“Shit, son, this isn’t about probable cause and whatnot. It’s about politics. This town is riled up. And we can’t afford any false moves, false leads. We need a clean investigation, clean arrest, the whole thing wrapped up and delivered to Hargrave with a bow on top. Now I’ll tell you what—you need to go out there and start doing some police work.”
Chapter 6
Geoff Waltz pulled into the French Quarter just after sunset and found his hotel. The labor shortage was still acute and there was no valet on duty, so he parked in a loading zone on Bienville and checked in. The concierge gave him directions to a garage, and he moved his car before going upstairs to his room.
It was an old hotel that a national chain had bought out years ago; though the lobby dripped with New Orleans ambience, his room could have been in a Des Moines airport motel. He had a view of a brick wall across a dark alley. He closed the drapes.
He had taken Tony’s advice and hired a private eye—Marisol Solis. She had flown into town that afternoon, and he figured she had already checked in. He had driven down alone, relishing the eight hours alone on the road. Now, he called her cell.
“Hey. I just checked in. How was your flight?”
“Uneventful. Are we having dinner before our appointment at the club?” Her faint Tejano accent gave her purring voice a piquant edge.
“Sure. I know a place right by there. Unless you have another idea …”
“No—I think you know the city better, so I’ll defer to you, Waltz. Meet in the lobby when you’re ready.”
“Fine.”
When he stepped out of the elevator ten minutes later, he saw Marisol sitting in a plush velvet chair flipping through a tourist magazine, slender legs crossed.
“Should we grab a taxi?”
“Let’s walk—I haven’t been here since Katrina. I want to feel the city.”
“Sure.”
They stepped out into the familiar, fermented Vieux Carre air. But Geoff sensed something new underlying the odor—a tart, sanitized smell. It was his first time back in New Orleans since the storm, too, though he had given himself a self-guided devastation tour as he drove in that evening, exiting I-10 onto Carrollton Avenue rather than going straight to the French Quarter. Rounding Riverbend, up the Avenue through uptown, nothing looked much worse for wear nine months out. Insurance money had taken care of the minor damage here, and with a fresh coat of paint, some areas looked better than before the storm. But as he turned away from the historic core of the city along the river to the lower-lying neighborhoods of Mid City and Broadmoor, the devastation closed in around him in a suffocating miasma. Most of the houses stood empty, many a kilter, with the sinister FEMA markings on their doors—circled ‘x’ with numbers indicating the date someone searched the house (often a week or more after the storm) and the number of bodies found inside.
When he made his way into wealthy, suburban Lakeview—Eileen’s neighborhood—he soon felt lost in the destroyed wasteland. Here, the devastation was total. No landmarks, few street signs still standing. The land once belonged to Lake Pontchatrain, and the Lake had exacted revenge. But the city (or, more likely, the property owners), had cleared most the rubble from the lots, and signs of stubborn rebuilding pierced the desolate emptiness of the flat moonscape.
The darkness threatened to take him when he crossed the Industrial Canal into the Lower Ninth Ward. The land in the shadow of the levee breach looked scoured, worse than Lakeview. Further down river, a few lots were cleared but many more were piled high with ruins and debris. No signs of progress, no signs of life. Except—on a single block of Urquhart Street, a pair of shotgun cottages, recently reconstructed and raised high off the ground, with lights on. A middle aged black man waved down at him from the porch of one as he passed.
He waved back. He had been numb and distracted (Janie, the baby) when the storm hit and hadn’t registered much emotion. No sense letting it get to him now.
But back in the French Quarter, thinking back to that Ninth Ward stalwart on his raised porch …
Marisol said, “Bourbon Street hasn’t changed.”
They walked past a seedy little strip club, bouncer standing outside with a slutty girl on his arm, beckoning to every male that passed by. “I guess not,” Geoff said, but he knew that in subtle ways, the infamous street was different. At barely eight o’clock the crowd already had a sinister look that wouldn’t have come out till the wee hours in the old days when Geoff lived in the city. This early, the street should be full of retired couples off the cruise ships, families out to dinner, and conventioneers from around the country. But post-Katrina, immigrant laborers—and the rough men they worked for—trolled the street for flesh. As if the storm washed away the naughty-innocent adult playground patina that had built up over the decades of the tourist-based economy, and the working city returned—an open port standing on the edge of dangerous waters.
