I jumped out of bed and began to dress. “Here,” I hissed, tossing Veek his trousers. “It is best to confront my father wearing armor.”
“And a disguise,” Veek agreed. Before my eyes he aged, sagged, and his lovely linen shirt and trousers became shabby, his shoes laceless and scuffed, his face pleated, his hands rough.
Old checkers guy threw young scary tattooed guy’s condom in the waste basket.
With a silent shake of my head, I fished it out, knotted the opening, and slipped it in my pocket. Spending time with the vodou lady had my imagination working in terms of hexes and hoodoos. I could easily imagine my father using that condom against Veek, if he knew how.
With my finger to my lips, I tiptoed to the door and listened.
Papa banged about in the suite’s great room for a minute or two. Then there was silence.
I eased my bedroom door open a crack and put my eye to it.
Across the great room, my papa was going into his own room and closing the door.
“Let’s go,” Veek mouthed to me.
We sneaked across the great room toward the door. Silently, Veek got the door open.
Then I saw my father’s briefcase on the low table.
I stopped. This might be my last chance to steal a look inside that briefcase.
Veek tugged on my arm. “We go! Now!” he mouthed soundlessly.
I pulled away and knelt quickly before the table, opening the briefcase latches with care. I set a furled black umbrella on the table and leafed quickly through the folders inside. Veek picked up the umbrella.
I was swiftly scanning the documents in the top folder when Veek made a sound.
He had unfurled the black umbrella. Tucked inside it was a slim envelope with French stamps and many postal markings. He drew it out of the umbrella. As he turned it over, I saw a thing like a brown twig taped to the back of the envelope.
A crack of laughter made us both leap with fear.
My papa stood in the doorway of his bedroom. His hand was thrust into his coat pocket. He leaned forward, eyes bulging, a creepy grin of incredulous delight on his face. “I had it? I had the letter all this time?” His voice rose to a squeak.
Veek backed away, putting the envelope behind him.
My papa barked, “Stop!” He looked completely mad.
I wanted to run, but I couldn’t leave Veek.
As I stood there, panicking, I remembered. In the past ten days, I had bought three umbrellas: two pretty ones, and one black folding umbrella. Had I left it with Jake at any time? Yes, to fetch a glass of water, the night he died. Then I’d brought the umbrella back to the hotel and left it lying about, and my father had taken it.
With this letter inside.
Papa pointed at Veek. His other hand worked in his pocket. “Give that to me.”
“He has a gun,” I said quietly. Veek and I exchanged glances. Veek seemed paralyzed. I couldn’t leave him here. I took the envelope from him and threw it at my papa.
My papa’s eyes widened in a creepy way as he turned the envelope over and looked at the thing taped to it.
With a terrible premonition, I blurted, “Oh, mon Dieu, it’s your navel string!” I started forward, but Papa pointed a finger at me and I stopped dead. Would he shoot his own daughter?
“So that’s what this is!” My father cackled. “Another relic. And do you claim to be the vicomte, then?” he said, the whites of his eyes showing as he surveyed Veek. “Too bad it’s not your foreskin!”
I wanted to run and snatch it from him, but Veek’s hand tightened on my shoulder.
And something else held me back, like an electrical current rooting me to the spot. Once before, I had experienced this. My feet tingled. I looked over my shoulder at Veek.
He too seemed to be struggling to step forward. His hand fell from my shoulder. Both his fists clenched, and sweat came out on his old, wrinkled brow.
Papa shrieked, “It’s all mine, now. I command you to stay still, impostor!” He sounded crazier and crazier. My papa’s once-orderly hair stood on end. His eyes were wild. His hand moved inside his pocket.
Please, please don’t let him shoot my Veek! I prayed.
I murmured, “Disappear. Vanish. I will distract him. Then you can take it from him.”
“Who is this really, daughter?”
I raised my chin. “This is the true vicomte. You will lose your lawsuit, Papa. He has decided to reclaim us.”
My father jeered. “Both of you are cowards.” He looked lovingly at the letter Jake had put inside my umbrella. “It takes more than childish plots to run this family.”
“What’s that?” I demanded. Then I realized. “Oh! It’s the summons to the Ministère de la Justice!” My jaw dropped. “That’s why you came. Not to find the vicomte. You came to steal that letter before he could receive it! That’s a serious legal offense!”
