Cyrus sat on a red sofa in the lobby and called Paulina. She answered on the third ring.
“Hey, baby,” he said. “How’s your morning?”
“Good Mass,” she said. “Missed you there.”
“Working. I’ll try to hit evening Mass tonight.”
“I’ll go with you, if you want. When nobody’s looking, I’ll let you put your hand on my knee.”
“You know I can’t turn that down.”
“You coming over now? I can fix lunch.”
Lunch with Paulina sounded almost as good as his hand on her knee.
“I gotta check a couple things out,” he said. “I just wanted you to know I’ll be with a lady today.”
“Is that so?” Paulina sounded amused. Better amused than angry.
Cyrus lowered his voice. “I told you about the woman who Father Ike tried to call before…she’s going to be helping me a little today.”
“This sex worker lady?”
“I just had coffee with her and her boyfriend. Judging by him, I’m not her type.”
“What’s her type?”
“She called him a ‘well-groomed Viking.’ It fit.”
“Oh my…I might like to see a well-groomed Viking.”
“Hey,” Cyrus said.
Paulina laughed her sweetest laugh.
“You know I love you and trust you. If you need this woman’s help, that’s fine. Finding out what happened to Father Ike is top priority.”
“You’re right,” Cyrus said. “You’re always right.”
“You know it,” she said. A long pause. Cyrus tensed. “You worried about something?”
“When am I not?”
“This lady?”
“She’s not bad,” Cyrus said. “But she’s no you.”
Paulina had insisted on counseling once they’d officially decided to be “a thing.” The first thing the counselor told Cyrus was, Tell her everything, even the stuff you don’t want to tell her. Especially the stuff you don’t want to tell her.
“Cyrus, one of these days you’re gonna have to get used to being around women again,” she said. “Women who aren’t me. Dr. Rourke said you should even try to make friends with a woman.”
“You want me to be friends with a dominatrix?”
“You never know who God’s gonna send into your life. The Creator can get real creative sometimes.”
“That’s for sure.”
“Think on it,” she said. “Maybe talk to that lady about it.”
Cyrus looked up as Nora entered the lobby wearing the same black dress and red strappy heels as yesterday. Was she a fine-looking lady? Definitely. But what he felt for her wasn’t attraction really, more like curiosity. He’d never met a woman quite that…what was the word he was looking for? Weird?
“We’ll see,” Cyrus said. “Gotta go, baby. Love you.”
“Love you, too, Daddy. See you tonight.”
Cyrus ended the call and stood up.
“‘Baby,’” Nora said, grinning the way women did when they caught a man in the act of doing something they approved of. “That’s cute.”
He ignored that. “You want to ride with me or me with you?”
She raised an eyebrow. “What’s your ride?”
“Black Honda CR-V. Yours?”
“Red Mustang convertible.”
Cyrus thought about that.
“You drive.”
Cyrus rode shotgun and didn’t mind at all when Nora put the top down. It wasn’t quite eighty yet, but it would hit it any hour now so they might as well enjoy the morning.
She slipped on a pair of black cat-eye sunglasses and headed out of the French Quarter.
“Kingsley first, I guess?” she asked.
“Might as well get it over with,” Cyrus said.
“Don’t worry about King. He’s fine. He’s just tense lately with Juliette about to have the baby.”
“It’s all right. I’m sure I’ll be the same way when it’s me and Paulina’s turn.”
“Paulina, pretty name. You two been together long?”
“Met two years ago, been dating about a year and a half. Engaged since May,” he said. “How about you and your Viking? Søren or whatever his name is?”
“Been together off and on since I was twenty,” she said.
“And you’re not married?”
She grinned as she made a left turn at a stop sign.
“We aren’t the marrying kind.”
“How about Edge and his Missus?”
“I think King would marry Juliette if only to make things easier on their kids. But Juliette’s dead set against it. Bad past experience.”
