TEN

Not knowing where to stay, they imagined a cool place on Canal Street, a converted brothel above a jazz bar where fragrant breezes wafted in off Lake Pontchartrain to mingle with a mournful, sexy, late-night sax, but neither Émile nor Sandra knew if a hotel on Canal Street really was the place to be, if it would be hip or merely a dive, or a place to get mugged in, or if jazz clubs were even located there at all, or hotels, or if opening a balcony door invited in the warm, humid air of the south or the muskiness of sour urine, or if the ambiance of a hastily booked room promised romance or might possibly instigate a near-death experience. So they booked the Hilton. From there, they could figure out the lay of the land and freely explore, and anyway, didn’t it sound perfectly safe?

They so rarely traveled. Care for the horses took precedence, and usually if they managed a week away Sandra opted for the New Hampshire farmhouse where her mother resided on her own, now that her dad was deceased. Most of their travels were to horse fairs and competitions within a day or two’s drive, trips that were pleasant enough and productive enough that they did not feel deprived of travel. And over the past two winters they had finally found their way south. Once for a week in Florida, then ten days in Barbados the following year. They appreciated the break from the cold and their bodies felt regenerated, but neither trip had been memorable and left them oddly dissatisfied, so that in considering a southern excursion this year they had been unable to sufficiently rouse themselves to make a decision.

But now. By some miracle. New Orleans.

They hoped to find the city in revival mode after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, but as they had not kept abreast of developments they really didn’t know what to expect. Cinq-Mars was governed by a single titbit of knowledge—serious crime abounded there—and knew also that Mardi Gras was on the horizon. He assumed that at such a legendary festival, bacchanalian and remotely quasi-religious at the same moment, he could find a niche and enjoy himself.

They’d have downtime with one another. Which created its own expectations and tension. Émile and Sandra aspired to connect again, to undertake a revival of some sort—quasi-romantic, perhaps, or even, who knows, bacchanalian. Rather than place their expectations at the risk of a crummy hotel room, they made peace with the likely dull security of the Hilton.

All that decision-making resulted in Sandra receiving a solid, undignified bump from a man in the lobby upon their arrival. A pair of men in their thirties were crossing each other’s path as the couple entered. In sidestepping that collision, one tripped right into Sandra, giving her a jolt, then the other, stumbling himself, reached out to break her fall as well as his own. Émile reached for her also, flinging out his arms, but in that instinctive reaction he also caught the scene in his mind’s eye and detected a foreign hand at his hip. Whether it was his police training, observations over a long career, or simply an impulsive intuitive notion, his right hand jumped to his rear pocket and his wallet there, and fell upon an uninvited paw. In the ensuing jumble, apologies were uttered by the men for their clumsiness and Sandra assured them to never mind and laughed the moment off. Émile Cinq-Mars, though, stood still and silent, arms crossed, certain that he had thwarted a carefully choreographed picking of his pocket.

Then he noticed that a clasp on Sandra’s purse had been tripped.

He smiled at the fellow who had fallen into his wife, stretched out his hand ostensibly to thank him, then took the fellow’s hand in his own and squeezed quite hard. He leaned into him, squeezing harder. He whispered in the man’s ear, “Return my wife’s wallet or I’ll break your fingers in five, four, three seconds.”

The man was small, casually well-dressed, with a smooth olive complexion and dark eyes. Under the pressure on his hand, his face was distorting rapidly and he involuntarily exhaled.

“Two,” Cinq-Mars said, and squeezed even harder. He gave him another friendly, encouraging pat as the man’s mouth stretched open in pain.

The other man among them appeared confused. He and Sandra were united in wondering what Émile had whispered.

“Oh! Look what fell,” said the man in the ex-policeman’s grip and knelt down even though Cinq-Mars still held his right hand. No one saw anything on the floor, but when the suave fellow popped back up again he held Sandra’s wallet out to her.

Suddenly she understood. Her wallet had appeared out of thin air. She did a rapid check, then said, “It’s okay. You can let him go, Émile.”

“I’ll be here for several days,” Émile let the man know. “You won’t be.” He patted the fellow’s wrist, then released him.

Supposedly, the two men were strangers passing in the lobby, but the jig was up and one gave an indication to the other with his chin. The pair departed out the front door together. One wore a pink sports shirt, elegant gray slacks, and kept his hair spot-on with gel. The other, tricked out in a spiffy lemony suit, used less gel. They could be brothers.

