10
This was a new kind of pain for me. I had experienced life as a parent for less than a year and, even then, only as the father of an adult daughter. But Heather’s unexplained disappearance, coinciding with a murder having taken place in my hotel room, rocked my world. Of course there were logical explanations for the note. I started to spin several rational scenarios to ease my mind. But none were sufficiently convincing. Heather’s cryptic note didn’t give me much to go on, not nearly enough to justify the nice, tidy, safe hypotheticals I tried to conjure up.
I immediately checked out Google Maps, but that didn’t help. A church in Paris; a city in Idaho. But nothing in the bayous of Louisiana.
Despite my repeated attempts to call Heather on her cell, she wasn’t answering. My mind was engaged in a cruel tennis match. Alternating shots across the net.
On one hand, maybe she had simply decided to do some research for her master’s thesis. Bonk.
But if that was true, why such a short, cryptic note, and why wasn’t she picking up when I called? Bonk.
Of course, Heather did have an eccentric and very independent side. Bonk.
But how did I know for sure that she wasn’t in danger? Bonk. Match.
My troubled mind was fixating on the many things I didn’t yet know, and that filled me with dread. Had someone lured her into a bad situation? I was the one who had brought her to New Orleans. This was happening on my watch.
In my new hotel room, I uttered a hasty, clumsily constructed prayer and then opened up the state map I bought at the sundries shop in the hotel and scanned the bayous surrounding New Orleans, looking for something called Bayou Bon Coeur. Nothing.
I wanted to contact the local police and file a missing person’s report, but given my recent brush with the FBI, and the news about the Pullmen murder and the connection to my hotel room, I had to be realistic about how that might play out. Worse still, it had been only a few scant hours that Heather had been unaccounted for. In addition, she was an adult, and there was absolutely no evidence of foul play. I knew too much about the process and how, down at the station, I would be summarily dismissed as an overcontrolling parent.
So I would have to wait. Staying up late. Pacing. Calling her cell, which rang but went to voice mail each time. Sending her text messages. Sending a few e-mails. No response. Finally around 3 a.m. I fell asleep.
I awoke with a start at five o’clock in the morning. I dropped to my knees and petitioned God to give me some indication of what was going on with my daughter.
I plunged onto the bed with my cell and went through the ritual of dialing Heather’s cell again, and again getting no answer except her voice mail. But I listened to it studiously. At least it was good to hear her voice. I prayed and continued praying in bed, too tired to slip under the covers, until I began to drift into sleep.
I had forgotten to set an alarm or ask for a wake-up, so it was almost midmorning on Sunday when I was awakened by a persistent tapping on my door. I headed to the door and opened it a crack. The housekeeper asked if I wanted my room cleaned. “Not today,” I replied. I wouldn’t take any chances with strangers coming into my room.
Then panic set in. No call from Heather had come through.
A bad way to start the day. I should have planned a day of prayer and fasting. Instead I started with cold-sweat anxiety and defeat.
I knew that New Orleans must have plenty of fine houses of worship, but I didn’t know of any personally. I would conduct church in my hotel room before heading off to find Heather. It was time to set things on a better course.
I knelt at the edge of the bed. Asking for insight about finding Heather. For the power of the resurrected Jesus to fight my battles for me —after all, the combat I was engaged in wasn’t just a matter of flesh and blood. It was a struggle against a dark, invisible empire.
Scripture reading for the day: I took a bypass out of Deuteronomy, which I had been studying, and went to Luke 4:5-13 instead. The devil’s temptation of Jesus in the hot, dry, unforgiving desert, showing Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, and offering him dominion over all of them if he would simply worship him. But Jesus answered: “You shall worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.” Then the devil unsuccessfully tempted Jesus by trying to entice him to jump off the pinnacle of the Temple in Jerusalem to prove his divinity. Jesus shut him down again, citing the Scripture about not putting God to the test.
Lesson? Even when he fails, the devil doesn’t give up. For the story goes on: “When the devil had finished every temptation, he left Him until an opportune time.”
The dark lord and his agents don’t surrender; they just regroup. Until the opportune time. Offering power as the incitement. But delivering slavery.
Morning was waning and I had run out of patience. I drove my rental down to the police station and filed a formal missing person’s report. I begged them not to follow the usual routine. I told them, “I have a bad feeling about this.” The interviewing officer had me sit in the chair next to his desk while he disappeared into the office of the police captain. I saw the two talking for a long while before the officer strolled back to me.
