Thinking rapidly, she decided that made sense. “It was in St. Louis Cemetery Number One. Hidden in a back corner of the vault of a man named Etienne Dupray.”
“Dupray,” Quinn repeated, his expression telling her he knew the name—and making her terrified that she’d told him too much.
“I’ll call you again,” she said, handing him the box and taking a backward step.
“I’m counting on that. And, Ms. Gault?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t get yourself killed.”
She forced a smile. “I’ll do my best not to.” When she turned away, her glance flickered to another man who was standing beside a nearby desk.
He hadn’t been there a few minutes ago, and she couldn’t help wondering if he’d overheard anything. Telling herself she was getting truly paranoid, she headed out into the afternoon sunlight.
5:02 p.m.
“You SHAVED OFF YOUR beard,” Monique said the moment she walked into the apartment.
Ben nodded. “I won’t need it if I’m wearing a mask.”
She removed her glasses and pulled off her wig, shaking her hair loose—aware there was a mile-wide gap in that logic. “But what if we don’t manage to get what we need tonight?” she finally asked.
He looped his arms around her waist and pulled her close. “We’re going to. I can feel it in my bones.” When he smiled, she couldn’t make herself smile back.
“But what if we don’t? Your beard was a good disguise and—”
“Shh,” he whispered, pressing his fingers against her lips. “I won’t be needing a disguise after tonight, because one way or another this is going to be over. Either we find out what we need to know, or we get the hell out of New Orleans. Like I said last night, as soon as the cops realize I’m not actually dead, they’ll start tearing this city apart again. And we can’t be here if they do.”
“So where will we be?”
“I’ve already booked us two flights out They leave a little after midnight” He kissed the top of her head, then took her hand. “Come on. You’ve got to decide which costume to wear.”
“No…wait a minute. Two flights? You mean two seats on the same flight, don’t you?”
“Not exactly. I booked you to Seattle so you can see your parents. Then, once I get settled somewhere… Hey, everything will work out. Besides, we are going to wrap things up tonight, which makes this discussion irrelevant”
She stood stock still, her thoughts racing. She knew exactly how his mind worked. And he had some absurd idea—which he, no doubt, considered gallant— that be shouldn’t drag her off to live the rest of her life in hiding with him.
Well, if he figured he was going to call that shot he had another think coming—and she was just about to tell him so when she thought better of it.
As he’d said, if they wrapped things up tonight this discussion was irrelevant. And they didn’t have time to waste on irrelevancies. So she’d hold off on setting him straight until she was certain it was necessary.
“Your costume?” he reminded her.
When they’d finally gotten home last night they’d simply shoved all the costumes Maria had brought off the bed and onto the floor. But now, she noticed when she followed him into the bedroom, there was a gorilla suit hanging from the top of the closet door.
It was hardly a standard issue one, though. The fur was white and the beast was wearing red-and-white striped pants, a large red-and-white polka-dot bow tie and a red sequined vest.
“You’re dressing up as a flashy albino gorilla?”
“You ain’t seen nothing yet.” Reaching down behind the end of the bed, Ben produced a furry white head, complete with a floppy red cap covered in buttons.
“You don’t think you’re going to be a tad conspicuous?”
He gave her a wry look. “This is Mardi Gras. It’s the people who don’t look outlandish who are conspicuous. Besides, I like his face and I can wear the bullet-proof vest underneath without anyone noticing it You’d better consider that too. And find a costume with a pocket for your gun.”
Trying not to think about the need for either the vest or the gun, she started picking through the costumes—ruling out the skimpy ones like the French maid’s outfit and the cocktail waitress number—and finally coming across a Kermit the Frog knockoff.
“What do you think?” she said, holding it up.
“Terrific. Lime green’s definitely your color.”
As Ben finished speaking, someone knocked on the door.
“Are you expecting Dezi or Maria?” she asked anxiously.
Shaking his head, he grabbed a mask from the bed and headed out of the room—Monique on his heels.
When they reached the door he checked the peephole, then said, “Yeah?”
“I’m looking for Anne Gault,” a man replied.
“Nobody here by that name.” He stepped away from the door, motioning Monique to look out
Her heart doing double time, she looked. Her heart began beating faster yet.
“You know which apartment she’s in?” the man asked. “I’m sure she lives in this building. Nicelooking woman with straight, dark hair?”
“Sorry,” Ben said. “I’ve never seen her.”
As the man turned to go, Monique whispered, “He’s someone from the Times-Picayune! I was worried that he overheard part of what I told Farris Quinn about the gun.”
“Dammit, he must have. Then he followed you, so he knows you’re in the building but not which apartment. How did he get your name, though?”
“I don’t know. Asked Quinn, maybe?”
“No, Quinn wouldn’t have—”
“Oh, I know. I had to sign in with Security, so he probably just checked the book. But why did he follow me? Is he a reporter trying to scoop Quinn, or what?”
Ben shook his head and motioned for her to be quiet Then, hiding his face with the mask he’d grabbed, he cracked the door open and peered out.
When he closed it and turned to her again, he’d grown pale.
“What’s wrong?”