“Welcome to the safe Hilton,” Cinq-Mars murmured as he watched them go.

“Welcome to New Orleans,” Sandra tacked on.

They smiled at one another and carried on arm in arm. What might have been a huge annoyance at the outset of their time away had been thwarted. Perhaps good fortune shone on their side.

Émile was glad that the situation had stayed calm. Any altercation at that moment might have found him deficient. In the Big Easy, apparently, men with slippery fingers knew how to keep their cool. After the cramped flight—for him, most flights were cramped—he was sore, stiff, and needed to exercise, so after checking in they went up to their room on the seventeenth floor where he performed his diabolical stretches. Sandra partially unpacked before busying herself in the washroom. She emerged wearing a black sports bra and panties and headed across the room to pull the drapes together and darken the room.

“We’re staying in?” Cinq-Mars asked, now in shadow on the carpet.

“It’s a night town, Émile.” She pulled the bedcovers down. “I’m resting up for the action.” Tongue-in-cheek, perhaps, but serious, too, she grinned.

Émile was just as happy to strip down and crawl into bed himself, ready for a snooze, and yet, after about ten minutes, they turned, and slid a little closer to each other, and that soon evolved into a snuggle. They tried napping in the spoons position but before sleep overtook them they both grew rowdy. Cinq-Mars honestly believed that he had not expected this, and yet he’d made an allowance for the possibility. To be on the safe side he took the time to ingest a Cialis while freshening up in the terminal after disembarking—in anticipation of the weekend, really, not this nap. Soon both were glad for his foresight.

 

 

Later they stirred. Somehow it seemed the right time to dip their toes, at least, into their mutual puddle. Émile was the first to wade in.

“We haven’t seen much of this lately.”

“Twice in the past week. I call that a major escalation. Or did you forget about that time at home already?”

“I meant further back than a week.” He seemed petulant to her.

“No one’s to blame, buddy. We’ve been at odds. I threw you for a loop.”

“I’m not too old to have my heart broken, I found that out. I’m not saying it broke, but that’s only because you haven’t left yet. But it cracked some. It’s getting ready to shatter.”

“Oh God. The melodrama! You’re holding up okay. For Pete’s sake, here you are, out fighting crime for the FBI on the blue bayou.”

“Leather-skinned on the outside. It’s all for show.”

She admitted quietly, “Yeah, I know. Mine cracked some just telling you that I might leave. More than I expected, I guess.”

He tilted his head further toward her. “In that case, shouldn’t we be trying to stay together?”

“We should. That’s what we’re doing, no?”

True, but it felt good to hear her say so. This was genuine encouragement. Rowing together in the same direction was so much easier than haphazardly flailing their oars. “Are you any closer,” Émile started in, knowing that he had to be careful how he phrased this or he could pitch himself into hot water, “to identifying what the core problem is? For you, I mean?”

Sandra fluffed a pair of pillows and arranged them against the headboard. She then lay back, partially upright with the sheet pulled high up. The air-conditioning cycled on again and, naked, she felt a chill. Reaching around to the back of her neck, she pulled her hair forward to let it fall along her right shoulder. Cinq-Mars noticed that strands of gray he detected previously were no longer visible. She must be tinting. A vacation tint. He propped himself up higher as well.

“It’s everything,” she decided. A single hair strayed over an eye and she inhaled and blew out two big puffs to send it back into place. “You mentioned sex, so okay, put it on the list. But you and I both know that sex is an extension of other things.”

“Including that I’m getting older.”

She looked at him then. They didn’t talk about this usually. “You take pills.”

“And I’m grateful to live in an era when that’s an option. But, also, you know, the libido. It’s diminished. That makes everything different.”

“How so?”

He really hadn’t wanted the conversation to come around to this. Now the matter was on him when she had seemed on the verge of opening up herself. He continued to speak cautiously. “When you remove the need, and, you know, the indiscriminate want, from sex—lust, essentially—the equation is different. You have what’s left, which is pleasure, intimacy, good things both.” He studied the ceiling awhile before daring to carry on. “But it’s not driven. That’s what’s hard to get used to. It’s no longer hard-wired. Perhaps I shouldn’t use the word hard.” That got her to grin a little. “It’s as if I have to arouse myself by visiting old memories, knowing that I used to feel a certain way, or maybe project myself into old responses or somebody else’s responses, but it’s … an adjustment, let’s say … it’s an adjustment to make love to the woman you love when sex is no longer urgent or a necessity or a response to need or even desire. So it’s—as it just was—fun. But the passion is on a different plane. I can’t pretend to be in the same place I was years ago or even—and this is telling, because you’re younger—even where you may still be.”

