S
ykes expected one of them to laugh.
They stood on the sidewalk outside Fortunes. Wazoo’s hand was tucked under Nat’s arm and he held Mario. Poppy looked at the ground.
“We’ll be off then,” Nat said.
“Where’s your car?” Sykes asked, glancing around.
“Bucky took it back,” Nat said. “See you later.”
“Why are you looking for Gray?” Sykes said. He couldn’t contain his curiosity.
“I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention it unless he does, but Gray may fill in for Bucky Fist. Bucky’s got to go off on compassionate leave. Illness in the family.”
“Fill in for Bucky?”
Sykes’s voice got louder with each word until he realized he was shouting and dropped his voice. “As your homicide partner? Does Marley know, for God’s sake?”
“I wish I hadn’t said anything,” Nat said. “Maybe we’ll decide against it but I really need him and he’s the only one who can slip into Bucky’s shoes without
needing any training. Plus, he knows the cases we’re dealing with.”
“Marley’s pregnant,” Sykes said.
“I think that’s sweet,” Wazoo said, looking distant. “I’m looking forward to meeting her.”
“This will all be over long before the baby’s born,” Nat said, but he did have the grace to look uncomfortable. “You’ll be late for your appointment if you don’t go now.”
Sykes squinted at him. It wasn’t raining anymore and the sun had awoken ferociously. “What appointment?”
“Hands On,” Nat said weakly. “Isn’t that what you told me?” he asked Wazoo.
With no warning, Mario wriggled and fell from Nat’s arms. The dog jumped at Sykes, who automatically caught him.
“He wants to be with you,” Wazoo said, wrinkling her brow. “Look at him.”
Mario settled comfortably.
“Forgive me but I’m going to have to duck out fast on this party and get some work done,” Poppy said. She sounded angry, and looked angry. “The last thing I want is to have Ward rushing out here and finding us before I can get to my apartment.”
“Why don’t you tell Mr. Smooth to get lost?” Wazoo said.
Poppy smiled at her and tapped her chest, like a sign between the two of them. “He’ll lose interest.”
“You don’t like him,” Nat said. “So why are you encouraging him?”
“She’s not encouraging him,” Sykes said through his teeth. “In case you didn’t notice, he’s hooked.” And he didn’t blame the man even if he did instinctively wish he’d leave town for good.
“I’ve got to go.” Hurrying, looking over her shoulder at the entrance to Fortunes, Poppy slipped up the alley beside the club and disappeared inside the door she and Sykes had used earlier.
“Excuse me.” A tap on his shoulder interrupted Sykes’s plotting. He wanted to get to Poppy again and very soon.
“Yes?” He glanced behind him and started. David, the teenager who said he was Pascal’s son, stood there, sunglasses still firmly in place, heavy black duster zipped from hem to neck despite the warmth.
“I was out for a walk and I saw you here.”
Sykes didn’t think so but he’d figure out the truth when they did not have an audience. “Hey, David. Be with you in a minute.”
He turned to Nat and Wazoo again. “I’d appreciate it if you’d tell Pascal I’ll be there shortly. He’s not going to be pleased about Gray, either. This is a bad time to drag him into the middle of everything.” He remembered the boy. “This is David—” What else was he supposed to say?
“David Millet,” David filled in for him. “Who are you?” He stared at Wazoo with open fascination.
“Detective Nat Archer,” Nat said. “Homicide. This is—”
“I’m Wazoo. I come from Toussaint but Nat’s my
good friend.” She glanced at him, smiled and added, “My best friend. That’s why I’m in New Orleans.”
With satisfaction showing, Nat pulled her away but Sykes didn’t miss the significant once-over he gave David. He would ask Pascal about the boy. Sykes was almost sorry he’d miss witnessing that.
“Okay,” Sykes said when the other two had left. “Who told you where to look for me?”
“No one.”
Sykes stood quite still and concentrated. With his own guard up, he sent out receptors for any signals from David’s mind.
“Pascal didn’t tell you I could be over here?”
The boy’s mouth tightened. He leveled the big lenses of his cheap wraparound sunglasses at Sykes. “I said I was going for a walk. He told me to be careful.”
The kid’s Adam’s apple bobbled and something in Sykes responded, softened. “Pascal is a very good man,” he said, not sure why he felt he had to say as much.
