The Nimble Man (A Novel of the Menagerie) (6 page)

"Vampire," it growled in disgust, slapping her
viciously away, the sharp protrusions that adorned its body shredding the soft
suede of her Italian coat as well as the delicate pale flesh beneath.

Eve rolled across the filthy floor and came up quickly,
coiled upon her haunches. She felt the bestial side of her nature awaken, the
canines elongating within her mouth, fingernails curling to talons.

"Did I forget to mention how much I hate that fucking
word," she spat, and she lunged at her foe, a thirst for the blood of her
enemy taking her to the brink of madness.

It was a place she had been so many times before.

A stray cat with fur the color of copper and one white ear
trotted along Rue Dauphine, darting out of the paths of tourists strolling the
New Orleans streets and sniffing at air redolent with the aromas of the city's
famous cuisine. Most people did not even notice the stray. Despite the glitter
of its later development, in its heart it was still an old city at heart, home
to countless rats, and stray cats were not only inevitable in such an environment,
but welcome. An old Cajun man sat on the stoop in front of a barbershop whose
window frames were badly in need of a new coat of paint. He called out to the
cat as it passed, almost as though the two were old friends. Otherwise the
stray went on without interruption.

If anyone had taken enough interest they might have observed
that the cat seemed far more single-minded than most of its species. Rather
than wandering, lured by tempting smells or idle curiosity, it seemed to have
purpose.

Most of the traffic in the French Quarter was on foot. Quickly,
though, the stray was moving away from the core of the Quarter, and there were
more cars rumbling by and fewer people on the sidewalks. There were children
searching for summertime diversions, but none of the street performers who
livened up the cobblestones of the Quarter.

Soon the stray left Rue Dauphine and began a winding journey
that took it past buildings that had been beautiful once, their balconies and
facades elegant and proud. Now they were falling apart, paint faded and
cracked, and where there might once have been flower pots upon the balconies or
outside of windows there were now cases of empty beer bottles and washing hung
out to dry.

On a corner, the cat paused and perched on its haunches,
staring first into the air above it at something visible only to its eyes, then
across the street at a barroom called Charmaigne's. Only the first half of its
neon sign was glowing, and even that was dim in the sunlight. A pair of police
cars were parked askew in front of the place and across the street was a third
car, this one with no police markings but with a blue light spinning behind the
rear windshield.

No spectators had gathered on the sidewalk outside the
barroom. It wasn't that kind of neighborhood.

The cat stared for a long minute at the grimy plate glass
windows of Charmaigne's. The barroom door was propped open with a cinderblock
but with the sunshine so bright it was only darkness inside. At length the
stray set of across the street. It paused beside one of the New Orleans P.D.
squad cars, then slipped beneath the vehicle. The cars had been there long
enough that the engine was not even warm above the stray.

With a practiced, feline nonchalance, the cat went up onto
the sidewalk and slipped into the steamy, fan-swirled gloom inside Charmaigne's.
Two uniformed police officers stood just inside the door on either side, as
though they were concerned someone might try to escape the stale beer and bad
cigar stink of the place. A third officer stood in the center of the barroom
with a man in a white shirt with rolled-up cuffs and a loosened black tie. His
hair had been cut with a military severity and he wore a gun on one hip, a
badge clipped to the other.

At their feet was the corpse of a boy, perhaps fifteen years
of age, who lay on his belly in a pool of his own blood. His face was sideways,
one cheek on the floor in the coagulating crimson, the other turned upward, the
diffuse sunlight in the darkened barroom creating an otherworldly sheen upon
his ebony skin. He was not the only corpse in Charmaigne's. Behind the bar
there was a second dead man, a wiry former fighter named Calvin Traviligni,
known to most as Trav. Trav had tended bar at Charmaigne's for seventeen years
and had taken a bullet to the face, crashed into a rack of bottles and died in
a puddle of broken glass and a potpourri of spilled whiskey, vodka, rum and
gin. No liqeuers. Nobody in this part of town drank that shit.