“Take it, then.” Papa flicked the letter at Veek. It bounced off Veek’s arm. “It won’t do you any good now.” He beckoned. “Come here, daughter. You,” he said to Veek, “stay. I’ll have you arrested for trespassing in my hotel room, and then we can end this farce.”
I looked from Veek to my father. “He can’t make you,” I said, hoping it was true.
“But I can,” my father said. “And what could this be?” He held up the little brown twig in his fingers. He pretended to study it, but all the time his other hand twitched in his pocket. “Is this the umbilical cord of the last true Vicomte Montmorency? Bon. If it is, then that,” he pointed the twig at Veek, “can’t move a step without my permission. I command him in his own name! Clarence de Turbin, stay,” he said, as if to a dog.
Veek trembled and grunted as if he were trying to lift a great weight.
My heart stuttered. With it, you could kill me, Veek had said of his navel string. Did Papa know how? I feared that he did. The thought terrified me.
“Come, Sophie,” Papa commanded.
I looked behind me. Veek was covered with sweat. His fists shook at his sides, as at Jake’s deathbed. I knew now that the schoolboy I had perceived then was indeed my ancestor, fighting the discipline that made a hell of both our childhoods. I realized too that he looked younger. It was as if, in his struggle, he couldn’t maintain his disguise.
“Come, daughter,” Papa said.
My feet shuffled forward against my will. “No!” I shrieked. My chest squeezed. I struggled for breath. I fell to my hands and knees.
“Crawl to me,” Papa said cruelly.
Now I was crawling toward Papa. Tears leaked from my eyes. “Veek! Do something!”
But Veek only stood there, sweating and grimacing. He now looked as I knew him best, a gangsta in his twenties.
When I had crawled to my papa’s feet, he made me bump my face on his shoes. Then he let me stand.
It wasn’t the first time he had humiliated me to control me. I had screamed with rage then. This time, I was afraid.
“How do you look so young, if you’re old? You must teach me that trick sometime.” My father cackled. With his hand gripping my arm, he hissed to me, “You see the artistry of the trap. If he is in truth Clarence de Turbin, I can command him, and he’s powerless. He must wait here for the police to take him away. If he’s not Clarence de Turbin, he can run away as soon as we leave. But if he isn’t under arrest when we return, you’ll know he’s just a fraud, my daughter. And you would never care for that.”
Veek glared holes in my father. I glared back at Veek, my throat and chest burning with anguish. I wanted to scream. Had a sex demon no wiles to fight this?
I snarled at my father, “How will you prove anything with the umbilical cord? You can’t bring that into court and try to control him with it.”
“No? It would be instructive to try. But I have more potent weapons even than that.” To my incredulous glare, he said, “DNA, my dear.”
Veek grunted.
“But you need two samples to compare!” I said.
My father smiled. “I have other resources.”
I looked from one to the other. How could Papa prove anything without a certified DNA sample from Veek as a boy?
“Be reasonable, child. Look at him. Is this man nearly a century old? The other one, the one who just died, he may have been the real vicomte.”
Papa was moving faster than I had expected.
My insides were turning upside down, then upright, over and over. I was angry with both of them suddenly. Papa was playing on my emotions, treating me like a baby, never telling me anything.
But Veek—Veek did nothing! What was wrong with him? Where was my badass vodou sex demon? Had he lost his nerve? Or was the navel string so powerful? I turned away. I feared that if I kept looking at Veek, he would change again, this time into someone I didn’t know.
Papa said quietly, “He’s a fraud, mignon. I promise you. Come with me to the laboratory and we will prove it together.”
I trembled. “You can’t prove what is a lie.”
“Come to the laboratory. Proof will arrive. Don’t be sad. You will come home and be my good daughter again.”
I heard a note almost of tenderness in my papa’s voice. How much did he want me? My insides were all twisted up.
I turned on Veek. He still stood there, frozen, his face a mask of hostility and confusion, his arms rigid at his sides, beads of sweat on his shaved head and his face. He was straining without moving a muscle.
My papa laughed. “You’re a good actor, monsieur. I’ll relieve you now of the need to perform for my daughter. You may not leave this room, however. I forbid it. Wait here for the police.” He waved that little brown twig in the air, then pocketed it, and pulled out his cell phone to make a call. “This is Vicomte Montmorency,” he told the phone. “You have another opportunity to earn your fee. Come to my hotel. I will leave word at the desk. You will find a man in my suite who must be arrested for trespassing. Search him before you call the police. What French lawyer?” Then I knew he was talking to his detectives, who had tried to kidnap me a few days ago. “When? Yes, perhaps, that could be he.” He said angrily, “What do you mean, you refuse?” Papa glared at Veek. “Cowards! Be damned to you then! You will not be paid!” He snapped the phone shut. “Come, Sophie.”