“Ah, I get that,” Cyrus said. “I’m about the only guy in town who handles domestics. Stuff I’d seen, damn. Marriage can get ugly fast.”
“Domestics?”
They’d picked up speed, so Nora had to raise her voice. The wind whipped her black hair around her face, but it didn’t seem to bother her. She looked good, a little wild like that.
“Yeah, that’s what we call it in the business. Domestic cases—those are cheating husbands, gambling husbands, deadbeat dads who buy brand-new Ford F-150s while their kids are wearing clothes from St. Vincent’s.”
“How’d you get into that line of work?” she asked.
“Mmm…” Cyrus considered telling her the whole story but stopped himself. No need to be getting personal. “I was a cop for ten years. Got shot on the job and decided not to go back. I feel like I can help more people this way. Women and children, I mean. That’s all I ever work for. Husbands don’t hire me. Just wives or girlfriends.”
“So you really are a knight-errant then?” she asked, glancing at him to smile.
“Been called worse.”
She pulled up to the drive of Edge’s 6th Street palace, and punched in the security code for the iron gates. When they parked inside, her dog ran to her, panting and wagging his tail. She pushed her sunglasses up on her head and reached for her dog.
“Sorry I abandoned you last night, boy,” she said, going down on her knees to scratch the Shepherd’s enormous black ears. “Mama had a date.”
“He’s a good-looking boy,” Cyrus said. “Too bad he eats men.”
Nora stood and tucked her fingers into her dog’s collar and held him against her thigh.
“Hasn’t eaten a man yet,” she said. “But every time Søren walks by, he does start to drool. Then again, so do I.” Nora winked at him.
Cyrus heard laughter and voices as they walked around the house. In the backyard, they found Edge standing in the shallow end of a swimming pool waiting to catch his daughter, who was perched on the edge of the pool in a pink swimsuit, pink arm floaties, and a pink swim cap over her curls.
Edge said something in French and the little girl laughed and then launched herself into her father’s arms.
“You speak French?” Nora asked Cyrus.
“Three years of French in Action in high school. Don’t remember a damn word.”
“He said, ‘Don’t jump on me. You’ll mess up my hair,’” Nora translated. “So of course she jumped on him.”
“Kids,” Cyrus said.
With his daughter in his arms, her skinny stick legs around his waist, Edge waded over to the side of the pool. He had on black sunglasses that he pushed up to his forehead.
“Hi, Tata Elle,” the little girl said, waving.
“Hello, my fishy,” Nora said. “You playing with Papa in the pool today?”
“Mama’s taking nap number one,” the little girl said. Edge laughed.
“Céleste, you remember Mr. Tremont, right?” Nora asked her.
“Hello, Miss Céleste,” Cyrus said.
“Bonjour, Monsieur Tremont,” she said. Even Edge grinned at that and kissed his daughter on her forehead.
“Can you do me a favor, sweetheart?” Nora asked. “Can you run into the house with Gmork and change his black collar to his pink collar? He told me he wants to wear pink like you today.”
“Can we dry off first?” Edge said to his daughter. “S’il ti plait?”
“I’ll help.” Nora held out her hands, and Edge passed his daughter to her. With a big pink towel, Nora dried off the girl and sent her scurrying into the house with a playful swat on her tiny pink-clad bottom, the big dog right behind her.
Edge put his hands on the side of the pool and rose up and out of the water. Cyrus breathed a sigh of relief. He’d thought all Europeans wore Speedos, but Edge had on a pair of black swim shorts.
“Mr. Edge—” Cyrus began, but Edge held up a hand. He said something in French to Nora. Nora replied, also in French. Edge nodded. Nora said something else, smiled, then laughed. Edge replied in what Cyrus assumed was a universal language, that of the middle finger. Nora didn’t seem shocked or insulted.
“Sorry,” Nora said to Cyrus. “King, Cyrus Tremont. Cyrus, Kingsley Edge.” Nora waved her hand between them. “Cyrus has a couple quick questions, then we’re leaving. I promise.”
