Hurrying through the big double-doors of the orphanage, the antiseptic smell of old mop water and lye filled Del with a stomach-turning sense of the place she had just called home. She couldn’t imagine how she had spent ten years of her life here. And she was determined to think about it as little as possible.
Josephine smiled as Del approached the desk. “You look cute, all dripping wet.”
Del wrinkled her mouth at the comment but presented it as a smile. Josephine always said odd things like that.
Waving absently at the reception desk, Del signaled to be signed in, knowing that Josephine would do it for her. There was really no need for her to sign in considering she had left only a month ago, but she didn’t want to irk the nuns. Josephine, also a member of the does-not-exist club, understood the need for compliance and wrote Del’s name.
Del entered a small waiting room where the round, flat face turned from the window and screamed her name.
“Deh Beh!” Jimmy said with hands on his hips, “you ‘ate!”
“What? Who says I’m late?” Del said with mock surprise.
Jimmy’s eyes narrowed to sharp slants as he smiled with the knowledge of being able to provide Del an answer. “Me Deh, Yimmy says you ‘ate.”
“Jimmy? Jimmy who?”
“Yimmy Wawoo,” he said thumbing his chest.
“Jimmy Lareaux? Oh, hmmm. I was looking for someone who has a birthday today. Who would that—”
“ME Deh! Yimmy Wawoo!” Jimmy said as his arms shot up in a victory pose.
“That’s right, Jimmy Lareaux. It is your birthday today isn’t it?
“Yeh, an you ‘ate!”
“Only a few minutes!”
Tapping his watch for emphasis Jimmy said, “Sic minunds ‘ate, Deh. Sic minunds.”
“I’m sorry about that Jimmy. With all this rain, the streets are a mess. I took a cab to get here as quick as I could.”
“Dah teets ah a mess? Why dah teets a mess?”
“I don’t know, I think a tree fell down.”
“A tee feh down? On you head?”
“No Jimmy,” she chuckled, “nothing fell on my head. Except all this rain.” She bent and shook her head sending water droplets showering over Jimmy.
“Bah! You a mess, Deh.” Jimmy said slapping the water from his face.
“Not today Jimmy,” Del said, giving him a wink. “Who’s ready for some cake?”
“Dis guy!” Jimmy said thumbing his chest.
Outside, the rain drizzled on: gutters overflowed, top-heavy trees leaned precariously, and somewhere, a bone, carried by a torrent of water, bumped quietly along a street and dropped into a drain.
Chapter 3
Frank Morgan pulled his 1953 Chevrolet Bel Air in front of his office at 10:00 a.m. The convertible top would have been down had it not been raining. The chill March air was a relief for a man of his girth, and Frank Morgan, Fat Frank to his friends, was known around town for driving with the top down in all sorts of weather.
The car was a gift to Frank from his late wife as an early retirement gift from the New Orleans police department, and as advertising for his new detective agency. After solving the Glapion murders in ‘53, he enjoyed a bit of celebrity and had been encouraged to go out on his own.
In reality, it was his wife’s way of getting him to slow down from the hectic schedule of police work—without saying so—in hopes that he wouldn’t have a heart attack at his desk. Little did she know, she was the one with the bum ticker.
Although the car was now ten years old, it still gleamed candy-apple red like it had just rolled off the showroom floor. He scraped, washed and polished it on a weekly basis from the detached garage in the back of his modest house.
Turning off the car, Frank sat watching the rain as he brushed cigar ashes from the plateau of his stomach. Seeing no delay in the monotony of drizzle, he stepped out, covered his head with the morning paper and trudged up the stairs to his second-story office.
The small nondescript office sat directly over a satellite office of the Times-Picayune newspaper, where several reporters worked. Over the years they had learned to keep tabs on Frank and his investigations, picking up crumbs of stories wherever they could. Often, they would share a drink or two at the Lamp and Lantern Bar near the corner of Bourbon and St. Phillips Street, pumping him for information.
