The Chosen One (13 page)

New Orleans, Thursday March 23, 00.06 CST

The cab threaded its way first through the streets close to the hotel, where blues licks still drifted through the air wreathing themselves around the wobbling groups of miniskirted girls, drunk in their stilettos. But then it left the French Quarter behind and the streets slowly became wider and more desolate. Soon they were passing boarded-up shops and whole blocks that seemed abandoned.

Maggie leaned forward to speak to the cab driver, an African-American whose hair was tipped with grey. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Just where you told me to go.’

‘Is it far?’

‘’Bout ten minutes. Maybe less. You don’t want to go?’

‘No, I want to go. I just thought it was closer, that’s all.’

‘Not many tourists come round here. I’m taking you the scenic route. This is the Ninth Ward.’

‘I see.’ Everyone in America knew of the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, the part of the city where Katrina had packed her hardest punch. Maggie had seen the footage on the news a hundred times, but still it was a shock to see
a house that had clearly been swept clean off its pilings wedged against a tree some three yards away. It was a shock to see it was still there – and that so much of the area looked as if the hurricane had just struck.

Even in the dark she could read the warning daubed in white paint on the door of one ruined home – U Loot U Die – and the other houses still marked by crosses, spray-painted in orange, the legacy, the driver explained, of rescue workers who hastily marked those buildings they had already searched for survivors – or corpses. Harder to make out in the dark, but no less striking, were the gaping gashes visible in roof after roof: the holes people had chopped as they tried to escape the rising flood waters that had chased them up into the attic and continued to rise, even there.

Eventually there were a few lights at the side of the road: a gas station, a Denny’s, a liquor store, outside of which four men sat on the sidewalk drinking from bottles clad in brown paper bags. And then, what looked like a warehouse or a giant shed, a single-storey building of grey corrugated steel decorated by a vertical sign: The Midnight Lounge. The illuminated black-and-white graphic of a curvy, thick-lipped stripper might have conveyed glamour once. Now it just looked forlorn and tatty.

Maggie paid the driver, nodded to a bouncer the size of a fridge on the door, as if she came to places like this all the time, and walked in.

Save for a few feeble table candles, the place was cast in a deep gloom, one that matched the rancid smell in the air. She had to walk past a cloakroom and a bar in order for the dimensions of the room to reveal themselves. Now she saw what it was: a stage area, dully lit in low purple, facing a clutch of small tables, all of which lay under a blanket of darkness. A strip joint, designed to spare the blushes of the audience and – judging by the performer bending into an
improbable angle at that moment – to spare nothing of those on stage.

‘You here alone?’

She looked up to see a waitress wearing a strip of material that few would recognize as a skirt and the skimpiest of bras, inside which were two unmoving globes of not-quite-flesh. She could see Maggie staring.

‘You here on business, darling? How about we get you nice and relaxed with a private dance, just us two girls, now what d’ya say?’

Maggie had her response ready. ‘I need to talk to your manager right away. A personal matter.’ Nervous, but doing her best to be friendly.

The expression on the human blow-up doll dropped instantly; now she looked as bored and surly as a checkout girl at an all-night supermarket. She inclined her head towards a table near the bar and slunk off, heading for richer pickings in the corner, where a bearded man, the sweat visible on his pate, was staring at the stage open-mouthed, as if he’d been hypnotized into a deep trance.

It was impossible to see who was at the manager’s table until she was just a few feet away. A woman, short blondish hair, Maggie’s age, dressed – to Maggie’s relief – in actual clothes. Black cigarette pants, a spangly top.

‘Can I help you?’

‘Can we speak in private?’

‘This
is
private.’ The voice, like the words, was firm but not quite harsh.

Maggie stayed in character for the part she had sketched for herself during the cab-ride over. She leaned in closer, then lowered her voice. ‘I need to speak about something personal. Very personal.’

‘It’s going to have to be right here.’

‘OK. Can I sit down?’

The woman gestured her into the seat opposite. A black leatherette portfolio wallet filled the space between them on the small circular table. On top were papers that looked like inventories, invoices and the like – as if the Midnight Lounge was a regular American small business. Which, Maggie supposed, it was.