“Get it over with,” Edge said, still dripping wet. He grabbed a towel off the stack and ran it over his wet hair. First, Nora in the bathtub. Now, Edge in the pool. Were these people ever dry?
“I know Nora told you about Father Isaac Murran’s death,” Cyrus began. “And that he called her minutes before his suicide. She doesn’t remember giving anyone in New Orleans her business card. Did you happen to give one of her red cards to anyone down here at any point?”
“What was the number?” Edge asked.
“My 3969 number,” Nora said.
“That was after you quit working for me,” Edge said.
“Right,” Nora said, nodding. “I had a different number when I was an Edge Enterprises employee.” Cyrus jotted that down his black reporter notebook. “But I quit working for him and went solo—stopped seeing almost all my clients but for a handful of favorites. That lasted about two years, then we moved down here.”
“When was that exactly?” Cyrus asked, though he already knew the answer from Nora. Just wanted to make sure…
“We bought this house…” Edge said, pausing to think. “…November, three years ago. Elle bought hers in December, same year. Yes?”
“Right,” Nora said.
“I’d guess you came down here to house hunt before buying the place,” Cyrus said.
“Of course,” Edge said.
“Any chance you gave someone down here Nora’s card during those trips?”
“I don’t know why I would. Trust me, this city has plenty of sin without needing me to import it,” Edge said.
“But you did, right?”
Edge shrugged. “I left most of my sin in New York. But I couldn’t bear to leave it all back there.”
“What about you?” Cyrus turned to Nora. “You remember giving your card to anyone when you came down here to house hunt?”
She exhaled heavily. “That was a quick trip three years ago. I was here less than a week.” She rubbed her forehead as if trying to jostle a memory loose. “It’s possible, I admit. But I wasn’t looking for clients. I’m trying to think if I met anyone kinky and exchanged information.”
“You didn’t go to any clubs or anything?” Edge asked.
“No,” Nora said. “Not that I remember. Although it is New Orleans. I might have had too much to drink one night and given out my number to everyone on Bourbon Street. I didn’t. I think.”
“Did you do any drinking while you were in town?” Cyrus asked her. She looked at him, lips pursed.
“What do you think?”
“Maybe you got drunk and gave everyone on Bourbon Street your card. Narrows it down.”
“Nobody called me after my trip down here,” she said. “That I do know. And if I give someone my card…they call me.”
“A dead priest did,” Cyrus said.
“A dead priest I never met in my life,” Nora said.
“So…either you got drunk—” he said, pointing at Nora with his pencil, “—and maybe gave your card to everyone on Bourbon. Or Father Ike went to New York, and he could have gotten your card from…”
“Literally any kinky person in the city,” Nora said.
“Great. Fantastic,” Cyrus said dryly. “I’ll ask Sister Margaret if he took any trips to New York. You ready?”
Céleste came running out of the house then with Nora’s big dog now wearing a hot pink collar around his neck.
“Much better,” Nora said.
“Come swim with me,” she said to the dog, pulling him by the collar to the pool.
“No dogs in the pool,” Edge said two seconds before Céleste and the dog waded into the shallow end via the pool steps.
“Out, Gmork,” Nora said. Her dog obeyed, climbed out of the pool, and promptly shook himself dry all over Edge, who took it with impressive stoicism.
“I never knew I could hate a dog,” Edge said. “But I can.”
“Bye, King,” Nora said. “Bye, princess!”
Céleste waved goodbye to them.
“Thank you, Mr. Edge.” Cyrus held out his hand, and Edge only hesitated a second before shaking it. As Cyrus and Nora were leaving the backyard, he saw Edge jump back into the water, swoop Céleste into his arms, and toss her squealing and laughing into the air.
“I’m gonna say something,” Cyrus said to Nora. “And you’re gonna forget I said it after I said it.”
