Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead (29 page)

He shook his head.

“I still don't understand it,” he said, frowning. “Why no one came. I mean, I read all the reports and all that. I
know
what happened. But I still don't understand. My mom, she's like—she just can't get over it. Can't get over that nobody came for us.”

He sat for a minute, his face wrinkled.

“Until him,” DeShawn said, pointing at the picture. “Third day—third night, really. And when night fell—well, it was good 'cause it was cooler. That was good. But it was so dark. So dark, like nothing you ever seen. And that dark—that was scary.
Real
scary. People screamin' from their rooftops, shouting, cryin'. The sound was all around you. But you couldn't see them. You'd hear stuff splashing around in the water, but you couldn't see it. Didn't know if it was people or rats—and then every once in a while these, like, searchlights would kind of swoop down
and you'd see everything all lit up, but just for a second. Like a strobe light in a club.

“And then, on that third night—we'd just about had it. My mom was prayin', I was prayin', but it's hard, you know. It's hard to keep faith. We thought the whole world left us alone. And then we see this little light. This tiny little light, way off in the distance. And then, just like a movie or a dream or something, this boat comes over. Someone on the boat's got a flashlight, and it's like—like this little cloud, like this cloud of light coming to us.”

DeShawn laughed. But his eyes were wet while he did it.

“It coulda been God, all we knew. I mean—being on the roof like that, it was like living in Bible times, you know? Like all that crazy stuff in the Bible or history or whatever you read about—it was like living then. Like you got trials and tests and anything could happen.

“Anyway,” he went on, “in the boat there's a mother, her boy, and this guy.
This
guy. And the mother and her kid, they're shivering and freakin' out, almost like they was dying. Just totally fucked up. And the guy,
him
. . .” He looked at the picture of Vic. “He was
smilin'
. Just smiling and happy like he was having the best day of his life. And he had a dog with him.”

“A dog?” I said. “Are you sure?”

DeShawn nodded. “A dog. I think it was the little boy's. Big German Shepherd type—my momma almost didn't get on the boat with him. I don't know how he knew we was there. Maybe he was one of the boats that passed us before, one of the boats that was too full. I don't know. I always wonder how he found us, but I don't know.

“Anyway. He helped us get in the boat. We wanted to get more—my neighbors was there, right next to us—but there was no more room. The man said the boat would tip if he put more in. So he just took us to the ground. Just dropped us off on dry ground like it was nothing. Me and Mom got off the boat first, 'cause we was in front, and there was people there with blankets and stuff. By the time we turned around, the rest of them, they was just gone.”

“Oh my God,” Mick said.

“Saved my life,” DeShawn said. “For real. Me and my mom—we would've been dead. See, later, we went back to the house, and the roof was caved in. We don't know when it happened, but.”

He didn't finish his sentence.

“He saved your life,” I repeated.

DeShawn nodded. “You know him?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “He died not long after that. Sometime during the storm. We don't know exactly when. That's what we're trying to figure out.”

“Oh my God,” DeShawn said. He looked devastated. “Jesus. That's so fucked up.”

“Did you see him again after that?” I asked after a while. “Do you know what happened to him after he dropped you off?”

“Well,” he said. “I think—I think he didn't make it back the next time. I think he drowned.”

“Why do you think that?” I asked.

“Because I saw my neighbor later,” DeShawn said. “In Houston. And we talked about it, traded stories. And he told me that man never came back for him. No one came for them till the next day.”

We sat at the table and didn't look at each other.

“I always thought,” DeShawn said, “thought I'd find him. I wanted to thank him or something.”

“You still can,” I said.

He looked at me. “You think he hear me?”

“I don't know,” I said. “But it's a no-lose bet.”

We sat for a minute and didn't say anything.

And then I remembered what Tracy had told me.

The very first clue
.

Suddenly my hangover was gone.

Mick looked at me.

“What?” he said.

“Nothing,” I said.

“What?” DeShawn said.

“I gotta go,” I told them. “I gotta go somewhere right now.”

I thanked DeShawn and paid the bill and Mick and DeShawn made promises to keep in touch and work on DeShawn's mother. Mick drove me back downtown. He still thought my truck was dead. He parked in front of my hotel.

“So I guess that's it,” he finally said. “I guess we know what happened to Vic Willing.”

I looked at Mick. He looked almost kind of happy. If Vic could be redeemed, anyone could be redeemed—even Mick, with his survivor's guilt and imagined list of sins. Even the kids he worked with, with their misdemeanor murders and resolute uninterest in the future. Even me, with my bad habits and louche ways.

I knew he wanted that to be true. Maybe he needed it to be true.

But it wasn't.

Maybe we could all be redeemed. But it wouldn't happen today.

Mick looked at me. “DeShawn just
said
,” he said. “He just told us. Vic drowned. He went out rescuing people and he never came back.”

I didn't say anything.

“Claire,” Mick said. Disappointment spread across his face. “
Claire
. You can't be serious.”

I didn't say anything.

“This is the answer,” Mick said. “This is the solution. The one you've been looking for. This is it.”

I still didn't know exactly what had happened to Vic Willing. But I had a pretty good idea, and I knew where I would find the rest of the story.

“Mick,” I began, gently, “I know you think the clue is the story DeShawn just told. And that—that means a lot. It really does. But that's not the end. That's not the clue.”

“Then what is the clue?” Mick said, pissed off.

“The same clue it's always been,” I said. “The same clue you didn't see from the beginning. That's the same clue you're not seeing now.”

We sat and didn't look at each other.

“Jesus, Claire,” Mick began. “Can't you ever just—”

“No,” I said. “Never.”

Mick shook his head and didn't look at me. I got out of the car.

