The Map of Moments (26 page)

Three big army trucks rolled along the street. Max stood in a doorway, leaning against the sunburned painted door and watching the vehicles trundle past. They carried nothing that he could make out, and he caught the eye of
one driver. He was young, maybe twenty, and he tried to stare Max down, his eyes screaming,
You haven't seen the things I've seen!
But Max stared back and won, because the driver was wrong.

As the trucks rolled away, he looked around, startled. He'd been careless; the sound of the trucks’ engines could have masked anyone approaching, and here in the doorway he was exposed. Max moved along the street and ducked through some wrought-iron gates, traversing a small courtyard and passing into a narrow walkway between two tall buildings. He emerged onto another street and turned left.

Back there in the Beauregard-Keyes House, would Coco be remembering the slaughter from so long ago? Ducking through that house, maybe for the first time in seventy years, would he be recalling the blood and pain and death brought down upon them by the ghosts that haunted that old, old place? How Coco could be so old was a mystery that Max was doing his best to ignore right now, because it made the shadows growing across the streets seem even darker, and gave the buildings he passed a sense of dread that he could not shake. He heard Charlie say,
You've pissed off Mireault,
and shook his head to lose the echo.

He doesn't have a grave.
Charlie had said that, too.
He'll never need one.

Mireault might not be immortal, but if he'd been alive still in 1935, how much harder was it to believe he could still be drawing breath now, seventy years later? And Coco, seventy years ago, looking just as he did now?

Max ran, and he thought about the other familiar face he'd seen in that house.

Ray. It
had
been him, passing beyond that door like a ghost himself. But had that still been part of the Moment? Max tried to pinpoint the exact time when the replayed past had turned once again into the rolling present, but he was confused now, and afraid.

At the end of a street, with two-story buildings crouching on either side and the smells of cooking and beer wafting from open doors, Max heard a shout. He ducked sideways and stood among some scattered tables below a balcony, looking back the way he had come.
They can't have found me!
he thought. He'd run fast, turning this way and that, and however well they knew the city—

Because they think the city is theirs!
Charlie had shouted.
Its
people
are theirs!

—they would have no idea which way he'd gone.

“Unless the ghosts told them,” Max muttered.

“You don't wanna mess with old ghosts, honey,” a woman's voice said. Max looked through the doorway behind him and saw an old black woman sitting at a café table, a bowl of fried shrimp before her. She smiled at him, and it lit up her whole face.

“Not much choice,” Max said.

“Oh,” the woman said; her smile vanished, face dropping, as if he'd told her he had two weeks left to live. She glanced down at his bloodied shirt, then back up at his face. “Then I'm sorry.”

“Is there a back way?” Max said, nodding into the café.

“Depends who you're backin’ away from.”

If he said,
The Tordu,
he was certain that things would
change. So he merely smiled his thanks at the woman and ducked inside. It was a sparse, simple place, unadorned by the usual tourist trappings, and the smells of honest food set his stomach rumbling. After all he had seen, all that had happened, Max still felt hungry. He almost laughed, and it felt good. It felt normal.

Past the restrooms, past an open door looking into a shady kitchen, the back door stood propped open with a chair. He stepped out into a narrow alleyway, piled here and there with bags of refuse. A couple of rats darted away from him, fast shadows in the dusky light. A dog worried a bag farther along the alley. It cast him a baleful glance before returning to its foraging.

He listened for voices and footsteps, but the noises that came to him did not seem out of place here: the crashing of pans; a dog barking; someone raising their voice; someone else laughing.

Max decided to double back on himself, turning left along the alley and walking cautiously until it spilled out onto a street. And there in that alley mouth he waited, watching and listening, wondering just what the hell he would do next.

His life was full of questions and dangers. And with every question he answered, two more arose in its place.

His exclusive, one-way viewing of these significant Moments in New Orleans’ history appeared to be compromised now. Back in the plague hospital, the Tordu man had seemed to sense something amiss. And in the Beauregard-Keyes House, both Mireault and the sacrificial victim had
looked directly at him. What they had seen he could not guess. Not a whole, solid person, certainly, because Coco would have never let a witness live through that.

