New Orleans Requiem

by D. J. Donaldson

  Gatlin picked up his radio. “Six leader to Ochoa. Victor, if he turns toward Canal before Baronne, stay with him until we can get someone else in position. Six leader to Larizzo. Dutch, let Frank out on the Canal side of Baronne, just shy of Poydras.”

  When Kit and Broussard had seen Harvey leave the reception and get on the escalator, they’d immediately gone to Broussard’s room, where they now sat at the round table by the window, Kit listening attentively to the radio traffic, Broussard mostly reading his book.

  There were many things about Broussard that Kit did not understand: his almost mystical ability to assimilate facts, his fondness for working in the kitchen, his apparent choice to live without sex—although that was one she didn’t like to dwell on—and now his ability to read a book calmly in the midst of all this. . . . But then, he’d been in forensics from almost the day she’d been born. Thirty years probably would take the edge off.

  “Ochoa to code six. Subject has turned onto South Rampart.”

  “Six leader to Ochoa. Stay with him. Dutch, where are you?”

  “Larizzo to six leader . . . Gravier and Baronne.”

  “Six leader to Larizzo. Let Frank out there.”

  The radio was silent for several minutes then: “Ochoa to code six. Subject has turned onto Gravier.”

  In Broussard’s room, he closed his book and listened, his chubby thumb marking his place.

  “What the hell’s Harvey doing?” Gatlin muttered in the van. “Six leader to Ochoa. Victor, don’t follow him down Gravier or he’s likely to make you. Stay on Rampart to Canal. We’ll take him for a while.”

  Without waiting for instructions, Green started the van and headed for Gravier, where, in less than two minutes, he pulled to the curb just short of the intersection with South Rampart. “Is that him?” he said, pointing.

  Gatlin checked through his binoculars. “Yeah.”

  It was tricky, this shadowing of someone through nearly empty city streets. “Uh-oh.” He put his radio to his lips. “Leader to code six. Subject has turned onto O’Keefe. We’re with him.” He lowered his radio. “Not too fast, Jack.”

  Green took the van leisurely to O’Keefe. “Good thing most stores over here are closed,” he said. “Nothin’ hardly for him to duck into. You want to go onto O’Keefe?”

  “Yeah, but hang back so we can see what he’s gonna do at Common.”

  When they turned the corner, Harvey was in the middle of the block. They parked at the curb and stayed there until he crossed Common. They then proceeded to the corner. “Six leader to Ochoa. Subject has entered University Place. Pick him up on Canal. If he stays on your side, cross over and walk him to Baronne. If he crosses Canal, stay on your side and let me know if he goes down Burgundy or turns on Canal. Dutch, take him down University. We’re gonna peel off. Frank get yourself to Canal.”

  Shortly, another message came in. “Ochoa to code six. Subject has crossed Canal and is turning toward the river.”

  “Six leader to Ochoa. Walk him to Frank, then get lost.”

  Gatlin considered their position. Once they hit the Quarter and the crowds, the chances of Harvey noticing he was being tailed would be much more remote. Of course it was possible they’d lose him in all the action. At least they’d managed to get this far without using Turgeon. That gave him a fresh face in reserve.

  At Baronne, Ochoa and Fortier’s paths crossed. Without looking at him, Ochoa muttered, “He’s all yours,” and kept walking.

  Across Canal, Fortier saw Harvey turn down Dauphine. For the next few minutes, Fortier kept about half a block between himself and Harvey, who crossed to the right sidewalk at Iberville and continued down Dauphine. At the next intersection, Harvey turned right and disappeared onto Bienville, heading toward Bourbon.

  This was the weakest moment in a tail. You couldn’t stand next to the guy at every intersection. So if he went around the corner, you always had a fifteen- to twenty-second blind spot.

  Generally, this didn’t create a problem. You’d turn the corner and find him. Occasionally, though, he’d go into a restaurant or shop and he’d be gone. In cases like that, it was usually best just to wait and eventually he’d come out and everything’d be fine. But it gave you a queasy feeling when you were waiting, not knowing if you’d blown it. And if he was in a restaurant, you’d have to wait a long time.

