Excerpt:  Outside Child

Chapter Two

DELIVERER

Where was Kasdan?  Ladonis made her way into the executive suite of the Floating Palace Steamboat Company.  Cigarette smoke hugged the pale white walls and the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Mississippi River.  Dying white carnations collapsed in the crystal vase on the credenza.  A stale-water odor filled the room.  What a morning.  Her boyfriend, her brother and now her boss.  How much bad air could a person take before 9 A.M.?  If only she could open a window.

She turned, afraid to leave, afraid to stay.  The screech of rubber soles on the tiled hallway floor caught her attention.  Lamar Kasdan walked in.  A strapping man with a military erect posture.  The muscles in his face were drawn so tight under his whiter-than-usual skin, his veins looked as if they were about to burst.

“You’re here,” Kasdan said, frowning, his eyes poring over her tattered sweat suit and bandana-clad, uncombed hair.

What did he expect?  It was Saturday and he’d ordered her to come in pronto.  Did he think she could go into a telephone booth, spin around and walk out in a three-piece suit and a freshly permed hairdo?

Bret Collins dashed in shortly afterwards pushing up his shirtsleeves.  His body got her usual quick, don’t-catch-me-watching perusal.  She’d been attracted to the CEO’s rugged good looks since the day they’d met.  Nothing to do about it though.  She knew the rules of the game.  Anyway, where was Tim?

“Something terrible has happened,” Bret blurted out.  “Tim fell overboard, off the Magnolia Belle.”  His voice cracked.  “He’s dead.”

“Sweet Jesus.”  Ladonis’ hand flew to her open mouth.  “Tim? Dead?”
Her knees slacked.  Her body swayed backward.  She grabbed hold of a leather high-back chair.  Shock, sadness, feelings so overwhelming, tumbled through her mind and body like a rockslide.  Then relief.  God help her, she hadn’t lost her job.

“How?” she whispered, gripping the chair.  “What happened?”

Tim had been her friend.  Her mentor in a hundred-year-old company with no blacks working in administration.  She’d been a “first,” and he had welcomed her, worked with her, advised her.

“We’re not sure,” Bret said, walking toward the wet bar.  “The captain said a deckhand saw Tim standing alone on the deck above the paddle wheel swearing and drinking minutes before . . .”

“He fell?”  The words stuck in her throat.  Tears welled up.

“Yes.”  Bret’s voice quivered.

She couldn’t cry.  Bret wasn’t crying, and he and Tim were best friends.  Remember:  The board room is like a baseball field, no place for tears.  Tim had said that.

“Of course he fell,” Kasdan said.  He tore off the plastic wrapper of his Marlboro cigarettes.  “Tim knew the problems if the paddle wheel caught a snag or something.  You think he jumped into the paddle wheel?  Cause that kind of damage?”  He searched his pockets and pulled out his gold lighter.  “Tim would never deliberately risk that.”

“Jesus,” Ladonis whispered, reacting as much to Kasdan’s cold, condescending tone as to hearing Tim was dead.

Kasdan didn’t like Bret or Tim.  How many times had she heard him complain about the pair and their superior Yankee attitudes?  Ladonis had long stopped thinking Kasdan was from up north too.  Maybe no local accent, but he sounded and acted like a southerner, closed mind and all.

Bret held his hand out to Kasdan for a smoke.  He put the cigarette in his mouth, lit up and closed his eyes.  Kasdan stared at his boss with a look Ladonis had seen so often she’d named it “old-man blues.”  The aging vice president had missed his chance to run the show when young Bret had been appointed CEO right out of grad school.  And whenever Kasdan was around the guy, that look of anger and disappointment tainted his face.

Ladonis glanced at Bret.  His eyes were sad, yet melancholy didn’t overshadow his bad-boy aura, that MTV raunchiness that popular religious conservatives likened to evil.  That look had a naughty, sensual effect on her.  But not today.  Today was about Tim.

“We’ve got to control the press on this one,” Bret said to her.  He took a long drag on the cigarette.  “A lot is riding on it.”

“Control the press?” she asked.  He couldn’t be thinking straight. “How?” she said, waving away his cigarette smoke.

“What you’re asking,” Kasdan said.  “Favors like that are hard to come by.”

Mr. PR, as Kasdan described himself, should know.  If he was the southern gentleman she thought he was, he’d know that unless they had something to deal with, all was lost.  Kasdan walked over and smashed his cigarette into the crystal ashtray on Bret’s desk.  Ladonis saw the clench of Bret’s jaw.

“Yes, I know,” Bret said.  “And we both know how far you’ll go to come by favors like that.  Do you want Velcroy and, say, the FBI to know as well?”

“That only happened once,” Kasdan said.  “I had no choice.  You know as well as I do that . . .”

