Burn- pigeon 16 (22 page)

TWENTY-NINE

They walked the streets of the Quarter. They sniffed and listened for thunks, hisses, and scales being played on a piano. Clare put one foot in front of the other and fought images that slammed into her mind with the force of sledgehammers, making it a struggle just to remain upright. The swift dark Mississippi River called to her, and she wanted to throw herself into its deadly embrace and never think or feel again, but, until she knew her daughters were dead, that was a release she had to deny herself.

Anna Pigeon walked with her. She talked of the clues they had, of the names Dougie and Blackie, proof of the connection between the fancy house and Seattle, of the possibility that David had been killed because he learned what was happening to the children and turned to the FBI.

Clare heard her and knew the woman was trying to prop her up with hope. Clare wanted the hope but couldn't get hold of it. Each time she tried to grab on, it slipped from her fingers and was replaced by pictures of men's hands on her girls. The depth of the depravity shamed her, made her not want to be a human being anymore, if humans could do these things; made her hate men for what they did and thought and wanted; made her want to be a man that she might atone by killing herself.

They made copies of the sketch the Jackson Square portraitist had drawn from the description of Dougie. Anna kept one. Clare gave the rest to Danny and his gang of punks. Handling the page, seeing the lines coalescing into the cramped face of the man with the yellow coat, the words "broke jewels" cut into her brain like a razor blade held too tightly in the hand: children as commodity, as things, things that could be broken and given to scum like Dougie to use or kill or both, precious Dana with her olive and alabaster skin, dark eyes brimming with love; little Vee always moving, too full of fun to stay still; jewels, broken toys, used up and thrown on a trash heap to be picked over by rats like Dougie.

"Hey!"

Clare dragged herself from the chamber of horrors. Anna Pigeon was standing in front of her, her hazel eyes so penetrating they burned some of the fog from Clare's brain.

"What happened?" Anna demanded.

Had the fool woman been listening? Had she not heard what Clare had? Did she not see the fancy house?

"Are you a fucking idiot or what?" Jordan snarled.

Oddly, the pigeon didn't look offended, only concerned.

Clare was outside of herself, above and to the right, looking down from the space she inhabited when she was being her own director. What she saw was not Clare Sullivan the actor playing a role; she saw a man who had no conscience, no regrets, no ethics, no friends, no hopes or fears, a man who was as free as he was reprehensible. She envied him.

"Clare?" An iron grip closed on Jordan's arm, and Clare slammed back into the body and the costume. Metaphorically speaking, Clare had lost herself in roles before, becoming enamored of the accent or the time period or the internal workings of a character she played--but only metaphorically. Never had she confused herself with a fictional person. Never thought their thoughts but with full knowledge that she was merely walking a mile in another's shoes, not morphing into flesh of their flesh. The line between art and insanity was always clearly drawn. Actors were the world's great realists. One couldn't focus intently on what made humans do as they did and have many illusions left.

Jordan was different. More and more Jordan was the only person Clare could bear to be. He'd become more than pretense; he'd become her fate, what she was becoming, cell by cell, thought by thought.

When Anna asked what happened, she wasn't harking back to Candy's revelations. She was asking why Clare had stopped and was standing in the middle of the sidewalk staring at a construction Dumpster.

"Sorry," Clare said. Unable to say more, she began walking.

Mackie greeted them at the gate. For once the joyous little face, the tongue that would not stay in his mouth, the ears flopping and bouncing as he ran, his obvious delight in her existence, did not lift her spirits. In a way, she had seen what she had let happen to Mackie's kids, the little girls he'd slept with most nights of his life and every night of theirs, the girls who doted on him and to whom, in return, he gave complete love and loyalty, even unto allowing them to dress him in doll dresses and bonnets and wheel him up and down the street where other dogs might see. His unquestioning love only served to remind her that she had betrayed him; he trusted her to keep his world with its two suns, Dana and Vee, intact. Having failed, it physically hurt to be greeted like a returning hero. Jordan pushed at Clare, and she had to fight not to kick the little dog away, yell at him to get down.

