“Sorry,” I said.
“It says it on the sign.”
“I must have missed it.”
More elegant playing of a tune dating from the end of the ragtime era. I was enjoying it. Then the music stopped, and he turned to face me.
“Can I help you?”
“That one’s from the 1920s, right?”
“Sophie Tucker made it famous in 1926. You into that old stuff? You look too young for that.”
“Forty-five isn’t young.”
“Just wait till you’re lookin’ from where I’m lookin’. It’ll look a lot younger then.”
Even in the shadows I could see his hair, cut short, was iron gray. He was wearing thick glasses. He tilted his head. “You didn’t tell me what you doin’ here.”
“I noticed one of the posters in the window about a jazz guitarist. Jersey Dan Hoover. He played here?”
“Oh yeah. You a fan of his?”
“Yes. Good friends, too. In high school we played in a blues band together. He took off like a rocket after that. We’ve stayed in touch.”
“Don’t say.” He grabbed a glass off a coaster on the piano and jiggled the ice. “I got bar privileges here. Wanna drink?”
“Thanks, but I’ll pass. I was just walking by and saw the poster and had to find out about my buddy.”
“You don’t sound local. From outta town?”
“Raised in Wisconsin, lived in New York City for a time. Now I’ve got a place on an island off North Carolina.”
He hit a few chords from “Bridge over Troubled Water,” chuckling to himself, and then said, “No man’s an island.”
I responded. “So true.”
“Down here in N.O. there’s all kinds of people. And people got their people. Got your musicians, like me, who hang together. There’s a lot of us. Then there’s the Holy Ghosters who spend their lives at church. Like my momma. And you got your imports from the outside comin’ here to make money—a lot before Katrina—shipping lines, oil companies, fisheries. Our football and basketball franchises, of course, and all those sports junkies that follow ’em.”
“I heard you lost an arena football team,” I said.
“Yeah. The New Orleans VooDoo. Them and a couple other teams around the country.”
“Just wondering . . . Are there many of those still around? Voodoo followers, I mean. Not the football kind, but the real believers.”
“More’n you’d think.”
That was something worth pondering. I reached out my hand. “Trevor Black.”
“Louis Thompson Jr. Jazz pianist.” Then he added, “And human being.”
I was glad to hear that. He couldn’t possibly have understood why.
“That’s comforting to know,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow. “What’s your interest in voodoo?”
“Something personal. Involving my daughter.”
“Sounds serious.”
“You have no idea.” Taking a chance, I said, “I’m guessing you’re pretty knowledgeable about things.”
“Not according to my two ex-wives.”
“Well, about voodoo, for instance.”
“What ya want to know?”
“Ever hear of a place called Bayou Bon Coeur?”
Louis’s face changed. It scrunched up and his eyes half closed. “Heard about it a few times. Always sounded to me like a bad place. Why?”
“My daughter may be there.”
“Sorry for you. And her.”
“I need to get there. To find her.”
“Oh, I can’t help you there.” He leaned back, grabbed his glass again, looked into its empty contents, and gazed longingly over to the bar. When he put his glass back on the piano, he said, “But I know somebody who might be able to help.”
He reached into the pocket of his sport coat and pulled out a pen, then yanked out a piece of paper from the other pocket and wrote on it.
“This here’s a man who’s a PI. I heard he’s had some dealings with that very location.” He handed me the note. “Oh, and another good thing. He comes well-armed.”
11
With Louis Thompson Jr.’s note in hand, I pulled out my city map of New Orleans, looking for a place on Magazine Street. When I found it, I tapped the address into my GPS and started driving. It was a part of the city where, if you keep going and you head farther out, you start entering the edge of East New Orleans. I had heard tales about East N.O. How it’s a place that sports way too many problems, especially homicides.
On the way I had a brain flash of sorts. When I was speaking at the ABA, Heather was in the front row. I recalled a female lawyer sitting next to her. Heather’s note said that she met a woman who apparently told her about Bayou Bon Coeur. If I found out who that lawyer was, I could track down Heather. I called Morgan Canterelle’s office and got his voice mail. I left a message: Seeing as he was on the convention committee, did he have some way of finding out the identity of a female lawyer sitting in the front row of the ABA session, right next to my daughter?
After passing some restaurants, food stores, and a strip club, I finally pulled over to the curb on Magazine Street and parked. I checked out the area, noticing a few men on a street corner a block away. The building I needed was half a block away. It housed a tavern and a palm reader on the street level, but my destination was on the second floor: the office of a private investigator by the name of Alfred “Turk” Kavagian.
It was late afternoon, so I thought I might still catch Kavagian. I walked up the narrow staircase.
The second floor was a time-warp kind of place, with worn wooden floors that creaked when you walked. The door to Kavagian’s office had one of those old-fashioned glazed glass panels with his name in black letters. I jiggled the doorknob. It was locked, but I could see through the hazy glass that there was a light on. I heard heavy footsteps coming up to the door on the other side. Then a man’s voice asking me to step over to where there was an eye-viewer. “I want to see you,” the voice said. I saw the cover to the peephole on the other side flip open, and then an eyeball appeared. “Who are you?”
