Ace Atkins - New Orleans Noir - The Classics

There was a man standing on the balcony, and the shutters passed right through him.

Francis Ferdinand scowled in annoyance. The first flesh-and-blood creature he’d met since his inglorious exit from this plane, and of course the fellow had to be stinking drunk.

Perhaps his drunkenness would make Francis Ferdinand’s job easier. Who could know? When one had to put himself together from whatever stray wisps of ectoplasm he could snatch out of the ether, it became increasingly difficult to fathom the minds of living men and women.

Joseph D’Antonio had a shock of black hair streaked with silver and a pale complexion that had gone florid from the wine. His dark eyes were comically wide, seeming to start from their sockets. “Hell, man, you’re a ghost ! You’re a goddamned ghost , ain’tcha?”

English had never been one of his better languages, but Francis Ferdinand was able to understand D’Antonio perfectly. Even the drunken slur and the slight accent did not hinder him. He winced at the term. “A wraith , sir, if you please.”

D’Antonio waved a dismissive hand. The resulting current of air nearly wafted the Archduke off the balcony. “Wraith, ghost, whatever. S’all the same to me. Means I’ll be goin’ headfirst offa that balcony if I don’t get to bed soon. By accident... or on purpose? I dunno...”

Francis Ferdinand realized he would have to speak his piece at once, before the man slipped into maudlin incoherence. “Mr. D’Antonio, I do not come to you entirely by choice. You might say I have been dispatched. I died in the service of my country. I saw my beloved wife die, and pass into the Beyond. Yet I remain trapped in a sort of half-life. To follow her, I must do one more thing, and I must request your help.”

Francis Ferdinand paused, but D’Antonio remained silent. His eyes were alert, his aspect somewhat more sober than before.

“I must kill a man,” the Archduke said at last.

D’Antonio’s face twitched. Then he burst into sudden laughter. “That’s a good one! You gotta kill somebody, but you can’t, ’cause you’re a goddamn ghost!”

“Please, sir, I am a wraith ! There are class structures involved here!”

“Sure. Whatever. Well, sorry, Duke. I handed over my gun when I left the force. Can’t help you.”

“You addressed me as Duke just now, Mr. D’Antonio.”

“Yeah, so? You’re the Archduke, ain’tcha? The one who got shot at the beginning of the war?”

Francis Ferdinand was stunned. He had expected to have to explain everything to the man: his own useless assassination; the ensuing bedlam into which Europe had tumbled, country after country; the dubious relevance of these events to others in New Orleans. He was glad to discover that, at least in one respect, he had underestimated D’Antonio.

“Yeah, I know who you are. I might look like an ignorant wop, but I read the papers. Besides, there’s a big old bullet hole in your neck.”

Startled, the Archduke quickly patched the wound.

“Then, sir, that is one less thing I must explain to you. You have undoubtedly heard that I was murdered by Serbs. This is the first lie. I was murdered by Sicilians.”

“But the men they caught—”

“Were Serbs, yes. They were also dupes. The plot was set in motion by your countrymen; specifically, by a man called Cagliostro. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.”

“Some kind of magician?”

“A mage, yes. Also a doctor, a swindler, a forger, and a murderer. He is more than a century old, yet retains the appearance of a man of thirty. A wicked, dangerous man.

“He was born Giuseppe Balsamo in Palermo, 1743. By the time he began his scourge of Europe, he had dubbed himself Cagliostro, an old family name. He traveled the continent selling charms, potions, elixirs of youth. Some of these may have been genuine, as he himself ceased to age at this time.

“He also became a Freemason. Are you familiar with them as well?”

“Not particularly.”

“They are a group of powerful mages hell-bent on controlling the world. They erect heathen temples in which they worship themselves and their accomplishments. Cagliostro formed his own ‘Egyptian Order’ and claimed to be thousands of years old already, reminiscing about his dalliances with Christ and various Pharaohs. It was power he sought, of course, though he claimed to work only for the ‘Brotherhood of Man.’

“At the peak of his European success, he became entangled in the famous scandal of Marie Antoinette’s diamond necklace. It nearly brought him down. He was locked in the Bastille, then forced to leave Paris in disgrace. He wandered back through the European cities that had once welcomed him, finding scant comfort. It has been rumored that he died in a dungeon in Rome, imprisoned for practices offensive to the Christian church.

“This is not so. His Masonic ‘brothers’ failed him for a time, but ultimately they removed him from the dungeon, whisked him out from under the noses of the French revolutionary armies who wished to make him a hero, and smuggled him off to Egypt.

“The practices he perfected there are unspeakable.

“Fifty years later, still appearing a young and vital man, he returned to Italy. He spent the next half-century assembling a new ‘Egyptian Order’ of the most brilliant men he could find. With a select few, he shared his elixirs.

“Just after the turn of the century, he met a young journalist named Benito Mussolini, who called himself an ‘apostle of violence’ but had no direction. Cagliostro has guided Mussolini’s career since then. In 1915, Mussolini’s newspaper helped urge Italy into war.”

D’Antonio started violently. “Aw, come on! You’re not gonna tell me these Egyptian-Dago-Freemasons started the war.”

“Sir, that is exactly what I am going to tell you. They also ordered my wife’s death, and my own, and that of my empire.”

“Why in hell would they do that?”

“I cannot tell you. They are evil men. My uncle, the Emperor Francis Joseph, discovered all this inadvertently. He was a cowardly old fool who would have been afraid to tell anyone. Nevertheless, they hounded him into virtual retirement, where he died.”

“And told you all this?”

“He had no one else to talk to. Nor did I.”

“Where’s your wife?”

“Sophie was not required to linger here. We were.”

“Why?”

“I cannot tell you.”

“You keep saying that. Does it mean you don’t know, or you aren’t allowed to tell me?”

Francis Ferdinand paused. After a moment, D’Antonio nodded. “I see how it is. So I’m supposed to dance for you like Mussolini does for Cagliostro?”

The Archduke did not understand the question. He waited to see if D’Antonio would rephrase it, but the man remained silent. Finally Francis Ferdinand said, “Cagliostro still controls Mussolini, and means to shape him into the most vicious ruler Europe has ever known. But Cagliostro is no longer in Italy. He is here in New Orleans.”

“Oh-ho. And you want me to kill him for you, is that it?”

“Yes, but I haven’t finished. Cagliostro is in New Orleans — but we don’t know who he is .”

“ We ? Who’s we ?”

“Myself, my uncle.”

“No one else?”

“No one else you would care to know about, sir.”

D’Antonio sagged in his chair. “Yeah, well, forget it. I’m not killin’ anybody. Find some other poor dupe.”

“Are you certain, Mr. D’Antonio?”

“Very certain.”

“Very well.” Francis Ferdinand drifted backward through the balcony railing and vanished in midair.

“Wait!” D’Antonio was halfway out of his chair by the time he realized the wraith was gone. He sank back, his brain seasick in his skull from all the talk of mages and murders, elixirs and dungeons, and the famous scandal of Marie Antoinette’s diamond necklace — whatever the hell that was.