The Lazarus Heart (24 page)

"I just don't want to get shot because somebody has to take a dump, you know?" "Then we better get this over with quickly, Detective."

"Jesus," Frank says again. "Would you believe this is the second time in the past twenty-four hours someone's pulled a gun on me in the John?"

"You're investigating the murder in Audubon Park this morning, aren't you?" The man gets up slowly, keeping the barrel of the gun pointed at Frank's chest. The crow caws loudly and flaps its wings.

"I guess the bird's yours, huh?" Frank asks, sparing another glance at the crow. "Something like that. Now answer the question."

"Yeah, me and my partner got that one. Sure. Now will you please point that fucking cannon somewhere else?"

The gun doesn't move an inch, and Frank tries to concentrate on being a cop, not just some scared asshole with a shotgun aimed at him. He notes the man isn't wearing a shirt under the jacket. No shoes either. He's wearing ragged black pants that might have been nice once. There's a pool of water at his feet, dripping off his body.

"You think it's the Bourbon Street Ripper, don't you?" the man says, but Frank's looking at the little window. Too small and too far off the ground for someone to climb through. And besides, it's locked from the inside. The rain beats on the dirty, fly-blown glass.

"What do you think?" Frank asks the man. "I think you're stalling."

"No, I'm just trying to figure out how the fuck you got in here without someone seeing you. You and that bird aren't really what I'd call inconspicuous."

"It's a long story, and believe me, you wouldn't buy it if I did tell you. Now answer the question, Detective. Do you think the body in the park this morning was a victim of the Ripper or not?"

Frank nods slowly. "Maybe. I'm waiting to see what the autopsy turns up."

"So you think the Ripper's still out there? That Jared Poe wasn't the killer after all?" Frank catches a glint of anger in the man's voice now, like sunlight off the blade of a knife.

"That's not exactly what I said."

"But is it what you
think?"
the man growls, and the crow caws again. Frank sighs and looks at the bottle of Jack in his shaking left hand.

"You mind if I have a drink of this first?" he asks, and the man says no, so Frank takes a drink. Courage in a bottle. Right now that's precisely what he needs, because he's pretty goddamn sure there's no way this freak's just going to let him walk away no matter how many questions he answers.

Frank sets the bottle on the edge of the sink and wipes his mouth with the back of

one hand.

"We thought it was just a copycat," he says. "It still might be a copycat. I didn't work the Poe case or any of the Ripper murders. So I'm a little new to this shit."

And then he notices the drops of blood that have started falling from underneath the man's long coat, a crimson trickle mixing with the rainwater on the filthy tile floor.

"You're bleeding." Frank points at the drops. "Why don't you just tell me who the hell you are and maybe I can help you."

"We're both looking for the same killer, Frank Gray," the man in the leather hood says. "And I don't really give a shit which of us finds him first. But I want you to know this-Jared Poe didn't kill
anyone.
Not Benjamin DuBois or anybody else."

"Is that a fact?" Frank replies, looking toward the door again, trying to think of some way to buy a little more time. "You need a doctor," he says.

"No, Detective. I need a goddamn undertaker."

The door to the rest room opens and the crow cries out, leaps into the air, and seems somehow to fill the whole room with the sound of its wings. Frank ducks for cover, dives for one of the stalls, reaching back for his pistol as he moves. The stall door slams wide open and he bangs his knee against the porcelain edge of the toilet bowl. He crouches, waiting for the freak in the mask to pull the trigger, waiting for the killing thunder of the shotgun.

"What the fuck are you doing in here, Frank?" Wallace asks, peering cautiously into the stall. "Who were you talking to?"

Frank's heart sounds like a kettledrum in his ears and every cell in his body is drowning in adrenaline. He feels more sober than he has in weeks. He shakes his head and returns his gun to his shoulder holster.

"If you didn't see him I think I'd better just keep my mouth shut, Wally," he says. "You better not be gettin' the fuckin' DTs on me, Franklin. We got entirely too much

crazy shit goin' down already without you seein' ghosts in the little boys' room." Wallace reaches down to help Frank up from the floor. "The orders just came in to evacuate the whole goddamn parish.
Everyone."

