Claire DeWitt And The City Of The Dead Part 22

"I'm right," I said at the door. "I'm always right."

"Yep, okay," Leon said as he closed the door in my face. "That's fine."

"You'll see," I said. "You will see."

He shut the door and didn't say anything, and I knew I was right.

And I knew something else too: when a client fires you, it means you're getting close to the truth.

"The client exists not as a part of the whole but as an external source of power," Silette wrote. "If the mystery is s.h.i.+va, the client is Shakti. The client initiates the descent into the mystery, but after that she is no longer needed; the detective proceeds of his own accord. The detective will more often than not solve the mystery despite the client, not because of her.

"The client is the errant goat that leads Persephone to the weak spot of earth where Pluto can let her in.

"No one remembers the name of the goat. Everybody remembers the name of the first detective, Persephone."

45.

I DROVE AWAY from Leon's house and parked a few blocks away even though I had nowhere to go. I didn't want to seem stalker-y. I didn't know what to do. I wasn't hungry. I was tired of liquor and drugs. I wasn't interested in going to any museums or malls or tourist attractions, most of which were closed, anyway. There was no one in New Orleans I wanted to see.

I wanted to know who killed Vic Willing. That was all I wanted.

I drove to the Quarter and parked the truck across the street from Vic's apartment. Jackson, the homeless man who'd known Vic, was sitting on the steps of a house nearby. We were only a few blocks from his regular spot in Jackson Square.

I got out of the truck.

"Hey, Jackson," I said.

He nodded sagely. "h.e.l.lo, ma'am."

"How you doing?" I asked.

"Blessed," he answered. "And you?"

"Not so blessed," I said. "They keep trying to bless me. But I don't think it's sticking."

He laughed. "They got the truck there," he said. He looked toward Vic's. I followed his eyes. In front of Vic's building was the same white cherry picker truck I'd seen all over the city.

"What is that thing?" I asked.

Jackson shook his head. "Don't know," he said. "I do not know. I thought you was a detective, anyway."

"That's true," I said. "I am."

I checked my gun, making sure it was loaded and within easy reach in my waistband. Jackson raised his eyebrows but didn't say anything. Dealing with munic.i.p.al authorities in New Orleans might require heavy artillery.

I crossed the street; as I did a man in a white jumpsuit got out of the truck and walked over to the oak tree by Vic's window. Vic's tree, where he fed his birds.

The man held an aluminum clipboard and looked up at the terrace, where the bird feeder hung.

"Hi," I said.

The man jumped and turned around.

"You scared me," he said, looking annoyed. "Is that your apartment?"

"No," I said. "It's my friend's. What do you want with it?"

He reached into his jumpsuit and pulled out a badge holder and flashed me a badge and an ID. He was an ugly man, short, with an unpleasant face and a lumpy body. He had black hair and brown skin with acne marks and a frown.

"Wildlife and Game," he said, snapping the wallet back closed. "We're-"

"Easy, pal," I said. "Let's see that again."

He shrugged and tossed it to me. I caught it and looked at his ID. It was good. I gave it back to him.

"So what are you doing here?" I asked.

"We had reports of an invasive species being fed here," he said. "The Quaker parakeet. They're illegal, you know."

"How can a bird be illegal?" I asked. "Was he dealing? Soliciting?"

The man shrugged. "Ask my boss. My job is just to eliminate them."

"Eliminate them?" I repeated.

He nodded. We looked at each other.

"You from here?" I asked.

"From here?" He looked confused and shook his head. "No. I'm from D.C. I'm just here for the elimination project."

"Well, you're in New Orleans now, pal," I said. "And no one's getting eliminated."

He scowled. "As a representative of the federal government, I have the right to-"

"You have the right to get your a.s.s out of here without me shooting you," I said. I reached to my waist and put my hand on my gun. "But only if you leave right now."

The man didn't look shocked or surprised. Just resigned. I guessed he was used to this kind of reaction. He gathered up his work case and his clipboard and got ready to leave.

"You were taking down their nests," I said, suddenly getting it. "They like the warmth so they build on transformers. You were taking down their houses."

"They're a hazard," the man said. "They could start a fire."

"Right," I said. "People never do that."

"They eat crops," the man said.

"Right," I said. "The wheat fields of New Orleans will recover. I promise you."

The ugly man looked at me. Maybe he wasn't so ugly. Maybe I just didn't like him.

"What's your problem?" he said. "Why do you care?"

"I don't," I said. "Now go f.u.c.k yourself."

I looked up. In the tree were two fat, ungainly little parrots. Mates. Many birds, maybe most, mate for life, or at least closer to life than most humans get.

The man got in his truck, made some notes in his clipboard, and left. I looked up. The two parrots looked down at me. One squawked.

"Yeah, you're welcome," I said.

I looked down at the base of the tree; sprinkled around it was some kind of blue powder, like the poison they use on rats in New York City.

