Dead Man (16 page)

“Keith Inverness.”

Neither man offered to shake hands. There was not so much antagonism as wariness between them, mutual recognition by hunting
animals whose territories happened to overlap.

“You still have the advantage of me, sir.”

“Because I know who you are? A man in my line of work hears things from time to time, Mr. Dain.”

“Your line of work.” Dain made it a statement, not a question. Inverness smiled slightly.

“I guess you could say it’s the same line of work as yours—except mine has a pension at the end of it.”

Dain said pleasantly, “What if I told you that my line of work is rare books?”

“Like this?”

Unexpectedly, Inverness reached across the table to snatch up Dain’s leather-bound volume. His big hands were remarkably quick.
He riffled through it, allowed himself a small smile at its harmlessness as he laid it on the table.

“The things people keep in cutout books might surprise you, Mr. Dain.”

“I doubt that.”

With what seemed like genuine regret, but without any sudden moves, Inverness took a badge in a leather case from his pocket
and laid it on the table.

“I guess you’d better make that Lieutenant of Detectives Inverness, Mr. Dain.” He drank beer, wiped his lips almost daintily
with one of the paper napkins on the table. “Like you, I track people down. But inside the law.”

“That’s okay with me,” said Dain.

“I’m also New Orleans police liaison with the Louisiana State Commission on Organized Crime.” Dain was silent. “We’d kind
of like to know who you’re looking for in New Orleans, and for whom.”

“Not who—what,” said Dain, suddenly misty-eyed. “And for me. New Orleans jazz. Dixieland. Storyville. The heart—
the soul
—of the blues.
My
heart and soul are transported back to those halcyon days when the Nigras all had rhythm and clapped hands and knew their
place…”

Inverness nodded, unhurriedly stood and put his badge away. He said in an almost apologetic voice, “You’re too good at finding
people, for all the wrong people. You couldn’t expect to remain anonymous forever. Enjoy your stay in New Orleans.”

Dain sat unmoving, watching Inverness depart, his left thumb scraping idly down through the label of the empty beer bottle
to tear it in half. The dancing colored water jet beyond his head made his profile very sharp and clear.

To hell with it. He already knew where Vangie worked;
just tag her to find out where she lived, make sure she was still with Zimmer, give Maxton the information, fade out…

But what would happen to Vangie then?

Goddammit, why should he care what happened to her?

Also, someone with a lot of clout had gotten the Louisiana Organized Crime Commission to send around a very good man to tell
Dain, in essence, to get out of town. It couldn’t be Maxton, checking up on him. Maxton didn’t know he was here…

Wait a minute. Could
Maxton
be under investigation? Couldn’t that explain Inverness? Organized-crime people in Chicago had Maxton under surveillance,
they identified Dain, tagged him to New Orleans, notified Inverness…

That didn’t work. Inverness would have known Dain had been hired by Maxton, wouldn’t have asked. All right, what if Dain’s
presence was muddying the water so his superiors told Inverness to get Dain out of the picture…

But then Inverness would have known where he was staying, would have tagged him at his hotel rather than on the street…

No. Somebody knew he was in New Orleans, knew what he looked like or had pictures to send—Inverness had been able to pick
him up cold—but was unable to tell Inverness where he was staying. Jesus, could he actually somehow have crossed the tracks
of the killers who

Marie was smashed back and up, her mouth strained impossibly wide
…
Albie’s legs were blasted back down the hall out of sight
…

The bottle in Dain’s hand exploded. He looked at it in surprise, opened his fingers slowly. It was shattered where he had
been gripping it, the bottom and neck were intact. The glass had not cut his callused palm. He shook his head to rid it of
the shards.

Nonsense. But it had decided him. He checked his watch. Three-thirty
A.M.
He would keep on with Maxton’s investigation, because something connected with it had stirred
something
up. So just keep going until he found out what and who and why. He’d checked for tails leaving the hotel before, had gotten
careless through the long night, but he’d
had that flash of apprehension and so had shown no reaction at all when he’d spotted Vangie.

So Inverness wouldn’t be expecting him to go back out tonight, thus wouldn’t still be tailing him.

Carnal Knowledge was dark and silent, closed. From down the street came the rattle-clash of garbage pails being put out. The
door opened and Vangie and the dancer who had stopped Dain earlier that night emerged.