"Wonderful," Frank mutters. There's something greasy on his hands from the floor and he pulls a wad of toilet paper from the roll to wipe them.

"That ain't all. And you ain't gonna even believe this other shit. They just found the DA over on St. Ann, sittin' in his car with his head blown off. Somebody used both barrels on him."

Frank has to sit down fast or he knows that he's going to fall. So he just sits on the toilet, still holding the wadded paper, and stares up at his partner.

The shotgun,
he thinks, and then, like tic-tac-toe:
Vince Norris and then Jim Unger.

And now John Harrod. . .

We're both looking for the same killer,
the man in the black hood said, the man with a crow. The man who must have walked out through the fucking wall.

"It's gonna be a long night, Franklin," Wallace says. "You might want to get some coffee in you while there's time. I just made a fresh pot."

"Yeah," Frank says. He can still hear the sound of the crow's wings, the velvet flutter loud as the storm. "That sounds like a good idea, Wally."

Jared stands on the roof and stares toward the river, toward the place where the river hides behind cold and colorless sheets of rain. His body parts the hurricane like the bow of a ship; there's something inside him that's even bigger, wilder than the whirling demon of water and wind. He holds the crow close to his body, sheltering it from the gales.

"Nobody got killed," he says. Lucrece is there somewhere, approving, but he doesn't need an answer. There's nothing left to do now but wait and hope the detective eventually leads him to the man who killed Benny.

The wind screams. Jared strokes the bird's smooth feathers with his gauze- swaddled hands.

Frank is filling a Styrofoam cup from Wallace's scalding pot of coffee when the telephone on his desk rings. He lets it ring two more times, and a fourth, taking a tentative sip of the bitter brew, before he picks up the receiver.

"Yeah," he says. For a second there is nothing but silence from the other end. "Hello?"

"Gray?" a voice asks. "Detective
Frank
Gray?" The voice is male-Frank's pretty sure of that- but high, soft, almost androgynous. He wonders if it's being electronically disguised. Frank sets the cup down on the edge of his desk. The coffee tastes almost as bad as he expected.

"Yeah," he says. "You got him. What can I do for you?"

Frank hears something dry, like paper being slowly crumpled between callused palms. The caller inhales loudly, draws a sharp, uneven breath.

"The homosexual police officer who was at the fountain this morning?"

The man drawls the word-"homo-sex-shul"- and Frank feels the sweat popping out all over his body, the cold, creeping sensation like icy spider feet up his spine

"What do you
want,
buddy?"

'To talk." The dry crackling sound comes through the receiver again.

"Yeah, well, I'm real short of conversation right now, so unless you fuckin' get to the point in the next five seconds I'm hanging up."

"You wouldn't want to do that," the man says.

"Why is that, buddy?" Frank asks. The sweat is starting to make him cold.

Another pause, and then, "'On the morrow
he
will leave me as my Hopes have flown before,'" the man says softly.

"Jesus," Frank whispers. "Who the fuck are you?" There's the dry sound again, and the voice continues.

"'Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
Doubtless,
said I,
"What it utters is its only stock and store..
."'"

"Look, freako. Tell me who you are or I'm hanging up right this fucking
minute"

"No," the man says, and Frank can hear him smiling. "No, you won't. Because I'm the man, aren't I, Frank Gray? Not poor Jared Poe. Me.
I'm
the
man"

"You're the fucker in the mask, aren't you?"

"I don't wear masks. Only They need masks. I have nothing left to conceal." "I'm hanging up now," Frank says.

"I don't think so. I'd listen if I were you. Unless you want the photographs to go to the media."

"Excuse me?" Frank sits down in his chair. There's no sign of Wallace, who was going down the hall for an update on the storm.

"Don't make me get sordid, Detective. I don't like to have to talk like that. To
say

those things aloud. But there are pictures. There have been plenty of opportunities . . ." "Listen, fucker-"

"My name is Lethe," the man says. "Joseph Lethe. The body you found this morning, that was my work, Frank Gray."

Frank holds the phone away from his face as if he's just discovered it's crawling with some contagion or filth, holds it a foot from his face and stares across the disorderly assembly of desks and typewriters. This phone isn't wired, even if there were time for a trace.

