Chapter 1: As Time Goes by...

The call woke Marie Guidry just as her digital clock blinked from 1:07 to 1:08 in the morning. She kicked Rémy Thibodeaux in the calf to wake him, and answered mid-third ring.

She was instantly alert and spoke softly, “Yes.”

The City Attorney listened for under a minute, then hung up.

Rémy said, “Eulalie?”

“Yes.”

“What did she say?” Then amended his question, “Did Kelly bite, chere?”

“No.”

“Huh.” Rémy yawned once, blinked twice, then rolled over on his side and immediately went back to sleep.

Marie Guidry glared at the back of his completely bald head with a mixture of resentment and envy. Then stared up at the white plaster ceiling as she began to recalibrate her plan.

Contrary Mary’s — a timeworn bar and grill in the middle of downtown Sausalito, Mississippi — was a large, ramshackle wooden structure. It rested on 18-foot piers that Logan Kelly figured must have been built decades before Katrina. Probably grandfathered in.

The building tilted a little to the left, to the north. Logan eyeballed it and figured it was four, maybe five degrees, off plumb. He and the Police Chief, Rémy Thibodeaux, climbed the wide stairs to the front section of the wraparound deck.

Rémy spoke mildly, as if he wanted to make a minor point and then move on, “Don’t pay any attention to the rumors.”

“Okay.”

“Mary’s never closes and it’s not because the City Attorney owns it.”

“Noted.”

“No under-the-table payoffs to politicians, no goat-fucking videos, no friends in high places.”

Logan hadn’t been much interested to begin with, but now he felt a brief twinge of curiosity. He judged the level to fall somewhere between polite and mild.

Rémy tapped the side of his nose with the length of his index finger, a gesture Logan found quaint.

“Mary’s has always stayed open, all day, all night, even on Christmas and Easter.”

“I see.”

“It’s sort of like settled law. Unofficial and unspoken.”

Logan nodded, charmed as always by the lilting rhythms of the Cajun patois.

Rémy paused, a man who liked to measure his thoughts before they escaped as spoken words, “Benign neglect, that’s another theory. The legislature is too busy gorging at the money-trough up in Jackson to worry about our little corner of the bayou.”

Logan nodded as if he believed the fairy tale, and the two men entered through wide-open screen doors. Wheezy old Arctic King air conditioners mostly just pushed the warm, moist air around. Overhead fans didn’t help much either. The large room was bathed in a perpetual honey-colored light that was surprisingly flattering both day and night.

A U-shaped bar, with its long side facing the entrance, greeted them. Tall wooden booths with cracked red leather seats lined both sides of the room with its gently sloping wooden floor. There were a few mismatched tables in front of the bar, but they didn’t get much use. Logan recalled from the night before that the furniture was moved into a back room to accommodate two-step dancing once the small band started up.

Mary’s smelled, not unpleasantly, of beer and grease and frying food.

With an occasional jukebox contribution from BeauSoleil, Yvette Landry seemed to be on permanent daytime rotation on the old Wurlitzer... “Friday night special, that’s all that I am.”

Rémy led them to the last booth on the left and sat, as Logan knew he would, facing the front door. Rémy, like many Cajun men, was short and wiry. Beneath his bald dome, a majestic hook of a nose pointed down to almost feminine lips that smiled a lot. He was 36 years old and seemed comfortable, if not pleased, with life.

Logan was just over six feet tall, and had inherited the lithe body of a serious racquetball player. Thick, straw-colored hair was cut en brosse, and his face was spared from being blandly handsome by a nose that had been broken off to one side, (line drive down the third baseline), and, three years later, (rifle butt) to the other. A faint white scar from a third-grade monkey-bar accident wandered on a diagonal about an inch or so above his left eyebrow. Eyes ... well, a former girlfriend had described them as spit-gray.

The chief looked at Logan and asked just as if he didn’t know. “So, Mr. Kelly, what brand of lawyer are you? Immigration? Personal injury? Intellectual property?”

“Disbarred.”

Rémy nodded thoughtfully, as if the answer were perfectly reasonable. “Lot of that going around.”

“Is there?”

