On the way back across the river, I called my lawyer on the cell phone and left her a message with the address of the new house, the listed Realtor, and the instruction that I wanted to take possession as soon as possible. If I stumbled a little over the word possession, it was only my unsettled state of mind.
As we sped through the rising darkness, I wondered if this was how Eric would have done things. Everyone I met seemed surprised that he had the money and influence that he did. Apparently, he’d played that close to the vest. The same way he’d played everything. Until he died and left me the keys to the kingdom, I hadn’t known that riders existed, much less that he was in the business of opposing them. I still didn’t know how he’d amassed the wealth I was spending. All I could say for certain was that it hadn’t come from my grandfather, or my own father wouldn’t have struggled so hard to keep me, my mother, and my two brothers in good clothes on Sunday.
Would he have come when Karen called? Would he have agreed to her plan, or would he have had a better one? What would he have seen that I was missing? The jet lag paranoia was thick as paste. I told myself that long plane flights always did this to me, and that a night’s rest would fix ninety percent of it. Or if not that, at least half.
New Orleans appeared across the water, a glow of light in the dark air. A city half ruined, but still bright.
We got back to the hotel a little bit late. Chogyi Jake, Ex, and Karen Black were already in the restaurant. The afternoon’s bright Dixieland had given way to a live jazz band softly playing songs I felt like I knew. The air was thick with humidity, but instead of feeling damp, it seemed lush. Like the whole city had just stepped out of the tub, and hadn’t quite gotten its robe on. The table was long enough for six, but set for five. Karen had taken the seat at the head, Ex to her left, Chogyi Jake to her right. Two highball glasses were sweating on the linen in front of Ex and Karen. Chogyi Jake was drinking water. Some things never change.
As Aubrey and I took our seats, Karen waved a greeting, but didn’t pause in the story she was telling.
“So there I was, dressed like the world’s cheapest hooker, trying to explain to the Secret Service that I hadn’t even known the vice president was staying there, and that they probably wanted to move him before the rest of the team showed up and arrested half the hotel staff.”
Ex chuckled and shook his head. Chogyi Jake smiled his beatific smile and turned to us.
“How was the house hunting?” he asked.
“Decent,” Aubrey answered.
“I think we’ve got a place,” I said. “It may be a day or two before we can get keys, though. Money lubricates, but bureaucracy resists.”
“It will be at least two days before the package arrives from London,” Chogyi Jake said. “But the property manager was quite helpful.”
“How long will it take you to get the place ready once all the props are here?” I asked.
“Two or three days,” Chogyi Jake said. “Two for certain if Aubrey or Ex can be spared. More likely three if it’s only me.”
The waiter ghosted up to us, took our drink orders, handed us two leather-bound menus, and vanished again. When Karen went back to the business at hand, she talked directly to me.
“There’s reconnaissance work to be done, but I don’t know that having four people would actually be an improvement on three. Or two, for that matter. The more people we have, the better the chances of being made.”
Ex sipped his drink. I didn’t remember ever seeing him with anything stronger than a beer before.
“How about you and me and Aubrey do what we can to track the girl,” I said. “Ex? You up for helping Chogyi Jake with the safe house?”
“Sure,” Ex said without rancor. I’d expected him to object. I was jumping at shadows.
“What’s the deal with the car?” Aubrey asked.
“Ninety-four Ford cargo van,” Ex said. “We’re leasing it under a false name, for cash. It’ll be here in the morning.”
“The gray market’s treating us gently,” Karen said. “I’ll make sure the police aren’t looking for it for any other reasons before we take it on the road, but I think we’re good.”
Aubrey looked suitably impressed. Our drinks arrived.
“We need to switch hotels,” I said. “I don’t want to try sleeping and worrying that the evil snake woman’s going to make another try for me.”
“Already done,” Karen said. “Ex had the same idea. We even moved your things. We’ll go to your new digs after dinner.”
I felt a moment’s disquiet about other people touching my stuff, but I let it pass.