“Of course, anyone may be saved,” Silette said in his 1978
Interview
interview. “No matter the crime. What they don't understand is that it is just like solving a crime; one must do it oneself, for one's own reasons, each on one's own time, and not for some stupid ideal of what the world can be or some childish notions of good and bad. The only way is to dive into oneself completely, which of course is the very last thing most of us will ever do. You must dive all the way to the bottom. Then, really, life can begin anew.”

In my room, on my bed, I turned up the heater and threw the I Ching.

Hexagram 4: Clouds over fire. The clouds surround the fire but do not put it out. Some fires burn true and some burn false. True fire warms the hands. False fire burns but never warms. The best fires burn everything in their wake, and only leave behind perfect nothingness. The wise man knows this is best place.

I got in my truck and drove to the perfect nothingness.

T
HE STREETS OF
the Lower Ninth Ward were caked in grayish-brown dried mud. So was everything else. Nothing had been cleaned. Little bits of people's lives were scattered around in between the piles of rubble: a shoe, a book, a bra. The smell was bad: garbage and mold and death. Some houses had been pushed into each other, making indistinguishable piles of rubble. Some had boats or cars or trailers or pieces of other houses on top of them or stuck into them, forced into strange angles by the strength of the water. There were boats on top of roofs and cars on top of houses. Some houses had been pushed blocks from their foundations: you could tell because someone had spray-painted their former addresses on them, as if they were lost puppies someone could pick up and take back home.
Oh, look, here's our house. I was wondering where we left it
.

It would be a miracle if anyone lived around here.

I drove to the address on the card. The lots on either side were piles of broken wood. But the house at the address was still there. Two sides of it were blue plastic tarp, but it was definitely a house. It was a classic Creole cottage. The grass was high but the yard was picked up. The mud had been hosed off the remaining sides of the house. The sides were pink.

Sometimes miracles happen.

Jutting from one of the sides of the house was a metal plant
hanger. Hanging from it by one broken chain and one slender intact one was a sign:

Ninth Ward Construction
We Can Do It!

Next to the letters was a poorly drawn sketch of a green parrot, wings outstretched.

That was the clue. That was the first clue and it would be the last.

“The detective who wishes a rapid conclusion to his case,” Silette wrote, “need do no more than examine every thing he was absolutely sure would not lead to the truth, and need only connect those facts he was entirely sure had no relation at all. Because this, for better or worse, is exactly where the truth lies—at the intersection of the forgotten and the ignored, in the neighborhood of all we have tried to forget.”

I parked the car and walked up to the door and knocked.

And then I heard someone pump a shotgun behind me and I thought maybe I had made a mistake.

I turned around slowly, hands up and open, face relaxed.

A man stood behind me, in between me and my truck. Next to him was a honey-colored pit bull standing at attention, eyes on my face. The man was holding a twelve-gauge shotgun pointed toward my head. He was about forty-five, thin, not tall. He wore a T-shirt tucked into neat blue jeans and white sneakers, sealed with a brown leather belt. He tried to look mean, or at least stern. It worked pretty well. Especially with the gun.

“If you from the CNN,” he said with a thick accent, “you might as well tell me, so I can shoot you and get it over with.”

“I'm not,” I said. “I'm—”

“And if you with the hippies, I'll shoot you faster,” he said. “So whatever it is you want, you might as well go on and get the fuck away from here before I shoot you.”

Slowly I reached into my pocket and took out his card. I'd found it in Napoleon House on my first day back in New Orleans.

Ninth Ward Construction.
We can do it!
Frank
555–1111.
CALL ME I CAN HELP!

Frank frowned and looked at the little piece of paper I held out to him. When he saw what it was he shook his head like he'd seen a ghost.

“I tried to call you,” I said.

“Phone's been down,” Frank said. “We had . . . we had a storm.”

“I know,” I said. “But you can still do it. You can still help.”

He put down the gun. When he did, the dog settled down on the ground, sticking her legs in front of her and settling her head in between. She looked like a carpet.

I reached slowly into my purse and took out my picture of Vic Willing. I handed it to Frank.

Frank took the picture of Vic and looked at it. Then his face crumpled, every soft point closing in.

“Holy shit,” he said. He looked like I'd punched him. He stumbled over to the steps to his house and sat down.

The dog came and sat next to him and looked at him. Frank scratched the top of the dog's head.

“You come on in,” he said finally. “I don't know if I can help you. I don't know if I can do it. But I'll try.”

Inside the house the walls were gone behind the blue tarp, but the supporting beams were in place. I heard the hum of a generator. A few shop lamps were hung up here and there, and a big TV was in the corner. The light coming through the tarp tinted everything blue.

Frank sat on a cable spool and gestured for me to sit on another. I did. The dog sat at Frank's feet. I explained that I was a private eye and I was investigating what had happened to the man in the picture.

“What do you need to know?” Frank asked.

“Everything,” I said. “Everything you remember.”

Frank nodded his head and collected his thoughts before he began. I had the feeling he didn't get many guests.

“That man,” Frank began. “He saved so many. I don't even know how many wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him. Boatload after boatload.”

I nodded. I didn't see any reason to tell Frank about the rest of Vic's life. I figured he'd seen more than enough vice and squalor for one lifetime.

“What happened after that?” I asked. “After he rescued all those people?”

Frank looked at me. “You don't know?”

“I don't know,” I said. I thought I knew, but I wasn't sure.

“I thought—” Frank said. “I thought you knew. I thought you were here to find out who did it. Like a murder mystery on the TV.”

“Who did
what
?” I asked.

“Who shot him,” Frank said. “That man was shot dead. Saw it with my own eyes. I thought you here to find out who shot him.”

“I am,” I said. “That's exactly it. I'm here to find out who shot Vic Willing.”