by G A Chase
From an early age, Lincoln’s mother had made sure he was her brother’s favorite nephew. As an adult, however, the ruthless businessman seldom associated with his uncle except at family events. The husky man with the dominating presence might be feared by many who walked New Orleans’s streets, but that power had little meaning to Lincoln since city politics no longer interested him.
Like a chess player assessing the strengths and weaknesses of his pieces, Lincoln saw Uncle Gerald as being as useful as a pit bull. Like the man’s sons, the LSU linemen, the chief of police had reached the limit of his usefulness once he kept the competition in line.
The light on Lincoln’s desk preceded his secretary’s voice over the intercom. “It’s the bank on line one.”
“At least it’s a call this time and not a summons. Thanks, Claire.”
He pressed the speaker button to keep the matronly voice out of his ear. “What can I do for you, Mother?”
“That last little adventure of yours put quite the dent in your line of credit.”
He returned his attention to the French Quarter. Beyond the police station stood the traditional source of the Laroque’s power, New Orleans Bank and Trust. Like the brother and sister who ran the two establishments, the bank reflected the same architecturally imposing cold marble exterior as the station. Lincoln’s mother, however, wasn’t nearly as pliable as her brother.
“Once I have the fat cut out of the investment firm and liquidate their unnecessary assets, the bank will make out just fine,” he said. Like anything I do ever costs the family money.
“Just don’t forget, this establishment isn’t your personal piggybank. If you intend to take this big a risk again, I expect to be notified beforehand rather than reading about it in the financial section. I do have other clients to consider.” Going up against their ancestor Baron Malveaux had managed to knock her down a few pegs, but she still held the city’s purse strings—a fact she liked holding over him as though he were some child demanding too much attention.
“Laroque Enterprises appreciates the notification.” Getting under her skin was a skill he’d spent decades perfecting.
“Don’t be a little snot. Just because you want to piss away your political career doesn’t mean you no longer need me.” She hung up before he could respond.
She was the mother bear forever trying to promote her cub, but that mother-son dynamic had ended for him half a lifetime before, and for the first time, he was seeing the woman as vulnerable. The aggressive gene that had been carefully cultivated in their family, and which he had in abundance, argued that the time to pounce had arrived. She could be crushed by any of several means. The tactician, however—and that skill was one he’d had to learn—knew once she was deposed as head of the bank, someone else would take her place. A weakened antagonist might beat an unknown underling with aspirations of power, but in either case, one of his strongest game pieces, the king’s proverbial queen, was showing her age.
Leaving her in power wasn’t without risk. He’d seen her battle back from too many losses to underestimate her resolve. Since the baron’s spirit was locked away, she’d take the opportunity to lick her wounds and come back stronger than ever. He needed to exert his control while he had the chance. His move would need to be decisive, cunning, and noticed by the entire family. Anything less, and he’d be watching his back for her counterstrike.
Unlike in chess, he had to keep a wary eye on his own pieces as well as his adversary’s. At any moment, one might decide it was better skilled at handling the reins of power, but for those close to him to be most effective, they had to believe such a possibility was within their grasp.
However, he knew the brother and sister who wielded so much power were themselves under the thumb of the family’s ruling elite. That was the shadowy group Lincoln needed to overcome, but not every member was known, even to the rest of the family.
Ignoring the piles of work on his desk, he pulled out a dog-eared notebook from his ever-present briefcase. The front page still had doodles he’d drawn in high school when he was naïve enough to believe his life was his own. Dreams of attending art school and becoming a bohemian painter selling his creations at one of the upscale galleries on Royal Street had been literally knocked out of his head by his mother. Another life.
He flipped to his first speculations on who was really pulling the strings. When his distant aunt Mary had become state senator, his attention was drawn to her branch of the family tree. For a few years, they seemed to be on the rise, but as the pendulum of power swung back toward money, he realized the gain had been only temporary. She might remain state senator, but in ten years, she’d moved no farther up the political ladder. In a family of sharks, such lack of progress meant death.
The most logical members of the secret board were his grandparents. He still considered the old coots likely candidates, but their lack of education, grace, and tact argued that some other force was influencing the decisions. Left to those two, the family would more accurately resemble the Beverly Hillbillies.
He flipped the page and saw his first rambling stream-of-consciousness on a paranormal force behind the family’s successes. In hindsight, he wasn’t as far off as he’d believed back then. Though at the time he thought the idea to be insane, that did lead him to his first meeting with Delphine de Galpion. Although she wasn’t much older than he, at the time, those years had equated to a college degree and a shop of her own while he was still worrying about his SATs. Together, they searched through her ancestor’s trunks of journals for any mention of his family. They found more than either had bargained for when the mysterious swamp witch made herself known, but in all the intervening years, the creepy old woman had become more legend than fact.