“So there’s just one more thing we need to talk about,” I said to Karen. “The price.”
Ex, Aubrey, and Chogyi Jake were quiet. Karen’s smile deepened slightly, and she looked down at the table. When she looked up at me through her soft, blond hair, her eyes were steeled. It struck me again that she was beautiful. The band shifted into something that I was pretty sure was John Coltrane.
“You’re right. I shouldn’t have gotten carried away before I knew I could afford all this,” she said. “What will it take?”
“Nothing that’ll break the bank,” I said. “I want you to tell me everything you know about my uncle.”
FIVE
The food arrived, a bouillabaisse that smelled rich and oceanic with two side orders of raw oysters for the table. The band took a break between sets, and a recording took their place, muted trumpet and stand-up bass hovering together just under the level of conversation. Karen ate a couple oysters, her eyes focused on nothing in particular, and then, her thoughts gathered, nodded to herself.
“I met Eric in the summer of 2000,” she said. “I was still officially working for the bureau, but I’d taken a leave of absence. I was… I wasn’t well. I don’t know how much you know about my history? Do you know about Davis?”
I shook my head.
“Okay,” Karen said. “I have to go back a little farther. After we caught Mfume, I wasn’t the only one looking for the rider. My partner on the case, Michael Davis, also heard everything Mfume said. We were working on the issue together. The year before I met Eric—July 12, 1999, the rider that had been in Mfume killed my partner. It made it look like an accident, but I knew.
“I went to New York. That was where the rider was. I started looking around. Eric’s name kept coming up. Everyone knew him, or knew about him. He was some sort of fixer. The guy you went to when you didn’t have anywhere else to go. I made him for a bagman. The public face of something bigger. I was wrong about that. Anyway.
“I found him in a bar on the Upper West Side. He had an apartment, and he was doing business out of it. I tried to lean on him. I don’t know exactly what I said. I think I gave him some crap about not having a business license or something,” Karen said, and she smiled. “He didn’t buy it. I’d meant to go in and roust him, break some heads, find out who his boss was, and if there was any connection to the rider. Instead, we wound up drinking whiskey and… and I told him everything. He had a way of listening that made you say things you didn’t mean to.”
“And he helped you?” I asked.
“He did,” Karen said, but her expression was bleak. “We didn’t catch the rider, but we cast it out of the body it had taken over. Broke its power a little. Weakened it. Afterward, I was sick for almost a month. It hadn’t been… it wasn’t easy. He let me stay at his apartment. He made me bathe once or twice a week. He kept me eating food.”
“He guided you back,” Chogyi Jake said. Karen considered for a moment, then nodded.
“He was with me through my breakdown,” she said.
“Were you lovers?” I asked.
“Only a couple times toward the end,” Karen said. Her voice had taken on a low, throaty amusement. “I wouldn’t have been much fun in the sack right at the beginning. But no, we weren’t serious about each other. We were just a man and a woman in close proximity for a few weeks. And neither of us had anyone. That
’s all.”
“What was his price?”
“Twenty thousand dollars, and five favors to be named later,” she said. “He called in three of the favors. Before I left the bureau, he had me expunge some information from a guy’s police record. Then after I left, he needed someone to be a lookout on a job he was doing in Seattle, so I went out and helped with that. The last time I heard from him, he needed me to keep a baby at my apartment for a couple weeks in March of ’03.”
“A baby?” Aubrey asked.
“Yeah. Little boy,” Karen said. “Looked Indian. Subcontinent Indian, I mean. I called him Raja, but I don’t know what his real name was. Eric dropped him off, then came and got him again. I didn’t ask what it was about.”
“March of 2003,” Ex said. “I remember that. He said he had to go take care of his mother for a few weeks. In Kentucky.”
“Well, he spent at least some of that time with an eight-month-old in Boston,” Karen said.
“And Grandma Heller died when I was twelve,” I said.
