City of Masks (45 page)

43

J
OSEPHINE'S RASPING VOICE CEASED
suddenly, and Cree felt the light in the room change. She turned her head to see a dark silhouette at the screen door, eclipsing the light from outside.

In another instant, Charmian Beauforte had opened the screen door and stepped onto the porch, and then she was coming through the open inner door. She wras dressed impeccably in a beige suit over a white silk blouse, holding her ostrich-skin purse close to her side. She didn't have her cane, but she mastered her limp almost completely as she came into the dim room, stood regally, and fixed them with her raptor's gaze.

"Can't just come in my house like this!" Josephine gasped.

Charmian ignored her. "You know why I'm here," she said to Cree. "We need to end your investigation. One way or another. Today."

"My investigation
is
over."

"Yes, it certainly is. Now, you two are going to do exactly as I say. We're going to make a deal, right now, the three of us. Your lives depend on making this deal and sticking with it."

Josephine stood up from her chair, mustering a formidable power of her own. "Miz Charmian. This my home. This my family home. You don't come here an' tell me what I do or don't do."

Charmian didn't back down as the taller figure approached her. "Josephine, look out the window. See the man leaning against the big car? His name is Loup Garou." For Cree's benefit, she translated, "That means 'Werewolf,' and they call him that for a very good reason. There's another man, just down the street. So get it through your head, right now - I
do
tell you what to do. Here or anywhere else."

Cree turned in her chair to look out the window, and it was as Charmian had said. An older Cadillac had pulled up, right at the end of the front walk. The man leaning against it wore an oversize checked shirt, parted enough to reveal a mat of dark chest hair above a sleeveless T-shirt. A big automatic pistol was stuck in his belt. Though he wore sunglasses, it was clear he watched the door of the house with interest.

"How did you know where I was?" Cree asked.

"Paul Fitzpatrick has been most helpful to me throughout this escapade. He told me you'd locate Josephine. I just had you followed." Charmian must have seen the astonishment come into Cree's face, because her mouth hardened, the tiniest smile of gratification at revealing this betrayal.

Josephine had studied the man at the car, and now she looked back at Charmian. They locked eyes. Cree could see the arc that leapt there, the ancient antagonism between these two old women, the bitter contest over which would possess Lila's heart, the unforgiven failings they accused each other of. After a moment, Josephine took two steps to the kitchen hallway and called down it. "Hiram! Go get yo' uncle's shotgun from out my closet. Then you come on out the front room."

But Hiram must have heard some disturbance earlier, because immediately Cree heard the sound of a shell being jacked into the chamber, and then Hiram was coming out of the hallway with the big gun leveled. He was still shirtless, his dark skin still glistening with sweat, and he towered over Charmian with a baleful look.

Charmian looked him up and down with contempt.

"Hiram," Josephine instructed, "you go sit on the porch, an' you watch that man at the car. He start to come up here, you shoot him dead. I call you, you turn around shoot this ol' lady dead. She like a witch, you don't trust her neither, you understand?"

Hiram moved silently past Charmian, out onto the porch, where he took a chair facing the street, the shotgun held low but aimed at the man outside. When the Werewolf saw him come out, he straightened out of his slouch and one hand strayed to his pistol.

The guns scared Cree. The powers of the two women held each other in a tense stasis. The motionless air was charged with latent action, and the guns made any shift of balance potentially lethal.

"You don't tell me what I do," Josephine said quietly. "No more. You not my judge, and you not my maker. You not even my boss. And this is
my
home. This be a good time you learn humility, Miz Charmian."

Charmian eyes blazed at that, and she seemed to inhale, swell with rage. If she upped the ante another notch it would all blow apart.

"Charmian," Cree broke in. "What deal? What do you mean?"

"I will protect my daughter," she said through her teeth. "That's the deal. The only deal." The compressed fury in her had only grown in the face of Josephine's resistance and Hiram's dark presence twelve feet away. Against her will, Cree had to admire the strength of her.

"We
all
want that! But how, Charmian? You told her to forget. She did her best. But the ghosts won't let her."

"Ghosts!" Charmian snorted contemptuously and looked to Josephine. "What do you think? Does Ms. Black have powers, the gift of sight? What would your mother say?"