Kasdan glanced around, spotted Ladonis and shut up.  She wasn’t sure what favors Bret was talking about, but she knew that was how things were done.  How else could a handful of white families control the purse strings of an entire city, no matter what race the electorate?  Kasdan’s taut features and droopy eyes were dead on for a man ticked off.

“Once is enough,” Bret muttered, acknowledging with a quick glance that he’d also realized that Ladonis was there.  He picked up a whiskey bottle, uncapped the top, tipped the bottle for a drink, then put the bottle down without taking a sip.  He walked to his desk and stood beside Kasdan.

“I don’t want the press,” Bret’s tone softened, “or anyone digging into Tim’s life.”

Smart move for Bret to try to sway Kasdan to his side.  The seasoned VP had a knack for finding and exposing skeletons.  And, direct order or not, when he felt threatened or put upon, he would not play by the rules.

“We have to make sure the press doesn’t get hold of this for awhile,” Bret said.  He plopped down in the black leather chair behind his desk.  “Too much at stake.”

What was that all about?  Her friend, P.J., the mayor’s niece as well as his assistant, had mentioned that the Floating Palace Steamboat Company was involved in lobbying to reinstate gambling.  Could Tim’s death impact that?  Or did it mean that Bret was somehow personally vulnerable?

“What our young leader is saying,” Kasdan said turning to her, “is that we’ve got to make sure this story is handled without drawing attention to the company.”

“Why?” Ladonis asked.  Had the company crossed some ethical line?  Corporations were getting caught over that line more and more these days.  Though there was no ethical line in New Orleans business or politics to cross.  Just do what had to be done.  “I mean, do we have something to hide?”

“Not exactly.” Bret helped himself to another cigarette from Kasdan’s pack.

Another cigarette?  Did he have a death wish?  She didn’t.  She fanned away the smoke filling the air.

“But I can’t get into that,” Bret said.  “It has to do with Velcroy.”

Ladonis had caught glimpses of the Floating Palace’s owner, Edward H. Velcroy, a Fortune 500 businessman out of New York.  He stalked the halls bumming cigarettes during his infrequent visits.  To her he was a freeloading slob with enough money and power to play Corporate God from afar.

“Why is that?” Ladonis asked.

She didn’t expect Bret to tell her the company secret.  Why would he?  She was just a token.  A local black and an employee who had a relationship with the city’s black elected officials.  Black officials who outnumbered and, for the most part, out-ranked the whites in City Hall.  Nonetheless, if he had the audacity to suggest that she could turn stone to bread, she should have the good sense to ask him why.

Bret shook out another cigarette still inhaling on the one in his mouth.  He had the jittery look of a power broker about to get caught.  Or one of HeartTrouble’s dope-head buddies getting into a police car.  Like the shady characters she’d seen a thousand times in the movies.

“You can’t explain why it’s important to keep an employee’s death a secret?”  She spoke slow and low to sound Wall-Street aggressive and not ghetto overbearing.  Her grandmother, Lucille, used to say, “It’s not what you say, but how you say it.”  If ever there was a time to remember that, this was it.

“This is not a good idea,” Kasdan whispered.  He sat on the edge of Bret’s desk and leaned close to him.  “She’s a secretary, for God’s sake.”

Ladonis wanted to scream that she had a master’s degree.  In business.  Kasdan didn’t.  But that didn’t seem to matter.

“Ladonis,” Bret said, glaring at Kasdan.  “No one knows what happened out there.  But you grew up here.  You know how things operate and who’s in charge.  I need you to speak with your police friends and your contact at that TV station where you used to work.  Get them to hold off publicizing this.  Keep this off the news until—”

“Look.”  She wanted to sit, but her hands wouldn’t let go of the chair.  Her legs wouldn’t move.  “Asking for publicity is one thing.  It’s not feasible to ask to suppress information.”

Who did he think she was?  Just because she’d made a few phone calls that held off the city’s bureaucratic leeches a couple of times didn’t mean she could part water.  Knowing the system had nothing to do with controlling it.  To do that she had to have access to the old, white-money power structure.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Bret said.  “We don’t want the story suppressed.  We just don’t want the hoopla to go on and on.  Until a body is found.  Or a suicide note.  Or something.”

Suicide note?  She shuddered.  It was an accident.  Wasn’t it?  Her hands gripped the chair harder.  Jesus, Tim.

“All we’re asking is that they hold up on it,” Bret said.  “To keep the public and media speculation out of this until we find out exactly what happened.”

The lines around his watery eyes bunched up.  He looked older and sad.  Was that distress or manipulation she heard in his voice?  She couldn’t tell.  She’d never seen that look before.

“I don’t want the company,” Bret said, “and Tim’s death to boost media ratings any longer than it takes to memorialize him.”