“That was the thing with Eric,” Karen said. “I knew a lot of things about him, but I was never sure any of them were true. Maybe he’d been in the military, maybe that was just a story. Maybe he’d gone to Juilliard. Maybe not. He had this way of suggesting things without ever exactly saying them. And then sometimes he was just joking. Or he was protecting me from something.”
The muted trumpet rose like a child wailing for her mother and went silent. Karen’s structural half-smile softened.
“I’m not helping, am I?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It seems like everyone knew a different version of him. I just wish…”
That he’d told me what he was, and what I was going to become. That he’d taught me. That he’d trusted me.
The Eric Heller I’d known had been the benign uncle, hated by my uber-Christian parents. When I’d gone on the queen mother of all teenage rebellious benders at sixteen and woken up with an honest-to-God lost weekend and a tattoo on the small of my back, Eric had been the guy to cover for me. When my father had informed the family that Eric was an abomination before God, I’d thought it meant he was gay.
And Eric had also been the architect of a secret war against riders. And having an affair with Aubrey’s wife, Kim, which was another thing I’d carefully not mentioned. And secreting anonymous babies with former FBI agents.
I ate an oyster, the stony shell feeling unnaturally solid and real.
“I’ll tell you what,” Karen said. “I’ll tell you anything I remember. Any question you want answered about him, I’ll do my best. And you can have those last two favors I owed him. And if I happen to win the lottery, I’ll pay you back for the house and car.”
“Deal,” I said, managing a smile.
As we ate, the conversation warmed. Karen was a good storyteller, and Ex, Chogyi Jake, and Aubrey all chimed in. It gave me room to step back and let the fatigue seep in. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, asking Karen to give me information about Eric. Some handle on him, some indication of whether he would have done what I was doing now. Something. The truth was, I didn’t need to charge prices for what I did, and at twenty thousand a throw, Eric didn’t either. With the money he’d left me, twenty thousand was pocket change.
But still, he’d taken it from Karen. He’d slept with her, taken her money, nursed her back to health, involved her in his work without explaining anything. I didn’t know what to make of any of it, and as the food hit my stomach, my few remaining neurotransmitters seemed to break down. The after-dinner coffee came at nine o’clock. Or five in the morning, Athens time. Fatigue was shaking in my veins.
I paid off the bill just as the band came back for a second set. Five black men in good suits and thin black ties. I wondered if it was a uniform designed to make me think of the Blues Brothers, or maybe it was the other way around. The sax player caught me staring at them and smiled.
“Why don’t you guys get the car,” Karen said. “Jayné and I can walk it.”
I was too tired to object, even though the idea of walking as far as the sidewalk seemed optimistic. Karen tucked my arm in hers and led me out into the thick night air. It was easy to forget how short she was, but as we reached Bourbon Street, she shifted, putting her arm around my waist and looping mine over her shoulder. I was easily four inches taller, and she fit beside me the way I had once fit beside my boyfriend.
The old Sting tune kept floating through my head as we turned north. “Moon Over Bourbon Street.” And here I was, walking through the narrow street. Cars moved past us slowly, careful of pedestrians like us. A wide brick courtyard on our left reverberated with a song that was thick and passionate and powerful the way only live music could be. The air was thick with humidity and the smells of gasoline and hot grease and, incongruously, fresh bread. Karen leaned her head against my shoulder, and the intimacy of her body next to mine was unfamiliar and inappropriate, and it was also as comforting as hugging my best friend. Part of me was freaked out by her, and part was grateful she was there. Her perfume was hyacinth and musk. I was surprised she wore anything so feminine.
A girl with café-au-lait skin no older than sixteen skipped up beside us, holding something out in her hand. A silver fleur-de-lis pin.
“Three dollars,” she said.
I looked at the pin, then at the girl. Without breaking stride, I pulled my wallet out of my backpack, plucked a five out, and gave it to the girl.
“Keep the change,” I said. She grinned and skipped away. I smiled and dropped the pin into my pack along with the wallet. Karen watched it all as if it were happening at a distance.