This cruelty, on top of the others she had borne this day, knocked her to the ground. Her knees slammed into the brick, and the pain was welcome. She opened her arms and gathered up her children's dog, burying her face in the fur of his neck as he wriggled and licked and made small happy noises.

When she could let him go, she realized she'd blocked the way, effectively trapping the so-called federal law enforcement officer behind her on the narrow walk. The pigeon had waited patiently, not trying to comfort or rush her.

Grateful, but without the strength to express it, Clare pushed herself to hands and knees, then to a standing position. No more than a month before, she'd been able to rise fluidly from sitting cross-legged to standing without the aid of arms or hands. Now it was all she could do to pull herself upright by holding on to a swirl of iron decoration nailed to Geneva's fence.

"Go take a shower," the pigeon ranger said. She put her hand on Clare's shoulders.

Neither Clare nor Jordan had the energy to jerk free of her touch.

Clare allowed herself to be steered to her apartment door. The key fell from nerveless fingers as she took it from her pocket. She watched Anna bend down to retrieve it. The ranger's hair was red and white, salt and cinnamon. It was braided into a single plait down her back and so long that, as she took up the keys, the red tail of it coiled momentarily on the ground.

When Clare played her she would remember that; she would remember what it felt like to have hair that fell heavily and had a life of its own, that did things the head never realized it was doing.

"A long shower," the pigeon said as she unlocked the door. "With lots of hot water. Wash your hair. I'm going out for a little while--not long." She peered at Clare with those sharp greenish gold eyes, the skin around them wrinkled from too many days in the sun and too little vanity to do anything about it.

"Shower," Clare said.

"Atta girl!" Anna slapped her on the shoulder as if they were old friends from the football field and left, pocketing Clare's keys as she did so. The water was hot and Clare was wet before she realized the ranger had effectively taken her prisoner. The gate could only be opened with a key.

She'd showered and washed her hair and was standing naked in the middle of the bedroom when the apartment door opened and Anna Pigeon walked in without knocking. She had two plastic bags, both of which she dumped on the table by the computer.

"I'm figuring you'll want to ask the concierge of Les Bonnes Filles to recommend a good restaurant, and then tip him lavishly to sort of break the ice," the ranger said as she took out a baguette, cheese, a bottle of wine, a carton of orange juice, and a jar of dill pickles.

"But I doubt there's any point in wasting time and money at a fancy restaurant. This should give you enough energy to go on." Anna took a Swiss Army knife from the pocket of her shorts, opened the corkscrew blade, and uncorked the wine. "Strictly medicinal," the ranger said with a smile. She looked around. Clare had no dishes. None. Surely she'd eaten in the last couple of weeks, she just didn't remember when.

"Well," the ranger said. "It'll be like camping." She took a genteel swig from the neck of the bottle, wiped the mouth on her shirttail, and offered it to Clare. "It is a proven fact no one ever got sick from drinking out of a bottle that has been wiped clean with a shirttail or a sleeve. Socks are another matter entirely. I knew a guy who had survived three weeks in Olympic National Park in one of the worst blizzards to hit the Northwest in half a century. Died a week and a half later because his brother wiped off the mouth of a beer bottle with his sock."

Clare accepted the bottle and took a drink. Anna carried the cheese, bread, pickles, and knife into the bedroom and sat on the floor. There she spread the picnic out on the boards. Clare watched without moving. Her brain wouldn't engage, and though she felt vaguely impolite, she didn't know what to do about it.

The ranger looked up at her expectantly. When Clare didn't respond, she said, "Food," as if telling a being from a distant galaxy what lay before it. As proof, or to remind Clare how it was done, or because she was hungry, she cut off a bit of the cheese and put it into her mouth.

"Right. Food," Clare said. She padded over to where the ranger sat with the pickle jar and joined her on the floor.
"The Naked Lunch,"
she said.

"William S. Burroughs," Anna said and handed her a chunk of bread and cheese.

