Chapter Three
When Palmer informed Pangloss of his destination, the good doctor assured him Renfield would see to airline tickets and accommodations. Palmer pointed out that flights into New Orleans during Carnival were booked solid weeks in advance, not to mention the hotels. Pangloss laughed and said there was nothing to worry about: He kept an apartment in the French Quarter, away from the serious tourist areas but still close to the action. He'd call the housekeeper and have the place aired out in anticipation of Palmer's arrival.
Palmer arrived late Sunday evening. The city was swarming with drunken, raucous merrymakers. Still, he had not expected Renfield to answer the door. "You're here," was all the pale man said in way of greeting, stepping back into the hallway to allow Palmer entrance.
"Doc didn't say anything about sending you to keep tabs on me." If Renfield noticed the barb, he ignored it. He pointed to the staircase, curled inside the house like a chambered nautilus. "Your room is on the second floor. Third door to the right."
"I thought Doc said he only kept an apartment here." Renfield shrugged. "In a way. He owns the entire building." Palmer frowned at the stack of junk mail piled haphazardly on the antique sideboard inside the foyer. Most of it seemed to be addressed to "Occupant" or "Current Resident." Renfield cleared his throat and lead Palmer upstairs. As they made their way to the landing, Palmer could tell by the echoes that the downstairs was empty.
Palmer's quarters were quite spacious, consisting of a bed-sitter, a sizable bathroom complete with a cast-iron tub with lion's feet, and a kitchenette furnished with a stocked refrigerator and a microwave oven. There was also a widescreen TV, a video deck, a stereo system and a wet bar. The apartment also came with two of the wrought iron balconies the city was famous for.
The bedroom balcony offered a view of the patio and what had been, a century and a half ago, the slave quarters. It was too dark for Palmer to see much, since the patio below was unlit, but a faint reek of vegetable decay rose From the garden beneath his window.
The balcony fronting the sitting room was better, as it overlooked the street, empty now except for the occasional passing mule buggy and cruising taxi. As he stood savoring his Shermans in the pleasant evening breeze, Palmer could hear
Bourbon Street
- its roar blurred and muted, but still distinct in the otherwise quiet neighborhood. Every now and again a drunken celebrant would shriek with laughter, the echoes losing themselves among the ancient buildings.
Palmer experienced a slight twinge of unreality, as if he were dreaming and aware of dreaming at the same time. When he had left for New Orleans that morning, there was still frost on the ground, and in certain alleys where the shadows rarely part, there were still hard crusts of snow and ice to be found. Now he was standing in his shirtsleeves, taking in the fragrant subtropical night air while listening to the sounds of Carnival.
He contemplated going out and joining the party, but jet lag claimed him instead. He fell asleep splayed across the massive four-poster, wisps of mosquito netting fluttering in the breeze from the open French windows.
He dreamed that he woke up. In that dream, he lay in bed for a few seconds, trying to place where he was and what he was doing there. When he remembered, he sat up, rubbing his eyes. It was still dark outside; a pale sliver of moonlight fell through the open windows. There was a table and chair near the foot of the bed. Palmer's dream-self was aware that someone - or something - was seated in the chair, watching him. At first he thought it was Loli - he could see enough to tell his visitor was female - and he instinctively put his hand to the scar over his heart. The puckered skin remained cool to the touch. Whoever this dream-intruder was, at least it wasn't her.
Palmer wanted to stand up and walk toward the mysterious woman, but he couldn't move.
Who are you?
The dream-woman did not answer but instead got to her feet. She stood in deep shadow, fingering the length of netting draped across the footboard. A spear of moonlight struck her face, but all Palmer could see was his own perplexed frown, reflected in miniature. Who are you ?
The shadow-woman smiled, revealing teeth too white and sharp to belong in a human mouth. That's funny, I was going to ask you the same thing.
It was her. The one he'd traveled so far to find. Palmer had never seen her photo, much less heard her voice, but he was certain that the woman standing at the foot of his bed was Sonja Blue. Before he could ask her another question, her attention was drawn to the balcony.
Here? No, not here. But close. On its way.
She sprinted for the French windows. Palmer opened his mouth to shout a warning that they were two stories up, but nothing came out. He felt slightly embarrassed for trying to warn a dream about breaking its legs. When she reached the open windows, she seemed to expand and elongate at the same time, stretching like a spaceship achieving light speed, then shot headfirst into the early morning sky.