“Our guy’s standing at the end of the hall talking to someone on a cellular. Which means we’ve got to get out of here. If he did hear you telling Quinn about that gun… Well, there are people on both sides of the law who’d pay him for the information. And I’ll bet they’d love to talk to you about what else you know, too.”
They threw on the bullet-proof vests and got into their costumes in no time flat. Ben handed her the purse she’d used for their trip to Vegas, but a glance in the mirror told her that a frog with a huge purse looked downright ridiculous.
When she said that, though, Ben shook his head. “We’ll want the tape recorder. Hell, if we had any more clothesline, I’d stick that in, too.”
Putting his Walther into one pocket of his costume and the cellular into the other, he pulled on the gorilla head, then said, “Okay, let’s blow this joint.”
Cautiously opening the door, he checked the hall. “Coast’s clear. But if that guy’s watching the building we don’t want him to notice us leaving, so we’ll use the back door. Then we can circle around and see if any company comes calling.”
Her hand tightly in Ben’s, Monique hurried down the stairs and out into the back alley with him. After racing along it, they made their way onto Royal where they were immediately engulfed in the crowd.
“We’ll wait in that café” across the street from the apartment,” Ben said, starting through the crush of people.
The front of the tiny restaurant was open to the street, and luck was with them. Just as they arrived a couple left, vacating a table that afforded a perfect view.
Deciding they’d better eat, that they might not have a chance later, they ordered seafood gumbo—a special from the chalkboard.
The waitress had barely turned away before Ben gestured down the street and said, “Either those guys are masquerading as the Keystone Kops or they’re our company.”
Watching the half-dozen uniformed o
fficers push their way through the crowd, Monique could feel her anxiety level rising even higher than it always seemed to be lately.
She tried telling herself that she and Ben were perfectly safe—just a gorilla and his frog friend out celebrating Mardi Gras. But when the cops headed into their building she felt anything but safe.
“What if they break into our apartment?” she said. “Will they be able to tell who we are?”
“I don’t think they’d break in. That guy who followed you couldn’t have told them much—only that a woman who claims to know something about the DeCarlo murders might live there.”
“And that’s not enough for them to start smashing down doors?”
“I doubt it Not with fifteen apartments in the building. But I hope we didn’t forget anything, because we won’t be able to go back in. One of them will probably stick around to watch for you.”
Ben fell silent as the waitress arrived with warm corn bread and their gumbo, then took off his gorilla mitts and reached for his spoon. But they quickly discovered it wasn’t easy to eat wearing either an ape’s head or a frog mask. Not that Monique could have eaten much, anyway. Not the way her stomach was churning.
“How soon are we going to see Danny Dupray?” she asked at last.
When Ben merely eyed her through the holes in the gorilla face, she said, “Don’t even think about arguing. I’m not going anywhere except with you.”
“Anyone ever tell you you’re the most stubborn woman on the face of the earth?” he muttered.
“Yes. So, how soon are we going?”
“The sooner the better, I guess. Let’s just hope he hasn’t gone off celebrating someplace.”
Ben took the cell phone out of his pocket, along with numbers for the Twinkle and Dupray’s apartment scribbled on a piece of paper.
“Here,” he said, handing everything to her. “You’d better call in case he answers. He knows my voice.”
“Everyone thinks you’re dead,” she pointed out “So he’d figure it was a ghost calling.” With his gorilla head on she couldn’t tell whether that made Ben smile, but she doubted it. His sense of humor had to be worn at least as thin as hers.
She phoned the apartment first and hung up on an answering machine. At the Twinkle she got a person, but it wasn’t Danny Dupray.
When she asked for him, the man who’d answered simply muttered, “Not here,” and clicked off in her ear.
“Now what?” she asked Ben. “For all we know he has gone off celebrating.”
“How about that waitress who told you Felicia had the envelope full of money?”
“Barb? I guess I could try asking for her. But if Danny said he figured I was lying about being Felicia’s sister, she’ll probably hang up on me, too.”
Ben shrugged. “Dupray’s not the type to confide in the hired help, so she’s got to be worth a try.”
Phoning the Twinkle once more, Monique disguised her voice and asked for Barb.
“Barb, it’s Felicia Williams’s sister calling,” she said when the waitress came on the line. “Remember me?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, I need to talk to Danny again. It’s really important, so I was wondering whether you know if he’ll be there later.”
“Absolutely. The place is packed, and he’d never trust anyone else to handle the receipts on a busy night.”
“Oh, great. Do you have any idea what time he’ll show up?”
“Not really. But if you give me your number I could call you when he does.”
“That would be fantastic.” Monique carefully recited the number. “And thanks so much. As I told you, it’s really important.”
“Well, like I told you, Felicia was my friend.”
Saying goodbye, Monique clicked off. “We’ll be hearing back as soon as Danny gets there.”
She held the phone out to Ben, but he shook his head. “If she’s calling back you’d better hang on to it.”
Slipping it into her purse, she said, “I can’t eat any more. So what do we do while we’re waiting?”
“I know a place we can go.” He signaled for the bill, and once it was taken care of they headed out onto Royal. Darkness had fallen, but since every light in the Quarter was on, it was almost as bright as day.
