Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead

by Sara Gran

  There are no coincidences. Only clues you've been too blind to see, doors you haven't found the key to open.

  "For the detective whose eyes have truly been opened," Silette wrote, "the solution to every mystery is never more than inches away."

  I went over to the boys and sat next to them, inches away.

  "Hi," I said. "I'm Claire DeWitt. I'm a private eye from Brooklyn, New York."

  They sat up and looked at me. No matter how far downhill it goes into yuppiedom, Brooklyn always impresses people. Between that and the PI business I had a good introduction to anyone under the age of forty who'd ever owned a hip-hop album.

  "I'm here working on a case," I said. "A very important case."

  The boys nodded, and tried to look dependable and upright.

  "And what I need to know," I said, "is if either of you has ever seen this man."

  I took out my picture of Vic Willing and showed it to them.

  They looked at the picture. When they did, something happened to the redhead. It was like a door shut across his face and locked tight. He didn't blink. He didn't wrinkle his forehead or move his eyes or any of the other normal things someone would do looking at a photograph. Instead he locked up, like a car that'd run out of oil.

  The brunette boy looked at the photo and shook his head.

  "Uh-uh," he said. "Sorry." He was telling the truth.

  The redhead shook his head. "Sorry," he muttered.

  He was lying. I looked at him. He started to look nervous. His foot tapped. Suddenly he stood up.

  "Fuck this shit," he said angrily to the other boy, throwing his cigarette on the ground. The brunette looked confused. "This is bullshit," said the redhead. "Waiting here all fucking day to see that nigga. He ain't even come visit me when I was in Charity, not once. Fuck this."

  He turned and walked away without looking at me. The brunette boy, confused, trailed behind him.

  The truth may have been inches away. But I still wasn't close enough to grasp it.

  I went back inside and read a book I'd brought with me on Mexican witchcraft. When my name was called I went through two metal detectors, both of which missed every piece of metal I had on me, and ended up in a square room that had the same smell and more lawyers and less mothers. A guard pointed to a round table near the middle, where Andray Fairview sat waiting for me where a guard had left him.

  I sat in the plastic chair across from him. He didn't look up.

  "Hi," I said. He looked up, saw me, and looked back down. I didn't know if he recognized me or not. I doubted it.

  His eyes were big and pale brown, the whites streaked with red and pink. Under the neckline of a thin T-shirt a gunshot scar blossomed on his chest. His eyes were fixed down on the linoleum floor, and his breathing was long and shallow. He sat slumped in his chair as if it took all of his energy to stay sitting up.

  "I'm Claire DeWitt," I said. "I'm a private investigator."

  That usually gets a good response. Everyone loves a mystery. But Andray just looked up and lifted his eyebrows and then let them fall back down, gradually, to his occipital ridge. If he recognized me, he gave no sign of it.

  "I found your fingerprints in someone's house," I said. "A man named Vic Willing."

  I gave Andray time to respond. He didn't say anything. But under the affected blankness on his face I saw something else—fear, maybe, or just loathing. He didn't like me, I saw that. But I couldn't quite make out if he was scared of me too.

  Andray had two sharp wrinkles going from the top of his nose to above his eyebrows. Above that three thin creases were etched horizontally across his forehead. He had a lot on his mind for an eighteen-year-old kid. Either he was smart or anxious or both.

  Usually I can read people. Most are easy. A hand to the face means they're lying, an extra blink gives away nervousness, a raised eyebrow signifies surprise. But Andray wasn't easy. All the clues were there, but I couldn't put them together in a way that made sense.

  I knew one thing. He wasn't happy to see me.

  And whatever he knew about Vic Willing, I wouldn't get it easy.

  On his arms he had a series of tattoos, most of them coded references to neighborhoods, housing projects, gang affiliations, and sundry other historical markers, in bold gothic print. One tattoo stood out. It was on the back of his right hand. In fancified, delicate script, it said LALI.

  "Who's Lali?" I asked.

  "No one," he said. It was the first time he'd spoken to me: his voice was deep and his accent was heavy. "No one" came out as one short, hostile word: no-un.