‘I know you have your rules about privacy and all,’ Maggie began, her voice wavering just as she intended it to. ‘But I need something from you. I need to know if my husband was here last night.’

‘I’m sorry, we have a strict pol—’

‘I knew you would say that, but this is different.’ Maggie hoped her eyes were full of imploring desperation and, to her surprise, she saw something that was, if not quite warm, then at least not cold, in the eyes scrutinizing her.

‘I know you have a business to run, but this is about my
life
.’

‘I’d love to help, but we couldn’t function if our guests didn’t feel their confidentiality would be resp—’

‘You see,’ Maggie whispered, playing her trump card, ‘I’m pregnant.’

The face of the woman opposite softened, only for a fleeting second, but visibly.

‘And I need to know what kind of man I am married to.’ She looked down, examining her own hand. ‘I took the ring off my finger this morning. You see, I need to know if this man is capable of being a father to my child. Or if I need to protect myself.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t want to insult what you do here.’

‘Why don’t you go right ahead?’

The tone was sardonic but the woman’s face told Maggie she should press on.

‘He said he had stopped all this: coming to strip clubs,
seeing hookers. He promised me months ago. I told him I needed that if we were to be a family.’

‘But you think he’s been coming round here?’

Maggie nodded mutely, trying to look as distressed as possible, though it required an effort on her part. She had learned long ago that some men simply couldn’t stay away from places like these. That was just how they were.

‘I tell you, honey, if a woman didn’t hate men before working at this joint…I’d say you were better off without him. But you didn’t come here for relationship advice.’

Maggie gave a weak smile.

‘Like I say, I’d really like to help. But we don’t exactly take names at the door.’

‘You have CCTV though.’

‘Yeah, but—’

‘Why not let me just see the tapes for last night? You’ve got a camera over the door; I saw it on my way in. That’s all I need. Put me in a room and let me look. Please…’

‘There must be, like, a million rules against that.’

‘I won’t make any noise, I promise. But then at least I’ll know if I’m being taken for a sucker or not.’ She laid her hand on her stomach. ‘Just let me look.’

The blonde woman shook her head, with a small, world-weary smile. ‘There’s not a man in this town who would let you go anywhere near those tapes. I must be an idiot.’

Maggie let out a sigh of relief and extended her hand across the table in thanks. The manager clasped it, holding it for a long second or two, her eyes not shifting from Maggie’s. Finally she stood up and, as Maggie did the same, she saw the woman take in the full sight of her, her gaze lingering, she thought, around her bottom.

‘I gotta say, guilty or innocent, your husband must be a major league asshole. Why would he drink Sprite here when he could be having vintage champagne at home?’

Maggie said nothing, following the manager down a flight of stairs, past the restrooms and through a door marked ‘Authorized Staff Only’. Inside was a corridor with three glass-panelled doors, all apparently opening onto offices.

They stopped at the third, the only one that seemed to be unlocked and whose light was on. One side was cluttered with old equipment, including what seemed to be a long-deceased fax machine, its cord coiled up like a defunct tail, while the other was dominated by four TV screens. Barely watching them, preferring to concentrate on the
Puzzler
magazine in front of him, was a man Maggie identified as the companion bouncer to the fridge she had seen upstairs. Perhaps he was the freezer.

‘Frank, this lady is a friend of mine,’ the manager said, setting no more than one foot in the room. ‘She wants to see the tapes from last night. Give her whatever she needs. And get her a glass of water. She’s pregnant.’

With that, she turned and gave Maggie one last look. ‘I have a twelve-year-old daughter at home. She hasn’t seen her father in ten years. You’re smarter than I was. Best of luck.’

Still bored, Frank pulled out a second swivel chair from under the work-bench that served as his desk, and nodded for Maggie to sit in it.

‘You know what time you’re looking for?’

Since she had assumed she was never going to get this far, she had not given a moment’s thought to the question. She tried to remember what Telegraph Tim had said earlier. There had been so many details, she had begun tuning out after a while. But he had told her, she was sure of it.

‘Did you hear what I said?’

‘I’m sorry. I need time to think.’

He went back to his puzzles.

