Déjà Dead (26 page)

I scanned to the west of St. Laurent. Right away I saw what I was looking for. Two hookers lounged outside the Granada, smoking cigarettes and playing the crowd. I recognized Poirette, but wasn’t sure about the other.

I fought an impulse to give this up and head for home. What if I’d guessed wrong on the dress? I’d chosen a sweatshirt, jeans, and sandals, hoping they’d be nonthreatening, but I didn’t know. I’d never done this kind of fieldwork.

Cut the crap, Brennan, you’re stalling. Get your sorry butt up there. The worst that can happen is they blow you off. Won’t be the first time.

I moved up the block and planted myself in front of the two women.

“
Bonjour
.” My voice sounded quavery, like a cassette tape stretched and rewound. I was annoyed with myself, and coughed to create a cover.

The women stopped talking and inspected me much as they would an unusual insect, or something odd found in a nostril. Neither spoke. Their faces were flat and devoid of emotion.

Poirette shifted her weight, thrusting one hip forward. She was wearing the same black high-tops she’d had on when I first saw her. Wrapping an arm across her waist and resting the opposite elbow on it, she regarded me with veiled eyes. Pulling hard on her cigarette, she breathed the smoke deep into her lungs, then pooched out her lower lip and blew it upward in a stream. The smoke looked like haze in the pulsating neon glow of the hotel sign. The sign’s blinking cast nets of red and blue across her cocoa skin. Wordlessly, her dark eyes left my face and returned to the sidewalk parade.

“What you wantin’, chère?”

The street woman’s voice was deep and raspy, as if the words were formed by particles of sound with empty gaps floating among them. She addressed me in English, with a cadence that spoke of hyacinths and cypress swamps, of gumbo and zydeco bands, of cicadas droning on soft summer nights. She was older than Poirette.

“I’m a friend of Gabrielle Macaulay. I’m trying to find her.”

She shook her head. I wasn’t sure if she meant she didn’t know Gabby, or was unwilling to answer.

“She’s an anthropologist? She works down here?”

“Sugar, we all work down here.”

Poirette snorted and shifted feet. I looked at her. She was wearing shorts and a bustier made of shiny black vinyl. I was certain she knew Gabby. She’d been one of the women we’d seen that night. Gabby had pointed her out. Up close she looked even younger. I concentrated on her companion.

“Gabby’s a large woman,” I went on. “About my age. She has”—I groped for a color term—“reddish dreadlocks?”

Blank indifference.

“And a nose ring.”

I was hitting a brick wall.

“I haven’t been able to reach her for a while. I think her phone’s out of order, and I’m a little worried about her. Surely y’all must know her?”

I drew out my vowels and emphasized the Southern version of
vous
. Appeal to regional loyalties. Daughters of Dixie unite.

Louisiana shrugged, a fluid, Cajun version of the universal French response. More shoulder, less palm.

So much for the Daughters of Dixie approach. This was going nowhere. I was beginning to understand what Gabby had meant. You don’t ask questions on the Main.

“If you run into her, will you tell her Tempe’s looking for her?”

“That a Southern name, chère?”

She slipped a long, red nail into her hair, and scratched her scalp with the tip. The updo was so lacquered, it would’ve held in a hurricane. It moved as one mass, creating the illusion that her head was changing shape.

“Not exactly. Can you think of anywhere else I might look?”

Another shrug. She withdrew her nail and inspected it.

I pulled a card from my back pocket.

“If you think of anything, this is where you can get in touch with me.” As I walked away I could see Poirette reaching for the card.

Approaches to several streetwalkers along Ste. Catherine yielded much the same result. Their reactions ranged from indifference to contempt, uniformly leavened by suspicion and distrust. No information. If Gabby had ever existed down here, no one would admit it.

I went from bar to bar, moving through the seedy haunts of the night people. One was as the next, brainchildren of a single warped decorator. Ceilings were low, and walls cinder block. All painted with Day-Glo murals, or covered with fake bamboo or cheap wood. Dark and dank, they smelled of stale beer, smoke, and human sweat. In the better ones, the floors were dry and the toilets flushed.

