As we sped through the rising darkness, I wondered if this was how Eric would have done things. Everyone I met seemed surprised that he had the money and influence that he did. Apparently, he’d played that close to the vest. The same way he’d played everything. Until he died and left me the keys to the kingdom, I hadn’t known that riders existed, much less that he was in the business of opposing them. I still didn’t know how he’d amassed the wealth I was spending. All I could say for certain was that it hadn’t come from my grandfather, or my own father wouldn’t have struggled so hard to keep me, my mother, and my two brothers in good clothes on Sunday.
Would he have come when Karen called? Would he have agreed to her plan, or would he have had a better one? What would he have seen that I was missing? The jet lag paranoia was thick as paste. I told myself that long plane flights always did this to me, and that a night’s rest would fix ninety percent of it. Or if not that, at least half.
New Orleans appeared across the water, a glow of light in the dark air. A city half ruined, but still bright.
We got back to the hotel a little bit late. Chogyi Jake, Ex, and Karen Black were already in the restaurant. The afternoon’s bright Dixieland had given way to a live jazz band softly playing songs I felt like I knew. The air was thick with humidity, but instead of feeling damp, it seemed lush. Like the whole city had just stepped out of the tub, and hadn’t quite gotten its robe on. The table was long enough for six, but set for five. Karen had taken the seat at the head, Ex to her left, Chogyi Jake to her right. Two highball glasses were sweating on the linen in front of Ex and Karen. Chogyi Jake was drinking water. Some things never change.
As Aubrey and I took our seats, Karen waved a greeting, but didn’t pause in the story she was telling.
“So there I was, dressed like the world’s cheapest hooker, trying to explain to the Secret Service that I hadn’t even known the vice president was staying there, and that they probably wanted to move him before the rest of the team showed up and arrested half the hotel staff.”
Ex chuckled and shook his head. Chogyi Jake smiled his beatific smile and turned to us.
“How was the house hunting?” he asked.
“Decent,” Aubrey answered.
“I think we’ve got a place,” I said. “It may be a day or two before we can get keys, though. Money lubricates, but bureaucracy resists.”
“It will be at least two days before the package arrives from London,” Chogyi Jake said. “But the property manager was quite helpful.”
“How long will it take you to get the place ready once all the props are here?” I asked.
“Two or three days,” Chogyi Jake said. “Two for certain if Aubrey or Ex can be spared. More likely three if it’s only me.”
The waiter ghosted up to us, took our drink orders, handed us two leather-bound menus, and vanished again. When Karen went back to the business at hand, she talked directly to me.
“There’s reconnaissance work to be done, but I don’t know that having four people would actually be an improvement on three. Or two, for that matter. The more people we have, the better the chances of being made.”
Ex sipped his drink. I didn’t remember ever seeing him with anything stronger than a beer before.
“How about you and me and Aubrey do what we can to track the girl,” I said. “Ex? You up for helping Chogyi Jake with the safe house?”
“Sure,” Ex said without rancor. I’d expected him to object. I was jumping at shadows.
“What’s the deal with the car?” Aubrey asked.
“Ninety-four Ford cargo van,” Ex said. “We’re leasing it under a false name, for cash. It’ll be here in the morning.”
“The gray market’s treating us gently,” Karen said. “I’ll make sure the police aren’t looking for it for any other reasons before we take it on the road, but I think we’re good.”
Aubrey looked suitably impressed. Our drinks arrived.
“We need to switch hotels,” I said. “I don’t want to try sleeping and worrying that the evil snake woman’s going to make another try for me.”
“Already done,” Karen said. “Ex had the same idea. We even moved your things. We’ll go to your new digs after dinner.”
I felt a moment’s disquiet about other people touching my stuff, but I let it pass.
“So there’s just one more thing we need to talk about,” I said to Karen. “The price.”
Ex, Aubrey, and Chogyi Jake were quiet. Karen’s smile deepened slightly, and she looked down at the table. When she looked up at me through her soft, blond hair, her eyes were steeled. It struck me again that she was beautiful. The band shifted into something that I was pretty sure was John Coltrane.
“You’re right. I shouldn’t have gotten carried away before I knew I could afford all this,” she said. “What will it take?”
“Nothing that’ll break the bank,” I said. “I want you to tell me everything you know about my uncle.”
FIVE
The food arrived, a bouillabaisse that smelled rich and oceanic with two side orders of raw oysters for the table. The band took a break between sets, and a recording took their place, muted trumpet and stand-up bass hovering together just under the level of conversation. Karen ate a couple oysters, her eyes focused on nothing in particular, and then, her thoughts gathered, nodded to herself.
“I met Eric in the summer of 2000,” she said. “I was still officially working for the bureau, but I’d taken a leave of absence. I was… I wasn’t well. I don’t know how much you know about my history? Do you know about Davis?”
I shook my head.
“Okay,” Karen said. “I have to go back a little farther. After we caught Mfume, I wasn’t the only one looking for the rider. My partner on the case, Michael Davis, also heard everything Mfume said. We were working on the issue together. The year before I met Eric—July 12, 1999, the rider that had been in Mfume killed my partner. It made it look like an accident, but I knew.
“I went to New York. That was where the rider was. I started looking around. Eric’s name kept coming up. Everyone knew him, or knew about him. He was some sort of fixer. The guy you went to when you didn’t have anywhere else to go. I made him for a bagman. The public face of something bigger. I was wrong about that. Anyway.
“I found him in a bar on the Upper West Side. He had an apartment, and he was doing business out of it. I tried to lean on him. I don’t know exactly what I said. I think I gave him some crap about not having a business license or something,” Karen said, and she smiled. “He didn’t buy it. I’d meant to go in and roust him, break some heads, find out who his boss was, and if there was any connection to the rider. Instead, we wound up drinking whiskey and… and I told him everything. He had a way of listening that made you say things you didn’t mean to.”
“And he helped you?” I asked.
“He did,” Karen said, but her expression was bleak. “We didn’t catch the rider, but we cast it out of the body it had taken over. Broke its power a little. Weakened it. Afterward, I was sick for almost a month. It hadn’t been… it wasn’t easy. He let me stay at his apartment. He made me bathe once or twice a week. He kept me eating food.”
“He guided you back,” Chogyi Jake said. Karen considered for a moment, then nodded.
“He was with me through my breakdown,” she said.
“Were you lovers?” I asked.
“Only a couple times toward the end,” Karen said. Her voice had taken on a low, throaty amusement. “I wouldn’t have been much fun in the sack right at the beginning. But no, we weren’t serious about each other. We were just a man and a woman in close proximity for a few weeks. And neither of us had anyone. That’s all.”
“What was his price?”
“Twenty thousand dollars, and five favors to be named later,” she said. “He called in three of the favors. Before I left the bureau, he had me expunge some information from a guy’s police record. Then after I left, he needed someone to be a lookout on a job he was doing in Seattle, so I went out and helped with that. The last time I heard from him, he needed me to keep a baby at my apartment for a couple weeks in March of ’03.”