by Brian Hodge
“Why this one, then?” April asked.
“Curiosity, primarily.” To Justin, Justin alone: “Would you mind terribly, talking to me about Leonard’s death?”
He said he wouldn’t, no, not terribly, but neither did he relish the opportunity. Dirkson plowed right ahead, recklessly eager, madly curious. Questions, questions, Leonard’s final moments: Had he touched anything? Given any indication as to where he’d been prior to their meeting? Had Justin passed anything to him, or accepted anything from him? What was Leonard’s state of mind again? On and on, everything Justin had already told to somebody from the coroner’s office. It was as if Dirkson had himself convinced there was something being forgotten, and if he tried hard enough, Justin would recall it.
“Why?” Justin said, finally. “There’s not a single question here that someone hasn’t already beaten you to, and I’m not going to remember Wednesday night any clearer than I already do. So what is it you’re after?”
Dirkson rubbed a hand across his chin, stared over toward the dwindling knot around the coffin. Mostly family now, and this was tough: watching Len’s wife, the two kids. No, Daddy won’t be coming with us. A grandmother, perhaps an aunt, trying to help her out, coax them along when they obviously didn’t want to leave. He couldn’t help but think of those crayon drawings still in a downtown desk drawer. Daddy at work. Would Daddy at Pine Lawn be next?
“When I first heard about Leonard,” said Dirkson, “a little alarm went off in my head. Something about it sounded familiar.” He was all concentration now, forehead pinched down the center. “I’ve not had a chance yet to ask his family, but you might know: Had Leonard gone to New Orleans recently, by chance?”
Justin stiffened. He could feel the bands tighten around his back, muscles in full apprehension. “We both did.” Softer, now, harsher. “About six weeks ago.”
Very clinical: “That’s interesting.”
Even April’s grip was tighter now, as if she were readying to pull him back from some brink he was too blind to see.
Dirkson went on. “I went combing through some back issues of the Journal of the AMA and found the article I was recalling. Plus some updates since the original article, and some mentions in the journal of the American College of Emergency Physicians.” His eyes were alight with fascination. “Whatever happened to Leonard, there have been thirteen documented cases of it having happened before, with the exact same pathology. All in the last seven years. Not a single one could be routinely explained. There’s a severe geographic skew, as well. One in New York, another in San Francisco, but all the rest have been in the South. Two previous ones in Florida, one in Atlanta and the other eight in and around New Orleans. The most recent was just this August. An accountant named Henry Cobb. Now here’s the really interesting tidbit: Most of them had reputed ties to organized crime.”
Justin, taking it all in, shaking his head, “No, not Leonard, no way.”
“No, I’m not suggesting he had any involvement, I just mention it as a curiosity.”
“What do you think it is?” said April. “You’ve obviously got an idea.”
Dirkson nodded. “I could be wrong, but I’m wondering if it might not be some manner of contagion. Whether viral or bacterial, I couldn’t say. But it’s the geographical aspect that bothers me about an allergenic explanation. Go back to when Legionnaires’ disease was first noticed. It traced back to a hotel in Philadelphia.” A certain smug satisfaction. “The CDC haven’t had much luck so far, but I’ll not be surprised if they eventually find some common link.” A brusque smile of dismissal. “Well. I do hope you’ll give me a call if you remember anything else about Leonard from that night.”
Gone, then, toward his car. Busy busy.
“Well. I do hope you’ll answer your own phone.” April and her gift for mimicry. He was too far away to hear, but that didn’t matter. She looked at Justin, her eyebrows like arches over almonds, with a light smile. Her cemetery smile. “You feel all right … don’t you?”
Onward to the car, keys in hand. “Fine. A little confusion, maybe.”
“So what else is new.” Nudging him with her elbow. “You, uh, mind if I drive?”
He tossed the keys over. And felt his tongue.
Chapter 15
Exile
Behind the wheel of a limo, you could keep the world at a distance, get to feeling that it could never touch you. Napoleon now knew better.
