City of the Dead

by Eileen Dreyer

  Frankie Mae had been born in the Seventh Ward, the early Creole stronghold that had given birth to Jelly Roll Morton and Paul Barbarin. She now lived with her mother and little boy just downriver of the rehabbed cache of the Faubourg Marigny in Bywater, where her sky blue camelback cottage sat between a warehouse and the Saint Claude Tabernacle of Light Church. She’d been driving a cab for fifteen years and knew New Orleans better than the cops.

  Everybody knew Frankie’s cab. It was pristine, polished, and featured a cast of plastic statues the tourists assumed were Catholic saints. Those who knew Frankie, though, recognized them as her orishas. Frankie Mae might have regularly attended the Saint Agnes Catholic Church, but she also practiced as a voodoo priestess.

  When Frankie Mae drove her cab, she carried with her Elegua, who looked like Saint Michael and ruled the crossroads. Ibeyi, the divine twins who gave good fortune and opportunity, posing as Saints Cosmas and Damien. And in the center of her dashboard, just as in any good Catholic car, the Virgin Mary. Except in this cab, if Frankie were actually asked, she’d admit that her blue and white madonna was actually Yamaya, who rules the shallow water of the ocean and helps with family, with nurturing, with fertility.

  Frankie had a full altar to her orishas in her home, where she made sure that especially Yamaya, her guiding spirit, was gifted with watermelon and crab claws and molasses each day. But in her car, she simply carried them all along.

  At the moment, Frankie Mae’s cab was parked in front of the Morial Convention Center down by the riverfront. There was a big CPA conference going on inside, and CPAs were notorious about not hanging around for the lectures. Frankie watched the street and listened to classical music on her radio and thought about how hot it was.

  That was how that cute James Guidry caught her unawares.

  “How are you today, Frankie?”

  Frankie flashed an erotic smile at James. She knew him, of course. Nobody could miss those snapping green eyes and black hair. Or that terrible mass of scars all down his side. Frankie had offered to do a rite for him, but James had politely turned her down. James wasn’t a believer, but he wasn’t a man to sneer, either. She mostly liked James.

  “I’m doin’ well, James. Doin’ well. And yourself?”

  James leaned against her door and raised a cigarette. Frankie nodded and he lit up. “Well, I have a strange gig, I have to say. I’m squiring a woman around lookin’ for her sister.”

  Frankie leaned back in her seat. “Could be worse, I imagine.”

  He nodded, sucked in a lungful of smoke. Frankie had offered to help him with that, too, but James just smiled and told her that firemen didn’t know what to do unless they had a lungful of smoke.

  “Odd thing is, seems the last this sister was seen was getting in a cab.” Setting the cigarette between his teeth, he reached into his T-shirt pocket and pulled out a photo. “Recognize her, maybe? She was picked up from lunch at Gallatoire’s a couple Fridays ago and hasn’t been seen since. Her family’s kinda worried.”

  Frankie didn’t hesitate more than a heartbeat. She reached out for that photo and gazed at it as if she’d never seen the like before. “They ask her husband he seen her? It almost always the husband, cries ‘Oh, where’s my wife?’ when he’s jus’ finished choppin’ her up in the basement.”

  James smiled and Frankie wanted to smile back, even knowing better. “This time the husband was in full sight of about fifty hospital personnel. He’s some big surgeon at Tulane. You didn’t pick her up, did you, Frankie?”

  “Me? Nah. I’m usually right here that time of day. Convention crowd’s much better tippers, and they always lookin’ to lunch someplace. Either that or the Zephyrs, they playin’ in town.”

  James took a long drag from his cigarette and nodded. “Would you mind asking around for me, Frankie? Her name’s Faith Stanton.”

  “Sure,” Frankie promised without blinking an eye. “Be happy to, for you, James.”

  James took a long look at Frankie, as if assessing her tone of voice. Then he just nodded, tapped her door in farewell, and ambled on down to the next cab in line.