"Yes." Clare held the rude sandwich. The smell made her sick.

"Eat," the pigeon ordered.

"I'll eat it later," Clare said. Anna Pigeon looked at her narrowly but didn't press the matter.

When the ranger had polished off a good bit of the food, she put the leftovers on the counter.

"Sleep," she told Clare.

Clare crawled to the sleeping bag and lay down.

"I'll wake you up in a few hours. It will probably be a longish night. At least I hope it will."

Clare closed her eyes, but cold panic shot through her and she opened them again. The ranger was still standing in the bedroom door.

"Don't worry," she said as if she were talking to a child. "I'm not going anywhere. I'll be right here in the next room."

Clare slept.

Anna didn't have to wake her. Two hours later she shot into a sitting position, driven there by a nightmare that was too like the reality Candy had painted to be let go of easily. From the other room she could hear the faint
tak tak tak
of fingernails hitting a keyboard. Anna had been as good as her word; she'd stayed and kept watch over her while she slept.

Having gotten up and brushed her teeth, Clare got the Ace bandage down from the shelf in the closet and bound her breasts flat. That done, she pulled on the fine silk boxers, a pair of pale blue silk-linen blend pleat-front trousers, an off-white collarless linen shirt, a snakeskin belt in light brown, and Gucci loafers without socks. In the shower she'd tried to scrub off her crown of thorns, but the ink left a ghost that was worse than the tattoo, so she refurbished it. Using spirit gum and a bit of hair, she replaced the patch beneath her lower lip. There was no need to darken and roughen her complexion with makeup. Stress and weight loss had aged and coarsened her skin.

The mirror reflected back Jordan Sinclair, and Jordan recognized himself.

Hair slicked back, he took a wad of twenties, fifties, and hundreds from his old wallet and folded them into a buttery soft leather billfold that he tucked in the inner pocket of the jacket hanging in the closet. Jordan liked the upgrade, the way the expensive clothes felt. He could do a pedophile with money to burn. Clare wasn't the only one who could pull off a scam. He dug out her last purchase from where she'd stuck it in the side pocket of the suitcase: a heavy gold signet ring set with a diamond the size of a hen's eye. The weight felt right on his hand.

"Wow," Anna said, and he looked up to see the pigeon leaning in the doorway, legs crossed at the ankles, arms crossed on her chest. "Nice ring. It'll be good in a fight."

"Yeah," Jordan said. The pigeon blinked. Maybe she saw him, maybe she didn't.

"Did that set you back another five thousand dollars?"

"What do rangers get paid?" he asked.

"Not much."

"We get the fuckers who took the kids, you can have this." The ring was the cheapest thing on Clare's wardrobe list. She'd bought it for seven dollars in the French Market.

"Are you about ready?" Anna asked.

"Let's do it." Jordan slid into the sport coat--also silk and light enough for spring in Louisiana--and grabbed the handle of the rolling suitcase.

"You may need this. It's prepaid. My cell number is programmed in."

Jordan took the cheap phone from the ranger's hand. He might need it, but he sure as hell was going to keep it out of sight. It screamed
LOW RENT.

"Take these, too," the pigeon said. In her hand were two of the pictures from the wall where Clare kept the photographs of children from porn sites.

Clare flopped in Jordan's breast. Had Anna held out a rattlesnake, she couldn't have had a more visceral reaction of fear and nausea. Jordan swallowed her down.

"Right," he said, unzipped the bag, and put them under the boxer shorts. If the concierge did any snooping, Jordan might as well let him know exactly what he was in the market for.

THIRTY

Clare hadn't eaten "later"; nor had she slept long enough to overcome the weakness that had brought her to her knees outside her apartment door. Even so, as Anna watched her becoming Jordan Sinclair, a well-to-do pedophile in New Orleans for a good time, she was suffused with energy. She was Jordan running on his own toxic brand of fuel. Using Clare's key, Anna let him out the gate. Jordan had chosen not to carry the key because it didn't "feel right." Anna suspected that call was from the actress, not her alter ego. Jordan would call Anna on the cell if he needed to get in.