Wednesday evening, the world as he knew it had turned inside out. That man, they had killed him so close that Napoleon could smell the smoke of the shotgun blast. One had fired at him as well, wildly, and he had driven from the garage and into the streets in a raw panic with his foot heavy on the gas.
Such an experience was beyond him, best left to someone who routinely made important decisions. Mr. Andrew, who perhaps should be warned, as well, not to go downstairs. Perhaps these two in the garage were waiting with their guns for him as well.
One hand on the wheel, the other on the phone, Napoleon had gotten as far as five digits into Mr. Andrew’s private office line before reconsidering.
Those two with their shotguns — hadn’t he seen at least one of them before? Maybe both? In a group, at Charbonneau’s, where Mr. Andrew sometimes ate, and where they would often sit in the back for hours, table heaped with so much food and drink it looked to be near collapse.
Perhaps running back to Mr. Andrew might not be the best idea. Murderers disliked leaving witnesses behind. If somehow Mr. Andrew knew these two — as he had known the dead man who worked for him — might they not have an easier time finding their witness?
And what might it mean that the man for whom he worked knew others who killed with the skill of professionals? Napoleon didn’t even want to consider this until he had time to clear his head, sort these things out.
With ears still ringing from the blast of the shotgun, Napoleon drove to the biggest parking lot he could think of. To abandon the limo in the shadow of the Superdome.
And just as he prepared to get out, th phone began to ring. Napoleon, only now beginning to catch his breath again, stared at the handset as it shrilled with an electronic chirp. A voice of reason would be on the other end, probably Mr. Andrew, asking if he was all right. Telling him, then, to come on back, come on and they would get this all straightened out. He would sound so very persuasive; Napoleon heard it all in that ring.
He sat there and must have sweated a pint before whoever had dialed gave up.
Moving twice as fast, then, before it could start up again, Napoleon checked his wallet. Just under a hundred dollars. Went through the glove compartment and found nothing of use. Crawled back into the cavernous passenger area and rummaged about; the bottles and glasses were useless, but he kept the half sack of beignets, now stale, that Mr. Andrew had left behind that morning.
He pocketed his key ring, grabbed his Bob Marley and Peter Tosh tapes, and locked the limousine behind him. With these clothes, though, no matter how far away from the limo he got, he was still going to look like a driver. The cap he whipped from his head and stuffed into a metal trash drum; let it mingle with the cast-off refuse of other lives. The black tie followed, and he left it coiled atop a pair of bottles like a snakeskin.
Given the circumstances, it was just that easy to leave a life behind. It was only when he considered tomorrow that the night began to weigh on him, in the pit of his stomach.
Napoleon walked east. He passed City Hall and the state offices, impressed by how quickly you could move from halls of importance to avenues of decay. He had polished off the last of the beignets and brushed the powdered sugar from his hands by the time he crossed Canal into the French Quarter. If he had to get lost, then here was the place.
So many other people were doing it too.
His days and nights were spent as a transient; that he would end up like this had never seemed remotely feasible. It was a brand-new kind of school, the Quarter a giant open-air classroom characterized by a shrewd decade
nce. Everybody was after something: conventioneers and tourists after the time of their lives, and the prostitutes after their cash in the process; freaks of every inclination, the street people and those who came out only after dark; sailors in off the river; musicians on break and street entertainers who never quit; and the police who patrolled like the last voices of sanity to keep it all from getting beyond control, although half the time it looked as if they too had been infected, and did not realize it.
He slept that first night in a doorway, shielded by castaway boxes. The next morning, before he got ripe enough to worry about being ejected from some self-respecting business, Napoleon hunted down a thrift outlet, trading in his gray slacks and jacket so he could quit looking the part of the runaway chauffeur. Anybody patrolling the streets on the wrong side of the law could spot him in an instant in that getup. He opted for a skinny pair of faded jeans and a blue Loyola sweatshirt to pull over his white dress shirt, and damn if he didn’t look almost collegiate. The black shoes would also have to go; one night a fugitive and he was already working on a blister or two. He bought a cheap, off-brand pair of running shoes.
