Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead

by Sara Gran

  "Anywhere's fine," he said.

  "Well, where?" I asked.

  "Where you picked me up would be okay," he said.

  "Where you almost got shot?" I said. "There?"

  Andray looked at me as if we weren't speaking the same language. "Miss Claire," he said slowly, using the polite term a young person in New Orleans uses for an elder, "they wasn't aiming at me"

  I drove him back to the hotel on Airline Highway, then drove myself home, picking up a po'boy on the way. I fell asleep with the po'boy on the dresser, watching me accusingly.

  19

  THAT NIGHT I DREAMED about Constance. We were in a rowboat with her old friend Jack Murray. They passed a bottle of brandy back and forth. I thought I was on the boat with them, but they ignored me and I wasn't sure if I was there or not. Constance wore her favorite Chanel suit, her white hair in a neat bun on her head. Jack wore an old suit and overcoat that weren't much more than rags. They laughed and whispered to each other; I couldn't hear what they said.

  "Now listen," Constance said sharply, turning to me suddenly. "Jack has something important to tell you."

  A subway rattled overhead. I looked up; it was the double-R subway from New York. On the side of the train was a mural of a girl with a spray paint can in her hand, writing her name on the train. Girldetective, she wrote.

  "You're not listening," Constance said. "He's telling you what you need to know."

  I looked at Jack. He opened his mouth to speak, but instead of sound birds came out of his mouth, hundreds of them; starlings, grackles, crows, pigeons.

  "The clues are all around you," Constance said sharply. "All you have to do is open your eyes, Claire, and see."

  20

  AFTER COFFEE THE next morning I called Mick. I didn't tell him about my escapade with his little friend the night before. Mick probably thought he was at church, or maybe rehabbing houses in Lakeview.

  "I need you to do something for me," I said.

  "Research?" Mick asked. "Go through files?"

  "Maybe," I said. "Maybe later."

  "Interview suspects?" he asked. "Track down witnesses?"

  "No," I said. "Probably. But not now. First, I need you to find Jack Murray."

  "Oh, Claire," Mick said, his voice thick with disappointment. "I don't know where he is. I wouldn't know where to begin."

  "You'd have a better chance than I would," I said. "I don't even live here."

  "Jesus," Mick said. "What am I, your fucking secretary?"

  "You want to keep your little friend out of jail?" I asked.

  Mick didn't say anything. We both knew the answer was yes.

  "Then you're my fucking secretary," I said. "And while you're on it, yes, you can get started looking through Vic's work records—the cases he prosecuted, what he won, what he lost, all that. Got it?"

  "I got it," Mick grumbled. "Jesus. Do you always have to make everything so fucking complicated?"

  "Yes," I said. "Yes, I do."

  I hung up the phone.

  "Simplicity," Silette wrote. "Is the refuge of fools."

  After breakfast, still slightly hungover, I walked back to Vic's house. I stood in his doorway and looked around as if I were starting my day.

  This part of the quarter was almost too quiet. The loudest sounds on Vic's block were horse-drawn carriages and the calliope from the riverboat. No one was around. Across the street someone opened the door to a little cottage. A black cat came out and plopped down on the porch. The door shut behind him.

  I closed my eyes. I knew the Quarter well enough to see a map of it in my mind's eye. The closest grocery was LaVanna's, on Royal. That was where Vic would go when he needed milk or toilet paper or cigarettes. I opened my eyes and walked over there. It was a bustling, busy little place, cram-packed full of junk food and beer and New Orleans tidbits like boudin at the meat counter and Hubig's pies in with the Twinkies. At the counter was an old white woman in a blue housedress, thick glasses on her face, a heavy wood crucifix around her neck. I showed her Vic's picture and asked if she knew him.

  "Vic?" she said. "I knew him for years, poor kid. Why you wanna know? You a reporter?"

  She had the fast-disappearing Yat accent, equal parts Brooklyn and Boston, and sharing the same origins. It used to be common in New Orleans; now it had moved out to Chalmette and up to the North Shore.

  I explained who I was and why I was asking.

  "Why 'poor kid'?" I asked.

