Back to Lazarus

Chapter 6

6

My head spun from hours of looking at photocopies of small type and barely decipherable handwriting, not to mention the latest revelation about Noel’s family. Noel was either mistaken or lied about when her father died and how old she was when her mother was killed, but I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt on this one. It’s possible she didn’t know about her aunt. It looked as if her father and his sister hadn’t been in touch for years, and Vanda’s family was unlikely to bring up the subject. That didn’t change my conviction that Noel wasn’t being straight with me about everything else, but I needed more information before I started attributing devious motives to her omissions. All I knew right now was that Noel and her entire family made my Sydney Sense tingle like crazy.

So I did what I always do when my head is spinning. I made Ralph’s favorite cookies.

I’d already been an investigator for a few years by the time I met Ralph Abraham, but I still feel like he showed me the ropes. He knew how things worked at the local level, who’s important and how to get the community on your side. His connections (and convictions) go back to his days as an idealistic young black man in the civil rights movement. He’s in semi-retirement now, doing consulting work once in a while on projects and issues that still ignite those young fires, but his health isn’t what is used to be.

Ralph was diagnosed with diabetes a few years ago. Although she tries to hide it, I swear his wife Diane cringes every time I walk through their door. I try to tell myself it’s because I still bring him forbidden chocolate peanut butter oatmeal cookies. The truth is, I only ever bring them when I need Ralph’s help, so I can’t really blame Diane’s anxiety on sugar alone.

It was 9 p.m. when I arrived on their doorstep, but Diane managed to swallow her emotions quickly as she welcomed me inside. I held up my little baggie in an effort at full disclosure. “See, I only brought four—two for each of you.”

She smiled. We both knew she’d be lucky to get her hands on just one. I paused for a moment before heading toward the den. “How is he?”

Diane started to speak, then made a face that caused her head to tilt and one eyebrow to rise. I recognized it as a variation on the “men are such dumbasses” expression and mirrored it with the ease of much practice. Diane let out a surprisingly girlish giggle for a woman of her mature years.

I tossed the bag of cookies on Ralph’s lap as I crossed the room to my favorite armchair. “Hey, old man. I brought your stash.”

It took Ralph a moment to tear his eyes from the TV. A big-haired woman was leaning against a police cruiser, wailing about her man in a twangy voice while mascara streaked down her face. It wasn’t a country music video, so it must be Cops. “Ever see anybody you know on there?”

“If I’m such an old man, how do you expect me to remember? What do you want, Syd?”

“Just to bask in your sunny disposition. Have a cookie, codger. If you’ve got your teeth in.”

He tried to scowl at me, but his natural good humor won out. Ralph could never maintain a bad mood for long. “So who’s got your world in a whirl this time, kid?”

I told him all about Noel and her shrinking and expanding family. “You check the body?” he asked. Little chunks of chocolate covered some of the gray in his mustache and settled on the pooch of his slightly bulging belly.

I simply blinked. “Her dad’s body. Check with DOC and see what they did with it. If the lady’s really his sister, maybe they released the body to her. Not to mention your client might want to know where her dad’s buried.”

I nodded. “The sister—if she is his sister—lives in Lazarus.”

“Lazarus!” Ralph lurched forward and I was afraid his tatty black recliner would flip before settling into its full upright position. By his tone of voice, you’d think I’d said Baghdad. In the off season.

“Yeah, Lazarus. What about it?”

“You never heard of Lazarus?” He shook his head in disgust. “Let me tell you a little story about a shitheap called Lazarus. A bunch of industries moved to Lazarus in the 1940s to help with the war effort. Close to the coast and to the interstate so you got cheap transport, close to the air force base, and lots of unemployed poor people, so you got cheap labor. Well, Lazarus was so friendly, those companies told a few friends, and on and on. Before you knew it, business was booming and Lazarus had just about the lowest unemployment rate in the South.”

“And then the other shoe dropped?”

Ralph mock-glared at me. “Who’s telling this story?”

I grinned and he went on.

“Hell, yeah, both shoes drop-kicked their asses at the same time. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, companies started going belly up or moving out of state. But people didn’t notice all at once. See, they were suddenly preoccupied with their parents and spouses and children getting sick and dying. Turns out for Lazarus, the unusually low unemployment rate went hand-in-hand with an unusually high mortality rate, just on a slightly delayed timetable.”

Ralph relaxed back into his chair and took a sip from the glass at his elbow. “It was a hell of a thing. I went up there for a while, trying to help collect the stories so somebody could file suit—the kind of thing you and I did in Beaufort—and I’ve never seen anything like it. Just about the whole damn town is a Superfund site now, full of PCBs and mercury and lead and—oh, wait. I forgot. There is no Superfund ‘fund’ anymore, so that designation isn’t worth the triplicate paper it’s filed on.”

Uh-oh. I knew if he got going on one of his rants I’d be lucky to get out by midnight, and I’d have to be even luckier for Diane to let me in the house next time. “But you digress…”

“Digression is an old man’s prerogative.”

“You’re not really an old man.”

He took the hint, and I asked him what he knew about Isaac’s attorney, Sam Norton.

“Screaming Sammy? He was a piece of work. They don’t make them like him anymore, thank God.”

“Was—past tense?”

“Yeah, Sammy died years ago. When would this have been?”

“The murder was October of ’80, so we’re looking at 1981.”

“He was already in his declining years by then. I think he died in 1983. Screaming Sammy was known for his cross-exams and his closing arguments. He was absolutely merciless with cops and snitches, not to mention State Attorneys. I swear to God, I saw him call out the prosecutor one time. It was a plea day—no jury. ‘Mr. Curtis,’ he said, ‘you have insulted me and you have insulted my client. How about you and I stop bothering the Court with this nonsense and take it outside?’” Ralph chuckled. “He was almost as bad in front of the jury, but he usually pulled it off with an air of righteous indignation.”

“So he was a decent attorney?”

“I’d have asked for him myself in his day, but I’d say by 1981 his day was long past. Find out if he had a second chair. If so, that’s who did all the work.”

Ralph shook his head and laughed condescendingly. Or maybe it just sounded condescending to me. “Sydney, as usual, you sure know how to pick them. Screaming Sammy, a Superfund site, a client who lies to you with a family who hates you—”

“She hasn’t really lied to me.”

“If that’s what you think, then you’re just lying to yourself.”

“What is that, a koan? Thank you, Obi-Wan, for your astounding insight.” He’d touched a nerve, and I smiled to take the edge off my sarcasm.

“You just watch yourself over there. The cops cleaned house a few years ago, as they do periodically, but there’s bound to be a few assholes left. Around the time of your murder, they ruled Stetler County like a cracker cartel. Anybody who didn’t go along ended up behind bars or wishing they could be so lucky. Don’t do anything stupid to piss them off.”

“Come on, Ralph. You know me better than that.” As I left, he gave me a face that looked suspiciously like Diane’s “men are such dumbasses” expression. I chose to ignore it.