9

I walked Katherine to her door. She unlocked it, hesitated a moment, and then turned around to face me.

“You’re a very nice man, Micah Dunn. If I asked you to come in I don’t know what would happen. I just know I might be sorry afterward.” She offered me her hand and I took it.

“You’re pretty special yourself,” I said. “Not many people would refuse to speak evil of somebody that had taken the person they love.”

“Just a character flaw,” she said wryly. “But I want one thing understood: If it comes down to it, I’ll swear Gregory was with me all night.”

I drove away, thinking about her words. I liked Katherine Degas, but likable people commit murder all the time.

I decided to pass by Thorpe’s house. It was ten o’clock, early yet. If Cora was playing, she might not be there. Or she might be there with somebody else. It wouldn’t be smart, but then she didn’t impress me as a very brainy lady.

I parked across the street and waited. There was a light on in the front room and the blue Mazda was in the drive. There were a couple of cars parked in front and I didn’t know if they were visitors to the Thorpe house or belonged to other families on the block. I decided to write down the plate numbers and got out. I had finished the last one when I heard someone clear his throat and looked up.

Mr. Beasley was rocking in the swing on his front porch, watching me. “That one belongs to the Lorios, next door,” he called dryly. “And the others are from houses on the other side.”

I put away my notebook and went up the sidewalk to his house.

“That’s a big help, Mr. Beasley.”

“She’s been inside all day,” Beasley said. He was still dressed in his coat and tie and his face bore a faintly supercilious expression. “She hasn’t been out to see him. You’d think she’d at least visit him.”

“You’d think,” I said. “But maybe she’s too upset.”

Beasley emitted a little guffaw. “Upset? I hardly think so. All that would upset that young woman would be the inability to take her annual trip to Paris.”

As we stood there, the side door opened and I saw a figure emerge and get into the Mazda. An instant later the motor ground into life and the lights flashed on. The car shot backward out of the drive and into the street, halted, and then started toward St. Charles.

“Doubtless gone to visit her husband,” Mr. Beasley said.

I left him rocking and started off down the sidewalk for my car.

She had a two-block head start and I saw her turn left onto St. Charles. I had to wait for three cars to pass before I could make the turn and by that time she was lost in the traffic. I swore under my breath and sped through a yellow light at Broadway. I tried to close the gap, but the car ahead of me was maddeningly slow. Ahead, I saw her turn right onto Carrollton and breathed relief. I didn’t know where she was going, but it certainly wasn’t to visit her husband. I ran the red light at Carrollton and Claiborne and elicited an angry cacophony of honks. The road was wider now, though, and I managed to gain a few cars. But she was moving quickly and if I got stuck at a traffic signal, I’d lose her. I had an idea she was heading for the expressway, and if I wasn’t close enough to keep her in sight I could forget it.

Sure enough, she shot across Washington and swerved right, onto the entrance ramp, and I followed, curving upward. Her taillights were growing smaller and I jammed down my own accelerator as I came onto the expressway, heading north.

She opened it out to seventy-five and I had to increase my own speed to keep up with her, hoping there were no police cars in the area.

We were headed north now, toward Lake Pontchartrain. Traffic was light, but there was enough so that I could hope she hadn’t spotted me. Something about the way she was driving made me doubt she was aware of anything except her destination. Just ahead now, the expressway swung left, in the direction of Metairie, the airport, and the swamps. She took the curve and seconds later we were into Jefferson Parish. I hung behind her for two and a half miles and then saw her glide over into the right lane. She was heading for Causeway Boulevard.

I exited after her, and by the time we came to the toll booth, I was two cars behind.

Now I knew: Her destination was the north shore of the lake, where the rich have their cabins, twenty-four miles from the smog of the city.

I saw the two red dots of her taillights grow small as she pulled away from the booth. I paid and started onto the low bridge after her, forcing myself to hold down my speed. The car between us shielded me from her rear-view, but if she held to her speed I would lose her. I debated swinging out and trying to close the distance between us, but it wasn’t an attractive thought: If a tire blew, there would be no room to maneuver and the car would ricochet down the lanes like an electron in an atom smasher. I would just have to let her go.

But luck intervened and I saw a red light strobe the darkness ahead as a causeway police car left a turnaround, headed after her. A minute later I passed in the outer lane, and the cop was smiling in the glare of his headlights. Maybe she’d talked him out of a ticket.

I came off the bridge and onto the north shore, where the fresh smell of ozone greeted me from the pines.

Mandeville was quiet and I pulled off at the first street and waited. I flicked a switch under the dash, dousing one of my headlights. Now, instead of two lights behind her, she would see the single lamp of a decrepit heap. If she turned, then in the second we were out of sight of each other I would switch the other headlamp back on. Two cars for the price of one.

Five minutes later she whipped past, seemingly unfazed by her recent brush with the law. She made a right at the second light, heading east onto Florida, and I watched her open out the distance between us.

She went on for five miles, then turned suddenly and I slowed as the crossroads shot up in front of me. I was far from town now, with the pine woods on both sides like a dark tunnel. I wheeled left and saw her red lights blink and then go out. I gunned the engine and watched the needle go to ninety. The road was narrow and there was always the chance of a deer leaping out onto the right-of-way, but I hadn’t any choice. As I neared the place I’d last seen her I braked and hoped I wouldn’t come up on her stopped on the road in the darkness.

But she was gone, as completely as if she’d vanished into the air. I slowed to a stop and then made a U-turn. I drove back slowly the way I’d come and that was when I saw it: a gravel road to the left, with a thin haze of dust hanging in my headlights.

I flicked off my lights and crawled along, painfully aware of the explosions of gravel under my tires.

