New Orleans Noir: The Classics by Julie Smith

Author:Julie Smith [Smith, Julie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: akashic books
Published: 2016-02-04T21:00:00+00:00

PART III

THE THANATOS SYNDROME

Rich

by Ellen Gilchrist

Garden District

(Originally published in 1978)

Tom and Letty Wilson were rich in everything. They were rich in friends because Tom was a vice president of the Whitney Bank of New Orleans and liked doing business with his friends, and because Letty was vice president of the Junior League of New Orleans and had her picture in Town and Country every year at the Symphony Ball.

The Wilsons were rich in knowing exactly who they were because every year from Epiphany to Fat Tuesday they flew the beautiful green and gold and purple flag outside their house that meant that Letty had been queen of the Mardi Gras the year she was a debutante. Not that Letty was foolish enough to take the flag seriously.

Sometimes she was even embarrassed to call the yardman and ask him to come over and bring his high ladder.

“Preacher, can you come around on Tuesday and put up my flag?” she would ask.

“You know I can,” the giant black man would answer. “I been saving time to put up your flag. I won’t forget what a beautiful queen you made that year.”

“Oh, hush, Preacher. I was a skinny little scared girl. It’s a wonder I didn’t fall off the balcony I was so sacred. I’ll see you on Monday.” And Letty would think to herself what a big phony Preacher was and wonder when he was going to try to borrow some more money from them.

Tom Wilson considered himself a natural as a banker because he loved to gamble and wheel and deal. From the time he was a boy in a small Baptist town in Tennessee he had loved to play cards and match nickels and lay bets.

In high school he read the Nashville Banner avidly and kept an eye out for useful situations such as the lingering and suspenseful illnesses of Pope Pius.

“Let’s get up a pool on the day the Pope will die,” he would say to the football team, “I’ll hold the bank.” And because the Pope took a very long time to die with many close calls there were times when Tom was the richest left tackle in Franklin, Tennessee.

Tom had a favorite saying about money. He had read it in the Reader’s Digest and attributed it to Andrew Carnegie. “Money,” Tom would say, “is what you keep score with. Andrew Carnegie.”

Another way Tom made money in high school was performing as an amateur magician at local birthday parties and civic events. He could pull a silver dollar or a Lucky Strike cigarette from an astonished six-year-old’s ear or from his own left palm extract a seemingly endless stream of multicolored silk chiffon or cause an ordinary piece of clothesline to behave like an Indian cobra.

He got interested in magic during a convalescence from German measles in the sixth grade. He sent off for books of magic tricks and practiced for hours before his bedroom mirror, his quick clever smile flashing and his long fingers curling and uncurling

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