Джеймс Кейн - Mignon

She had photographs, water colors, and plats, and they both seemed to take a delight in pointing everything out — the four wharves the town had, ramps up the riverbank, with railed platforms up top, “nice, well-built structures,” as he put it, “not like those Teche wharfboats, all full of bugs and rats, or those Mississippi levees, with their rum holes, gambling dives, and cathouses”; the “cistrens,” as they called them, just visible through the trees, “as there’s no wells in Alexandria — it’s all rainwater, which we run off the roofs and valve to our various cisterns, these big ones that you see, which stand on trusties so they warm in the light of the sun, and the drinking ones underground, where the water keeps fresh and cool”; the big, new hotel, a three-story, brick affair, “one of the finest in the land, except just as it was getting finished the dayum war hit, and their furniture never came”; most lovingly noticed of all, the line of stores on Front Street, looking out on the river, as the bank itself had no structures on it, with of course the Landry store, near the corner down from the hotel, so it faced the lower end of Biossat’s, or the upper wharf, and its twin next door, the Schmidt van, pipe and kettle house; Mrs. Landry’s grave, in Pineville, which seemed to be a little town across the river. When I’d got so I thought I knew Alexandria better than I knew Annapolis, he closed the album and mused: “What I miss most, living here in New Orleans, is the cleanliness of it — but of course that’s a natural thing. Alexandria’s where the Southwest begins.”

“Southwest’s cleaner than other places?” I asked.

“Mr. Cresap, I have to say—”

“Call him Bill,” she cut in.

“Bill, I have to say it is. Texas may be dry. It may be dusty and poor. A Texas ranchhouse is just six skinned poles in front, holding up the porch, and no poles at all behind, as there’s nothing back there to hold up — but it’s big. And it’s clean.”

“I’ll have to go there some time.”

“You could do a lot worse.”

Perhaps to draw me in it again, she recalled more points about the morning, and that was when she said what she did, about hoping they’d hang Burke. And then he downright astonished me. “I certainly hope they don’t,” he said, almost in the tone of a prayer.

“But why?” she asked him, bewildered.

“Daughter, he’s still my partner.”

“You’d still call him that? After what he did—”

“For sixty thousand bucks? I certainly would.”

“But Father, how can you? How—”

“Mignon, we’re chained! We’re articled to one another! Everything’s in his name, and if he doesn’t claim my cotton, once the Army seizes it, I lose everything! All he need do is nothing, and that sinks me!”

“But he turned on you! He—”

“And what am I supposed to do? Turn on myself?”

“ You could kill him! ”

His face darkened, and his hands, still on the table, closed into two big fists. He said: “I could, that’s true. He deserves it, and I imagine I’m able. But that would get me hung, and it would not file a claim for my cotton when it gets seized. And if they do something to him, saving me the trouble — like hanging him, or holding him in jail so he can’t be present up there to take receipt for the seizure, that wrecks our claim too. Yes, I’d like nothing better than to see him swing from a gallows, but not — not, not , NOT — to the tune of sixty thousand bucks.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“I? Nothing. It’s not up to me to do.”

“You’re certainly talking funny. And that explains something else: why you acted so meek when you saw him up there today. The least you could have done was punch him, and all you did was say hello.”

“That’s right. Very friendly.”

“To that rat! ”

“Daughter, once again: To that partner .”

It was a twist I hadn’t thought of, and though I could see his point, walking back to the hotel I found myself upset. And I wasn’t much surprised to see Dan there in the lobby, apparently waiting for me, beckoning me to come over. I sat down with him on the same sofa I’d sat on to start things off with Olsen. When I asked “What’s the good word?” he paid no attention, but piled in at once: “Bill, be in my office tomorrow morning eleven o’clock, to answer questions about Burke, these things you’ve accused him of. Have Mr. Landry with you, and also Mrs. Fournet.”

“Well I guess I can make it — fine.”

“Don’t do any guessing, Bill. You make it, or wish you had. My reason for coming tonight is to preclude a soldiers’ visit to the Landry flat tomorrow, and a trip on foot for those two up here, under guard. This way, if it’s known you all three will be there, no order will be issued.”

“I thank you, Dan. I’m really grateful.”

“You needn’t thank me — I’m not doing it for you. I wouldn’t mind a bit seeing you marched through the streets. But she seemed like a very nice girl.”

“Then she’ll thank you, I’m sure.”

“How’d you like to go to hell?”

“I ignore your remark. I’ll have her there.”

“See that you do. And don ’ t bring Olsen .”

I had her there, with her father, and promptly at eleven o’clock we were all in the selfsame places we’d been in the day before — Dan, Jenkins, Burke, Mignon, Dan’s orderly, and I. But in addition, Mr. Landry was there, as well as a lieutenant colonel named Rogers, from the Judge Advocate’s office, a belted guard in charge of Burke, and Pierre, Burke’s gippo, in his reefer, his sailor hat in his hand. The lieutenant colonel was senior, so everyone waited for him to begin, which he did after taking his time and shuffling papers around. He was a smallish man who looked like a lawyer, and presently he said: “All right, let’s take up first this money which William Cresap alleges to have been paid by the prisoner Burke to Major Jenkins of this staff. Mr. Cresap, do you still have the hundred-dollar bill which you say was passed?”

“I do.” I took it out and showed it.

“You saw this bill passed?”

“No sir, I didn’t.”

“Then how do you know it was passed?”

“I saw it first when Burke offered it to me in payment for services and then an hour later, when Major Jenkins paid it out to a man for a case of champagne. To have it as evidence in the Landry case, I bought it for a hundred and one dollars.”

“You’re sure it’s the same bill?”

“I am, definitely.”

“By what means of identification?”

“This jag torn in one end.”

“Mr. Cresap, since neither Burke nor Major Jenkins makes any admission regarding this bill, do you have any further identification?”

“No, Colonel Rogers, I have not.”

“You realize any bill could have a jag?”

“No two would be jagged the same way.”

“They could be! They could be — couldn’t they?”

“Not so as to set up a reasonable doubt.”

“Mr. Cresap, a jag is no identification at all.”

“Nothing is — under a coat of whitewash.”

“Whitewash, did you say? What do you mean by that?”

“You heard me, and you know what I mean.”

My hackles were rising as I saw the drift of his questions, and I got up from my chair, but Mr. Landry came over and pushed me back, trying to keep me quiet. Colonel Rogers started to roar about people who made “wild, reckless charges, without a scintilla of proof,” but I cut in to tell him: “Talk louder, Colonel — so maybe you’ll believe what you’re saying!” Then she got in it, screaming at him furiously: “You think he didn’t take it, this money Burke paid him? Then why weren’t you here yesterday, as I was, to see the look on his face when Mr. Cresap showed him that bill? Why was it he turned white as a sheet? What was he scared of, Colonel, if it wasn’t the truth catching up?”