"Les Bonnes Filles is the other way," Anna said as, towing the suitcase, Jordan turned toward the river and the heart of the French Quarter. He looked back at her with such disinterest, had she not watched the man being constructed, she would have sworn he'd never seen her before.

The stare altered in some unfathomable way, and Clare's voice said, "I'll walk down to North Peters and get a cab there. I need to put some wear on the shoes and on the wheels of the suitcase." She--or somebody--sketched a salute and turned, continuing in the direction she'd chosen.

Anna watched for a minute, noting how gutter punk Jordan's slouch was gone, replaced with the sullen swagger of a man whose money can't buy him the respect of those he admires.

Closing the gate, she locked it and went back to her cottage. The day had been filled with the high-tech research of computers, the esoteric research of hypnotism, and the artistic use of disguise. Unfortunately for Anna, there remained only the tedious work every law enforcement officer depends on, whether the crime is bank robbery or the vandalism of Anasazi ruins.

Retrieving her backpack and the photocopy of the sketch of Dougie, Anna let herself back out onto Ursulines to walk door to door, show anyone who would look the sketch, and say, "Have you seen this man?" Not particularly sexy, but the Boring Technique was the backbone of most police work.

On a spring evening the shops in the Quarter where she had followed Mackie and Dougie would be open till six, some till eight, and, of course, the bars and restaurants would be open for business. Given it was going on six already, Anna decided to start with the shops at the levee and Dumaine, then work her way up to Bourbon Street. There, she'd have till 4:00
A.M.
to wander around shoving her sketch under noses.

She'd walked four blocks when the cell phone in her pocket started playing "Clair de Lune," the ringtone she'd programmed in for her husband, Paul. The rush of pleasure and excitement contact with this beautiful man always engendered in her was soured as she realized, if she answered the cell, she would have three choices: She could lie to him, either by omission or commission; she could abandon what she was doing and leave Clare to do or die on her own; or she could endanger her law enforcement spouse by telling him she was aiding and abetting a suspected murderess. None of the possibilities was palatable. Not answering the phone wasn't palatable either. It was unthinkable that should Paul ever need her, she turn away. Even if all he needed was to know she was alive and well and loved him.

Across the street was what had once been--and could still be, for that matter--a convent. The building dated from the late nineteenth century and was surrounded by a high brick wall. The wall ended at a parking lot separated from the street by a matching wall, modern and only thigh-high. Anna crossed, sat on it, and flipped open the cell.

"Hello, love," she said, feeling, through her guilt, the joy of having someone for whom pet names were not silly but secret and grand.

"Am I interrupting anything?" Paul asked. This had become their traditional first line over the time they'd been together. With both working criminal cases--him much of the time, and Anna when she had to--it was too easy to interrupt a sensitive moment with an ill-timed call.

At the sound of his voice, with all the warmth of his heart in it, Anna made a sudden decision. She had gotten in too deep to abandon Clare and her quest, even to the extent of turning her quest over to the police. Lying would start a cancer between her and Paul that nothing would ever be able to completely root out. Choosing the lesser of the evils, she decided to endanger him.

"You're not interrupting anything--well, you are, but I need to make a confession."

There was a brief silence; then he said, "Episcopal priests hear confessions, but we don't give out penance. We leave that to our Catholic brethren." His tone was light, but Anna could hear the worry underlying it.

Starting at the beginning, she told him everything she had done or said or found or suspected since she left Port Gibson to "find herself" in Geneva's backyard. When she finished, she waited. Paul said nothing for a bit, and she forced herself to relax her shoulders and unclench her left fist. After so many years of not caring a whole hell of a lot what people thought of her, caring so much was painful.

Finally, he let out a breath and said, "Oh, Anna . . ."

He sounded frustrated and scared and a little angry, but he didn't sound disappointed. Anna breathed a sigh of relief.

