Old Black Magic

by Jaye Maiman

  Jill teases me that the kid and I have some sick mother-son thing going on. I’ll never admit it to her, but she could be right. I read his file first.

  Chapter Seven

  Evan had compiled accounts of the six murders from newspapers I’d never heard about, publications with titles like The People’s Gazette. He’d managed to contact three of the six lead investigators, interview a few family members of two victims, and assemble names and phone numbers of people I might want to contact for more information. All this in less than nine hours. That’s my boy, I thought, smiling to myself.

  The smile evaporated the next instant when I read that he’d floated NeVille’s name by one of the investigators on Rubin’s case. The New Orleans Police Department had dismissed his inquiries immediately and demanded to know my license number. I was annoyed by Evan’s faux pas, not the NOPD’s response. Rubin’s homicide was an active investigation. On top of that, the victim was ex-wife to a dead cop. No outlander could touch this case, especially not a New Yorker. Ryan had made it crystal clear that the only shot we had at obtaining inside information came from Sweeney. What concerned me now was getting my name pulled into the official investigation. I’d have to keep a very low profile from this point on.

  The news from Chicago was more disturbing. Evan noted that the so-called eggshell murder of Andrea Allen, 59, Christian right-to-lifer and housewife, had been solved more than two years ago. The murderer turned out to be the unemployed 32-year-old son who had moved back home a few months earlier. My stomach sank as I read through the summary. NeVille’s presence in Chicago at the time of Allen’s homicide now appeared entirely coincidental. What if the other cases were also unrelated incidents? I rubbed my hands over my face, suddenly tired again. I reread the page in front of me. Evan had highlighted one sentence: Andrea Allen had not been raped or otherwise sexually assaulted. All the other women had. I reminded myself that this case had been the weakest link from the beginning.

  We were down to five murders, including Mary Ryan and Lisa Rubin. Maybe this was progress, after all. I put aside the rest of Evan’s report and thumbed through the other three. Pretty monotonous stuff, except for a stack of papers that originated with Elmore Wilmington, a man I’d first encountered in a kidnapping case this past winter. An artist living confidently with a severe neurological disorder called Tourette’s syndrome, Wilmington’s latest obsession was something he’d dubbed “imagination mapping.” I laughed out loud as I unfolded a sixteen by twenty sheet of drawing paper on which he’d drawn a series of concentric and overlapping circles in brilliant shades of his own hand-made pastels. With Evan and Elmore in our stable, our agency was certainly going where no private investigators had gone before. Tony doesn’t fully approve of their unorthodox approaches, but they thrill me.

  I pivoted the desk lamp to better illuminate the drawing. The concentric circles illustrated the sequence, time lapse and location of the murders. Amazingly, he’d delineated Allen’s murder with a dotted line and the typically ambiguous marginal note, “Obscures picture. Send to background.” The dates of four of the six murders were drawn in vermillion. Allen’s was ochre, Betty Galonardi’s green and circled in yellow. I bent closer to read Wilmington’s note. “Per: NYPD Izzy McGinn, Galonardi murder corrected to June 13th. Final coroner report estimated death post-midnight.”

  Sweeney had already given me the corrected date, but seeing it on paper sucked away a few cobwebs. I steepled my hands and held my breath. A warning signal began to buzz at the back of my head. With Allen’s case removed and Galonardi’s date corrected, the connection hit me like a spitball on the forehead. Friday, August 3, 1984. Friday, August 23, 1985. Saturday, May 3, 1986. Monday, June 13, 1988. Monday, May 3, 1993. Every murder had been committed on a date containing the number three. A mystical number. So maybe our killer was religious. I fingered the page and shook my head at the sudden clarity. The first three murders had occurred within a year of each other. The fourth took place after a two-year lapse. Allen’s occurred two years after that. With her homicide removed, the lapse between Galonardi’s murder in New York City and Lisa Rubin’s death jumped to five years. Had another murder taken place in the meantime that we didn’t know about yet? Or had something occurred in New York that scared off the killer, forced him to take a sojourn from his bloody pastime?