They walked over a block to Royal Street.
“Thanks for agreeing to come down on such short notice.”
“No problem, Waltz. Thanks for the opportunity.”
Royal boasted a few more tourists and locals—families and couples out to dinner. Some of the old haunts like Irene’s looked crowded, but the lines weren’t as long as he remembered.
He paused at a sidewalk cafe in Pirate’s Alley. “T-Jacques won’t go on till midnight. What say we stop here for a drink before dinner?”
She arched her eyebrows and walked in front of him through the open doorway to the bar. “What are you having?”
“Sazarac—but I can get these.”
She looked at him over her shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ll expense it.”
He sat at an iron table on the sidewalk across from the cathedral garden. A few Goth kids lounged around—as if they had finally won their battle with the tourists for control of this end of the Quarter. She returned with the drinks—two sazaracs.
“You ever had one of these?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Hope you like licorice.” He raised his glass slightly. “Salud. I only drink these in New Orleans.”
She sipped. “Mmm, tasty. Bittersweet.” Geoff noticed a droplet of amber liquid clinging to her dark painted lower lip after she put down her glass. She dabbed it with a cocktail napkin and said: “So, Waltz. What are we out to accomplish tonight?”
Each sip of the strong liquor brought Geoff closer to a pleasant numbness her question threatened to pierce. He said, “Well. I really don’t quite know.”
She smiled, lifting a perfectly shaped thin eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you had me fly all the way down here just for cocktails.”
Geoff could feel the blood starting to rise to his face. “No—as I said when I retained you, there was a murder. A woman who worked for me, or rather, she worked for the woman who works for me—”
“Eileen Kim, who we’re seeing tomorrow.”
“Right. Tonight we meet T-Jacques, the victim’s boyfriend. He’s convinced he knows something about the murder.”
“And you think he’s nuts.”
“Sure. The sheriff heading up the investigation thinks it was a random hate crime. So do I. But Eileen … Well, I guess I feel I owe T-Jacques something.”
“That’s fine.” She leaned forward over the little table and looked up at him over the rim of her glass, brown eyes swimming beneath long black lashes. “But what. Do you want. To accomplish. Tonight?”
Geoff felt an ancient, forgotten twinge. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Marisol leaned back in her chair and lifted a hand to her chin. “The way I see it is, I need to be your second set of eyes and ears tonight. See if this T-Jacques has anything. Take it to Ms. Kim, sees if it rings any bells with her. Then, the sheriff’s interviewing your client again tomorrow, right?”
“Tomorrow evening, at his daughter’s house.”
“And we don’t want to be there. But we’ll stop by beforehand and put him at ease. Maybe let him know what’s up
with T-Jacques. All that. And by tomorrow night you’ll know whether you need to continue my services. Or, if there’s nothing happening here, so long. Sound like a plan?”
He smiled. “Sounds like a plan, Marisol.”
Smiling back: “You’re new at this, huh Waltz?”
“Yup.” He finished his drink in a gulp. “Let’s keep walking.”
They crossed Esplanade into the Marigny and continued up Frenchman. Geoff found the restaurant, an intimate Creole-Italian place above dive bar, and was relieved to see it was still in business. They entered, and Geoff followed Marisol’s scent up the dim, narrow staircase. How long since I’ve been out with a woman for drinks and dinner? Eileen? Does that count? He shuddered before they stepped into the candle-lit dining room, and the waiter showed them to a small, rough-hewn wooden table in a corner.
They ordered a bottle of old Sangiovese. Marisol said, “Tony tells me you lost your wife.” She must not have liked his look. “Sorry. I’m a P.I. I dig for information, don’t always know when not to.”
“It’s all right. Yeah. Car accident. Going on two years ago.” One year, eight months, twenty three days. And six hours.
