Teddy, too, was impressed, and he let his eyes linger on the bow, speculating on the weight of the massive anchor snugged against the hull. Then he studied the lettering on the bow, trying to figure out what language it was. Turning to ask Kit’s opinion, he found her gone.
Sweeping the dock with his eyes, he saw her halfway up the metal steps leading from the dock to the ship’s deck. Hurrying after her, he discovered that those steps were angled in an odd way, as though they were folded up, so you had to walk on their front edges. This produced such precarious footing, he didn’t catch up to her until she was already on deck, where he found her staring into the cargo hold.
This view was even more impressive than their first look from the dock. The hold was so deep the men guiding the pallets of cargo being lowered on steel cables attached to the boom of a giant onboard crane looked like dolls. Suddenly, from Kit’s left, they heard a voice.
Turning, they saw a small man in jeans, a blue T-shirt, and a hard hat. Clearly, he found their presence on deck surprising. He spoke again, and Teddy was sure it was Russian.
“English?” Kit said, making sure she could be heard over the grind of the crane engine. “Speak English?”
The man shook his head. “No English.” He motioned for them to follow. “Chief mate . . . please . . .”
He opened a small oval door in the ship’s superstructure, ducked his head, and went inside. Going in after him, Kit was so concerned about knocking her head on the low opening, she stumbled over the threshold, which was about three inches high. Seeing her trouble, Teddy did much better.
They found themselves in a hot, gloomy hallway paneled in Formica intended to resemble bleached wood. Hard Hat opened the door to a tiny elevator paneled in the same Formica and waved them on. Three was the maximum number the little elevator could hold, so they formed quite an intimate group as the elevator carried them sluggishly up two floors. The decor there was no different from that below, and they were led to a small cabin sparsely equipped with a desk, a chair, a small green sofa, a TV, and an antique VCR. On the wall Kit saw a chess set with flat chessmen hanging on little hooks and she wondered if Russian sailors played standing up. There were windows here that admitted a welcome breeze.
Hard Hat suddenly called out in Russian, making Kit jump in surprise. At first, she thought she’d committed some shipboard sin, but then she saw a tall, angular fellow come out of a doorway behind the desk, and she knew that Hard Hat had merely announced their arrival.
Hard Hat explained what was going on, and the other man, apparently the chief mate, looked at Kit and Teddy with a friendly expression. “What can we do for you?” he said, with an accent just like Natasha in the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons Kit used to watch as a kid.
“I’m Kit Franklyn, and this is Teddy LaBiche. . . .”
“Believe it or not, my name is Boris,” the chief mate said.
His smile was tentative and restrained, as though he was embarrassed at the condition of his teeth.
“We’re trying to locate anyone who knew this man.”
Kit produced the photo and gave it to him. He winced when he looked at it. “He looks very sick.”
“He died, and no one knows who he was.”
“A man should not leave this earth in such a way. But I do not know him. Why do you come here with your picture?”
“We have reason to believe he had recently visited the docks, maybe boarding a ship. How long have you been in port?”
“Since late Tuesday.”
“Would you mind if we showed the picture to the members of your crew?”
“If he had been on board, I would have known,” he said, his manner stiffening. Then he relented. “But of course you may ask.” He rattled off something in Russian to Hard Hat, then said, “This is Victor. He will take you around. Unfortunately, I’m presently engaged and cannot help you myself. Victor speaks no English, nor does crew. So if you find someone you wish to question beyond showing them your picture, bring him here and I will interpret . . . yes?”
Kit thanked him and they followed Victor into the hall.
They questioned two crewmen swimming in a pool that appeared to have a fuzzy green growth on its bottom and spoke to two more lifting weights in a miniature gymnasium. In the galley, they interrupted a man shredding lettuce into a big enamel bowl and bothered another one cutting up a pile of chickens. Both were sweating heavily into their green sleeveless T-shirts.