  "I thought he drowned," she said. "That's why I said that. What you told me about him disappearing, I didn't know that. I didn't know."

  "What was he like?"

  "Vic? He was a hell of a guy." She smiled. "A sweetheart. Knew him all of his life. His momma, she came from down here, and she used to bring him down to see everyone. Always with a smile, something nice to say, something funny. Like a light, like a light in the room. Last time I see him he says 'Miss Mary, Miss Mary,' he says, 'when are you gonna...'"

  But she stopped talking and started to cry.

  "Vic," she said, counting on her fingers as she cried. "Artie. Micky. Shawn, from over in the projects—Jesus, he was just a kid. Angie. Nate. Ferdie. Jesus Christ." She shook her head. "I'm sorry. Jesus." She sniffed and stopped crying. "Anyway, you wanna know about Vic, you come back and ask Shaniqua. She'll tell you."

  "Shaniqua?" I asked.

  "Colored girl, works nights," the woman said. "Very nice, been working for me for years, never any trouble. I know her whole family, I know the kids since they were born. Good kids. Vic, he helped 'em out of a jam a, what, a year or two back." She shook her head. "How the police treat the coloreds around here, it's a crime. They got rights, you know. Not Vic, he didn't go for that. He helped Shaniqua and her kids, wouldn't take no money or nothing."

  "She's here every night?" I asked.

  "Most," the woman said. "She'll be here tonight around six, you wanna come back. She'll tell you."

  "I'll be back," I said. "I'll be back around six."

  The woman shook her head.

  "The coloreds," she said sadly. "They got the mayor, the DA, everybody. It's all black now. But still. They ain't never seem to catch a break."

  21

  THE FIRST THING you need to know about being a detective," Constance explained when she was interviewing me to be her assistant, "is that no one will ever like you again. You will turn over their stones and solve their crimes and reveal their secrets and they will hate you for it. If you're stupid enough to marry, your husband will never trust you. Your friends will never relax around you. Your family will shut you out. The police, of course, will loathe you. Your clients will never forgive you for telling them the truth. Everyone pretends they want their mysteries solved but no one does." She leaned toward me. I smelled her violet perfume, her expensive face powder. "No one except us."

  I felt a thrill up my spine; her words, of course, were straight from Silette's Détection. Had she been there when he wrote them? Had she helped them take shape?

  "That's okay," I said. "No one likes me anyway."

  She peered at me. "Do you have family?"

  "Yes," I said. "But I haven't seen them in years."

  "Do you have any friends?" she asked.

  "I used to," I said. "They—one disappeared. The other hates me."

  Constance smiled.

  "Good," she said. "That's perfect."

  ***

  I'd met Constance in Los Angeles in 1994. A detective named Sean Risling had set up an introduction, knowing I needed work and Constance needed help. She was in L.A. on the famous HappyBurger murder case. Of course I knew who she was: the famous detective, the student of Silette, the eccentric from New Orleans, admired by some, reviled by more. Silette and his followers have never been the most popular detectives. No matter how many cases we solved or how quickly we solved them, respect was always hard to come by. It was like an episode of Quincy, stretched out over fifty years. All the better, Constance explained later, when we were friends. High
expectations from others can cripple you.

  I didn't expect her to like me. I didn't let myself hope. I called her on the phone as per Sean's instructions. She picked the time to meet and the place, a small, dark restarant in Little Tokyo.

  "How will I know you?" I asked.

  "I'll know you," she said.

  I thought she was nuts. That was the first thing I liked about her.

  Since I'd left Brooklyn I'd been traveling around the country, taking it in a little bit at a time. A year in Chicago. Six months in Miami. Two years in Portland. I went from place to place, earning money when it was easy and acquiring it by other means when it wasn't. Sometimes I solved crimes, helping out other detectives when they needed it, going undercover where they couldn't. I was getting a reputation as a good detective but impossible to deal with. I had a temper. I had no patience.

  I'd shot four people. I'd killed two. None were in self-defense.