“So you don’t need sex anymore,” Sandra summarized. “The passion is gone.”

“Not gone. Transformed. And diminished. But I’m not going to lie.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“It’s like the joke I heard this older comedian say once. ‘At my age, if a woman says yes, that’s great! If she says no, that’s okay, too!’”

Sandra laughed. Then she did more than laugh. She leaned across and kissed her husband. In their postcoital ease he found it as natural as breathing to cup her breast, then to run a thumb over and around the lovely large brown nipple. She pulled back, but not away. And looked at him. She placed a hand over his, as if to assist him in caressing her breast.

Then she fell away again and covered up against the cool temperature.

“So I’m younger than you,” Sandra said. “This is not news. I’m not at that stage yet when desire is … diminished, or gone, whatever … and maybe it’s different for women anyway. But if you’re saying, as I think you’re saying—are you saying that even if you’re no longer driven by urge or desire or some rampant horniness you can, with pharmaceutical assistance, perhaps, still enjoy yourself? And enjoy me?”

“And appreciate the whole shebang more than ever,” he added.

“Shebang—no pun intended, I suppose.”

This time he was the one who laughed. “Okay, so, the pun was not intended, but it is appreciated, if you follow my drift. Like sex, it may no longer be intended as it once was, but it is enjoyed just as much. Same pattern.”

She loved it when they could playfully joust with each other’s intelligences. In the old days the sessions often proved preliminary, a kind of foreplay before foreplay, and now, were such times to be post-postcoital instead? A shift, but, in the overall scheme of things, a minor repositioning. One she could live with, in any case.

“What else though,” he asked, “because I agree with you, sex is a symptom here, not a cause—what else pushed us off the rails?”

She had to think about it, or perhaps her delayed response sheltered what she would prefer not to say. Sensing her reluctance, Cinq-Mars grew worried, feeling a cloud, a larger issue he might neither have anticipated nor necessarily desired to spring from its hiding place.

When finally she spoke, he understood that his premonition was accurate. In a millennia he’d never have anticipated this response, not from her, and he wasn’t at all sure that, for once in his life, the truth was something he wanted to know. That the issue had nothing to do with him made it all the more perplexing.

Sandra said, “I think I’m done with horses.”

Whoosh. A wind blew through them both. Cinq-Mars felt a seismic lurch.

The silence lingered awhile, then she pressed, “You have to say something.”

“I can’t. I’m stunned.”

“I know. I know. It doesn’t seem possible.”

But there it was. He had quit policing, but time had brought that on. A difficult end to a career integral to his being. Nonetheless, in the realm of personal choices a necessary one given his age and physical condition. Retirement had always been an expectation, even a reward, and given the dangers inherent in what he did—and what he in particular had done had been dangerous, taking on the various mobs and the bikers and on occasion the police department itself—retirement had been a logical conclusion. But for Sandra, at forty-six, to relinquish her one abiding passion sounded an alarm. A condition of her marriage, of leaving New Hampshire to come and live in Quebec with Émile in a French milieu foreign to her had been this singular demand: they had to live on a farm and she had to have horses. Cinq-Mars knew now that he wasn’t dealing with a mere malaise or a common marriage slump. This was serious. Life changing. The whole of her foundation was in upheaval, and her inner psyche could only be disheveled as a result.

“Then I’m not the only one in the family,” he said, glad to be able to speak, to respond at all, “who’s holding up under a strain.”

 

 

Their talk dissolved into hunger, and with a renewed burst of energy the couple dressed for a night on the town. Émile paused at the concierge desk downstairs to ask how far it might be to the French Quarter. Did he require a cab? He was tempted to ask his questions in French, but resisted, and was both surprised and pleased to be informed that, “We’re located in the French Quarter, sir. It’s outside the door.” The warmth of the black woman’s smile allowed his humiliation to feel entirely worthwhile. So in the end the Hilton Garden Inn may have been somewhat safe and dull but not totally un-cool.

They hit the streets.