The second-story office was a converted flat made of two rooms, a small bathroom and one door leading outside to a covered walkway that ran the length of the building. The other top office space had been vacant for years, so no one ever walked outside his office window which looked out onto the street below.
At one point he had a secretary, but now only had a cleaning lady come every other week. She would complain about the overflowing ashtray of cigar stubs and the stacks of old newspapers—which he called his research material—and warned that she would find him burned up or dead under a pile of papers one day. To this he would simply nod and say, “As long as I’m in heaven five minutes before da devil knows I’m dead!” And pull a long draw from his cigar.
Today, the phone was ringing as he stepped through the door. Tossing his hat and coat onto an old wingback—the only waiting chair he had in the front office—he shuffled his girth through the inner door to his stuffed office and grabbed the phone.
“Yeah?” he said.
“Frang? It’s Henri GeeOHM.”
Frank recognized the deep, slow voice immediately. Henri Guillaume had been a sergeant on the force before Frank retired. After Frank left, Henri quickly rose to captain. He smiled at the sound of the heavy French-Creole accent that sounded slightly Jamaican, as he pictured the six-foot-two black man in his mind. A heavy accent could be expected in the poorer wards or deep in the bayou, but Henri was from an educated family. He dressed for a higher class but spoke like the down-trodden; just enough to make Frank feel there was another side to Henri GeeOHM.
“Cap’n, what I do ya fer?”
Slow, rhythmic words unfurled. “Frang, leesen, I was wond’ren could you run a call fer me?”
“Talk about. Like a regular call? You outta desk jockeys?”
“Frang, it’s de’pouille—a mess! Da damn bones is floatin’ up ever’where and me men are scattered. But dis—”
“Bones? You got more?
“Yah, yah, not since da 1800s we see dis many. We think they’re old graves, but gotta run it, you know.”
“Yeah, of course.”
Frank remembered reading about a flood in the late 1800s that soaked the area for so long that bones from old grave sites started working their way up through the soft Louisiana soil. In a few cases, caskets—those unfortunate enough to be buried—popped straight up out of the ground due to the high-water table. Those were relocated to new burial vaults above ground, but there was a long-held belief that there were thousands of bodies buried in the soil that had nothing more than a layer of rock on them to weigh them down.
“So, it’s a bone run?” Frank asked.
“No Frang, dis a body. A fresh one. Sounds like a gator ‘tack.”
Louisianans were no strangers to alligator attacks, Frank knew this. Besides the slave and cotton trades, the alligator trade in Louisiana had been significant in the late 1800s. The state still boasted the largest alligator ever killed, coming in at an astonishing nineteen feet and nearly 2000 pounds. Even more astonishing was that the gator was killed in the early 1890s.
“Surprised der’s a body a’tall den.”
“Yah, I know. Missin’ da head I tink, but you run it, eh? It’s out da Jean Lafitte way.”
“Not exactly on my way home, Henri. That’s a bit of a—”
“Drive da damn car faster Frang, you go, eh?”
“Yeah das fine. Let me write it down. I’ll go da afternoon.”
“OK Frang, tanks.”
Frank leaned back in his desk chair, lit his cigar again and stared out the window. This wasn’t exactly detective work, but it gave him something to do.
Prolly some poor drunk step off his porch last night and got et.
Frank shook his head slowly.
Dat poor sumbitch musta stank to high heaven to not get et up all da way.
He brushed cigar ashes from his plateau-belly again and watched the rain drizzle on.
He thought about a headless body lying in the mud of the vast Jean Lafitte Preserve and wondered if he really wanted this case.
Somewhere, from an unopened window, a faint breeze chilled the back of his thick neck.
He thought the answer was No.
Chapter 4
Del looked at her watch and realized she was running late again. Jimmy had eaten more cake than he should have and had made a mess in the waiting room. He continued to thank Del for his drawing set while she quickly straightened the room.
“An den, I daw you a piduw of dah tee dat feh on you head.” Jimmy cracked a wide smile.