Neither recognized the man in the picture. But the one cutting up chickens pointed at Teddy’s hat with his cleaver and said, “Clint Eastwood.” Then he laughed. “Wait . . .” He put the cleaver down, washed his hands, and ducked out a door at the end of the galley, to reappear a few seconds later with a furry Russian hat, which he held up to Teddy. “Trade?” He pointed at Teddy’s hat.
“Sure,” Teddy said, removing his hat and giving it to the man. He took the Russian hat and, despite the heat, put it on. It looked as ridiculous as the beret he’d worn earlier.
The Russian donned Teddy’s hat, laughed, and patted Teddy’s shoulder.
Kit subsequently showed the picture to another fifteen men, including the captain, who was on the bridge, but got no positive responses.
“No more,” Victor said, shrugging.
“Chief mate?” Kit said.
Nodding, Victor took them back to Boris’s cabin, where he was studying a chart spread out on the desk.
“We didn’t find anyone who recognized the picture,” she said. “But what about the man working the crane and the ones down in the hold?”
“Those are not crew,” Boris said. “Longshoremen . . . U.S. citizens. You want to talk to them, they eat lunch at noon on dock.” He pointed at Teddy’s hat. “You picked up souvenir?”
Teddy nodded.
“Lady must have souvenir also.” He disappeared through the door behind the desk and came back with a sparkling white cap with AMAEPMA lettered across the front, the name on the ship’s bow.
“It is perhaps not as fine a souvenir as fur hat, but is thought that counts in gift, yes?”
“Absolutely,” Kit said, accepting the cap. She thanked him for that and his hospitality, and as Victor was showing them from the cabin, Boris said, “Tell me . . .”
They turned.
“Either of you ever meet Dolly Parton?”
Back on the dock, Kit donned the cap Boris had given her, and Teddy was awed at how attractive she looked in it. “If you tell me how good I look in my hat, I’ll return the favor,” he said.
Kit studied him, stroking her chin. “Sorry, I still prefer the straw model.”
“Well, you look super.”
Kit didn’t reply, but Teddy could tell she was pleased.
She glanced downriver, where the wharf made a slight right turn, so they couldn’t see beyond the stern of the Amaepma. “There’s another ship down there,” she said, pointing. “Let’s try that one.”
They picked their way past old crates and piles of empty pallets and walked about seventy-five yards down to the ship Kit had seen from the deck of the Amaepma. She certainly wouldn’t have described the Amaepma as sleek, but the ship downriver was a major clunker—bigger, boxier, and with a towering superstructure that rose skyward like a gargantuan white box of generic breakfast cereal with holes cut in it for windows.
At first, she thought the hull was covered in rust. But as they drew nearer, she saw it was merely rust-colored paint.
“I don’t think this one has a chance for the America’s Cup,” she said, glancing at Teddy. When she turned back to the ship, her eyes fell on the name lettered across the bow and she stopped walking.
The SCHRADER . . .
There was something about that. . . . “The note in his wallet,” she said, looking at Teddy.
“What note? What wallet?”
“The dead man. He had a note in his wallet that said, ‘Schrader, Wednesday, eleven A.M.’ This is it.”
5
Broussard woke Monday
precisely at 6:00 A.M. without benefit of an alarm, as he did every morning, if he hadn’t already been called out to a murder scene. It was a talent. Come daylight saving time, he’d make the hour adjustment mentally and still hit six on the nose.
He lay for a moment, wiggling his feet, enjoying the buttery feel of his Portuguese cotton flannel sheets against his bare toes. Withdrawing his arms from under the bedclothes, he let them rest on top, where his eiderdown comforter supported them ever so gently, and the flannel duvet covering the comforter felt so creamy he couldn’t imagine why Charlie Franks thought sleeping was a waste of time.
But there was work to do.
He threw the comforter back and swung his feet over the side of the bed. On cue, Princess, his Abyssinian cat, trotted from the doorway, where she’d been watching him, and jumped into his lap. In the morning, but no other time, she liked to have Broussard rub her head hard with his knuckles, which he did now for exactly nineteen seconds. Any more and she’d nip at him. Then a couple of scratches under her chin and she jumped to the floor and trotted to the kitchen to await breakfast.