Each of the following days, he bought the paper to see what was said about the man he’d seen killed. They called Tyson Larkin the victim of an apparent robbery because his wallet and attaché case were missing. No, no, this wasn’t right at all, those two had not had robbery on their minds. Full of shit, this was.
It was only after reading the initial story a third time that Napoleon realized he should be breathing a sigh of relief for one fact, at least. Something he’d previously not considered. There was no mention of him at all, by name or by occupation. That he was being sought as a witness or as a suspect.
Or feared dead too, for that matter, his body and the limo yet to be recovered.
This was all just too confusing, and too dead-end for him to continue much longer. Even sleeping on the street, his cash would last only a few days, and what had he accomplished: buying himself a secondhand wardrobe in which to slowly starve?
Napoleon could never bring himself to beg money from others on the street. He had even parted with a few dollars, to those who so obviously needed it more, but he could not keep this up for long. Such a thin line separated distressed from destitute.
He had wanted to get lost? He had done a thorough job of it. Only there was no way back, and nothing ahead to walk toward. This path led only back onto itself.
Rock bottom could surely not be far away.
And Friday night, it found him.
The moment began in comic spectacle, Napoleon feeling safe in the crowd on this night of weekend decadence. Bienville beneath his feet, in a block treading a fine line between picturesque and blighted. Just moments before, he had smacked down the last of a foot-long bought from the cart of a Lucky Dog street vendor. He crossed the mouth of Exchange Alley, stopping on the fringes of a crowd gathered to watch an impromptu show.
Two retirement-age women, apparently strangers to one another and both as stout as fireplugs, had been out walking their dogs. Fussy little beasts in rhinestone collars, on short leashes. One a dust mop of a Pekingese, the other a badly clipped terrier. Only the whim of some puckish god of mischief could have directed them toward one another, could have inspired within each dog so fervent a hatred for the other.
They went at each other like wheezing little gladiators, all asthmatic snarls and scrabbling paws. Crow as they might, the two women were unable to pull the dogs apart, and the only recourse left was for them to go on the attack as well. One brained the other with a glancing blow from an umbrella, then tumbled to the ground herself after a leash twined about her heavy ankles. Bright red pumps wavered in the air while the snapping dogs continued their battle atop the barrel mound of her stomach.
Maybe someone should do something, Napoleon thought, but the sentiment was hypocritical and he knew it. He was laughing as hard as anyone.
So much so, he never saw it coming. An arm, that was all. An arm in quick flash, and for a moment Napoleon couldn’t figure out what had hit him. Staggering back a few steps into the Alley, one hand clutching his eye while it came again, and this time he at least saw some thickset fellow in a jacket and days of beard, and his other eye was closed for him. Knocked against brick, then, and his pockets were roughly violated. His cassettes spilled to the ground — he heard them, wondered how far away they had bounced even as he felt his wallet taken.
He slipped to the ground while snatching blindly after the thief, and heard escaping footsteps beneath the laughter of the crowd and the hacking choke of a dog with its collar pulled too tight. No one even knew of him, and if they did they did not care. Money gone, now he would starve. He couldn’t even see, both eyes watery and set within throbbing bones. Skin puffy already, he bled bitter tears. Groping for his tapes, he found them in a random scatter, and he held them to his chest while scooting back against the brick wall. If anyone tried to take those from him he would bite the hand off at the wrist.
Sobbing, then, without sound, holding it inside while the world went on around him. Only his shoulders might give him away. He bit his thumb and trembled, bit harder and held firm. To ground himself, his thumb was as real as anguish.
“Well honey, ain’t you the sorriest thing I laid eyes on all week.”
A voice somewhere before him, close. Napoleon lifted his head and tried to open his eyes. They cracked apart by millimeters, his vision overlaid with a blurry reddish haze.