Making their way through the sea of people, they walked the block up from Royal to Bourbon Street, which, impossible as it seemed, was more crowded yet Every second building was some sort of club, and despite the early hour, music was blaring out into the street.
“We don’t have far to go,” Ben said, wrapping his arm around her waist and snaking a path past two very drunk men.
Once they reached Toulouse Street, they turned north. Like all of the Quarter, Toulouse was a mixture of the seedy and the refined, and when they eventually stopped it was in front of a particularly elegant little gem of a building.
“This is it,” Ben said.
For a moment, Monique gazed uncertainly at the arched doorway and the leaded glass and ironwork of the door. Then she noticed a small brass plaque that identified the place as the Crescent Wine Cellar.
“This is yours” she said, smiling at him from beneath her mask.
“Uh-huh.” He opened the door. “I wanted you to see it.”
Inside, the Crescent glowed with polished dark wood and antique glass. And crowded as it was, there was a more sophisticated sense about it than most upscale bars came anywhere near achieving.
“It’s beautiful.”
Ben nodded. “The renovation turned out well. But let’s go and say hi to Dezi. I’ll bet, in these outfits, even he won’t have a clue who we are.”
They started toward the bar, but didn’t make it halfway there before the cellular began to ring.
Monique quickly dug it out of her purse and clicked it on. Even before she said hello, the background noise told her it was Barb calling from the Twinkle.
Chapter Fourteen
Tuesday, February 11
7:46 p.m.
By the time they turned onto Dumaine and could see the marquee of the Twinkle up ahead, Ben’s heart was beating so loudly he could barely hear the roar of Mardi Gras.
All he had to do, to get the name he wanted, was make Danny Dupray talk. The problem lay in how big an all that was. The slimy little bastard hadn’t lasted as long as he had by volunteering the wrong information to the wrong people.
When Monique squeezed his hand and he glanced at her, she looked so silly in her frog outfit that he should have found it easy to smile. He didn’t, though, because she was his other problem. Or, more accurately, the problem was that she’d been so damn insistent about coming along.
He’d taken one last shot at getting her to change her mind, had tried to persuade her she should stay at the Crescent with Dezi. But she’d been just as stubborn as ever.
“Turn on the tape recorder,” he said, leaning closer to her.
Once she’d reached into her purse and done so, he added, “And don’t forget, when we get into Dupray’s office, do your best to edge over to one side. He’s bound to have a gun in his desk, and it’ll be better to watch him from different angles.”
When she nodded he left it at that, but it obviously would be better for another reason, as well. If she wasn’t standing beside him, directly in front of Dupray’s desk, she’d be out of the most likely line of fire.
Gazing along the street again, he told himself to stop thinking worst-case scenarios. After all, they were hardly defenseless. But the last thing he wanted was a nineties version of the shoot-out at the O.K. Corral. He simply wanted to make Danny Dupray believe that if he didn’t talk he’d be worse off than if he did.
There was a lineup outside the Twinkle, and some hostile muttering when Ben and Monique strode directly to the front of it.
“Back of the line, ape-man,” the bouncer told him.
“We’re not here for the show. I have to see Danny Dupray.”
“Yeah? You got an appointment?”
&
nbsp; “Tell him it’s his buddy Larry, from Vegas.”
“What about the frog chick?”
“He doesn’t know her, but she’s with me.”
The bouncer went inside, reappearing a couple of minutes later with a young blonde at his side. She was pretty, but scantily dressed.
“That’s Barb,” Monique whispered.
“Yeah, okay, Larry,” the bouncer muttered. “Danny says he’ll see you. Barb here’s gonna show you the way to his office.”
Ben had never been in the Twinkle before, but a quick glance around and a breath of the air—heavy with the smells of stale beer, smoke and sweat—told him it was an even grubbier dump than he’d heard.
They followed Barb past the runway, where a large-breasted woman was stripping to “Fever.” As they reached the hallway that led into the back of the building, Monique rested her hand on the waitress’s arm to stop her. “Barb? It’s me, Anne.”
The waitress nodded. “I figured it was. But listen, Danny’s in kind of a twitchy mood tonight, so watch what you say.”
Terrific, Ben muttered to himself.
Barb started off again, leading them the rest of the way to Dupray’s office.
“Yeah, send them in,” he called at her knock.
“You’re on your own,” she whispered, opening the door and beating a hasty retreat.
When Ben closed the door behind them, Dupray merely gazed across his desk for a moment—finally giving them a narrow, phoney smile. “Well, if it’s not King Kong and the Frog Princess. To what do I owe the honor?”
“There’s been a death in my family,” Ben said, watching Monique from the corner of his eye. She was already edging toward the side of the office, feigning interest in a cheap print on the wall.
“A death in your family,” Dupray said. “Yeah, I heard. I guess most people have. Of course, most people don’t know Ben DeCarlo was your brother.”
“No. There’s just you…and me…and…”
The sleazoid nodded, but he didn’t bite. This obviously wasn’t going to be any easier than Ben had expected. And wearing an ape head that restricted his vision wouldn’t be an advantage if Dupray got gun happy.
The Valentine Hostage Page 17