“That tree didn’t fall on my head, silly. But maybe it will fall on your head.” She rubbed his messy hair.
“No, doan say dat Deh!” Jimmy covered his head with both arms. “I doan wan bad deams!”
Del had known Jimmy most of his life from the orphanage, and had sat with him more times than she could remember after he’d wake from a bad dream. When they were younger—when boys and girls stayed in the same large room—she could easily soothe him back to sleep by humming some made-up tune. She told him if he closed his eyes and listened quietly, he could hear the angels singing far off in the distance.
Some days, the older kids teased her for singing retardo at night, which meant singing nonsense words, but she usually ignored them. But the day she came into the room and found several of them playing Ring Around Retardo, with Jimmy crying in the middle of the circle, she pushed one of them down and stood fiercely over the girl until the others left. This earned her several swats from Sister Eulalie, but the kids left Del and Jimmy alone after that.
“Bad dreams? Why would you have a dream about a tree?” she asked, looking at her watch again and cleaning the last speck from Jimmy’s face. “Oh, I’m really late. I gotta get going.”
“I had a bad deam ast night, Deh.”
Throwing on her damp jean jacket, she spied Sister Eulalie’s old wrinkled face through the waiting room doors and her stomach turned sour. Sister Eulalie’s eyes shone white against her black face, which looked like a deep shadow inside her white habit. She was watching Del with crossed arms.
“Jimmy, I really got to—I’m sorry, what did you say? A bad dream? About what?” She sent a tight-lipped smile toward Sister Eulalie through the window, who returned a cold and distant scowl.
“A bad deam Deh. About a… issad,” he said after some thought.
“A what?” she asked, hugging him quickly and wiping away the last icing smear from his cheek.
Del could understand Jimmy better than most, but had to think about the word he was trying to form.
“Ah… iiissaad,” he tried again. “He was bad, Deh.”
“A… wizard?” she said, hurrying for the door. “Did someone tell you a spooky story about a wizard? Don’t worry, if we see one, we’ll just throw some water on him and melt him!”
“No Deh, dat—”
She closed the door, saying, “Bye Jimmy Lareaux. Happy birthday!” from the lobby. She ran out the double doors.
“—da ickad itch got mettad!”
Watching Del run down the sidewalk, Jimmy pressed his face to the same cold window and absently said, “Doan et da issaad eat you head.”
Frank sat in the front window of the Treme Grill at the corner of St. Phillip and North Robertson streets, finishing his lunch of liver and onions.
This was his regular table when he came here, which was often since his wife passed, and the cook and two waitresses knew him by his first name.
The grill was just down from his office, and both sat on the edge of the Treme neighborhood, one of the poorer in the city. This meant the rent was right and the clients were plenty.
He brushed the breadcrumbs from his shirt, grabbed his cigar and dropped a five on the table. Stepping into the sodden air, he was surprised by a figure running out of the mist, nearly colliding with him.
“Whoa der!” he said, shielding his head with his newspaper.
“Frank! Oh my gosh, how nice to see you!” Del said.
“Del-bell! What you doin’ runnin’ dis rain honey? Not in trouble, are you?”
“No Frank, nothing of the sort,” Del said. “Heading to my new job and running late is all.”
“New job? You out da orphanage? Dat’s great news!”
“Believe it? I’m finally rid of Sister Eulalie!” she said.
“Ha! Dat ole—”
“Careful Frank, she got good ears!”
“Heh, yeah, I guess. But not good enough to hear you sneakin’ out all dos nights.”
The side of Del’s mouth curled slightly as she remembered the many nights she had slipped out of the orphanage and roamed the old city. It was a stupid thing to do, she knew—at least, that’s what people told her—but she had never been afraid, nor had any trouble. In fact, the night seemed to shield her in an odd way, embracing her presence and sucking her in, as if they both fed from each other.
