by J. A. Kerley
With an upward swoop of a rippling arm, the bald man seemed to levitate the steward to his feet by little more than will. The steward trembled on wobbly knees.
“M-May I return to my cabin by myself, Mr Mattoon?”
Mattoon considered the request, then shook his head as if saddened by his upcoming words.
“No, Mr Valvane. I want Tenzel to accompany you.”
The steward’s eyes widened in fear. Mattoon saw the front of the steward’s pants darken with urine.
“P-Please. I can—”
“Shhhh. Go with Tenzel, Mr Valvane.”
“Please, Mr Mattoon, sir. I beg you—”
Mattoon turned his back. The steward began weeping. The bald man, his grin incandescent, led the bawling man away.
“To your stations, gentlemen,” Mattoon said to the captain and circling crew. Tenzel Atwan’s visit to Valvane’s room would result in a blinding dose of pain, but no structural damage. Mattoon glanced at their faces. He saw no anger, only acceptance of the rules. They filed away.
It had to de done. The rules of the ship were spare and easy to remember: Hard work, no thievery, no telling tales when off the ship, and absolute obedience to Mattoon. In return, the pay was quadruple the going rate, the crew quarters furnished with the comforts and amenities of a four-star hotel. The meals were prepared by a Cordon Bleu-trained chef. Prostitutes were procured in every port at ship’s expense.
Turnover was almost non-existent, lessened further in that all crewmen were fugitives from somewhere. Mattoon had bought his master steamfitter and oiler, both smugglers, out of life sentences in Rwanda for five thousand dollars each. The chef had ducked his gros bonnet out of Paris just ahead of an Interpol drug investigation. Scotland Yard wanted his communications officer for blackmail, his electrician for forgery. The only man not wanted by name was Tenzel Atwan, and only because his crimes left no accusatory fingers pointing.
Mattoon took the stairs back to the weatherdeck, the main deck. It was bare of cargo, the two up-thrusting crane posts resembling vestigial masts. The decks of most container ships held hundreds of metal boxes stacked high, hundreds more in the holds. The Petite Angel, diminutive at a length of 91 meters, currently carried only sixty-seven containers, all below, all loaded in Montevideo.
Making a profit didn’t matter with the Petite Angel; Mattoon owned a fleet of huge container ships, the rail lines of the shipping lanes, and they ran full, hard, and ceaselessly. The Petite Angel, a bulk carrier converted to containers, was Mattoon’s sole residence, a home that traversed oceans. Still, a businessman makes money, and Angel always carried freight to pay the bills. Within days her cargo would be offloaded at the Mobile docks, with the ship taking on containers for the return trip.
In addition, Mattoon would pick up one more item in Mobile—much smaller, though infinitely more valuable.
He checked his watch and a horizontal smile touched his lips. Dear would be waking up and getting ready for her day. His steps gained speed as he returned to his quarters.
Mattoon occupied the entire level beneath the bridge, the space as much museum as lodging, the gray of the ship transformed into teak walls and blood-red carpet. The main room was three-fourths of the living area, heavy maroon drapes covering the windows, four overlooking the weatherdeck, two on each side of the door. Full-length mirrors with gilded baroque frames stood between the windows. Furniture held one corner, an L of couch sections facing twin chairs across a low table, leather and mahogany the dominant materials. In the opposite corner was a waist-high map cabinet with a roseate marble top.
The visual center of the room was a burled walnut desk spanning three meters in length, two in width. Though it seemed a Dickens’-era piece that might have graced the offices of Lloyd’s, it had been crafted five years prior at the cost of seventeen thousand British pounds. The desktop held only a hard leather writing pad, a multi-buttoned communications station, and an antique ship’s clock of gleaming brass, its spring-driven mechanism replaced with electronics.
The room would have been dark but for track-mounted spots pinpointing glass cabinets of yellowed scrimshaw. Wall-hung shadow boxes displayed antique navigational equipment, astrolabes, sextants, compasses; Walter Mattoon was a collector of small objects of beauty, utility, or both.
