Big Easy Bonanza

Peeler left me and I couldn’t support it, what if I decided to sue him, what if I asked for money. I said, ‘Don’t worry about it. Nothing’s going to happen.’ So you know what he did then? He offered me money to have an abortion. Cash money—$10,000—to abort my child. You ever hear of anything like that?”
    Skip shook her head.
    “Well, I said no, of course. He said he’d like to give me some money anyway—for a wedding present, and he asked if he could come over for a drink—to say good-bye. He made me have one with him. I just had fruit juice, because I was looking out for the baby, but next thing I knew I was waking up in some doctor’s office. I tried to find out where I was and somebody gave me a shot. When I woke up again I was home, stuffed up to my chin with bloody gauze. And I wasn’t pregnant anymore.” She turned her thunderbolt eyes on Skip. “
Now
what do you think of your Mr. Chauncey St. Amant, civic leader, friend of the downtrodden, and of black people most particularly, and King of Carnival?”
    The question
, thought Skip,
is what do I think of this story.
She said, “Are you telling me he drugged you and somehow got you a forced abortion?”
    “That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”
    “But no doctor would do that.” She wished she believed it.
    “Oh, no? Not for Mr. Chauncey St. Amant, civic leader? You don’t think so? Baby, wadn’t no lawyer or Indian chief put that gauze in my twat.” For the first time she lapsed into black dialect. “You realize what he did? It was illegal what he did. What would you call it, officer? Assault? Hah! Murder’s more like it. You can’t
do
that to people.”
    Skip made herself ask the question. “Do you know who the doctor was?”
    “I didn’t care about that. I just wanted my baby back.” When Skip didn’t reply, Johnson turned to her, and mischief had replaced the storm in her eyes. “Funny thing was, I got pregnant right away again, and ended up with a whiter-looking baby than I probably ever would have had with Chauncey. Peeler’s my color except with blue eyes. I guess Mark’s the color of one of his great-granddaddies—but I knew I couldn’t sue Chauncey, claim it was his baby after all, when I saw those eyes.”
    Skip wished she had never heard of Estelle Johnson, wished she could take back the whole damn morning and her stupid lie about her ovary, wished she were walking her beat, chatting up old ladies and giving teenage punks threatening looks. She turned her brain inside out but couldn’t think of a reason on earth for Johnson to lie about such a thing. Her gut told her she hadn’t. The tears and the thunderbolts were entirely too real.
    The hell of it was, she knew Chauncey could do it. Maybe plenty of cops wouldn’t think he could get away with it, would really believe what she had said—that no doctor would do such a thing—but Skip knew the St. Amant family doctor and, maybe more to the point, the Mayhew family doctor, all too well. She could see just how it could happen. Chauncey would mention that he needed to get out of a possible jam with his father-in-law. Or maybe he’d taken the problem to old Haygood Mayhew first, said he was afraid of getting into trouble with Bitty, thereby defusing him, making him a co-conspirator against the scourge of the Southern male, the Southern female. And then Haygood had taken it to the family doctor, who referred him, at least, may even have done it himself.
    She wondered what her father had gotten out of it. Even Haygood Mayhew couldn’t get an upstart like him into the Boston Club. Maybe the Louisiana Club, something like that. Something. Skip was sure of it. Her father would happily sell his soul, but he wouldn’t be stupid enough to give it away.
    Angrily, she drove to police headquarters, wondering why she was so mad. She should be sad—for Stelly, for her aborted child, for her own aborted child. For being born into such a poison garden of corruption. And maybe she was, underneath. On top she was mad, probably at Skip Langdon, investigator extraordinaire, for unearthing this garbage, exposing her own nostrils to the stink of it.
    Thanking her stars that Tarantino and O’Rourke weren’t in the office, she went up to Homicide and typed the written request she’d need on her next errand. Then she headed for the state office building, which housed the Bureau of Vital Records.
    There she had a clerk check for birth certificates under five