He could be a good Boy Scout, play by the rules, but what could he tell anybody? He was near blind, and even nearer drunk when he saw what he saw, and who was going to listen to an old retired nigger bus driver anyhow? The governor? Sure. The mayor maybe, or perhaps the police commissioner? He laughed at the idea, but his nerves, his eyes and his conscience were already preying on him. Just a few years ago the city had finally begun to hire black cabdrivers in what was once an all-white profession. He had to do his duty. Maybe if somebody had just come forward and done their duty before now, lives would have been saved.
“ Christ-on-my-knee, what chance anybody gonna wanna hear what I gots to say,” he told himself aloud.
Still, he did know the license plate on the car. He'd been frozen in place by what he had witnessed from the doorway where he'd been resting and drinking; he'd been there long enough to memorize the license plate as he'd had a clear view of it, just as he'd had a clear view of the attack. He'd seen the man inside slouch over like he was shot by some silent bullet. He had seen the man's head cut clean away. Seen it all through the back window from where he sat, his feet against one doorjamb, his back to the other.
“ God, that killer-man waza mostest brazen human bein' I ever seen in all my days. Damned if he didn't move like the Devil hisself,” he quietly warned himself, ambling toward home, still debating with himself as to what he should do, still wondering why the hunched-over, bloated guy who did the killing had taken off the man's head to place it in a tote bag, wondering what the devil intended doing with the head.
He cautioned himself a last time to not get involved. “Nobody gonna b'lieve an ol' fool nigger anyway,” he rationalized aloud. “Leastways, not a liquored-up one.”
Just the same, he had to tell somebody. He'd tell his boy, if he could find him home. If not, he'd confide in Maybelle. Maybe she'd know what to do.
In the dark confines of the yellow cab Jessica Coran felt completely alone-as she should be, she told herself. No one else would come between Matisak and her, no one in harm's way. It was nearing midnight and the monster awaited.
She recalled her most important confidence to Kim, the one she'd wanted everyone to know: She didn't want to be responsible for another soul to pass from this world because of Matisak's sick obsession with her, and one way or another it had to end tonight.
And if Kim were like Ed Sand, here as one of Paul Zanek's carefully placed bodyguards, then Jessica would know that too before the night was over. But nothing must happen to Kim, she firmly told herself. No one could ever again fall victim to Matisak.
Jessica had earlier found a back way out of the hotel, and using a London Fog coat, a pair of dark glasses and a service elevator, she had quickly located the tunnels below street level. A few blocks from the hotel, she'd located a cab, which now bumped the curb and came to a sudden halt before an old stone and metal sign that read: “Metairie Cemetery.”
The cabdriver had been dubious, but after she'd slipped him a few bills he'd kept his concerns to himself. Now he said nothing, even as he stared out at the desolate location and the high gates to the cemetery. The place was closed and locked against the public this time of night.
This wasn't exactly the time and place she'd have chosen for an end to her life, and it wasn't that she particularly wanted to die here tonight, or that she felt suicidal, but she was determined that no one else on the periphery of the combat would die because of the indiscriminate, all-encompassing conflict that had become like some cosmic battle between her and Matisak.
“ You wan' I should wait, lady?” the Spanish driver finally asked, having no idea of the danger he was already in.
“ No, no, thanks…I'm… well, I'm expecting someone.”
“ I hope it ain't Dracula, lady,” joked the cabbie, unaware that he was so close to the truth.
“ Thanks for your concern, Mr… ahhh…” She scanned for his name on the dash I.D., but he supplied it with a flurry of his hand before she could eyeball it.
“ Santiago, Andreas Santiago… Andy for short. You sure you don' wan' me to wait round, lady?”
“ No, please…I'll be all right.”
“ Okay den, dat'll be fifteen-fifty for de trip, miss.”
She quickly paid the fare, thinking simultaneously of the job that lay ahead of her and of the neon lights of a Lil' Champall-night convenience store a block and a half back. If she needed assistance, she could go there, she reasoned, find a phone-if she should survive this encounter.