She said wearily to Vangie, “Another buck, another fuck. Wanna go get coffee, kiddo, or—”

“Home and to bed,” said Vangie. “See you tonight, Noreen.”

Vangie turned and started up the street, her heels loud on the sidewalk. Down the block ahead of her, on the other side of
the street, a large muscular drunk shambled from a recessed storefront and staggered in the direction she was going with a
too-much-to-drink pace unremarkable in the Vieux Carré at four in the morning.

It was midafternoon and the pitiless New Orleans sun struck blinding light from the chrome of passing cars, baked the sidewalks,
softened the blacktop: a sweltering, shirtsleeves kind of day. A clerk dozed behind the check-in desk at the Delta Hotel.
The huge slow floor fan stirred around the heat. The same five old codgers in shirt sleeves were again—or still—sitting around
with their faces and bodies slack. A sixth was sprawled with a newspaper over his face, gently snoring.

Across from the dozing clerk the elevator doors opened. Vangie came out wearing a light summer dress that showed little but
suggested much, subtly touching and caressing her body as she crossed the lobby with her long dancer’s stride. Half a minute
after she had gone out into the street, the old codger under the newspaper harrumphed and hawked and sat up, crumpling the
paper aside. He stood up, rubbing his eyes, and shambled out apparently still unsteady from his nap.

Vangie went into the cathedral where Dain had wakened screaming in his pew the day before. The old man waited outside on a
bench in Jackson Square. Vangie emerged from the cathedral, bought a sandwich and a soft drink from one of the portable wheeled
po’boy stands set up to catch the tourist trade. She went down St. Anne past the street artists and hawkers, bought two pralines
in opaque paper slips from the store on the corner, crossed Decatur with the light, heading for the waterfront.

On the far side of the walkway across the railroad tracks, Vangie went down rough wooden steps to the brown Mississippi lapping
over tumbled black rocks. She sat two steps up from the water, put her pralines and soft drink down beside her, in no hurry
to eat. Instead, she watched the river traffic for nearly ten minutes, her unwrapped sandwich open on its waxed paper in her
lap. At this hour she was alone on the steps.

When she finally took a big bite of po’boy, chewing without inhibition, a shadow fell across her. She didn’t look up, not
even when a man sat down on the same step five feet away.

“Think those prayers in the cathedral are going to do the trick?” he asked in a conversational tone.

She looked over at him hard with cold eyes, but he was not looking at her, was looking instead at a tow of barges being shoved
up-current by a river steamer. He looked almost sad. Vangie was suddenly strident around her mouthful of sandwich.

“Blow it out your flutter-valve, Jack.”

A big black Labrador that had been lapping water and scaring the fingerling rock bass around the half-submerged stones came
up to thrust his dripping muzzle into Dain’s hand. Dain fondled him behind the ears, still not looking at Vangie.

“Dain. Edgar Dain.” He reached over, broke an edge off one of Vangie’s pralines, told the dog, “No teeth!” as a warning against
snapping at it, then offered the morsel to him. The dog wolfed it, ecstatic. Dain said, “Maxton sent me to find you. I’ve
found you.”

The girl gradually stopped chewing, like an engine running
down. Suddenly the rich mix of spicy meats and cheeses was cardboard in her mouth. She looked surreptitiously about, fearful
of seeing bulky men in Chicago overcoats coming down the steps after her. No one was close to them, no one at all.

The man who had said his name was Edgar Dain was still watching the water. His face was still sad. His hands had given the
rest of her praline to the dog, who lay down at his feet, panting with his tongue out and a silly look on his face.

“Sorry. I fed one of your pralines to the dog.”

Vangie shuddered as if the scorching sunlight had a wind-chill factor. “Jesus, you’re a cold-blooded bastard.” No answer.
“It was that goddam phone call of Jimmy’s, wasn’t it?”

“That confirmed it, yes.”

The river looked very peaceful. Downstream the same side-wheeler full of tourists that Dain had ridden two mornings before
bellowed raucously with its steam whistle. Dain chose his words carefully, as if they were brittle and might break.

“Maxton is screaming for blood, but I think if he had his bonds back he’d not go looking too hard for you or Zimmer.”