“I’m really sorry.”
“And no kids.” As soon as Geoff had spoken the words, he saw a cloud pass over Marisol’s features. Something in her eyes told him they shared a sadness but he could not bring himself probe its nature, did not know why he had raised the pointless subject in the first place.
“I never want kids. This world is too … fucked up. The damn planet’s choking and we keep adding more people to it.” Her voice was barely above a whisper, and when she looked up at him with her dark hair hanging down, her eyes had lost their flinty edge.
Geoff had not taken her to be an environmentalist, felt taken aback at this sudden display of eco-emotion.
They watched each other across the rustic tabletop in shadowed silence.
“So, what’s your story? Tony says you used to be an ATF agent.”
“Yeah, I worked for the feds for a while.” She gave him a crooked smile, all traces of despair gone from her gaze. “Good to know how the bastards think, you know?”
•
After they ate, the chef and proprietor came by, greeting them with a rich accent that somehow matched the weird, delicious cuisine. And an old black man walked by them and sat before an upright piano standing in a corner.
The chef said, “We’re lucky to have Dr. Pierre back. Lost his house in the storm—been staying by his daughter in Westwego.”
Geoff swirled the last of his wine in the candle light and ordered a glass of port. He savored it as Marisol sipped chicory coffee and the old man played an extended medley of tunes in the rolling New Orleans piano professor style before diverging with grace into spare, modern improvisations of a series of standards—All the Things You Are, Tenderly, On Green Dolphin Street. Geoff lost all sense of time or space—he saw only the candle flame dancing in time with the music, glistening through the ruby wine and felt the familiar, blissful feeling of the world floating away.
•
They walked into the bar just after midnight as the band started up its first set. Geoff picked out T-Jacques on the trombone. He was fit and handsome. His close cropped hair had a sharp side part, and he wore a narrow dark suit with narrow lapels and a narrow dark tie. He was smoking a cigarette on stage, puffing between solos. He looked like 1962.
Geoff stumbled and nearly missed his bar stool. He caught Marisol’s sideways glance and ordered whiskey. She had an Irish coffee. The band played jazz infused with New Orleans funk while hipster kids danced in Depression-era getups. As if they danced for all their life to forget the shattered world outside.
When the set ended, Geoff waved to T-Jacques, who nodded back. T-Jacques put his trombone into its case and as he stood up he put his arm around the shoulder of one of his band mates and said something into his ear. Then he walked over to the bar and faced Geoff. He didn’t sit down.
“I guess you’re Waltz. Who’s that?” He didn’t look at Marisol, just twitched his head slightly in her direction.
“Marisol Solis. She works for me. She’s okay.”
“Alright.” T-Jacques spoke with the smooth melodious diction of Creole New Orleans. “We’re going to the back bar where we can hear ourselves. It’s a little more private. You can take your drinks.”
They disembarked from their bar stools, Geoff taking his tumbler with its yellowish ice cubes, Marisol leaving her empty mug on the bar. They followed T-Jacques through a doorway behind the bar, down a narrow hall to a small room of classic old world decadence in sharp contrast to the bright, airy dance floor of the main room. The walls were a deep green over cream-colored wainscoting bearing ancient water spots. Gilded lamps with cracked, silk shades sitting on oak table tops dimly lit the room. Two overstuffed velour sofas—one deep purple, the other gold—and matching armchairs provided seating. In one corner stood a small bar with a half dozen stools. Geoff didn’t see a bartender, but two men in suits and hats were sitting at the bar smoking cigarettes and drinking cocktails. Before them lay a clarinet in an open case, which the men appeared to be discussing in soft tones.
T-Jacques gestured to one of the sofas and Geoff and Marisol sat down. Then he walked to the bar and refreshed Geoff’s drink and took some rum for himself. The two men at the bar nodded and T-Jacques nodded back. Then, settling into an armchair near Geoff, he said, “After the break, our trumpet man will go up and play some solo numbers, sing a little. So, we have time. But first—” He reached into his breast pocket then handed Geoff the flash drive. Geoff put the thing deep in a pocket of his jeans.
