Knight's Fall

by Angela Henry

  The man waiting for me wasn’t anyone you’d look at twice. He was balding and middle-aged with a paunch and, even sitting in the coolness of the dark bar, large pools of sweat were staining his blue dress shirt under the arms. He kept mopping his sweaty face. He looked like every other guy in the bar except me. But we had more in common than anyone knew. His name was Sherman Woolsey, and in another life, he’d been a priest. I didn’t know why he’d been defrocked and didn’t care, though I’d heard it had something to do with a female parishioner. It usually did. All I knew for sure was that in his current job as a clerk with the Louisiana Office of Motor Vehicles, he had access to information I needed and was broke enough to sell it.

  “You got something for me?”

  “Do you have my money?” His eyes darted around nervously.

  “Relax, Woolsey. No one gives a shit about you. They’re too busy talking baseball.” I could hear George and the others in the background arguing about the Yankees.

  “Then why’d you turn the jukebox on?”

  “Music relaxes me. You got a problem with Etta?”

  “Look, I’ll lose my job if anyone finds out I gave you this info.”

  “No one’s holding a gun to your head, and I know this isn’t the first time you’ve done this. Now,” I said, and slid an envelope across the table at him. It held the remainder of the money I’d gotten from Father Sims. “What have you got for me?”

  I watched him thumb through the stack of twenties and shove the envelope into the briefcase sitting on the ground next to the booth. He pulled a manila folder out and handed it to me, then stood up to go.

  “This is all I could find.”

  I waited for him to leave before I opened the folder. Inside were two photocopied sheets of paper, license, and registration for Ava Duval, a woman who died twenty years earlier. Yet I’d spent the night with her just a year ago and gotten clipped because of it. Not that having sex with her had been the entire problem. Angels have been getting busy with mortal women since the dawn of time. It’s illegal, especially for guardians. But it happens. The problem was that while I’d been with her, I’d managed to let one of my charges die. At least that’s what I’d been told when I was dragged out of Ava’s bed by members of the guardian tribunal and placed under arrest while she slept peacefully. I’d been trying to track her down for months. It was like she’d disappeared off the face of the earth. Then I found an obit for her from 1990. The picture on the driver’s license was of a sixty-nine-year-old woman with a double chin and a beehive hairdo. Not my Ava by a long shot. Either I’d made love to a ghost, or the woman I’d fallen in love with and had lost everything over never existed.

  ****

  Something heavy sitting on my chest woke me early the next morning. I reached up and my hand encountered a warm body that felt like suede wrapped around a hot water bottle. I opened my eyes to see the wrinkled, white, hairless face of Minx, my savior. The one who’d rescued me a year ago from becoming demon chow. She meowed loudly in my ear. I grabbed her and dumped her on the floor, earning me an indignant yowl.

  “Scat.” I rolled over and went back to sleep.

  I finally got out of bed close to noon and found Minx sitting at the kitchen table eating a banana. She was wrapped in a thick flannel robe because she’s always cold and had the Times Picayune spread out in front of her. When Minx first brought me home to her shotgun house on Burgundy Street, I had no idea she was a cat shifter. I didn’t figure out that the strangely beautiful, tall, bald woman who’d stitched up my back and the Sphinx cat who licked me clean in the alley were one and the same until two days later when my fever broke. I’m just damned grateful it had been Minx who found me that night on her way home from a party, and even more grateful she’d brought my sorry ass home with her.

  Minx was a model. Her long limbs and exotic looks made her one of the most sought-after models in the world. As hairless in human form as she was in cat form, her pale, translucent skin, high cheekbones, and huge, blue eyes made her look otherworldly. Everyone else just thought she was a hot bald chick. She had the money to live anywhere in the world, but the hot, sultry New Orleans weather appealed to her heat-seeking nature. Though we weren’t lovers, Minx and I were the perfect pair. We were both different and we both had secrets, even from each other. I’ve never told her why I got clipped and she’s never asked. And I had no idea what Minx’s real name was or where she came from. It just didn’t matter.