The hunger jag kept their initial jaunt short, but after a stop for gumbo—the first item on Sandra’s list, which proved delicious—they did a short walking tour of the area, spending time in Jackson Square at the St. Louis Cathedral. They strolled along St. Peter Street, and Royal, and came back down Bourbon. These narrow streets, with their muted colors and patina and old-world charm and balcony life, offering up an other-era sense of festivity, almost beckoned them to kick up their heels, though no band played. Cinq-Mars yearned to see a funeral march, for the music, and said so. “I hope somebody important dies.”

“Émile!”

“Come on. You know it would be cool.”

Palm fronds rattled as they walked. They liked that.

And the sudden warmth from their winter was amazing.

Reaching St. Peter and Bourbon, he noticed a man he had checked out earlier near the cathedral. A brown-skinned man with patches on one cheek where the pigment was blemished, easy to identify after spotting him twice. He believed he could distinguish tourists from locals, but this guy seemed out of place among either clan. For someone who had shown up in different locations, or perhaps had followed him around for several blocks, he seemed disinterested in his surroundings and rather preoccupied with doing absolutely nothing. Typical cop behavior, he noted.

“What’s wrong?” Sandra asked, detecting the change in his mood.

He shrugged. “I’m being paranoid, I guess.”

“Seriously? Nobody here knows you, Émile.”

“Maybe that’s it.” His laughter seemed coy. “The total lack of notoriety.”

At least he succeeded in getting her to take his mood lightly.

“What do you want to do?” she asked.

“Drinks?”

Up for that, she remembered a place she had read about that they passed earlier. Down a few doors on St. Peter Street they stepped into a tourist mecca called Pat O’Brien’s, or more commonly, Pat O’s. Cinq-Mars was skeptical. Five hundred beer steins hanging from the ceiling seemed too obvious an effort to make an impression, but the talk around them proved convivial and the house speciality, a rum concoction known as a Hurricane—“I guess living here you need to find ways to lessen your fear of the word”—hit the spot.

If he was being followed, the stalker did not tramp inside after him.

They enjoyed a second round, and these were not light drinks, but when Émile started scouring out a local’s politics, Sandra hauled him away. On the streets again, their weariness felt sublime. After the long flight, the round of sex, their talk, the good food and feeling awash in liquor, their mood was bright and sad and a trifle sassy even as they turned contentedly bone-tired. A stray, sultry voice lured them into another bar and Émile was into the Scotch now. They each had a shot, not planning to stay long. The female blues singer with the soulful sound caught their attention, but when the piano player dipped in for a quiet riff they fell in love with New Orleans. He paid homage to the tune but altered the song, transforming a narcotic sadness to a homily on love, and when the woman returned to the lyrics she conveyed a more poignant nuance on life’s travail. Simple and riveting in its way. Arm in arm, Sandra and Émile strolled back to the Hilton and given his mood Cinq-Mars might have forgiven himself had he missed the signs, but as it turned out he did not.

The man in the foyer who had tried to snatch his wallet earlier caught no more than a glimpse of him, then sent an elevator up empty. Seeing that he was identified, the fellow gave him a stern look, a virtual challenge, but Cinq-Mars didn’t fall for the bait. Rather than chase him out the door again he summoned the next elevator, which opened for him almost immediately, and they ascended.

“Stay behind me when we get out,” he warned his wife.

“Excuse me?”

“Well behind me.”

“I heard you. Émile!”

The doors opened. Out he jumped and she chose to do as he asked. Close to their room she saw the problem. The door stood ajar with a wastebasket jammed in the gap to keep it open. An intruder wanted the rightful guests to identify themselves before entering. Instead, Cinq-Mars pulled the basket out to the hall and shut the door quietly. “Go downstairs,” he whispered. “Get Hotel Security.”

She was on her way when the door pitched open. Out flew the man who had previously pilfered her purse. He drove into Cinq-Mars like a running back, a shoulder ramming his chest, knocking him to the opposite wall, where he regained his footing though many steps behind the fleeing intruder now. Sandra looked frozen and terrified as he appeared set to barrel right through her. But he tucked in a little feint to the left and burst to the right, racing past Sandra like an errant wind. Cinq-Mars was running after him and his wife tried to get in his way, to reason with him through gestures but managing only to slow him down a tad, giving the culprit time to stab the elevator buttons, then, when no door spontaneously opened, sprint to the stairway. Cinq-Mars chased him as far as the stairs, but at the top looked down. He heard the miscreant leaping down the stairs a half dozen at a time in an accelerated burst to freedom.