At the back of the room a fourth uniformed officer sat with
a young black girl who wore too much make up. Old before her time, Jaalisa had
been on her way home after a long night on the only job she'd ever known, a job
her father had first given her, and heard the shots. Saw a car tearing off down
the street. She insisted to the officer that she had seen nothing more.

The stray took all of this in immediately and it darted
across the room and slide along the base of the bar beneath the lazily whirling
fans. The beer and cigar smells were ingrained in the wood, but the new scent of
fresh blood hung in the air like a fresh coat of hell's own paint. The cat was
skittish at the smell of blood but did not let its instincts turn it away. The
plainclothes cop, a detective, noticed it, and the cat noticed him noticing,
but they ignored one another.

At the back of the bar the cat went to a corner booth that
was draped in shadows, not far at all from where Jaalisa was being interviewed,
squeezed for some vital detail that might make this crime more than a
statistic. The stray leaped up onto the bench of that booth and sat down.

And then it changed.

The only sound was a low rush of air, like a man inhaling
suddenly. Flesh rippled and bone stretched with impossibly fluidity. Where the
cat had been, Clay Smith now sat staring at Sergeant John Brodsky, the
uniformed cop who had called him down here in the first place.

Déjà vu. Clay had first been in Charmaigne's forty-seven
minutes earlier. He and Brodsky had a passing acquaintance based almost
entirely upon Clay's reputation. He wasn't a private investigator, but for a
wealthy resident of the Quarter he had found himself in the midst of enough
murder investigations in recent years — and was invaluable in solving
nearly all of them — that some of the members of the N.O.P.D. had come to
rely upon him. Other cops, however, detectives in particular, despised him.

Clay didn't mind. It was never about being liked.

A call on his mobile phone from Brodsky had brought him to
Charmaigne's before the department had sent a homicide detective down. That was
better for everyone, politics-wise. He had talked to Brodsky, heard about
Jaalisa's 911 call, the deaths of Trav and the kid on the floor, and nodded
once.

Then he had gone to work.

Someone had gunned the kid in the doorway while Trav was
getting the place cleaned up for business. The bartender always came in early
to wash the floor, wipe down the tables, all the things that nobody wanted to
do when they were closing up at 3 a.m. The kid — whom no one had
identified yet — had obviously run in through the door and then been shot
in the back. Trav had been a witness, and witnesses have a very short life
expectancy.

Clay had examined both bodies without touching them. He had
made a show of considering the crime scene. But that was just for the sake of
the cops who were watching him, trying to figure out how he did it.

They couldn't see the tether.

The souls of murder victims never passed on to the
afterworld immediately. Always, they clung to their victims for a time, crying
out for vengeance, perhaps hoping someone will hear their anguish. If Clay
reached the victim within the first few hours after their murder he could still
see the tether, an ethereal trail of ectoplasm that stretched from the hollow
shell that had been the victim's flesh all the way to the current location of
the soul.

The soul that was attached like a lamprey to its killer.

Clay had followed the tether out the door of Charmaigne's
and then on a twisting path through the French Quarter. Eventually, it had led
him back here.

The voices of the policemen and the tired, hard-edged words
of the prostitute seemed like church whispers as they drifted through the bar. Clay
slid from the rear booth and stood up, black shoes scuffing the floor. He wore
tan chinos and a simple, v-necked navy blue t-shirt and his hair was freshly
cut. In this neighborhood he would have stood out, been noticed by everyone he
passed. But nobody had noticed a stray cat with copper fur and one white ear.

Clay started toward the front of the bar.

Sergeant Brodsky looked up sharply from questioning Jaalisa,
notepad and pen in his hands, and he frowned deeply, then stood up and moved to
block Clay's path.

"I didn't even see you come in," Brodsky said.

The man had a round little keg of a beer gut and his slumped
even when standing, but his eyes were bright and intelligent. He only looked
the part of the fool. Even now there was something in his voice that suggested
that he knew there was something unusual, even unnatural, about Clay Smith, but
he would say no more about it.

"You weren't supposed to," Clay told him with a
smile.

Brodsky processed that a moment, eyes narrowing. Then he
nodded. "You find anything?"
"Yes. Your perp."