Broussard showered, brushed his teeth, shaved, and dressed, taking a moment to rub some Curél into the soles of both feet, which for some reason were always dry and cracked this time of year.
In the kitchen, he fed Princess, then took some freshly roasted Meru beans out of the freezer and poured them into the coffee grinder. He pressed the button to start the machine and sent his mind on ahead to the quail eggs à la chatelaine he was planning to whip up in just a few minutes, a trip so riveting, he barely heard the whine and rattle of bean against blade or the sound of the telephone.
Eventually, the latter got through and he answered it.
“Broussard.”
“Had your breakfast yet?” the voice of Phil Gatlin, ranking Homicide detective on the NOPD, asked.
“No. Have I missed my chance?”
“Might be better that way. I got a stiff here making me sorry I ate.”
Broussard did not like other people interpreting murder scenes for him before he saw them himself. But he always had to weigh that dislike against the relative inconvenience of the time the call came in and the judgment of the detective working the case. Life was too short to throw on your clothes in the middle of the night and dash off to a run-of-the-mill murder that presented no unique or puzzling features. True, he hadn’t eaten yet, but he was already dressed. And if Gatlin wanted him, that was good enough.
“Where are you?”
He jotted the address down on the little spiral pad he kept taped to the counter.
“I’m on my way.”
He tore the page out of the pad, stuffed it in his shirt pocket, and grabbed his bag, which always sat by the back door. He went into the garage, set the timer for the light at five minutes, and paused for a moment on the top step, admiring the sight before him—six 1957 Thunderbirds, all of them in mint condition.
It was a dazzling display—each a different color, their spotless paint reflecting the garage lights like great jewels. The Russians had Fabergé and his eggs; the English, Grinling Gibbons and his picture frames; the French, Falconet and his bronzes. But the United States had Henry Ford, and Broussard had six examples of his finest work, one for every day of the week . . . well, almost every day. He had long believed that six cars was abundance and that seven would be eccentricity. Still . . . there was room for another.
A few minutes later, he backed out of the garage in the white one and headed for the Mississippi River bridge. For neckwear, Broussard owned only bow ties, mostly because the long kind had a tendency to fall into his work when he bent over. Then, too, there really wasn’t enough clearance between the T-Bird’s steering wheel and his shirt for any extra fabric.
The sun was a cool sphere low in the sky and he reached over and flipped the passenger visor down to keep it out of his eyes. After so many years as ME, he rarely encountered any big surprises, but he still found drama in death and his blood still sang in his veins on his way to a scene. When that was no longer true, he’d retire.
As he turned onto the West Bank Expressway a short while later, his stomach rumbled mightily in protest over his missed breakfast. To calm it, he unbuttoned the flap on his shirt pocket, fished two lemon balls out, and slipped one into each cheek.
The address he’d been given turned out to be a five-story apartment house displaying a large green canvas awning over the entrance, with the street number stenciled on its end in large gold numerals. Beside each metal pole supporting the awning was a huge concrete urn predictably planted with a conical evergreen. Sitting on the rim of one of the planters was Phil Gatlin, sucking on a cigarette.
Broussard saw Gatlin’s Pontiac nearby and one police cruiser, but no other official vehicles, which was odd. Normally, a murder worthy of his appearance at the scene would generate more interest.
He parked, grabbed his bag off the passenger seat, and shed the car. At his approach, Gatlin stubbed his cigarette out on the planter, felt the tip of the butt for heat, and put it in the pocket of his suit coat.
“Savin’ it for later?” Broussard asked.
“Killing myself with them is bad enough. No need to litter, too.”
Gatlin stood about six inches taller than Broussard but was about the same age. Over the years, Broussard had watched Gatlin’s features soften and round, until he’d turned into someone the occasional felon would mistakenly think could be bested in a footrace or relieved of his weapon. And of course, Broussard hadn’t changed at all.
“Where is everybody?” Broussard asked.