Every page seemed to end in question marks. If the power really had come from Baron Malveaux, shouldn’t that power transfer to me since the cantankerous spirit was locked away in the voodoo fetish? Has it already? He’d played the game masterfully, secretly drawing forth the spirit, seeing that he possessed that fool of a bartender, pitting him against his mother, then exorcising the demon and locking him away in a form Lincoln could access. Getting the ugly totem out of the hands of his longtime associate was like taking candy from a baby.
He knew he was missing something important. That impression was one that had plagued him most of his life. Never before had his inner compass of caution been more important. He didn’t dare attempt to contact Baron Malveaux until all his questions were answered.
Then what? The simple question had proven useful in tempering his ambition. His mother’s designs on seeing him achieve political office had been thwarted by his realization that such an achievement would only put him under the thumb of those with money, but following her lead—counting cash and using it as if the world was her Monopoly board—held no interest for him. From an early age, he’d rejected the conclusion that his life could be reduced to a game piece on the board of life.
He stared out the window at the Central Business District. Achieving recognition among the titans of commerce had been his aim in college. Those were the men who changed the lives of common people. Buying businesses, stripping them down to lean, mean, sharklike organizations, and setting those predators loose to do combat to the death used to give him a rush like no other. Workers were the blood cells, management the organs, and he the brains. Politicians provided the playing field, such as it was. In an emergency, the police might act as referees, though, like the politicians, such impartiality was an illusion. Money funded the blood sport. It should be enough. However, being the great white shark in a school of makos wasn’t enough excitement to last a lifetime. He needed more and always would. Who knew being at the top of the food chain could be so depressing?
He turned a hideous statue on a corner of his desk toward himself. “You understood. Taking down an adversary was never enough for you. Eating of their flesh and drinking their blood from their hollowed-out skulls might have been passé, but taking their w
omen for your personal enjoyment—and their humiliation—must have felt like drinking from a victory cup.”
His great-great-grandfather’s obsession with turning women into whores, however, was also a practice left in the past. Even then, like a drug, the rush only lasted for a moment. How do I know that?
Again the questions haunted him. He sat back at his desk and opened the binder to a fresh page to record what he knew.
He wasn’t some reincarnation of the baron Malveaux. His ancestor’s spirit was locked in the voodoo totem. From the hatred and fear he experienced while looking at the misshapen features of the statue, he knew the baron was his adversary. Though that could easily be explained by the baron’s current predicament, the sense of animosity wasn’t confined to their recent encounter.
From his research project with Delphine, Lincoln knew of one other member in the history of the family who’d experienced that same hatred. Finding information on the baron’s only son wouldn’t be easy, but he knew where to start.
He pushed a button on the intercom. “Claire, find me a real-estate firm. I need one that can provide a layer of anonymity between me and the transaction. Make it one we haven’t used before.”
* * *
Lincoln’s six-month-old Mercedes S63 Cabriolet fit in nicely on the streets of the Garden District, though he knew no recent resident of the Laurette mansion would have had the money for such an expensive luxury car.
Neighbors were sneaking looks out their windows at the well-tailored businessman like gossipy little old ladies. He did his best to look nonchalant as he approached the weathered front door with its missing panes of glass. If he dawdled, someone might start questioning him about his intentions toward the derelict building. People in historic neighborhoods never did know when to keep their noses out of other people’s business.
He didn’t have a key, not that one would work in the rusty lock anyway. One good shove of his shoulder as he turned the pitted knob was enough to break through the building’s resistance to any intruder.
Lincoln was not unknown to the house. He stood in what had been the grand foyer, surveying the ravages of time. As a child, he’d slid down the two-story wooden banister and received a sound whooping for the joyride. He shook the elegantly carved mahogany railing. The kid he’d been would land on his ass if he tried to slide down it now. Fucking termites.
Buying the family mansion from his distant cousin had been simple enough. By hiding behind his shell company and a redevelopment firm, the trail back to him was so convoluted that she hadn’t bothered asking any questions about the buyer’s identity. Paying cash also had a way of quieting any owner hoping their historic property would retain its past glory while trying to avoid the hassle of fixing up a decaying relic.
Samantha Laurette had been the most direct descendant of Baron Malveaux’s only legitimate son and heir, but a little investigating had revealed she had no interest in the family’s heritage. The cloak-and-dagger purchase might not have been necessary, but with his family, the less revealed, the better. The need to stay one step ahead had become so ingrained that he hardly noticed the chicanery anymore.
He avoided the downstairs with its once-opulent dining room and outdated kitchen. His great aunt had been a horrendous cook. Even after thirty years, he recalled the smell of her burnt biscuits and gravy. The memory made him nauseated. How could any woman raised in the South fuck up biscuits?
The threadbare red carpet runner with its yellow—now brown—flowers, meant to protect the wooden stairs, curled at the edges. Mold tendrils extended beyond the carpet like the black death. He kicked at the rotting wool as if getting back at his relatives for their inhospitality toward the youth he’d once been. Children at the forced family gatherings had been as unwelcome and unnoticed as the peeling paint and wallpaper. Even back then, the place had showed its age.
