Deadly Pedigree

27



Ronald’s funeral in Natchitoches was a big affair. And sad.

Relatives and friends lingered over the open casket, discussing how handsome he looked. The knife wounds and the autopsy damage were for the most part well disguised. On Shelvin’s instructions, Nick had purchased a new Brooks Brothers double-breasted pinstriped suit in New Orleans. The morticians had been impressed. Nick’s own touch for Ronald’s final costume was a tasteful boutonniere for the lapel.

Just visible below Ronald’s clasped hands were a brand-new small Bible and a sealed aluminum tube with a black ribbon. The tube contained Hyam Balazar’s original letter, which Ivanhoe had buried for safekeeping with his mother in 1869. Dora had bravely seen to this detail, with the help of a plumber friend. It was a form of insurance, Nick had told her.

Erasmus was completely broken up by his son’s death. Dora had her hands full taking care of him and the old man, Twice, who of course didn’t know what was going on. He would erupt now and then in the little rural Baptist church during the minister’s sermon with a demand for ice cream. The choir sang many rousing hymns throughout the long standing-room-only service; powerfully moved, Nick hummed along to “I Love the Lord, He Heard My Cry,” “Amazing Grace,” “We’ll Understand It Better By and By,” and other gospel favorites he wished he’d grown up hearing. Ronald and Shelvin’s sister, five childhood friends, a couple of coworkers (he had been advancing in a Dallas telecom company), and three high-school teachers delivered tearful eulogies.

Later, in the cemetery behind the church, Nick stood at the edge of the crowd, indulging his passion, guiltily, even in the midst of this tragedy. He was reading headstones, traveling back in time, wandering farther and farther from the group; but no one paid any attention. All eyes focused on the interment.

In a neglected, overgrown section of older graves he found Ivanhoe and his wife. The headstones were just marginally legible. He was fairly sure Erasmus and Dora were unaware that these ancestors were buried here.

Well, Nick thought, Ivanhoe will once again know where his precious letter is.



The next day, the minister allowed Nick to graze in the old church records and scrapbooks, where he discovered, among other interesting things, that Ivanhoe Balzar had been gunned down in an argument with Chapman Winn, his own half-brother, the son of Mulatta Belle and the white gambler. Nick supposed that Chapman had second thoughts about having sold his own letter and Portion to Jacob Balazar at a discount. Maybe he thought Ivanhoe had some chance of getting the thousand acres Hyam had promised his love child, and wanted a piece of that pie. At least Nick now understood why the diary came to such a sudden halt.



At a convenience store outside New Orleans, where he’d stopped to get gas, Nick walked by a newspaper box. The headline caught his eye: “Artemis Holdings Near Failure?”:

A bitter dispute over ownership of the company and wave after wave of capital flight have left one of New Orleans’ financial empires shaken and on the verge of collapse. Federal and state authorities, responding to a flood of complaints in recent weeks, descended on the landmark office tower of Artemis Holdings yesterday afternoon, carting away hundreds of boxes of documents and computer records. Many in the investment community believe this is the beginning of the end for Artemis, long hailed as one of the region’s top money-management and venture-capital firms. Artemis is also a major force in local philanthropy. Calls to the company headquarters for comment have gone unreturned. Regulators fear thousands of investors may face tremendous losses….

Nick called the company, but he did no better than the reporter. A recording said all client service representatives were busy and politely suggested he try again later, or “select one of the following options.” He slammed down the pay-phone handset. Voice menus drove him nuts. He would just have to make his own appointment time, unilaterally.

Must be lots of worried people trying to get through, he thought; then again, it might just be electronic stonewalling.

Good thing he’d put his money in bottles of fine Burgundy.



When he got to the lakefront driveway of Armiger’s property, he noticed the guard in the gatehouse was still missing. What the hell, he thought, a few more dents couldn’t hurt. He stomped the gas pedal and crashed through the gate, leaving clumps of his car clanging on the ground behind him.

He sped down the winding road and parked in front of the elegant little building. The blond goon limped toward him, his gun drawn. One arm was in a sling, three fingers of the other hand were wrapped securely. Tape and plastic hid his nose, and what Nick could see of the rest of his face looked like a well-bruised melon.