A nubile young girl whose lovely face had strangers pegging her at 10 years old — maybe 9, maybe 11 — sashayed over. She was actually 14, but cheerfully leaned into the Lolita look, “Salut Rémy, beer this morning?” She had lush black hair, and tawny, unblemished skin.

“Mais oui, chere, but cut me off at three. I don’t want your sister on my butt.”

The girl shrugged and looked at Logan.

Rémy said, “Logan Kelly, Eulalie Guidry.”

They nodded pleasantly, as if they hadn’t met the night before. As if Logan hadn’t turned down her offer to accompany him back to his room at the Cajun Arms Motel. Not the easiest call he’d ever made.

The menu at Contrary Mary’s was simple:

Breakfast $6 Dinner $7 Supper $8

It was almost 10:30 in the morning and Logan wondered if they would be having a late breakfast or an early lunch. Early dinner, according to the menu.

Eulalie brought them two ice-cold cans of Dixie and a wad of paper napkins. Both men watched her walk away, her pert little butt showcased in cut-off denim shorts that hadn’t been pre-distressed in some Asian factory.

Logan started to speculate on whether they were the same shorts she’d been wearing the night before. Realized they weren’t; decided it didn’t matter.

When the two men were halfway through their first beer, Eulalie came by with food that neither one had ordered. She held a red plastic, open-weave basket in each hand and balanced another on each forearm.

As she slapped the cheeseburgers and shoestring fries down, she said, “Dinner.”

Logan glanced around the room and surmised, correctly, that cheeseburgers and fries were the only food that Contrary Mary’s served. Morning, noon, and night.

Rémy, who was using as many napkins to wipe the top of his sweating head as his mouth, said, “Marie heard about the recipe for these fries all the way up in New York City.”

Logan helped himself to another couple and nodded appreciatively.

“Trick is ... well, sir, two tricks. Soak ‘em in water all day and all night. Then dry ‘em and fry ‘em.” He looked sharply at Logan, “Twice.”

Logan played the straight man, “Twice?”

“Cook ‘em, then crisp ‘em.”

Chief of Police Rémy Thibodeaux and former attorney Logan Kelly continued pleasantly discussing nothing in particular through lunch; then through two more icy cans of Dixie.

The men mutually ignored the one person they knew in common. A high-level mover-and-shaker who was a more than slightly bent confidence trickster. And, rumor had it, an occasional blackmailer. She currently called herself Lacy Danube and was known, if not appreciated, by a select few law enforcement officials around the country. And also by a select few on the other side of the line.

The studiously casual conversation was as intrinsically baked into each man’s behavior patterns as the mating ritual of the male sage grouse.

In addition, Rémy believed, and Logan knew for certain, that the first person to mention Lacy Danube would be at a slight disadvantage. Like asking someone the price early on in the negotiations — often a tell that he had a serious case of the shorts.

Logan sat back and looked around the large room. Every booth was occupied except for the one next to their own. Since the chief was talking quietly with a stranger, regulars seemed to understand his right to, if not need for, privacy.

The three-sided bar was mostly filled as well, even the tall stools that had their backs to the entrance. And, almost all of the morning-drinkers had two red plastic baskets in front of them. Eulalie and two other young Cajun girls were delivering food and drink, taking their time, bantering with the locals.

Logan asked, “Chief, could someone, say he was lactose intolerant, have a burger without cheese?”

Rémy pretended to be shocked, “Mais non, Mr. Kelly. That cheddar cheese comes here all the way from New Zealand. They sit it in a cave for six years before they ship it out.”

“The burger certainly was tasty, as good as any I’ve had.”

“It’s just ground round and ground chuck from the Piggly Wiggly. Of course there’s a secret blend of Cajun spices that Mary’s protects to the death.” He grinned, “Slap Ya Mama, also at the Piggly Wiggly.”

“Well, it works.”

“It also helps to have a griddle that hasn’t been turned off for decades. Nor cleaned.” He grinned happily, “Laissez les bon temps rouler.”

Logan knew from his own research that Contrary Mary’s provided a contribution to Sausalito’s annual budget that usually came to a little over one-half of one percent. In terms of dollars, Logan estimated that it hovered around plus-or-minus $75,000 — a not inconsiderable sum to the city of 9,876 people.