  “I thought you were in Paris ’til Sunday?” I grabbed a coffee mug from the cabinet above the sink, poured myself some freshly brewed chicory coffee, took a sip, and waited for the caffeine to wake me the rest of the way up. Minx let out a disgusted snort.

  “I got bumped from the cover by some pop tart named Dimples. That’s the third time this year I was promised a cover and got screwed out of it by some nobody. I had to settle for a measly eight-page spread. And when the November issue doesn’t sell, they’ll want me back, and I swear I’ll crawl through broken glass on my belly before I ever model for them again,” she said haughtily.

  “Don’t worry, kiddo.” I ran a rough hand over her head, which I knew she hated unless she was in cat form. “Next year you’ll still be the hottest chick in the game, and Dimples will be dancing with the stars or in celebrity rehab.” Minx didn’t look convinced and just rolled her eyes.

  “I saw you were getting low on elixir. So I made you some more.”

  I opened the fridge, where a metal rack holding two dozen corked, glass vials of amber-colored liquid sat on the top shelf. Ever since the night Minx found me, she insisted I regularly drink a concoction she made to mask my soul’s essence from Lucifer’s hunters. I knew it wasn’t just to keep me safe. I’m not that naïve. She was looking out for herself, too. I didn’t blame her. She took a big risk in taking me in. Most bounty hunters only took tarnished souls, but some wouldn’t hesitate to take Minx’s soul for the hell of it. Pun intended. I had no idea what was in the stuff. She wouldn’t tell me. But I had a sneaking suspicion her cat piss was in it. Whenever I ingested it, it produced a masking effect that lasted for a couple of days. And it seemed to be doing the trick. I hadn’t seen a demon since that night a year ago. I grabbed a vial and drained it. It tasted like licorice. I hate licorice.

  “You had a message on the answering machine this morning. Sounded like it might be another job.” She pulled a piece of paper out of her robe pocket and handed it to me.

  “That reminds me,” I said, opening the fridge and pulling out the plastic butter tub that I kept my money in. “Here’s this month’s rent.” I tossed her a roll of twenties, and she impressed me by snatching it out of the air with one hand.

  “X,” she said, sighing with exasperation, “I told you you don’t have to pay rent as long as you take care of the house and the yard when I’m away working. Besides, you’re going to need this if the guy who left that message is as rich as his address.”

  I looked at the name and address scrawled in Minx’s looping cursive. She wrote like a sixth grader, dotting the i’s with little hearts and putting smiley faces inside the o’s. Someone named Alastair Duquesne wanted me at his house that afternoon at 4:00 p.m. sharp to discuss a very private matter. His address was in the Garden District. Minx was right. My usual uniform of jeans and a T-shirt wasn’t going to cut it this time. I doubted Mr. Duquesne would talk to me if I showed up looking like I was there to cut his grass.

  “Looks like I need to buy a suit.”

  “And I’m going with you.” She jumped up from the kitchen table.

  “Not necessary. I’m a big boy,” I said over my shoulder on my way to the bathroom.

  “With no taste,” she called out after me. ”The last time I let you go shopping alone, you came home with that raggedy car and a bag full of clothes from the Goodwill that went out of style with pet rocks and Rubik’s cubes. If you had let me go with you, you wouldn’t need to buy a suit. You’d already have one.”

  Women. Human or nonhu
man, they were all the same.

  ****

  At 4:00 p.m. on the dot, I walked up the wide front steps of Alastair Duquesne’s white, double-galleried, Greek revival mansion on First Street wearing a gray Armani suit and a black silk shirt. Minx had been so proud of me getting a wealthy client she even bought me a sterling silver pen recorder. I’m not James Bond, but I wouldn’t hurt her feelings for the world and just smiled and put it in my suit pocket. I rang the doorbell and caught a glimpse of my reflection in the glass on the front door and saw a thirty-five-year-old man of indeterminate race with bronze skin, a slightly crooked nose, brown eyes staring from under hooded lids, and thick, close-cropped hair so dark and shiny it looked wet.