Mattoon sat in the leather chair behind his desk and opened the top drawer to display a panel of switches. He touched one and the curtains retreated from the windows, the boundless horizon revealed. He touched another and low music fell from hidden speakers, Scarlatti.
“Dear?” he called toward a curtained doorway at the rear of the main room. “Are you awake yet? Have you dressed?”
A young black girl stepped into the room. She wore a flowing designer gown, mauve, the décolletage high and demure over the modest swell of her breasts. A red silk orchid floated behind an ear. Mattoon rose in acknowledgement.
“Shall we take the morning breeze, Dear?” Mattoon said, sliding a slender arm behind her and guiding her toward the door. Though he knew Dear had gone by the name of Darla Dumont for the eleven years of her life in Mobile, he never used it, the name part of a life that no longer existed. She was Dear. They were always Dear.
The girl’s eyes looked through Mattoon, out a window, across the sea and beyond. She walked as if in a gray and meaningless dream. Her look troubled him and he stopped. “Dear? Are you all right?”
She continued staring out the window. Mattoon regarded her with sad eyes; knowing from experience she had started dissolving. His love could do that, Mattoon knew. None of his glorious Dears had endured even a year before dissolving into nothingness.
“Love is such sweet pain,” Mattoon whispered. “But we are blessed to receive it.”
The girl had slumped forward. Mattoon sighed and sent her back to her room. He went to his desk calendar and, for the third time that morning, counted the days until the ship reached Mobile.
The next morning Sandhill pushed his key into the restaurant door when he felt a tug behind the knees of his jeans. He turned and looked down. A little girl, lean as a twig, dressed in pink jeans and a white tee, some current cartoon animal on the shirt.
“Jacy Charlane?”
Jacy stared mutely at her sky-blue sneakers.
Sandhill frowned. “Well, what is it?”
She shuffled her feet, wrung her hands. Sandhill tapped a finger on Jacy’s head. “Talk, girl. I know you’re in there. The Gumbo King’s got chores to do, vittles to cook. What do you want?”
Still studying her shoes, she held her hand up and finger-waved him closer. He sighed and lowered to a knee. Jacy cupped her hands and encircled Sandhill’s ear.
“I have to tell you a secret, your highness.”
Her breath was warm on his ear. He hoped she wasn’t carrying a cold or some childhood affliction.
“One quick secret, then I have to get busy. Is today your birthday? Did I guess it?”
“My birthday’s not for three weeks,” she whispered. “It’s a bad secret.”
“Did you lose something? A toy? I’ll bet if you retraced your steps—went back where you—”
“Someone is stealing little girls, Mr King.”
Sandhill froze. He took a deep breath and nodded slowly. “I’ve, uh, heard about that. It’s a sad thing. Listen, Jacy, I wouldn’t worry too much about—”
“One was in a burned-down house. On the TV they told her name was LaShelle.”
“Jacy, uh, maybe your aunt could explain—”
“Did LaShelle feel the burning, Mr King?”
Sandhill put his hand on her shoulder and felt her shaking like her breath should be visible in the air. “Jacy, I don’t really know anything about that.”
She said, “I touched my hand on a hot pan once … I picked it up and it hurt terrible …” She put her hands to her eyes and started crying.
Sandhill scanned the street. Ted Spikes’s grocery was half a block away. “Would you like an ice cream, Jacy? We could head t
o Teddy’s. Does that sound good?”
Tears poured down her cheeks. “Why would someone steal little girls and burn them? Did they feel the …”
Sandhill swooped her into his arms and stood. “Ssssh. Don’t cry,” he said, wondering what the hell to do. Jacy tucked her face under Sandhill’s chin and wept softly, kitten sounds, her tears dropping hot on his neck. He pushed open the door of the restaurant and stepped inside, cool and dark and perfumed with spices.
“It’ll be fine, Jacy,” he crooned. “I talked to a policeman yesterday and he said they’re doing real good in finding the bad person.”
“Then how come the little girl got burned up?”
Sandhill paused, closed his eyes; good question. “They’ll do better soon. It takes time to learn things.”
“You could help look for the little girls. You could do that.”