“Dalia said, ‘if anything happens to me, get this to Geoff Waltz.’ You follow what’s on there. Think y’all can handle that?”
“Sure,” Marisol said. “That’s my job.”
“Alright.”
Geoff said, “What else did Dalia say, T-Jacques? About what she’d found.”
“That she was scared. That there was bad shit going on at the lake. That it involved Robert Duchamp.” He spat the name.
Marisol said, “Duchamp? The congressman?”
“Ex-congressman,” Geoff said. “The refinery’s in his old district. But T-Jacques, what the hell could he have to do with any of this?” Geoff rubbed his forehead, trying to focus his vision and his memory. Duchamp—he and Eileen had seen him at the sheriff’s office. Or did I dream that? And was it only two days ago?
“I don’t know,” T-Jacques said. “I tell you, your answers start on that drive.”
“Wait.” Marisol turned her hard, sober eyes on Geoff. “Your lawsuit’s about an oil refinery, right? Didn’t the Duchamps make their fortune in oil and petrochemicals?”
Feeling a growing, drunken confusion, Geoff struggled to organize his thoughts, his words, before letting them pour forth. Those words did not betray him, but he felt a sense of panic as listened to his own voice, sounding like a recording of some rational mind at work and no more connected to his own muddled brain than the words of Marisol or T-Jacques or the two musicians at the bar.
“The Duchamps are one of the old industrialist families—like the Carnegies, the Rockefellers, and the rest. They made their fortune in oil and mining back East long before the current branch came to Texas in the forties. But Marisol, the Duchamp family divested its interests in all that stuff decades ago. Yes, I think Texronco—the corporation that owns the refinery—is somehow linked as a successor to the old Duchamp Petroleum. But Robert Duchamp never had anything to do with the petrochemical industry. Before he went into politics, he used his father’s money on shady real estate deals. Never made a dime on his own.”
“I don’t know about any of that, Waltz,” T-Jacques said. “But there’s weird animals on that lake—unnatural creatures. There’s strangeness afoot up there. Ungodly things. That’s the start of it. What do you know about alien technology? Human cloning—”
“Alien? As in extraterrestrial?” Geoff’
s vision blurred. He looked into his glass, surprised to find it empty. “That’s insane, you know that?”
“Maybe it is.” T-Jacques’ voice had mellowed—distant and almost serene. But Geoff could smell the rage on him. “I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know what they’re up to. But the floodwaters that took us here in this city were only a part of it—I heard the explosions, not ten blocks downtown from my home—”
“T-Jacques, wait …” Geoff felt himself losing his battle to keep his wits as the jazzman’s visage loomed before him unleashing its torrent of paranoia. “There are no aliens, no cloning. People have been talking about weird animals on that lake since I can remember. It’s myth—”
“What you saying, Mr. Waltz? Dalia was a scientist—”
“And the levees and Katrina—there’s no connection. Dalia was murdered on a lake three hundred miles—”
“She was a scientist, and she couldn’t see the dark spirits that lay behind the things she observed but, no matter, she still observed these things. My mama’s people came from Haiti during the revolution—I can feel these beasts that live and should never have been, things that lie beneath that lake, a new genesis that will bring—”
“No no no, dammit. There’s toxic pollution at the lake from an old refinery, Dalia was investigating it, some rednecks killed her. That’s all. Science …” Geoff rubbed his head, his eyes, as the figures in the bar danced in the candlelight, and it was as if T-Jacques’s paranoia had infected him like an airborne virus. The two old men stared and laughed and made a profane gestures with the clarinet as Marisol huddled in the corner with a woman (Janie) whose face Geoff could not or would not see though she looked at him with a bloody smile, and they cradled an infant with mirrors for eyes and the face of Joey Kincaid.
After a nightmarish indeterminate span, Marisol’s voice snapped Geoff to. A caul of delusion dropped from before his face and the discordant sounds of an ill-practiced symphony came into harmony before fading into the background of his mind.
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