"I wish you weren't doing this," he said. There was a weariness to his tone that let her know how much working two jobs without help was grinding him down. At fifty-seven Paul was fit and strong, with the body type her father used to describe as "built like a brick outhouse"--not too tall and powerful across the chest and shoulders with legs that could carry him up steep hills with ease. Still, he was fifty-seven, and Anna had noticed when fighting wildland fires that the middle-aged firefighters were tougher than the youngsters at the beginning of a twenty-one-day assignment, but by the end the kids had grown stronger while the older guys had only grown more tired.

"Yeah," Anna said, hearing an echo of his fatigue in her own voice. "I do, too, but Clare's right. Her stature as prime suspect would blind any law enforcement to what she was trying to show them. You know how it is."

"I do," Paul said. "Your brother-in-law knows what's going on?"

"Not officially, but he's been figuring out what evildoers are doing for so long it didn't take him long to catch on."

"Molly?"

"I'm sure he told her. Molly could tempt secrets out of the Vatican."

"Well, that's good, then," Paul said. "We'll make going to the federal penitentiary a family affair."

Anna laughed, not because she was in the mood for laughing, but to thank him for trying to lighten the mood.

"You know what I want to do, don't you?"

"Yes," Anna said. "You want to jump in the car and rush down here to watch my back."

"And all other parts of your vulnerable anatomy," Paul said.

"Failing that, you want to issue a head-of-the-household dictum forbidding me to do it."

Paul broke out laughing. "Yes, but I won't because it would only serve to spur you on to do it further and faster and more often, just to prove you can."

"I love you," Anna said with a depth of sincerity that couldn't be watered down by distance or sketchy cell phone coverage.

"And I you," Paul said. "I will call you every three and a half minutes until we're together again, and if you don't answer, I will flood Sin City with good ole boys from Miss'sippi toting deer rifles. Make me one promise?"

Anna hesitated, then was ashamed of herself. "Name it," she said.

"Tell me
before
you do anything risky."

"Cross my heart and hope to die," she said.

"Not remotely funny."

At the gate in the levee wall between North Peters and the river where she'd first spotted Dougie wearing the infamous yellow leather jacket, Anna realized she was whistling "Dixie," a song as politically charged as the Confederate flag. She changed to "The Yellow Rose of Texas," realized that, too, was a touchy subject, and gave up altogether. She didn't give up being happy. Had she realized how heavily being less than honest with Paul had weighed on her, she would have put his freedom and his career in jeopardy days ago.

Smiling at her cheerful selfishness, she surveyed the bricked lane called Dutch Alley. The confectioner to the left was closed, but on the corner where Dougie and Mackie had turned was one of New Orleans's many art galleries. The sign over the door read
DUTCH ALLEY ARTISTS' CO-OP
. Anna went in and began her canvassing.

The two artists working didn't recognize her sketch, but she didn't write the stop off as a waste of time. The gallery was one of the finest she'd ever seen--not that she saw many in her line of work--and she made a mental note to come back when she had time and money to throw around.

Settling into the patient, stolid mode of a magazine salesperson, she stopped in two of the main watering holes near the gallery. At Sydney's grocery, the woman behind the counter thought she might have seen him but, then again, probably not. Anna thanked her.

The bartender at Coop's said he'd never seen the guy with such alacrity that Anna suspected it was his policy never to see anybody. She thanked him.

Returning to the corner of Dumaine and North Peters, she began the chore of stopping at every shop along the route she and Mackie had chased the yellow jacket.

A young man at the tourist info center said the picture didn't ring any bells but he thought she'd like to try a Ghost Tour. The girl in the souvenir shop on the opposite corner knew the man in the sketch. Anna was thrilled with her luck until the girl began to tell her about all the secret police work she'd done and how if anybody knew she was working undercover, they'd sure be sorry they'd been such pricks. Anna thanked her.

She worked her way up the east side of Dumaine getting nothing and thanking everyone. The Amazing Patty at Vieux Dieux offered to read the tarot or the stars or the angel cards to find the guy. Anna politely declined, so Patty gave her, free of charge, a charm to find lost things.