“Easy, pal,” Nick said, stepping from his car, his hands raised, as if approaching a skittish alligator. “I’m not armed. She asked to see me. The gate was open, so I just–didn’t she notify you?”

“No. No she didn’t.” He seemed confused, probably still seeing stars from his recent run-in with Shelvin and Ronald. Maybe it was the painkillers. “Come ’ere.”

He stuffed his gun in his pants waist and frisked Nick perfunctorily, wincing from what Nick suspected were broken ribs.

“It shoulda been you, motherf*cker,” he said to Nick. “Okay. Go on in.”

He limped back to his car and gingerly sat down on the hood.

Inside, Nick felt surrounded by a disturbing new species of silence that brought to his mind images of a suspended heartbeat, a blade raised, or a gun cocked.

There was a new glass case upstairs. He walked up to it, and wasn’t surprised to see the documents he had stolen from Natchitoches, the documents Una had stored in the departmental safe a bit too long.

All these silent witnesses thus imprisoned strengthened Nick’s determination to get Armiger out of the genealogy business–forever.

Natalie Armiger sat in her accustomed place behind the ornate desk. The silver frame and the gold pillbox were there, too. The chair seemed too big for her now, though, slumped and indrawn as she was. Her elbows supported her on the arms of the chair, and her hands gripped each other before her face.

“Praying, Mrs. Armiger? Not your style, exactly. You usually just place an order with God, a market transaction.”

Nick thought that mouth of hers seemed less malignant than pitiable now, a jagged, fatal wound. He had no pity for her. She was a murderer, of human beings, of genealogy.

“You should not have come back,” she said. “I had envisioned a happier fate for you.”

“Mrs. Armiger, you don’t direct fate. You never did. The past and the future are beyond your control. Your delusion is a convenient excuse to do what you want–save this one, kill that one, as if the world were your personal ant farm. You don’t really believe that, do you? Maybe it’s worked so long that you do. I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong. You have to pay for what you’ve done.”

She seemed momentarily amused. A brief smile played across the surface of her lips and was gone, like fugitive sunlight on a cloudy, windy day.

From her lap she lifted an elaborately inlaid, silver-and-gold double derringer. Nick thought it might have belonged to Euphrozine, her great-grandmother, or to Jacob Balazar; it might even be the one Ivanhoe mentioned in his diary. But he didn’t doubt it was capable of a modern killing.

“Justice, payment for our sins, ‘a divinity that shapes our ends,’ I believe Hamlet says. What a quaint archaic concept of life, Nick.”

He wanted to point out that she was the one who’d named her company after a Greek goddess, but his mouth was too dry.

The weak spots in her armor, he kept telling himself, hoping his poker face was better than his cards.

“Zola and I will survive our difficulties, lawsuit or no lawsuit, here in New Orleans or elsewhere. You could have lived to know how lucky you were to have occupied a brief space in our hearts–and our checkbooks. Now you are the one who has overreached; in your delusion, you are an agent of Nemesis. When the media report your death, it will be something like this: crazed Artemis investor with a petty grievance breaks into Armiger estate, where he is shot dead by security guards. Don’t worry, we’ll open an account for you.”

Nick could see her finger beginning to move the trigger. He found his tongue. “If you kill me, Zola will find out about her adoption, what you allowed to happen to her parents.”

“I told you never to mention that again!” Her outburst drained her; she panted as her wild eyes searched the room for the strength to continue. Her caftan seemed to be devouring her, inch by inch. “You’re bluffing. You have no proof. You merely put together some odds and ends, some coincidences. No, that story died with Max. The immediate danger has been”–she seemed to lose her thread–“has been…neutralized. And one day, I will gather those records, as well. Those, as well…. But now, your threat will die with you.”

“Odds and ends, coincidences, vague patterns–genealogy defined,” Nick said, talking rapidly, all the while looking down at her finger on the trigger of the derringer, three feet away. “So spread out, so powerfully free, that not even you can gather them in to your glass cases of revisionism. I put Zola’s story on a dozen computers, timed to be released online–if I don’t live to stop it. No matter where she is, it will follow her. At first not many will notice, just the cybergeeks. But eventually thousands of people will start to ask thousands of questions. One day, maybe years from now, she’ll turn on her computer or pick up a magazine, and there will be her real past, pointing the accusing finger at you.”

