November Road. Lou Berney

Carlos’s pocket. This was the president of the United States. Bobby Kennedy and the FBI wouldn’t stop until they’d turned over every goddamn rock.

      A sticky drizzle blew away, and the sun poked through the clouds. Seraphine stood next to the statue of Old Hickory. The horse rearing, Andrew Jackson tipping his hat. The shadow from the statue split Seraphine in half. She smiled at Guidry, one eye bright and liquid and playful, the other a dark green stone.

      He wanted to grab her and shove her up against the base of the statue and demand to know why she’d stuck him right in the middle of this, the crime of the century. Instead, wisely, he smiled back. With Seraphine you had to proceed with caution, or else you didn’t proceed for long.

      “Hello, little boy,” she said. “The forest is dark and the wolves howl. Hold my hand and I’ll help you find your way home.”

      “I’ll take my chances with the wolves, thanks,” Guidry said.

      She pouted. Is that what you think of me? And then she laughed. Of course it was what he thought of her. Guidry would be a fool if he didn’t.

      “I adore autumn,” she said. “Don’t you? The air so crisp. The scent of melancholy. Autumn tells us the truth about the world.”

      You wouldn’t call Seraphine pretty. Regal. With a high, broad forehead and a dramatic arch to her nose, dark hair marcelled and parted on the side. Skin just a shade darker than Guidry’s own. Anywhere but New Orleans, she might have passed for white.

      She dressed as primly as a schoolteacher. Today she wore a mohair sweater set and a slim-fitting skirt, pristine white gloves. Her own private joke, maybe. She always seemed to be smiling at one.

      “Cut the bullshit,” Guidry said. With the right smile, he could say things like that to her. To Carlos, even.

      She smiled and smoked. One of the skeletal carriage horses on Decatur Street whinnied, shrill and disconsolate, almost a scream. A sound you wanted to forget the minute you heard it.

      “So you’ve seen the news about the president,” she said.

      “Imagine my alarm,” he said.

      “Don’t worry, mon cher. Come, I’ll buy you a drink.”

      “Just one?”

      “Come.”

      They walked over to Chartres. The Napoleon House didn’t open for another hour. The bartender let them in, poured their drinks, disappeared.

      “Goddamn it, Seraphine,” Guidry said.

      “I understand your concern,” she said.

      “I hope you’re planning to visit me in prison.”

      “Don’t worry.”

      “Say it again and maybe I’ll start to believe you.”

      She flicked the ash from her cigarette with a languid sweep of a gloved hand.

      “My father used to work here,” she said. “Did you know? Mopping the floors, cleaning the toilets. When I was a little girl, he brought me with him occasionally. Do you see those?”

      The walls of the Napoleon House hadn’t been replastered in a century, and every one of the antique oil portraits hung just a little bit crooked. Mean, haughty faces, glaring down from the shadows.

      “When I was a little girl,” she said, “I was convinced that the people in the paintings were watching me. Waiting until I blinked so that they could pounce.”

      “Maybe they were,” Guidry said. “Maybe they worked for J. Edgar Hoover.”

      “I’ll say it once more, because we’re such old friends. Don’t worry. The authorities have their man, don’t they?”

      “It’s just the cops in Dallas, and they only think they have their man.”

      Guidry knew that the FBI would never buy Oswald, not for a minute. C’mon. They’d start digging, and he’d start gabbing. No. Check that. The feds were already digging, and Oswald was already gabbing.

      “He won’t be a problem,” Seraphine said.

      Oswald. That little rat face, vaguely familiar. Guidry thought he might have seen him around town at some point. “So you can tell the future now?” he said.

      “His.”

      “Where’s the Eldorado?” Guidry said. Seraphine could reassure him till she was blue in the face, but he wouldn’t be safe from the feds until that car disappeared forever. The Eldorado was the one piece of physical evidence that linked him to the assassination.

      “On its way to Houston,” she said, “as we speak.”

      “If your fella with the eagle eye gets pulled over by the cops …”

      “He won’t.” Her smile a bit less serene this time. The Eldorado was also the one piece of physical evidence that linked Carlos to the assassination.

      “And once the car’s in Houston?” Guidry said.

      “Someone trustworthy will send it to the bottom of the sea.”

      Guidry reached over the bar for the bottle of scotch. He felt better, a little. “Is that true?” he said. “About your father working here?”

      She shrugged. The shrug meant, Yes, of course. Or it meant, No, don’t be absurd.

      “Who’s dumping the car in Houston?” Guidry said. “Your fella who’s driving it down?”

      “No. He’s needed elsewhere.”

      “So who, then?” Guidry, from his elevated perch in the organization, just a branch or two below Seraphine, knew most of Carlos’s guys. Some were more reliable than others. “Whoever dumps it, you better be damn sure you can count on him.”

      “But of course,” she said. “Uncle Carlos has complete faith in this man. Never once has he failed us.”

      Who? Guidry started to ask again. Instead he turned to stare at her. “Me?” he said. “No. I’m not going near that fucking car.”

      “No?”

      “I’m not going near that fucking car, Seraphine.” Guidry remembered to smile this time. “Not now, not a hundred years from now.”

      She shrugged again. “But, mon cher,” she said, “in this matter who can we trust more than you? Who can you trust more?”

      Only now did Guidry complete the arduous climb to the summit and, panting with exertion, realize just where Seraphine had led him. It had been her plan all along, he realized. Have Guidry stash the getaway Eldorado before the hit so that he’d be thoroughly motivated—his own ass on the line now—to get rid of the car afterward.

      “Goddamn it,” he said. But you had to admire the dazzling footwork, the elegance of the maneuver. Who needed to tell the future when you could create it yourself?

      Out on the street, Seraphine handed him a plane ticket.

      “Your flight to Houston leaves tomorrow,” she said. “You’ll have to miss your Saturday-morning cartoons, I’m afraid. The car will be left for you downtown, in a pay lot across the street from the Rice Hotel.”

      “What then?” he said.

      “There’s a decommissioned-tank terminal on the ship channel. Take La Porte Road east. Keep going after you pass the Humble Oil refinery. You’ll see an unmarked road about a mile on.”

      What if the feds had already found the Eldorado? They’d sit on it, of course. They’d wait for some poor idiot to show up and claim it.

      “In the evening you’ll have all the privacy you need,” she said. “The ship channel is forty feet deep. Afterward walk half a mile up La Porte. There’s a filling station