Chapter 1

WAKE-UP CALL

I lay staring at the yellowed ceiling, streaked by decades of nicotine from previous down-on-their-luck tenants. The haze from my Camel desert dog softened the stains, like the lenses used to hide the creases of aging actresses. Flickering neon lights in front of the newsstand downstairs cast flashing pink and green stripes through the Venetian blinds onto the walls.

I had been existing in this fleabag hotel for a week, after having escaped what turned out to be a parasitic relationship. Six years ago, I gave up my base single housing when, against all common sense, I had moved in with Midge in the modest home she purchased after finding her dream job as a physician’s assistant at a Charlotte clinic. Midge had run off a few college suitors since our neighborhood touch football games and our steamy high school romance. She had always complained that none of her squeezes worked out because of neuroses that her twelve hours of college psychology had enabled her to diagnose. Missing all the red flags, I jumped in with both feet. Then a week ago, I got my diagnosis: “Flat affect, an emotionless cynic,” she said the night she threw me out. Who knows, maybe she was right. Or maybe she just hadn’t elicited much emotion. I’d have to ponder that one. Certainly, something was missing in her or in me that prevented the lasting emotional bond we’ve all come to expect in romance, and few of us ever find.

The phone ringing on the nightstand jangled me back to reality. I debated whether to answer it, fearing it would be Midge again, spouting more evidence of my neuroses. Instead, I ignored it and took a drag on my Camel, but its persistence outlasted me. After the seventh or eighth ring, I gave in and grabbed the receiver.

“Major Doucet?” said the voice on the other end. “Lieutenant Massey here. We just got an emergency message for you to call your Aunt Ethel, ASAP. She doesn’t have your new number, and Midge told her you had moved.”

Oh, crap, I thought. I had meant to call Aunt Ethel with the news I knew would cheer her up: Midge and I are history. I just hadn’t gotten around to it, preoccupied as I was with my own self-pity.

“Thanks, Lieutenant. Any idea what’s up?”

“No, Sir. I just got a note to tell you it’s an emergency.”

Aunt Ethel and Uncle Louis had raised me and my brother Victor since I was three, Vic was two. Along with my baby sister who never saw the light of day, the mother I barely recollect died of complications during childbirth. I was too young at the time to hear the details, and no one had shared them with me since. All I know is that my father, grief-stricken, had what the relatives whispered was a “breakdown” and refused even to name his stillborn offspring. Ethel sat Vic and me down, and we agreed on christening the baby Faith. It only seemed right.

Father’s breakdown wasn’t the type that hospitalizes its victims or leaves them incapacitated. Instead, my father’s emotional collapse caused him to immerse himself in the multinational oil drilling company he eventually came to own and sacrifice Vic and me in the bargain. Aunt Ethel and Uncle Louis oversaw the operation of the old family farm, what was to become the agricultural branch of Father’s corporation. Unfortunately, Ethel and Louis were never able to have children, so they just raised Vic and me as their own. Father made periodic “business” visits to the farm, but he rarely spoke to me, lavishing his sporadic attention on Victor instead. When he did speak to me, it was usually to correct me for some mischief I was never as good at pulling off as Victor. “Why can’t you be more like your brother?” I can still hear Father scold, as Vic, usually the instigator, grimaced at me from behind his back.

I never remember a hug or a kind word from Father. Looking back, I would have to guess now that I reminded him of Mother, while Vic took after Father’s side of the family, the tall muscular frame, wavy black hair, and Roman nose that generally made the women swoon. I was always told, somewhat condescendingly, that I looked just like my mother’s side, having fuller lips, lighter coloring, and a less muscular, wirier build. After all, Mother had no French ancestry, and Father was a proud Frenchman.

Or maybe Father just expected more from his first-born son. He always expected little from Victor and got little in return. Whatever the reason, Father and I have always had a strained relationship, no less strained since I opted not to join Doucet Drilling.

Instead, I joined the Air Force Reserves, got a civil engineering degree at LSU, and was commissioned as second lieutenant in the Air Force. Now, as a Major currently stationed at Seymour Johnson airbase in North Carolina, I oversaw a squadron of engineers in airfield construction and maintenance.

Not that I disrespected my father, though that’s not how he saw it. In his view, I had abandoned him. Above all, he wanted loyalty, and he felt my departure showed disloyalty to him. Father was a hard man, emotionless, suffered fools badly, and shot straight from the hip. Hell, maybe that’s the man Midge saw in me.

I finally picked up the receiver and dialed Aunt Ethel, dreading the questions that were sure to follow. It took her about five rings to make it to the hall phone from the kitchen.

“Aitchie?” she said when she picked up. My family called me H, since I was named after my father, Harvey Willard Doucet, and I guess it was too confusing to call me Harvey. Only my Aunt Ethel still called me Aitchie, my childhood nickname. Or sometimes she called me ‘Tee Harvey, short for petit Harvey, the affectionate Cajun name for junior. Or just ‘Tee. Somehow ‘Tee Harvey didn’t stick.

“Yes, Aunt Ethel, it’s your long-lost nephew. What’s the emergency?” I asked, concerned that something might have befallen Uncle Louis, a hard-living, hard-playing old Cajun of dubious health.

“Oh, Aitchie, cher. I have terrible news! I’m afraid your daddy has passed on. I’m so sorry, ‘Tee,” she said in a thin voice. I could tell she’d been crying. At age 65, Father was as robust, muscular, and healthy as any man half his age. I was dumbstruck, and my heart raced.

“Oh, no! What happened, Ethel?”

I could hear her sniffling for a few seconds before she continued, barely audible, “They say by his own hand, ‘Tee. Suicide, cher… After the inundation….that salt mine where the company had the jack-up, over at Oka Chito Island… Earlene’s the one who found his body in his bed!” I heard Ethel blow her nose.

