Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead

by Sara Gran

  I didn't leave home. Home left me, block by block.

  Kelly had wanted to go too, once. That was the plan, the three of us. When we turned sixteen we were going to leave together. It didn't matter where. We weren't going to. We were going away from.

  "I thought we were going to leave," I said finally. Kelly was going through her file of interviews, double-checking the testimony of a transit officer who may have maybe seen someone who kind of maybe looked like Tracy ten minutes after we left her. "I don't want to stay here forever."

  Kelly looked at me as if she couldn't believe what I'd said.

  "Yes," she said, astonished. "We were going to leave. Together. The three of us."

  "Even if we find her," I said, "she's not coming with us."

  We spent the rest of the day in silence.

  After that day, I saw that I had to make a choice. I started giving things away, lightening my baggage. Kelly talked to me less and less. A crack had developed between us; soon it would grow into a valley. I started stealing more money from my parents to save; they were drinking more and didn't notice. I also started stealing more from stores, things I could sell: mostly books, which were easy to take and easy to sell to the Strand.

  I didn't tell Kelly. She knew.

  When I had a decent bankroll together, I packed what little I had and told my parents I was going to summer camp. They barely noticed.

  I went to Kelly's apartment to say goodbye.

  She opened the door. When she saw me standing there with my suitcase, she turned her back on me and closed it again.

  I went to Port Authority and got a ticket for the next bus that was going far away. It was going to San Francisco. I got kicked off in Cleveland.

  I knew if I stayed in Brooklyn, I'd be locked in that room forever, like Tracy and Kelly, walled off, slowly running out of air to breathe. I would drown in the Case of the Girl Gone Missing if I didn't let it go.

  But Kelly never left. She never stopped. And slowly, a little bit at a time, she did drown. She opened a detective agency, but it was just a side project to fund her search. Nothing else mattered to her. She'd left an air-shaft window open to Tracy's room, and she was arrested a few times for breaking in to the projects, even though no one found the room. Twenty years of working on the same case had made her a great detective. And it had broken her. Everything that could have been hadn't and everything that should have been wasn't. It should have been the three of us traveling the world, the three of us solving mysteries, the three of us growing rich. But it was only me. There wasn't a moment I lived that I wasn't living for three of us. It's not the way to do it. But it was the only way I knew how. It wasn't enough to take one bite for myself. I had to take a bite for Trace and a bite for Kel too. I couldn't go back there, but I also couldn't let go, not really. It would be like losing them all over again.

  Kelly and I talked once every few years, when we had dreams about her or other clues to share. Now, twenty years later, sometimes I still expected Trace to call me up on the phone. What's up, bitch, meet me at Mars Bar at ten tonight. I still expected Kel to be waiting for me at the G train to go write graffiti. What's up, bitch, you're late.

  It isn't the dead we should feel sorry for. It's the living.

  I didn't know how to solve the Case of the Girl Gone Missing. And I didn't know how to solve the Case of the Broken Levees. I didn't know how to save a city from drowning and I didn't think anyone else did, either. I could barely keep my own head above the water. The water line was already up to my eyes, and it wasn't getting any lower. I would have liked to rewrite both stories and give them a happier ending. But I couldn't do that. All I could do was solve mysteries, and go on.

  "There are moments in life that are quicksand," Silette wrote. "A gun goes off. A levee breaks. A girl goes missing. These moments of time are different from the others. Quicksand is a dangerous place to be. We will drown there if we can't get out. But it tricks us. It tricks us into confusing it with safety. At first, it may seem like a solid place to stay. But slowly we're sinking. You will never move forward. Never move back. In quicksand you will slowly sink until you drown. The deeper you let yourself sink, the harder it is to claw yourself out.

  "These spots of quicksand are unsolved mysteries. Only the detective can descend into the quicksand and come out alive. Only the detective can pull things and people out of quicksand and get them back on solid ground."

  But how the detective pulls herself back up—well, Silette never wrote about that. And I still don't know.