  Left behind, Frankie watched him in the rearview mirror. She was pretty proud of herself, keeping so calm and quiet. She’d wait for her fare, or until James worked his way through the taxi line and moved on. Then she’d take off and find out about this Faith’s sister who’d suddenly shown up. Frankie had a bad feeling about that, cause it might mean that things could suddenly fall apart. Which was something Frankie simply wasn’t going to allow to happen.

  “Get down,” Kareena breathed in awe.

  Kareena looked like a Grapesicle as she stood in her scrubs and lab coat in the hushed and marbled environs of Leyton’s Jewelers on Royal Street. Chastity, standing alongside, fought a growing feeling of dislocation. Going from that silent, sterile house in that silent, sterile subdivision back to the clatter and energy of the Quarter was seriously screwing with her mojo. And her mojo had already suffered enough setbacks today for a lifetime.

  At this time of the day, traffic on Royal was cordoned off for the people who had the money to shop there, and street performers took up the corners. Mimes and dancers and old men playing blues on electric guitars. Antiques and jewelry and art filled the stores like an overfull suitcase that had burst at the seams. The sun beat down like purgatory, the whine of guitars bounced off the closely packed buildings, and the air was thick with the smell of food and flowers and always, just for seasoning, decay.

  Chastity felt her blood pressure rise. She felt her juices flow. It was the closest she ever felt to being in the ER, where the rush of the unexpected kept you humming along.

  There was life in St. Louis. There was diversity and color and music. But it just didn’t have the intensity it had here, as if it were all packed in a tight box and lidded down. Which felt almost like alcohol on raw skin to Chastity’s already fragile equilibrium.

  And then, like crossing into the eye of the hurricane, they’d stepped into the elegant, smiling Leyton’s Jewelers. Reached by buzzer, the store enveloped them, as if with old silk and champagne, in age and serenity and dignified excess.

  Kareena made a beeline for the colored gemstone case. The detectives stood like a set of salt and pepper shakers at the diamond counter waiting for one of the Leyton senior staff. Chastity cruised the polished hardwood floors in search of anything that cost less than the yearly rent on her flat. And this was Max’s jeweler? Chastity was definitely in the wrong end of medicine.

  “Of course I recognize it,” the cultured, white-haired woman said with a precise smile a moment later as she held out a hand for the evidence bag. “It was from the Van Bronson estate. A lovely six-point-four-carat, emerald-cut Colombian emerald set in sixteen F color, VVS clarity, ten-point princess-cut diamonds. Flawless.”

  “Could you have your jeweler look at it for us?” Detective Gilchrist asked, looking like he wanted nothing more than to scratch somewhere.

  The woman lifted a very elegant eyebrow. “To?”

  “We need an appraisal.”

  She nodded. “Of course.”

  In places like this, questions simply weren’t asked.

  Chastity moved in to watch and noticed that Kareena did the same, her habitual big-ass smile conspicuously absent. Kareena was at work, and like Dulane had said, she was a complete pro.

  “Do you know if the ring’s been in recently?” Chastity asked. “Oh, for cleaning or anything?”

  Since anytime a piece this valuable came through that glass and grilled door, the store would recheck the provenance and the stones to reinforce their reputation for honesty.

  Another nod. “I’ll check. A moment.”

  “You see this green thing, girl?” Kareena demanded, pointing to a necklace that looked alarmingly like a slug on a line. “What the hell is that thing?”

  “The green thing is a green tourmaline,” Chastity informed her. “Next to it are alexandrite earrings and a lovely tanzanite and diamond necklac
e. You can buy that or a new Jeep Cherokee.”

  “No way. You really know this shit?”

  “Late night television, Kareena. It will tell you all.”

  Kareena was busy ogling the slug necklace. “Get down.”

  “You seem to know your stones,” the white-haired woman said with a faintly larger smile as she returned to the case, card and loupe in hand.

  Chastity smiled back. “Wishful thinking only. You have an exquisite collection.”

  “Yes,” she said without pretension. “We do. Now, as for this ring, we actually haven’t had it in for over a year. I’m surprised, actually. Dr. Stanton is a regular customer. I can’t imagine him neglecting something this valuable.”

  “How valuable, if I may ask?”

