Aunt Helen—“Hell,” she liked to be called—had by then turned this cycle into a way of life. The hangover would start to gather about the time the coffee was perking, so she’d spike it with a gin Bloody Mary and get on with life. I sincerely hope she outlives us all.
That breakfast had started out airy and French, a soufflé made with berries, and then anchored with hot Andouille sausage and fried potatoes, washed down with imported beer. I don’t think I had eaten better in my life at that time, and have only a few times since.
Of course this visit to the Big Easy was going to be less festive. Not easy.
After eighteen hours on the bus, sleeping fitfully after I finished the short Hunter chapter, I was ready for a little walk. The ticketmeister drew me a map on a three-by-five card and said it was a little more than a mile. It was not quite eleven, and I’d told Kit “about noon,” so I set out into the gathering heat.
Quite a bit of foot traffic, but it wasn’t unpleasant, tourists happy to be where they were, not yet sweltering and cross. I resisted the automatic reflex to take out the cell and check for calls, or call Kit to reassure her. They’re probably listening; why make it easy for them?
Of course there was a chance we had lost them now. In my mind’s eye I could visualize them crawling over Kit’s car, looking for clues. There wasn’t one molecule of evidence that we were going to New Orleans. They would find the directions to Baton Rouge, crumpled up and kicked under the seat, but otherwise I hoped our trail stopped there, in the long-term lot outside the St. Louis airport.
They would get the rifle. That gave me a little chill. Would they bench test it without first checking—lock and load and fire the second round into the blocked barrel? If it killed or injured some DHS or FBI agent, they would probably up the ante. If it was the people who’d supplied the rifle in the first place, who knows? They wouldn’t have any reason to test-fire it. Maybe it would show up in our motel room in Key West, still fatally booby trapped.
The line for Brennan’s was half a block long. After a minute or two, long enough for me to fall into a reverie, Kit tapped me on the shoulder. “Hey, sailor—new in town?”
We kissed and she steered me across the street to a place with tables in the front garden. She’d already gotten us a table and a carafe of coffee.
The coffee was strong and bitter with chicory. Thick real cream and honey to take the edge off. A waiter came over immediately and I ordered a beer and a pile of sausage and bacon.
“Breakfast of champignons?”
“Living on candy and carbs, on the bus,” I said. “Dreaming of that sausage.”
“And coming up with a master plan, I hope.”
“I have some ideas. You?”
“One you won’t like.”
In other words, one I’d better accept. “What?”
“We should both change our appearance radically. Look like we belong in the Quarter. Chop my hair short and dye it, go butch.”
“I love your hair.”
“It’ll grow back. Likewise you: off with the beard and moustache, and shave your head.”
“Shave my head? I’d look fucking gay.”
She nodded, expressionless. “Look around. Black jeans and tight black T-shirt, little earring. You get hit on, just say no. I do it all the time.”
I couldn’t argue with the logic. If your appearance gives off a specific sexual signal, most people won’t see anything else. “And then we get fake IDs?”
“You said this would be the place.”
“Yeah. True.” Maybe I could go home for just one minute and grab the file of notes I had on the subject, for the novel. “Smoke shop, head shop, is the place if you don’t need anything heavy-duty. Out-of-state driver’s license.” I looked at her critically and stroked my beard. “Think you could pass for twenty-one? Little girl?”
“In your dreams. Wet dreams.” She could pass, actually—even for a teenager if she dressed the part.
A pile of pig protein and lots of muscular chicory-flavored coffee, and I was ready to face a bunch of spies, or at least a barber.
He didn’t speak much English, but he got “Take it all off.” The feeling of a straight razor sliding along your skull was a new kind of discomfort for me, which I hope never to repeat. He also did an expert job on my beard. In the mirror I looked like one of those children with progeria, a baby’s face with age lines and basset eyes.
Kit’s haircut cost three times as much, and looked like the result of an industrial accident. You shouldn’t lean so close to the lathe, babe. But I hardly recognized her, which was the idea: bleached blond riff brushed out stiff with a purple accent.
She looked in the mirror and started to cry. But then she laughed brightly and wiped her eyes. She put on some lipstick that I didn’t know she had, and a little mascara. Stuck out her tongue at the reflection.
We split a pair of earrings, black pearl studs that she had in the bottom of her purse. I hadn’t worn one since I was an undergraduate, so it hurt and bled.
As a mutual disguise, though, it worked pretty well. We did look like a couple of thirty-ish tourists trying to look younger. On the Bourbon Street sidewalk, we blended in like cows in a herd.
A restaurant on St. Charles, Korn Dogs ’n’ More, needed a dishwasher and a waitress. The manager looked like he had just stepped out of a Yale faculty meeting, but he didn’t blink at our appearance or at Kit’s story that we’d been robbed and had no IDs.
The dishwashing wasn’t hard. Piled up after lunch and then was quiet until about five. Pretty busy till the place closed at ten. The pots and pans took another hour after that, Kit helping.
I probably would have hated it if I’d had to do it for a living, up to my elbows in greasy water. Doing it as protective coloration was kind of fun.