Stepping out of the cab, she felt a blanket of damp fog engulf her spirit. As the cab drove away, an eerie glow below the few street lamps in an area dominated by the cemetery made the darkness so much darker. Peering in through the gates, she saw a necropolis in the truest sense of the term. Staring back at her was an underworld turned inside out, an aboveground cemetery of bleak tombs and grim memorials. And somewhere crouching behind one of these burial stones, waiting for her to enter his chosen field of battle, was Mad Matthew Matisak.
He wasn't likely to be stepping out into the open or coming from behind those black wrought-iron gates, she told herself, a damp chill penetrating her bones, tickling like fingers across a piano up and down her spine. A disturbing uneasiness, creeping up from deep within, filled her every fiber, pore and cell all the way to the surface, the epidermal layer, with dread. Core fear, rising… climbing… mounting like mercury in a thermometer. Rising from inside her. Fear from the center of being… interrupted only by ugly, jolting flashes of the last time she was under “Teach” Matisak's control.
She stepped away from the gates, fully realizing that he was in there peering out at her from the fog-laden world of the dead. She could feel his eyes on her. She walked beside the high stone walls at a quick step, taking herself out of his view, seeking the comfort of stone walls thrown up between them, and seeking another way in, which appeared most likely to mean climbing over the walls.
This did little to reinforce the courage she'd started out with. She felt as if the eyes of the monster could easily see through the stone wall she now moved along. He could see through stone and straight into her private hell to her frightened heart, which was beating like a wounded bird's. How often had he read her mind; he certainly must know her thoughts now that she meant to destroy him at all costs.
She felt a sudden shameful yet overwhelming weakness take control of her limbs, fear robbing her of strength and resolve. Her lungs were hot lead in her chest, two pistons rising and falling with the falsetto voice of her startled heart. She was out of step, not herself, unsure, her hands trembling.
“ Damn him,” she cursed aloud, “damn him to hell and me with him if necessary.” She had to get a grip on herself and now.
A shaky, shady-looking character in rags came stumbling from nowhere and was coming directly toward Jessica, an outstretched hand running along the cemetery wall for balance. His face was shrouded in shadow as was his physique, but he appeared to favor his left-hand side as Matisak had always done, and there was a familiarity to this lumbering shadow's gait and that hunchbacked appearance. She flashed on the memory of how easily the fiend slipped into disguise. It was him. He had come out of the cemetery at some point up ahead of her and was coming straight for her.
She raised her weapon, about to fire when the ragman's face was suddenly tinted with a flood of light from a black wrought-iron New Orleans lamppost, revealing a wide-eyed wino with a toothless mouth the size of the Grand Canyon. “You… you Dr. Coran?” asked the strange, ugly man under the light. “Yes, I am.”
“ You're to go alone to Gatorland Storage, the old Jacobi warehouse district. That's alls I know.” He'd gone wide-eyed on seeing her. 38 leveled at his brain. Now he turned and stumbled away.
“ God, Jess,” she cursed herself. “Get hold.”
She'd imagined this moment for a long time now, and she had wondered how she would find the strength, the courage and the will to carry out her own deadly plan against the madman. Now that she was here, how
ever, she only felt alone and weak and fearful and stupid; she'd almost gunned down an innocent, harmless man who had no notion he acted as Satan's messenger this night.
How was she going to cope with facing Matisak outside his cage if she couldn't make the simplest judgments with some accuracy? She began to question herself. Was she being foolish? Was she being suicidal, courting death coming here this way? What might happen if he were to survive their encounter but she were to die? Who would stop him after she was gone?
She heard every sound now as if it were in Dolby stereo, the creaking of a branch in the chill wind, the rustle of leaves as they skittered across graves on the other side of the wall, the humming of electricity through the veins of the city, a cat on paws sliding across a trash can and onto the stone fence overhead, its bulging green eyes glaring at her. A night bird keeping a wary eye on the cat while spying on Jessica. All accoutrements for the Halloween setting of this place.
She knew that he waited patiently within. Just like the old Buddy Holly song title, “True Love Waits.”