Part of the revenue came from the 1% municipal sales tax that had been added on top of the state’s 7%. But more of it came indirectly from what the chief referred to as ‘voluntary civic contributions’. Because Mary’s never closed — and it was the only public bar in Mississippi that didn’t — college students, drywall installers, bikers, and many other first-time visitors often ended up staying later than they had intended. Drinking steadily as the night wore on.

As speed traps go, Sausalito’s were fairly benign. Motorcycle cops stationed themselves at various points along the two-lane blacktop that led north out of town. The curiously named Andre Previn Road was the only land route into and out of Sausalito. It led to what the locals vaguely referred to as ‘up there’.

Any driver who saw flashing lights in his rearview mirror usually just pulled over with a resigned sigh. Even the drunkest among them realized they’d been had.

The first of the previous night’s revelers had been an aluminum siding representative from Hattiesburg. He had a little trouble with the toggle switch for the driver’s-side window and blinked up at the officer, “You got me.”

Red Morgan was 33, recently divorced, and just starting to lower his head in the mirror to look for signs of male pattern baldness. His wet, friendly eyes gleamed with the optimistic hope of a true salesman.

Morgan was startled almost into temporary sobriety when Corporal Ryan DeWitt said, “Hop on the back of my Harley and I’ll carry you over to the Cajun Arms.”

“What about my car?”

“Leave the keys. It’ll be parked in front of your room when you wake up.”

In the meantime, the night dispatcher would run a ‘wants and warrants’ check. And, the all-important credit check.

Corporal DeWitt, in his third year with the department, remembered to take a picture of the three-quarter-full bottle of Dixie nestled in Morgan’s cup holder. He remembered in spite of a spirited exchange he’d had with his mother that afternoon right before he reported for his shift.

Greta DeWitt had told him, “Target fixation. Remember, Ryan, target fixation.”

Ryan muttered, “No such thing,” although deep down he knew she was right.

Once, making a sharp left turn, he went into a skid and couldn’t tear his eyes away from the shallow ditch and the copse of slash pine trees just beyond. His big Harley followed the path of his gaze, and he had his first crash during his first year on the job.

Why his mother kept bringing it up ... well, she was a mother. Target fixation.

Chief Thibodeaux’s policy was simple — be firm, but treat the customers with respect. Sausalito needed the revenue and Mary’s wanted repeat business.

If there was a sober-enough passenger, the motorcycle cops would let the party leave town after paying a DWI fine which ranged from $250 to $1,000 — depending upon cash available and credit card limits. Checks accepted only from clients with credit scores above 700.

After his first year as chief, Rémy Thibodeaux added a popular upgrade option. The drunk driving charge would be forgiven and forgotten should the driver opt to double up on the fine.

Rémy explained the courtesy to the City Attorney, “Why burden the state and the DMV and insurance companies with all that extra paperwork?”

Marie Guidry sighed, “Be judicious, Rémy. Don’t offer it to everyone. And certainly not to an attorney.”

Once in a while, there was someone in the party who was sober enough to take the wheel. But most drivers simply handed over their car keys and checked into the Cajun Arms Motel. A two-level, L-shaped structure with 22 modest, but clean rooms that overlooked a gravel parking lot. Even at $124 per night, it was preferable to the city drunk tank for most Sausalito visitors.

Rémy told Logan, “Now Southerners do like to weekend pretty hard. But with Contrary Mary’s ... well, weeknights are pretty much like Friday and Saturday since there’s no Last Call.”

“I can imagine.”

Rémy glanced at Logan, “Now it’s true the City Attorney owns the Cajun Arms, but nobody forces them to stay there.”

“I understand.”

And Logan not only understood, but appreciated the symmetry, the pas de deux, between the police chief and the city attorney.

Logan Kelly hadn’t actually been disbarred, but he let people assume that he had. It was an instantly understood shorthand for running afoul of the legal establishment. Specifically, for tossing a Tanqueray and tonic, with lime, in the face of the drunk who had grabbed his only client’s only daughter on the butt.

