“Home and to bed,” said Vangie. “See you tonight, Noreen.”
Vangie turned and started up the street, her heels loud on the sidewalk. Down the block ahead of her, on the other side of the street, a large muscular drunk shambled from a recessed storefront and staggered in the direction she was going with a too-much-to-drink pace unremarkable in the Vieux Carré at four in the morning.
17
It was midafternoon and the pitiless New Orleans sun struck blinding light from the chrome of passing cars, baked the sidewalks, softened the blacktop: a sweltering, shirtsleeves kind of day. A clerk dozed behind the check-in desk at the Delta Hotel. The huge slow floor fan stirred around the heat. The same five old codgers in shirt sleeves were again — or still — sitting around with their faces and bodies slack. A sixth was sprawled with a newspaper over his face, gently snoring.
Across from the dozing clerk the elevator doors opened. Vangie came out wearing a light summer dress that showed little but suggested much, subtly touching and caressing her body as she crossed the lobby with her long dancer’s stride. Half a minute after she had gone out into the street, the old codger under the newspaper harrumphed and hawked and sat up, crumpling the paper aside. He stood up, rubbing his eyes, and shambled out apparently still unsteady from his nap.
Vangie went into the cathedral where Dain had wakened screaming in his pew the day before. The old man waited outside on a bench in Jackson Square. Vangie emerged from the cathedral, bought a sandwich and a soft drink from one of the portable wheeled po’boy stands set up to catch the tourist trade. She went down St. Anne past the street artists and hawkers, bought two pralines in opaque paper slips from the store on the corner, crossed Decatur with the light, heading for the waterfront.
On the far side of the walkway across the railroad tracks, Vangie went down rough wooden steps to the brown Mississippi lapping over tumbled black rocks. She sat two steps up from the water, put her pralines and soft drink down beside her, in no hurry to eat. Instead, she watched the river traffic for nearly ten minutes, her unwrapped sandwich open on its waxed paper in her lap. At this hour she was alone on the steps.
When she finally took a big bite of po’boy, chewing without inhibition, a shadow fell across her. She didn’t look up, not even when a man sat down on the same step five feet away.
“Think those prayers in the cathedral are going to do the trick?” he asked in a conversational tone.
She looked over at him hard with cold eyes, but he was not looking at her, was looking instead at a tow of barges being shoved up-current by a river steamer. He looked almost sad. Vangie was suddenly strident around her mouthful of sandwich.
“Blow it out your flutter-valve, Jack.”
A big black Labrador that had been lapping water and scaring the fingerling rock bass around the half-submerged stones came up to thrust his dripping muzzle into Dain’s hand. Dain fondled him behind the ears, still not looking at Vangie.
“Dain. Edgar Dain.” He reached over, broke an edge off one of Vangie’s pralines, told the dog, “No teeth!” as a warning against snapping at it, then offered the morsel to him. The dog wolfed it, ecstatic. Dain said, “Maxton sent me to find you. I’ve found you.”
The girl gradually stopped chewing, like an engine running down. Suddenly the rich mix of spicy meats and cheeses was cardboard in her mouth. She looked surreptitiously about, fearful of seeing bulky men in Chicago overcoats coming down the steps after her. No one was close to them, no one at all.
The man who had said his name was Edgar Dain was still watching the water. His face was still sad. His hands had given the rest of her praline to the dog, who lay down at his feet, panting with his tongue out and a silly look on his face.
“Sorry. I fed one of your pralines to the dog.”
Vangie shuddered as if the scorching sunlight had a wind-chill factor. “Jesus, you’re a cold-blooded bastard.” No answer. “It was that goddam phone call of Jimmy’s, wasn’t it?”
“That confirmed it, yes.”
The river looked very peaceful. Downstream the same side-wheeler full of tourists that Dain had ridden two mornings before bellowed raucously with its steam whistle. Dain chose his words carefully, as if they were brittle and might break.
“Maxton is screaming for blood, but I think if he had his bonds back he’d not go looking too hard for you or Zimmer.”
She began shrilly, “That fucker’s screaming for blood? What about...” She stopped, controlled herself. “Yeah, we give you the bonds and they don’t get to Maxton, and we end up—”
“I don’t want the bonds, Vangie.”
“Oh sure, I believe you.”
Dain scratched the black Lab behind the ears, stared out over the slow brown water, shook his head, said patiently, “You came in by bus, you’re too smart to leave a locker key with Zimmer, so if I searched you right now...”
Vangie had sprung to her feet at mention of a bus depot locker key. This jerked the Labrador’s head up, but she was just standing there. He chuffed and put his head down again. Slowly, uncertainly, Vangie sat back down.
“Maxton doesn’t know where you are — yet.” He turned to look at her. “I stirred somebody up by coming here to look for you — for my own reasons I want to find out who and why.”
“Maybe that I’d believe. Good old self-interest.”
Dain was stroking the dog’s back absently. “But I’m going to have to give him something pretty soon.”
She said despairingly, “If I fuck you will you—”
“No.”
“Doesn’t it bother you that we might be killed?”
“I stopped worrying five years ago about what happens to people.” Smothered anger entered his voice. “Especially people who ask for it.” He stood up. “If you don’t give them back to Maxton I won’t be able to help you, Vangie.”
“Jimmy won’t do that,” she said regretfully.
“Then you give them back.” He was suddenly, harshly angry. “You stole two million dollars from a guy who said he loved you and then offered you to his friends—”
“Yeah, so I stole his fucking bonds. And you know what? I’m glad I did if it gives that pig one sleepless...”
She ran down again, a startled look on her face as if she hadn’t known she was capable of so much hatred. Dain nodded.
“That’s terrific, Vangie. Some great revenge you’re getting on him. Think about what can happen, for Chrissake! Keep the room you have, but have a friend rent you another room in your hotel under another name and sleep in that one. And keep Zimmer off the street — I might not be the only one looking.”
Vangie started to speak, stopped. Her spirit was gone.
“How do I get hold of you?”
“Call me at the De La Poste Motel in Chartres Street by this time tomorrow. I can give you that long.”
“Edgar Dain. De La Poste Motel. Tomorrow afternoon.” As he nodded and turned to start off up the steps, she added almost wistfully, “We almost made it, didn’t we?”
Dain looked down at her bowed head for a long moment.
“You weren’t even close,” he said.
It was dusk, the huge high piles of cumulus on the western horizon were shot with pink, Bourbon Street was opening its doors and tuning up its music. Vangie sat on the edge of their bed in the Delta Hotel regarding Zimmer with resigned eyes. Between the edges of the curtains on the window behind her was the pornhouse marquee, the scattered lights on it still unbroken flashing intermittently.
“It’s the only way, Jimmy. You know that when Dain tells Maxton where we are...”