Джо Горес - Dead Man

“The things people keep in cutout books might surprise you, Mr. Dain.”

“I doubt that.”

With what seemed like genuine regret, but without any sudden moves, Inverness took a badge in a leather case from his pocket and laid it on the table.

“I guess you’d better make that Lieutenant of Detectives Inverness, Mr. Dain.” He drank beer, wiped his lips almost daintily with one of the paper napkins on the table. “Like you, I track people down. But inside the law.”

“That’s okay with me,” said Dain.

“I’m also New Orleans police liaison with the Louisiana State Commission on Organized Crime.” Dain was silent. “We’d kind of like to know who you’re looking for in New Orleans, and for whom.”

“Not who — what,” said Dain, suddenly misty-eyed. “And for me. New Orleans jazz. Dixieland. Storyville. The heart — the soul — of the blues. My heart and soul are transported back to those halcyon days when the Nigras all had rhythm and clapped hands and knew their place...”

Inverness nodded, unhurriedly stood and put his badge away. He said in an almost apologetic voice, “You’re too good at finding people, for all the wrong people. You couldn’t expect to remain anonymous forever. Enjoy your stay in New Orleans.”

Dain sat unmoving, watching Inverness depart, his left thumb scraping idly down through the label of the empty beer bottle to tear it in half. The dancing colored water jet beyond his head made his profile very sharp and clear.

To hell with it. He already knew where Vangie worked; just tag her to find out where she lived, make sure she was still with Zimmer, give Maxton the information, fade out...

But what would happen to Vangie then?

Goddammit, why should he care what happened to her?

Also, someone with a lot of clout had gotten the Louisiana Organized Crime Commission to send around a very good man to tell Dain, in essence, to get out of town. It couldn’t be Maxton, checking up on him. Maxton didn’t know he was here...

Wait a minute. Could Maxton be under investigation? Couldn’t that explain Inverness? Organized-crime people in Chicago had Maxton under surveillance, they identified Dain, tagged him to New Orleans, notified Inverness...

That didn’t work. Inverness would have known Dain had been hired by Maxton, wouldn’t have asked. All right, what if Dain’s presence was muddying the water so his superiors told Inverness to get Dain out of the picture...

But then Inverness would have known where he was staying, would have tagged him at his hotel rather than on the street...

No. Somebody knew he was in New Orleans, knew what he looked like or had pictures to send — Inverness had been able to pick him up cold — but was unable to tell Inverness where he was staying. Jesus, could he actually somehow have crossed the tracks of the killers who

Marie was smashed back and up, her mouth strained impossibly wide ... Albie’s legs were blasted back down the hall out of sight ...

The bottle in Dain’s hand exploded. He looked at it in surprise, opened his fingers slowly. It was shattered where he had been gripping it, the bottom and neck were intact. The glass had not cut his callused palm. He shook his head to rid it of the shards.

Nonsense. But it had decided him. He checked his watch. Three-thirty A.M. He would keep on with Maxton’s investigation, because something connected with it had stirred something up. So just keep going until he found out what and who and why. He’d checked for tails leaving the hotel before, had gotten careless through the long night, but he’d had that flash of apprehension and so had shown no reaction at all when he’d spotted Vangie.

So Inverness wouldn’t be expecting him to go back out tonight, thus wouldn’t still be tailing him.

Carnal Knowledge was dark and silent, closed. From down the street came the rattle-clash of garbage pails being put out. The door opened and Vangie and the dancer who had stopped Dain earlier that night emerged.

She said wearily to Vangie, “Another buck, another fuck. Wanna go get coffee, kiddo, or—”

“Home and to bed,” said Vangie. “See you tonight, Noreen.”

Vangie turned and started up the street, her heels loud on the sidewalk. Down the block ahead of her, on the other side of the street, a large muscular drunk shambled from a recessed storefront and staggered in the direction she was going with a too-much-to-drink pace unremarkable in the Vieux Carré at four in the morning.

It was midafternoon and the pitiless New Orleans sun struck blinding light from the chrome of passing cars, baked the sidewalks, softened the blacktop: a sweltering, shirtsleeves kind of day. A clerk dozed behind the check-in desk at the Delta Hotel. The huge slow floor fan stirred around the heat. The same five old codgers in shirt sleeves were again — or still — sitting around with their faces and bodies slack. A sixth was sprawled with a newspaper over his face, gently snoring.

Across from the dozing clerk the elevator doors opened. Vangie came out wearing a light summer dress that showed little but suggested much, subtly touching and caressing her body as she crossed the lobby with her long dancer’s stride. Half a minute after she had gone out into the street, the old codger under the newspaper harrumphed and hawked and sat up, crumpling the paper aside. He stood up, rubbing his eyes, and shambled out apparently still unsteady from his nap.

Vangie went into the cathedral where Dain had wakened screaming in his pew the day before. The old man waited outside on a bench in Jackson Square. Vangie emerged from the cathedral, bought a sandwich and a soft drink from one of the portable wheeled po’boy stands set up to catch the tourist trade. She went down St. Anne past the street artists and hawkers, bought two pralines in opaque paper slips from the store on the corner, crossed Decatur with the light, heading for the waterfront.

On the far side of the walkway across the railroad tracks, Vangie went down rough wooden steps to the brown Mississippi lapping over tumbled black rocks. She sat two steps up from the water, put her pralines and soft drink down beside her, in no hurry to eat. Instead, she watched the river traffic for nearly ten minutes, her unwrapped sandwich open on its waxed paper in her lap. At this hour she was alone on the steps.

When she finally took a big bite of po’boy, chewing without inhibition, a shadow fell across her. She didn’t look up, not even when a man sat down on the same step five feet away.

“Think those prayers in the cathedral are going to do the trick?” he asked in a conversational tone.

She looked over at him hard with cold eyes, but he was not looking at her, was looking instead at a tow of barges being shoved up-current by a river steamer. He looked almost sad. Vangie was suddenly strident around her mouthful of sandwich.

“Blow it out your flutter-valve, Jack.”

A big black Labrador that had been lapping water and scaring the fingerling rock bass around the half-submerged stones came up to thrust his dripping muzzle into Dain’s hand. Dain fondled him behind the ears, still not looking at Vangie.

“Dain. Edgar Dain.” He reached over, broke an edge off one of Vangie’s pralines, told the dog, “No teeth!” as a warning against snapping at it, then offered the morsel to him. The dog wolfed it, ecstatic. Dain said, “Maxton sent me to find you. I’ve found you.”

The girl gradually stopped chewing, like an engine running down. Suddenly the rich mix of spicy meats and cheeses was cardboard in her mouth. She looked surreptitiously about, fearful of seeing bulky men in Chicago overcoats coming down the steps after her. No one was close to them, no one at all.