Palmer was suddenly aware that he was cold and sweating and shaking like a malaria victim. His scar began to burn like a hot wire pressed against his chest.
Loli popped up from behind the footboard like a malignant jack-in-the-box, the .38 leveled at his heart.
" Surrr - prizzze!"
He was unable to control himself this time and woke screaming, his fingers clawing at the scar.
There was no listing for Indigo Imports in either the New Orleans Yellow or White Pages. Palmer hadn't expected one, but you never could tell. Still, if you wanted a credit card, you had to have a phone. It was a fact of life. It was probably an unlisted number, but there was always the chance she relied on a message service to relay her calls. And those were listed.
After three hours and eighty-six answering services, he called Telephones Answered, Inc. and asked to speak to the head of Indigo Imports.
"I'm sorry, sir, but this is her answering service. Would you like to leave a message?"
He had her. He fought to keep his voice from betraying his excitement. "Yes. Tell her William Palmer called. It's very important that she contact me," he said, and gave the operator the number off Pangloss's phone.
"Very, good, sir. I'll make sure she gets the message."
Palmer replaced the phone in its cradle. Sightseeing would have to wait.
The call came at six that evening. He'd fallen into a light drowse, helped by a couple of shots of expensive bourbon he'd found in the wet bar, and nearly fell off the couch attempting to answer the phone before the second ring.
"Hello?"
There was silence on the other end of the line, then a woman's voice. "Mr. Palmer?"
"This is Palmer."
"What do you want of me, Mr. Palmer?"
"I'm a private investigator, Ms. Blue. I was hired by your grandfather, Dr. Pangloss, to find you."
"You work for him?" There was both suspicion and curiosity in her voice.
"In a fashion. Let's say I owe him a favor. All I know is that I'm supposed to deliver a letter to you. Please, I'd like to arrange a meeting with you, if it's at all possible."
"You will be alone." It wasn't a question.
"Of course. You set the time and place. Whatever you're comfortable with."
"Tuesday night at eleven. The Devil's Playground, on the corner of Decatur and Governor Nicholls."
The severed connection droned in his ear like an angry hornet. Palmer's hands were shaking, his shirt glued to his back. It was the same woman. The one from his dream. He'd recognized the voice. He blinked and massaged his brow with the flat of his palm. Christ, what was going on? Was it the acid he'd done back in the seventies? If so, it had picked one hell of a time to treat him to a flashback.
Still, so many things had changed since he'd awakened from the coma. Sometimes it felt as if he'd spent the past thirty-eight years stumbling around in a sleepwalker's daze and was only now fully awake. Other times it seemed as if he was on the verge of complete and utter mental collapse.
He'd never considered himself an ordinary schmuck, but before his "accident" he'd never experienced much in the way of nightmares. Not since he was a kid, anyway. He'd had some doozies back then.
His parents had disapproved of his discussing the dreams, so he'd stopped. His father insisted that talking about "things that ain't real and never will be" was pointless and only lead to confusion and, in some strange logic that only his parents seemed to grasp, insanity.
Whenever Palmer pressed the point, his father would threaten him with Uncle Willy.
"You keep fretting about stuff that ain't real, you 're gonna end up just like Uncle Willy! He was always worrying about the things he saw in his dreams. Where'd it get him ? In the StateHospital, that's where! You 're gonna end up sharing a cell with him if you don't lay off this shit!"
Palmer smiled wryly as he reached for the bourbon. Better shove over, Uncle Willy. Look's like you 're going to have company.
Palmer let the crowd push him along
Bourbon Street
. It was slow going and intensely claustrophobic, but in spite of the overcrowding, the noise and the reek of curbside garbage, he was enjoying himself.
It was Mardi Gras, and he'd spent the day wandering the narrow streets of the French Quarter, marveling at the costumes and sampling the various local alcoholic beverages. Carnival revelers on the balconies overhead tossed beads and other trinkets at the crowd below. Occasionally a drunken tourist would bare a tit or a backside, causing a shower of hurled plastic beads and a firestorm of camera flashes. The whole thing was silly, trivial, bawdy and dumb. Palmer thought it was great.