  "No one," I repeated. "I got some tattoos like that too."

  He ignored my attempt at a joke. For a split second, I saw something in his face. It was a question, asking for something. Save me, it said. Or maybe Kill me.

  "She your girlfriend?" I asked.

  He looked away again and didn't say anything.

  "Vic Willing disappeared sometime during the storm," I said. "I'm trying to find out what happened to him." I'd noticed that when people in New Orleans said "the storm" they didn't mean the literal storm, which only lasted a few hours. They mean the whole week, the time between when evacuations began and when they ended seven or eight days later.

  Andray didn't say anything.

  "Can you tell me where you were?" I asked. "During the storm?"

  "Convention Center," he mumbled.

  "Let's start earlier than that," I said. "Let's start with Friday night. The Friday before the storm. What'd you do that Friday night?"

  He took a deep breath and sat up a little and looked at me directly for the first time.

  "Friday night," he said. "Friday night was just normal. Sunday night, that's when it started. We went down to the Superdome. We got out of there fast. They didn't want to let no one out, but we found a way."

  "We?" I said.

  Andray nodded. "Me and Terrell," he said.

  "Who's Terrell?" I asked.

  Andray looked like he was surprised I didn't know Terrell. It wasn't unreasonable in New Orleans, where everyone knows each other.

  "No one," Andray said, blinking. "A guy I know. You ain't know him. It was me, him, and Trey. Trey, he gone, so you ain't getting no alibi from him. So then I start looking for my girlfriend, Lali. Ever since the storm she don't want nothing to do with me, but then she was my girlfriend. So I go to this house where she's at and I get her. Then, me and Terrell and Lali and Trey, we go looking for my mother."

  "You find her?" I asked. I hadn't known he still knew his mother. That wasn't in the file.

  He shook his head, and came to life, which in this case meant getting angry.

  "So then I went down to the Superdome, to look for her," Andray went on. "By then, they had people in the Convention Center too. So we went over there and, you know, that was some fucked-up shit. So me and my friend Peanut—he dead so don't waste your time looking for him—we go off and we got a car for everyone to get out of town in. And so me, Terrell, Peanut, Pee Wee, Lali, Peanut's little sister, her kids, Pee Wee's girl, her kids—we all drove out to Houston. Drove right up to the Astrodome, and those mothafuckas turned us down. Said we weren't authorized or some shit like that. But then these other people, they saw us get turned away. And they took us back to their own house, their own house where they lived, and they made us dinner, found us a place to stay, all that. Nelson, was their name. Tom and Mary Nelson. So, you know," he said, in case I was wondering, "they got some good people out there too."

  "What day was that?" I asked.

  Andray shrugged. "I lost count," he said. "One day just bleed right into the next."

  I changed tracks again.

  "How did you know Vic Willing?" I asked.

  "I did the pool in his building a few times," Andray said. "Pool place. They sent me to him."

  I'd seen on his sheet that last year Andray had hooked up with a nonprofit called Southern Defense. They sent him to an employer called Supirior Pools, Inc.— sic—the pool place in qu
estion. He did about ten jobs for them before he stopped showing up.

  "Yet your prints were all over the apartment," I said.

  "I went in sometimes," Andray said. He seemed insulted that I would think otherwise. "You know, use the bathroom, have a drink. He all right. He give me a drink, something to eat, stuff like that."

  "What'd you drink?" I asked.

  "Water," he said, without skipping a beat.

  "What'd you eat?"

  "Sandwich."

  "What kind?"

  He shrugged.

  "Huh," I said. "So what'd you guys talk about?"

  Andray shrugged again. "Shit."

  "Sorry," I said, leaning forward. "I should have been more specific. What did you talk about? When he was giving you water and mystery sandwiches, what did you talk about?"

  Andray shrugged again. "Just talked."