The Italian owner, Mario, cooked nonstop but had lots of stories, and was obviously happy to have a new audience. He’d also been in the desert, so we bonded over that.
Once I didn’t respond when he called me “Jim,” my temporary name, and he gave me a big wink.
He had a friend who rented rooms by the week a few blocks away, and gave Kit an hour off to get us a place. We finally crashed there a little after midnight.
The computer beeped at ten. Kit was already in the shower down the hall.
The room had a coffee machine. By the time I had it charged up and dripping, she came back, rubbing her hair with a towel. She shrugged out of her robe and handed it to me, then giggled when I put it on. “We’ll have to get you something without lace and flowers.”
I looked in the mirror and almost didn’t go down the hall. Baby-blue posies clashed with my skinhead asshole look. I showered quick.
We got to work one minute early, and Mario seemed vaguely surprised to see us. But we were going to hang in there at least six days, until the first paycheck. Or until somebody caught up with us.
4.
We got our first week’s pay and the phone call the same day, no coincidence, I suppose. Even paid by cash, there would be a record. My “James Kinney” ID probably went straight into a federal database of false IDs, and a face recognition program linked it with the person I used to be.
The phone rang at Korn Dogs and someone asked for me. Mario put it on hold and asked whether I was here.
“Someone want Jim Kinney?”
“Well . . . ‘the person who calls himself James Kinney.’ Want me to say you haven’t come in yet?”
No, they might be watching. I shrugged and held out my hand. A woman’s voice asked if I was Jack Daley.
“Or Jim Kinney, yes. Who is this?”
She was agent Sara Underwood, who had been “partnered with” James Blackstone. She asked me whether I had any information about him.
I was tempted to say that if the federal government couldn’t keep track of its own people, how are they goin
g to track down the bad guys? “No, not since our interview last week. I called his office once, but he wasn’t in.”
“What business did you have with him?”
“He asked me to call in if I had a change of address. He wasn’t there, though.”
There was a long pause. “Agent Blackstone has died, under odd circumstances.”
“Oh, my god. I’m sorry.”
“Yes. We’re calling everyone who had contact with him recently. You were not a person of interest in any of his ongoing investigations, but you did speak with him the afternoon of the seventeenth. About a sniper rifle?”
“Yeah, we called on Tuesday last week, I think. Someone left a weapon in my car, the sniper rifle that I thought I’d gotten rid of, with a suggestive note.”
“Yes, we know that from his desk report. I’m afraid we have to confiscate the rifle now.”
I tried to respond but my throat had closed up.
“Mr. Daley? We need that rifle. You don’t have to ship it to us. We can pick it up now.”
Sirens outside. A black-and-white screeched to a stop in the side street. I signaled Kit and she stepped into the ladies’ room.
“I—I don’t have it.”
“Where is it, Mr. Daley?”
Two uniformed cops banged into the store. The black one had his hand on his gun, the Hispanic on a Taser. I raised my free hand. “The police are here.”
“Where is the gun? Mr. Daley.”
“In the trunk of a car in St. Louis. Airport parking lot! That’s what I told—” The cops towered over me. I covered the phone. “I’ll be right with you,” I said. “Talking to the FBI.”
“Put down the phone,” the black one said. “Right now.”
“I mean Homeland Security,” I said.
“We’ve recovered that car,” Sara Underwood’s voice said, and then she said something else, but I couldn’t hear it because the Hispanic officer had snatched the phone away.
“Are you going to cooperate?” he said.
“I’m already cooperating! Talk to the lady on that phone!”
He opened the phone and looked at it. “Says ‘call blocked.’”
“Yeah, of course.” I stuck out my wrists. “Let’s go.”
“We don’t do it that way,” the Hispanic one said. He grabbed my arm and hauled me out of the chair and had my hands cuffed behind my back in about one second.
“Take it easy, for Christ’s sake!” One held me while the other patted me down roughly.
“Homicide,” the black one said, in explanation, as he goosed me. “Up in Indiana or someplace.” I almost said “Illinois,” but decided to leave him uncorrected.
At least they didn’t get both of us, I thought, and didn’t look at the door to the ladies’ room.
They stuffed me in the back of the patrol car and managed to belt me into the shoulder harness with both hands behind my back. Maybe my one phone call would be to a chiropractor.
It didn’t last long. We went a couple of blocks with the siren going, the black officer driving slowly while the other said incomprehensible things into the radio. Then they pulled over and helped me out of the car, took off the cuffs and gave me back my cell phone.
“Be careful now,” the black one said by way of apology, and they drove away.
If something like that happened in Iowa City, I’d go down to the station and get on their case. False arrest, harassment, intimidation. Not in the Big Easy, I think.
I walked back down St. Charles for a few blocks and then sat down at a sidewalk café to think.
Was I being watched? Not obviously. Wouldn’t make any difference anyway, if it was just Homeland Security and the FBI and the New Orleans cops. But how far behind are the ones who gave me the rifle, twice?
A pretty black waitress came out, looking bone tired. End of the night shift. I ordered white coffee and a beignet, playing knowledgeable tourist. After I ordered it I chastised myself. Black coffee and a doughnut would have saved me three bucks.