He held out his hand to me.
My feet stopped tingling. I found myself going to him, but I refused to touch him. I looked back. “Veek!”
I saw pain in Veek’s eyes.
I had to free him somehow.
I had an inspiration. I took my father’s hand. If he could command with the power of the umbilical cord, so could I. Papa led me to the suite door. As I left the suite, I looked back and shaped silent words with my lips: By the power of your leash, I free you.
And Veek vanished!
My father didn’t see.
“Sophie, come.” He yanked me through the doorway and slammed the door behind us.
In the lobby downstairs, Papa told hotel security to go up to our suite and arrest Veek.
My mind thrashed with questions. How could my father have such powers? Would the navel string prove Veek’s claim? And why was Papa so crazy? He seemed feverish, maddened by his triumph over Veek.
o0o
We took a taxi to a laboratory. Soon we were meeting with one of the lab technicians.
Papa said, “I have two very old tissue samples that I want compared. They are supposed to be from the same individual. How soon can you prove it or disprove it?” He looked at his watch.
The technician, a white-coated South Asian man with a round face, shook his head. “Two, three weeks?”
“How much to do it today? This afternoon? Now?”
Here we go, I thought. My father throws money at the clock.
The technician shook his head. “Very unlikely.”
Papa thrust his hand into his suit coat pocket. He swelled. His face turned red. “You will do it today. Now. You will be handsomely paid.”
The technician blinked.
Papa said all that again, word for word, looking into the man’s eyes as if trying to mesmerize him.
The technician stared back, expressionless.
I remembered how Papa had dragged me across the room to his feet.
My flesh crawled.
After a moment, the technician nodded.
For the first time in what seemed like weeks, my papa took his left hand out of his coat pocket. He put two things on the table. “Guard these very carefully. They’re worth millions.”
One was the brown twig of Veek’s navel string. The other was not a gun. It was as repulsive-looking as the navel string, like a dusty, crumpled sheet of freeze-dried tripe.
The technician looked over the tripe with interest. “Birth caul?”
My father showed his teeth. “Precisely. I see I have come to the right place.”
The technician sighed. “All right. It will be hours, maybe days. You can wait here.”
“Begin with that,” my father said, poking the navel string.
Rolling his eyes, the technician left with the two samples.
“What is a caul, please?” I demanded when we were alone in the waiting room.
My father paced the small waiting room fiercely, pleasurably, as if he were measuring a grave for his enemy.
“It appears like a veil on the face of a newborn—a child, or any mammal. It’s an extra sheet of placental material. Folk wisdom says it marks the infant as special—gifted.” He spat accurately into the pot of a plastic palm tree in a corner of the waiting room. “Our revered ancestor,” he sneered, “was born with one. It was preserved all this time like a sacred relic. It will utterly betray this impostor.” He spat again—still into the palm pot. Our family’s training for neatness ran deep.
I said, “If you think he’s a fake, why didn’t you take a DNA sample from his person instead of the navel string?”
My papa looked at me almost tenderly. “Because I want my daughter back.”
I was shocked into silence. Hot emotion filled my chest.
Papa came and sat beside me, taking one of my hands in his. “He’s not the first to steal your affections, but—may I hope?—he is the last. Your behavior follows a family pattern, to run away. Yet the true heir returns and serves the family. Vicomte Clarence’s father did this, though he was only a second son. He ran to New Orleans and hid from his duty with that wild Kreyol woman. But when he inherited the title, he returned to resume his responsibilities. That in part is how I know this man is a fraud, and the true black vicomte was unworthy. When he inherited the title, he stayed away.”
“But the family paid him to stay away,” I protested. “They hated him.”
Papa shrugged. “When your time comes, you too will return to the family.”
He’d treated me like a cull heifer with a genetic flaw, all my whole life. Now he wanted me back. I felt myself melting.
“Daughter, you’ve tried hard to prove your unfitness to manage our business, these six or seven years now. This too is the family way. But always there has been one, a man of sense at the helm. A wise curator for the family fortune. When he dies—pouf!—the rebel of yesterday becomes the curator today.”