Next time, perhaps they would see more.

He backed away from the street and sat on a cold concrete step. He could see out into the street from here, but now that darkness had fallen, he hoped that no one could see this far in. Street lamps were lit, and a few bars and restaurants tried their best to stay in business. The French Quarter was still alive. He smelled food again and his stomach rumbled, but the next time he breathed in he smelled spilled blood and vinegar.

He'd seen Coco taking that boy's organs.

He sighed and leaned back against the steel door. When he closed his eyes, Gabrielle's image leapt out, surprising him with her easy smile and the way her hair always fell over one eye, however much she swept it back. He felt a sudden rush of love for her, and for a beat it was as if she were still there. His eyes snapped open and he felt the loss again, raw and harsh.

Two men walked past the mouth of the alley, talking in hushed tones, and Max sank lower so that he could not be seen. He peered from the shadows, and the men were unknown to him. When they passed the alley he missed their voices. He missed the ease with which they walked the streets, their casual acceptance of the night, and the friendship that seemed obvious between them. Once again, the city made him feel alone.

“Up,” a voice whispered, so quietly that Max frowned and tilted his head to one side. “Up,” it said again. And he felt the point of a blade touch his neck below the jaw.

Slowly, Max pushed himself up, pressed face-first against the metal door. He tried to turn, but the man behind him growled and nicked him with the knife.

Max felt the cool dribble of blood down his neck. He sniffed; this was not Coco. The car driver, then? Or the fat man from the back? If it was the driver, he'd seen the man nursing his head after the collision, so there could be a weakness there. If it was the fat man—

A fist crunched against his back, driving white-hot pain through his kidneys and around his torso. Max groaned and went to his knees, crying out when the knife touched his neck again.

“I said
up
!” the man said. He smelled of garlic and whiskey, cigarettes and sweat, and Max could tell that he'd been running.

How far behind are the others?

Max stood, hands raised in supplication, knowing that he had to get away.

Had they split up to look for him?

He leaned against the door, gasping as the pain settled into his side and back.

Were Coco and this goon in touch?

“Face the fucking door.”

Max leaned against the door and heard a voice behind it, shouting very faintly.

“What's that in your pocket?”

Max glanced back at the man, taking the opportunity to press his ear to the door. Clanging, metal on metal, shouting, bustle …it sounded like a busy kitchen. “A map.”

The fat man grunted and plucked the map from Max's
pocket. He wiped sweat from his big round head, flicking the droplets across Max's face and smiling. “What sort of map?”

“A magic one.”

The fat guy's smile dropped from his face. Something flashed in Max's eye, and then the tip of the knife was pressed to his lower eyelid. Max rose onto his tiptoes but the knife followed him up, never more than half an inch away from his eye.

“Don't fuck with me, dead man,” Fat Man said. “My brother's legs are shattered, they say he won't walk again, if he even lives. But Coco told me he don't want you dead. Least, not yet. But that doesn't mean I can't …cut you a bit. Soften you up for his questions. ’Cos he has plenty of questions for you, dead man.”

Don't push don't push don't push,
Max thought, feeling the knife's tip touch his inner eyelid.

Fat Man eased back on the knife, and when Max sighed with relief and lowered himself down, Fat Man flicked the blade.

Max gasped, from shock more than anything else. He felt a drizzle of blood on his face, and then the stinging came in, and the pain, like intense heat or extreme cold pressed in a line on his cheek.

His heart thumped quicker, and fear and anger sharpened his senses.

“What are you—?” he began.

Fat Man pointed the knife at his face. “You don't ask any fuckin’ questions here. Got that?”

Max nodded, resting his head back against the door.

“Now be a good dead man while I give my friends a call.” Fat Man took a cell phone from his pocket and flipped it open, knife still pointing at Max's face.

Max heard footsteps approaching beyond the door, echoing, setting the metal vibrating. A voice called inside, Max felt the door shake as bolts were drawn back, and a man laughed, deep and hearty.