I talked to an operator and then a secretary in the Springfield Homeland Security office, and got a call back from Sara Underwood. “What on earth is going on down there? You’re in trouble with the New Orleans police?”
“You tell me, Ms. Underwood. My girlfriend and I are getting jacked around six ways from Sunday, and all we’ve done is try to cooperate with the authorities. I was just now handcuffed and thrown in the back of a police car, and then released, all without a word of explanation. You tell me what’s going on!”
There was a long silence, with some clicks. “I don’t know what kind of trouble you might be in, down south. You’re in some trouble here in Springfield.”
“What do you mean, trouble? I haven’t done a damned thing illegal.”
“That may be, Mr. Daley. But this is a homicide investigation now, and you are more than a ‘person of interest.’ You were interviewed by Agent Blackstone, with negative results. Agent Blackstone was found dead this morning.”
It was a sunny clear morning, but I could feel walls closing in on me. “I didn’t do it. I couldn’t have done it. How could I? I’ve been in New Orleans for a week!”
“Well, you were in New Orleans a week ago and you’re there now. You could have gone to Singapore and back in between.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you guys wouldn’t notice. But you said you got the car?”
“The car?”
“Before New Orleans’s finest picked me up. You said you’d retrieved the car from the airport in St. Louis.”
“We did, yes.”
“Then? You were about to say something else.”
There was a sound like papers being shuffled. “I was going to ask you . . . about firing the rifle. You did do some shooting with it.”
“Just a few rounds. As I told Blackstone. Just to zero it in.”
“Why?”
“To zero it in.”
She sighed. “I mean why would you want to zero it in if you never planned to use it?” That blocked me for a moment. “Hello? Doesn’t that seem odd to you?”
“The note . . . there was a note!”
“We found a note, crumpled up on the floor of the car.” She paused. “It says, basically, you’ll be paid $100,000 to kill someone, and there’s a down payment in the rifle stock. Nothing about zeroing the weapon.”
“No, I’m wrong. I’m sorry! It wasn’t the note; it was a phone call right afterwards—a woman told me to take the rifle down to the Coralville dump and zero it in. Then police up the brass and targets.”
“What about the police?”
God, was this happening? “Police. It’s a verb. It means to clean stuff up. I was supposed to pick up the brass from shooting it. The spent cartridges.”
“So was it a phone call or a note? Or was it both?”
“Both. It was both.” I took a deep breath. “Someone put the rifle on my doormat back in Iowa City. Put it there while I was asleep, and rang the bell and drove away.”
“And you didn’t call the police then because?”
“We told all this to Agent Blackstone.”
“And he’s dead now. You didn’t call the police?”
“There wasn’t time! I opened the box and while I was looking at the rifle, the god-damned phone rang. A woman warned me not to call the cops, and then said to take the rifle out to the Coralville dump and zero it.”
“She actually said ‘Don’t call the cops’?”
“I don’t remember her exact words. But she threatened to kill Kit if I didn’t cooperate.”
“In so many words? ‘We will kill Catherine Majors’?”
“No . . . I don’t know. She said they’d done it before, and she had me Google some kid’s name. Who had died of mylo something. Mylo-thrombosis? It was pretty convincing.”
“And on the stre
ngth of that?”
“What do you mean? They threaten to kill my girlfriend and ‘on the strength of that’ I go zero their fucking rifle? Yes! You wouldn’t?”
“What were you supposed to do after that? Did they say who you were going to shoot with the rifle?”
“I don’t think they ever did . . . no, never. Just that he was someone bad.”
Paper rustled. “‘You will agree that the World is a better place without him.’ The word ‘World’ is capitalized.”
“I noticed that. And a couple of other grammar things. So he’s not too literate?”
“You never know, Mr. Kinney—Mr. Daley. ‘He’ might be a female, and more literate than you or me, faking it. Though you’re right; on the surface it appears to have been written by a person with little education, probably male.
“Of course that generates the question of how and why some semiliterate person could and would set up and execute this complex stunt.”
Her use of the word “stunt” was interesting. “Wait. Do you still think that I might have done this ‘stunt’ myself?”
“Nothing is off the table, Mr. Daley. My personal opinion is that you didn’t do it. People who haven’t seen the recording of your interview, who don’t know anything about you, might think otherwise.”
“But it’s ridiculous! Why would I go to all that trouble just to get into more trouble?”
“You’re an educated man, and a writer. You know that people do things for odd reasons, or no reason. That you or someone else would set this up is ‘odd,’ but odd things happen.”
That was almost exactly what Blackstone had said. Maybe it’s a mantra you have to learn for Homeland Security. “And I suppose my fingerprints are all over the note.”
“In fact, no. That piece of paper has been folded and unfolded and crumpled up, but as far as we can tell no one has ever touched it without gloves. You do admit to reading it?”
Shit. I loved where this was going. “Of course. I told Blackstone—”
“Why would you put on gloves to read a note? Why would an innocent person avoid leaving fingerprints on anything?”