  I sat in the restaurant in Little Tokyo and read Bhukerjee's Deadly and Medicinal Orchids of South America. A side project I was working on for Sean. He'd been working on the world's definitive encyclopedia of flower poisons. And still was, as far as I knew.

  Constance came in and sat at my table, barely glancing at the rest of the restaurant. She knew me, all right.

  "Bhukerjee," she said, looking at the book. "Not bad."

  "Who do you like?" I asked.

  "For orchids?" she said. "Or poisons?"

  "Both," I answered.

  She thought for a minute. "Ivan Vesulka," she said. "He's a little sketchy on details. But I don't think you can beat him for theory."

  I reached into my purse and pulled out my own worn, creased copy of Vesulka's Poison Orchids of Siberia: A Visionary Interpretation.

  We smiled at each other. I was hired.

  I didn't try to impress her. I figured that wouldn't work. I just did my work and kept my mouth shut, watching her out of the corner of my eye when I could, taking in her fur, her spectator pumps, her Chanel suit, her big custom bag, the white hair in a knot on top of her head, the rocks on her fingers and around her neck.

  Mostly in those first few days I ran errands for her. Bring this book to the Tibet Center, pick up dinner from the Korean barbecue joint, run to the herbalist for some new tea, find a Spiritual Church in Los Angeles and light a candle for Black Hawk. I tried to do a good job and keep my head down and my nose clean. After a few weeks she started giving me more substantial tasks: read this book on iridology and write up a report, go talk to this person about the history of poker chips. At the end of four weeks I sat in as she interviewed Vishnu Desai, the murderer—although, of course, we didn't know that at the time. Constance asked him a hundred questions or more in the room she'd taken to interview witnesses and suspects, two floors under her own room at the Chateau Marmont.

  Desai didn't fold. He was good. At the end she turned to me.

  "Anything you'd like to add, Claire?"

  I figured she was cutting me a break. She'd missed the most important question of all. There was no way it had escaped her gaze, as sharp as an eagle's.

  "Mr. Desai," I began gently. "You say your wife, Sarafina, ran out at eleven o'clock for a bite from the HappyBurger down the block."

  "Yes," Vishnu said politely, wearily. "She was hungry. There was nothing in the house. HappyBurger was the only place around; she was going there to get a bite when—"

  His voice broke, unable to form the words for what happened next.

  "Mr. Desai," I said. "Sarafina was a Sikh, am I right? She was a follower of Yogi Bhajan, wasn't she?"

  Mr. Desai nodded, confused.

  "Yogi Bhajan's followers are vegans," I said. "They eat no animal products. What would Sarafina get from a HappyBurger?"

  Mr. Desai opened his mouth but nothing came out. His brown skin turned red.

  "Even the french fries at HappyBurger have beef fat," I said. "Even the onion rings have lard. Even the french fries, Mr. Desai. Even the onion rings"

  Mr. Desai burst into tears.

  "Oh, Sarafina," he cried. "Forgive me."

  He confessed. Constance broke the case. She'd thrown me a softball; all I had to do was catch it and not fumble.

  One week later I committed to be her assistant. Three years later, she was gone.

  22

  I GOT A SANDWICH at Central Grocery and then flipped through records at a store on Decatur Street for a while. I bought a vinyl import of the Wild Magnolias' They Call Us Wild, a Best of Shirley & Lee CD, and a CD reissue of T.Rex's Electric Warrior, somewhat overpriced but irresistible. Down the street I went to a bookstore, where I spent an hour looking at crime novels and picked up a copy of Jamal Verdigris's Advanced Techniques in Locksmithing, a steal at two hundred and fifty. After six I went back to the grocery store where Vic had shopped.

  At the counter was a long-faced African American woman in jeans and a gray hooded sweatshirt, a bright red scarf around her hair. I would have guessed she was twenty-something if I didn't know she had children old enough to get into trouble. I introduced myself. She was Shaniqua. She said that the old woman, Florence, had told her about me.

  "So no one knows what happened to Vic?" she said. The concern in her voice sounded real. "That's terrible. He ought to be laid to rest. I just assumed, you know. I'm sorry he's gone, I tell you that. He was so nice to us. He was always nice—just friendly, fun, always tipping everybody. And then what happened was that my son, Lawrence, got in some trouble with the law. It wasn't his fault. He didn't really do anything—it was his friends."