In all Hawty’s rhapsodies about the information superhighway, something had stuck in his memory. He hoped it sounded convincing.

A sudden pain made Armiger inhale sharply; she fought it. Each sign of her increasing anguish made Nick bolder.

“I don’t believe you,” she said. But he could see she did.

The gun drifted slightly. She was calculating profit and loss.

After a moment’s reflection, she asked, “For the sake of discussion, if you are telling the truth, what do you propose?”

“My quaint archaic concept. All is chance and necessity, Democritus said. Ancient Greece again; you should feel right at home. What do I propose? Has your chance reached the limit of necessity? Have the things you can alter met the things you can’t? Let Fate–with a capital f–decide our contest here.”

Something twisting her insides made the veins in her neck stand out.

“The legal system you mean? I am to turn myself in, confess? Do you really believe that I would be indicted for anything more serious than jaywalking? My means are not inconsiderable, even now.”

She picked up the pillbox and tried to open it as she continued to cover Nick with the pistol. Her trembling hands fumbled with the box, revealing to Nick the depth of her crisis. But her finger never left the trigger.

That pill, she needs that pill!

“The legal system’s not what I had in mind,” Nick said. “Allow me.” He stepped forward and took the pillbox from her unresisting hands.

“If you live long enough to do what I propose, you’ll have earned my silence.” He slipped the box in a pocket of his corduroys. “I’ll accept that judgment.”

“How do you know I don’t have more medicine here?”

“You would be reaching for it now. Here’s my deal. Make a settlement with the heirs of Ivanhoe Balzar–immediately. Fifty million dollars. Next, establish a foundation at Freret University for the study of the Holocaust. Another fifty million. Donate the documents in the display cases out there to the foundation–call it the Maximilian Corban Foundation. Finally, leave the past alone–never again damage the historical record. That’s it. I drive a hard bargain, remember?”

“You have thought of everything, Nick. I cannot kill you…” Her words trailed off into rapid breaths.

“And you’re having a heart attack,” he said, finishing the analysis of the royal flush he’d laid down.

He wondered if she’d heard him.

At last, she met his gaze. Nick saw in her eyes the helpless power of a dying lioness. Her voice was faint, barely audible.

“You would stop this…broadcasting, this revelation? I have your word?”

“The word of a third-rate hack and a plagiarist? Yes. Zola will never know the truth from me, and I’ll do nothing to make it more likely that she’ll ever find out.”

She put the gun on the desk and dragged her hand from it.

He had beaten her–for Corban, for Ivanhoe, for Ronald, for Shelvin, for everyone whose past she had sought to erase.

She listed to one side like a sinking ship. “I have always thought that fear of financial ruin was exaggerated. One is never truly bankrupt while dignity remains. Death is a broken bench, too, the ultimate bankruptcy. You will allow me to retain my dignity, Nick?”

It’s more than you did for anybody else.

He watched a moment more. Then he turned and unhurriedly walked toward the doorway, half-expecting to feel a bullet. But if this worked, it would have to work his way.

After all, he was entitled to some dignity, too–dignified revenge.



The blond goon now sat in the driver’s seat of the car, reading the sports section. The door was open. He wasn’t all that interested in Nick’s exit from the chateau.

A human being with the silicon soul of a computer-game demon, Nick thought: he kills only on command. Armiger had not yet instructed him to get rid of the pesky genealogist–and never would, now.

Nick walked past the front of the car. As if a thought had suddenly occurred to him, he took a few steps back.

“Hey, you know CPR?” Nick asked, casually.

“Huh? Yeah. Why?” His head snapped toward the chateau; then he hoisted himself to his feet and ran growling with pain into the building.

Nick removed the pillbox from his pocket and drew his arm back to throw it into the meandering pond of a restful Japanese garden extending back from the parking area. The engraving on the pillbox caught his eye. “Genesis 27,” he could barely make out on the cover. The tiny scene depicted Jacob kneeling at his father Isaac’s bed, receiving the blessing meant for his brother, Esau.

He let it fly. There was no way to be sure, but he wanted to believe that the box, too, had belonged to Jacob Balazar.





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