My heart thumped, then swelled. “Papa, you’re only fifty.” He would make me curator of the family fortune someday! Tears stung my eyes, but I blinked them back. He didn’t answer, but stared at me as if seeing through my face to the future.
I swallowed. I wanted a real father. I’d been so afraid to hope. He wouldn’t love me, not properly, but maybe he would trust me, if he thought he had no other choice. My chest burned.
He said heavily, “When I die, someone must take over.”
Here it came. It was time for him to admit that I had a right to the privileges and powers of adulthood, the right to command in his place. I held my breath.
“I have arranged a marriage for you with a very reliable young man. He can’t rule in your place. You will have the birthright. But he can guide you. Advise you. I have taught him as much as I can without admitting him to matters he should not yet know of. You’ll have to learn to trust him, ma fille. I know how hard that is. You’re my daughter.”
The heat in my chest turned icy. I puffed out my breath.
Just as well that I gave up hope.
He planned to marry me off as he had threatened to do since I was twelve.
Well, that would turn out to be harder than he expected.
My heart hardened.
I remembered that he hadn’t answered my question. “How is the navel string better than a sample of his blood or hair or saliva?”
Papa looked at me with surprise and disappointment. Yes, your emotional outburst has been wasted on your cold-hearted daughter, I thought with savage satisfaction.
“But you see. The impostor has charmed you. When his great proof of identity fails, you will know he is only a liar. You can’t respect that in any man,” my papa said with confidence.
The look I sent him made him drop his gaze. Damned right, Daddy Liar, I thought.
We didn’t speak to one another for hours. At some point, my papa called a restaurant to bring us food. When the receptionist complained, he ignored her.
After forever, the inner door opened from the lab. The same technician looked in. “You’re still here.”
My papa stood up. “Well?”
“You were right. The caul is human tissue. That other thing is a strip of dried beef liver. At least sixty years old.”
My jaw dropped.
Papa inflated as if drawing life back into himself with the air. His unspoken glee poked at me.
“Good. Take a little sample of the caul and keep working on it. I must have the rest back now. I will soon bring you a much newer sample, human tissue this time, to compare with it. You must make no mistake.”
I sat frozen with shock.
“I won’t,” the technician said, and shut the door in our faces.
I counted thoughts and emotions as they swung about in my sky. The navel string was false. But the caul was true . . . or might be. Papa believed it was. Why? Something had nailed Veek to the spot. Something had made me crawl across the floor to my father’s feet.
But why hadn’t Papa destroyed the navel string? He must be completely confident that Veek was a fraud. Unless he meant what he said—that he believed Jake had been the true vicomte, and Veek was the pretender, taking over his claim as the old man faded and died. Why had Veek obeyed the navel string, then? Was he truly a sex demon, but a false vicomte?
I was very exasperated with Veek for being such an uncooperative conspirator.
The technician returned with the caul in a clear plastic bag.
My father took the bag off and fondled the dreadful thing with trembling fingers, staring creepily into space.
Was that a true relic of my Veek? That veil thing?
The technician gave him a squint and went away.
“By now our prisoner has been arrested,” my father said. “In jail he will be given an opportunity to provide us with a DNA sample—if he wants to escape prosecution.” He bustled to the door. “Well, come along!”
I pulled myself together. “I have a tissue sample.” I paused. It was best if I were to make Papa think he had convinced me. “Of the pretender. I’ll give it to that man now.”
“What?” Papa scowled. “What is it?”
I pulled the bedraggled, used condom out of my pocket. “It’s his.” I thought fast. “I’ll wait until it is verified, one way or the other.” If I said it first, maybe he wouldn’t use that dreadful thing to command me.
Papa turned white. He reached out as if to pat me on the shoulder, but he drew his hand back. Instead he went to the door and summoned the technician. “I have that other tissue sample.”
The technician looked grumpy. My papa gestured to me.
I handed the condom to the technician.
“Call me when you have determined if it is a match,” Papa commanded, his left hand in his coat pocket. “Call me day or night.”
The technician said, “I go home at night.”
“Not on this job. You will work until you have certainty. And you will call me.” He handed over his card. “Here.”
The technician looked at the knotted condom, then at him, then at me.
“Bon. Do it.” My father strode out, his eartips turning crimson.
The technician seemed very glad that he had gone. He went back into the lab.
When I was alone, I called the botánica.
It was the only number I had.