Джо Горес - Dead Man

Another day to kill. He rode a streetcar named Desire out to the end of the line, rode it back in again, spent a half hour admiring the stations of the cross and the stained glass at St. Louis Cathedral, sat in a pew, feet on the kneeler... his eyelids drooped...

The black hole between Marie’s breasts blossomed red. Her eyes were wild, her hair was wild, from her mouth, strained impossibly wide, came a hoarse masculine SCREAM, quickly muffled

Dain jerked erect, mouth-breathing, looked around quickly. A nun in a habit was staring at him from across the aisle. A little child was crying, pointing a finger. He almost fled.

At the oyster bar of Houlihan’s, he watched a man commit murder on fresh dripping bivalves with great skill and a sharp knife. Couldn’t eat, found a karate dojo, exhausted himself with two hours of the basic “forms” of his second-degree black belt — two taikyoku drills, five pinans, and the other “open hand” drills — saifa, kanku, tensho and sanchin.

Back at his room he lay nude on the bed, tried to justify his life. Whatever he did was meaningless. Lassitude gripped him. He was surprised to realize that he hoped Broussard would outwit him, but he knew she wouldn’t. He was too good at the precise geometry of manhunting, she was a prey animal that

Between Marie’s beautiful breasts the black hole blossomed red. Her eyes were wild, her hair was wild

Dain woke with a yell, bathed in sweat. He was falling to pieces. He took another shower, when he emerged, wet hair slicked back, towel around his waist, another night had fallen and the old-fashioned streetlights glowed from their cast-iron poles. Music drifted up from Bourbon Street to his small outside balcony, along with the clip-clop of a horse-drawn buggy in Rue Chartres. He leaned on the filigreed railing. Jasmine and mock orange filled the air with heavy fragrance.

He had to find her soon or abandon the search.

Midnight again. Dain leaned in the doorway of yet another exotic dance club on one of the side streets of the Quarter — for the moment he had exhausted Bourbon Street. How many had he hit tonight, how many more would he have to hit before he scored or admitted that his logic had been faulty — or was driven away by his now incessant nightmares?

Another hour, another joint. Different faces, different voices, different music, all the same. The gyrating woman was past her prime, like pheasant hung so long that the skin had a greenish tinge and when you shook it all the feathers fell out. When he left the mostly empty joint, he set his untouched beer on an empty table in passing. Somebody was gulping it down from the bottle before he cleared the doorway.

Directly across the narrow street was something called Carnal Knowledge. For some reason it was jumping, blaring, spilling customers out the open doors. Raucous rebel yells, groans, screamed sexual obscenities. If the two scantily clad women sprawled spread-legged in chairs outside the joint were typical, its success was undeserved.

Dain slid inside. Very good music pounded a wicked beat for the topless girl writhing onstage. Being tall, he could just see her over the silhouetted heads of shouting, arm-waving tourists and drunks. The dancer was Vangie Broussard.

She was magnificent, of body, face, movement. He felt an irrational flash of sympathy for this bright wood duck among the mud hens as he turned away, edged back out of the crowd again. He felt an equally irrational flash of caution. Why? There was no reason anybody should be tailing him. But what reason had there been for that extra bug on Farnsworth’s phone?

One of the resting dancers blocked his way with a meaty white thigh. “Don’t like girls, baby? That one’s hot stuff.”

Dain patted her cheek. “So are you, darlin’, so are you.”

He went on, feeling the little momentary fierce joy he’d always felt the rare times he’d beaten Marie at chess. Nothing to do with winning: rather with the implacable beauty of

Marie, her eyes wild, her hair wild as her feet came up off the floor with the force of her death

Dain growled aloud, thrust the image away. No, goddammit, don’t rob yourself of this triumph, minuscule though it might be. Make it pay off. Then maybe Marie could stop haunting his dreaming and — now — even his waking hours.

Deserted 2:00 A.M. street, the nightlife behind him, its raucous sounds dim on the air. He’d come this way deliberately, still wary, the same wariness that will make a leopard lay up on its own backtrail to ambush the white hunter he doesn’t even know is tracking him.

Okay, deserted enough here. Dain took out the little pocket guide to the French Quarter he had gotten at the hotel desk, used it as an excuse to stop abruptly and gawp up at the next pair of street signs. Yes! An echo of sound scraped from the pavement — only it was not an echo because he had stopped moving. He squinted up at the signs, down at the guide, nodded and turned down Ursulines.

When he was out of sight, a tall spare man in excellent condition, with the coloring and weathered look of the outdoors, cut across Burgundy at an angle toward the corner where Dain had disappeared. His shock of sandy hair had natural curl and was shot with gray, he wore glasses with a half-moon of bifocal on the lower curve of lens. Like Dain, he was sauntering.

Moving through the bright lights and thinning crowds, Dain got fragmentary images of the tall spare weathered figure before it could slip off the edges of reflecting store windows. So, he’d been picked up on the street sometime during the evening. Dain felt totally alive for the first time since his snake dance in the desert. Hunting, he had become prey. Wonderful!

He turned off on Conti, went in through the archway to the hotel courtyard, in the tiny taproom was served by a black-haired girl in leather shorts and halter who dispensed drinks with a smile and a lot of cleavage. Leather-bound book clipped under one arm, he crossed the courtyard to a small round white wrought-iron table near the splashing fountain. At this time of the morning, he was the only person in the court. A gecko hung in sideways patience against the curved side of the fountain.

He set down the icy opened imported beer on the table, seated himself with his glass of ice water, the pastel lights from the fountain playing across his face. A chair scraped being drawn out Dain spoke without glancing over.

“Pauli Girl. I took the chance you were a beer drinker.”

The stalker tipped the glass to pour beer without getting too much of a head. His hands were big, strong, angular. He had a soft inviting Louisiana accent.

“You make me feel lacking in southern hospitality, Mr. Dain, buying for me in my own town.”

Dain looked at him. He was a big man, big as Dain but without Dain’s weight of muscle. His hard-bitten face had an inner calm behind the hardness. Dain matched his courtly tone.

“You have the advantage of me, sir.”

“Keith Inverness.”

Neither man offered to shake hands. There was not so much antagonism as wariness between them, mutual recognition by hunting animals whose territories happened to overlap.

“You still have the advantage of me, sir.”

“Because I know who you are? A man in my line of work hears things from time to time, Mr. Dain.”

“Your line of work.” Dain made it a statement, not a question. Inverness smiled slightly.

“I guess you could say it’s the same line of work as yours — except mine has a pension at the end of it.”

Dain said pleasantly, “What if I told you that my line of work is rare books?”

“Like this?”

Unexpectedly, Inverness reached across the table to snatch up Dain’s leather-bound volume. His big hands were remarkably quick. He riffled through it, allowed himself a small smile at its harmlessness as he laid it on the table.