A half mile later I came to the gate. I opened my glove compartment, took out my flashlight, and played the beam on it. It was a pair of brick pillars with a cattle guard and a sign that said NO TRESPASSING. A barbed-wire fence led from the pillars into the forest on either side. I thought for a moment, then made a decision. Turning around so that I faced back the way I had come, I left the car at the side of the road and got out.

I started along the gravel, stopping every few seconds to listen for noises, but there were none. I’d gone about five hundred yards when I saw the house. Its windows winked through the trees like a pair of friendly eyes but I knew better. I could see her Mazda now, as well as a white Jaguar. I’d check out the Jag and then see if I could find a crack in one of the windows.

I stowed my flashlight in my guayabera pocket and fished out a small notepad and pen. Then, holding the pad against my chest with the heel of my hand, I pushed the button on the ballpoint and copied the license number. I needn’t have done it, because it was a prestige plate, with SAINT on it, which showed somebody had a sense of humor.

The house was a log-cabin affair with a sloping roof. A rock tune drifted out from inside and I heard muffled voices. I edged around to the end, where I was covered by darkness, and tried to get a look through the windows, but the curtains were drawn and the room was dark. I crept to the rear and slipped along the back side of the house, to where a white square of light fell on the grass. There was a concrete deck with some lawn chairs, and I threaded my way among them, flattening myself against the timbers and bending my head to look through the window beside the door.

She was standing in the middle of the room, a cigarette in one hand and a glass in the other. She was talking in a loud voice and now and then I caught words like “responsible,” “police,” and “prison.” Against her pleading I caught a deeper voice, from someone out of sight of the window, and I could tell he was trying to quiet her, but he seemed not to be having much luck. As I watched she took two steps forward, but her gait was unsteady and she dropped the glass onto the floor and I heard a muffled oath. A man came into view then, steadying her and gesturing as if to say that it didn’t matter. His back was to me, but I could see that he was tall, well over six feet, and young, with longish, curly blond hair. He was wearing a silk shirt and he had the kind of narrow waist and bulging biceps that went with weight lifters. He was holding her with both hands now, gently shaking her, and he was trying to tell her that everything was all right, but now and then I caught sight of her face, terrified, and I could tell his words weren’t having much effect. He turned around then and I thought he had seen me, but I realized he was just fixing her another drink. I watched as he poured in vodka and tonic and then, to my surprise, took out a little vial and dropped in a pill. He stirred and then, satisfied, turned back to her and handed her the glass.

I had only seen him for an instant, but I would remember the face: long, with a pointed chin, and the quick, calculating eyes of a con man. He was bending over her now, the soul of compassion, and I wondered if I should break down the door before she took a sip. Before I made up my mind, however, the decision was taken out of my hands. I heard a twig crackle behind me and started to turn but it was too late. Something hit my head and a Roman candle of colors shot through my vision. I tried to turn but my legs buckled and I fell forward into a tunnel.

When I awoke I was staring into the sun. I moved my head and mortar fire began to explode the ground around me. I held still and the firing subsided. I closed my eyes and tried to remember something, anything. I had been shot and I was lying in a paddy, just as I’d always feared would happen. I was hit and the others had left me for dead. I would lie here forever and be carried in the casualty lists as only a name.

But what name?

I reached for my dog tags but I wasn’t wearing them. Then I rolled onto my side and the mortar explosions began anew, only farther away. I tried to shove myself upright with my left arm, but it wouldn’t work for some reason.

But my body was otherwise functioning, and that meant I could crawl for the tree line, out of the field of fire.

Except that there wasn’t any tree line. And there wasn’t any sun. I was in a room and the bright light came from a lamp beside a sofa and a blond woman was stretched out on the sofa, apparently asleep.

I got to my knees and then heaved myself up. The room looked familiar, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever been in it before. The woman looked familiar, too, but somehow I didn’t think we were lovers.

I reached into my back pocket and brought out my wallet. I stared down at the driver’s license and the PI’s license and the Orleans Parish special deputy’s commission that allowed me to carry firearms.

And slowly it all drifted back.

I had been looking through the window and somebody had dropped a load of concrete on my head. Then they had dragged me into this room. But why?

I went over to Cora Thorpe and felt her pulse. It was regular and she was snoring. So her male companion had slipped her a barbiturate. But he couldn’t have been the one who’d slugged me. Where was he? Had he heard the commotion and left?

I took a deep breath and started around the sofa and stopped. A pair of legs were sticking out and when I went around to the other side I had at least one of my questions answered: He hadn’t gone anywhere.

He lay face-up, his arms flung to the side and his silk shirt open to the navel, revealing his muscular chest. It struck me as a pose but I realized it wasn’t, because he wasn’t breathing. There was a small red hole about two inches below his gold neck chain and the blood around the hole was already clotting. I reached down and fished the wallet out of his pocket. His name was Claude St. Romaine, a name I’d heard somewhere before, and he had an address on the New Orleans side of the lake, near the yacht harbor. He had about every credit card known to the civilized world, as well as a wallet-sized colonel’s commission on the governor’s staff and a business card from a well-known brokerage firm. I checked his front pockets and found a roll of hundred-dollar bills in a money clip and a vial containing several types of pills. I identified Quaaludes and amphetamines, but there were several other ones that appeared to be homemade.

I put his things back in his pockets and started back around the sofa. As I did, my foot kicked something and I looked down.

It was a .25 Beretta, the kind of pistol ladies carry, not especially deadly unless you’re within three feet of your target. Which meant St. Romaine had been shot up close.

My watch said I had been out no more than twenty minutes, so whoever was responsible had had plenty of time to leave. And, I thought, as tires crunched the gravel outside and lights flashed into the room, time to return.

I picked up the pistol, because a .25 was better than a Hail Mary, and backed toward the rear door. But before I got there it opened and somebody told me to drop the gun.

The cavalry had arrived.