Cinq-Mars let him go. No use pretending that he could compete on the same athletic scale. Besides, he was supposed to be retired.

Sandra, in any case, was pleased to see that he discontinued his reckless pursuit. The elevator door called by the trespasser opened behind them. “Catch that,” he said. When she hesitated just a second, he added, “We’ll go see Security.”

He insisted that the hotel staff call the police. When the Latino Head of Security suggested that they keep this “in-house,” Cinq-Mars volunteered to call the cops himself.

“There’s no need, sir, really,” the man insisted. “We’ll file a report with the police ourselves.”

“This is not an in-house type of incident,” Cinq-Mars told him.

“How so?”

He’d rather not tell him. “I’m a retired cop myself,” he revealed.

“Which means what exactly?” The hotel man was small and lean and in a way his body-type was remarkably similar to that of the two men who had now accosted Cinq-Mars twice. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t trust him. But he realized that the man was only following an appropriate procedure. As a cop, he never appreciated hearing from hotels about every little break-in. They could afford their own security so they should use it. He only wanted to be let in on the big stuff and the repetitive crimes, otherwise, just submit a report. He saw that the man had his dander up. He knew what this looked like: an old cop looking down on a much younger security staffer because he represented the minor leagues of law enforcement, without ever considering the difficulties and responsibilities of his position. The hotel employee felt irritated.

Of course he did. Cinq-Mars lightened up.

“I’m sorry. I apologize. Look. A couple of guys attempted to rob us in the lobby. They tried to pick my pocket and her purse. They were good at it, too. Professional. Now those same two men—one downstairs to keep a lookout—break into my room. That’s not coincidence. It’s impossible for that to be coincidence. Pickpockets aren’t burglars and vice versa. I just arrived in this city today. I’m being targeted. I’ve come to you first, of course, you need to be informed. But I also want to talk to the police on this because it is not simply a random incident.”

Clearly, the man appreciated his manners.

“I’ll call,” he said. “They come in half the time than if you call yourself.”

Cinq-Mars had no trouble believing that that was true.

Together, the Head of Security, Sandra and Émile Cinq-Mars went upstairs to see what might have occurred in their room. The men formally introduced themselves on the ride up, and Everardo Flores offered an apology on behalf of the hotel for the incident.

“Do you think,” Cinq-Mars asked him, “I could get another room and have it booked under another name? Given what’s occurred?”

“I’ll see to it, sir,” Flores said. “I won’t say half, but, this time of year, with Mardi Gras coming up, maybe twelve or fifteen percent of our clientele are here under assumed names anyhow, so what’s the difference?”

“Why are they…?” Sandra started to inquire, then changed her mind. “Never mind. Don’t answer that.”

“Mardi Gras,” Everardo Flores explained anyway. “Strange things happen.”

They disembarked on the seventeenth floor once again.

 

 

This time, no one was in their room.

As far as they could tell, nothing was stolen, which only deepened their concern. The thief, if that was his proper designation—and Cinq-Mars had his doubts about that—had proven himself to be considerate and tidy. Émile’s clothes remained unpacked, and it was obvious that the intruder had searched through his gear without unduly disturbing anything. The edges of his shirts had been lifted. The smaller pockets in his suitcase unzipped. Drawers had been opened and Sandra’s things mildly rearranged. One tidy crook, then, who had probably intended to leave the premises as he had found them, as if he had never been there at all.

“But if he stole something,” Flores pointed out, “then sooner or later you’d know that you’d been robbed.”

“Not if he was looking for information,” Cinq-Mars contradicted him. “If that’s what he came for, and found it, we might never have known he was here.”

“What sort of information?” Flores’s query was not skeptical, and Cinq-Mars gave him a glance. A lesser mind might have assumed by now that these hotel guests had panicked, perhaps mistaken room service for the mob. That they were bumpkins. But Everardo Flores apparently took Cinq-Mars at his word and was not treating the event lightly. Nothing stolen, no one hurt, and yet the intrusion felt serious. Even, perhaps, ominous.

Cinq-Mars was examining his suitcase again, trying to remember what he might have had in it. In the washroom, items had been removed from his toiletries bag and set aside, most likely to facilitate a more thorough examination of the contents, but what, indeed, could the man have been searching for?

“That I don’t know,” Cinq-Mars admitted. “Maybe whoever invaded my room didn’t know either.”

“I know what’s missing,” Sandra piped up.

