The Bourbon Thief(32)

“Me?”

Slowly, very slowly, as slowly as anyone in history ever nodded, Andre nodded.

“Goddammit.” Levi sighed.

“These things happen.” Andre lifted his beer and drank half of it. He wasn’t much of a heavy drinker anymore, which meant he was enjoying this conversation about as well as Levi was.

“So what happened between them?” Levi sat back in his chair, covered his face with his hands and breathed.

“The usual. He lost interest, started seeing someone new. She quit when she found out she was pregnant. And six months later a baby boy was born, snow-white and blue-eyed.”

Levi wasn’t white as any snow anymore, but he wasn’t black by any stretch of the imagination. Not even brown. Not on the outside, anyway. But the inside of a man didn’t matter to 99 percent of the population.

“Why am I hearing about this now? Why didn’t she tell me this before she died?”

“If it was George Maddox, then that’s your answer. Money’s bad enough, but money and power is a dangerous combination. When you turned out so light, she was afraid your father might try to take you away from her. She was afraid his family might try to kill you to cover up what he’d done from his wife. She was afraid of everything for a long while.”

“Still doesn’t explain why she wouldn’t tell me.”

“Your mother knew you too well. She thought you might do something stupid. Get drunk and start a fight. Make your existence known to people who had very good reasons to not want you in the world.”

Levi thought of Virginia Maddox and her hatred of him that seemed to stem from nothing and nowhere. Always he’d assumed her loathing of him was simply bigotry, snobbery. She knew his mother was black and she hated him for it. But now he knew better. It wasn’t because of his mother that Virginia Maddox hated his guts. It was because of his father.

“So how did you find out after all this time?” Andre asked.

“Tamara Maddox came to see me today.”

“She the granddaughter?”

“She is. Sort of. She found her father’s suicide note somehow. In it he calls me George Maddox’s son. And I guess I am.”

Andre tapped the table, wiped a swatch of foam off the inside of his glass.

“I guess you are.”

Levi stood up, stood over the kitchen sink and tried not to puke into it. Gloria wouldn’t have that, either.

“I can’t believe Mom and George Maddox...”

“Why not?” Andre asked. “Didn’t you get canned for fooling around with that Maddox girl?”

“With Tamara.”

“Kissing cousins,” Andre said and chuckled.

“Not quite. Turns out Tamara isn’t her father’s daughter, after all. Tamara’s not a real Maddox, and I guess I am.” Levi’s lip curled in disgust. He couldn’t look at Andre anymore. “Son of a bitch. She worked for him making fifty cents an hour. What was she supposed to do? Tell the boss man no?”

“Your mother told Glory she was in love. He didn’t force her as far as I know. She was young and pretty and did what young pretty things do sometimes. But she loved you, too. She married that piece of shit Jay Shelby so you could have a father and a name.”

“She divorced him as fast as she married him.” His mother’s marriage had lasted all of two years, but Jay Shelby had given him some measure of legitimacy, and a last name other than his mother’s maiden name.

“Probably her plan all along.”

Levi turned around, crossed his arms over his chest.

“I don’t know what to do with this,” Levi said. “Other than carry it.”

“What’s there to do with it? What’s Tamara Maddox doing mucking all this mud?”

“Tamara said the company should be mine. That’s why she came to see me, to tell me what she knew.”

“She wants you to have Red Thread?”

“Her momma’s trying to sell it and she thinks she shouldn’t because it doesn’t belong to them.”

“It belongs to whoever George Maddox left it to.”

“And that’s Tamara. It’s not like I can waltz into a lawyer’s office, tell them who I am and smile while they hand me the keys to the place. I have no idea why Tamara told me all this. No idea what she’s got to gain by it.”

“Maybe she’s one of the good ones. I heard rumors they exist.”

Levi snorted a laugh. His uncle had little use for white people. It was “us” and it was “them,” and the more “us” stayed away from “them,” the better “us” had it. But on occasion he’d admit there was a good one or two of “them.” He liked Johnny Carson. He liked Frank Sinatra. He thought All in the Family was funny, but mainly because it showed the world how ignorant white people were most of the time. He’d laughed so hard when Sammy Davis Jr. kissed Archie they’d thought Andre was having a heart attack. You could count the good ones on one hand, according to Andre.

“One of the good ones? I don’t know,” Levi said. “She’s not one of the bad ones. She’s only...spoiled. Spoiled rotten. She didn’t seem like that today, though. She seemed... I don’t know, but I think her mother’s not been too good to her. Easy to believe. Her mother’s one of the bad ones, that’s for damn sure.” Levi ran a hand through his still-wet hair.