She began shrilly, “That fucker’s screaming for blood? What about…” She stopped, controlled herself. “Yeah, we give you the
bonds and they don’t get to Maxton, and we end up—”

“I don’t want the bonds, Vangie.”

“Oh sure, I believe you.”

Dain scratched the black Lab behind the ears, stared out over the slow brown water, shook his head, said patiently, “You came
in by bus, you’re too smart to leave a locker key with Zimmer, so if I searched you right now…”

Vangie had sprung to her feet at mention of a bus depot locker key. This jerked the Labrador’s head up, but she was just standing
there. He chuffed and put his head down again. Slowly, uncertainly, Vangie sat back down.

“Maxton doesn’t know where you are—yet.” He turned to look at her. “I stirred somebody
up
by coming here to
look for you—for my own reasons I want to find out who and why.”

“Maybe that I’d believe. Good old self-interest.”

Dain was stroking the dog’s back absently. “But I’m going to have to give him something pretty soon.”

She said despairingly, “If I fuck you will you—”

“No.”

“Doesn’t it bother you that we might be killed?”

“I stopped worrying five years ago about what happens to people.” Smothered anger entered his voice. “Especially people who
ask for it.” He stood up. “If you don’t give them back to Maxton I won’t be able to help you, Vangie.”

“Jimmy won’t do that,” she said regretfully.

“Then
you
give them back.” He was suddenly, harshly angry. “You stole two million dollars from a guy who said he loved you and then
offered you to his friends—”

“Yeah, so I stole his fucking bonds. And you know what? I’m
glad
I did if it gives that pig one sleepless…”

She ran down again, a startled look on her face as if she hadn’t known she was capable of so much hatred. Dain nodded.

“That’s terrific, Vangie. Some great revenge you’re getting on him.
Think
about what can happen, for Chrissake! Keep the room you have, but have a friend rent you another room in your hotel under
another name and sleep in that one. And keep Zimmer off the street—I might not be the only one looking.”

Vangie started to speak, stopped. Her spirit was gone.

“How do I get hold of you?”

“Call me at the De La Poste Motel in Chartres Street by this time tomorrow. I can give you that long.”

“Edgar Dain. De La Poste Motel. Tomorrow afternoon.” As he nodded and turned to start off up the steps, she added almost wistfully,
“We almost made it, didn’t we?”

Dain looked down at her bowed head for a long moment.

“You weren’t even close,” he said.

It was dusk, the huge high piles of cumulus on the western horizon were shot with pink, Bourbon Street was opening
its doors and tuning up its music. Vangie sat on the edge of their bed in the Delta Hotel regarding Zimmer with resigned eyes.
Between the edges of the curtains on the window behind her was the pornhouse marquee, the scattered lights on it still unbroken
flashing intermittently.

“It’s the only way, Jimmy. You know that when Dain tells Maxton where we are…”

Jimmy, a weak man scared, kicked over a chair.
“No,
goddammit,
no!”

Vangie sighed, got to her feet, went to him. She put her arms around his neck, her face close to his. “Jimmy-honey, listen
to me! You
know
we have to—”

He shook her off angrily.

“All I know is that I lose the bonds, I lose you!”

“Maybe, maybe not—but you won’t lose your life.”

“According to Dain.”

Vangie controlled her anger. “
Not
just according to Dain. You know what Maxton is capable of—”

“I never knew Maxton as intimately as you did.” He had worked himself up into a fine, nasty, self-justifying anger. “You’ll
end right side up, though—or should I say backside up? I bet you slept with Dain this afternoon and made plans to—”

“Jimmy, I have to go to work. I get paid tonight, we need the money. We’ll talk about it when I get home, okay?” Zimmer was
petulantly silent, refusing to meet her eyes.

“At least
think
about giving them back. And
please
let’s get another room like he suggested.”

Zimmer replied in his childishly defiant way, “I’ll do whatever the fuck I please.”

At Carnal Knowledge, the musicians were just arriving, having a drink, looking to their instruments. A few local guys on their
way home after work were having a quiet beer before the entertainment drove the prices out of reach. Two bulky men, Nicky
and Trask, entered like matched, mobile, very heavy bookends. They moved in on the bartender in unison.