“My name’s Trevor Black. I used to be a criminal defense attorney. Now I’m an investigator.”
“What do you want?”
“Louis Thompson Jr. sent me. The jazz pianist.”
“Why didn’t you say so?” the man said.
The door opened.
Kavagian was a man in his midforties, about my age, with long hair down to his shoulders and the muscular shape of a bodybuilder. He invited me in and pointed to a wooden chair across from his desk that was piled high with newspaper clippings, magazines, and manila files.
I knew a lot of PIs in my day, and judging from his office decor, I expected him to offer me a drink—maybe straight Jack Daniel’s in a dirty glass. But instead he asked me if I would like a “veggie juicer.”
I declined, noticing a juicing machine on his credenza next to a bowl of fruit.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“This is a personal matter. I’d be glad to pay you.”
“And I’m always glad to be paid.”
“It’s about a place called Bayou Bon Coeur.”
He took his time. Then, “You don’t say.”
“You know it?”
“In a manner of speaking,” he said.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning there was a missing person case I had once. I was hired by an unfortunate family who was looking for their young daughter who had disappeared. The police weren’t exactly burning a path to find her, so the parents got me involved through a lawyer. Make a long story short, I located some vile porno videos online that we were pretty sure had featured the daughter. And pretty sure it wasn’t voluntary. Probably drugged. The guy assaulting her was dressed in a costume like some kind of voodoo devil. Anyway, I expected the worst, personally, though I didn’t tell the parents. Not at first. Until I got a lead that she might have been taken to that bayou you mentioned. A place you
can’t exactly find on a travel atlas.”
“Bayou Bon Coeur?”
“That’s the one.”
“Did you find her?”
“Sort of.”
I waited.
“They found her body. It had been there for a while. The swamps tend to devour victims pretty fast. And whatever is left isn’t pretty.”
There was no happiness in my meeting with Turk Kavagian. Or in hearing his terrible story. My insides felt like they were in the jaws of a vise at the thought that Heather might be out there in that bayou. But the clock was ticking. I needed more information.
“Is this the only contact you had with that place?”
“I’d heard rumors—bad magic going on out there, that sort of thing; ceremonies and whatnot. But you know, you sort of keep an open mind until you get some hard evidence.”
“That young girl who was killed. Did they ever find the perps?”
“Nope. Never did. Sickening, isn’t it. Thinking they could still be out there. The cops were thinking that it was part of a larger criminal ring. Some kind of cult group.”
“Voodoo?” I asked.
Turk Kavagian took a long, hard look at me. “You’re not from Louisiana, are you?”
“My criminal defense work was in New York City. Now I write articles on crime subjects and do investigations.”
He shot back, “In other words, you got disbarred?”
I smirked. Turk evidently knew something about the ways of the world. “As a matter of fact, I was. But that’s a long story.”
“The reason I asked about you not being local,” he said, “is that people have all these assumptions about life down here. About New Orleans culture. Myself—I grew up in Denver and came here to play football on a scholarship to Grambling. But the very first year I tore up both my knees. Good-bye, football. I wasn’t much for academics, so I bailed out my second year and teamed up with a private eye here by the name of Otis Orrman, who showed me the ropes. A good man. Died a few years ago.”
“Natural causes?”
“Lead poisoning,” he said and waited for my response. Then he explained, “He was serving a summons on a guy in East N.O. in a domestic abuse case. The guy shot him dead on the doorstep.”
Turk wound his way back to the trail we were on—about voodoo. “See, people have this idea that every other person down here is either a witch doctor or else knows someone who is.”
“Not me,” I pointed out. “I don’t think that.”
“Good.”
“But I also know,” I said, “that there is a shadow world. A dark empire of evil that is mostly unseen. But the doors that lead there—they’re open for business. I think voodoo is one of them.”
Turk gave a weary smile. “Then I guess we have something in common.”
“I’m here because my daughter wrote a note saying she was going to Bayou Bon Coeur. She’s a researcher. I’m worried.”
“I would be too,” he said. “That criminal group I talked about, the one they thought was behind the killing of the girl in the bayou? The word around New Orleans was that it was the work of a special kind of voodoo cult. Not exactly your backwoods swamp-rat type. Or the third-world variety. This one was different.”
“How so?”
“High-tech. Some kind of Internet thing. Child abduction. Trafficking. Girls getting used and abused and after a while, some of them get erased.” He shook his head. “Sorry to hit you with all that, seeing as your daughter might be there.”
“Do you know how to get to the bayou?”
“Not personally. I’ve got somebody I can call. A swamp man. Knows the bayous. He could probably take you there. For a price. Give me some time and I’ll connect with him.”
“Time is what I don’t have.”
“Tell you what, I’ll put a rush on it. No charge for my time. Just gimme your card. Maybe you can help me someday.”
I wrote down my cell number on one of my old “private investigator” cards from New York that I never ended up using, then told him to ignore the outdated NYC address and dropped it on his desk. I grabbed one of his for myself.
As I turned to leave, sickened over the possible fate of my daughter, I had to ask him one more time.
“About that voodoo cult you mentioned. Does it have a name?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Not that I ever knew. All I heard was just a saying that folks have about it.”