“Say it.”
“That is one good-looking man.”
“Rich, too.”
“Do I want to know where the money comes from?”
“He had a trust fund,” she said. “Sort of. He used it to buy buildings in Manhattan in the ’90s. Sold them twenty years later for ten times what he paid for them. Oh, he’s hung like a horse, too.”
“We’re one-hundred percent done talking about this.”
“Talking about what?” Nora said.
“Thank you.”
Nora sent Gmork back to his doghouse, which was only slightly smaller than Cyrus’s first adult apartment.
“So, we go to Father Ike’s place now?” Nora asked.
Cyrus paused. “Once you tell me what you all were saying about me in French.”
“Believe it or not,” she said, “we weren’t talking about you at all. Kingsley asked how our Viking was. I said he was okay. Then I asked King how well he slept last night. Kingsley said he slept very well. I said I didn’t sleep much. He flipped me off.”
“That part I got. He mad you got some and he didn’t?”
“I don’t blame him,” she said. “And trust me, if King has something to say about you, he’ll say it in English.”
They returned to her car. “Where to?” she asked.
“St. Valentine’s,” Cyrus said, and gave her directions.
“You know, we might never figure out how he got my card. We had hundreds printed.”
“We?” Cyrus said. “You investigating this case now?”
“Wouldn’t you be a little curious if someone you didn’t know called you two minutes before shooting themselves in the head?”
“Probably. But this is my job. It’s not yours.”
“If Father Ike was kinky, he was one of us,” she said, pointing at herself. “Somehow we failed him if he thought the only way out was suicide.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Cyrus said. “People make their own choices.”
“True. But I want to help if I can.”
“You’re kind of friendly for a dominatrix,” Cyrus said. “Where’s the whip and chains?”
“You wanna see ’em?” She glanced at him over the top of her sunglasses.
He pointed at her. “You’re trouble.”
“Yeah, sorry.” She pushed her sunglasses back on and faced forward, eyes on the road. “Old habits die hard.”
“I hear that,” he said, wincing.
“Oh…there’s a story there.” She laughed. “Spill it.”
“Not telling it.”
“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”
“You already told me yours,” he said.
“Not all of it.”
Cyrus laughed. He liked her. That was a fact. Whether he should like her…well, that he didn’t know.
“I’ll tell you something,” Cyrus said. “Doctor’s orders.”
“Now I’m intrigued,” she said. “Tell me anything you want.”
“I’ve had…ah…issues in the past. With women.”
“Issues?”
“Honesty issues,” he said. “I’m seeing someone for all that. And it’s helping. One of the things I’m supposed to work on is being truthful with the women in my life. No false pretenses, no lies. Not even white lies. So, you know, don’t ask me something if you don’t want an honest answer.”
“Are you lying to me about something?”
“No, no, not that. Just…I’m supposed to have a female friend. A woman in my life who I’m not related to who I can confide in and be friendly with. Paulina said today you might be a good candidate for the job.”
“Me? Why me?”
“Throw me in the deep end, I guess.”
“And I’m the deep end?”
“You are definitely not the kiddie pool, lady.”
They’d turned into construction traffic and slowed to a crawl. The sun was high and hot, so Nora hit the button to raise the convertible top. Once latched into place, she turned the A/C on. Suddenly it was cooler, darker, and much more intimate in the car.
“This is coming from a therapist, right?” Nora asked. “Sounds like it. What do they call it? Exposure therapy. Spiders freak you out, so they have you make friends with a spider. Women freak you out, so they have you make friends with a woman?”
“Something like that,” he said. “Therapy was Paulina’s idea. And when I say ‘idea,’ I mean ‘order.’”
Nora grinned again. “So you used to play around a lot, then you met your dream girl, and now you’re behaving yourself?”
“I did not play around,” he said. “There was no playing. I made girls my second full-time job.”
“Nice work if you can get it. I guess you got it.”
