Orfeo

by M. J. Lawless

  “I’ve had worse,” Orfeo said, his eyes fixed on the blank television screen.

  “Perhaps you have, perhaps you have,” Baptiste replied softly. “But in any case,” he continued, speaking in a louder tone of voice, “you have to rest here—bed rest, completely—for a week! Doctor’s orders!”

  Orfeo shook his head. “I can’t do that.”

  Flinging the remote away, Baptiste collapsed into a chair and raised both hands to his head. “Fils de putain!” he hissed and glared at Orfeo who refused to look back at him. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  Again Orfeo made no motion.

  “Do you have any idea of whom you're up against?” Baptiste asked, staring at him incredulously. “Do you have any idea of what kind of man Earl is?”

  “I know that he’s a man,” Orfeo said very quietly.

  Baptiste snorted. “A man who controls just about every crooked deal in New Orleans. Not a drug is sold, nor a whore traded, nor a palm greased somewhere in this city without Earl taking his cut. And as for those loa of his -” Orfeo sneered at this but Baptiste persisted: “As for his loa, let me give an indication of the kinds of people you’re dealing with. You were lucky with Horse. He could have pulled your head off with his bare hands if he’d wished. He’s probably the most loyal. He cut out his own tongue when he failed Earl and he’s been trusted muscle ever since. Snake...” Baptiste shuddered at the thought of the tattooed Hispanic woman. “Well, at least she’s easy to second guess: if she can get pleasure hurting you, then she’ll take it, but you can see when her temper’s about to blow.”

  He drew closer to Orfeo and stared at him silently until the young black man returned his gaze. “But the one you’ve got to watch out for is Papa. In some ways he’s the worst of them all, worse even than Earl. Earl’s smart enough, more determined than anyone else I’ve ever known, but at least he kind of operates in a way that’s... well, human, I guess.”

  Orfeo said nothing as Baptiste continued to speak. The old man’s hands were trembling slightly as he spoke, but he did not divert his eyes away. “Papa used to control the city till Earl tricked him, bought off his men. But I want to tell you a little story that illustrates the kind of man Papa is, the kind of man you’re up against.

  “About seven years ago, I think it was, Earl was still having some problems running the city. There was a gang up in 9th District—some Creole crowd, running loose, selling crack, trafficking, the usual. I think Papa had had dealings with them in the past, but they were a royal pain for Earl so he wanted them cleaned up. There was a guy in charge, by the name of Raoul, who got wind of it that Papa had been sent out for him, so he took a dozen of his most trusted men, armed them to the teeth and holed himself up in some slum building.

  “That was his first mistake. Papa didn’t follow him to his stakeout, but instead tracked down Raoul’s family. This guy, Raoul, he was bad but he had some standards of decency, you know? Wanted to keep his wife and children out of it. Anyway, Papa goes into the house where his family lives. I think his mother was there as well, I can’t remember now. So the story goes, he tells the other guys sent by Earl to wait outside and goes in himself. Less than twenty minutes later, he came out with the head of the youngest—a girl. Ten I think she was, maybe eleven or twelve. He gives it to one of his men and tells him to deliver it to Raoul. Then he goes back inside.”

  Baptiste paused, looking toward the window. His hands were shaking even more as he continued, but his voice was quieter, softer.

  “He’d killed them all, of course. Every woman, every child in the house. I guess the best thing that could be said was that it was quick, what he did to them.” Baptiste gave a low, bitter laugh at this. “But that wasn’t the end of it. Within the hour Raoul came back with all his men. There was no-one else to be seen—Papa had told them to skidaddle. He was in the house, alone with all those dead bodies when Raoul and his twelve disciples went rushing in. I think half of them, including Raoul, died in the explosion.”

  Baptiste looked directly into Orfeo’s eyes as he said this. “He’d rigged them, you see. Booby trapped the bodies. He was hiding somewhere up in the house, away from all the bodies, so when Raoul came in and saw his dead children, his wife, his mother... well of course he did what any man would do. He rushed up and... boom!”

