Chapter
47
* * *
The next morning I awoke with an ache in my arms from toting the Calico, exacerbated by the lingering pain of the gunshot wound inflicted in Haven. I could smell powder on my fingers, in my hair, and on my discarded clothes. The room stank like the scene of a gunfight, so I opened the window and let the hot New Orleans air slip heavily into the room like a clumsy burglar.
I checked on Louis and Angel. Louis’s hand had been expertly bound after the doctor picked the shards of bone from the wound and padded the knuckle. Louis barely opened his eyes as I exchanged a few quiet words with Angel at the door. I felt guilty for what had happened, although I knew that neither of them blamed me.
I sensed, too, that Angel was anxious now to return to New York. Joe Bones was dead, and the police and the feds were probably closing in on Edward Byron, despite Lionel Fontenot’s doubts. Besides, I didn’t believe that it would take long for Woolrich to connect us to what had happened to Joe Bones, especially if Louis was walking around with a bullet crease on his hand. I told Angel all of this and he agreed that they would leave as soon as I returned, so that Rachel would not be left alone. The whole case seemed to have ground to a kind of halt for me. Elsewhere, the feds and the Fontenots were hunting Edward Byron, a man who still seemed as distant from me as the last emperor of China.
I left a message for Morphy. I wanted to see what his people had on Byron; I wanted to add flesh to the figure. As things stood, he was as shorn of identity as the faceless figures of the slain that the feds believed he had left behind. The feds might well have been right. With the local police, they could conduct a better search than a bunch of visitors from New York with delusions of adequacy. I had hoped to work my way toward him from a different direction, but with the death of Joe Bones that path seemed to have come to an end in a tangle of dark undergrowth.
I took my phone and my book of Ralegh’s writings and headed for Mother’s on Poydras Street, where I drank too many cups of coffee and picked at some bacon and brown toast. When you reach one of life’s dead ends, Ralegh is good company. “Go soul … since I needs must die. And give the world the lie.” Ralegh knew enough to take a stoical attitude to adversity, although he didn’t know enough to avoid getting his head cut off.
Beside me, a man ate ham and eggs with the concentrated effort of a bad lover, yellow egg yolk tingeing his chin like sunlight reflected from a buttercup. Someone whistled a snatch of “What’s New?” then lost his thread in the complicated chord changes of the song. The air was filled with the buzz of late morning conversation, a radio station easing into neutral with a bland rock song and the low, aggravated hum of distant, slow–moving traffic. Outside, it was another humid New Orleans day, the kind of day that leads lovers to fight and makes children sullen and grim.
An hour passed. I rang the detective squad in St. Martin and was told that Morphy had taken a day’s leave to work on his house. I had nothing better to do now, so I paid my bill, put some gas in the car, and started out once again toward Baton Rouge. I found a Lafayette station playing some scratchy Cheese Read, followed by Buckwheat Zydeco and Clifton Chenier, an hour of classic Cajun and zydeco, as the DJ put it. I let it play until the city fell away and the sound and the landscape became one.
A sheet of plastic slapped dryly in the early afternoon wind as I pulled up outside Morphy’s place. He was replacing part of the exterior wall on the west side of the house, and the lines holding the plastic in place over the exposed joints sang as the wind tried to yank them from their moorings. It tugged at one of the windows, which had not been fastened properly, and made the screen door knock at its frame like a tired visitor.
I called his name but there was no reply. I walked to the rear of the house, where the back door stood open, held in place by a piece of brick. I called again but my voice seemed to echo emptily through the central hallway. The rooms on the ground level were all unoccupied and no sounds came from upstairs. I drew my gun and climbed the stairs, newly planed in preparation for treating. The bedrooms were empty and the bathroom door stood wide open, toiletries neatly arranged by the sink. I checked the gallery and then went back downstairs. As I turned back toward the rear door, cold metal touched the base of my neck.
“Drop it,” said a voice.
I let the gun slip from my fingers.
“Turn around. Slowly.”
The pressure was removed from my neck and I turned to find Morphy standing before me, a nail gun held inches from my face. He let out a deep breath of relief and lowered the gun.
“Shit, you scared the hell out of me,” he said.