Gatlin wiped his big mitt over his face, fuzzing his eyebrows. “I’m not sure what we got, so we’re taking it slow right now.”
This piqued Broussard’s interest. “Show me.”
“We gotta go upstairs . . . third floor.” He gestured at Broussard’s bag. “You haven’t got a couple of gas masks in there, have you?”
“There’s an odor?”
“Oh yeah.”
Broussard followed Gatlin up the steps and down the hall to the elevator. When it arrived, it contained a young couple, facing front, both wearing an impish look of exaggerated innocence. Her blouse was rumpled and partially pulled out of her skirt. They hurried past without speaking. As the elevator doors shut behind Broussard and Gatlin, they heard the couple laugh.
“You ever been that goofy?” Gatlin asked.
“Sure. And so have you.”
Mixed with the lingering traces of the girl’s perfume, Broussard detected the faint but unmistakable odor of decomposing flesh. Over the years, he’d become so sensitive to the smell, he could discern it at levels imperceptible to others. He was so good at it that twice he’d located bodies in nearby swamps by the odor in the bubbles they’d sent to the surface. And he could even differentiate decaying animals from humans. It was a gift.
On three, the elevator doors opened onto a blue-carpeted hallway with blue-striped wallpaper, and the odor grew stronger. Gatlin got off and turned right, his long strides making Broussard hurry to keep pace.
At the end of the corridor, a uniformed cop leaning against the wall with his arms folded saw them coming and spruced up.
“Where’s the manager?” Gatlin asked when he got close enough.
“Went back to his apartment,” the cop said.
He was young—younger, Broussard thought, than his thinning hair would indicate. And hopefully still untouched by the departmental corruption the Picayune had been detailing in articles almost daily for weeks.
“He asked us to keep the door shut,” the cop added.
Gatlin nodded perfunctorily, a disgusted smirk on his face. The odor now was strong enough for anyone to smell.
Abruptly, the door opposite the one the cop was guarding flew open and a man in a gray suit and carrying a briefcase came out. He looked at Gatlin and Broussard, sniffed the air, and waved his hand in front of his nose. “Jesus . . . what . . .” Now he saw the cop. “Is that smell what I thi
nk it is?”
“We’re kinda busy right now,” Gatlin said, “so if you’d just go along to work, we’d appreciate it.”
“You gonna be able to get rid of that smell? ’Cause if you can’t . . .”
“Smell’s ain’t our department,” Gatlin said. “Now shift your load.”
He didn’t get it.
“Move.”
Giving Gatlin a sour look, the guy headed for the elevator.
“Sir . . .” Gatlin called after him.
The guy stopped and turned around. “Yeah?”
“Have a nice day.” Looking at Broussard, the old detective added, “Memo last week said to remember we’re ambassadors for the city. How’d I do?”
“I think you’ve made a new friend.”
Gatlin lifted his tie to his nose, opened the door to the guarded apartment, and stood aside to let Broussard enter.
“You gonna need me in there?” the cop asked.
“No. But stay right out here,” Gatlin replied.
The odor in the apartment gave the air a tangible consistency. But more striking was the blood—great gouts of it in overlapping fuzzy-edged sunbursts on the cream carpet.
Broussard knelt in a clean spot and pulled on a pair of rubber gloves from his bag. He pressed the edge of a nearby sunburst with the gloved fingers of his left hand and noted that the blood was totally dry and crusted, as he expected. So there was no need to worry about tracking it around on his shoes.
He stood up and looked at Gatlin, who was still breathing through his tie. “Where are we on pictures?”
“Already got a set. Jamison left just before you got here.”
Broussard then turned his attention to an open closet door on the opposite side of the room, where numerous articles of clothing, many still on hangers, were scattered over the carpet. He moved in that direction and detected an increase in odor intensity. He now had a pretty good idea where the body was.
Reaching the clothing, he saw that most of it appeared to have been scattered after the carpet had been bloodied. But there was a tweed sport coat and a tan poplin jacket with blood spatter on the upper surface that seemed to be part of a continuous pattern extending onto the carpet.
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