  For a moment both of them were silent. “A couple of the others were also killed in that house, though I don’t know how. In the end, only four came out, but within the week they were dead as well.” He shrugged. “That’s the kind of man you’re dealing with.”

  Orfeo said nothing. His own eyes had returned to the empty, black screen of the television set. At last he opened his mouth, speaking in such a low, deep voice that Baptiste barely heard him.

  “It changes nothing. I have to find her.”

  Baptiste collapsed back in his chair and raised both hands into the air in frustration. “Holy mother of God!” he half shouted. “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?”

  Orfeo lifted his face, bruised and cut, and stared levelly at Baptiste. “Every word,” he said. “If I wasn’t determined to find Ardyce before, after what you’ve just told me there’s no way in this world I’d leave her with such people.”

  At this, Baptiste looked baffled and then ashamed. For a few while neither of them spoke and then Orfeo stood, letting the sheets fall away from him, unconcerned at the presence of the other man who, in any case, did not dare look at him.

  Finding a pair of trousers and a shirt on the other side of the room, Orfeo began to dress himself. “You’re determined to find her, aren’t you?” Baptiste observed. Orfeo merely nodded his head.

  “You can’t just rush in. There’s no way you’ll get inside—even you must be able to see that. But there might be a way I can help.” Orfeo paused as he did up the buttons on the shirt, watching Baptiste as he continued to speak.

  “I have... some connections. I’m not a criminal—well, not much of one. But it’s hard to do business in this town—any business—without brushing up against Earl at some point or other. And anyway, if you can’t beat them, you might as well try and make some money out of it, eh?” Baptiste laughed, but the sound of his voice was hollow even to his own ears.

  “You can’t get into Hades by walking through the front door, that’s for sure. It’s built like a fortress, but more than that it’s a maze inside. After it burnt down, five years ago or so, I was involved in setting up some of the contractors who worked for Earl. Just a middleman, that’s all. I knew him through Ardyce and... well, that doesn’t matter now. In any case, I think I might be able to find someone who can get you inside.”

  Orfeo nodded and returned his attention to his buttons, smoothing down the fabric of the shirt against his chest. The pain was a dull throb inside him but it no longer bothered him anywhere near as much as when he had woken. He had not lied when he’d told Baptiste that he had experienced worse.

  He looked at Baptiste coolly for a long time. “Do it,” was all that he said at last.

  Chapter Twelve

  It was two nights later when Baptiste and Orfeo sat in a taxi, driving toward Marigny where Hades was sited not far from the river. When Orfeo had been introduced to the construction manager who had been involved in rebuilding Earl’s club and shown plans of the building, he had determined to follow a route which led through a service entrance that joined an abandoned warehouse, an arrangement that struck the manager as odd but which he had never questioned. Once inside, he hoped that he would be able to find quickly the rooms which, the manager informed him, had been designed as Earl’s private apartment.

  “I’m doing this because I owe Baptiste a favor,” the manager, a grizzled and tired-looking man in his fifties, had told him. “But I have no idea why you want to get in there—and I don’t want to know. Once you’re in whatever business you have with Earl is between you, him and God.”

  This had not perturbed Orfeo in the slightest, but as he made preparations in the evening
to leave Baptiste had finally announced that he intended to accompany the young singer—against the protestations of Emile. “I still have some credit with Earl,” he had said, his pensive expression somewhat undermining any projection of confidence. “Who knows, I might be able to talk us out of any trouble. In any case, I want to know how Ardyce is.”

  And so the two of them sat silently in the back of a cab, driving through the streets. At last, Baptiste felt he had to break the silence: “I still can’t believe you ran all this way from your house. You’ve got stamina, son, I’ll give you that.”

  Orfeo did not respond. He had not moved his attention from the front window of the cab, focusing his energies on what lay before them.

  “Maybe that’s what Ardyce liked about you,” Baptiste said, forcing a leer to express a jollity he didn’t feel. “Your stamina.”