I could feel my heart thumping wildly in my chest. “Thanks,” I said. “I really needed that kind of adrenaline rush on top of five cups of coffee.” I sat down heavily on the bottom step.
“You look terrible, mon. You up late last night?”
I looked up to see if there was an edge to what he had said, but he had turned his back.
“Kind of.”
“You hear the news? Joe Bones and his crew were taken out last night. Someone cut Joe up pretty bad before he died, too. Police weren’t even sure it was him until they checked the prints.” He walked down to the kitchen and came back with a beer for himself and a soda for me. I noticed it was caffeine–free cola. Under his arm he held a copy of the Times–Picayune.
“You see this today?”
I took the paper from him. It was folded into quarter size, the bottom of the front page facing up. The headline read:
POLICE HUNT SERIAL KILLER IN RITUAL MURDERS. The story below contained details of the deaths of Tante Marie Aguillard and Tee Jean that could only have come from the investigation team itself: the display of the bodies, the manner of their discovery, the nature of some of the wounds. It went on to speculate on a possible link between the discovery of Lutice Fontenot’s body and the death of a man in Bucktown, known to have links with a leading crime figure. Worst of all, it said that police were also investigating a connection to a similar pair of murders in New York earlier this year. Susan and Jennifer were not named, but it was clear that the writer — anonymous beneath a “Times–Picayune Journalists” byline — knew enough about the murders to be able to put a name on the victims.
I put the paper down wearily. “Did the leak come from your guys?” I asked.
“Could have done, but I don’t think so. The feds are blaming us: they’re all over us, accusing us of sabotaging the investigation.” He sipped his beer before saying what was on his mind.
“One or two people maybe felt that it could have been you who leaked the stuff.” He was obviously uncomfortable saying it, but he didn’t look away.
“I didn’t do it. If they’ve got as far as Jennifer and Susan, it won’t be too long before they connect me to what’s happening. The last thing I need is the press crawling all over me.”
He considered what I said, then nodded. “I guess you’re right.”
“You speak to the editor?”
“He was contacted at home when the first edition came out. We got freedom of the press and the protection of sources coming out our ass. We can’t force him to tell but” — he rubbed at the tendons on the back of his neck — “it’s unusual for something like this to happen. The papers are real careful about jeopardizing investigations. I think it had to come from someone close to all this.”
I thought about it. “If they felt okay about using this stuff, then it must be cast iron and the source impeccable,” I said. “It could be that the feds are playing their own game on this.” It seemed to reaffirm our belief that Woolrich and his team were holding back, not only from me but probably from the police investigating team as well.
“It wouldn’t be anything new,” said Morphy. “Feds wouldn’t tell us what day it is, they thought they could get away with it. You think they might have planted the story?”
“Somebody did.”
Morphy finished his beer and crushed the can beneath his foot. A small stain of beer spread itself on the bare wood. He picked up a tool belt from where it hung on a hat stand near the door and strapped it on.
“You need any help?”
He looked at me. “Can you carry planks without falling over?”
“No.”
“Then you’re perfect for the job. There’s a spare pair of work gloves in the kitchen.”
For the rest of the afternoon I worked with my hands, hoisting and carrying, hammering and sawing. We replaced most of the wood on the west side, a gentle breeze spraying sawdust and shavings around us as we worked. Later, Angie returned from a shopping trip to Baton Rouge, carrying groceries and boutique bags. While Morphy and I cleaned up, she grilled steaks with sweet potatoes, carrots, and Creole rice, and we ate them in the kitchen as the evening drew in and the wind wrapped the house in its arms.
Morphy walked me out to my car. As I put the key in the ignition, he leaned in the window and said softly: “Someone tried to get to Stacey Byron yesterday. Know anything about it?”
“Maybe.”
“You were there, weren’t you? You were there when they took Joe Bones?”
“You don’t want to know the answer to that,” I replied. “Just like I don’t want to know about Luther Bordelon.”
As I drove away, I could see him standing before his uncompleted house. Then he turned away and returned to his wife.
? ? ?
When I arrived back at the Flaisance, Angel and Louis were packed and ready to go. They wished me luck and told me that Rachel had gone to bed early. She had booked a flight for the next day. I decided not to disturb her and went to my own room. I don’t even remember falling asleep.