“Yeah, thank you again for helping me smooth that over with the sister! Hey listen, I really gotta run, I’m just—”
“Where you goin’ honey?” He started walking. “My car’s right down der, I’ll give you a—”
“Down there? That’s where I’m going. I started at the Times-Picayune last week and they sent me to help the reporters. I want to be a reporter one day.”
“Talk about! Well let’s jabber outta da rain, but I don’t think Harry or Sal is in today. My office is right over them, and Friday is pretty quiet in that office. Thursday night bein’ poker night and all.”
As suspected, the newspaper office was locked tight. Frank invited Del up to his office to dry off and sat down heavily in the protesting office chair.
“When you get dried up, I’ll run you home. Infernal rain ain’t never gonna stop I ‘spec. Anyway, I got a call I gotta run, so I’m headin’ out any—”
“What kinda call? A crime scene call? Can I go with you?” she asked.
“Oh, I don’t know honey, it’s kinda out der. And I don’t know if a young girl like you should be seein’ such things as—”
“Come on Frank, please! What better way to learn the newspaper business but to ride along on a real call? I’ll write up whatever you find and break my first scoop!”
“Well, I tink dis’ll be a case ah accidental death, but death it will be. You sure ‘bout dis?”
“Absolutely! No turning back.”
Frank frowned slightly at the odd choice of words, but dismissed it as a cold draft raised goose bumps on his neck. He always ran on the warm side, and didn’t remember his office being drafty before. He looked at the dark gray sky outside and wondered briefly how long the storm would last.
“Frank?”
Looking back at Del’s expectant face, he was surprised by a strange color reflection in her eyes—mottled dark gray with black flecks. He blinked and it was gone.
Must have reflected through the window, he thought. “Well… OK den, let’s go.”
Chapter 5
Thirty minutes later Del saw an imposing sight rise in front of them as Frank pulled off Barataria Boulevard onto a dirt road and headed southwest into the Jean Lafitte Preserves.
She had made a few trips out of the city in the past, and knew that a short drive in any direction would lead a person to some form of water: Lake Pontchartrain to the North; Lake Borgne to the East which opened to a Sound then the Gulf; the Mississippi river snaking its way from the West and running south of the city. Any southerly drive led to more water: marsh, lake or swamp.
The sight in front of them cast a deep pall over an already gloomy day. Although the Jean Lafitte Preserve was officially established as an historic park and
preserve in 1907, most people just thought of the area as uninhabitable swamp. Half the state of Louisiana fit the general category of wetland, which could consist of a river, lake, marsh or swamp. But once the low shrubs and grasses of a marshland gave way, the swamp took over and things changed: the land became wilder with narrow strips of land—barely qualifying as roads—winding deep into the murk; the trees were tall and twisted in all directions as if trying desperately to escape the stinking black water; Spanish moss hung from giant cypress trees in long, ghostly shreds, swaying slightly in the stagnant air; and then there were the sounds.
The dense swamp air compressed and reflected sounds in strange ways. Unseen wildlife inhabited every part of the swamp, producing a cacophony of barks, hums, growls, chirps and twitters. Combine all the sounds together, thread them through ancient groves, twist them around giant trees and warble them off murky pools and you hear the voice of a thing that should not have a voice; you hear the voice of the swamp.
“Damn, but there ain’t nothin’ out here ‘cept gators and bones,” Frank said, absently squinting through the windshield.
“Is this the right place? I don’t even see phone lines out here. And is this a road?”
“Der was a phone outside dat ole broken down store turnin’ off Barataria, but not much else dis far out. We gonna’ turn around up here if we can find a place, less I gotta back us all da’ way out. Maybe up around dis curve—”
“Hey look,” Del said, pointing at a spot through the curtain of branches, “an old shack.”
Frank crept the car forward, squinting. “Ol’ shack is right,” he said, clinching his cigar between his teeth. He braked the car nearly to a stop as he reached across and opened the glove box, pulling out a revolver.
Del eyed Frank as he slid the pistol into a shoulder holster.
Noticing her questioning look, he said, “Fer gators.”
A Grimoire Dark Page 2