“What’s that?”
“That they’re into sex, spells, and human sacrifice.”
As I exited his office, I heard the sound of Turk’s juice blender whirring. I thought back to what I had just learned, and as I did, I felt the sensation of weightlessness down in my gut.
12
Down on the street, Heather was even more on my mind after my chat with Turk Kavagian. I hunted for my rental car, but I couldn’t find it. Thinking I must have gone the wrong way, I turned around and headed in the other direction along the sidewalk. After several blocks I had that sinking realization. I knew I had parked legally. Yet my car was nowhere to be found. Only one answer. It must have been stolen.
Figuring that I’d report the car theft when I was back in my hotel room, I was about to call a cab. And I would have done that, except a black Lincoln limo came cruising by and slowed down. I raised my hand, thinking maybe I could grab the limo instead. But in my unusual line of work, I had to be cautious. I checked out the license plate on the rear of the limo. It read For Hire. I strolled over to the tinted glass window on the driver’s side, which was rolled up.
“Can I see your chauffeur’s license?” I said loud enough to be heard.
The window hummed down a few inches. A hand thrust out the window holding a Louisiana chauffeur’s driver’s license for a few seconds, as I hastily scanned the little laminated certificate. The hand disappeared and I crawled in the back, grateful for the favor this guy was offering.
It was one of those limos with a glass panel separating the passenger from the driver. I could see the driver was wearing a dark suit and a chauffeur’s cap. I couldn’t believe they still wore those, and to make matters worse, the cap didn’t fit him very well.
I touched the intercom button and gave him the address to my hotel. I didn’t care about the fare; I needed to get back and make a series of calls. My daughter was still missing, my rental had just been jacked, and Canterelle had still not responded to the message I left him.
The driver nodded. As we headed away from Magazine Street, I heard the electronic click of the doors. For a while I was buried in my thoughts, about how I needed to focus all my energies on Turk Kavagian’s offer to get a swamp guide to take me to the bayou where Heather might be waiting. I had been trying her cell every few hours but still getting voice mail. Frantic thoughts of catastrophe had to be suppressed, but it wasn’t easy.
Eventually I clued into my surroundings. Through the tinted windows I noticed the street sign. Clouet Street. And I looked ahead and noticed the Mississippi River looming. We were in the warehouse district. Big storage buildings, vacant lots, and few houses.
I pressed the intercom. “Hey, this isn’t the way to the hotel. What’s the deal?”
The driver didn’t respond.
“Can you hear me?” I said.
The driver turned his head, revealing his profile, and I felt an electric shiver—an indelible sense that I’d encountered this presence before. I could picture the figure I’d seen from the beach, hovering over the water, defying the laws of nature. Except, at that moment, he was in the front seat, driving that limo.
I banged on the glass. “Talk to me. Where are we going?”
The limo took a sharp turn onto Chartres, and I heard something behind me in the trunk of the limo. A heavy rolling thud. We were running parallel to the river and the limo was picking up speed. It must have been going fifty miles an hour and accelerating.
More banging on the glass, this time with both of my fists. Finally the driver spoke. And when he did, he turn
ed to face me. His face was like it had been carved in granite and his eyes were lifeless. Yes, it was him.
“Trevor Black. We meet again. But not for long . . .” He burst into a cackle like some kind of jungle animal.
The driver was the same monster that I had seen out there on top of the surf, off Ocracoke Island. He hadn’t given up. Of course not. He had just regrouped. And once again, no advance warning; I never caught the scent.
The limo took a wheel-squealing turn onto an industrial entrance to a broad concrete wharf, and there was another rolling thud in the trunk. We were heading straight at the river. No gates and no fences to stop us. Next stop, the Mississippi.
As we sped forward, the driver opened his door and stepped out calmly as if the car were in park. Even though we were going at least sixty, he never missed a step, never fell; he just casually walked away from the speeding limo, defying the rules of physics.
I grabbed the door and jammed my shoulder against it while trying to lift the handle, but it wouldn’t open. I banged on the window. Break the glass, I thought. With what? The limo was maybe thirty feet from the edge of the wharf. I frantically disengaged my seat belt buckle and thrust my hands under the driver’s seat, looking for anything to smash the window. We were almost at the edge of the wharf. My hand touched the handle of something under the seat. I yanked it out. A hammer. What was it doing there? And the business end was dripping with blood.
The car toppled over the edge of the wharf as I tried to swing the hammer against the car window but missed.
Whomp. The limo hit the water with a jolt, front end down, throwing me forward with the back end of the limo easing upward.
I was smashing the window with the hammer. It began to break apart. But the limo was sinking quickly into the river, the driver’s compartment filling with water and the doors locked. The passenger seat would be filling next. More wild smashing of the glass. I dropped the bloody hammer and pushed the busted glass out with my hands as the river water was now up to my door.
I squeezed through the window, finally out, just as the limo fully submerged. I was underwater, having to hold my breath as the limo slipped to the bottom of the river while I did panic strokes upward through the opaque water, my lungs burning, trying to make it to the top and to the air that I needed. Pushing, pushing.
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