  "Sorry," I said, leaning back. "My fault. I don't think I'm making myself clear. See, I think you probably weren't close personal friends with Vic Willing. I think you probably killed Vic Willing, and I think at the very least you looted his house. So I'm giving you the chance to defend the extremely unlikely possibility that you and Vic Willing actually had a relationship by explaining to me what the basis of that relationship was by telling me what you talked about when you talked to Vic Willing."

  Andray looked at me.

  "Birds," he said defensively. The lines on his face deepened, and he scowled. "We talked about birds."

  "Birds?" I said.

  "Yeah," Andray said. "He fed these birds. Made a big fucking mess on the terrace. Seeds everywhere and bird shit and shit like that. He pay me extra to clean it up for him when I did the pool. I thought birds were, I don't know, like rats. Dirty. No good. But, you know. Once you watch them they're like—I don't know. They're cool. They're just, you know—" He shrugged.

  "Birds?" I suggested.

  "Yeah," Andray said. "Just birds. He showed 'em to me, you know, all the different kinds and stuff"

  "Vic did?" I said skeptically. "Vic told you about the different kinds of birds?"

  "Look," Andray said angrily, reaching into his back pocket. "He gave me this. A book. To show me the different kinds "

  He handed me a small paperback book. With a chill I saw the familiar blackbird on the cover of the slim paperback.

  Détection, by Jacques Silette. On the cover of this edition, the U.K. paperback, was a blackbird in flight.

  "The mystery is not solved by the use of fingerprints or suspects or the identification of weapons," Silette wrote. "These things serve only to trigger the detective's memory. The detective and the client, the victim and the criminal—all already know the solution to the mystery.

  "They need only to remember it, and recognize it when it appears."

  14

  I WENT OUT to breakfast at the Clover Grill the next morning. Over eggs and grits I looked over Andray's file again. He'd shut down after showing me his copy of Détection and I'd left soon after.

  I didn't know where he'd gotten that book. I doubted Vic Willing gave it to him to show him the different kinds of birds, since it was not, in fact, about birds.

  Then how had he gotten it? And why did he carry it in his pocket? When I'd asked him he'd gone back to monosyllabic non-responses. I dunno. Nothin'. No reason.

  Détection, I wrote in my file. Andray. Why?

  I went back to his record. He'd been removed from one foster home for suspected sexual abuse by the foster father and another for suspicion of neglect by the foster mother. After that he'd been ripe for picking by the gangs that ruled New Orleans.

  In other cities there were programs and missions and social workers just waiting for a malleable lump of humanity like Andray to fall into their lap. They'd train him to be obedient to a boss and a wife instead of a pimp or a gang leader. That was objectionable on its own terms, but at least he'd have a chance. But there weren't enough of those programs in New Orleans in any case, and most of the few that had existed had closed since the storm. If he could find a program, he'd have to compete for a spot with twenty other kids, all of them probably a better risk than he was.

  And besides, I was pretty sure early death was a job benefit for Andray.

  When I came back from breakfast Mick Pendell was waiting in the lobby of my hotel for me. He sat stiffly on a rigid high-backed chair, flipping through Detective's Quarterly. He looked like he was waiting to see a doctor about an unusual lump.

  I hadn't seen Mick in nearly ten years. I recognized his tattoos before I recognized his face, especially the little star near his eye on his left temple. I felt a rush of something I couldn't name—nostalgia, maybe, maybe happiness.

  I put a lid on it.

  "Well, gee," I said coldly. "It's my lucky fucking day."

  Mick heard my voice and jumped up. He looked good. He'd gone a little gray around the edges but he carried it well. He wore an old black sweater over a T-shirt, and black jeans, all of it faded and rumpled and not too clean. He had his sweater pushed up, and I saw that his arms were now completely covered in traditional Japanese tattoos: water, flowers, black swirls. On his knuckles were rune marks and around his wrists were words: HATE on the left and LOVE on the right.

  If you ask me, if you can't remember which is which, maybe you ought to stay home.

  "But unfortunately," I said, "you didn't make an appointment. So. You know. Bye."

  Mick laughed as if I were joking.

  "Claire," he said, smiling wide, his voice deep and aged. "Claire. Oh my God. I am so happy to see you."