  To make his blind spot as small as possible, Fortier picked up the pace. He rounded the corner and nearly collided with someone leaning against the wall. “Charge me or get off my ass,” Harvey said.

  19

  “Fortier to six leader.”

  “Six leader to Fortier. Yeah, Frank, what is it?”

  “Sorry to say this, Phil, but I been made.”

  “In-damn-credible,” Gatlin muttered. “Jack, we may have just lost the war.” He hit the button on his radio. “Six leader to Fortier. Serve your warrant, Frank, and take him in for questioning. I’ll be there shortly. Andy, Kit . . . don’t go anywhere. I’m coming up.”

  “The Hyatt?” Green asked over his shoulder.

  “Yeah, I’m gonna toss his room. Nothing turns up there, we’ve had it.”

  “You want me?”

  “Not many places to hide things in a hotel room. You might as well pack it in.”

  THE ASSISTANT MANAGER OF the hotel unlocked the door to Harvey’s room, tapped the light switch, and stepped aside. “I still think we deserve to know what this is about,” he said, the tiny muscle under his right eye twitching.

  “Sometimes people get what they deserve and sometimes they don’t,” Gatlin said, still angry at Fortier’s screwup. He pushed past the man and entered a small alcove with a bathroom on his right and a closet with sliding glass doors on his left, Kit close behind. Broussard was back in his room waiting for that phone call, which, to Kit’s mind, couldn’t be as important as this.

  The assistant manager came in behind Kit.

  Gatlin had already learned that Harvey had nothing in the hotel’s safe. His first objective, therefore, was to get a look at the room safe to see if he was going to need hotel help in getting it open. Sitting as it did, in plain view from the doorway, he saw instantly that no safecracking would be required.

  “We need anything else, we’ll let you know,” Gatlin said, looking over Kit’s shoulder. Obviously put out, the assistant manager left, grumbling.

  Gatlin went into the main part of the room and pushed the door of the safe fully open with his foot. “Bad sign,” he said, stepping back and looking inside to be sure it was empty. “Best place in the room to put something you don’t want anybody to know about.”

  “Maybe not,” Kit said. “It’s the first place you looked.”

  Gatlin examined her through narrowed eyes and said, “Want to help?”

  Ignoring the faint suspicion he was about to tell her to keep quiet and stay out of the way, she said, “Sure.”

  “Ordinarily, there are rules to a search. If you’re looking for something the size of a bread box, you can’t look in a shoe box, ’cause you can’t get a bread box in a shoe box.”

  “Sounds like the law was made to protect criminals rather than put them away,” Kit said.

  “Too damn many liberals in the country,” Gatlin growled. “But you want to see a liberal turn mean, show him one of his relatives on a morgue table. Anyway, one of the things we’re looking for is Scrabble letters. Since they’re small, we can look anywhere. How about you go through whatever’s in the closet.”

  While Kit frisked Harvey’s suits, Gatlin went to Harvey’s Forensic Academy tote bag, which was on the bed, and dumped out the contents. It contained the thick black book of abstracts Gatlin had seen everyone carrying around, as well as a thin yellow pamphlet listing the times and places of all the talks. He also found a small loose-leaf notebook, which he thumbed through, a couple of Bic pens, and an unopened roll of Rolaids.

  The foul-up with the tail had brought back his indigestion, so when he was putting everything back in the
bag, he helped himself to a couple of the Rolaids. He tossed Harvey’s one suitcase onto the bed and opened it.

  The main compartment was empty, but he found three Band-Aids and another roll of Rolaids in a side pocket. A compartment on the other side yielded a small umbrella and an adapter for 220 electrical outlets.

  “Nothing in his suits,” Kit said.

  Gatlin gestured vaguely to the low-slung bureau of pale oak and black Formica. “Check those drawers.”

  He went into the bathroom and rummaged through Harvey’s leather toiletry bag, felt inside the Kleenex dispenser, then took the lid off the commode and peered in.

  “I wouldn’t have thought to look there,” Kit said.

  “It’s why I get the big money,” Gatlin replied. “His drawers clean?”

  “Some are, some aren’t.”

