While he was living in medium-security at Angola it was Leo who did the most for him. Leo talked to some of the right people in Baton Rouge, told them his brother-in-law was a little wild, immature. You know, thought he was a hotshot, every girl’s dream. Leo explained that Jack was intelligent but had lacked proper discipline as a boy; his dad had died in Honduras working for United Fruit when Jack was in the ninth grade at Jesuit High. Jack was the kind, he’d always been full of the devil. Like he’d go over to Manchac and hunt snakes and dump them into country-club swimming pools. But not poisonous ones. Leo told the people in Baton Rouge he’d give Jack Delaney a job in a profession that offered daily reminders of life’s realities, its consequences, and get him straightened out. That is, once Jack spent some time in state rehabilitation, one month shy of three years out of the five to twenty-five of his sentence.

So going to work for Mullen & Sons, 3600 Canal Street, was part of Jack’s parole deal. He didn’t see working with dead people any more a career opportunity than picking cotton at Angola; but here he was living on the second floor of a funeral home, down the hall from the embalming room, driving a hearse, picking up bodies at hospitals and parish morgues, watching the door during visitation hours, sticking flags on cars in the procession… Jack had said to his brother-in-law when he hired him, “You sure you know what you’re doing?” And Leo said, “I know it isn’t good for either of us to drink alone.”

Leo said now, “If you haven’t been to Carville since you worked for the Rivé brothers it must be six or seven years.”

“Longer’n that,” Jack said.

“They’re not sure how you contract leprosy-I mean Hansen’s disease-though I’ve read you can get it from an armadillo. So stay away from armadillos.”

Jack didn’t say anything.

“I know none of the sisters ever got it and they’ve been there since the place opened, almost a hundred years ago. The same ones that are at Charity Hospital. You recall if you met a Sister Teresa Victor?”