"She know what you done. She know why you done it. She seen Richard's ghost and Bradford's, too. She a healin' woman, can fix Lila if you let her."

"And what about you, Josephine?" Charmian's face moved in scorn. "What about your forgiveness you need so badly? Can she give you that?"

Josephine turned her face away. "Me, I'm not too worried about no forgiveness no mo'." Her voice was a dull, hopeless echo in her hollow chest. "How 'bout yo' own? You know how you done, how you lost yo' daughter."

Charmian pretended to ignore the question, but her eyelid ticced, and she went on hurriedly. "The deal is, I confess to killing Richard. I say I poisoned him with a preparation of black cherry seeds. I can prove it they can open the crypt and find traces of it in his remains. I confess and you don't tell anyone anything different."

"Detective Guidry will ask why you killed him."

Charmian improvised: "Because he . . . he let my baby brother die in that swamp, let him go off on his own, drunk, and I lost my head and took revenge! Or he had an affair, or - "

"No." For a moment Cree had thought maybe Charmian was right, maybe this one lie was the route through, but she quickly came up against another wall. "Charmian, if you want Lila to survive, she has to face the ghosts - both her father's ghost and Bradford's. She might be able to buy in to your killing Richard, and that's what's most important. But when she faces Bradford, she'll know how he died, she'll know he died at the house and not in some bayou. She'll know he's the one who raped her. She'll know you lied. It'll all fall apart."

Charmian snorted. "You're assuming I believe in ghosts."

"Lila has to face them whether you believe or not."

Charmian's desperation grew. "You don't understand! If I tell about Bradford, it will be the end of the Beauforte name, the Lambert name! It'll reach every scandal-mongering journalist in the country! We'll - "

"Decide, Charmian. Decide whether it's your daughter you want to protect or just your family name and your control. It's something you should have decided long ago."

The dragon eyes looked baleful and wounded, but still Charmian held firm, said nothing.

"And then there's Temp Chase," Cree said.

For the first time, Charmian looked frightened. She mastered the expression quickly, but a shiver shook her, and Cree realized she'd reached the limit of her self-control. Just beyond was collapse or violence. "What about Temp Chase? He has nothing to do with this!"

"Temp came to you after Josephine's visit. He wanted to blackmail you. His career was falling apart, he'd had financial setbacks, he was desperate. Josephine had told him almost everything. He came to you and said he could feature it in an expose, or you could pay him a lot of money not to."

Josephine's face folded in pain. "I am sorry, Miz Charmian. Didn't know 'bout Lila killin' her daddy, I wouldn't have said
nothin
to him. But he say he already know about it! He say he your friend! I take it on my shoulders. This all on my shoulders."

"I didn't kill Temp Chase, that's absurd!" Charmian was truly terrified now, breathless and trembling from head to foot.

Cree let her hang for a moment. The heat was stifling, and the smell of so many fears in the small room was choking her. Charmian's reaction now would determine the outcome of the whole case, for Lila, for all of them. "No. I know you didn't."

Hearing that, Charmian's body shook. The straight back seemed to falter, and she groped toward a chair, grasping its back to stabilize herself.

Out at the curb, the swamp rat had heard Charmian's raised voice and had stepped away from the car. His narrow face lifted toward the house as if he were straining to see into the shadowed interior, and both hands now rested on his gun. "Hey, Gran'mere!" he called, just loud enough to be heard. "Is it time? Nigger on the porch don't scare me, you jus' tell me when."

Loup Garou took another easy step forward. On the porch, the shadow that was Hiram didn't seem to move, but the glisten along the barrel quicksilvered as the shotgun tracked Loup.

"Save me something," Charmian whispered. "Don't do this. Don't bring my son into this. Don't make this part of the deal. Don't make me protect one child only to lose another."

Loup Garou took another step toward the house, calling Hiram's bluff by degrees.

"Call off the Werewolf. Tell him to go back to the car."

Wide-eyed, Charmian shook her head,
no.

God
damn
the woman for her stubbornness!
Cree thought. "Temp is
dead.
His killer has to pay!" She said urgently. "Call him off."

"Temp Chase stays out of it.
Ron
stays out of it! If it ever comes up, I'll confess to that, too. You know I will. Their investigation has gone nowhere in over two years! They already looked at Ronald! I can prove I had reason to kill him! You can tell Guidry anything you want, nobody can prove it, nobody'11 bother. Not with me confessing!"