Twelve thirty. The estimated time of death; Tim had
mentioned it twice. But when Forbes’s evening began, there was no way of knowing. He could have been here hours earlier. Would she really have to get Frank to spool through four or five hours of CCTV footage, looking for, what, a glimpse of a man Maggie had never met, whom she had seen only on television?

Television.
That was it. She had watched Forbes give that live interview on TV while she sat in Stu’s office, before the meeting in the Residence. It had been just before eight. That would have been 9pm local time. And then, nearly an hour later, they had been interrupted with the statement Forbes had just released. That made it 10pm in New Orleans.

‘Frank, is there only one entrance and exit to this building?’

Slowly, as if wrenching himself away from his Sudoku puzzle, the security guard brought his eyes to rest on Maggie. ‘For staff or guests?’

‘Guests.’

‘Hmm-hmm,’ he said, by way of affirmation.

Anticipating her next question, he added, ‘Besides, there ain’t no camera on the other one.’

‘So this one it is,’ said Maggie, grateful to have one less decision to make. She rubbed her temples: haggling with the European Union at three in the morning over the right language for a cap-and-trade clause in a climate change treaty suddenly looked like a walk in the park.

As Frank punched the buttons that would bring up last night’s recordings, Maggie’s BlackBerry chimed. A message from Stuart.

Call me urgently. Situation grave.

‘Anything here, ma’am?’

She forced herself to come back to the moment. She had to concentrate.

Until now she had only been half-watching the faces going in and out. She’d ignored groups, especially those made up
of the young. She had been looking for bald, middle-aged men which, given the Midnight Lounge’s clientele, did not narrow it down much.

She looked at the time-code clock at the top left of the screen. It was just past eleven. A procession of heavy men, thin men, black men, white men, men who looked furtive, men who looked flushed, men who looked like fumbling boys, men who looked like wifebeaters – Christ, no wonder the manager had grown to hate the entire sex. And Maggie had only been staring at an hour’s worth of the Lounge’s customer base, and that was at 2x, twice normal speed.

Half-way through the second hour, at what would have been eleven thirty in real time, something caught Maggie’s eye.

It was not a man but a woman. Tall, her dark hair cut in a chic geometric bob, she instantly stood out from the rest: classier than the handful of other women the CCTV had picked up that night, who either wore the forlorn expression of the luckless wife bullied into playing along with her husband’s threesome fantasy, or radiated the drunken, tottering jollity of the hen night.

Not that Maggie could see her face; she kept her head down. But she walked elegantly. And with something else too. Purpose.

And now she could see why. Walking a pace behind her, as if tugged by an unseen rope, was a man in a flat golfer’s cap – pulled down low to conceal his face – and a dark grey suit. He looked sharply left and right as he came out, slipping a tip into the hand of the bouncer on the door as he did so. He looked left and right again, this second sweep exposing his face to the CCTV camera. There was no sound, so there was no way of knowing if he was actually panting. But his eyes were almost bugging out with what Maggie could see, even from this grainy angle, was desire.

It was only then, once she had determined that this was a man leaving the Midnight Lounge with a beautiful woman he had picked up, that she thought to identify him. But there was no doubt about it.

She asked to freeze the frame, so that she could take a good, long look at the man who had stared so knowingly from the television set last night. For there, caught on tape and on heat, was none other than Vic Forbes.

New Orleans, Thursday March 23, 00.52 CST

Trying to sound as nonchalant as she could, she asked the guard next to her about the man on the screen. ‘Do you recognize this man?’

‘That your husband?’

‘Do you recognize him?’

‘I’m not sure what I’m meant to say here, ma’am.’

‘You heard what your boss told you. You’re to help me out.’

‘I don’t know what would help you out, ma’am. For me to say I do recognize him or to say I don’t.’

‘How about you tell me the truth?’

‘He looks kinda familiar, yes.’

‘You know who that is?’ For a moment, she hesitated: was it possible this guard had seen Forbes on TV?

‘Well, I couldn’t tell you his name, if that’s what you mean, ma’am.’

‘You couldn’t?’

‘That’s not how it works here. We’re not meant to know anyone’s name. We never ask. That’s the whole point. It’s not Cheers.’

‘But you’ve seen him before?’

‘He’s been here a coupla times.’

‘A couple?’

‘OK. Bit more than a couple.’