“How’re you doing, kiddo?” she said.
“Everyone keeps asking me that,” I said. “I’m fine. I mean, not great, but fine.”
“Hope it’s okay I sent the boys on ahead,” she said.
“Sure,” I said, then sighed. “It’s kind of nice, actually.”
“I wanted a minute with just the two of us. I put you on the spot back there.”
“I thought I was doing that to you,” I said.
“That too.”
A man with a new-looking goatee and a T-shirt that read I Got Bourbon Faced on Shit Street lurched in front of us smiling, looked at Karen looking back at him, and scuttled away.
“The things we did today?” she said. “The safe house, the van, the wards. All of it. It would have taken me weeks.”
“Nah,” I said. “You could have—”
“I couldn’t,” she said. “You could. I knew Eric maybe as well as anyone, and I barely knew him at all. I can’t imagine how hard it would be stepping into his shoes.”
I swallowed. If I hadn’t been so desperately tired, I probably wouldn’t have teared up.
“You’re doing great,” she said.
The sense of sloppy gratitude was only matched by the embarrassment that I was quite so easy to read. I wiped my cheek with the back of one hand.
“Thank you,” I said. “Really. Thanks.”
It seemed like we’d hardly started walking when she angled me up and to the left, and the new hotel opened before us. I stopped at the counter and got my key card. The boys weren’t anywhere to be seen. Karen took my hand. At that moment, I felt like I’d known her my whole life. The smile at the corner of her mouth snuck up to her eyes.
“Call me when you wake up?” she said.
“I promise,” I said. “But it may be early evening. I’m destroyed.”
“Whenever,” she said, then swooped in and gave me a quick hug. I watched her walk back out onto the street, and I watched the men she passed watch her too. My body felt like overcooked chicken ready to slough off the bone. I made my way to the elevator, up to my floor, to the room number, and into the great, king-size bed, still thinking about Karen without thinking anything in particular.
If there were any justice in the world, I would have gone off like a light and awoken twenty hours later feeling rested and human again. Instead,
I lay on the bed and vibrated. The clock at the bedside told me it wasn’t ten o’clock yet. My body said I’d been up all night, and I was officially too tired to sleep.
True to their word, Ex and Karen had brought my stuff to the new hotel. I popped open the laptop, checked mail, checked a couple of blogs I followed, and turned to Google.
I got no hits at all for Amelie, Daria, or Sabine Glapion. Not even a MySpace page. I wondered if being a voodoo queen meant being technologically pure or something. I tried loa and got a little over eighteen million hits, including things like the Logistics Officer Association, letters of agency, and the Mauna Loa Observatory. I found a Wikipedia article on voodoo gods, and then another three or four references that explicitly disagreed with it without ever agreeing with one another. Damballah was the voodoo spirit of the snake. Or Baron Samedi was. Or Carrefour. Or Legba.
I paused.
Legba.
It was what I had said during the fight in the lobby, the name I had called the old woman and the shining snake. There was a pretty detailed article about Papa Legba on a site Chogyi Jake had shown me, but when I tried to read it, I found myself losing the sense of it. I bookmarked it and promised myself I’d look again when I was functional. I shut down the laptop and stumbled into the shower.
I ran the water cool, and it woke me a little bit. I still felt the exhaustion, but I didn’t have the same sense of being caught half in dream, unable to wake up or go down to sleep. I washed my hair twice, just because it felt good to do it. The hotel had a white terrycloth robe with its logo embroidered on the right breast, and I had just wrapped myself in it and stepped out of the bathroom when a knock came at the door. My heart ramped up a little.
“Who’s there?” I said.
“It’s me,” Ex said. His voice sounded odd.
I hesitated, then went to look through the peephole. It was Ex, and he was alone. I gathered my qi, the mystic energy that let me do the little bit of magic I could. I pulled the energy up my spine and into my eyes, using it to see through enemy spells, but Ex was still just Ex. I opened the door.
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