Hiram stood up as Loup Garou came another step closer. The barrel of the shotgun shook with his tension. Cree gave the shotgun the edge, but Hiram was no gunfighter. One hesitation and Loup Garou would have the advantage. Either way, the house would have bad ghosts forever and another generation of pain would be born. And nothing anyone could do would help Lila.

"You tell Guidry you killed Richard because he killed Bradford! And you tell him why Pachard did it!" Cree insisted. "You have to tell him about the rape! That much has to come out or it won't hold. And you tell Paul Fitzpatrick to cooperate with me on treating Lila whether he believes in ghosts or whatever the hell. And I don't bring Ron into it. Okay? Now
call him off!"

Charmian hesitated for three more heartbeats, calculating, not breathing. Then she called, "Loup! Go back to the car!"

He paused, only a few steps from the door.

"Now!" she shouted. "Go back to the car! Get inside and wait." She held herself there until he began backing away. Then she quickly took a seat and let her back fold.

Only when the Werewolf had gotten inside the big car did Josephine move again. Straight streaks of tears lined her face beneath both eyes. "You doin' good, Hiram," she called softly. "Yo' great-auntie thank you. Better put it down now."

44

"
Y
OU HAVE TO REALLY FIND IT IN YOU
," Cree repeated softly. She'd already said it five times in five different ways. "You can't fake it or force yourself to feel it. You've got to offer him a real window of escape. Encountering you has got to provide resolution for him, and that'll happen only when you provide yourself some resolution - when you really accept what happened and let go of it. The promise of that closure must be so real and attractive that it draws him toward you, and then your reality will war with his obsession. It'll show him his world is unreal. Does that make sense?"

Lila nodded minutely.

The three of them stood beneath a streetlight on Washington Avenue, looking across at the walls of Lafayette Cemetery. Behind them, the lush streets of the Garden District settled into the relative tranquillity of a Tuesday evening. Though the cemetery was closed now, Paul and Lila had prevailed upon its staff to open the gate for one after-hours visit to a family tomb; the Beauforte name still carried enough weight for such favors. Now the dark figure of a cemetery attendant waited behind the main gate. Beyond, the innumerable low roofs and gables of the crypts were tinted with sad twilight blue.

Lila looked pale in this light, her skin almost transparent, as if the blood she'd lost had not been restored to her. Her physical health was not bad, but the revelations of the past forty-eight hours had wrenched her open, exposing her past and her hidden self. Charmian had gone to the police, had confessed to killing Richard, and had told them why: because he'd killed her brother. And she'd explained that, too: the rape. Not trusting Cree to keep the deal, she'd also confessed to murdering Temp Chase when he attempted to blackmail her; she was right, it was an effective way to keep Guidry from any suspicion of Ron. The story would cause a fabulous scandal when Deelie's scoop hit the newsstands, the kind that cropped up in New Orleans only once every few years and helped preserve its exotic reputation: great names fallen low, the sordid underbelly of the aristocracy exposed, ancient secrets come to life.

Still, Lila looked determined. Knowing what had happened back then, who the boar-headed man was, had strengthened her. She admitted she was terrified by what they were about to do, yet she took Cree's word that within the cemetery gates lay the promise of closure and the beginning of healing.

If everything went as Cree hoped, anyway.

Paul appeared to waver between confusion about Cree, and, she hoped, shame for being a lying, deceiving son of a bitch. Also worry for his patient and distrust of tonight's enterprise - he had come along only because Lila had insisted.

And Cree - how did Cree feel? she wondered. For starters, she wished Edgar had made it here, as much for moral support as for gathering physical evidence on the boar-headed man. But when Joyce had spoken to him on Saturday, he'd told her he just couldn't make it, after all. Things were really heating up with the Gloucester ghost, he needed to extend his stay a few days. Ordinarily, Cree would have waited on the final phase until Ed had a shot at these ghosts, but remediation couldn't wait.

But more than anything else, she was scared for Lila. Hopeful for her, too. A little sick with apprehension at the prospect of what they were about to do.