Lincoln held his breath as he climbed past the second floor. Even decades after her death, his great-grandmother’s perfume permeated the walls and carpet. The overly flowery scent made him consider fumigating the house before his next visit.
The rope that had hung from the attic hatch at the end of the third-floor hallway was recently replaced. He figured Samantha had gone through the dusty storage space. Speculating on what family skeletons remained in the dark corners had been a favorite pastime of the family children. Being one of the youngest, he thought his cousins had meant literal bones.
He pulled down the wobbly stairs and ended up covered in dust for his effort. His dry cleaner was going to have a time of it getting the expensive suit back into shape—not that that mattered. If he had to poke around in old trunks and dilapidated rooms, he intended to be comfortable, and that meant a nice suit, not some poor-person jeans.
From the areas clear of dust on the attic floor, he knew anything of value had been removed. He doubted Samantha had found much in the way of compensation for her work. The old folks in his family weren’t the type to let expensive heirlooms sit rotting in their closets.
Ambition and money had a way of skipping generations. Anthony Laurette, who had at one time been Antoine-Caliste Malveaux—son of Baron Archibald Malveaux—had that ambition. His architectural firm had designed many of the Garden District’s mansions. Unfortunately, his eldest daughter had been too much like her younger sister, Lincoln’s grandmother. For each generation that built something of value, another right after it was happy to live off the spoils. Only Laurette’s middle son had shown any signs of ambition.
Lincoln pulled a beat-up dining-room chair off a pile and set it under the dormer window. He wasn’t there for the plunders of ownership or to get even with his past, at least not the one he remembered. The time had come to find out if the old swamp witch had been right in her prophecy about him so long before or if she was just another con artist out to manipulate him.
He sat in the wobbly chair and put his hands against the solid-wood beams running down from the roof. They wouldn’t have changed since the mansion had been built shortly after the War Between the States. He imagined himself being the one drawing up the plans. All his life, people had told him he was an old soul. If the baron could return from the dead after a century and a half in the ground, could being the reincarnation of his son be that hard to accept?
After five minutes of intense concentration, he let his arms fall to his sides. He was a titan of business, not a practitioner of voodoo. If his suspicions were true, he was going to need more than this old residence to jump-start the memories. Damn it!
He didn’t dare try to utilize his ancestor’s power, locked in the wooden sculpture, until he knew the truth of his existence. The old man had already proven his lust for control knew no bounds, including family loyalty. Simply being the great-great-grandson wouldn’t be enough to keep the baron in check. However, as the only son who had saved generations of the family from the curse brought on by the old goat’s lusts, he might have the leverage others had sought.
The attic smelled of past generations, musty, rotting timbers, and death. Connecting to what he believed about himself had only been Plan A. Like any successful businessman, he’d come with a contingency plan.
He stood and kicked the chair over. As the uppermost room of the building—and used only for storage—the attic had suffered the worst from termites and dry rot. The nails holding the beadboard to the rafters weren’t doing their job. He pulled on a hanging board, which crumbled in his hand. If need be, he would remove every plank to find what his ancestor had hidden. If the answers to his questions weren’t in the diaries left by Marie Laveau—which he had cleverly gotten into the hands of her descendent, Delphine de Galpion—then they must have been in the writings of Anthony Laurette.
Like a squirrel designing a luxury nest, the original founder of Laurette and Associates Architects had an annoying habit of stashing his secrets in the walls of his mansions.
Lincoln pulled hard at a more substantial-looking piece of beadboard, and a splinter pierced his well-manicur
ed index finger. He held his hand up to the light to inspect the wound. Blood quickly ran down his palm and soaked the cuff of his pressed-silk shirt. “Damn it!”
The physical pain paled in comparison to his skiing injuries. Even the loss of the shirt wasn’t what bothered him. He had a closet full of them in his office. The old residence and repository of family secrets wasn’t going to hand him the answers he sought without a fight, but it had crossed the wrong descendant.
“I’ll be back, and I’ll have a construction crew at the ready to pull you down, board by board.”
47
Kendell found playing her guitar for Cheesecake had its limitations. Truth be told, the dog didn’t have the greatest ear, regarding music. On stage with the band, Kendell was forced to play the rehearsed set list. As Olympia Stain, she could cut loose, but it wasn’t her music. Myles did his best to be supportive, but like every other boyfriend she’d had, he didn’t know how to deliver honest, constructive criticism, and when he did, he was always wrong. The real problem was she needed an audience—one that didn’t know her, one with no expectations.
She’d skipped the whole street-performer phase of her education, believing an actual college degree would provide more useful information than being a street urchin playing for coins. As she set up her mobile amplifier on Chartres Street, she wondered if she’d missed something important in her professional calculations. Having tossed countless dollar bills into tip jars, she’d heard every type of busker, from musical virtuosos to dudes who didn’t know how to properly handle their instruments. Only once had she attempted that form of baring her musical soul, and she had been under the influence of the voodoo curse at the time.