“Listen,” she said.  She’d almost called him Bret, even though she’d never addressed him that way before.  “My reporter friends monitor the police radio for story leads.  Suppose they tune in to Coast Guard calls as well?”

Bret’s eyelids jumped.  He hadn’t thought of that, huh?  Must be the cigarette smoke clogging his brain.  Kasdan paced behind Bret sitting at his desk.  Ladonis recognized the old-guy’s condescending glare and knew what he wanted to say, what she’d heard him grumble many times before, “Boy, get your head out your butt.”

“Two hours and no press,” Kasdan said.  “They’d be here waiting for the Belle to dock if they’d picked up on a Coast Guard signal.  Evidently, you and the New Orleans cops are of like minds on this one—keep the press out of it for as long as possible.”

“Makes sense.”  Bret sighed.  “The cops tend to be cautious with news reporters on high-profile matters.”  He looked at his watch and turned to Ladonis.  “The Belle is still sitting in the river a few miles away from Houmas House.  Three, maybe four hours away.  I’m sure the Harbor Police know that.”

“Yes,” Ladonis said.  “And the NOPD will be here any minute now to find out all they can about Tim and . . . and whatever else they can learn before the boat gets here.  I guarantee the press won’t be far behind.”

She saw Bret flinch when she said “whatever.”  What secret did Tim have that was so terrible?  Or was it Bret’s own secret he feared getting exposed?

“True,” Bret said.  “But by the time they pull something together to hit the airwaves, you can have the lid on.”

Was he nuts?  The reporters at WWL were CNN anchor wannabes and had hounds planted everywhere to sniff out a story lead.  Especially her old classmate, Monique, who was already miffed at her for waking her up to cry on her shoulder about Jack.  Suppose Monique was on the alert and she was already sniffing around?  If she were still working at WWL and the riverfront was her beat, that was what she’d do.

“I’ll tell you what,” Bret said.  “This story is yours.  You’ll be the company’s spokesperson.  You prepare our statement.  All publicity must come through you.”

Ladonis bristled.  Kasdan let out a moan.  As quickly as she had imagined the door of opportunity opening, she understood just how unrealistic Bret’s request was.  Sure, her friends would grant her a favor or two to put her in her employer’s good graces.  Particularly the city councilman who’d taught her high-school math, and especially if it took a stab at the good-ole-boy network.  But the people she knew would never overstep their limits.  Her influence went only as far as the we-take-care-of-our-own mentality would allow.

“If you can manage a publicity shutdown for a day, two at the most,” Bret said, “I guarantee you won’t be sorry.”

What did he think Tim had done?  What had he done?  Whatever Bret was hiding had to be bad.

“Tim mentioned you have a centennial celebration plan,” Bret said.  “Correct?”

Her eyes flashed on Kasdan.  He didn’t say a word, but his eyebrows formed a grizzled line.  Was he shocked at that idea?  Or was he pondering his next move to put her in her place?

“Well, don’t you?”  Bret raised his voice.

“Yes, I do,” Ladonis said.

Heat shot through her leaving her skin warm and moist.  Adrenaline pumped up her ego.  She couldn’t help thinking about what would happen if she actually could pull off her hundredth-anniversary production idea.  A new job title?  A raise?  Maybe a post on Presidents Row, that string of window offices overlooking the Mississippi River.  Everything she wanted.

But what if she failed?  Would corporate Louisiana add her to its list of blacks who couldn’t make the grade?  She feared this outcome the most.  Her critical challenge to her climb up the corporate ladder.  That, despite her preparation and hard work, success and failure were judged in terms of her blackness.

And what about Tim?  His life?  His death?  Her brain filled with the question “why.”  Why did he have to die?  And why wasn’t that Bret’s primary concern?  Or was it?  Suppose Tim had jumped, and she did what Bret wanted?  Maybe she’d be the first to find out why he did it.  That way, if it were bad for Tim and thereby the company, she could. . .  Could what?  Hide it from the world?

She glanced at Kasdan.  He leaned against the credenza near the door staring at the pencil he twirled through his fingers.  He looked up.  His eyes swept over her.  She sensed his displeasure.  Not just with her dingy wardrobe.  His disrespect was instinctive and as much for her being a woman as for her being black.  If this blew up in her face, she’d have to wait for that old coot to die before she got another chance to prove what she could do.

She’d learned in college and on the job, specifically from Tim, that, to move up the corporate ladder, a climber needed support in upper administration.  Tim was gone.  If she played her cards right, perhaps Bret would be her deliverer.  But could she be his?  HeartTrouble had told her once that she had a way of making everybody and everything revolve around her.  Was she making Tim’s death all about her?  What would Tim think?

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© 2007 Alice Wilson-Fried, All Rights Reserved