Fat Man was dialing a number, frowning, large fingers clumsy on the small keypad.

The metal door shifted, and Max made sure he had his balance.

“Your brother screamed like a pussy when I ran him down.”

Fat Man's eyes went wide.

The door swung inward, away from him, and Max let himself fall forward onto his hands and knees, twisting and kicking up at Fat Man's hand.

The guy who'd opened the door jumped backward, shouting in surprise.

Fat Man's knife hand was thrown back by the force of Max's kick, but he held on to the blade, fumbling and dropping the phone from his other hand instead.

Once again, Max was faced with a sudden choice: flight, through the kitchens and out into the streets once more; or fight. And he was sick of running.

He stood and swung, his fist glancing from Fat Man's cheek, thumbnail ripping his ear open. The man screeched and stumbled back, and Max heard the crunch of plastic as the man stepped on his own phone.

Behind Max, the man who had opened the door was
already retreating back inside the building, the door swinging shut. The man said nothing, but he moved quickly. Max didn't have long.

Fat Man started to swing the knife around again but Max shouldered him in the chest, reached up, and caught his forearm, gripping hard. He planted his feet and spun around, twisting the guy's arm as far and as hard as he could.

He heard a crack, and Fat Man screamed. Max had never done anything like this before. He'd had a fight in fifth grade when his combatant and he had both been sent to the head teacher with blood streaming from their noses. And once, out in Boston with a group of college friends, he'd helped break up a drunken scuffle between two of them, and a flailing fist had caught him in the mouth and made his lip bleed. But that was the sum of violence in his life. He didn't know how to hurt, and the thought of doing it had always been reprehensible to him.

But the Fat Man had grinned as he flicked the knife across Max's face. He had called him “dead man.” And something deeper than memory, something more allied with instinct, kicked in.

Max let go of the man's arm and pushed. Fat Man shuffled backwards and hit the wall, grimacing as his useless right arm flapped at his side. Max stormed forward, aiming a kick at the man's balls and missing, but following up with punches to his face and neck. It was pathetic. Fat Man's knife gone, his arm out of action, he snotted and sniveled, and in what seemed like seconds he was begging for Max to stop. But to stop would be a mistake, Max knew, and he
punched again and again. Fat Man slid to the ground, and Max kicked him in the face.

At last he stepped back. It could have been seconds or minutes, but the red mist of fight and fury lifted as quickly as it had arrived.

Fat Man started laughing. Each time his chest rose and fell Max heard something click, and blood bubbled at his cut and swollen mouth, his eyes seeing little. The beaten man lifted his good hand to his neck and laughed some more, shaking his head as if he'd heard the funniest joke ever told.

“What's so goddamn funny?” Max demanded, unnerved.

The man pointed at him first, and then with great effort his lips parted in a grin, splitting and spilling more blood down his slick jaw. “Dead …man.”

Max glanced around. The metal door to the restaurant kitchens was still open, though there was no sign of any curious faces inside.
Someone else's problem,
he thought. In the borrowed streetlight he could see Fat Man's crushed phone, like a huge beetle someone had trodden on. He looked around, and moments later he saw the glint of the fallen knife.

He snatched up the weapon and knelt before the man, knowing even then that he could never kill. But he had to convey the possibility that he would.

Max pressed the knife beneath one of the Fat Man's eyes, reversing the situation from minutes before. “What did Gabrielle Doucette have to do with the Tordu?”

Fat Man smiled, and a croaky giggle escaped him.

“I'm going to kill you in five seconds if you don't start
talking,” Max said. “Tell me about Coco, the Tordu, Gabrielle, and why you do what you do to people. What's the point of it all? Tell me, or in five seconds I'll cut your throat and watch you bleed to death. One.”

Fat Man stared at him with one partly-open eye.

“Two.”

A car passed by the end of the alley, and Max glanced up. Police car. It did not stop. He looked back down at Fat Man, whose smile had disappeared.