  Another break in the pattern emerged. The killer had taken a bi-coastal approach until now: San Francisco first, then Massachusetts, back to San Francisco, then New York and most recently, New Orleans. Why? I stood up, stretched, then blurted, “Shit.” Rubin was from Berkeley. So the pattern held. Now all I had to do was figure out what the hell it all meant. Piece of cake.

  Speaking of cake…

  I checked my watch and my stomach grumbled in response. It was twenty past six and I hadn’t had a real meal since yesterday. I dialed K.T.’s restaurant again. The response was pretty much the same. She was “indisposed.” The idiot on the other end actually used that word. Indisposed. I’d have to deal with her later tonight, when we had time to talk and I had ample time to beg, justify and make amends. I threw some paperwork into a backpack and focused on my most pressing problem. Getting into a decent restaurant at prime time. Les Enfants was out until K.T. and I had some private time. Another option sprang to mind. I used to do travel writing and I still have a few solid connections around town, including one at The Red Bike, one of the hottest new restaurants in town. A quick phone conversation with the owner won me entry to a seven o’clock seating.

  That settled, I made a quick call to New York and then dialed Tom Ryan. The first few minutes he spent shouting at me with the bravado of a pissed-off father impatient at his own fear.

  “Are you done?” I asked.

  “Not really. How are you, by the way?”

  “Fine. Do you want to hear my news?”

  “All I want to hear is that you and K.T. are booked on the next flight home.”

  “Ryan, I’m fine.”

  “That’s not what Theo said. He wants you out of the picture. Called you a loose cannon. I understand you almost got him killed in the bayou. The bottom line, Miller, is if you or Theo got whacked, it’d be on my head and my neck ain’t strong enough to hold up that kind of weight. Not anymore. I hired you and I’m firing you. That’s the joy of being a bonafide cash client. Send me a bill, send your files to Theo.”

  “Theo’s an asshole.”

  “Granted. But he’s a damn good investigator.”

  “Would a damn good investigator fail to find out that one of the six eggshell murders was resolved more than two years ago?” I heard electricity hiss on the line. “Ryan, did you hear me?”

  “No, I’ve been struck deaf and dumb by your brilliance. Which one?” He listened in silence until I started talking about the date patterns. When I added in the tidbit about the corrected date of Galonardi’s murder, he spat out a string of curses, all directed at himself. “What kind of fucking moron am I? All that shit is obvious and it took some amateur to figure it out. I should retire from the force. Damn it.”

  “Am I rehired?”

  “I don’t know…can’t believe Theo didn’t catch this. Maybe he’s got his nose pressed too hard against the window.”

  “Or maybe he’s just too dense. Did you ever question whether he was the right guy for this job? And don’t give me your old boy’s club answer.”

  “No one’s better, Robin. Seriously. Or so I thought. I mean…Christ. This investigation has been in his hands for years, what if I’ve screwed up again? Tony’s been aching to pitch in and help, but Sweeney’s such a hard-ass I thought…No, no, he wouldn’t let me down. I know that. No one knows better than he does what Mary meant to me, what it means to lose a wife you adore—”

  He sounded so hurt, I had to back off. “Well, maybe something else is going on with him.” I hesitated. “The other night when we met, he had a couple of drinks.”

  “Shit.” For a second or two he was quiet, then he said, “Sweeney
does that now and then, thinks he can hold a few brews and not go off. I should’ve seen that coming. These past few months have been real hard on him. His mother, well, I guess I can call her that. She raised him. Isn’t that what matters? Anyway, she passed away in November. The man spent the last five years watching her die. Bone cancer. No one thought she’d last six months. But Theo brought her up North and took care of her, read to her, bathed her, drove her to national parks, put a skylight over her bed so she could see the stars at night—”

  “Sweeney did this? You got to be kidding. The man has the sensitivity of a rabid raccoon.”

  “You don’t know him like I do, Robin. He’s a good guy. I’m not going to condemn him for making one mistake. I’ll talk to him about the drinking, get a sense of how far he’s gone. Still, maybe I should keep you on this a little longer. You and your motley crew bring a new perspective.” In his own way, Ryan was telling me he was worried about Sweeney’s capabilities.