Some bars had raised platforms on which strippers writhed and slithered, their teeth and G-strings glowing purple in the black lights, their faces fixed in boredom. Men in tank tops and five o’clock shadows drank beer from bottles and watched the dancers. Imitation elegant women sipped cheap wine, or nursed soft drinks disguised to look like highballs, rousing themselves to smile at passing men, hoping to lure a trick. Aiming for seductive, they looked mostly tired.

The saddest were the women at the borders of this flesh trade life, those just crossing the start and finish lines. There were the painfully young, some still flying the colors of puberty. Some were out for fun and a quick buck, others were escaping some private hell at home. Their stories had a central theme. Hustle long enough to make a stake, then on to a respectable life. Adventurers and runaways, they’d arrive by bus from Ste. Thérèse and Val d’Or, from Valleyfield and Pointe-du-Lac. They came with gleaming hair and fresh faces, confident of their immortality, certain of their ability to control the future. The pot and the coke were just a lark. They never recognized them as the first rungs on a ladder of desperation until they were too high up to get off except by falling.

Then there were those who’d managed to grow old. Only the truly canny and exceptionally strong had prospered and gotten out. The ill and weak were dead. The strong-bodied but weak-willed endured. They saw the future, and accepted it. They would die in the streets because they knew nothing else. Or because they loved or feared some man enough to peddle ass to buy his dope. Or because they needed food to eat and a place to sleep.

I appealed to those entering or those leaving the sisterhood. I avoided the senior generation, the hardened and street smart, still able to rule their patches just as they in turn were ruled by their pimps. Perhaps the young, naive and defiant, or the old, jaded and spent, might be more open. Wrong. In bar after bar they turned away from me, allowing my questions to dissolve into the smoky air. The code of silence held. No access to strangers.

By three-fifteen I’d had it. My hair and clothes smelled of tobacco and reefer, and my shoes of beer. I’d downed enough Sprite to reclaim the Kalahari, and my eyes were seeded with gravel. Leaving yet another loony on yet another bar, I gave up.

T
HE AIR HAD THE TEXTURE OF DEW
. A
MIST HAD RISEN FROM THE
river, and tiny droplets sparkled like glitter in the streetlights. The chill and damp felt good against my skin. A knot of pain between my neck and shoulder blades made me suspect I’d been tensed for hours, coiled and ready to bolt. Maybe I had been. If so, the tension came only in part from my search for Gabby. Approaching the hookers had grown routine. So had their rejection. Fending off the cruisers and the gropers had become a reflex response.

It was the battle inside that was wearing me down. I’d spent four hours fighting off an old lover, a lover from whom I’d never be free. All night I’d gazed temptation in the face—the chestnut glow of scotch on ice, the amber beer poured from bottles into throats. I’d smelled my moonshine sweetheart and seen his light in the eyes around me. I’d loved it once. Hell, I loved it still. But the enchantment would destruct. For me, any trifling dalliance and the affair would consume and overpower. So I’d walked away from it, with twelve slow steps. And I had stayed away. Having been lovers, we could never be friends. Tonight we’d almost been thrown into each other’s arms.

I breathed deeply. The air was a cocktail of motor oil, wet cement, and fermenting yeast from the Molson brewery. Ste. Catherine was almost deserted. An old man in a tuque and parka slumbered against a storefront, a scruffy mongrel at his side. Another sorted through trash on the far side of the street. Perhaps there was a third shift on the Main.

Discouraged and exhausted, I headed toward St. Laurent. I’d tried. If Gabby was in trouble, these folks would not help me reach her. This club was as closed as the Junior League.

I passed the My Kinh. A sign above the window advertised CUISINE VIETNAMIENNE, and promised it all night. I glanced through the grimy glass with little interest, then stopped. Seated at a rear booth was Poirette’s companion, her hair still frozen in an apricot pagoda. I watched her for a moment.