  I didn't need to be a private dick to know he was lying. No one has ever been happy to see me. Not unless I owed them money. Even that didn't always fly.

  I looked at him.

  "I'm sorry I couldn't see you," Mick said, putting his hands in and out of his pockets. "I'm sorry about the appointment thing. I just—"

  "You just had better things to do," I finished for him. "As do I."

  I turned to walk through the courtyard to my room. Mick followed.

  "It's just—" he began.

  I walked faster. He caught up to me.

  "It's just—" he said again.

  We'd reached my room. I took out my key and opened the door.

  "Sorry," I said. "I would invite you. It's just that, you know, I want you to go away." I waved my fingers. "Go."

  "Claire," Mick said, trying to catch my eye. "Claire. I'm sorry about the appointment thing."

  "No, you're not," I said. "You came here because you want something. And whatever it is, you're not getting it. So you can go now."

  "Oh, come ON!" Mick cried, maneuvering between me and the door. "I was in with a student! I—"

  "You're lying," I said. "Next you're going to tell me you value our friendship and that you think of me often and you're so sorry we lost touch and then you're going to ask for whatever it was you were going to ask me for. So you might as well just ask and get it over with."

  "I do value—" he began.

  "Look at the time!" I cried, looking at my watchless wrist. "It's all gone. There's none left."

  Mick sighed. "Yeah, okay," he said, dropping his fake smile. "Listen. I do need your help."

  "Oh-h-h," I said slowly. "You need my help. What a fucking surprise. I never would have guessed. I am totally fucking—"

  "Okay," he said softly. "Okay."

  We didn't say anything for another long minute. We each shivered.

  "I'm cold," Mick said. "Come on." I looked at him again. Now that he wasn't trying so hard I saw that he was tired. He looked older than I'd expected him to be. If I was thirty-five that made him forty-ish. He looked ten years older than that.

  I opened the door and didn't stop Mick from coming in behind me. There was a heater along the baseboard of one wall and I cranked it up. I put down my bag and took off my coat and sat on the bed, curling my feet under me. From the ashtray on the dresser I took half a leftover joint and lit it up, inhaling deeply.

  Mick
sat on the end of the bed. He took the joint when I passed it to him and smoked a little before handing it back to me.

  "I heard you went to see Andray Fairview in OPP yesterday," he said.

  I blinked. Out of all the things Mick had possibly wanted, I hadn't expected anything to do with Vic or Andray.

  "That was fast," I said.

  "I'm in this group," Mick explained, as if he knew how ridiculous it was. "Southern Defense. We provide legal services to people who otherwise would get none. People like Andray."

  "You volunteer?" I said. "Mick, that's fucking incredible of you. You deserve a fucking medal. Don't for a minute think that I'm not impressed, because—"

  "Believe it or not, Claire, I'm not trying to impress you," he said bitterly. "I—"

  "I choose not to believe it," I said. "But what do you do? Don't they get public defenders?"

  Mick lay back on the bed and smoked a little more weed. He sighed again. "Of course they get one on paper," he began.

  "Stop sighing," I said. "It's annoying."

  He took another big inhale but this time stifled the sigh and exhaled silently. "Yeah. So they get a defender on paper, but there aren't really any here. So this group, Southern Defense, they're supposed to help by giving them defenders. But they don't have enough defenders either. They've got fourteen but they're all totally overextended. So they recruited people like me, criminologists—"

  "Professors of criminology," I corrected him. Mick used to be a PI but gave it up to teach and donate his time to nonprofits like this. I hadn't forgiven him for it yet, and I didn't plan on doing so anytime soon. Teaching was a waste. School was the worst possible place to learn anything, or so it seemed to me from my brief time there. If he really wanted to help people he ought to be out there solving mysteries.

  "Whatever," he said, muting another a sigh and rolling his eyes. "There's a bunch of us who are like the second string, who can't serve in court but can give advice and hook people up with resources or whatever. So I was working with Andray on this bullshit charge he's in there for now, and then today he mentions to me that a crazy white lady came to accuse him of murder. And, well—"