The luminous dial on my watch read 8:30 A.M. when the pounding came at my door. I had been in deep sleep and I pulled myself slowly into wakefulness like a diver struggling for the surface. I had got as far as the edge of the bed when the door exploded inward and there were lights shining in my face and strong arms hauled me to my feet and pushed me hard against the wall. A gun was held to my head as the main light came on in the room. I could see NOPD uniforms, a couple of plainclothesmen, and directly to my right, Morphy’s partner Toussaint. Around me, men were tearing the room apart.
And I knew then that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.
? ? ?
They allowed me to pull on a tracksuit and a pair of sneakers before cuffing me. I was marched through the hotel, past guests peering anxiously from their rooms, to a waiting police car. In a second car, her face pale and her hair matted from sleep, sat Rachel. I shrugged helplessly at her before we were driven in convoy from the Quarter.
I was questioned for three hours, then given a cup of coffee and grilled again for another hour. The room was small and brightly lit. It smelled of cigarette smoke and stale sweat. In one corner, where the plaster was broken and worn, I could see what looked like a bloodstain. Two detectives, Dale and Klein, did most of the questioning, Dale assuming the role of aggressive interrogator, threatening to dump me in the swamp with a bullet in the head for killing a Louisiana cop, Klein taking the part of the reasonable, sensitive man trying to protect me while ensuring that the truth was told. Even with other cops as the object of their attentions, the good cop — bad cop thing never went out of fashion.
I told them all I could, again and again and again. I told them of my visit to Morphy, the work on the house, the dinner, the departure, all of the reasons why my prints were all over the house. No, Morphy hadn’t given me the police files found in my room. No, I couldn’t say who did. No, only the night porter saw me re–enter the hotel, I didn’t speak to anyone else. No, I didn’t leave my room again that night. No, there was no one to confirm that fact. No. No. No. No. No.
Then Woolrich arrived and the merry–go–round started all over again. More questions, this time with the feds in attendance. And still, no one told me why I was there or what had happened to Morphy and his wife. In the end, Klein returned and told me I could go. Behind a slatted–rail divider, which separated the detective squadroom from the main corridor, Rachel sat with a mug of tea while the detectives around her studiously ignored her. In a cage ten feet behind her, a skinny white man with tattooed arms whispered obscenely to her.
Toussaint appeared. He was an overweight, balding man in his early fifties, with straggly white curls around his pate like the top of a hill erupting from out of a mist. He looked red eyed and nauseous and was as out of place here as I was.
A patrolman motioned to Rachel. “We’ll take you back to your hotel now, ma’am.” She stood. Behind her, the guy in the cage made sucking noises and grabbed his crotch in his hand.
“You okay?” I asked as she passed by.
She nodded dumbly, then: “Are you coming with me?”
Toussaint was at my left hand. “He’ll follow later,” he said. Rachel looked over her shoulder at me as the patrolman led her away. I gave her a smile and tried to make it look reassuring, but my heart wasn’t in it.
“Come on, I’ll drive you back and buy you a coffee on the way,” said Toussaint, and I followed him from the building.
We ended up in Mother’s, where less than twenty–four hours before I had sat waiting for Morphy’s call and where Toussaint would tell me how John Charles Morphy and his wife, Angela, had died.
Morphy had been due to work a special early duty that morning and Toussaint had dropped by to pick him up. They alternated pickup duties as it suited. That day, it happened to be Toussaint’s turn.
The screen door was closed, but the front door behind stood open. Toussaint called Morphy’s name, just as I had the afternoon before. He followed in my footsteps through the central hallway, checking the kitchen and the rooms to the right and left. He thought Morphy might have slept in, although he had never been late before, so he called up the stairs to the bedroom. There was no reply. He recalled that his stomach was already tightening as he worked his way up the stairs, calling Morphy’s name, then Angie’s, as he advanced. The door of their bedroom was partially open, but the angle obscured their bed.
He knocked once, then slowly opened the door. For a moment, the merest flashing splinter of a second, he thought he had disturbed their lovemaking, until the blood registered and he knew that this was a parody of all that love stood for, of all that it meant, and he wept then for his friend and his wife.