She dipped an egg roll into a cherry red sauce, then raised it to her mouth and licked the tip. After a moment she inspected the roll, then nibbled at the wrapping with her front teeth. She dipped again, and repeated the maneuver without hurry. I wondered how long she’d been working that egg roll.

No. Yes. It’s too late. Hell. One last shot. I pushed open the door, and entered.

“Hi.”

Her hand jumped at the sound of my voice. She looked puzzled at first, then relieved, as recognition surfaced.

“Hey, chère. You still out?” She returned to her roll.

“May I join you?”

“Suit yourself. You’re not working my ground, sugar, I got no grievance with you.”

I slid into the booth. She was older than I’d thought, late thirties, maybe early forties. Though the skin on her throat and forehead was taut and there were no bags under her eyes, in the harsh fluorescent light I could see small creases radiating from her lips. Her jawline was beginning to sag.

The waiter brought a menu and I ordered Soupe Tonqinoise. I wasn’t hungry, but I wanted an excuse to stay.

“You find your friend, chère?” She reached for her coffee, and the plastic bracelets on her wrist clacked. I could see gray scar lines across her inner elbow.

“No.”

We waited while an Asian boy of about fifteen brought water and a paper place mat.

“I’m Tempe Brennan.”

“I remember. Jewel Tambeaux may hawk pussy, darlin’, but she’s not stupid.” She licked at the egg roll.

“Ms. Tambeaux, I—”

“You call me Jewel, baby.”

“Jewel, I just spent four hours trying to find out if a friend is all right, and no one will even admit they’ve heard of her. Gabby’s been coming down here for
years
so I’m sure they know who I’m talking about.”

“Might be they do, chère. But they got no idea why you askin’.” She put down the roll, and drank the coffee with a soft slurping sound.

“I gave you my card. I’m not hiding who I am.”

She looked at me hard for a moment. The smell of drugstore cologne, smoke, and unwashed hair floated from her and filled the small booth. The neck of her halter was rimmed with makeup.

“Who
are
you, Miss ‘Person with a Card Says Tempe Brennan’? You heat? You inta some kind of weird hustle?” It came out sounding like “wired.” “You someone got a grudge?” As she spoke she raised one long, red talon from her cup and pointed it at me, emphasizing each possibility.

“Do I look like a threat to Gabby?”

“All folks know, chère, is you’re down here in your Charlotte Hornets sweatshirt and Yuppie sandals, and you’re asking a lot of questions, trying real hard to shake someone loose. You ain’t pussy on the hoof and you ain’t trying to score rock. Folks don’t know where to put you.”

The waiter brought my soup and we sat in silence while I squeezed small cubes of lime and added red pepper paste with a tiny china spoon. As I ate, I watched Jewel nibble her egg roll. I decided to try humble.

“I guess I went about it all wrong.”

She raised hazel eyes to me. One false lash had loosened, and it curved upward on her lid, like a millipede rising to test the air. Dropping her eyes, she laid down the remains of the egg roll, and slid her coffee directly in front of her.

“You’re right. I shouldn’t have just charged up to people and started asking questions. It’s just that I’m worried about Gabby. I’ve called her apartment. I’ve stopped by. I’ve called her at school. No one seems to know where she is. It’s not like her.”

I took a spoonful of soup. It tasted better than I’d anticipated.

“What’s your friend Gabby do?”

“She’s an anthropologist. She studies people. She’s interested in life down here.”

“Coming of Age on the Main.”

She laughed to herself, watching carefully for my response to the Margaret Mead reference. I gave none, but began to agree that Jewel Tambeaux was no dummy. I sensed I was being tested.

“Maybe she doesn’t want to be found right now.”

You may open your exam booklets.

“Maybe.”

“So what’s the problem?”

You may pick up your pencils.

“She seemed very troubled the last time I was with her. Scared, almost.”

“Troubled ’bout what, sugar?”

Ready.

“Some guy she thought was following her. Said he was strange.”