For Cree, the most difficult decision of the last two days was whether Lila should begin with Bradford's ghost or Richard's. On one hand, she felt that if Lila came to Richard's ghost first, she'd emerge strengthened, cleansed of subconscious guilt - j u s t maybe strong enough to face down her uncle's monstrous revenant. But she worried that bringing Lila back to the house when the creature still roamed there would undo her before she got anywhere near the library. Anyway, before she went to the library, Lila needed to
know,
absolutely and at the deepest level, the truth of who her rapist had been. She had to purge any lingering subconscious accusation of her father if she were to meet him and accept the love he offered.

So maybe she should face Bradford first, conquer him, release him, to prove to herself that her father was not the guilty one. But Cree had no confidence she was strong enough to face the dark halls of Beauforte House, the spectral wereboar that hunted her there.

For most of the night, she had gone back and forth, agonizing. It had to unfold just right. If anything went wrong, Lila could emerge from the encounters crazy, permanently unbalanced, lost.

The biggest problem was that Cree really had no idea how to alleviate the boar-headed phantom. How could they reach him? He was too intentional, physical, awful. And he was too
simple - a
powerful revenant existing in a very narrow band, with an almost one-dimensional affective complex. For the thousandth time, she puzzled over the absence of the perimortem experience in his manifestation. She knew his predations were a memory recalled intensely at the moment of death, but she'd never sensed the "umbilicus": He was almost completely devoid of any connection to the man's actual experience of dying. And it was under the duress of dying that each individual most fervently sought to settle his accounts, sought emotional refuge - and therefore was most vulnerable That's when he was most likely to allow a living being to intrude upon his perseverating universe. But Cree had never sensed the library beating in the boar-headed man. And if he felt any remorse, it was only a tiny, dark thing, a grain of ash.

But late last night, thinking through every step of the scenario yet again, an epiphany had come to her. A curtain had fallen away, her vision clearing so abruptly that at two A.M. she'd leapt out of the hotel bed. She had dressed and slipped away from the hotel and come here to Lafayette Cemetery. She'd slid between the iron rails of the gate and gone deep into the center of the city of the dead. It had taken a long time to find the right crypt, but her guess had proved correct.

Paul looked at Cree, a question and an accusation. She had not told him the specifics of what was to happen, only that this visit was necessary and that he damned well owed her this much faith after all she'd accomplished so far. Not to mention the little matter of his secret collusion with Charmian. She had refused to listen to his excuses, and she'd made no effort to hide her contempt: He was as deceitful as anyone else in this city of masks.

"What do you think, Lila?" Paul asked. "Are you really up for this?"

"I think so," Lila said. "I can try."

"You'll do fine," Cree assured her. She took her arm and went with her across the street, Paul following reluctantly.

The attendant swung the gate open to let them in, then closed it after them. " 'Bout how long?" he asked. "I got to stay on to close up after."

"It might be two or three hours," Cree told him. "I'm sorry to keep you late. We're very grateful."

He cheered up when Paul tipped him with a twenty. He nodded, checked his watch in a shaft of streetlight, and went to sit on a block of masonry to one side of the gate. Cree looked back to see him light up a cigarette, its tiny orange pulse the last beacon of the ordinary world beyond the cemetery walls.

Near the gate, the cemetery was arranged in major lanes lined with the little temples. Farther in, the lanes branched and wandered, narrowing, and the crypts stood closer together. In the dim light, the faux-marble surfaces took on a misty quality, rectangles and triangles pale against the night. Here and there, statues stood guard at crypt doors, patient and sorrowful.

There were a thousand faint ghosts of grieving here, the lingering feelings of the living who had come here to bid farewell to loved ones. But otherwise, it was a tranquil place, Cree felt. The densely clustered crypts blocked the noise of the city, broke its sounds on a million facets of masonry so that the wandering avenues were bathed in a soft white whisper. It smelled of old brick, old cement, and the faint, musty breath of vault interiors. The air was cool now, but when she passed close to crypts Cree could feel the glow of the heat they'd stored during the day.

They walked slowly on. Lila was gripping her arm hard. Paul still followed behind, saying nothing. Cree had instructed him to be quiet, not to voice his skepticism, to bring a flashlight but not to use it unless she told him to. It was crucial that they let Lila find her own way through this.