  Another smile, this proprietary. “On today’s market, this ring could fetch almost sixty thousand dollars. Not only is the emerald the finest, but there are at least a dozen high-quality diamonds.”

  Dulane hid his astonishment better than Gilchrist, who let go a startled, “Fuck me.”

  Again, silence fell. The woman slid the ring from the bag and lifted the loupe to her eye, her posture assured and settled. She knew exactly what she’d find when she examined that ring.

  Suddenly she straightened. She looked up.

  “Who asked for the appraisal?” she asked quietly.

  Both cops pointed to Chastity.

  “You do know your stones,” the woman murmured.

  She called to somebody in the back, and a younger, russet-haired man joined her at the counter. She said nothing, just held out ring and loupe.

  He bent to the task. Everybody waited.

  He straightened as well. He looked at the woman. He looked at the card on the counter. He looked at the four people clustered around the other side of his case.

  “It’s excellent work,” he admitted, then handed the rings back to Dulane.

  “But?”

  He shrugged. “It is the original setting. The hallmarks in the gold are intact. But the stones are excellent quality fakes.”

  The woman looked at the man. Gilchrist looked at Dulane. Kareena looked at Chastity.

  “Somebody’s screwed,” she said, and everybody nodded.

  Seven

  “So the stones could have been replaced anytime in the last year,” Chastity said glumly as she stared into her gin and tonic.

  “Not much help,” Kareena agreed.

  They’d finally found that jazz place Chastity wanted to go to, a little joint on Frenchmen Street. Actually, the jazz place was next door. They were sitting at the sidewalk in a new vegetarian-and-alcohol restaurant that was cheaper, less packed, and close enough to hear the great riffs coming from clubs along the street.

  The perfect place to rehab and reflect.

  The night was fairly dark, with a gibbous moon that seemed to melt a bit in the humidity as it floated between buildings. The sidewalks were thick with a pantheon of pedestrians, and the energy level was way beyond Chastity’s.

  She was still feeling itchy and raw, easily startled and battling sudden flushes of nausea. The day had worn badly on her, and yet here she was extending it by treating her nerves to New Orleans nightlife.

  It was too much. Too full. Too good. It excited and soothed at the same time, sparking in her all the way to her fingertips.

  “You sure you want to be doing that?” James asked suddenly, his shot of scotch halfway to his lips.

  Chastity realized she’d been rubbing up against his leg. She flushed brick red, the shame instinctive and hard.

  “Sorry,” she said, her gaze out to the street. “Bad habit.”

  She could still feel his leg against the sole of her foot, of course. She could smell him, with his soap and scotch and his cigarettes. She could see the sharp angles of the good side of his face and the long grace of his good fingers.

  Chastity swore she hadn’t been this bad for five years. She’d hidden in plain sight, a friend to all the men around her, intimate to none. Safe and separate and sane. Yet suddenly she was prey to the worst of her urges all over again.

  Why was it James who set her off? Was it this city, which was so much like him, handsome and scarred and sly? Was it the search for her sister? Or just that damn chaos theory, spinning her completely out of control?

  Well, it wouldn’t spin her anywhere tonight. With every ounce of will she had, Chastity shut her weakness away, right behind the anxiety that ate at her sternum. She pulled in a breath and took a drink of gin.

  “You really didn’t find anything out today?” she asked.

  James took a considered sip of his twelve-year-old Macallan, rolled it around in his mouth, and took a hit off his cigarette. “A lot of nothing, which makes me suspicious. You’d think somebody would have seen something. Especially if they picked up a rich lady from Gallatoire’s and took her to a fertility clinic.”

  “How’s your brother-in-law taking the thing about the ring and that Jane Doe?” Kareena asked.

  Chastity shrugged. The gin wasn’t working yet. She felt frayed and frantic, still caught between the smell of a man and a memory.

  “Chastity?”

  Chastity shook her head. “I don’t know how he’s doing. I think he’s as confused as I am. Who’s the Jane Doe, and how did she get that ring? Did Faith run away or was she taken? Or did she run away and just stumble over something bad? Since she wasn’t wearing her pearls, I have to think she ran. It’s a statement, ya know?”