Jackson and I spent the rest of the morning spraying off the tree with the hose from Vic's building, was.h.i.+ng off the blue poison and hoping no one would catch us before we finished the job.

46.

THAT NIGHT I DROVE around, still hoping something would happen. Nothing did. Not to me. Things happened to other people; people laughed, guns went off, people drank, prayers went unheard, lives were conceived, people fell in love. A house fell down on Josephine Street. I was on Magazine Street when I heard a big boom, like a cannon. A cannon didn't seem impossible, but when I drove closer to the scene I saw a big dome of sawdust and ash, like a mushroom cloud. I'd noticed the house before. It was an old, pretty shotgun, or had been. The storm had knocked the roof off. Then a fire had gutted it, leaving a black ashy mess. But it had still stood up, until tonight. A crowd gathered around the collapsed house, astonished, laughing and shaking their heads.

On my way back downtown to my hotel, I stopped in the all-night gas station on the corner of Magazine and Was.h.i.+ngton for a few bottles of water. Theoretically the water in New Orleans was as clean as before the storm. Even if that was true, it wasn't exactly an endors.e.m.e.nt.

The store at the gas station was the only one open at night for a few miles, and the lot was full. I parked the truck on Was.h.i.+ngton, in front of something called the New Orleans Firefighters Museum. Inside, the gas station/store was a cross section of New Orleans, each nominated representative of each subculture eyeing the other suspiciously: punk giving the fish-eye to frat boy, thug warily watching punk, Egyptian store worker following crackhead lady, crackhead lady eyeing Egyptian store worker for signs of disrespect.

On my way out of the store I ran into Terrell, Andray's friend. He was loitering with another boy near an Oldsmobile high up on oversize wheels. He had his phone out and was about to make a call.

"Hey, Miss Claire," he said, uneasily. Terrell looked tense, different from his usual happy self. I figured he was hanging out with the cool kids and trying to look tough. I waved a h.e.l.lo. He waved back and went back to his phone.

I walked back up the block to my truck. I was almost there when I heard someone come up behind me. I turned around.

It was Andray. He wasn't alone. Behind him were three other young men, men I didn't know. Each wore the uniform of huge pants and big hooded sweats.h.i.+rt, along with the accompanying almost-sneer.

I didn't see Terrell. They'd been looking for me, I now saw, and Terrell had been the advance team.

If I had seen that five minutes ago, it would have been much more helpful than it was now.

"What's up, Miss Claire?" Andray said. If he had any recollection that we had almost been sort-of kind-of friends, he kept it a secret.

I reached into my waistband for my gun-the gun Terrell had sold me. That was a dumb move. The youngest of the boys behind Andray, a kid about sixteen with skin nearly as dark as his black hair, had a nine-millimeter out and pointed at me nearly as soon as I got the idea.

"f.u.c.k," I said. "f.u.c.king Quick Draw McGraw."

The boys all laughed. But the young one didn't put down his gun.

"s.h.i.+t," Andray said. "You always funny, Miss Claire. But listen, we gotta talk to you. So you gonna come with us for a little drive, okay?"

I looked at Andray. I looked for a crack in a window, an easily picked lock on a door to his psyche.

Nothing. He was sealed up tight.

"You're the boss," I said.

Andray's friends hung back as we walked together up toward Prytania. We didn't talk. Andray's sneakers were quiet in the night air, his breath soft and white in front of him. Around the corner I saw what I'd been dreading.

A black Hummer. Just like the one driven by whoever shot at the kid in front of the restaurant the other day.

Or shot at me.

We stopped in front of the car.

"You gonna kill me, Andray?" I asked. I heard my heart beating in my chest.

Andray shook his head as if I'd said something stupid and didn't answer.

That was when I got scared.

The other boys caught up with us and the youngest one tossed his gun to one of the others, two medium-size, unremarkable-looking young men. One of the unremarkable boys caught the gun by the handle in the air. He was like a circus performer. Then the young one used a key to open the Hummer and then popped the rest of the locks and we all got in-me in the front between Andray and the driver, the two unremarkable boys in the back.

"You don't have a remote?" I asked.

"I lost that s.h.i.+t!" the driver exclaimed. "Like the first motha-f.u.c.king day I had it, I lost that s.h.i.+t! And you know what they want for another one at the dealer's?"

"I can imagine," I said. "Look on eBay."

"Yeah," he said, looking over his shoulder to pull out. "I gotta get with that s.h.i.+t."

The driver put on the radio. To my surprise he didn't put on one of the ten million hip-hop stations in New Orleans. Instead he put on WWOZ, where the Oak Street Bra.s.s Band was doing an in-studio show.

The two unremarkable boys fell into a series of hoots and hollers as the band started "Eliza Jane."

"We got friends in that band," one of the boys explained to me.

"You play?" I asked, turning around.