“There’s nothing I can do, Jacy. Only the police are allowed to investigate. It’s the rule.”
Jacy squeezed Sandhill’s neck. “You don’t have rules. You can do anything you want. You’re a king.”
She started sobbing. Sandhill carried her around the room for several minutes. He noted the time.
“Hey Jacy, you ever turn on the lights in a restaurant?”
She kept her face buried in his shoulder, shook her head.
“Let’s go over here to the switches,” he said. “You can make the place come alive. Is that cool or what?”
She nodded, sniffling, wiping away tears with her wrist. Sandhill held her to the wall switches. “Flip ’em all up. Don’t be afraid.”
She looked at him instead of the switches. “Can you help find the girls, Mr King? Please?”
Sandhill closed his eyes.
“I’ll see what I can do, Jacy. No promises, though.”
She reached out and snapped the switches. The fluorescent lights in the ceiling sputtered awake. The sign hissed. Hummed. Flickered.
Paused as if gathering force …
The Gumbo King wrote itself large and red against the sky.
Photos from the fire were spread across Ryder’s desk, companions to those tacked to the gray divider beside him. The pictures showed charred joists. Seared floors. Carbonized walls. Several shots centered on a small object that resembled a … Ryder didn’t want to think what it resembled; he had no words for it.
Pressed against his desk was Harry Nautilus’s desk, its surface empty and desolate. Ryder looked away as his phone rang. Bertie Wagnall, the phone jockey, burped: “You got a call on four, Ryder. Some guy says he’s Henry the Fifth. The fifth what?”
Ryder’s heart dropped a beat. “I got it, Bertie.”
“Ryder, you got the weirdest friggin’ snitches.”
Ryder punched the line and snatched the phone. Sandhill said, “It’s me, Detective Ryder. I’ll come by and look at the files late this morning. Pro bono.”
Ryder’s shoulders slumped in relief.
“Thanks, Sandhill.”
“I’ve got one condition, Detective.”
“Which is?”
“I don’t want to see anyone above the rank of sergeant. Got that?”
Chapter 14
Sandhill stood in his apartment tying his tie for the third time, scowling at the mirror, trying to get the wide end longer than the skinny end. He hated leaving the simmering gumbos, fearful they’d suffer in his absence. Each was an act of precision balance, the fulcrum shifting daily and dependent on such factors as whether the shrimp were from the bay or the bluewater, the freshness of the thyme and heat of the cayenne, the pungency of the onions. Gumbo, that sensory explosion of sight and smell and gustatory overload, was, at heart, one of the subtlest of the kitchen’s creations, a struggle for harmony.
He cursed and went at the tie a fourth time, grateful the gumbos would be under the watchful eyes of Marie Belfontaine. Fifty-two, dark as chocolate, able to set one-hundred-fifty pounds into motions that still pulled whistles from street corners, Marie was his kitchen confidante, his whisper-hoarder, his Richelieu. She’d appeared three weeks before opening, sawdust on the floor, wires dangling from the ceiling, Sandhill wondering if the idea of opening a gumbo joint was divine inspiration or one of his darker urges gone hideously awry.
“You can tear this up,” she’d said, handing him the HELP WANTED sign from the door.
“Actually, I’ll probably need a few more people,” Sandhill said, a scarlet handkerchief wrapping the thumb he’d mistaken for a nail minutes earlier.
“You already thinking of expanding?” Marie said, looking at the space destined to become his dining area. “Your gumbo that good?”
“I’m planning sixteen four tops. To wait on them I’ll probably need—”
“To find me more work to do, if that’s all the piddling number of folks you gonna put in here.”
“I might need kitchen help, too,” Sandhill said, not really knowing what he was looking for, never having hired anyone before.
Marie narrowed an eye. “Cook?”
“Prep help, maybe. Pot-watching if I make a shopping run. But I do the main cooking.”
Marie smiled at Sandhill like he’d cleared a high-set hurdle. “Good. You gonna make gumbo, you got to have one cook. Gumbo may look like committee food, but good God Almighty it surely ain’t. Let me tell you …”
Marie’s five-minute discourse on gumbo was less science than theology and when she’d finished Sandhill was uncertain whether to hire her or propose.