  Chastity itched to get her hands on the rest of the jewelry in that glossy mahogany box in Faith’s closet. What if she’d missed more fake stones? What if somebody had spent months building up a little nest egg that couldn’t be traced?

  “You told him about the fake stones yet?”

  “Yep. He screamed like a banshee. Claimed the police did it. I told him the police wouldn’t have had time to substitute a fake of that quality. He took a Valium and went to bed. I’m here soaking up the nightlife and trying to figure out how we’re going to find her without the police, who now think she just ran away from home.”

  She was there trying to figure out a way to protect herself from old sins and older secrets.

  “Either of you know a jeweler?” she asked. “Somebody who might know who could do that kind of replacement work?”

  “I might,” James said. “I’ll check.”

  She nodded. “What if Faith bought a new identity with that money? It sure as hell isn’t that hard to do anymore.”

  “We’d never find her,” James said, as if it were that simple.

  If that was what happened, Chastity didn’t think she’d mind. After all, she could certainly understand wanting to run away from the life Faith had been trapped in. Hell, just those pictures in her bathroom were pathological. After only one look at them, Chastity had damn near walked straight into a swamp. She couldn’t imagine facing them every time you had to brush your teeth.

  “You keep saying you expected her to run away,” Kareena said.

  Chastity sipped at her drink and watched as a couple began to dance out in the middle of the street, swaying and smiling as if it was the most important thing in life. Next door somebody was singing about having a bad Monday, and across the street somebody else banged out something like boogie-woogie on a piano.

  “Why do I like it here so much?” she mused out loud, making it a point to take her attention from the street long enough to wave for another drink. “I shouldn’t like it here so much.”

  “Why not?” James asked. “All these other people do.”

  “For one, it’s surrounded by water. I hate water. I should be a puddle of Jell-O right now because of all that water.”

  Kareena snorted, sniffing the air as if testing it. “You don’t know the half of it, girl. Pontchartrain keeps away from the Gulf by one little strip of land east of here, just marshes and shit. One good storm, and we’ll be underwater like Atlantis.”

  Chastity gulped her gin. “Gee, thanks.”


  “Matter of fact,” Kareena continued, waving her drink in the vague direction of the sea, “I heard today on the Weather Channel, we already got us our third tropical depression brewin’ in the Atlantic. They already think it’s gonna be a big-ass mother.”

  “Third, huh?” Chastity asked, wincing. “Figures.”

  “And it’s heading our way, which is even weirder. Storms really don’t start gearing up till at least July, even though this is the technical season and all. And no tropical storm has hit the mainland before August since 1999. How cool is that?”

  Cool? Chastity felt a fresh frisson snake down her back. It figured, didn’t it? The first time she sets foot out of St. Louis in her entire life, and hurricanes start sprouting out of season.

  It, too, seemed inevitable.

  She hated inevitability more than the number three. More even than water. She’d already suffered way too much from inevitability.

  Kareena didn’t notice how pale Chastity had suddenly become. “So this could be the storm to send us under, yeah?” She grinned like the Cheshire Cat, high on the possibility of annihilation. “That’d just be the end of the world, wouldn’t it?”

  Chastity focused on the street rather than on the pasta she’d just finished that now threatened to make a big comeback. She’d done that quite enough today already, thank you.

  “By the time any hurricane hits here, I’ll be back in St. Louis remembering you all fondly,” she promised.

  “Don’t assume nothin’, girl. This may be your destiny.”

  “My destiny is to retire from my job at an advanced age secure in the knowledge that I’ve lived a virtuous life on dry land.”

  Even James laughed. “Why else shouldn’t you like it here?”

  Chastity shot him an arch look. “You kidding? I have trouble enough controlling my bad habits. I’d get no help here at all.”

  He gave a slow nod. “Maybe here you wouldn’t have to always worry about it so much.”

  “Oh, I think I would. My habits aren’t happy ones, fireman.”

  His answering expression acknowledged the fact that her foot had only recently left his leg. “But if you exchanged them for habits that are happy, nurse…”