  Again Orfeo did not reply but, after a few moments more of silence, he asked suddenly: “How long have you known her?”

  “Ardyce? Why, most of her life—in a casual manner. I’d done business with her father, back in the day, and a few times I saw her at Xanadu. She was a pretty child, as lovely as a spring morning, but she soon grew into an even more beautiful woman. Even after her parents died her melancholy made her look even lovelier. She was the queen of New Orleans.” He smiled at the thought.

  “How did her parents die.”

  Baptiste paused, shaking his head and looking out of the window. “They were driving out of state—had left her behind. It was fortunate for her, in one way, though maybe she’d have just had the happy moments in her life if she’d been with them that day.” He shrugged. “They were on the freeway and a lorry overturned. Killed all three of them—them and their driver. She was just seventeen.”

  Orfeo nodded slowly at this. “And after that? What happened to her?”

  “Well, there was a guardian at first, but he wasn’t the man that her father had thought him to be. There was a big brouhaha when she was eighteen. He’d been burning his way through the Dubois riches, but the real scandal came when she attacked him. That got some notoriety in the local press but it soon blew over and he backed off real quick. A lot of people were surprised about that at the time, but Ardyce told me later that he’d tried to rape her and she’d stabbed him. I think, at first, he thought he could get her locked away but she turned the tables on him. He’d underestimated her—underestimated her badly. She’d hired a detective to dig up some dirt on him and found his connections to a whole host of dodgy dealings including Earl, worse luck.”

  “Is that how she met Earl?”

  Baptiste shook his head. “Not directly, but it was only a matter of time. I didn’t know her so well back then, not at first. She was just the pretty Dubois girl I’d seen from time to time at a fancy house outside the city, but even I knew she was turning wild. Some kind of diabolic, rebellious streak had gotten hold of her. Not so unusual, perhaps, but normally there’s someone else on the scene to temper that kind of devilry. Instead, you had a beautiful, rich girl with a feral streak as wide as the Mississippi, getting in with all the wrong crowd, throwing parties at Xanadu or indulging in all kinds of mayhem in the city.

  “I think she was nineteen when she met Earl, probably at Hades—the old one, before it was rebuilt. By the time she was twenty, she was half living with him, though I think she never fully committed. And the strangest thing is, I think he was the one who wanted her more than anything. Earl’s an evil bastard, make no mistake about that, but his obsession with Ardyce... I’ve never seen anything like it. Until you, that is.”

  Orfeo nodded at this but remained silent, his expression implacable. Baptiste sighed. “That’s when I got to know her better. I don’t lead the holiest life and our paths began to cross more often. It was obvious she was picking up some... unfortunate habits, and I felt sorry for her. She gave this impression of being so strong and tough, but I could still see the little girl as pretty as a spring day.”

  “How did it end? With Earl, I mean?”

  This caused Baptiste to frown. “Now there remains a mystery. She’d been with him maybe four years when it happened, and toward the end she’d spend more and more time with him, but something wasn’t right. She was becoming listless, despondent. Certainly she was taking... well, never mind that. I think he’d represented excitement—danger even—at first, but then... who knows? Maybe she just got bored. She’s a willful woman, is Ardyce Dubois.

  “In any case, one night there was a terrible fire at the club. Hades was gutted—nothing more than a shell left behind—and she’d been there. She was okay, absolutely unharmed thank God, but after that she kept Earl at arm’s length. He was furious but the oddest thing is I’ve never seen her frightened of him ever since, not really. That man could eat anyone alive right up to and including the mayor, but she has some strange power over him. She’s never told me what happened but the truth was she began to clean herself up after that. The wildcat queen of New Orleans became almost a hermit for a time, only allowing a few people such as myself close to her—well, as close as you can ever get to Ardyce.”

  Baptiste let out a low chuckle. “Hell, until that month when she came to Apollo’s every night to hear you sing, I don’t think hardly anyone had seen her about town. There was just this myth doing the rounds of a flame-haired beauty who lived alone in Xanadu, but then the rest of the city finally got to see what just how special she is.”

