hand reaching for the sandwich wrapper, but still. “I’m sorry this is so hard. Please know that I love you.”

  I put down my beer, cupped her face in my hands. Something had happened today. I needed to find my better angel. “I know that. I’m sorry it’s hard, too.” I leaned in and gently kissed her. It was soft, a brief touch of comfort and love. Then I let go. “Should I microwave these? They’re better hot than cold.”

  She nodded and I did. We talked as we ate, small talk, the weather, who’d told her about the newly open store—“he said he screamed like a girl when he heard the news”—what to put on the grocery list—talking as if we needed to avoid silence.

  She let me drive.

  As we waited for the light at Claiborne and Esplanade, she said, “I had an appointment with Jennifer today.”

  “Jennifer?” I asked, trying to place the name.

  “A…specialist.”

  “Why?” I asked as the light changed and I shifted into first gear.

  “Probably nothing. But I’ve been so tired lately. Plus losing weight.”

  “Which you’ve wanted to do.”

  “I’m not trying. Thought it might be thyroid, but we did those tests and everything came back negative.”

  I briefly glanced at her. Cordelia has struggled with her weight more than I have. I seem to have one of those obnoxious metabolisms that allows beer and brownies with no bulge. She’d lost weight after her ordeal in Charity and as far as I could tell hadn’t regained it. The hollowness in her cheeks was still there. Had she lost more?

  “What are you being checked for?” I asked.

  “The usual, any swelling or mass.”

  “Cancer?” The word hung in the air.

  “That’d be the worst-case scenario. It’s most likely a low-grade infection causing the swollen lymph glands. I’m probably also going to find out that I’m borderline anemic and need to eat more protein.”

  “What are the possibilities?” I tried to keep my tone neutral. She brought it up because she was worried about it.

  “The doctor side of me knows that most of the time it’s nothing, a few tests, some anxious moments and that’ll be it. We did the needle aspiration of the lymph nodes today. It’ll be about a week before we get those results back.”

  “What about the patient side of you?”

  “I’m not used to being the patient.” She was silent. Finally she said, “It’ll be okay. I’m probably only trying to find a physical reason for my mental malaise. Tell me about your day. Anything interesting?”

  I let her avoid the subject. They’d run a few tests, we’d know then. There was no point in worrying about it now.

  “It seems that someone is selling Lake Pontchartrain swamp water as the cure-all for everything. And it somehow became my job to solve the case.”

  “Lake Pontchartrain swamp water? Really?”

  “Probably not,” I amended. “But one of those ‘natural miracle drugs’ that the government doesn’t want anyone to know about because it’s so good. I was supposed to prove that it didn’t work, convince the nephew he was throwing money away, all for a nominal fee that I’d waive in the end because this is such a do-gooder case.”

  “Did you take it?”

  “No, of course not. I’m busy enough and have no experience in medical fraud even if he was willing to actually pay me anything. I told him to go to the FDA. If people are stupid enough to fall for swamp water as a cure for cancer, there’s not much I can do about it.”

  “Desperate,” she said softly.

  “What?” I asked as I stopped for the light at Broad.

  “Desperate,” she repeated. “Most of them are desperate. Clinging to a fragile hope that the answers they’ve gotten so far—that there is no cure—aren’t the only answers.”

  For a brief second a haunted look crossed her face, as if she could feel that desperation, then it was gone and the Cordelia I knew returned. I didn’t know if she was talking about herself or remembering someone else’s desperation.

  “So desperate they’d try something insane?” I asked.

  But the fear I had glimpsed was gone. Or hidden. The perilous week in Charity Hospital would haunt her to the grave. Maybe some vestige of that would always be hidden behind her eyes. Her answer was calm. “Snake oil salesmen have been with us since there were snakes. Until around a hundred years ago, it was a free-for-all, totally unregulated so-called patent medicines whose main ingredient was either alcohol or opium. We only started regulating these things in 1906.” She was comfortable with information; sometimes she hid behind it. “The first law here was introduced then and it only required that ostensible medicines disclose ingredients like alcohol or opium. Quite a number of temperance ladies were distressed to discover that Mrs. Pinkham’s potion was more alcoholic than their husband’s gin.”

  I interrupted the lecture. “But that was then. Now we have better regulations, right?”

  “Better regulations, yes, but also a much more complicated medical system. Drugs approved by the FDA have to go through a series of clinical trials to prove that they’re safe—at least safer than the disease they’re treating, all drugs have side
effects—and actually work better than a placebo. If it says it reduces high blood pressure, then it has to reduce high blood pressure. But there is a whole unregulated side, the nutritional supplements.”

  “They don’t have to work?”

  “They can’t claim to treat disease, they can’t say ‘reduces blood pressure,’ but they can be vague and say things like ‘promotes heart health.’ They’re considered safe until proven otherwise.”

  “So people can still sell snake oil?” I asked, making the left at City Park to get onto Carrolton.

  “Essentially. They can’t claim on the labeling that it cures cancer or HIV. The latest trick is to have one website extolling the virtues of snake oil with a link to another website that makes no health claims but actually sells the stuff.”

  “Is that legal?”

  “Freedom of speech.”

  “So you can claim Lake Pontchartrain water cures every disease known to man—and woman, and I can sell it and it’s all legal?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “What if it kills someone?”

  “If it’s harmful, it can be pulled from the market.”

  “Cold comfort if you’re already dead.”

  “Very cold. It took years for ephedra to be banned despite mounting evidence that it killed people. The deaths of several prominent athletes were required to get Congress to outlaw it. The supplement makers took it all the way to the Supreme Court to get the FDA ban overruled.”

  “They lost?”

  “Yes, but they have a powerful lobby—the money to buy influence.”

  “So is all that stuff crap?”

  “No, some of it is clearly worthless, some actually helpful, and most is in the don’t-know category. It’s expensive to do research, and there is no incentive to spend money when you’re already making money without spending it.”

  The welcoming glow of lights appeared ahead of us. A grocery store had indeed opened below Canal Street. That burst of normality cheered me considerably. It still wasn’t close to our house; before Katrina this had been the far grocery store, one I went to if I had something to do up here. Now it was the near one.