NO Quarter (8 page)

I had insisted that Bone give the police forty-eight hours. I had no intention of doing the same. While I would avoid any direct involvement in the investigation, that didn’t mean doing nothing. I needed information. I needed to find out what the police knew, and that meant finding a source.

But first, I needed knowledge of a different sort, something that the police weren’t likely to have. That would require going out in the daytime. Not an easy thing for someone used to waking after sunset, but I figured the information would be worth the sacrifice. I dragged myself out of bed around three, dressed, and, after a moment’s thought, grabbed an old cable box and an empty incense container and threw them in a bag. Thus prepared with props and an alibi, I stepped outside the cool darkness of my apartment—only to be blinded by the glare of the huge glowing disk in the sky. Oh, yeah
...
it was the sun. It had been a while since I had seen it that high in the sky. I scrambled to pull my sunglasses over my eyes while ducking back into the shaded alcove by my door. As I huddled in the shadows waiting for my eyes to adjust, I could not help but think of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula, cowering beneath the deadly onslaught of daylight. It hadn’t taken a vampire bite to turn me into a creature of the night—just a little time living in the French Quarter.

Once I could see again, I headed down Bourbon Street, toward St. Ann. This early in the day, Bourbon was still open to motorized vehicle traffic and the Quarter was an entirely different place. Instead of the wanton lady of the evening I knew so well, cloaked in darkness and adorned with garish neon and beads, the daytime Quarter was a quaint French Colonial Lady, showing her age in the cracks and crevices clearly visible in the unforgiving light. The smell of stale beer and puke, usually so prevalent on Bourbon, had given way to smells of café au lait and beignets, burgers, gumbo, and seafood, seasoned with hot asphalt.

I’m normally alert on the street, aware of those around me. In ten years down here, I haven’t been successfully mugged. Today, though, I felt an extra wariness. I still had no idea who’d been walking Decatur last night looking for me. My subconscious hadn’t conveniently matched the Bear’s description with some hidden mental file while I’d slept.

I stopped in front of Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo. One of the older buildings in New Orleans, it had once been home to Marie Laveau II, one of fifteen children of the original Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. Now it housed a shop catering to tourists and occult practitioners. The cracked paint and ancient timbers of the building added an air of authenticity that probably made it easier for tourists to believe they were in the presence of old magic. Above the door a hand-painted sign promised:

Special Exhibit

Strange Gods, Strange Altars

Inside the shadowy interior, the air was thick with the smell of incense and essential oils. Shelves lined the walls, overflowing with an eclectic combination of candles, fetishes, gris-gris, dolls, and potions, as well as statues of Catholic saints and rosary beads, statues of Marie Laveau. Altars for various religions and rituals were artistically scattered about the room. Gator skulls, carved masks, and chicken feet hung from the ceiling and off the shelves. One section of the building was set aside as a small Voodoo museum. T-shirts, books, jewelry, and posters filled the remaining spaces. But I knew the front was mostly for the tourists. Anything serious took place beyond the beaded curtain separating the main store from the back room.

“Can I help you?”

The young man behind the counter wore a Voodoo Shop T-shirt and had spiked hair. I didn’t know him. “Just came to get some incense,” I said. “Is Mother Mystic around?”

“Is that Maestro?” The clipped contralto of her lilting, accented English echoed from somewhere in the back. A moment later Mother Mystic swept out through the beaded curtain, her arms open in greeting. A bright caftan draped her ample figure in colors that complemented her mahogany skin. “My dear Maestro, I have not seen you out my way much. At least, not in the daylight.”

My patterns were getting much too predictable. I would have to do something about that.

“I was just out doing some daytime errands and decided to stop by.” I grinned. She cocked an eyebrow at me as if she didn’t entirely believe it. “I needed to pick up some more incense for my altar.” I pulled out the empty box. Actually I had plenty of incense at home.

“Well, you know where to find it.” She gestured towards the large display. “Let Mother know if you need anything special.”

I made a show of examining the racks of incense.

“Did you hear about the murder last night? Down by the Brewery? I heard something about a Voodoo ritual?”

When Mother Mystic didn’t answer I glanced at her. Her face was stone.

“I heard it was Sunshine, the little blonde waitress,” I continued.

“I do not think I knew her.” She answered coldly.

“I remember her,” the guy at the counter piped up. “She used to wait tables at Big Daddy’s. She was hot.”

“Did she ever come in here? Possibly show an interest in Voodoo or anything?”

He shook his head. “No. Not that I know of.”

“Why do you ask so many questions, Maestro?” Mother Mystic frowned at me, and at her clerk. “I’ve never taken you for the gossip type. What is this thing to you?”

I had planned to treat the whole thing as casual conversation and give a glib answer, but one look at her face convinced me that I needed to level with her if I wanted any real answers.

“She was a friend. I’m just trying to find out what happened to her.”

Mystic looked at me for a long moment. “Come. Into the back.”

I followed her through the beads into the “reading room” usually used for psychic and tarot readings. She gestured to one chair at the small table, taking the other for herself.

“Look,” she half-whispered, “the police have already come here. I did not have anything to say to them, or to you. The girl and her fate were unknown to me until I hear of it this morning.”

“But they say there was evidence of a Voodoo ritual at the murder scene,” I pressed.

