John Miller - Upside Down

Taking a deep breath, she put the buzzing contraption under her hair at the base of her skull and slowly brought it straight up, stopping at the crown. Circling her head, Faith Ann repeated the upward strokes until only the hair on the top of her head was still long. Gathering the remaining hair together, and twisting it so she could hold it up, she was pleased that the plastic gap in the blades had left her hair a uniform one half of an inch on the sides and in the back. With only a vague idea of what a boy's haircut should look like, she set the clippers aside, got the pair of scissors from the dog-grooming box, and started cutting her way through the rope of red hair where it entered her fist.

After a few minutes hard at work with the scissors, Faith Ann figured she'd best stop where she was. Carefully she gathered up all the long strands of hair she could find in the sink, left on the towel and from the floor, and put them in the toilet. It took two flushes to clear the bowl. Turning on the tap, she carefully washed the shorter bits of hair down the sink.

As Faith Ann studied herself in the mirror, she fought back tears as she imagined how horrified her mother would be at the sight of her daughter looking like a baby chicken.

Marta and Arturo sat in her Lincoln Town Car, parked across the street from the Porter house. Marta was certain the Porter girl would return home, because she, like other normal children, lacked the skills to survive outside what was familiar to her. The kid had run straight to her comfort zone immediately after leaving her mother's office. Maybe she had seen the cops waiting here, but if she had, where would she have gone? Best the cops could discover, Faith Ann Porter didn't have any close friends.

There was no choice but to sit and wait like hunters in a blind. If the cops spotted the girl, they'd call the two detectives downtown and they'd call Arturo and Marta. Problem was that there was no obvious trail to follow, no list of friends and associates. Marta glanced at the sleeping Arturo and could see the golden crucifix through his open shirt.

Marta thought religion was candy for superstitious idiots. She couldn't stand nuns or priests, crucifixes, statues, or paintings of the Blessed Mother or of Jesus with His cut-out heart suspended in front of His chest. The only thing the Catholic Church had ever done for Marta was to use an ancient padlock on their poorbox. Marta had learned to pick it by trial and error-finally succeeding when she bent an ice pick tip between two bricks and used it like a key.

As a child, Marta had lived by her wits and her ability to successfully read people and situations. She had learned her lessons by trial and error, and by observation. She'd watched foraging raccoons and seen how they worked tirelessly to figure out how to get to sources of food that people had done their best to keep from them. Because the raccoons didn't understand people and were greedy, the animals left a big mess, so the people they'd outsmarted always figured out a new way to thwart further looting. For several years she had robbed the poorbox of its offerings, never taking more than a small percentage at a time. Picking that first padlock took the patience and ingenuity of a raccoon. Like the animals, Marta knew if she were found out the priests would change the lock to thwart her.

Marta had learned that often when a job went this wrong, somebody got caught, and then that somebody talked. Once people like Jerry Bennett started trying to save their own skins, they'd throw out every name they could remember to the cops.

Normally, as a matter of self-preservation, she would have already killed Bennett for his stupidity. Unfortunately, since this involved Arturo, she had amended her normal rules. She had to get the tape, which tied Arturo into this. And she would make sure there was no evidence in Bennett's possession that connected Arturo to any other wet work. Finding that out would only require having Mr. Bennett alone for a short time.

She had two methods of getting information out of a man. One was by using her sex. The other way, which involved her other skills, was infinitely faster and far more palatable.

Sean had made Winter's travel arrangements, so even though the plane was only half filled with passengers he flew first class. By the same token, he would be staying at a luxurious hotel. Left to his own devices, he would have flown coach and stayed at the first motel he saw. The truth of it was that nothing mattered but the task awaiting him in New Orleans. It was a bonus that he knew the city, had once been a resident, so he wouldn't need maps.

Winter spent the entire flight deep in black-cloud thought. He was in a dangerous mental place, suppressing an anger as intense as any he had ever felt. The closer the jet drew to New Orleans, the farther it was from his family and the blacker his thoughts became. How had this horror happened? Who was responsible? How would he deal with whoever was responsible when he got to them? Could he find Faith Ann?

Never had his job felt like a more futile enterprise. No matter how hard lawmen worked, seriously twisted people popped up faster than they could be chased down and dealt with. He was happy to let those who still believed they could win a lasting victory have it all to themselves. He would be content to simply protect his own.

At the end of his flight, Winter rented a gray sedan. After leaving the interstate and taking a couple of wrong turns because his mind was running in ten directions at once, he found a place to park on Tulane Avenue, a block from the hospital.

Charity Hospital was a concrete building constructed by the WPA during the Depression. The state-supported hospital owed its founding to infamous Governor Huey P. Long, whose philosophy, before his assassination in 1936, had been to give the common man what the rich had always enjoyed-or more likely just to convince the poor guys that such was his intention.

As he entered the building, Winter immediately spotted Nicky Green standing alone reading a folded newspaper. The private detective was easy to spot, since he was bald and wore a dark red leisure suit adorned with yellow piping and a cowboy hat. A walking cane leaned against his leg, a toothpick was clenched between his front teeth. Green glanced up, saw Winter, and folded the newspaper.

“Nicky?”

“You must be Winter.”

“I am. It's a pleasure to meet you.” Winter offered his hand and forced himself to smile.

Green gripped Winter's hand and shook it vigorously. “I been waiting for you to show up. The sons of bitches won't tell me what color the sky is.”

“And Millie?”

“Morgue. Kimberly Porter's there too. Thank God Millie didn't suffer. The initial impact killed her. I expect they'd want to be buried in Texas with their people, but I don't reckon it's up to me to make a decision like that. I know there are cousins all over Texas, but I don't know any of them by name. I reckon somebody will have to look through the Porter house or something to find names.”

Winter didn't know of any close relatives of either Hank or Millie, aside from Kimberly and Faith Ann. “I expect we can wait to see what Hank wants to do,” he replied.

“I sure hope you're right. I should have told them I was related, but I didn't.”

“Let me see what I can do about getting us in,” Winter said. He went to the kiosk and gave the woman the administrator's name along with his own. She handed him a laminated red pass and told him that a doctor would meet him just outside the intensive care unit.

“I'll need one for Mr. Green,” he told her. The receptionist eyed Nicky suspiciously, called someone, and gave Winter a normal white visitor's badge from a box on the desk for Nicky. Winter and Nicky walked to the elevator bank.