Seated on the bed, she now stood to show them. She pointed to the front of Émile’s suitcase, but he couldn’t see what was gone.

“Your name tag’s been torn off. And your baggage tag from the airline! My baggage tags are still on my luggage, and I know that you never take your tags off for months—not until your next trip.”

Cinq-Mars concurred. He had a leather name-and-address tag attached to the handle, and a baggage tag from the airline, and both were now gone.

“You’d think, if he broke into the hotel room of people he previously tried to rob, he might already know your names,” Flores remarked.

“Proof of the visit, maybe. Something to show a boss. Or he’s a collector.”

“Of name tags?” Sandra asked.

“Souvenirs.”

“Or he failed to rob you the first time. So he came back.”

The police knocked and announced themselves. Cinq-Mars opened the door and the two uniforms entered and shook hands with Flores first, whom they seemed to recognize. Cinq-Mars didn’t bother to mention that he was a retired detective as the introductions were being made, but he noted that the officers were efficient, if somewhat disinterested. They obviously had no clue as to why they’d been called to this scene, and with some urgency, when nothing more than a couple of tags had been swiped. At least they were not being outwardly sarcastic, although they did give each other looks, as if to ask, “What’s next? Do we get called if a guest farts?”

They showed more interest when Flores told them about the first incident, but again they came back to the relevant information. “So, nobody actually pinched your wallet?”

“No, sir.”

“Nor your purse?” the other officer inquired of Sandra.

“No, but he had my wallet in his hand.”

“Which he picked up off the floor, is that right?”

“He made it look that way. Before that it was in my purse.”

“This is before they accidentally bumped into you.”

“That was no accident,” Sandra let him know, her temper flaring. “That’s the point. The wallet may never have been on the floor.”

“I see,” the first officer said. He had an Italian name which Cinq-Mars had instantly forgotten. D’Amato or D’Amico. Simple enough, but it slipped his mind.

“He was on the job,” Flores said quietly, obviously feeling the need to defend the hotel’s guest.

“Who? Him?” the Italian asked.

“Neither here nor there,” Cinq-Mars told him.

“That true? You were a cop somewhere, sir?”

Conceding the point with a nod, Cinq-Mars admitted, “Detective. Montreal.” Then he added, in case that was not enough information, “Canada.”

The officer surprised him, this D’Amato or D’Amico. “You know what they say. New Orleans. San Francisco. Montreal. Those are the three most lively cities in North America.”

Cinq-Mars knew that, but he was surprised that this man did, too. Then he remembered that the Internet filled people’s heads with an abundance of useless information, particularly when it came to lists and to ranking places and products. “That is what they say.”

“And your description of the intruders again?”

A hopeless cycle, so he indicated Flores with a jerk of his thumb. “Both of them, they looked like him.”

“So two small Mexicans.”

The hotel guy gave him a look.

“Fit,” the officer added. “A couple of small-build, fit Mexicans. About his age, too?”

“I’d say so.”

“All right. Not much we can do here, sir. The guy stole nothing—”

“My husband’s name tags,” Sandra interjected, and Émile wished that she hadn’t brought them up again.

“Yeah. Well, let’s be grateful he didn’t grab the entire suitcase. Of course, then we’d have an actual crime.”

“Hey, Aldo.” The quieter of the two cops spoke up to get his partner’s attention. He indicated the door, and Cinq-Mars recognized the instant change in the young officer’s demeanor. He’d seen that look before, when a subordinate’s unwarranted confidence yielded to dismay in the presence of a superior officer.

In the doorway stood a man of some heft, emboldened by a stomach that overlapped his belt, who dangled a gold shield from a packet stuck in his suit’s chest pocket. The man had short, tightly curled hair, but his features and skin tone suggested a racial mix that was relatively rare. African and Asian DNA predominated a blend that might include Caucasian and American Indian, making identification of his ethnic origins a challenge. Half a dozen disparate peoples might be willing to claim him as their own. What struck Cinq-Mars though was that the atmosphere in the room had been transformed, in part because their non-crime inexplicably warranted a detective, and in part because the two officers in the room were obviously wary of this man. Possibly—likely, he gauged—they feared him.

“Sir,” the one called Aldo sputtered. He damn nearly saluted.

“Big case?” the new arrival inquired. His presence was further amplified by an impressive baritone voice.