The incident occurred at an early-evening cocktail reception at the Kalorama Triangle home of the Chargé d’Affaires from Burkina Faso, Sangoulé Yaméogo.

Unfortunately for Kelly, the recipient of his impulse toss was Robert Herzfeld, the CEO of The District of Columbia Bar. Who, in its wisdom, sent Kelly to CUBA for three months. Conduct Unbecoming an Attorney. He could have appealed the 90-day suspension, and probably prevailed, but the process would have taken longer than the exile.

Since he had only a single client — one-term Senator Ethan Dalton, formerly of Laramie, Wyoming — CUBA was more of a temporary distraction than a real concern.

Besides, the last thing Dalton needed these days was legal representation.

Logan passed on a fourth Dixie and looked directly at Rémy, “Lacy Danube speaks highly of your City Attorney. Tell me about her.”

“You want the public version or the true skinny?”

Logan shrugged, “You decide.”

“Which means you already know most of it.” He grinned, “Or think you do.”

They waited while Eulalie cleared their table. Her perky nipples were clearly visible through her thin, white tank top. Logan doubted that the slender Cajun girl had ever worn a bra in her life. And it would probably be a few more decades before she needed to.

Logan didn’t really care, but asked, “Isn’t she a little young to be serving alcohol?”

Rémy swatted his hand through the air, “Oh, she’s just helping her sister out. Doesn’t really work here, not officially, no sir.”

“So, your City Attorney.”

Rémy, a seasoned storyteller, leaned back, “They call us the Second Sausalito, but we were actually incorporated in 1877 — 16 years before that one out in California.”

“Okay.”

“And don’t believe all that nonsense about a bunch of coonasses who left New Orleans and got all drunked up and confused, and landed in Mississippi by mistake.”

“I won’t.” Logan settled in for the yarn.

“It was the big hurricane of 1852 that blew them off course. Lucky they even survived. Anyway, they ended up here.” He smiled and eased back in the booth, “Know how we got the name, Sausalito?”

“I figured you stole it from California.”

Rémy grinned, “Fucking Yankee.” Both men tracked Eulalie and the other two girls as they bussed the tables in the rapidly emptying room.

“Sausalito means ‘willow’ and this corner of the bayou has desert-willows — very unusual for a wet climate like ours.”

“I see.” Rémy would get to Marie Guidry in his own good time.

Rémy paused again to gather his thoughts, to get the right words, and arrange them in the proper order, “Now technically, your desert-willow isn’t actually a willow. It’s catalpa, not chilopsis linearis.”

“Interesting.”

“No, sir, it isn’t, not really. But people need to understand that it wasn’t some old, confused fool who named the town. The desert-willow has very willow-like leaves.”

“Noted.”

Logan had the sense that Rémy didn’t really care all that much about the origins of his hometown. It was just a story to pass the time, to gauge Logan’s reaction to an improbable tale.

Rémy said, “Sausalito has the best 6-inch white sand beach on the Gulf Coast. Including the Redneck Riviera. “ Wanting to be accurate, “Not sure if that includes the Keys.”

He shook his head, “We’d be more popular than Destin if ... well, by the time Miss Katrina hit ... our beach was already mostly gone. Earlier hurricanes, erosion, oil spills. Not that we talk much about spills — too many jobs tied to the industry.”

“I understand.”

Satisfied with the history lesson, Rémy said, “Fast-forward to today. Sausalito has around 10,000 residents.” He frowned, “A little under. And about a thousand of us, maybe 1,500, live in houses down in the bayous and marshes. It’s like the Atchafalaya Basin over next door. No roads, you can only get home by flat-bottomed Jon boats. And a few not even that way. For the last part of the trip, they have to paddle a pirogue —which is also flat-bottomed, but narrower.”

“Secluded.”

Rémy gave him a firm nod, “Secluded, that’s the very word. And some people value their seclusion.” He looked off into a middle distance, “Hard to put a price tag on privacy these days.”

Logan thought: Now we’re getting to it.

Just then Marie Guidry strode through the open screen doors, walked over, and slid in beside Rémy. She looked across the table at Logan, “You boys get to the nut-cuttin’ yet?”