  Snorting a small chuckle, he put the lid back in place, then felt behind the commode as far as his fingers would reach. He took a quick look behind the shower curtain, then shook out all the towels and spread one on the floor so part of it went under the Formica faceplate for the sink. He got down with his back on the towel and slid forward so he could look at the large hidden space under the sink.

  “Anything?” Kit asked hopefully.

  He made a negative grunt and his face reappeared, his color distinctly higher from his efforts. They returned to the main room, where he pulled out one of the bureau drawers and held it up so he could examine the underside. “See if he’s taped anything inside there.”

  Kit peered into the dim recess where the drawer fit. “Nothing.”

  They did the same for the other two drawers, then Gatlin moved the bureau away from the wall and checked on the back. “See if there’s anything under the beds.”

  “Isn’t that kind of obvious?”

  “We once had a guy kill somebody in a hotel room and leave the corpse under the bed. It was two days before it was found and two different couples had occupied the room.”

  Gatlin examined the underside of the round table and two chairs by the window and looked behind the curtain. He went to the nightstand, opened the drawer, and flipped through the phone books and the Bible, tossing each onto the bed as he finished. He pulled the drawer all the way out and gave it the same treatment as those in the bureau, then tugged the nightstand away from the wall and looked on its back panel. He would have looked behind the headboards as well, but they wouldn’t budge.

  While Kit waited for further instructions, he put the nightstand back in order, then patted the pillows and began yanking the blankets and sheets off the bed near the window. Following his lead, Kit did the same with the other bed. After they both had worked their way down to bare mattress, Gatlin hoisted his off the springs.

  “The maids are going to love this,” Kit said.

  “I don’t really care,” Gatlin replied, flopping the mattress more or less back in place. He moved to the other bed and did the same.

  They both saw the brass key at the same time.

  “Get that, will you?” Gatlin asked.

  “Do I have to pick it up any special way?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  Kit got the key and Gatlin let the mattress drop.

  The key had a square head and the number 251 inscribed on one side. The other side was blank. The Hyatt used plastic cards as keys.

  Gatlin held out his hand and Kit put the key in his palm. He examined it briefly, then took it to the lamp on the bureau and perused it again in better light. Suddenly, Kit saw what the key could mean. “If we locate the room that key opens, we might find the things we’re looking for.”

  Instead of being pleased at the find, Gatlin’s perpetually unhappy expression darkened, if anything. “Law says we can’t take the key. But that doesn’t mean we have to leave empty-handed.”

  He put the key on the bureau, took out his wallet, and fished a business card from between his folding money. He laid the card facedown on the bureau and centered the key on it. With his pen, he traced the key’s outline.

  “You can’t take the key, but that’s legal?” Kit said.

  “Justice is a fickle mistress,” he said. “I read that somewhere. Wouldn’t want you to think I was profound or anything.”

  Pocketing the card, he took the key back to the bed where he’d found it. He hoisted one corner of the mattress and tossed the key back onto the bedsprings. “Now, let’s go over to the YMCA,” he said, letting the mattress fall.

  “How do you know that’s where the key came from?” He opened his mouth to answer, but she raised a cautioning hand and said, “I know . . . that’s why you get the big money.”

  “No, there was a Y scratched on the back.”

  “Could belong to the YWCA. . . .”

  Gatlin shrugged. “Could be neither one.”

  THE HOUSING DIVISION OF the YMCA sits on St. Charles Avenue at the edge of Lee Circle. In the center of the circle, Robert E. Lee stands with his arms folded on a sixty-foot spire of Tennessee marble, apparently greatly offended at the Y’s orange facade with horizontal black stripes. Gatlin parked out front and Kit followed him into a seedy lobby with a stained yellow YMCA banner on the wall behind a small U-shaped registration counter. The clerk at the counter had thinning hair, a pale oval face with a big nose, and closely spaced eyes that were partially closed by drooping lids.

  Gatlin flashed his badge. “You got a room two-five-one?”

  “Yeah . . . why?” the clerk asked in a neutral tone.

  Gatlin put the tracing of the key on the counter. “Your keys shaped like that?”

  The clerk bent down for a closer look and stayed that way for a long time.

  Finally, Gatlin knocked on the counter with his fist. “Hey, buddy, you asleep?”