“I was across the street, I saw what he done to you,” the voice said, lowering to his level. “Lord help me, I tried to get half a block away and I couldn’t do it, the sight of you sitting there like a wet puppy dog someone done kicked. Fool? Ain’t you got no more sense than to go walking around, your pockets bulging like that? Saw you two nights ago, look the same damn way, on some of these streets it’s a miracle you ain’t been knocked in the head before now.”
The first thing he noticed was the voice, as if it had begun a man’s, and by endless practice been made a good imitation of a woman’s. He scrutinized: tall and thin, medium-black skin, squatting before him in a blue sequined dress slit to mid-thigh, and large spiked heels. A fake-fur stole that had seen better days tossed about her shoulders, and a tiny satin purse slung over one hip. He had once heard Mr. Andrew refer to one as a hooker’s purse. He saw an Adam’s apple, and all doubt was erased, but the face above it was an undeniably pretty one, if garish. Heavy fake eyelashes with bold splashes of shadow over the lids, and a bright red sheen on her lips. Her hair was a wild wig of copper tresses.
Her. Napoleon knew better and still could not help but think of this person that way. He was hurting too much to care.
“Who are you?” he asked. What seemed rather impolite.
“Magenta. And that’s all you need to know.” She was opening her purse. “You look like a damn college idjit, only not as smart. Never seen anyone with less sense than you. Looking like you done fell off the cheerleader wagon. Let me get that blood wiped off your eyes.”
She tugged a fresh tissue from her purse and balled it, then licked it, swabbed at him as if motherhood were second nature. It stung and he flinched, protesting, and she held him still with a strong hand.
“What’s that I hear in your voice?” Magenta asked. “You a Jamaican?”
He tried to nod. “Close.”
“Well, ain’t that marvelous, honey, I love Jamaicans. Never had a bad time with a Jamaican, except this one from a coke posse, and him I never could decide on.” She gripped his jaw with her fingertips, and through the haze he could see her eyeing him with a heavy sigh. “Tell me you got someplace to stay, please.”
He almost did, just so he wouldn’t further trouble her.
Magenta sighed again. Looked at the bloodied tissue in her fingers, then tossed it aside. Looking back at him, big red lips twisting to one side in exasperation. “Oh, Lord, why me? Okay. Look at you. You already done swelled up some more just since I been here. Ten more minutes, hone
y, and you won’t be able to see a thing. Can’t leave you here, come morning streetcleaners’ll come along, wash you right in the gutter.”
Napoleon probed at the tender pulp around his eyes. Felt like grabbing Magenta’s hand and not letting go. He had never been this alone in his life, and it was the worst thing he could imagine.
“Well,” said Magenta, with hesitant resolve, “you may be dumb, but you look housebroken, at least. Won’t kill me to give you someplace to stay till you can see again.”
He couldn’t help it. Clutching for Magenta’s hand, those long lacquered nails. No longer caring that he had degenerated into a weepy foundling, stammering his thanks in a fractured voice.
“Oh, hush your mouth, you. And don’t you be pawing at me ’less you plan on paying for the privilege, and by the looks of things I don’t think you can manage that.”
Magenta rose, helped pull him back up onto his wobbly legs. “What’s your name, anyway?”
“Napoleon. Napoleon Trintignant.”
She rearranged her dress, smoothed it over her rump, fluffed the tacky stole and her wig. Whatever filled out her bra, she rearranged that too. Smacked her lips and tossed her shoulders once, and it was as if a whole new identity had been shifted back into place.
“Okay, Napoleon, honey, stick one hand inside your sweatshirt and take my arm like a gentleman.” Magenta began to lead him back out into the flow of foot traffic. The oddest couple in sight, and they drew scarcely a second glance. “And try not to get lost on the way.”
It was a haven of fragmented identities, Magenta and her two roommates and their apartment on Melpomene Street. They lived in an old clapboard building with peeling paint sides and a wrought iron fence whose gate was falling apart at the hinges. Magenta put him in her room and did a more thorough job of cleansing his swollen face, showed him how to feel his way to the bathroom, then was back out the door before he fell asleep that first night.