‘Is he a regular?’

‘I’m sorry, ma’am. This must be real hard for you.’

‘So he’s a regular, yes?’

The guard nodded.

‘And what about her?’ Maggie nodded towards the frozen image on the screen. The woman was only half in shot, at the extreme right of the picture.

The guard rewound and played the sequence back at half-speed: the head down, the sharp bob of hair, the elegant figure. ‘Hard to tell,’ he said finally. He rewound the tape and stared at her intently. But the woman kept her head down, refusing to reveal her face.

‘Oh, OK. I can see who that is now.’

‘She come here often too?’

‘She works here.’

‘Here? You mean I could go talk to her?’

‘You’d have to ask the boss ’bout that. Mind you, she ain’t here today.’

Maggie frowned, puzzled.

‘She’s a dancer. Started a couple of days ago, I think. But she didn’t turn up for work today.’

‘And do you remember her name?’

‘You’re kidding, right?’

‘No.’

‘Like I said, it’s not Cheers.’

‘I thought that was just for the guests.’

‘OK,’ he said, allowing himself a small, patronizing smile, as if explaining to a naïve child the ways of the world. ‘The girls have names. But they’re bullshit names. Mystery, Summer, all that shit.’

‘So what was this one called?’

‘I can’t remember that, ma’am. I’m sorry. Remember, I ain’t inside seeing the show. I’m on the door.’

‘Were you on the door last night?’

Before he had a chance to answer, the door swung open. It was the manager. She smiled at Maggie. ‘You got what you wanted?’

‘I wouldn’t say it was what I wanted.’

The woman shifted her features into a pose of earnest concern. ‘No, of course.’

Frank, eager to seem helpful, gestured for his boss to come closer and to look at the screen. ‘The lady wants to know who this is. I said she was new.’

The manager leaned in for a closer look at the monitor and Maggie hurriedly suggested Frank rewind: she wanted to go back to the image of the woman alone, before Forbes entered the frame. The security guard might not be a cable TV viewer, with instant recall of the face of Vic Forbes, but she couldn’t be so sure of the manager.

The outline of the woman now dominated the screen, the shape of her haircut the clearest feature. After a second or two, the club manager spoke. ‘Frank’s right. She’s new. Started this week.’

‘Who is she?’

‘She dances under the name of Georgia, if that helps you.’

‘You don’t know her real name?’

‘I never ask.’

‘And she only started this week?’

‘Right. She came in day before yesterday, I think. Offered to start right away.’

‘Just like that.’

‘Well, it wasn’t a hard decision, if you know what I mean.’

‘What do you mean?’

The manager looked back up at the screen, a half-smile
on her face. ‘You think your husband left the club with this girl?’

Maggie nodded, dipping her head: the anguish of the betrayed wife.

‘Well, you don’t want to hear any more about it then, do you?’

Maggie stared at her. ‘You said it wasn’t a hard decision. What did you mean?’

‘I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m sorry.’

‘What did you mean?’

‘I just meant that she was—’ She hesitated, unsure how to put it. ‘
Unusual.
In this place, I mean.’

Maggie kept her eyes on the manager, leaving the silence hanging. Eventually the woman spoke again. ‘Look, most of the girls in here
look
like strippers. Their nails are fake, their boobs are fake, their hair’s fake. The college boys like those girls plenty, but the more upscale guests are looking for something real. Kind of the whole natural beauty thing. They’ll pay for that. They’ll come back for it again and again.’

‘So you hired her straight away.’

‘Yes. She was gorgeous, no doubt about it.’ She looked at Maggie, who was furrowing her brow in a show of wounded wifely love. ‘I’m sorry.’

Maggie collected herself. ‘And where is she now?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to go after her.’

‘I wouldn’t blame you if you did. But, I’m telling you the truth: I don’t know.’

‘Did she not show up for work?’

‘Not since last night,’ the manager said. Then, making the connection, she nodded towards the CCTV image on the screen: ‘Not since then.’

‘Have you tried to contact her?’

‘I called her this evening. Her phone just rang.’

Maggie looked down at her hands, digesting what she had heard.