He broke free of the press of bodies at the next intersection and headed toward
Jackson Square
to watch the costumers promenade past the Saint Louis Basilica. He was amused by a band of masquers dressed as frogs heckling the extremist fundamentalists, who were protesting the merrymaking by handing out their own bogus religious tracts. Palmer was so impressed he offered to pay for some of their literature.
"Don't bother." The young man grinned from inside the gaping cloth mouth of a frog's head. "We just do it to piss these jerks off. In fact, more people offer us money than them, and that really gets their goat! They've been out here for the last few years, being a major pain in the butt. There's not nearly as many of them this time, though. I guess their funding got the triple whammy, what with the PTL scandal, old Jimmy gettin' caught out on
Airline Highway
, and that weird Catherine Wheele cult-massacre last year. Thanks anyway, mister! Happy Mardi Gras! Remember: Frog Croaked For Your Sins!" The frog priest laughed, hopping after his departing flock.
"You weren't offering that man money, were you, sir?" Palmer looked down at the florid-faced woman in the Christ Is the Answer Crusade T-shirt. Her eyes were so magnified by her coke-bottle glasses they seemed to hover in front of her face. "They do the Devil's work, mocking the Lord's word and deed! They shall burn in hell on Judgment Day! Jesus loves you, even if you are a sinner! If you confess your sin now, and kneel with me and pray for deliverance of your soul, it may not be too late for you . . "
Palmer shook his head, too overwhelmed by the woman's conviction and madness to say anything. It wasn't until he'd disentangled himself that he realized she'd slipped a tract into his pocket. The title dripped red ink like slime and read: Are You Ready for the End Times?
Judging from the crude illustration beneath the question, no one was: terrified "sinners" in tattered rags ran from flying insects the size of dachshunds; haggard derelicts tried to slake their thirst at drinking fountains gushing blood; a busty MTV-style Whore of Babylon lolled on the back of a seven-headed Beast, while in the background a nine-hundred-foot-tall Jesus beamed beatifically at the hundreds of souls zipping skyward from a tangle of wrecked and abandoned cars on the interchange.
Disgusted, Palmer hurled the offending tract to the ground and hurried away in search of beer.
He passed the next few hours drinking concoctions with so much grenadine in them the back of his throat puckered. Darkness came, and, as if upon clandestine agreement, the families vanished from the area, leaving only the hardcore to bid farewell to the flesh.
A shrill, almost hysterical, sense of abandon tinged the masquers' celebrations. Drunken horseplay turned into open brawls. Palmer couldn't tell the difference between screams and laughter. The eyes of the revelers gleamed from behind their borrowed faces, as if compelled to cram as much as possible into the few hours remaining to them before returning to their real lives.
The need Palmer glimpsed in their bleary, unfocused stares was both repellent and fascinating. It was as if he were surrounded by thousands of empty people desperately trying to fill themselves. He was overwhelmed by an image of himself being attacked by the screaming, laughing, empty people, devouring his soul as easily as a lion cleans the marrow from a broken bone.
Gasping, he pushed past a group of masquers dressed as cockroaches and stumbled inside one of the all-hours tourist traps that lined the street. He leaned against a postcard rack and shivered like a drunk with the DTs. There was still an hour to go before he could consider his job done. He decided to lay off the booze so he would be in the condition to talk with the elusive Ms. Blue. Or if he meant to steer clear of the nuthouse, for that matter.
He could still remember the day the men in the white suits took Uncle Willy away, screaming at the top of his lungs about the worms crawling out of his skin. Palmer's father had been quite upset. People on TV didn't have members of their family carted away. At least not on Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best. It happened on the soaps his mom liked to watch all the time, though.
"You awright, mister?"
Palmer jerked his head up and stared at the man behind the cash register. The shopkeeper was the overall shape and size of a small foothill, dressed in khaki pants and a I Saw the Pope T-shirt. He chewed on an unlit cigar, eyeing Palmer warily.
"You ain't gonna be sick, are ya? If yer gonna puke, do it outside, fer th' love 'a Gawd! I awready cleaned up after three people awready t'night! Jesus!"
"I'm okay, thanks. It was a just a little... crowded out there."