  "Of course," I said. "Friends."

  "And Vic," she went on. "I mean, I just asked if I could ask him a few questions. Just to clear some things up. I was a wreck. You know, it's all so confusing. Like what kind of charges they could bring against him, what was real and what they were just scaring us with. I mean, you just don't know what to think. And Vic, he just fixed it all up for us. Just like that." She snapped her fingers and looked amazed. "Just talked to a few people and the whole thing just went away."

  "Wow," I said. "So if you don't mind my asking, what were the charges?"

  "Oh, let's see," Shaniqua said, counting off on her long fingers. "Possession with intent to sell, possession of a handgun, driving with no license—what else? The big one, the scary one, was murder two. But Vic, he was like a magician. Just made it all go away."

  I asked if I could talk to her son, Lawrence. She gave me a long list of contact information that included two cell phones, a girlfriend's phone, a pager, and the number of a friend's house where he spent a lot of time.

  "I mean, Mr. Vic," Shaniqua said. "We are so grateful. He just made the whole thing go away. All that trouble. Just made it all disappear. Like, poof."

  "Poof," I said.

  "Poof," Shaniqua confirmed. "Poof"

  23

  I MET MICK for dinner later that night at a Middle Eastern joint on Magazine Street. That was the biggest change in New Orleans since I'd lived here: the dazzling array of Middle Eastern restaurants, at least a few in each of the busiest neighborhoods. That was a mystery itself, but one I could live without solving.

  Mick had moved to the Irish Channel after losing his house in Mid-City. At first, he'd thought he would renovate or rebuild the house in Mid-City. But after a few months of dealing with contractors and insurance adjusters and copper thieves and one worker robbing him and another worker getting robbed and Mick's wife moving back to Detroit—after a few months, he decided to sell his house. It was bought by "an evil vulture-type real estate yuppie who probably wants to put in a disgusting fucking McDonald's there," as Mick described him. "Or a Taco Bell." But that was more or less how Mick described anyone who made more money than he did. Which, I was beginning to see, was almost everyone. Mick had done pretty well as a detective. As a teacher and a busy-as-a-bee volunteer, he wasn't exactly raking it in.

  Now Mick was staying in a different apartment in the Irish Channel, the first one having had leaks and mice and nei
ghbors who sold crack and carried guns. He'd gotten some insurance money, but not enough for a new house and new everything else. He'd lost everything in the flood; not just the things you think about, like a house and a car and maybe clothing and books and the good china. He'd also lost all of his socks and all of his utensils and his can opener and his kitchen spices and five packages of paper towels he'd bought on sale and some nice pens and his pillows and his sheets and his paper clips and some notebooks and a collection of tiki cups—all expenses he forgot to claim to the insurance company. Mick was lucky—not only was his house flooded, but most of the roof was blown off by the wind. That meant he got insurance coverage for some of his losses even though, like most New Orleaneans, he didn't have flood insurance.

  "The thing is," Mick said, eating his shawarma, "if they put a fucking McDonald's in there? A McDonald's where my beautiful house from 1911 with three fireplaces stood? My house, which is gone because of the failure of the federal levees? If those fuckers put a McDonald's in there, I'll just blow it up. I can do that, no problem. I mean, I'm not even worried about it."

  I figured he was pretty worried about it.

  "You know that's exactly what they wanted," Mick went on, jabbing a finger in the air. "That's been their fucking plan all along. Get out the poor, bring in the rich. Out with the black, in with the white."

  "I see that," I said. "A poor black man like you just can't make it in this day and age. What with McDonald's pulling the rug out from under you."

  Mick scowled.

  "It isn't about me," he said.

  "People always say that," I said. "But it's always about them."

  "Please," Mick said. "They've been dying to get their hands on this city. Did you see the plans? The plans they made? You can get them on the Internet. They got plans for the whole city, all divied up. Fucking Trump is talking about a deal on Canal Street. Fucking Donald Trump"