David nodded, yes. “I’m an inconvenience. Bound to be.”
“Are you hungry?” Sykes asked.
This time he got the head shake, no, but he did not believe it. This boy could use a whole lot of eating.
Sykes considered the best way to make sure the Fortune brothers were on the case with Poppy being upstairs at the club, alone.
And he felt a distinct if faint series of attempts to join his wavelength. Small, almost imperceptible probes.
Finding out where they came from was easy for him but he identified the locators with some trepidation.
David.
Just as he had expected. Millet or not, this was a paranormal and unless Sykes was very mistaken, there were considerable powers here.
“Let’s start walking,” he said, hiking Mario under his arm. “There’s a little place I like on Chartres Street. It won’t take us too far from the shop. Do you mind if I make a call?”
The glasses turned toward Sykes again. “Sure.”
David was almost as tall as Sykes. Whatever else he might not have done today, he had given his scalp a fresh shave. His duster had large pockets that snapped and they bulged—with the things David held most dear, Sykes imagined. But he had felt he could leave his backpack at Pascal’s place.
Sykes pulled out his phone and called Ethan. He told him Poppy was at home and Ethan’s reaction revealed that he understood the message.
They walked down Dauphine Street to Chartres where Sykes stepped through the open doors to Arlo’s Diner and led the way to a booth near the windows.
The good old smell of fried everything permeated the place and unintelligible shouts through a pass-through behind the counter sent two waitresses trotting back and forth with steaming plates.
When they sat down facing each other with Mario
stashed quickly under the table, Sykes said, “Aren’t you hot in your coat?” Just looking at it made Sykes over-heat.
“No.”
Okay.
“I don’t know what to do, or I didn’t.” David swallowed audibly. “I think I do now.”
Sykes waited, afraid to turn off this sudden flow of words.
“Something’s going on here, isn’t it? It’s really bad. I never felt anything like it before but I’ve been a long way from anywhere most of my life. I’m used to things being real quiet.”
That prodded Sykes into a response. “Let’s take all that, but one at a time. Start with where you come from.”
David smiled a little. “I must have shocked all of you. It shocked me that I came here at all, but I didn’t know where else to go.”
“How did that happen?”
“I turned eighteen. They couldn’t keep me there anymore.”
Sykes gave him time, but David didn’t volunteer more information. “Will you tell me about
they
and
there?
”
“My mom and stepdad. We moved around all the time—small towns. My stepdad’s a good mechanic but he doesn’t stay sober, and we had to move on each time things got bad.”
“Will you let them know where you are?” Sykes figured that would tell him all he needed to know about family love.
“I don’t reckon so, not as long as he’s around. I’ll keep tabs on my mom.”
“How?”
“I’ve got my ways.”
“Was your stepfather mean to you?”
“Hey, handsome.” Joannie who was seventy on a good day ran her fingers through Sykes’s hair and sighed. “Do you know how many girls would give it up to have those curls.”
Sykes smiled into her bright blue and slightly watery eyes. “You flatterer, Joannie,” he said. “What’s good?”
“Gumbo,” she said without taking a breath. She always said that. “Sweet corn bake. Lots of eggs and shrimp. It’s all good.”
Arlo’s didn’t run on menus apart from the chalk-board on one wall where smartass comments were as plentiful as the food items written there.
“You want coffee?” Sykes asked David.
“Green tea,” David said, and Joannie’s mouth dropped open until he took a bag from one of his deep pockets and put it on the table. “Just bring me boiling water, please.”
Joannie’s thin eyebrows rose high enough to show all the creases in her turquoise eye shadow. “Got it.”
“I’ll have toast and a boiled egg,” the boy continued. “Any fresh fruit?”
“I think we got some raisins.”
Sykes put a fist over his mouth. “I’ll have coffee and make it two boiled eggs with toast for me. Hold the raisins.”
Joannie left in a hurry to share the news of the strange orders with her cronies.
David laughed softly. “He would have said raisins were fresh fruit,” he said, apparently referring to his stepfather. “Probably maraschino cherries and olives, too—not that he bothered with refinements.”
It was impossible not to smile with him.
“Have you graduated high school?” Sykes said.
“Yeah. When I was fifteen.”
“Fifteen? A brain, huh? What have you been doing since then?”