  Back in my guardian days, I could change my appearance if necessary to make my charges feel more at ease on the occasions when I had to communicate with them. Usually in dreams, where I needed to tell them something important that would save their lives. Like appearing to a man in a dream as his recently deceased father, reminding him to replace the battery on the smoke detector two nights before his house was going to burn to the ground. People tended to remember dreams about dead loved ones. Now I was stuck with the face I’d shown to Ava Duval for the rest of my life, which according to Minx wasn’t such a bad thing.

  A maid in a black uniform let me into a foyer with marble tiles inlaid in an ornate circular pattern in the center of the shiny, dark hardwood floor, and a mahogany double staircase that wound its way up to the upper floors. A large portrait of a grim-faced, white-haired man seated and wearing a Confederate captain’s frock coat hung on the second-floor landing overlooking the foyer.

  “Wait here, please, and I’ll see if Mr. Duquesne is ready for you,” she told me before disappearing.

  Unlike the man who emphasized punctuality in his phone message, Alastair Duquesne left me waiting for twenty minutes before being ushered into his study. When I finally sat down in a red leather wingback chair in front of his polished oak desk, I understood why. Despite the fact that he was well-groomed and wearing a tailored suit that looked even more expensive than the one I wore, the man looked very ill. Minx had looked him up on the Internet for me before I’d left the house, and I knew he was only forty. But his hair was almost white, and his skin looked waxy, with dark circles under his sunken eyes. His hand was clammy and cold and trembled slightly when he shook mine, and I saw a bruise on the side of his neck and another on his wrist. I wondered if he had leukemia.

  “I’d like to thank you, Mr. Knight, for meeting with me on such short notice. I hope I haven’t inconvenienced you?” He had a cultured voice with just a hint of a drawl.

  “Not at all. But before we get down to business, I need to know who recommended me to you.” My services weren’t common knowledge, and when people in the know sent work my way, they usually gave me a heads-up first.

  “Of course you do. Smart man. It’s always good to know whom you’re dealing with.” He gave me a thin smile. “Father Lejeune of St. Ursula’s recommended your services to me.”

  “I don’t know a Father Lejeune. How does he know me?” I assumed that this Lejeune could have heard of me from Father Sims or any of the other priests I’d done work for, but I always felt safer not making assumptions.

  Duquesne let out a harsh laugh that gave way to a fit of coughing that went on so long that I finally got up and poured him a glass of water from a cut glass decanter sitting on a side table.

  “Thank you,” he said after he took a long sip and regained his composure. I could tell he was embarrassed, and I didn’t ask if he was okay. “Mr. Knight, I have a rather delicate situation on my hands and sought Father Lejeune’s advice. He discreetly inquired on my behalf about the services of a private detective, and you were referred to him by at least two priests, including Father Sims of St. Jude’s. I understand you were quite instrumental in tracking down the fake contractors who bilked parishioners out of money for repairs to their homes that were never done after Katrina. You sound like the kind of man who can help me, and I’m willing to pay you double your normal fee.”

  Double my normal fee was a shitload of money and could only mean one thing, a shitload of work. But I leaned back in the chair and smiled.

  “How can I help you?”

  “Well,” he said, clearing his throat and looking a little flustered, “it involves a young woman.”

  Of course it did. It always does.

  “I made her acquaintance this past February at the Comus Ball. She was a very beautiful woman and quite the enchantress. Before long, she practically lived here.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “She told me her name was Savannah LeMaster and that she owned a restaurant in Atlanta and was looking to open another here in New Orleans.”

  “And?”

  “And I’ve since found out her real name is Crystal Sneed, and she’s a call girl from Hoboken who moved here and set up shop last December.”

  “How’d you find out?”

  “After we’d been seeing each other for about five months, I got a call from her pimp, a man named Anton DePreist, a thug from Iberville, who informed me of her true identity. He even e-mailed me the vilest pictures as evidence. Seems Crystal saw me as a meal ticket and, thinking I’d marry her, left her pimp. It took him months to track her down.”

  “You confronted her?”

  “I did, and she didn’t bother denying it. And because she knew the gig was up, she handed me a bill for services rendered that came to fifty thousand dollars.”