There have been plenty of opportunities,
the man said.

"Jesus H. fucking," Frank whispers, and hesitantly puts the phone to his ear again. "What do you want?"

"Good boy," the man says. "You want to know the truth, don't you, Frank?" "You're saying you put the body in the fountain?"

"Oh, I'm saying a lot more than that, Detective. But not yet. Not over the phone." And then the man named Joseph Lethe gives Frank an address and a time, and

Frank scribbles it quickly on an old deli napkin.

"I don't have to tell you to come alone, Frank. Or not to talk to anyone else about our little conversation."

"Yeah," Frank says. "There's a goddamn hurricane coming, you know?"

"It doesn't matter. I can't wait any longer," the man says. "But cheer up. You're going to be a hero. How many faggot cops get to be heroes? You should be happy."

"Why?" Frank asks. A fat drop of sweat falls from his forehead to the top of the desk.

"Because I'm tired. That's all. It's been a long time and I'm tired. I want to stop now.

They know who I am anyway, don't They? So what's the point in going on?" "But why me?"

"Because you're such a good boy, Frank. Because . . ." The voice trails off, is quiet for the time it takes Frank's heart to beat eight times and skip once.

"Mr. Lethe? Are you still there?"

"There was lightning here. Did you hear it?" The man sounds different now. The glee and smug self-assurance in his voice has been replaced by a distance, a sad uncertainty. "When I was a child, I was struck by lightning," he says. "I was struck..."

"I don't understand. Is that important?" Frank asks him. He sees Wallace coming back through the doorway from the hall, looking straight at Frank and shaking his head.

"Isn't it?" Joseph Lethe asks back, asks as though he really needs the answer.

Then the line goes dead and Frank hangs up the telephone.

"You don't even want to know," Wallace says, sitting down at his own desk across from Frank. "If those eggheads at the weather bureau are right, we're gonna be lookin' for a new job soon, 'cause there might not even
be
a New Orleans when Michael gets done with us."

"Yeah, look," Frank says, standing up, not sure his legs will hold him, but he's standing up anyway. That was my sister on the phone, Wally. There's a family

emergency and I have to go. I'll meet you back here later."

Frank takes his raincoat off the coat rack near the radiator, where it's been drying since they got back from Metairie.

"You never told me you had a sister, Frank."

"We're not really very close," Frank replies, already halfway to the door. "You don't tell me shit, Franklin. You don't tell me anything unless I ask . . ."

But then Frank's in the hallway and there are other voices, people getting ready for the storm, and he can't hear Wallace anymore. On his way to

the car he remembers why the name Joseph Lethe sounded familiar. Something he had to read for high school, a book on Greek mythology, and it named the five rivers that divide the underworld from the world of the living. One of them was the River Lethe, the river of forgetfulness.

Joseph Lethe pulls off the tissue paper cover he put over the receiver to protect him from germs and nanites. He hangs up the pay phone, wads the paper, and lets it fall toward the wet asphalt of the parking lot. The wind grabs it and whisks it off before it can hit the ground. He watches it flying away, sailing high over the roofs of the few cars parked outside the K&B, into the low, uneasy sky.

"I was struck," he says again, wondering how long until there will be more lightning. "I was struck."

And it's true. When he was a boy, barely eight years old and living with his family in Houma.
Don't stand under a tree when it storms,
his grandfather had said. His grandfather had told him that lots of times. But once there had been a thunderstorm and he forgot and hid beneath an old oak for shelter. The white fire came down and split the tree in two, cleaved it open and flowed through the earth into him. He can still remember that instant when he was full of fire. He came to some time later, lying in the rain, and someone had been standing over him, asking him his name over and over.
Do you know your name, boy? Can you tell me your name?

But the lightning had left something inside him, something small and hard inside his head, and he
couldn't
remember his name. He knew other things, though. New things the lightning had wanted him to know. But not his name. That was part of the cost, his name. And he could never wear a watch after that, and compass needles acted funny when he was around. He didn't tell his parents, made the man asking his name promise not to tell, because he was okay and there was no need to tell them, was there? But they knew he was different after that day. They looked at him differently and spoke to him differently.