Even now, I seem to recall only snatches of what he said, but I can picture the bodies in my head. They were naked, facing each other on what had once been white sheets, their bodies locked together at the hips, their legs intertwined. From the waist, they leaned backward at arm’s length from each other. Both had been cut from neck to stomach. Their rib cages had been split and pulled back, and each had a hand buried in the breast of the other. As he neared, Toussaint saw that each was holding the other’s heart in the palm of a hand. Their heads hung back so that their hair almost touched their backs. Their eyes were gone, their faces removed, their mouths open in their final agony, their moment of death like an ecstasy. In them, love was reduced to an example to other lovers of the futility of love itself.
As Toussaint spoke, a wave of guilt swept over me and broke across my heart. I had brought this thing to their house. By helping me, Morphy and his wife had been marked for a terrible death, just as the Aguillards too seemed to have been tainted by their contact with me. I stank of mortality.
And in the midst of it all, some lines of verse seemed to float into my head and I could not recall how I had resurrected them, or who had given them to me in the first place. And it seemed to me that their source was important, although I could not tell why, except that in the lines there seemed to be echoes of what Toussaint had seen. But as I tried to remember a voice speaking them to me, it slipped away, and try as I might, I could not bring it back. Only the lines remained. Some metaphysical poet, I thought. Donne, perhaps. Yes, almost certainly Donne.
? ? ?
If th’unborne
Must learne, by my being cut up, and torne:
Kill, and dissect me, Love; for this
Torture against thine owne end is,
Rack’t carcasses make ill Anatomies.
? ? ?
Remedium amoris, wasn’t that the term? The torture and death of lovers as a remedy for love.
“He helped me,” I said. “I involved him in this.”
“He involved himself,” Toussaint said. “He wanted to do it. He wanted to bring this guy to an end.”
I held his gaze.
“For Luther Bordelon?”
Toussaint looked away. “What does it matter now?”
But I couldn’t explain that in Morphy I saw something of myself, that I had felt for his pain, that I wanted to believe he was better than me. I wanted to know.
“Garza called the Bordelon thing,” said Toussaint at last. “Garza killed him and then Morphy supplied the throwdown. That’s what he said. Morphy was young. Garza shouldn’t have put him in that situation, but he did, and Morphy’s been paying for it ever since.” And then he caught himself using the present tense and went silent.
Outside, people were living another day: working, touring, eating, flirting still continued despite all that had taken place, all that was happening. It seemed, somehow, that it should all have come to a halt, that the clocks should have been stopped and the mirrors covered, the doorbells silenced and the voices reduced to a respectful, hushed volume. Maybe if they had seen the pictures of Susan and Jennifer, of Tante Marie and Tee Jean, of Morphy and Angie, then they would have stopped and considered. And that was what the Traveling Man wanted: to provide, in the deaths of others, a reminder of the deaths of us all and the worthlessness of love and loyalty, of parenthood and friendship, of sex and need and joy, in the face of the emptiness to come.
As I stood to leave, something else came to me, something awful that I had almost forgotten, and I felt a deep, violent ache in my gut, which spread through my body until I was forced to lean against the wall, my hand scrabbling for purchase.
“Ah, God, she was pregnant.”
I looked at Toussaint and his eyes briefly fluttered closed.
“He knew, didn’t he?”
Toussaint said nothing, but there was despair in his eyes. I didn’t ask what the Traveling Man had done to the unborn child, but in that instant, I saw a terrible progression over the last months of my life. It seemed that I had moved from the death of my own child, my Jennifer, to the deaths of many children, the victims of Adelaide Modine and her partner, Hyams, and now, finally, to the deaths of all children. Everything this Traveling Man did signified something beyond itself: in the death of Morphy’s unborn child, I saw all hope for the future reduced to tattered flesh.
“I’m supposed to bring you back to your hotel,” said Toussaint at last. “The New Orleans PD will make sure you get on the evening flight back to New York.”
But I hardly heard him. All I could think was that the Traveling Man had been watching us all along and that his game was still going on around us. We were all participants, whether we wanted to be or not.
And I recalled something that a con man named Saul Mann had once told me back in Portland, something that seemed important to me yet I couldn’t recall why.
You can’t bluff someone who isn’t paying attention.