She could feel his eyes on her, the staring, unblinking, uncompromising sonofabitch. She was his easy prey now.
Matisak had every advantage. He knew where she was. He merely had to wait for her to step closer, to commit totally to his trap.
28
Woman is like your shadow; follow her, she flies; fly from her, she follows.
— Sebastian R.N. Chamfort
Alex Sincebaugh had spent the entire evening in desperate pursuit of a line on a guy named Easy or Big Easy or any variant, such as E-Z. But none of those he came up with who used any of those aliases seemed a likely suspect. So Ben and he had spent a frustrating night-that is, until Alex talked Ben back into pursuing the Davey Gilreath angle. He wanted to put the touch on Gilreath's relative, this Susie Socks.
Ben didn't share Alex's single-minded determination, and they had some words when, after long hours, Ben began to moan, too fatigued, he said. Still, they drove for the Pink Anvil only five blocks riverside from the Blue Heron. At the club, Susie Socks-no doubt her name was an alias-wasn't on duty, but on her night off people were more inclined to talk about her. When Alex learned that she was in fact Gilreath's sister, he became doubly excited. She had been living and working in the area for a little over a year, having come on the scene at about the time of Victor Surette's death-also an interesting wrinkle, thought Detective Sincebaugh.
He and Ben got an address on Susie, Ben admitting that maybe something just might shake out when he said, “Geez, I never knew the weasel had a sister.”
“ You learn something new every day,” Alex replied as they made their way back to the car. From there they started for Susie's place, but there was no rush. When they arrived, they found she was not home. Alex wanted to stake out the place for a while, but Ben argued for letting it go for another day, that they'd find her at the nightclub the next day. Ben followed this with wide, long yawns, stretching and talk of a soft bed and a softer Fiona waiting for him at home.
“ Look, Ben, on the surface, it always appeared that Victor Surette fell from the sky without a background, without people or connections, and I think that was by design. He had no photos when we searched his place, remember? No albums, postcards, not so much as a phone number. It was unnatural then, and it stinks now, that his place was so goddamned clean of information. You remember that?”
“ Sure, but we chalked it up to a spartan life, a guy who didn't want ties or anyone from his past to know his whereabouts.”
“ No high school yearbooks, nothing,” Alex continued. “Unless all such materials were cleaned out before we got to the apartment. Remember the delay between finding and identifying the body?”
“ Yeah, but I don't think there's some conspiracy going on here, Alex.”
“ Well if there's no conspiracy to hide Surette's true identity, then why the hocus-pocus attempt out at the cemetery? And who else'd make off with the man's photos and corre-spondence and papers? His killer?”
“ None of the other victims had their places cleaned out, Alex. It was just how Surette lived.”
“ Maybe…maybe not…”
“ What's that suppose to mean?”
“ What if someone didn't want Surette to have a past?”
“ What if that someone was Surette himself?” Ben countered.
They were getting on each other's nerves, so Alex left the car for the building, to wait on the steps. They had a fair description of Susie, and he believed he'd know her if she showed up. As for the mystery of Surette's past, everyone questioned claimed no knowledge whatever of his childhood or parentage. Perhaps Victor had cut himself off completely from all connections with his childhood.
“ Maybe Davey Gilreath killed Victor Surette in a lovers' quarrel,” said Ben, who'd wandered over to sit alongside his partner. “Outta jealousy, rage. You know how it goes. Love kills…”
“ But that doesn't explain the others.”
“ Yeah, it could… it could,” countered Ben. “They're all the same; they're all interchangeable; he kills them all because they're all extensions of Vicki, get it?”
“ Could be…” Alex gave Ben a nod. They had found threads of information linking the victims: They all belonged to the cross-dressing gay crowd, they frequented the same nightclubs and gay bars, they lived within a twenty-seven-block radius of one another and mutual friends knew more than one of the victims by more than just reputation. Maybe Ben was onto something.