Half past five, she turned at Chartres and headed down the west side of Dumaine. Stores were beginning to close for the evening. Soon she'd need to move into the nocturnally oriented businesses' territory.

At Authentic Voodoo she made her last stop. She paused in front of the door trying to remember the owner's name.
Racine.
As she reached for the door handle she heard a man shouting. Unashamedly, she leaned closer to eavesdrop. The words were unintelligible, Cajun French, she guessed. Racine--at least she assumed it was Racine--replied in English. Unlike the man's, her voice was not raised, but Anna could still hear well enough.

"You hate magic, you embrace work the devil would turn down, and yet you say you love me and Laura. There is so much dark in you, I wouldn't let you near her. Get out." The last was hissed. Anna was reminded snakes were an integral part of a lot of voodoo rituals; she was also reminded of the snake she'd sensed beneath Racine's skin on their first meeting.

The man spoke again, still in Cajun French, but Anna knew cursing when she heard it. Then he cried out as if Racine had stabbed him with a knife. Anna jerked open the door and walked in, making as much noise as possible, banging the door and stomping. It was not her intention to get cut in a domestic dispute. She merely wanted to shatter the mood and distract the participants till things settled down. Failing that she would run away, fleet as any deer.

Again dressed in unrelieved white, a tiered cotton skirt with eyelet trim and a tank top, the tall pale voodooienne stood behind the counter. Her hair was loose and straight and fell from a center part. Her daughter, Laura, was nowhere to be seen. In a bizarre tableau, the slender blonde was holding a burly middle-aged man, with wild black hair and muscles like the roots of an old oak, at bay with what appeared to be a handful of dried sagebrush.

"I call on Papa Legba. Come to me. Send me a warrior; send Ogoun." Her voice was louder now and had changed pitch. The man threw his hands before his face.

"You goddam witch!" he cried in accented English and backed toward the door in such a blind rush Anna had to jump out of the way or get trampled. He was so anxious to escape the curse of the loa that Anna didn't think he'd even noticed she was there.

Slowly Racine lowered the weeds with which she had terrified the man. The elevated stare she'd adopted as she chanted melted down to a normal gaze, and her eyes locked on Anna.

"You," she said. "We are about to close, but if your problem is small, and I can help, I will."

Anna wasn't going to get a better invitation than this. She crossed the room and laid the sketch on the glass-topped counter. "Do you recognize this man, or does this sketch resemble anyone you know or have seen?"

Racine turned the page around and, holding her hair back with one graceful hand, bent over the paper. It occurred to Anna that the woman was nearsighted and too vain to wear glasses.

Suddenly, Racine jerked her head up as if the drawing were a scorpion about to strike and emitted a stifled gasp. Without looking at Anna, she spun around till her face was shielded from view and snatched up a pile of papers near the cash register, tapped them into line on the counter, laid them back down, and squared the corners as if it mattered.

"You know him," Anna said flatly, not wanting to give Racine time to work up a good story.

"I don't," Racine said, continuing to fiddle with the small pile of flyers.

"It matters," Anna said. "It matters a lot."

Racine took a deep breath. Letting her head fall back, she exhaled slowly. "I don't know him," she repeated.

"Nothing will come back on you. I don't need to know how you know him, and I don't need to tell anyone you told me."

Racine said nothing for a moment. Then, "I was about to close. Is there anything else I can help you with?" Her eyes were hard and her mouth determined.

Playing for time, Anna looked around the shop. Racine started toward the door to usher her out. Anna sighed. Meeting Racine's eyes she said, "I know this guy's name is Dougie. I know he's dangerous. I know he's connected to the business of harming children. Me, by myself, I might not stoop to threats. With little girls factored in, I might stoop to anything. So: I know your name, Racine Gutreaux, and your daughter's name, Laura. I know you're involved with--or married to--a man who speaks Cajun French. I'm guessing he's Laura's father and there is a dispute about custody. In this information age, just how long do you think it will take me to put these pieces together and find out how you know Dougie?"