  He looked out of the window and breathed in deeply. “Okay, we’re here. Let’s get this over and done with.” As he paid the driver and opened the door, Orfeo noted that his hands were trembling and that he had never looked so old. His face was paler than usual, and sweat coated his brow and cheeks. For his own part, Orfeo was as cool and unperturbed as ever, keeping his inner self secure against the troubles that lay ahead.

  As they stepped from the vehicle onto the sidewalk Orfeo looked up at the building ahead of them with the same, impenetrable gaze, not even paying attention to the deserted warehouse on one side and the few other industrial buildings that lay between Hades and the river. For his part, however, Baptiste shivered. This was a part of the city that he had never seen before, and whatever charms existed for him throughout New Orleans were not evident here. By contrast, the place was almost a wasteland, gray and dirty in the half moonlight and without a soul to be seen. That, however, would serve their purpose well.

  The rear wall of Hades presented itself as a cliff-face, without any doorway or window that could break its relentless surface or any of the garish lights that illuminated it at the front. Baptiste gazed up at it ruefully. “I thought the gateway to hell was meant to lie open day and night, but this will be labor.”

  “Hoc opus, hic labor est,” murmured Orfeo, causing Baptiste to gaze at him in astonishment. For the first time since he had picked him up from the road on the Baptiste saw his companion smile.

  “One day,” he remarked, “you might just realize that I’m more than a dumb black kid.” Without waiting for a reply he turned his attention to the surrounding buildings. “That warehouse, that’s where we’ll find the service entrance.”

  Baptiste nodded. “Earl bought it, planning to use it for God knows what, but it’s been left derelict ever since. We should be careful, though. Perhaps it does serve some purpose.”

  Nodding but barely listening, Orfeo crossed the road and came to a doorway. As Baptiste scuttled up behind him, he tested the door and then bashed his shoulder against it a couple of times. When that did nothing, he took a step back and kicked it twice with all his force. Whatever lock had held it broke open and the door swung to onto blackness within.

  “There goes the element of surprise,” Baptiste muttered, but once more Orfeo gave no indication he was listening. Instead he plunged into the darkness, at first only a faint, ghostly glimmer of his clothing visible until even that was swallowed by the inky void. For a few seconds, Baptiste stood on the sidewalk outside, listening fearfully as his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down in
terror. The darkness seemed complete and his heart was beating faster than he had ever known.

  At last he entered. Within a few seconds the faint light outside had disappeared and Baptiste found himself alone and utterly isolated. He wanted to scream out in panic, but instead he simply moaned incoherently, wondering what on earth he was doing here. When a hand reached out and grabbed him roughly, he did indeed yell just before another was placed across his mouth.

  “What in hell are you doing?” Orfeo hissed in his ear. “Keep quiet!”

  Only when he felt Baptiste’s body relax did Orfeo release him. Now that they were inside and their eyes gradually became accustomed to the lack of light, they could indeed perceive a faint gray glimmer that came from half-boarded up windows high overhead. There was a sense of space around them, with girders and interconnecting walkways leading between floors.

  “The entrance is over there, isn’t it,” Orfeo said quietly. Baptiste nodded then, realising that Orfeo would probably be barely able to see him replied with a simple “Yes”. Padding on his feet, almost soundless in the night, the singer moved away to a stairwell and Baptiste hurried behind, more scared now to be left behind than anything else.

  When they came to the door Orfeo took out a key that Baptiste’s acquaintance had given him and slid it into the lock. It turned with a click and, very carefully, he prised the door open. For a second he paused, semi-consciously touching the amulet he wore beneath his shirt, the companion to that he had given to Ardyce.

  Beyond they could immediately make out a purplish light which gleamed down a long corridor, though the light source itself was not evident. Both of them also immediately heard the pulse of distant music, a deep, dark throb like a rapid heartbeat. Baptiste started to tremble once more as Orfeo pushed ahead, but he no longer dared stay behind.