“No, sir,” Aldo briefed him. “Nobody hurt. Nothing—nothing of substance taken, sir.”

“Nothing of substance,” the detective repeated as he came into the room. “Good evening, ma’am,” he said to Sandra with a nod. He had a wide smile and teeth that gleamed. “Evening, sir,” he said to Cinq-Mars. Abruptly, surprisingly, he dismissed the two men in uniform. “I’ll take it from here,” he let them know.

When the door closed behind them, the new man pointed to Flores and said, “I don’t know you. You’re Security, right?” Again he smiled brightly, invitingly, as if welcoming everyone into the fold.

“Head of, sir. Everardo Flores.”

“Hmm. Yes. Sorry. We have met before. I’m—”

“Pascal Dupree,” Flores said. “I know who you are, sir.”

Dupree said nothing at first, expecting nothing less than recognition from Flores, yet seemed unimpressed by his own local fame. He grinned again and gestured to the tall retired detective. He asked Flores, “Do y’all know who he is?”

“Well,” Flores hesitated. “I know his name. I know he was on the job.”

Dupree nodded. He asked Flores to stay although the man had not shown any sign of leaving. Dupree stuck out his hand, “Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars, I’m guessing. Honored to meet you, sir. Sergeant Detective Pascal Dupree, New Orleans Police Department.”

“How do you do? I wasn’t expecting a detective for our little break-in.”

“Soon enough, sir, I’ll ask y’all what the hell you’re doing in New Orleans. But before we get to that, fill in the blanks for me, if you don’t mind, on what this kerfuffle is about.”

Cinq-Mars did so, briefly and succinctly, while Dupree flipped through a series of expressions that denoted his interest and at times his amazement. When the visiting detective was done, he said only, “I take it that y’all don’t know me?”

The Montreal cop was flummoxed. “I’ve never seen you before in my life.”

Dupree nodded, grinned, and looked over at Sandra. To her he said, “I’m the guy he came here to see.”

Suddenly, Cinq-Mars grasped the situation. He went to his suitcase again to dig out the notes he prepared from the FBI files that Bill Mathers had sent him, but even as he did so he was not expecting to find them. The wee notebook, especially purchased for the occasion, was gone.

“I can’t verify that,” Cinq-Mars told Dupree. “But your name rings a bell now. My notebook’s been stolen.”

“Is that significant?” the big man asked him.

“How do you mean?” He was thinking that the fellow’s broad smile kept him off his game. He couldn’t gauge why he was so happy and consequently couldn’t figure him out at all.

“Well, sir,” he said, although his inflection made it sound more like whale suh, “is there something in your notes that somebody who stole them from you will find significant?”

He thought about it, concluding, “Hard to say. I think most people would find my notes cryptic.”

“Cryptic,” Dupree repeated.

“I guess it would depend on who’s looking.”

The heavy black man changed the subject. “Are there many Duprees in your part of the world? You’re a Frenchman, right? It’s necessary to go back a ways, some would say a long ways, but there’s a trace of Cajun in me. My grandma on my mom’s side was a Filipina, about the only pure blood in me. But then my granddad, her husband, was a black-Cajun mix. My dad’s half black, my mom also has a white mom and a black father. One of those. So I’m a mongrel, but contrary to popular opinion I’m not some junkyard dog. I don’t inhale the breath of the dead. But I got enough of a trace of Cajun in my dancing shoes to earn the name Dupree. Some kind of French, no? Even though as you might tell from my accent, I hail from Mississippi. We all live complicated lives, don’t we?”

Cinq-Mars sat on the bed beside his wife. This man was beginning to sound like he did himself during an interrogation. Go all over the map in a discussion in order to tie the person up in his head and deliberately confound him then slice through to the heart of the matter. He wished he’d get to the heart of the matter.

“No Duprees where I come from,” Cinq-Mars told him. “But Dupuis. Dupree could easily be a corruption of that.”

“Corruption,” the detective repeated, and smiled.

“Like my name, Cinq-Mars, could be a corruption of Saint Marc, possibly. That’s one explanation. Or it can mean the fifth of March for some reason. Nobody’s one hundred percent sure.”

“Oh I get you, Detective. It’s just that that word—”

When he paused, Cinq-Mars repeated it for him, “Corruption.”

“It’s not a word nobody wants to say out loud in this town. Not in the company of a policeman.”

Sandra posed the question. “Why not?”