“I got it,” he said. Cyrus didn’t say anything and neither did Nora. She seemed to be waiting for him to go on. “I was not a great guy back then.”
“No judgment here. I’ve been the bad guy, too,” she said. “And trust me, you’ve got nothing on King. Even after he met Juliette, it took him a long time to settle down. Céleste finally did the trick. That man is lucky to be alive. In his heyday, it was a different girl—or guy—every day almost.” She didn’t sound like she was joking.
“That’s almost better than what I was doing,” Cyrus said. “A new girl every day and nobody really gets hurt because nobody expects anything. Me? I’d play the girls, play with their minds, their hearts, make them crazy about me, make them think we had something real. Then I’d get bored, pick a new girl, start all over. Run down my list…” he said, miming an imaginary list of women’s names. “Get to the bottom. Start at the top again. Apologize. Flowers. Beg for forgiveness. Win them over.”
“Power trip.”
“You got it. Therapist thinks—I do, too—that it’s because my father died of a heart attack when I was fifteen. Tough time to lose your dad. I started looking for any way to feel better, to feel in control. I found girls.”
“What changed? You don’t seem like much of a player anymore.”
“I got shot,” Cyrus said. “I was off-duty, rolled up on a bunch of squad cars outside a gas station. Owner got shot during a robbery. They had it under control so I went home. Drove past this alley, saw a kid running—matched the description down to his yellow Adidas tennis shoes. I knew it had to be our guy. I got out and ran down the alley…came out the other side and BAM—hit right in the shoulder. Another cop thought I was the guy.”
“Jesus Christ,” Nora said. “You got shot by another cop? He didn’t recognize you?”
“All he saw was ‘black dude running.’ Good thing he’s a shit shot, or I’d be a dead man.”
“Fuck.”
She didn’t ask any stupid questions. Cyrus appreciated that. “Fuck” was the right response. At least she didn’t ask Did it hurt? like a lot of people did. Yeah, it hurt. Of course it hurt.
“Two weeks laid up in the hospital. Nobody but family came to see me. I had my phone. I let every girl on my list know their poor baby Cy had taken a bullet in the line of duty. I was waiting for my medal, waiting on some sympathy.”
“At least a sponge bath, right?”
“Not one of them showed up.”
“Not one?”
“They had me figured out.” Even as he said it, he remembered one person had shown up at the hospital to check on him, one of the girls on his list. Detective Katherine Naylor. She’d made the mistake of coming when his mom was there. He’d pretended like they were nothing but coworkers, and that had been the last of Katherine.
“Not even Paulina?”
“I hadn’t met her yet,” he said. “I did a couple weeks after I got out. I was staying with Mom while I was recovering. Her rule—you stay in her house, you go to Mass with her every Sunday.”
“Sounds like your mom and my mom went to the same Mom School.”
“Mom introduced me to Paulina at church. Love at first sight. For me. She looked at me like she’d been reading my internet search history.”
Nora laughed at that. She did have a good laugh. The kind of laugh that made a man stand up a little straighter in his seat.
“Took a long time to convince her to give me a chance. She’d heard enough horror stories from Mom in their prayer group to make me work for her. For three whole months I could only see Paulina at Mass. Lucky for me, she goes every day.”
“So you started going every day?”
“Every God damn day,” he said.
“Explains why your website says you only help out women and children. You’re doing penance.”
“Maybe so,” he said. “Maybe that’s what it is.”
“I think you’re more Catholic than I am.”
“Bad Catholic. Paulina was this close to joining the Ursulines in town.” He held up his hand, fingers a hair apart. “I stole her right out from under God’s nose. Might be going to hell for that.”
Nora said, “It’s okay. We’ll ride share.”
He laughed, couldn’t help it. The lady was fun. Fun enough to be a real friend? Time would tell maybe.
“You’re all right, Nora.”
She smiled. “Better reserve judgment there, buddy.” Nora hit the gas.