The woman spoke again. ‘Listen, sweetheart, you don’t want to hang around a sleaze-pit like this. Why don’t you and your baby go home, have a long soak in the tub, and put all this behind you. Chain the door and get the locks changed tomorrow. How’s that sound?’

Maggie managed a watery smile. ‘Thanks.’

‘I’m sorry you had to find out like this, honey. But better to find out now than later. Take it from me, that ain’t no fun. Not for you, not for your child.’

Maggie collected her things, digging into her bag for a tissue which she used to wipe away fake tears, thanked Frank and let the manager show her out. Upstairs, she surveyed for the last time the tables cloaked in darkness and the stage in a purple haze. Performing was a dull-eyed bottle-blonde, who held her hands over her head in readiness for a manoeuvre that would have her literally bending over backwards with her private parts thrust forward.

Maggie headed for the door. Following the lead set by ‘Georgia’, she kept her head down throughout so that no CCTV camera would catch her.

Once outside, she exhaled deeply, refreshed to be out in the cold and away from the stale, soiled air of the Midnight Lounge. She fought the urge to phone Stuart. Not yet; this was still not nailed down. She looked across the street, seeing a man in an idling car. He glanced directly at her, then away. Not a cab, then. Suddenly, desperately, she wanted to get out of here.

While the bouncer on the door called her a taxi, she began to pace, itching for a cigarette.

Surely what she had just seen could mean only one thing. The time stamped on the CCTV recording had been unambiguous: 23.05. Last night, Vic Forbes had been in a
TV studio, then sat somewhere – perhaps at home, maybe at an internet café, perhaps on a street corner armed only with a BlackBerry – and issued his ‘statement’ threatening to reveal a shocking aspect of Stephen Baker’s past. And then he had come to his regular perch at the Midnight Lounge where he had picked up a girl. And not just some stripper, but an unusually beautiful woman. Who just happened to have started work at this place – where Forbes was a known regular – one day earlier and who had now disappeared off the face of the earth.

They had left together and, an hour or so later, he was dangling from a rope, trussed up like a drag queen with a Vitamin C habit.

There was only one way that could have happened, wasn’t there? Or was it still conceivable that Vic Forbes had somehow come to his death alone?

All right
, Maggie told herself.
Think.
Forbes went back to his apartment with Georgia, they’d fooled around a bit, said good night and then he – not yet sated – had got out his Rocky Horror kit for a bit of solo gasping, which then went horribly wrong.

Theoretically possible. But that was surely the less likely scenario. What was it the nuns had taught them in those moral philosophy lessons? Occam’s Razor: always go with the simplest explanation, the one that made the fewest assumptions.

And that version pointed only one way.

The gorgeous Georgia had started working at the Lounge on the very day Vic Forbes had begun his public and private blackmail assault on the President.

Maggie pictured Frank, the security guard, nodding when she asked if Forbes had been a regular. Had he been there a couple of times?
Bit more than a couple
.

Whoever had been watching Forbes knew he’d be at the
Lounge. Probably knew his tastes, too. So they sent in Georgia.

Forbes – unable to believe his luck – had taken the bait. He’d headed home, she did the job, then dressed his body to look like an auto-erotic suicide.

Was there another way? What if it was a real pick-up? She pictured Forbes at his front door, fumbling for his key, then tumbling inside with Georgia, ravenous for sex. He tells her of his fetish for dressing up and his penchant for breathlessness. She goes along with it, but something goes wrong. Worried she’ll be blamed, she flees…

Again, possible. But what were the chances that a woman, who had just started working at the Midnight Lounge when Forbes got active, would go home with him on the very night he was about to strike his deadliest blow against the President, and then disappear immediately after his death – what were the chances that all that was a coincidence?

Besides, Maggie remembered Telegraph Tim saying that the only fingerprints they’d found at the house had belonged to Forbes. If she had just been an unhappy hooker, in the wrong place at the wrong time, she’d have left her prints everywhere.

No, there was only one plausible explanation for why Georgia had disappeared – and it was the same explan ation for why she had appeared at the Midnight Lounge in the first place. It was a classic honeytrap – though with a lethal sting.

The police were wrong. Tim and all the other reporters were wrong.

Forbes had not killed himself, by accident or design.

Victor Forbes had been murdered.