That great white-toothed grin again. “A few of our officers recently got sixty-five years each. Now that’ll be a good long stretch for them, don’t you think? Should teach them a lesson, no?”

“What did they do?” she asked.

“Ever heard of Danziger Bridge?” He carried on when she shook her head no. “A few of our officers killed innocent citizens there, just a week after Katrina. The victims were poor people. Hungry people. Folks without their homes. They were in a desperate plight. So our boys went down there and shot them. Killed two. Wounded a bunch of others. Four others. One young man was shot and as he lay dying an officer of the law went about kicking him. Really made him suffer before he died. He was a mentally challenged boy but some would apply that distinction to the cop. A few of our boys, not enough of them if it was up to me, got sixty-five years for that.”

Sandra had another question. “Why did the police shoot them?”

“Did I not explain that?” Before answering, Dupree shot a glance across at Everardo Flores, a look which Cinq-Mars interpreted as meaning, I don’t know you, but I’m going to say what I think in front of you anyway. “Why, ma’am, my fellow officers shot those people because they were poor, hungry, homeless, and scared, but mostly they shot them because they were black. The cops said they were shot at, opinion contradicted by the evidence, and by witnesses, including police witnesses.”

Everyone let the opinion settle in the room.

“I guess y’all don’t have such problems up there in Montreal,” Dupree said.

“I’m an American,” Sandra said, but Cinq-Mars did not know why she bothered to say that, and he wasn’t sure that Sandra knew why either.

Dupree was smiling, but with his mouth closed, the smile an effort now as he looked around at the other three. Then he said, “Corruption is not a word that sits well in a policeman’s head these days. It’s what they call the elephant in the room. Anytime you’re sitting down with an officer of the New Orleans Police Department, it’s the elephant in the room. But you, Cinq-Mars, y’all fought corruption in your own department. That’s your reputation. Good on you.”

“You have me at a disadvantage,” Cinq-Mars told him. “I don’t know how you do or why you do. How do you know anything about me? I was given your name, but I forgot it. At no time did I do a background check on you.”

“I’m the one who’s at a disadvantage, Detective Cinq-Mars.”

“How so?”

“Because I may know who y’all are, but I have no clue why the hell y’all are here. You might not know who I am, but who cares about that? I’m of no account. But y’all know why you’re here. I don’t. I’m the one, see, who’s wearing the disadvantage like shackles on his feet.”

Cinq-Mars noticed the man’s eyes shift as Sandra raised her fist in stifling a yawn. The day had been long and seemed endless. Detective Dupree released that buoyant, all-encompassing smile again. “Y’all traveled today, right?”

Sandra agreed with a nod.

“Y’all had a night on the town. Adventures! Beyond what you cared to experience. And yet, Detective, we have some things to talk about, no? Such as, what y’all are doing here. Why has your arrival set off a fireworks within the New Orleans Police Department?”

“What?” Cinq-Mars barked.

Dupree seemed surprised by his reaction. “Don’t you know? Then we have things to talk about. That could be a dandy conversation. I only hope this has nothing to do with Danziger Bridge. I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with that mess.”

“I’ve never heard of Danziger Bridge,” Cinq-Mars assured him.

“Y’all don’t watch the news? I thought you were retired. What else y’all got to do but watch the news? I guess New Orleans affairs are of no more interest in Montreal than Montreal is a concern to us. But the point is,” he hurried on before Cinq-Mars could interrupt, “we could go out, me and you. Your wife can get some shut-eye. I won’t keep him out all night, ma’am,” he said to her. “But if him and me can cover some ground, we all might sleep better afterward.”

Sandra and Émile glanced at each other, acknowledging that this was not the most romantic outcome to their evening. “I was going to change rooms,” Émile said.

“Good idea,” Dupree opined.

“The hotel can take care of that for you,” Flores interjected. “Check in at the front desk when you return. Mrs. Cinq-Mars, you can be in bed in ten minutes in your new room.”

He liked neither the cosiness of all this nor the hurry. The unknown aspect. But Cinq-Mars said, “Okay,” and Sandra nodded to confirm the right decision.

“I’ll show y’all a side of the real New Orleans,” Dupree enthused.

“Which means you don’t think I’ve seen it yet,” Cinq-Mars noted. He meant something by that, floating the opinion that Dupree may have done some earlier recognizance on his evening. But Dupree breezed on through the comment.

“How could you have? Is this your first time here, Detective? Yes? Then how could you have?”