“How long have I …?” Surplus could not bring himself to complete the sentence.
“More than one day. Less than two. When you failed to return to our hotel, Tawny and I were naturally alarmed and set out in search of you. New Orleans being a city prone to gossip, and there being only one anthropomorphized dog in town, the cause of your disappearance was easily determined. But learning that you had been sent to labor in the sugarcane fields did not narrow the search greatly for there are literally hundreds of square miles of fields. Luckily, Tawny knew where such blue-collar laborers as would have heard of the appearance of a dog-headed zombie congregated, and from them we learned at last of your whereabouts.”
“I … see.” Focusing his thoughts on practical matters, Surplus said, “Madam-Mayor Tresjolie, as you may have surmised, had no intention of buying our crates of black paper from us. What of our other marks?”
“The interview with the Pirate Lafitte went well. Tawny played him like a trout. That with Master Bones was considerably less successful. However, we talked Lafitte up to a price high enough to bankrupt him and make all three of us wealthy. Tawny is accompanying him to the bank right now, to make certain he doesn’t come to his senses at the last minute. He is quite besotted with her and in her presence cannot seem to think straight.”
“You sound less disapproving of the girl than you were.”
Twisting his mouth in the near grimace he habitually assumed when forced to admit to having made a misjudgment, Darger said, “Tawny grows on one, I find. She makes a splendid addition to the team.”
“That’s good,” Surplus said. Now at last he noticed that in the back of the buckboard two zombies sat motionless atop a pile of sacks. “What’s all that you have in the wagon?”
“Salt. A great deal of it.”
In the final feeding shed, Surplus kicked over the trough, spilling swill on the ground. Then, at his command, Darger’s zombies righted the trough and filled it with salt. Darger, meanwhile, took a can of paint and drew a rough map of New Orleans on the wall. He drew three arrows to Madam-Mayor Tresjolie’s brothel, Jean-Nagin Lafitte’s waterfront office, and the club where Master Jeremy Bones presided every evening. Finally, he wrote block letter captions for each arrow:
THE MAN WHO TRANSPORTED YOU HERE
THE WOMAN WHO PUT YOU HERE
THE MAN WHO KEPT YOU HERE
Above it all, he wrote the day’s date.
“There,” Darger said when he was done. Turning to his zombies, he said, “You were told to do as I commanded.”
“Yass,” the male said lifelessly.
“We must,” the female said, “oh bey.”
“Here is a feeding spoon for both of you. When the zombie laborers return to the barn, you are to feed each of them a spoonful of salt. Salt. Here in the trough. Take a spoonful of salt. Tell them to open their mouths. Put in the salt. Then tell them to swallow. Can you do that?”
“Yass.”
“Salt. Swall oh.”
“When everyone else is fed,” Surplus said, “be sure to take a spoonful of salt yourselves—each of you.”
“Salt.”
“Yass.”
Soon, the zombies would come to feed and discover salt in their mouths instead of swill. Miraculously, their minds would uncloud. In shed after shed, they would read what Darger had written. Those who had spent years and even decades longer than they were sentenced to would feel justifiably outraged. After which, they could be expected to collectively take appropriate action.
“The sun is setting,” Darger said. In the distance, he could see zombies plodding in from the fields. “We have just enough time to get back to our rooms and accept Pirate Lafitte’s bribe before the rioting begins.”
But when they got back to Maison Fema, their suite was lightless and Tawny Petticoats was nowhere to be seen. Nor was Pirate Lafitte.
The crates of black paper, having served their purpose, had not been restacked in front of Tawny’s bedroom door. Hastily lighting an oil lamp, Darger threw open the door. In the middle of her carefully made bed was a note. He picked it up and read it out loud:
Dear Boys,
I know you do not beleive in love at first site because you are both Synics. But Jean-Nagin and I are Kindrid Spirits and meant to be together. I told him so Bold a man as he should not be in Trade, esp. as he has his own ships banks and docks and he agrees. So he is to be a Pirate in fact as well as name and I am his Pirate Queen.
I am sorry about the Black Mony scam but a girl can’t start a new life by cheating her Hubby that is no way to be
Love,
Tawny Petticoats
P.S. You boys are both so much fun.
“Tell me,” Darger said after a long silence. “Did Tawny sleep with you?”
Surplus looked startled. Then he placed paw upon chest and forthrightly, though without quite looking Darger in the eye, said, “Upon my word, she did not. You don’t mean that she …?”
“No. No, of course not.”
There was another awkward silence.
“Well, then,” Darger said. “Much as I predicted, we are left with nothing for all our labors.”
“You forget the silver ingots,” Surplus said.
“It is hardly worth bothering to …”
But Surplus was already on his knees, groping in the shadows beneath Tawny’s bed. He pulled out three leather cases and from them extracted three ingots.
“Those are obviously …”
Whipping out his pocketknife, Surplus scratched each ingot, one after the other. The first was merely plated lead. The other two were solid silver. Darger explosively let out his breath in relief.
“A toast!” Surplus cried, rising to his feet. “To women, God bless ’em. Constant, faithful, and unfailingly honest! Paragons, sir, of virtue in every respect.”
In the distance could be heard the sound of a window breaking. “I’ll drink to that,” Darger replied. “But just a sip and then we really must flee. We have, I suspect, a conflagration to avoid.”
David W. Ball
A former pilot, sarcophagus maker, and businessman, David W. Ball has traveled to more than sixty countries on six continents, crossed the Sahara Desert four times in the course of researching his novel Empires of Sand, and explored the Andes in a Volkswagen bus. Other research trips have taken him to China, Istanbul, Algeria, and Malta. He’s driven a taxi in New York City, installed telecommunications equipment in Cameroon, renovated old Victorian houses in Denver, and pumped gasoline in the Grand Tetons. His bestselling novels include the extensively researched historical epics Ironfire and the aforementioned Empires of Sand, and the contemporary thriller China Run. He lives with his family on a small farm in Colorado, where, after a writing hiatus of nearly a decade, he is back at work, growing tall tales.
They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but the desire to possess beauty, particularly when it’s worth a great deal of cash, can bring you up against some very unsavory characters indeed …
PROVENANCE
David W. Ball
The letter arrived at the Wolff Gallery in New York with the usual catalogs and gallery announcements. It was marked “Personal,” so Max’s secretary left it on his desk, unopened.
Max slit the envelope with his good hand and removed a note, handwritten but neat. “Dear Mr. Max Wolff,” it said. “I hear you know a lot about fancy paintings and can sell them sometimes. I have one that I’m not sure is worth much, but thought you ought to take a look and if you are ok with it we could maybe do some business. On the quiet, of course. If you are interested, please send a note at the post office box below. Sincerely, L.M.”