"Yeah, ain't that the truth! I'll be glad when ever'body goes home so's I can get some sleep. I - Hey, is that some friend of yours?" He pointed at the busy street on the other side of the glass.
Palmer spun around, the hairs on the back of his neck erect. A well-fed tourist couple stood and stared at a "lifelike" plastic turd stapled to the brim of a synthetic baseball cap that bore the legend Shithead.
"You mean them?"
"No, it was some guy in a suit. You know, dressed like them queers down at the art galleries. He was smokin' a cigarette and wavin' at ya, like he was tryin' t'getcher attention."
"It must have been a case of mistaken identity. I don't know anybody in town.
The shopkeeper grunted and returned to thumbing through his porno magazine. "Tourists is tourists."
Palmer stared out into the street. He hadn't lied. He didn't know anybody in New Orleans. So why did he feel as if someone had just walked over his grave?
The Devil's Playground was a block off the historic French Market, and the odor of discarded produce was strong on the night wind, mixing with the ever-present reek of beer and urine that seemed to hang over the district during Carnival.
Painted flames covered the bar's windows. A fiberglass statue of a grinning Mephistopheles, resplendent in his skintight red jumpsuit and neat goatee, stood next to the door. The grinning devil held aloft a pitchfork in his right hand, his left fist firmly planted on one hip. The Prince of Lies' jaunty demeanor was far more reminiscent of Errol Flynn as Robin Hood than Goethe's demon.
Palmer pushed his way inside, ignoring the looks from a couple of young men sheathed in black leather and chrome chains lounging near the door. The place was packed, the buzz of a hundred voices lost under the crash and thunder of amplified rock music. He scanned the cramped quarters for a sign of his quarry. He made a try for the bar, brushing against a tall, heavyset woman.
The woman turned, smiling good-naturedly if drunkenly. Her face was heavily made up, chunky costume jewelry dripping from her fingers and ears.
"Hey there, handsome. You look lonesome." Her voice was husky, her breath redolent of whiskey. She reached up with one beringed hand and patted her hair.
"Oh, I'm looking for someone, actually."
The woman's smile grew wider. "Aren't we all, sugar?" She leaned closer and Palmer glimpsed a hint of five o'clock shadow under the makeup. She placed a large, knobby-knuckled hand on his sleeve. "Maybe I can help you find what you're looking for."
Palmer shrugged. "You might. I'm supposed to be meeting someone here. A woman."
The transvestite removed her hand from his arm. "I see." Interest drained from her voice as she returned her gaze to the mirror behind the bar, readjusting her wig.
"Maybe you know her. She lives somewhere around here. Her name's Sonja Blue."
The transvestite jerked her head in his direction so hard she unseated her wig. Palmer glimpsed thinning hair the color of wheat straw.
"The Blue Woman? You're meeting the Blue Woman? Here?!" All pretense of imitating a woman's voice ended. The transvestite stared at Palmer as if he'd just announced he had an armed nuclear device strapped to his back.
Palmer was suddenly aware that everyone else in the bar was staring at him. The music continued to thump and growl like a caged animal, but no one spoke. Palmer felt his armpits dampen.
"Get out! Get out of here! We've got enough trouble as it is without you bringing her here!" The bartender, a muscular fellow naked except for a leather jockstrap, a ram's horn headdress and a tattoo of a dragon rampant on his chest, gestured angrily at the door.
"But - "
A dozen pairs of hands grabbed him, lifting him bodily over their heads. Palmer recalled how he used to stage dive at the hard-core concerts, leaping onto the stage for a brief moment of stolen glamour before jumping back into the seething dance floor. He didn't try to fight them and allowed himself to be roughly passed over the heads of the bar's patrons and dumped, unceremoniously, back onto the street. He straightened his rumpled clothes as best he could, glancing back at the doorway. The two young men dressed in leather and chrome blocked the entrance.
"Fuck this shit." Palmer was in no position to take on two guys ten years his junior. Not if he wanted to keep what was left of his teeth. He shoved his hands in his pockets and stalked off around the corner.
He paused halfway down the block, lighting a cigarette with trembling hands.
"Palmer?"
He spun around so fast he burned himself with his lighter.
She was dressed in a pair of faded, much-worn blue jeans, a Cramps 1990 Tour T-shirt, a ragged leather jacket a size too big for her, scuffed engineer boots and sunglasses. Even though he could not see her eyes, Palmer was aware of being watched.