Near the center, they hesitated at an intersection of narrow paths. At first Cree wasn't sure she remembered the way, but finally she decided they needed to go left, and only a few steps farther brought them to the crypt. As befitted an old and prestigious family, it was larger than most, a Greek temple about the size of a prefab backyard storage shed. In front, two fluted pillars held up the roof of a shallow vestibule that cast the vault's cover into shadow. The back was wedged only a hand's width from neighboring crypts, the gaps between completely lightless.

"What do we do?" Lila whispered so quietly Cree could hear the pulse in her throat.

"We wait. Might as well sit." Cree gestured toward a squat urn to the left of the door. "You'll find him."

Lila sat, just a shadow within the shadow of the overhang. Barely more visible, Paul hung several paces back, shifting uneasily. When Cree had proposed this visit, he had warned her that New Orleans cemeteries were dangerous places at night, and not for supernatural reasons. The enclosed, labyrinthine little cities made good temporary lodging for homeless people and had become favored places for crack deals to be made, for junkies to cook heroin over candle flames and shoot up. Night in the cemeteries was too often a time of predation.

"If you're too scared," she had told him acidly, "then don't come." The look on his face had given her a pang, but he damned well deserved it.

The air turned gradually cooler. Cree stood until her legs tired and then sat cross-legged on the floor of the vestibule. Paul's shadow shifted uneasily from foot to foot. Lila was a mound of darkness that rocked ever so slightly from side to side.

Sometime later, Cree felt it coming: the impulse growing toward its eerie nascence. It began with a faint sense of movement and feeling that coalesced only inches away, on the other side of the vault cover.

Paul sensed it, too. His shadow froze, as if he were listening.

"I'm scared, Cree," Lila whispered.

Something moved audibly inside the crypt. It started as a faint scraping noise, like a rat gnawing, but it soon changed. Something larger shifted, making a rustle of cloth and then a faint, dull thump. Even knowing it was coming, Cree felt a feather drift up her spine.

"There's someone coming," Paul whispered urgently.

"Shhh."

"No, there's someone . . . this is no joke, Cree, these crack heads - "

"Paul,
shut up!"

The shadow of Paul looked down one side of the crypt, saw nothing, then stepped to the other side. Then he mounted the apron and put one hand against the marble crypt cover. He snatched it away as if it had burned him. No doubt he felt the faint vibration in the marble. Afterward he stood motionless again, indecisive. Cree couldn't see his face, but she could hear his breath, a short, sharp panting.

Lila hadn't moved. Cree let herself fall into sync with the burgeoning manifestation in the crypt and felt Lila coming with her.

And they found him there.

He had just awakened in utter darkness, confused. At first it seemed that he couldn't open his eyes, but then he realized they
were
open, he had either gone blind or there was simply no light for them to register. A waterfall of pain originated in his head and poured down his neck and back. Something was wrong with him, he realized. He'd been hurt. It took a while to make sense of things, but he became aware he was lying on his back on a hard, smooth, slightly rounded surface. With an effort, he lifted one hand only to discover a coarse masonry ceiling just inches above him. The discovery shocked him and his whole body jerked reflexively. The movement caused him to slide to the right, down the slight incline of the curved surface. Abruptly he felt a gap beneath him, and he rolled partly into it.

He was wedged there in the dark, his forehead against rough stone, the back of his head against the thing he'd been lying on. One arm hung beneath him, his fingers trailing in some kind of rubble - dust and crumbly chunks and sharp pieces. An incomprehensible place.

The movement had caused savage arcs of pain to streak through his whole body, and with it the memory came suddenly to him: Richard had been beating him! He had fled the purpling face of his brother-in-law, cringing from and yet welcoming every explosion of pain as the poker struck. Now was some time after that, and he was somewhere dark and small and musty smelling.

The arm beneath his body could hardly move, but the other was free, and with his fingers he traced the surface behind him. Beneath a film of grit it felt smooth and metallic. Something was digging painfully into his back, and when his fingers found it he discovered it was carved in low-relief designs. A flange or fixture like a decorative fist gripping a pole or rail that felt like, it
was,
a handle!

It was the carrying rail on a coffin.

At the realization, Bradford's ghost ignited in sheer terror. The hand wedged beneath him scrabbled in the remains of his Lambert ancestors. His free hand clawed the wall and bloodied itself. He got it above him, past the end of the coffin, and found only more of the same: bricks with bulges of mortar between them.