Closer to the front door, the plainclothes detective cleared
his throat. "Sergeant, what the hell is this?" He strode toward them,
shoes rapping the pitted wood floor. "Where the hell did this guy come
from?"

The detective was pale, with dark circles beneath his eyes. He
had probably not been drinking yet today, but the stale smell of alcohol exuded
from his pores. There were sweat rings forming under his arms and the white
shirt looked rumpled as though he might have slept in it.

"Lieutenant Pete Landry, meet Clay Smith," Brodsky
said. "He's here to help."

The Lieutenant's nostrils flared and he stared at Clay. "You're
him."

"Yes."

"He's got a lead on the perp," Brodsky offered,
making a game attempt to defuse the tension.

"Oh, he does, huh?" The Lieutenant rolled his eyes
and reached into his shirt pocket to pull out a pack of cigarettes. He tapped
one out, dragging the moment, and fished into his pants for a lighter. When he
snapped it open and set fire to the end of the cigarette, he gazed at Clay
through the flame, then clicked the lighter shut.

"So, give, genius. Who killed Travaligni and the kid?"

Clay did not smile. Instead, he stared at the wretched,
silently screaming ghosts that clung to Pete Landry, tearing at him with
insubstantial fingers. Trav the bartender was there. And the kid. But there
were others as well. An attractive, middle-aged woman, a thug with cruel eyes,
an old man whose spectral body seemed contorted somehow.

"Come on, Lieutenant," Clay said. "You did. You
killed them."

The hand holding the cigarette to Landry's lips shook and
dropped away from his mouth.

"Christ, Clay!" Brodsky snapped. "What the
hell are you —"

"The kid had something on you, saw you do something
else you shouldn't have been doing. Or maybe he was a runner for you. What are
you supplying on this block, Pete? Crack? Heroin? He pissed you off, this kid. And
the fool bartender, he should've slept in, just this once, but his work ethic
wouldn't let him."

The other uniformed officers had begun to slide toward them
now, drawn by the words and by the way the air in the bar had grown suddenly
heavier.

The Lieutenant hesitated only another moment, then put the
cigarette to his lips again and took a long drag as his colleagues watched him
in confusion and doubt. He let a plume of smoke out the side of his mouth and
then glanced around at the uniforms.

"Who the fuck does this guy think he is? Come in here,
making accusations like that."

Clay glanced at Brodsky again. "I doubt he used his
police issue. But I also figure he's arrogant enough not to have dumped the gun
he did use. Check under the seats of his car, maybe the trunk, I think you'll
find it. I also think if you check his hands you'll find residue."

Lieutenant Landry snorted and shook his head, tendrils of
smoke rising up to the fan spinning above them. "You got some balls, you. But
you watch too many movies."

Brodsky wasn't gaping anymore. The look on his face had gone
from incredulous to darkly inquisitive.

"Then you won't mind if Gage and Caleb over there take
a look in your car, right Lieutenant?" the Sergeant asked.

The man laughed. "Damn, boys, y'all can do whatever you
want." He nodded toward the two uniforms in question, gestured toward the
door. "Go on, boys. Have yourselves a time."

They hesitated only a moment, then glanced at Brodsky, who
nodded once. Then the two cops went out the door at a run.

"Jaalisa," Brodsky said, "you want to take a
look out the door at the car across the street?"

The prostitute did not seem at all tired anymore. Her eyes
were wide and her chest rose and fell as though she were breathing for two. She
stared at Pete Landry for a long moment and he took a long drag on his
cigarette, its tip burning red in the darkened bar. Jaalisa shook her head.

"No, sir. I don't think I do."

The Lieutenant cleared his throat again, drawing Brodsky's
attention. Clay watched as he took a step nearer the sergeant.

"Things ain't never gonna be the same for you after
this, Johnny," Landry said, the words a grim promise. "Not ever. And
this asshole's not going to find the Quarter real hospitable either. You
embarrass me like this? Make a fool out of me? You're the damn fool."

Brodsky's partner, the only other cop still in the bar, had
moved toward the door to watch Caleb and Gage. When he spoke it was so low as
to be barely audible, and yet the words resounded through the bar.