"Sonja?"
"You are Pangloss's agent?"
He shrugged. "You could say that."
"Were you followed?"
"No.
Her lips twisted into something like a smile. "You seem sure of yourself."
"I'm good at what I do."
"No doubt. You spoke of a letter from my... grandfather."
Palmer reached into his jacket and withdrew the letter. "Funny, the Doc doesn't look old enough to have a granddaughter your age."
"He's very well preserved. It's a family trait. I'll take that letter now, if you don't mind." She extended a pale, narrow hand toward him.
Palmer handed over the sealed envelope, his fingers accidentally brushing against hers.
There was a sound like a flashcube going off in the back of his skull. His fingertips tingled. He saw Sonja Blue jerk her head as if she'd received a sudden electrical shock. The street disappeared and Palmer found himself in a strange room.
He saw a pool table surrounded by splintered pool cues, scattered cue balls... and broken boys. The smell of blood and fear was strong. The fear smell's primal intensity was erotic, the greatest aphrodisiac he'd ever known, and most of it radiated from the frightened boy clutched in his hands. The youth's hair was the color of a Maxfield Parrish sky, his face that of an errant choirboy. There were brief, blurred glimpses of rape, robbery, looting, each involving the same baby-faced miscreant - An orgasm shuddered through Palmer's nervous system as a hot gush of thick, salty blood filled his mouth.
Sonja Blue jerked her hand away from his, growling like a mountain lion. She turned and ran, disappearing into the darkness before Palmer had a chance to reorient himself. He felt dizzy, as if he'd just stepped off the Tilt-A-Whirl at the State Fair. He could still taste the boy's blood. The thought made him moan, and bile burned the back of his throat. He didn't want to think about it. Not now, not ever. He especially didn't want to think about how he'd recognized the blue-haired boy's face as belonging to Jimmy Eichorn.
All he wanted to do was get back to the apartment, phone Pangloss and tell him he'd fulfilled his part of the bargain. He'd collect his bonus and go somewhere nice and sunny. Mexico sounded good. He'd retire to Mexico and sell stuffed frogs playing mariachi instruments to the turistas. That sounded real good.
He started back toward Pangloss's house. It was almost midnight, and
Bourbon Street
was jammed with partygoers determined to wring the few remaining minutes of pleasure out of Carnival. The noise and excitement was almost enough to make him forget what had just happened.
At first he thought the tugging on his sleeve was the wind. Then it spoke his name.
Palmer turned and stared into the pale, smiling face of a man in his late twenties, dressed in an expensive, loose-fitting suit. The stranger lifted a smoldering French cigarette to his thin lips, his eyes strangely sunken in the fluorescent and neon glare from a nearby live sex show sign.
There was something familiar about his arrogant, smirking features - then Palmer recognized him.
He took an involuntary step backward, his scalp tightening as his heart began to race. The street noise faded into an indistinct rumble, as if he were underwater. He prayed he wasn't having a stroke, though that would at least explain the things happening to him.
"You're dead]" It sounded like an accusation.
Geoffrey Chastain, known to friends and enemies as Chaz, shrugged. "Is that a crime? I've been tryin' to get yer bleedin' attention all bloody night! Coo! Yer a dense bugger!"
Palmer noticed that parts of Chaz were semitransparent. The dead man drew another lung full of smoke from his phantom cigarette, causing his midsection to swirl. Palmer wondered if he'd still be toking on his beloved Shermans a year after his own death.
"Look, there's not much time left. Mardi Gras night's one of th' few times th' friggin' spirits of th' dead can corporalize 'n mingle with th' livin'. As it 'tis, it's damn near Ash Wednesday. I know we dead men ain't supposed to be tellin' tales, but I was ne'er one for th' rules. So take some advice from one who knows, eh? Get th' hell outta town while yer able. Fuck gettin' yer money from Pangloss. Just get on th' next bleedin' bus outta town and don't look back! Fergit y' ever laid eyes on her!" "Who - ?"