  “Looks like ours,” the clerk said, straightening up. He had a slow, uncertain cadence to his speech that seemed at odds with the importance of the situation.

  “How about letting me see a dupe for two-five-one,” Gatlin said.

  Puzzle lines appeared above the clerk’s thin eyebrows.

  “Duplicate key,” Gatlin said as though he thought the guy might be a lip-reader.

  “I’ll see if it’s okay.” The clerk left the enclosure and headed for the stairs to his left.

  “It’s police business,” Gatlin reminded him. “So it’s gonna be okay.”

  The clerk didn’t acknowledge this, continuing up the stairs.

  While they waited for his return, Gatlin busied himself studying the intricate compass design in the terrazzo floor, hands thrust unhappily in his pockets. Figuring they might be there a while, Kit sat in one of the two plastic and vinyl chairs flanking a big plant that seemed to be growing too well for the available light. Over the next few minutes, several men came down the stairs and dispersed in various directions without so much as a glance their way. None of them looked like derelicts.

  Finally, the clerk appeared on the stairs and Kit joined Gatlin at the counter.

  His face a blank, the clerk moved behind the counter and began working on something under it. There was the sound of a drawer opening and the jingle of metal. He came up with the key.

  Gatlin took it and placed it against the outline on the card. While Kit waited breathlessly at his side, he shifted the key around, then said, “We got a match.” Then to the clerk, he said, “Who’s got that room?”

  Instead of turning to the cards in a rack on the wall behind him, the clerk stared at Gatlin without moving. Finally, after a long pause, he said, “Ain’t no occupant. It’s empty.”

  “How long’s it been empty?”

  “What time is it?”

  Gatlin checked his watch. “Nine-thirty.”

  The guy went into hibernation again and Kit half-expected Gatlin to grab him by the shirt front and shake him. Eventually, the guy said, “Nine and a half hours.”

  “Then there was somebody in it this morning?”

  The clerk made a vague gesture with one hand. “Dunno when he was last in
it. I ain’t got time to keep up with that kind of stuff.”

  Kit had begun to think this clerk and the one she’d encountered at the toy store were related.

  “Are you telling me he checked out at noon?”

  “Didn’t check out.”

  “Skipped without paying?”

  The clerk shook his head. “Paid in advance for three days. That ran out at noon.”

  Gatlin pulled out the faxes he’d shown Phyllis Merryman and put them on the counter. “Is one of these the guy who rented the room?”

  The clerk shifted slowly through the pile, then shook his head. “Ain’t a one even close.”

  Exhaling forcibly and shaking his own head like he’d just come up from swimming across the YMCA pool underwater, Gatlin folded the faxes and put them back in his pocket. “That’s all I want to know.”

  “So the key didn’t belong to Harvey, after all,” Kit said.

  “Apparently not.”

  “You want to talk to the guy who rented the room?” the clerk said.

  “I might,” Gatlin replied, turning. “You know where he is?”

  “No.”

  Gatlin seemed about to reach for the clerk’s neck when the guy said, “But he might come back for the stuff he left in his room.”

  “What stuff is that?”

  The clerk bent down and came up with an old briefcase that he put on the counter. He flipped the latches and turned it around. Inside was a folded newspaper, a Baggie full of Scrabble tiles, and two large serrated knives still in their cardboard and plastic wrappers.

  HEART TRIPPING WITH EXCITEMENT, Kit knocked on Broussard’s door at the Hyatt. When he opened it, her story poured out.

  “It was Harvey. We found a key under his mattress to a room at the YMCA and when—”

  “Why don’t you come and sit down,” Broussard said, stepping away from the door.

  She went in, still talking. “When we got to the Y, Gatlin showed the desk clerk a picture of Harvey, but the clerk said he wasn’t the one who’d rented the room whose number was on the key.” She pursued Broussard to his chair at the table by the window and sat opposite him.

  “And at that point, we almost gave up, but as we were about to leave, the clerk said something about the last guy who rented the room leaving some belongings behind.” Feeling too restricted by her chair, she got up. “He put this briefcase on the counter, opened it, and there they were— Scrabble tiles, the rest of the newspaper he’s been leaving, and two more knives just like the one we found with the third body.”