“Working wherever I could to save money so I could get away. I don’t kid myself it’s going to be easy, but I want to go to college.”
And what, Sykes wondered, should he believe or disbelieve from this stranger? Other than the signs of paranormal talents.
“First I’m going to be needed around here, though. I can do stuff. You know what I mean?”
Sykes was afraid he did know. “You tell me.”
“It’s gotten me in trouble as long as I can remember. I can move things—but that could be my age and if it stops as I get older I won’t be surprised. Biggest deal is following marks. Everyone’s got a different mark. If I look for them, I can see them and they lead me to people.”
“So much for you taking a walk and just happening to bump into me this morning,” Sykes said.
“I did tell Pascal I was taking a walk,” David said. “But I wanted to find you because you’re the power, man. I never felt power like yours before, although I haven’t been around much of it. But I recognize big stuff when I walk into it. Pascal’s strong, but I expected that from what my mother said. Not that she said much. Marley’s real strong, too, and Gray’s got powers. Not Anthony. I don’t know what to think about him. He brought the neat red dog over.” He frowned. “I like dogs.”
“What is it? You look worried.”
Joannie returned with a mug of coffee and one of hot water. “Better put that tea thingie in there fast before this cools off, she said. You want milk?”
“No! No, thank you,” David said. “That’s kind of you, but milk doesn’t go with green tea.”
Joannie wagged her white-blond head. “Learn somethin’ every day. Food’s comin’ up.”
“You were going to tell me something,” Sykes said, hoping to push David a bit.
David shook his head. “No, no, nothing. Wazoo’s a puzzle to me but you must know about her.”
“I thought I was asking the questions around here. Wazoo is my friend, Nat’s girlfriend. I like her a lot.”
David ripped open the tea and plopped the bag into his mug. “There’s Antoine and Leandra, right? And Willow, Riley and Alex as well as Marley. You’re the only son.”
“That must have been some night,” Sykes muttered, thinking of Pascal with David’s mother—if he had been and it was looking more likely—spilling family stuff the way none of them ever did.
“You mean the night I was conceived?” David said, absolutely serious. “Mom liked your uncle. When she had a few drinks and we were alone, she’d talk about what he told her, that’s how I know the things I do. It isn’t much.”
“Do you know where they met?”
“Mom wouldn’t tell me. She said it didn’t matter.”
But it had mattered enough for David to ask. Sykes realized he was starting to warm up to the kid, which might or might not be a good idea.
“My mom’s okay. I guess Sim wasn’t always the way he was by the time I knew him.”
Joannie delivered their plates, pulled a rack of condiments forward and fished sachets of jam from the pocket of her apron.
“I asked for one egg,” David said, his face turning pink.
“Memory like a sieve,” Joannie said, slapping her forehead. “The second one’s on the house.”
Sykes noted that David had four rounds of toast to his own two and figured Joannie’s motherly instincts were in play. The woman started to leave, then looked around before pulling a scrunched napkin from the same apron pocket and giving it to Sykes without a word and walking away.
He waited a moment before checking the napkin,
smiled at David and put both the napkin and the scraps of sausage it contained under the table.
He was glad of the high volume of gabble in the place to cover Mario’s chomping.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” David said. He ate both eggs in four bites and began piling jam on the toast.
“What does that mean?”
“I already told you I’ve figured out you’ve got big trouble. And I did meet the homicide detective, remember.”
“Nat’s a friend.”
“You said you didn’t want Gray pulled into things.”
Sykes studied him. “Observant, aren’t you?”
Muscles worked in David’s thin cheeks. The toast disappeared steadily.
“How are we supposed to know if you’re really anything to do with the Millets? Just because you show up at the shop and decide to use our name doesn’t have to mean we’re related.”
“I’ve got proof,” David said. “But it’s for Pascal first. I haven’t been alone with him. As soon as he saw me this morning, he went downstairs to the shop.”
“He goes to the shop every morning,” Sykes said in defense of his uncle, but also to shield David’s feelings for some reason.
“I like him,” David said, turning red again. “He’s…he’s someone special. He knows stuff, I can feel it.”
Sykes realized David wanted to like Pascal and he
wanted someone he could be proud of. “That’s true,” he said. “Tell me one thing. How did you know to come to New Orleans?”