"Who th' bloody fuck y'think I mean? Sonja soddin' Blue! The Bloofer Lady herself! She's death, boyo! Death on two legs! Pure 'n simple. Not that she can help it, mind you. It's just her way. But knowin' that won't help you none when the time comes. An' it will. Look, mate - I was a real pisser when I was like you. Alive, that is. Bein' dead's changed how I see things. It innit pretty, lookin' back an' seein' meself for th' bastard I was. But it ain't bad, really. Actually, I prefer it to how things was when I was flesh 'n' blood. So mebbe how she did me weren't so bad. Mebbe." Palmer's stomach knotted tighter. "Are you saying she - " "Snuffed me? Aye, that she did. Ain't you th' bright student? She killed me, awright. Just like she did th' lads with th' blue hair. She was feelin' her oats that night. Not that I should blame her for it - but I still do. I guess I haven't been knackered long enough t' forgive her fer that. But I don't hate th' lass, if that's what yer gettin' at. Like I said, bein' dead changed how I look at things. I used t' think I hated her, back when I was alive. Now I see that I loved her, that was me problem. Me! Lovin' someone! It scared me so bad I got to hatin' her fer it. That's why I did her th' way I did. That's why she did me th' way she did. Love. Funny how death makes things so much clearer, innit?"
"Then why are you warning me, if you're so ambivalent?" Palmer's fear had abated in the face of this mundane, chain-smoking specter. He was starting to feel more aggravated than frightened.
"Shall we say you 'n me, we're kindred spirits?" Chaz's smirk widened. "That bullet did more'n punch a hole in yer skin, ducks. It woke up somethin'. Jump-started it, as it were. Yer what they call a 'sensitive.' How else y'fancy ol' Pangloss found you, eh? You might have been unconscious th' whole time you was in hospital, but part of you was broadcastin' like a bloody shortwave radio! They like usin' sensitives like you - an' me. We make handy servants, don't you know? So far you've only had a taste of what it's like - 'avin' th' world turn itself inside out like a bloomin' magician's sack, an' you bein' th' only one noticin'. But get used t' it, mate. Yer'll ne'er get t' like it, but yer'll get used t'it, if it don't drive you mad first. Like it did me mum. An' yer Uncle Willy." "Wait a second! What do you mean? "
"Sorry, luv. Seems me time's run out." The bell in the basilica's tower rang, marking the transition from excess to penance. Chaz grinned as he stepped into the street.
"What do you mean? Who are they?" Second stroke. Third stroke.
The ghost laughed and shook his insubstantial head. "Yer not goin' t' leave it be, are you? Yer in love with her already! You don't even know it, yet, but I can see it in th' folds of yer brain, mate!" Fourth stroke. Fifth stroke. "Why are you telling me these things? Why?"
"Because y'put flowers on me grave, that's why! Th' dead are a sentimental lot." Sixth stroke. Seventh stroke.
Halfway up the block uniformed policemen appeared astride horses, riding four abreast, bullhorns held in their hands. Behind them Palmer glimpsed the huge street-sweeping machines, brushes spinning in anticipation of flushing the gutters clean of accumulated filth, human and otherwise. Eighth stroke. Ninth stroke.
Chaz shimmered with every toll of the bell, like a reflection in a bestirred pool. Palmer tried to push past the throng of revelers, desperate to win one last answer from the smiling ghost.
"Mardi Gras is over! Everyone go home!" bellowed the police as they moved forward, forcing the people milling in the street either onto the sidewalks or into the bars. "Mardi Gras is over! Everyone go home!"
The sanitation trucks blasted their horns to punctuate the mounted officers' commandment.
Tenth stroke. Eleventh stroke.
A huge, heavy hand closed on Palmer's shoulder, pinning him so he could not move. He looked up and stared into the brutish features of the man he'd seen skulking in Pangloss's shrubbery. "Renfield say come now." "Mardi Gras is over!"
Twelfth stroke. Midnight arrived, ushering in Lent.
Chaz wavered like a hologram projected onto smoke. Palmer watched as one of New Orleans' finest rode through the dead man. He expected the horse, at least, to react to the ghost, but all it did was flare its nostrils, toss its mane and leave a pile of dung in its wake.
"Renfield say you come now!"
The gorilla tightened his grip on Palmer, causing him to cry out in pain.
This made the gorilla smile, something Palmer definitely wished he hadn't seen.
Palmer had a funny feeling he was soon going to find out exactly who "they" were.