City of Night

front walk.
    The maid, Lulana St. John, answered the doorbell. She was a fiftyish black woman whose girth and personality were equally formidable.
    Leveling a disapproving look at Carson, trying to suppress a smile when she glanced at Michael, Lulana said, “I see before me two well-known public servants who do the Lord’s work but sometimes make the mistake of using the devil’s tactics.”
    “We’re two sinners,” Carson admitted.
    “ ‘Amazing grace,’” Michael said, “ ‘how sweet thou art, to save a wretch like me.’”
    “Child,” said Lulana, “I suspect you flatter yourself to think you’re saved. If you have come here to be troublesome to the mister, I ask you to look within yourselves and find the part of you that wants to be a peace officer.”
    “That’s the biggest part of me,” Michael said, “but Detective O’Connor here mostly just wants to kick ass.”
    To Carson, Lulana said, “I’m sorry to say, missy, that is your reputation.”
    “Not today,” Carson assured her. “We’re here to ask a favor of Aubrey, if you would please announce us. We have no grievance against him.”
    Lulana studied her solemnly. “The Lord has given me an excellent crap detector, and it isn’t ringing at the moment. It’s in your favor that you have not shaken your badge at me, and you did say please.”
    “At my insistence,” Michael said, “Detective O’Connor has been taking an evening class in etiquette.”
    “He’s a fool,” Lulana told Carson. “Yes, I know.”
    “After a lifetime of eating with her hands,” Michael said, “she has mastered the use of the fork in a remarkably short time.”
    “Child, you are a fool,” Lulana told him, “but for reasons that only the Lord knows, in spite of myself, I always take a liking to you.” She stepped back from the threshold. “Wipe your feet, and come in.”
    The foyer was painted peach with white wainscoting and ornate white crown molding. The white marble floor with diamond-shaped black inlays had been polished to such a shine that it looked wet.
    “Has Aubrey found Jesus yet?” Carson wondered.
    Closing the front door, Lulana said, “The mister hasn’t embraced his Lord, no, but I’m pleased to say he has come as far as making eye contact with Him.”
    Although paid only to be a maid, Lulana did double duty as a spiritual guide to her employer, whose past she knew and whose soul concerned her.
    “The mister is gardening,” she said. “You could wait for him in the parlor or join him in the roses.”
    “By all means, the roses,” Michael said.
    At the back of the house, in the immense kitchen, Lulana’s older sister, Evangeline Antoine, softly sang “His Lamp Will Overcome All Darkness” as she pressed dough into a pie pan.
    Evangeline served as Aubrey’s cook and also as an amen choir to Lulana’s indefatigable soul-saving efforts. She was taller than her sister, thin, yet her lively eyes and her smile made their kinship obvious.
    “Detective Maddison,” Evangeline said, “I’m so glad you’re not dead yet.”
    “Me too,” he said. “What kind of pie are you making?”
    “Praline-cinnamon cream topped with fried pecans.”
    “Now that’s worth a quadruple heart-bypass.”
    “Cholesterol,” Lulana informed them, “won’t stick if you have the right attitude.”
    She led them through the rear door onto the back veranda, where Moses Bienvenu, Aubrey’s driver and handyman, was painting the beautifully turned white balusters under the black handrail.
    Beaming, he said, “Detective O’Connor, I’m amazed to see you haven’t shot Mr. Michael yet.”
    “My aim’s good,” she assured him, “but he can move fast.”
    Well-padded but not fat, a robust and towering man with hands as big as dinner plates, Moses served as a deacon at the church and sang in the same gospel choir as his sisters, Lulana and Evangeline.
    “They’re here to see the mister but not to trouble him,” Lulana told her brother. “If it looks like they’re troubling him, after all, lift them by the scruffs of their necks and put them in the street.”
    As Lulana went inside, Moses said, “You heard Lulana. You may be police officers, but she’s the law around here. The Law and the Way. I would be in your debt if you didn’t make it necessary for me to scruff-carry you out of here.”
    “If we find ourselves getting out of hand,” Michael said, “we’ll scruff-carry each other.”
    Pointing with his paintbrush, Moses