“You’re the one from the ABA lawyers’ meeting? Taken in for questioning by the FBI? Dead government lawyer found in your hotel room?”
“We’ll follow up on this in due course.” I dreaded those last two words. Then he added, “And, Mr. Black, don’t leave the area without letting us know first.” He handed me his card with his direct line on it.
My car was parked two blocks away. When I had trudged there, I would have ducked into my rental, except I saw something. A little jazz café, right there at the spot where I had parked, called the Blue Key. The front window was littered with small posters of music groups, and one of them struck a personal chord with me, so I strolled in. Having no answers about Heather was vexing me severely. I wanted a momentary diversion.
The place was dimly lit with a dozen tables scattered around. At one end was a bar with stools and a backlit glass case with bottles full of colored booze. At the other end, a black man was at the keyboard of a baby grand piano. I recognized the tune he was playing, an obsolete jazz number —“Some of These Days” —that said, “Some of these days you’ll miss me, honey.”
He must have heard me come in but didn’t turn at first, just kept playing. When I took a few steps closer, he spoke without looking over. “We’re closed today.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“It says it on the sign.”
“I must have missed it.”
More elegant playing of a tune dating from the end of the ragtime era. I was enjoying it. Then the music stopped, and he turned to face me.
“Can I help you?”
“That one’s from the 1920s, right?”
“Sophie Tucker made it famous in 1926. You into that old stuff? You look too young for that.”
“Forty-five isn’t young.”
“Just wait till you’re lookin’ from where I’m lookin’. It’ll look a lot younger then.”
Even in the shadows I could see his hair, cut short, was iron gray. He was wearing thick glasses. He tilted his head. “You didn’t tell me what you doin’ here.”
“I noticed one of the posters in the window about a jazz guitarist. Jersey Dan Hoover. He played here?”
“Oh yeah. You a fan of his?”
“Yes. Good friends, too. In high school we played in a blues band together. He took off like a rocket after that. We’ve stayed in touch.”
“Don’t say.” He grabbed a glass off a coaster on the piano and jiggled the ice. “I got bar privileges here. Wanna drink?”
“Thanks, but I’ll pass. I was just walking by and saw the poster and had to find out about my buddy.”
“You don’t sound local. From outta town?”
“Raised in Wisconsin, lived in New York City for a time. Now I’ve got a place on an island off North Carolina.”
He hit a few chords from “Bridge over Troubled Water,” chuckling to himself, and then said, “No man’s an island.”
I responded. “So true.”
“Down here in N.O. there’s all kinds of people. And people got their people. Got your musicians, like me, who hang together. There’s a lot of us. Then there’s the Holy Ghosters who spend their lives at church. Like my momma. And you got your imports from the outside comin’ here to make money —a lot before Katrina —shipping lines, oil companies, fisheries. Our football and basketball franchises, of course, and all those sports junkies that follow ’em.”
“I heard you lost an arena football team,” I said.
“Yeah. The New Orleans VooDoo. Them and a couple other teams around the country.”
“Just wondering . . . Are there many of those still around? Voodoo followers, I mean. Not the football kind, but the real believers.”
“More’n you’d think.”
That was something worth pondering. I reached out my hand. “Trevor Black.”
“Louis Thompson Jr. Jazz pianist.” Then he added, “And human being.”
I was glad to hear that. He couldn’t possibly have understood why.
“That’s comforting to know,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow. “What’s your interest in voodoo?”
“Something personal. Involving my daughter.”
“Sounds serious.”
“You have no idea.” Taking a chance, I said, “I’m guessing you’re pretty knowledgeable about things.”
“Not according to my two ex-wives.”
“Well, about voodoo, for instance.”
“What ya want to know?”
“Ever hear of a place called Bayou Bon Coeur?”
Louis’s face changed. It scrunched up and his eyes half closed. “Heard about it a few times. Always sounded to me like a bad place. Why?”
“Sorry for you. And her.”
“I need to get there. To find her.”
“Oh, I can’t help you there.” He leaned back, grabbed his glass again, looked into its empty contents, and gazed longingly over to the bar. When he put his glass back on the piano, he said, “But I know somebody who might be able to help.”
He reached into the pocket of his sport coat and pulled out a pen, then yanked out a piece of paper from the other pocket and wrote on it.
“This here’s a man who’s a PI. I heard he’s had some dealings with that very location.” He handed me the note. “Oh, and another good thing. He comes well-armed.”