Deserted 2:00 A.M. street, the nightlife behind him, its raucous sounds dim on the air. He’d come this way deliberately, still wary, the same wariness that will make a leopard lay up on its own backtrail to ambush the white hunter he doesn’t even know is tracking him.
Okay, deserted enough here. Dain took out the little pocket guide to the French Quarter he had gotten at the hotel desk, used it as an excuse to stop abruptly and gawp up at the next pair of street signs. Yes! An echo of sound scraped from the pavement — only it was not an echo because he had stopped moving. He squinted up at the signs, down at the guide, nodded and turned down Ursulines.
When he was out of sight, a tall spare man in excellent condition, with the coloring and weathered look of the outdoors, cut across Burgundy at an angle toward the corner where Dain had disappeared. His shock of sandy hair had natural curl and was shot with gray, he wore glasses with a half-moon of bifocal on the lower curve of lens. Like Dain, he was sauntering.
Moving through the bright lights and thinning crowds, Dain got fragmentary images of the tall spare weathered figure before it could slip off the edges of reflecting store windows. So, he’d been picked up on the street sometime during the evening. Dain felt totally alive for the first time since his snake dance in the desert. Hunting, he had become prey. Wonderful!
He turned off on Conti, went in through the archway to the hotel courtyard, in the tiny taproom was served by a black-haired girl in leather shorts and halter who dispensed drinks with a smile and a lot of cleavage. Leather-bound book clipped under one arm, he crossed the courtyard to a small round white wrought-iron table near the splashing fountain. At this time of the morning, he was the only person in the court. A gecko hung in sideways patience against the curved side of the fountain.
He set down the icy opened imported beer on the table, seated himself with his glass of ice water, the pastel lights from the fountain playing across his face. A chair scraped being drawn out Dain spoke without glancing over.
“Pauli Girl. I took the chance you were a beer drinker.”
The stalker tipped the glass to pour beer without getting too much of a head. His hands were big, strong, angular. He had a soft inviting Louisiana accent.
“You make me feel lacking in southern hospitality, Mr. Dain, buying for me in my own town.”
Dain looked at him. He was a big man, big as Dain but without Dain’s weight of muscle. His hard-bitten face had an inner calm behind the hardness. Dain matched his courtly tone.
“You have the advantage of me, sir.”
“Keith Inverness.”
Neither man offered to shake hands. There was not so much antagonism as wariness between them, mutual recognition by hunting animals whose territories happened to overlap.
“You still have the advantage of me, sir.”
“Because I know who you are? A man in my line of work hears things from time to time, Mr. Dain.”
“Your line of work.” Dain made it a statement, not a question. Inverness smiled slightly.
“I guess you could say it’s the same line of work as yours — except mine has a pension at the end of it.”
Dain said pleasantly, “What if I told you that my line of work is rare books?”
“Like this?”
Unexpectedly, Inverness reached across the table to snatch up Dain’s leather-bound volume. His big hands were remarkably quick. He riffled through it, allowed himself a small smile at its harmlessness as he laid it on the table.
“The things people keep in cutout books might surprise you, Mr. Dain.”
“I doubt that.”
With what seemed like genuine regret, but without any sudden moves, Inverness took a badge in a leather case from his pocket and laid it on the table.
“I guess you’d better make that Lieutenant of Detectives Inverness, Mr. Dain.” He drank beer, wiped his lips almost daintily with one of the paper napkins on the table. “Like you, I track people down. But inside the law.”
“That’s okay with me,” said Dain.
“I’m also New Orleans police liaison with the Louisiana State Commission on Organized Crime.” Dain was silent. “We’d kind of like to know who you’re looking for in New Orleans, and for whom.”
“Not who — what,” said Dain, suddenly misty-eyed. “And for me. New Orleans jazz. Dixieland. Storyville. The heart — the soul — of the blues. My heart and soul are transported back to those halcyon days when the Nigras all had rhythm and clapped hands and knew their place...”
Inverness nodded, unhurriedly stood and put his badge away. He said in an almost apologetic voice, “You’re too good at finding people, for all the wrong people. You couldn’t expect to remain anonymous forever. Enjoy your stay in New Orleans.”
Dain sat unmoving, watching Inverness depart, his left thumb scraping idly down through the label of the empty beer bottle to tear it in half. The dancing colored water jet beyond his head made his profile very sharp and clear.
To hell with it. He already knew where Vangie worked; just tag her to find out where she lived, make sure she was still with Zimmer, give Maxton the information, fade out...
But what would happen to Vangie then?
Goddammit, why should he care what happened to her?
Also, someone with a lot of clout had gotten the Louisiana Organized Crime Commission to send around a very good man to tell Dain, in essence, to get out of town. It couldn’t be Maxton, checking up on him. Maxton didn’t know he was here...
Wait a minute. Could Maxton be under investigation? Couldn’t that explain Inverness? Organized-crime people in Chicago had Maxton under surveillance, they identified Dain, tagged him to New Orleans, notified Inverness...
That didn’t work. Inverness would have known Dain had been hired by Maxton, wouldn’t have asked. All right, what if Dain’s presence was muddying the water so his superiors told Inverness to get Dain out of the picture...
But then Inverness would have known where he was staying, would have tagged him at his hotel rather than on the street...
No. Somebody knew he was in New Orleans, knew what he looked like or had pictures to send — Inverness had been able to pick him up cold — but was unable to tell Inverness where he was staying. Jesus, could he actually somehow have crossed the tracks of the killers who
Marie was smashed back and up, her mouth strained impossibly wide... Albie’s legs were blasted back down the hall out of sight...
The bottle in Dain’s hand exploded. He looked at it in surprise, opened his fingers slowly. It was shattered where he had been gripping it, the bottom and neck were intact. The glass had not cut his callused palm. He shook his head to rid it of the shards.
Nonsense. But it had decided him. He checked his watch. Three-thirty A.M. He would keep on with Maxton’s investigation, because something connected with it had stirred something up. So just keep going until he found out what and who and why. He’d checked for tails leaving the hotel before, had gotten careless through the long night, but he’d had that flash of apprehension and so had shown no reaction at all when he’d spotted Vangie.
So Inverness wouldn’t be expecting him to go back out tonight, thus wouldn’t still be tailing him.
Carnal Knowledge was dark and silent, closed. From down the street came the rattle-clash of garbage pails being put out. The door opened and Vangie and the dancer who had stopped Dain earlier that night emerged.
She said wearily to Vangie, “Another buck, another fuck. Wanna go get coffee, kiddo, or—”