Sandhill tied his tie for the fifth time. Though the new windows were triple-paned for insulation, he heard voices from the street drifting up to his second-story digs. He lived above the restaurant in a failed dance studio, a box sixty feet long, thirty wide, fourteen high. The former dressing room was subdivided into a small bedroom and large bathroom. Cabinets and a counter, hanging implement rack and appliances turned a corner into a kitchen.
Before moving in, Sandhill had painted everything white: floor, walls, ceiling, trim. Then, like arranging thoughts in a clarified mind, he’d added furniture and decorated. His major furnishings were blond maple. The back wall held five twelve-foot-long bookshelves, sixty running feet with few inches to spare. A large Oriental carpet beneath a table and six chairs suggested the dining area. Posters from local events hung on the walls, the controlled chaos of a Jackson Pollock reproduction hovered above the sofa. Six ceiling fans, a legacy of the dance studio, spun lazily overhead. The only sense of disarray came from books and magazines scattered throughout the apartment, some open, some closed, most cluttered with bookmarks.
“Finally,” Sandhill growled, pulling the tie tight, it having acquiesced to near-evenness. He stepped back to put his head-to-toe image in the bathroom mirror—the dark brown suit needing pressing he had neither the time nor skill for, white shirt, dark tie. His basic uniform for years. It felt tight and uncomfortable, an inch or two of gumbo new to his waist.
He sat on his bed to put on his shoes, instinctively reaching for the ankle-holstered .32 on the nightstand. The small Colt didn’t offer much firepower, but it was light and, when he wore floppy jeans, invisible to the ordinary citizen.
The holster had been two hundred bucks, but the leather was molded glove-tight to the revolver and the strap was lined with sheepskin for comfort. Sandhill had made only one modification, carefully peeling a small section of the sheepskin from the cowhide strap, creating a small pocket, like the coin pocket in a pair of jeans. The pocket held a simple wire lockpick. Two years back a state cop had been blindsided by a canny felon and restrained with his own cuffs until being shot to death. Sandhill modified his holster the next day.
He bent to Velcro-strap the holster to his ankle, caught himself. I’m going to a cop shop, for crying out loud. He slipped the weapon back in the nightstand, locked up the apartment, and stopped into the restaurant. Marie was in the kitchen with a stirring-spoon in one hand, romance novel in the other.
“I’m outta here for a few hours, Marie. We need anything from the mark
et?”
She studied Sandhill and wrinkled her nose. “You going in dressed like that?”
“I thought about nudity, but clothes seemed more appropriate.”
“You look like a Policeman.”
“I was, remember? They give you these clothes with your detective’s shield and you wear them for life. When you die they strip you and give the clothes to a new-made detective.”
“You not a cop any more.”
“And?”
“Look at you. Going to that place and you somebody different.”
“They’re just clothes, Marie.”
She hmphed and turned away.
Sandhill said, “Marie? Hello?”
She kept her back to him. “They owning you again and you not out the door of your own place.”
“Come on, Marie. Aren’t you being a bit sensitive? I mean—”
Marie spun and gaveled the spoon against the pot. “You ain’t no cop no more, Conner Sandhill. You the Gumbo King, right? Like you all the time preaching at everybody else: To thine own self …”
She let the words hang in the air.
“Be true,” Sandhill completed, stripping the tie from his neck.
“Late in the year for Mardi Gras, ain’t it, Carson?” Detective Roy Trent said, looking from a window to the parking lot.
“What are you talking about?” Ryder said.
“You won’t believe what fell off a float and’s heading this way,” Trent said, a grin bridging his outsized ears from lobe to lobe.
A minute later Sandhill strode into the room wearing a purple vest trimmed in gold brocade. His felt crown was high and crisply ironed. He wore a black tee shirt and jeans with black Converse hightops slapping the floor.
Mouths fell open. Ryder muttered, steering Sandhill away from the looks and down the hall to the meeting room.
“Is there a reason for the get-up?”
“Makes me feel regal.”
“I was hoping we might pull this off without fanfare.”