  44

  WHEN I GOT off the phone with Kelly my head was pounding too loudly for me to go back to sleep. There were plenty of other symptoms too, but I could sleep through those. After a thousand cups of coffee and one of the Vicodin I'd stolen from Vic Willing's house, I felt well enough to check my voice messages. Leon had called while I was sleeping.

  I had a shower and more coffee and called Leon back. I gave him a vague report on what I'd learned. He sounded unhappy. Clients are often unhappy. Especially when you tell them their uncles might be pedophiles and you still don't know who killed them. They're funny about that.

  "Are you sure?" Leon kept saying. "Really?" He asked if I could come over to his house a little later. I was pretty sure what was coming, but there was nothing to do but let it come.

  I got to Leon's house at about three. We sat down in the living room. He fixed me a drink right away. I knew that was too good to be true.

  He sat on the chair opposite me. "We need to talk," he said.

  I rolled my eyes. Clients.

  "I don't think things are working out," Leon said gently, as if we were breaking up. "This isn't going the way I hoped it would. I really hoped we would have made more progress by now."

  I sighed and began my standard lecture for impatient clients. "Leon," I began. "In these busy, fast-paced times, people often have unrealistic expectations of how private investigation works. This isn't Matlock, Leon. This isn't Magnum, P.I.—"

  Leon frowned and interrupted me: "I don't watch Matlock. I didn't think this was Matlock."

  "Okay," I continued. "You don't watch Matlock. No one's accusing you of anything, Leon. I was explaining that detection isn't a sprint. It's a marathon. Anyone can jump to conclusions. You don't need a private dick for that. You want the truth. As do I. We're united in—"

  "Thanks," Leon said, frowning again. "Thanks, but no. I don't think it's going to work out."

  "Leon," I said. "At some point in the development of the detective/client relationship, it's natural for the client to want to fire the PI. It's a part of the process, and that's okay. But we need to move past that, to a better place—a place of healing, if you will."

  I didn't think any of that was true, about clients wanting to fire their private dicks. They usually wanted to fire me. That was true enough. Almost always they wanted to fire me. Actually, every time. Every time except one, the time in Dallas when the guy killed his own mother and then hired me to find the killer because he didn't know the murderer was one of his other personalities. He never fired me.

  "No," Leon said. "I don't think so. I think this is over. I'll pay you for what you've already—"

  "Leon," I said. "You can't fire me. I'm going to keep working on the case. Then, when I solve it, you're going to see how truly wonderful and clever I am. Then you're going to pay me for the whole time, and you are going to do it happily. You are going to do it with bells on. So let's just—"

  Leon let out a little breath of frustration.

  "No," he said again. "No. I—I really don't—I mean, I just can't imagine that. No. This is over. This is completely over. I haven't been happy with your, uh, performance. To begin with, you don't check in enough. And as far as I can tell you haven't, you know, accomplished anything. And the"—he looked at the bottle and made a little tipping-back gesture with his hand—"the drinking and the, the everything else, whatever it is you're doing, smoking morning glory seeds or whatever—"

  "O
loliuqui," I said. "It's not exactly a morning glory. It's a flowering shrub—"

  "And the voodoo or whatever—"

  "Oh, come on!" I cried. "No one was even possessed!"

  "No," he said again, cutting me off with a frown. "No. I don't want to give you the wrong idea. Here." He handed me a check for the work I'd done so far and a piece of typed paper. It was an official notice of termination. On the bottom was a seal; I saw that it had been notarized by a notary public. He wasn't taking any chances.

  "I think that makes it official," he said, standing up. "I think we're all done."

  I stood up. "You'll see," I said.

  "Sure," Leon said. "Okay. I think you should leave now."

  I stood up and left.

  "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 Shiva, 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. "Hello, 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 municipal 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 ass 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 fuck 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, washing 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 Washington 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 endorsement.

  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 Washington, 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 Egypti
an 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 hello. 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 sweatshirt, 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.

  "Fuck," I said. "Fucking Quick Draw McGraw."

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

  "Shit," 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.