I pulled myself out of the alcohol fog I’d been using as a crutch the last couple of days on liberty. I needed to think fast, but my brain was still in slow-mo. “Listen, Ethel. I have some business to attend to here tonight, but I’ll try to hop a plane and shoot out there first thing in the morning.”

“Oh, Aitchie, I’m glad to hear that. Louis and me need you here, cher!

Trying hard to digest all the implications of suicide, I added, “Listen, Aunt Ethel. I’m going to need to stay at the farm for several days at least. That OK with you?”

“Of course, cher. I was hoping you could stay!” she said. “This is your home! Uncle Louis ain’t doing so good, and me and Earlene have been making arrangements for the funeral. The wake’s tomorrow evening, then the funeral’s on Tuesday. I expect a lot of kinfolk will come to town.”

Earlene was the office manager of Doucet Drilling and one of Father’s most valued employees. She’d been with the company from the beginning.

“OK. Try to relax, Ethel. I’ll be there to help. After the funeral, I’d like to stay awhile to look into a few things,” I said, not wanting to upset her with the doubts that had immediately surfaced about the cause of death. No point in putting a bug in her ear until I had some facts.

“Stay as long as you can, cher. But don’t you have to get right back to the base?”

“I can get an emergency leave.” Though I didn’t mention it, I hoped to be able to use up some of the extensive leave time I had been saving up over a few years so that Midge and I could have an extended honeymoon in Bermuda or Cabo, if I had ever gotten around to proposing. Looked like that wouldn’t be happening now.

“Wonderful, cher. I’ll call Placide right away to have him pick you up at the airport. Poor Placide. Il voit du bleu!”

“Yeah, I figured it would hit Placide hard, inseparable as they were. Tell him I’ll get the flight details to you in the morning.”

Placide had been my father’s devoted driver and bodyguard. People had always rumored that Placide was a killer, that Father had saved him from a life sentence for second-degree murder. I knew Father’s story, though. I remember Father explaining it to Vic and me when we were in our teens.

“Placide saved my life,” he had told us, “but in the process, he killed a judge’s drug-addict son and winged the other low-life thug. Those two bums attacked me in the parking lot at L’Auberge in Lake Charles after I won a couple grand in a poker game. Always remember, boys, Placide is a godsend to our family. Treat him like family, hear?” After Father hired Placide, he provided one wing of his condo for Placide to live with him and protect him 24/7.

Father and I had been estranged for so long that it wasn’t a matter of my missing him, not as Placide must miss him. How can you miss what you’ve never really had? Still, something was unsettling about his death. Suicide? Never! Not my father. As I sat on the edge of my bed and smoked what was to be my last desert dog, I decided it was time to stop feeling sorry for myself, clean up my act, and get to the bottom of this alleged suicide! Hell, I knew Victor, with all his bravado, would not have the balls for the job. I set down the glass, plopped my suitcase on the bed, and dragged over my trunk qua end table. I packed up, then rang Lieutenant Massey back.

“Lieutenant? Major Doucet here. Listen, my father just died, so I need some arrangements to get over to Louisiana. I’m going to need to take an emergency leave, at least two weeks, maybe four. How about getting the paperwork together and setting me up some flight arrangements for tomorrow morning? I’ll be over there at 0700 hours.”

“Yes sir, Major. Very sorry, Sir,” Massey said. “I’ll have the paperwork sitting on your desk when you get here, Sir.”

“Thanks, Lieutenant.”

I moved my bag over to the chair, threw back the covers, plumped the pillow, and putting everything on hold, I drifted into a fitful sleep.

~

I groaned as I lifted my head from the pillow a few hours later and felt a throbbing pain in my temples. No woman is worth this, I thought, lying back down and shutting my eyes to the world.

The memory of last night’s phone call seeped through the haze. “Suicide, my ass!” I heard a voice deeper than mine spit out of my parched throat. I dragged myself out of bed, stumbled to the bathroom, and swung open the medicine chest to grab the aspirin. When I closed the door, I growled at the stranger with bloodshot eyes peering back at me from the mirror.

I made a strong cup of joe to clear my head, but the half-empty fifth on the counter beside an overflowing ashtray damn near made me blow chow, so I dumped it down the drain and slam-dunked the empty bottle into the trashcan. I told the pack of Camels staring at me from beside the reeking pile of butts, “You’ve had it too!” I crushed the smokes remaining in the pack and flung them on top of the broken glass. Time to get my ass in gear, I told myself, and headed for the shower.

I had heard about the inundation and the loss of lives near New Iberia. Hell, everybody had. But I hadn’t kept up with Father’s dealings for years, let alone the corporation. I didn’t even know he had been the drilling contractor at Oka Chito, and truth be known, cared less.

After a shower, I headed downstairs to the newsstand. They carried damn near every major paper, so I picked up a copy of the Sunday Times-Picayune. I paid Sam, the old codger who had probably run this smoke-filled neighborhood store in Goldsboro for the last fifty years. I skimmed the front-page article. November 30, 1980. Ten days after the inundation, one day after Father’s death. Still headline news, of course:

Harvey Doucet, owner of Doucet Drilling, apparently committed suicide in the early morning hours yesterday, after his company was served with several lawsuits from both Calco Oil and Sapphire Salt, for allegedly miscalculating directional drilling in Lake Chevreuil.

Just bloody hell, I thought, as I called over my shoulder, “Later, Sam,” and carried the paper outside.

I checked out of what had been my base of operations during my wait to get back into base housing. Midge may have me down for the count, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to keep me on the mat.