Deadly Pedigree

13



Nick ate breakfast in an airy sun-filled, antique-crammed room downstairs, in the company of ficuses, palms, and about thirty Japanese tourists videotaping each other eating such unfamiliar Louisiana fare as grits and grillades, eggs Benedict, and beignets. Sharla, fortunately, was absent.

I shouldn’t have, but I did anyway…words for his tombstone. One of these days, he would have to pay for his libidinous lapses; the avenger waiting for him might be some dread disease or a jealous husband. He also worried that maybe he’d shared too much with Sharla the night before, in the way of words, that is; he foggily remembered opening a second bottle of chardonnay, which Sharla just happened to have put in the room’s mini fridge.

A couple of homemade bagels with gravlax and cream cheese, some fresh fruit, freshly squeezed orange juice, and two pots of steaming coffee and chicory were getting the better of his hangover and his typically gargantuan appetite. He had a lot of work to do. Moping over indiscretions he might have made, but couldn’t now change, wasn’t on his schedule. He had to be back in New Orleans for As You Like It at eight, with Una.

Una…she would definitely not approve of his fall to temptation. And he cared about her approval. The weight of dishonesty he was lugging around was becoming very heavy indeed.



At the front desk, Rebecca was just a little colder toward him at first, as he checked out. She obviously sensed what had happened between her daughter and him. Maybe, Nick thought, she hadn’t been much different when she was Sharla’s age, and this was just peevishness at the creeping of years, at having to admit to herself that the attention of the opposite sex had shifted to the younger generation. He wanted to tell her he understood, and in fact found her attractive, too–but decided she might take his consolation the wrong way.

Soon, though, her irrepressible good nature shone once again, and she was insisting on having one of her workers take him to the Balzar building. Finally, he escaped on his own.



The Balzar building was a post-Civil War beauty, sadly neglected. It sat at the lesser-traveled end of a side street perpendicular to the river. Four floors, herringbone-patterned brown and cream bricks, classical masonry details. The bottom floor once housed other small businesses besides–possibly–Ivanhoe’s barbershop; Nick studied the old torn posters and faded painted signage that remained in the windows or had merged with the brick.

Did Ivanhoe, the mulatto barber, own this semi-prime piece of real estate? Perhaps the building just became identified with him, as the long-time, popular tenant; perhaps he was a more influential citizen than was usual for a man in his position in the rigidly stratified society of those bygone days.

The block had the forlorn look of past bankruptcies and sheriffs’ sales, of Louisiana’s roller-coaster casino-mentality business environment–bet it all and throw the dice! A car rolled by, but the driver took no notice of him. Now he was alone on the quiet street. He slid his Freret University laminated library card through the simple door latch.

“Oh, the manifold uses of the tools of a liberal education!” he said to the silent room he entered.

Any barbershop once in existence had been succeeded ultimately by an insurance agency, Nick judged from the calendars on the peeling walls, and from the scattered stationery and brochures on Sherman tank-like metal desks. The place had been cleared out in a hurry, unceremoniously, and no one had looked back. February 1963 was when the ax fell for Triple-V Insurance, and nothing much had happened here in the thirty years since. In some places the green-speckled linoleum squares were missing, evidence perhaps of an abandoned refurbishment. He could still see the circular bolt holes in the floor where the barber chairs had once been. Was this Ivanhoe’s place? It was looking good.

He walked into the back hallway, stirring up dust and breaking cobwebs. There wasn’t much here except dozens of paint cans and jugs of pesticide, a regular toxic waste dump. He hoped the stuff had evaporated years before. He hurried upstairs, holding his breath as much as possible.

His ascent was a journey back in time, each floor a quarter-century, it seemed. Flashlight in hand, he rummaged awhile among a multitude of boxes in hallways and dry-rotted black holes of rooms. He learned a little about the other businesses that had been here, but nothing especially relevant for his project.

He made his way to the fourth floor, in increasing heat. Was it just a wild-goose chase? That seemed more and more likely with every step.

The fourth floor consisted of one large, long room; it would have made a good indoor basketball court, in more temperate months. The naked walls, ceiling, and floor offered a course on the construction methods of the mid- to late-nineteenth century. It seemed this floor had always been the dumping ground for the major debris of decades, and Nick now found himself amid a beckoning archaeological site. Something was here, something crucial. He could feel it.

Feeble light from the street windows illuminated in colorless relief a blanket of dust covering everything. His slightest movement created minuscule tornadoes that sent galaxies of dust motes swirling up his nose and into his eyes. He poked around several piles of stuff, until a random swing of his fading flashlight found in the far corner of the room the old barber chairs.

Or what was left of three or four of them. The good chairs had long ago been commandeered, and now no doubt served as decor in some Americana-themed eatery. Other telltale signs of the barber’s trade were evident to Nick: drawers with scissors and combs, razors, brushes, and other implements that Ivanhoe must have used for the minor surgery barbers performed in those days; some bottles of whimsical and ornate design, that probably once held the rainbow array of tonics and scents Ivanhoe splashed on his customers’ faces and scalps; striped poles, and signs advertising the many grooming services available at “Balzar’s Tonsorial Emporium”; an oak file cabinet, which stood sentinel over rat-eaten piles of account ledgers.

And there, atop the file cabinet, inconspicuous below similarly mildewed and gnawed volumes, was Ivanhoe’s diary, the most momentous impossible gap Nick would ever be likely to discover in a long life of genealogical research, if such were to be his fortune.





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