  “Yeah, that’s us. Motley Incorporated.” My ankle had begun to throb. I lowered my sock and checked the bandage. The wound was oozing. “Did I tell you we charge extra for accepting insults?”

  “Yeah, well, just make sure you submit an itemized bill. And, Miller, thanks. This is the first time in years I think it’s possible we may get a real break.”

  “Don’t get mushy on me, Tom.”

  “Piss off.” He hung up with a smile in his voice. It’s not too often I can do that for such a good friend. The satisfaction I felt almost made up for the hours I’d suffered with Sweeney. Almost.

  My dinner reservation was less than ten minutes away. Not that it really mattered in New Orleans. Reservations just mean you have to wait less than an hour for a seat. I changed my bandages, donned a pair of khakis and a carelessly ironed white shirt, wrote K.T. a detailed and apologetic note, swallowed my medicine and finally started for the door. I was twenty minutes late, which meant I’d be right on time. The phone rang just as I was heading out. I scrambled for the receiver, praying it was K.T., realizing with a start how much I missed her, how worried I was that I’d screwed things up once more.

  It was Dr. Lerebon. He’d found my notebook and offered to meet me at the Napoleon House, one of the few quiet bars in town, around eleven. One thing about New Orleans, insomniacs have plenty of company. Normally, I wouldn’t have hesitated, but I was anxious about getting time with K.T. I negotiated with him and we finally agreed to meet at nine instead, which meant I had to high-tail it over to The Red Bike.

  After a day spent alone in a dim hotel room, the cacophony of the streets was overwhelming. Strangers rushed by, caught me by the elbow, spun me around. Music seemed to cascade toward me from every direction. Kids too young to attend movies alone tap-danced for money, their eyes vacant, their movements mechanical, without joy. By the time I got to the restaurant, I was ready for a drink. I ordered a Dixie beer, Oysters Rockefeller, crawfish with remoulade sauce and a side of gumbo. The waiters, all men, were just as I remembered them from the last time. Dressed in all black, with deep Southern accents, they were indulgent to some diners and benignly neglectful of others. I got lucky. The man serving me liked the quantity of food I’d ordered. He slipped me extra pecan cheese twists and winked.

  A cut by the Gypsy Kings was piped through the dining room. The music transported me to a quieter place. I leaned back, let the ceiling fans sweep the chill air over my face and sighed. I wanted desperately just to be another patron on vacation, instead of a detective picking through the fragments of six brutal murders. I dumped my files into the backpack and spooned a dish of Key lime pie that K.T. had once begrudgingly called the best in the universe. The admission had almost broke her heart. I smiled at the memory.

  Less than forty-eight hours ago K.T. and I had lain on the hotel bed, wrapped around each other, bodies slick with sweat, hearts pounding, our eyes locked in shared dismay that our love-making remained so energetic and so assured. It had been like that from the beginning, with one exception. Remembering the first time we’d made love after I knew she was pregnant brought another smile to my face. K.T. had taken me home from the hospital and stayed there as I recovered from pneumonia. One unusually warm day in March, we sat in the back yard watching a flock of goldfinches devouring thistle from a feeder I’d just hung up. K.T. gestured for me to open my legs so she could nestle against me on the chaise lounge. Up until then, we had done little more than kiss, still deep in negotiations over the terms of phase two of our turbulent relationship. But the weight of K.T.’s slender back pressed along my body, her head resting between my breasts, my legs crossed over her thighs, became too much all at once. I started stroking the sides of her swollen breasts, wondering what they looked like now that she was pregnant, wondering how sensitive her nipples had become, how swollen her lips would be now that blood pounded through her with increasing force, how she’d respond to my mouth, my tongue.

  Without knowing it, I groaned beneath her. We exchanged no words, each of us pretending to be engrossed in watching the birds. Quietly, she gyrated against me, so slight a movement I could barely tell if it was her or the wind rocking us. My breath quickened and I tightened in response, an exquisite discomfort demanding more from K.T. than this teasing pressure. I pressed my hands beneath her shirt, ran my fingers upward from her hips. Her waist had begun to disappear. Her breasts had grown so much that they fell gently to the sides. She arched slightly and I could see through her turtleneck that her nipples, so much more pronounced than before, had hardened. The changes in her body excited me.