  “You paid?” I tried not to smile.

  He gave me a sheepish look and took another sip of water. “I gave her five grand and told her to hit the road, and if I ever saw her again, I was calling the police.”

  “So, what is it you want from me, Mr. Duquesne?”

  “The last time she was here, Ms. Sneed took a gold signet ring that belonged to my great-great-grandfather Charles Augustus Duquesne. Its value is purely sentimental, but it’s been in my family for generations. She’s holding it ransom for the remainder of the money she claims I owe her.”

  That must have been old Charles Augustus’s portrait on the landing. I wondered what would bother him more, that the woman who stole his ring was a prostitute or a Yankee?

  “And you’re sure she really has it?”

  “She e-mailed this to me a few days ago.” He pulled open his desk drawer, took out a piece of paper, and handed it to me. “I didn’t even realize the ring had been stolen until I got that e-mail.”

  A color printout of a photo showed a woman’s hand wearing a gold signet ring on her middle finger. The gold ring had ornate scrollwork on the shoulders and a large square onyx in the center that sat flush with the setting.

  “The fact that she’s wearing it on her middle finger speaks volumes, wouldn’t you say?” He let out a mirthless chuckle. I agreed. Nothing says fuck you like stealing someone’s most prized possession.

  “There are some things I’ll need from you before I can get started.”

  “Then you’ll take the case?” asked Duquesne hopefully. A little bit of color had returned to his face, making him look a little more alive. I started to ask him what was wrong with him but realized I really didn’t want to know.

  “Yes,” I told him.

  It had seemed so straightforward that I didn’t hesitate to agree. How hard could it be to get a ring back from a hooker in hiding? And what else did I have to do? Little did I know that finding Crystal Sneed would be the least of my problems.

  ****

  I didn’t bother going home to change after my meeting. I’d need an expensive suit for where I had to go to try and track down the call girl who stole Duquesne’s ring. I figured since she’d lost her big fish, she’d most likely go back to doing what she did best. What I didn’t know is if she’d gone back to her pimp. If I had to guess, I’d bet she was hiding from him and waiting for Duquesne to fork over the remaining $45,000. I checked into the W Hotel in the Quarter with some of th
e money Duquesne gave me for a retainer. Knowing full well that if Crystal Sneed were as smart as I thought, she wouldn’t be using her real name with both her pimp and Duquesne after her, I got busy making phone calls. Starting at 6:00 p.m., every half hour call girls from various escort services started showing up at my room. I showed each one of them the photo of Crystal Sneed that Duquesne had given me. And no wonder he’d gotten taken for a ride. Crystal Sneed had long, dark brown hair, creamy skin, big green eyes, and a beauty pageant smile. She was a definite knockout.

  “I don’t know her, but I can be her if you like, sweetie. I can be anybody you want,” drawled a strawberry blonde named Honey, who’d brought an arsenal with her including a cheerleader’s uniform, a wig in every color, and an eight ball of coke she told me I could snort off her tits for a hundred bucks a line.

  I learned a lot in the next few hours, and none of it had anything to do with Crystal Sneed. The women who paraded through my room would have let me do anything, including shitting on them, if I paid the requisite price. But what they wouldn’t do was admit to knowing Crystal Sneed. I didn’t get lucky until eleven o’clock, when a goddess with jet-black hair named Gisele showed up. She couldn’t have been much older than twenty-one and looked like she belonged on the cover of a fashion magazine, not in a hotel room performing golden showers on sleazy strangers. By the time I turned around from shutting the door, she’d already stripped down to a purple thong and was stretched out on the bed waiting for me. I tossed my suit jacket over her chest and showed her the picture. Her eyes narrowed slightly in a brief flicker of recognition.

  “You know her, don’t you?”

  “Are you a cop?” She looked nervously at the door.

  “Relax. Even if I am, all we’re doing is talking, right?” She nodded reluctantly, and I handed her the picture again. “Take a good look.” I peeled off a couple extra hundreds to jog her memory, and after a few moments she handed the picture back.