Alex half expected to find that Sue Socks was in fact Pigsty, dressed in women's clothing and acting out the life he'd always wanted, the life of a woman. But the woman who climbed from a cab, draped in the arms of another woman, the two kissing one another passionately here on the street, was not Pigsty.
Alex flashed his badge at the lesbian couple. The painted peroxide-blonde almost spat at them. But beneath her bravado, Alex sensed a deep-seated fear.
“ Susie Socks? We need a word with you.”
She took a moment to plead with her lover to stay, to not leave her alone with the “pigs.” But her lover was equally nervous given the situation, so she begged off, going back to the cab.
“ All right… come on up,” Susie told them, her alcohol breath parting the detectives.
It was a sordid little apartment just off Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. The walk up was straight and narrow. Once inside, Alex and Ben posed questions amid a bare room without adornment or pictures. They questioned a bare woman adorned in phony makeup and clothes that hearkened back to the flower children of the late sixties.
“ It's a lie,” she told them. “I ain't no relation to that bastard and prick David Gilreath.”
He took note of the fact she called him David.
Susie Socks was a gaunt, rangy lesbian who turned tricks with men for money when she wasn't waitressing at the Pink Anvil, or so their information had told them, and it would appear that their sources were correct. Alex and Ben knew what prostitutes hated more than anything, so they went to work, squeezing her for information, threatening her with daily harassment and arrests if she were not cooperative.
“ What the hell you want from me?”
“ Just a line on Gilreath's whereabouts…”
“ Or it's a trip to night court,” Ben added.
“ He's afraid, and he won't come out of hiding. He doesn't know anything.” Her voice was deep, resonant and thick, like a man's.
“ Then what's he afraid of?”
“ Power.”
“ Oh, really? I would've thought your answer different, that he's afraid of the Queen of Hearts killer.”
“ That is power, sugar… power in its rawest form.”
“ Power, huh?” replied Ben, tired of the games. “Then try this on for power. We bust your ass tonight, sweetie, for prostitution and anything else we find in your place that isn't le-gal-say, crack. Then we exercise our power to do so again tomorrow and the next night and the next.”
“ Why don't you
make this easy on yourself, Susie Q,” suggested Alex, a half smile playing on his face. “We just want to question him. That's all, Miss Gilreath.”
“ S-Socks, Susie Socks,” she corrected him. “He's no longer in the city.”
“ Where is he then?”
“ I don't know!”
“ All right,” bellowed Big, “guess we do this the hard way. Want to get a coat, make a better impression on the judge, sweetie?”
Alex escorted her toward the back of the house, both cop and civilian knowing the rules of discovery should he see something illegal in her back room.
“ All right… all right… he's back home, out at the farm.”
“ Where's the farm, honey?”
“ Up-country…”
“ Where exactly up-country!”
“ Palladium… my daddy owns a place up there. Davey went home to hide out. He was afraid when Surette was killed. Something… something about it all scared the hell out of him, and now I know why.”
“ Oh, and why's that, sugar?” pressed Ben.
“ Hell, all of the victims were men of my brother's… persuasion, and he knew most of 'em, and he was close, real close to Surette. He knew whoever was doing the killing would get round to him if he didn't run, so he ran, and so you fools… you think he's the killer because he disappeared from sight, but you don't know jack-shit. It's about power, is what it's about… power.”
“ Are you going to tell me what you mean by that, Jodi?” Alex pressed now, using her real name just to annoy her.
She lit up a cigarette. “You didn't hear nothing from me, you understand?”
“ Sure, nothing.”
“ Not a word of it,” added deYampert.
“ Half the police force in this damned city's been paid to look the other way, and my baby brother was paid to leave town. Money… money is power.”
“ Paid by whom?”
“ People high up, that's all I know. Hell, if I knew any more, I'd have got my fair cunt outta here too, but Davey wouldn't tell me nothing, the little bastard…wanted it all to himself- the money, that is. Had some fool notion he could buy Daddy's love with it. Stupid shit… said it was for my own good that we never speak on it, not ever. Said it could cost me my life, which I didn't at first believe, but then the killings kept on happening, and then I decided maybe he wasn't lying after all.”
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