It was four and a half months between Wendy Dalton’s original diagnosis of ovarian cancer and her final hazy days of hydromorphone-muddled agony.

Ethan Dalton and his young daughter, Madison, began having their first ‘adult’ conversations during this stressful time. Madison had been a generally cheerful girl, and he decided that her new, sometimes-probing questions were simply part of growing up.

In addition, the distraction was good for both of them.

“Popsicle, how did the feud start?”

The tall, craggy rancher laughed, “Feud is a pretty grand word for a little legal spat.”

“But we hate Paul Citron, right?”

“He and I will never be friends, but I feel sorry for him more than anything.”

“But why? He tried to steal our land.”

“He just wanted a few acres — a shortcut so his coal trucks could save a few miles getting to the railroad.”

Madison, dark haired, lovely, serious when she felt it necessary, put her fists on her hips, “The fucker tried to steal it. And that stupid court said it was okay.”

Shortly before her mother died, Madison had started dropping the occasional curse word into her pronouncements. Ethan asked Wendy about it — talking about her daughter usually elicited a smile — “Let her test her wings, Ethan. No, encourage her. She’s at a very formative stage.”

“Okay.”

“And pretty soon, she’ll start exploring her sexuality too.”

Long sigh, “I know.”

Wendy managed a weak laugh, “She’ll drive you crazy, honey. But you’ll get through it —- that’s part of your job description. Parenting.”

Ethan smiled at his daughter, “The court. In this case, it was the least qualified judge in Wyoming. Harlan Farnsworth has been reversed more than anyone in a century. And the State Supreme Court didn’t waste any time in slapping him down this time.”

“Then that Citron guy said he’d get even with you.”

“Well, we’ll see about that.”

Madison frowned and crossed her arms.

He looked at Madison, with her mother’s dark, flashing eyes, “To the outside world, it looks like a silly little argument between a rancher and a mine owner.”

“People say he’s mean, that Citron.”

Ethan smiled, and the creases in his tanned face deepened, “Well, your old pa may have a trick or two up his sleeve.”

Madison’s face darkened, “That cocksucker.”

Logan admired the sure, confident way that the City Attorney entered and immediately dominated the room. Like the very best politicians and only a surprisingly few film stars when you met them in person, Marie Guidry had charisma. She was the focus, the real deal.

Logan noted the green silk blouse tucked into a white pencil skirt. Moderate heels added a couple of inches to her 5’ 6” frame. Black hair in a chic pageboy framed a strikingly lovely face.

Her younger sister dropped off a cup of hot water with a thin slice of lemon and left without saying anything.

Mary’s was starting to fill up again. Logan thought: Interesting. They must do two turns. At lunch on a sleepy Tuesday.

Rémy said, “Mr. Kelly here was just asking about you.”

She looked at Logan over the rim of her cup as she sipped. “Well sir, Rémy and I were born right here in Sausalito. Grew up here — way down in the bayous. We were dirt poor, usually didn’t have shoes for most of the year.”

Logan had had enough of Memory Lane; he suspected the rambling conversations were just a stall, a way for them to evaluate him, “Rags to riches. Congratulations.”

Marie’s dark eyes flashed some brief annoyance, and she looked at him like a recent impulse purchase that she might just decide to return. But she simply said, “Okay, Yankee, the short version.”

“Thank you. What is a Yankee, by the way?”

“Anyone who lives north of I-10.”

“Ah.”

Marie spoke quietly, without rancor, as if discussing the distant cousin of a former friend. “Men around here started hitting on me when I was eight, nine, around in there.”

Logan nodded.

“I was smart enough to hold out until I figured out who the players really were.”

Rémy smiled, “Tell him the City Council story, chere.”

She ignored him. “No money, no connections, but I had a brain and some backbone. I flirted my way into an after-school job at LeBlank’s Pharmacy.”

She smiled to herself, “Interesting what you can learn about people from working in a small-town drugstore. Anyway, the day I turned 14, Maurice LeBlank tucked a hundred dollar bill into my birthday card. I turned the sign on the door to ‘Closed’ and gave him a blowjob behind the counter.”

Logan nodded judiciously.