  I locked my ankles over hers, ran my hands over her breasts, heard her gasp. She pulled at my thighs and whispered, “Gentle.” With excruciating tenderness I brushed a single fingertip over each erect nipple. She twisted her head to one side, the pulse in her neck synchronized to the soft pumping of her hips. Her hands rested on her abdomen, kneading herself. After another moment, she let out a burst of air. “Enough teasing, Robin.”

  I led her back up to my room, stripping as I climbed the stairs. K.T. remained clothed. She backed me into the room with feverish kisses, her hands under my panties, squeezing my butt. I tried to remove her turtleneck but she stopped me cold, with a look I’ll never forget.

  “I want this slow.” She insisted that I sit on the bed, naked and impatient for her flesh, as she undressed. The button of her jeans took forever to unhook. She lingered over the zipper, grinding her hips until the pants finally, finally fell to the floor. The fabric of her turtleneck twisted and undulated over her skin, accentuating the shape of her breasts, the curve of her spine. When her body was finally exposed, a tremor ran through me. Her belly had begun to swell, her nipples had grown as dark as espresso beans. Since the last time we’d made love, months earlier, the muscular angles of her body had turned strangely alien and astoundingly alluring. I latched onto her hips, tossed her next to me on the bed and froze.

  She’s pregnant, I thought suddenly. Pregnant. A fetus is growing inside her body. Images from a Nova special on human development flickered before me.

  Within a nanosecond, the energy between us altered. The moon had eclipsed the sun and all I could hear were the wolves approaching from the dark recesses of my mind. I tried to relight the fire by bending to lick her nipples. But once there, I was too afraid to suck.

  K.T. laughed out loud, realizing immediately that something had changed. “I’m not that fragile,” she said lightly.

  “It’s not you I’m worried about.” I was poised above her, propped on my elbows like a wooden bridge swaying over churning waters. I was terrified I’d fall on her and crush the baby. What the hell was I supposed to do? My friend Beth had read that oral sex with a pregnant woman could be dangerous if air was blown into her vagina accidentally. Certainly penetration had to be safe. But we hadn’t stopped to wash our hands since filling the bird feeder. What if I gave her a bacterial infection?

  K.T. took charge. She slipped out from under me, pressed a palm against my back so that I fell agai
nst the mattress and straddled me.

  “Check, ma’am?”

  I started at the interruption. The waiter handed me the bill with a crooked, insider grin. I blinked hard and blushed. Back to reality. I glanced at my watch. It was time to meet Dr. Lerebon.

  Getting my mind back on murder and mayhem was easier than it should have been. The door to The Red Bike opened up onto a quiet street just outside the Quarter. A faint mist had crept into the air. I picked up my pace and soon reentered the raucous steam bath of Bourbon Street. Some people think the French Quarter is romantic. I’m not one of them. I hesitated for a second before joining the surge of bodies. Think of it as merging into a five-lane highway in Los Angeles, with the on-ramp no longer than the length of a mad cow. My New York edge served me well. I elbowed through the drunks and veered onto a quieter side street.

  The Napoleon House is located directly behind the Royal Orleans. I’ve always thought of it as an oasis, tonight more so than usual. My body was aching and any muscle not physically damaged was knotted by worry about K.T. Long a haven for artists and writers, Napoleon House is the only place in New Orleans with piped-in classical music. It even has a pay phone. As I entered, I rolled my head to one side and heard my neck click. The place was lit by brass hanging lamps with thirty-watt orange bulbs. Pipe smoke curled along the bar. On a night like this, the courtyard garden would be littered with flying termites. I waited for my eyes to adjust, then headed for one of the back tables positioned directly beneath a ceiling fan.

  I recognized an aria from La Boheme: “Your tiny hand is frozen.” One of K.T.’s favorites. I smiled. Opera had never been in my repertoire of tunes to hum along with, but K.T. has changed that. For her, opera is pure passion, and after making love to Lakmé I’m inclined to agree.