She snorted in anger. “Yes. That is what they say. And it did not take but one whiff of that rumor to spread it all over the Quarter. The tourists are spooked. They do not come to Mother’s shop today. They all want to play with the Voodoo—right up until they think it might be real. Now folks are upset, they worry.” She sat back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest, “It is enough that sometimes a fool tries to get me to do a black magic curse for him! Now some nutcase kills a poor girl, tosses some tourist toys around, and everyone believes we are all murderers!”

She sighed, then she leaned in close, her eyes intensely bright. “I’ll tell you this, because I think you of all people ought to know better. The
Vodun
is a
religion. It is about connecting with the saints and with the gods. The
Vodun
we practice has more in common with the Catholics and their saints than anything else. It’s not about murder.”

“But aren’t there ritual sacrifices?”

“Of course. The same sacrifices the farmer makes every time someone decides they want chicken for dinner. We kill animals in some of our rituals, but we do it more humanely than the slaughterhouses, and we cook them and eat them after. There is no part of
Vodun
that includes killing
people
. That only happens in the movies. Whoever did this is some kind of sick
bokor
want-to-be—knew just enough to think he could do a ritual. Either that or somebody out there has decided to practice the dark arts.” Her eyes turned hard. “If that be the way of it, we’re all in trouble. The
Vodun
is a respectable religion, of the light, and we do not need anyone perverting it with the darkness.”

I thought for a moment, disturbed by that last possibility. “Just out of curiosity, how do you kill your animal sacrifices?”

She studied me for a moment, then said, “We slit their throats with a very sharp knife.”

I thanked Mother Mystic for her time and headed out the door. I needed to find out exactly how Sunshine died. I still had no idea what the police had actually found at the crime scene.

In almost every detective novel I’ve read or movie I’ve ever seen, the hero has a contact with the police he or she can call on for information. It’s a neat, handy way to get facts not readily available to the general public. Unfortunately, I’ve never been that fond of the police. I try to stay as far away from them as possible. This, of course, precludes having one of them as a first-name-basis friend. Still, it’s the Quarter, and if you try hard enough you can find anything ... even a cop.

Sorry. That’s an overly harsh exaggeration. In truth, the police make themselves easy to find in the Quarter, in their prowl cars, on foot, on horses, and even on bicycles and scooters. Tourists, who are responsible for a great deal of this city’s income, can walk around in protected, well-lit comfort. That is, as long as they stay on ticky-tacky Bourbon Street and retreat to their hotels at a reasonable hour.

I wanted to find someone connected with the police to sit and talk to, and that was tricky. My solution was to stop at a cop bar. This, at least, is not a phenomenon peculiar to the Quarter. It’s my impression that every large city has at least one cop bar per precinct, where the off-duty officers gather to drink and swap stories, both funny and horrifying, of their work. The one in the Quarter is a half block off Bourbon on Iberville, one block short of Canal Street.

It was approaching late afternoon, the optimal time to hit my target bar. Late evening it would be a bit too loud and raucous for conversation, and in the morning the odds of anyone being there who’d know anything were slim.

As it was, I got lucky and caught Sneaky Pete, the owner, behind the bar when I wandered in. He was yet another pool shooter, and got his nickname from using a “sneaky pete” pool cue. That’s a custom cue that is deliberately crafted to look like an ordinary bar cue.

“Hey, Maestro,” he said, straightening from reading the newspaper. He was shorter than me, with a lot of scalp showing through his thinning white hair these days. “What brings you up to this end of the Quarter?”

Objectively, the Quarter is small, some thirteen city blocks by seven. But within this curious neighborhood of ours there are inevitable subdivisions and regions. Denizens of the Quarter are creatures of habit, usually hanging out at specific bars at specific hours. Any deviation is unusual and therefore draws attention. Fortunately I was ready for Pete’s question and had my excuse ready.

“I was just hiking up to Cox Cable to return my box,” I said. I brandished the bag I carried. “They cut off my service a couple of months back and are trying to bill me three or four hundred for their equipment. It’s worth the walk in the heat to get them off my back.” As prepared as a Boy Scout, of course I actually
did
have the old cable box in the bag. I do have cable in my apartment, but frankly, I watch the Cartoon Network more than anything.

“Get you anything?” Sneaky Pete asked. We were the only two in the place.

“Yeah. I’ll take a Bud draft.”

I rarely drink beer. It’s filling, it’s fattening, and I don’t need any more waistline than I’ve got. But it was in the high nineties outside and far too early to start in on my traditional Irish whiskey.

“You got it,” he said, opening the tap to fill a large plastic go-cup—French Quarter crystal, we call it. “How’s your team doing this session?”

“Struggling a bit, but we’re still in the running.”

Pete also shot on a league pool team, but I’d never really warmed to him or his compatriots. Though I still shot pool and was even co-captaining a team, it seemed I’d once had more enthusiasm for the game. I wondered in the back of my mind if this hobby would go the way of my sword-fighting club. Once, I’d been wildly enthused about that. But it had just sort of drifted away.

We chatted for a few minutes. Though I wasn’t especially enamored of Pete, good manners are valued in the Quarter. Besides, it’s good to collect as many familiar faces as you can, for those occasions when you might find yourself out of your normal prowl range. Sometimes people will come to your aid even if they only know you in passing. And you never know when trouble will come, or when you’ll need that aid.

Eventually I tried to edge the conversation around to the subject on my mind.