Langston Hughes once wrote, “Hold fast to dreams/For if dreams die/Life is a broken-winged bird/That cannot fly.” There are some dreams which should never be trampled upon. Dreams deserve treatment reserved for the delicate and precious things they are.
I imagine Claire Sturges felt the same way before the dangerous, smooth-talking stranger named Baxter Flatt walked into her life on a bright summer morning in Jackson Square.
Claire was Cully Tucker’s friend. Cully is my attorney, sort of, in the sense that I call him whenever my infrequent dangerous adventures land me in jail. He’s a small-time ambulance chaser with self-esteem problems, but his heart is in the right place, which is probably why he showed up at Holliday’s, a bar off Toulouse Street in the French Quarter. I play a cornet at Holliday’s, and I live in an apartment on the top floor. I also do favors for friends, so Cully brought his sad-looking friend Claire to see me on a warm afternoon in October.
“Mr. Gallegher,” she began, “I don’t want you to think I am a foolish woman. I’m forty-two years old, and until last June I led a very stable life. I went to good schools and made some very prudent investments with the money I inherited from my parents. I’ve never married, though I’ve had a number of offers. I have a good job as a management consultant with the firm of Sanders, Boynton, and Simms on Canal Street. Now, I’m afraid I’ve done something quite stupid and embarrassing.”
She looked like a forty-year-old virgin I knew once when I was a professor at a university in New England. She put great store in her stability and in her propriety. If her slip were showing she would be thrown into a tizzy.
“I was spending a Saturday morning in Jackson Square watching artists paint. A young man who called himself Baxter Flatt walked up to me. He seemed nervous, and was perspiring profusely. He begged me to walk a short distance with him, and he said that ‘they’ were after him. I asked who ‘they’ were, but he said the less I knew, the better. He appeared at his wits’ end, and I must admit quite frankly that I was intrigued. My life to that point had been so ordered and planned that the prospect of a dangerous encounter was, if I may say so, romantically appealing. I walked with him until he was several blocks away from the square. He appeared to relax, and asked if he could buy me a drink. Mr. Gallegher, I normally do not accept such invitations from people I’ve just met, but he seemed so genial, and, as I’ve told you, I was quite distracted by the romantic nature of our meeting. I accepted, and he told me the most amazing story.
“He said that he was an operative for an obscure government agency, and that his identity had been discovered by what he called ‘deep covers’ in New Orleans. These ‘deep covers’ were afraid that he would expose them, and they wanted to kill him.”
I interrupted. “Did you ever see these people he described?”
“No, but Baxter... Mr. Flatt claimed to see them several times that day. I let him drive me home in my car. He took a crazy, circuitous route, driving back and forth, and around blocks two and three times. Finally, he said he had lost them, and he was safe, temporarily. He said he needed to find a safe place to hide and asked if I could drop him off at the next comer. I was frightened, but terribly excited, so I told him he could hide at my house.
“He stayed there, off and on, for almost two months. At first it was a completely impersonal arrangement. He would disappear for three or four days at a time, then reappear looking ill and exhausted. He would tell the most harrowing stories of being followed and attacked, and of hiding in the vilest places. Once he indicated that he had even been forced to kill one of the people pursuing him.
“I was so taken in by the danger and the romance and the intrigue that I believed him. He told me that he had been placed ‘out of sanction’ by the agency he worked for, which meant they didn’t trust him anymore, and they would not protect him. He said he had arranged to buy a new identity, but he needed ten thousand dollars to pay for the identification cards and papers. I acted foolishly. I gave him the money. He left, and I haven’t seen him since.”
“Did you notify the police?”
“After three weeks. I was afraid that Baxter had been killed. I talked with a detective named Nuckolls.”
“Farley Nuckolls,” I said, “I know him. Good cop.”
“He told me I had been swindled. It seems Baxter Flatt is some kind of mentally ill person. A paranoid schizophrenic. He is convinced that he is being persecuted by some unknown, unseen enemy, by secret agents from unnamed countries. And, I’m sorry to say, I’m not the only woman he’s fooled.”
I rose and went to the refrigerator for a Dixie beer.
“Ms. Sturges,” I asked as I sat back down, “what would you like me to do?”
“Mr. Tucker told me that you might be able to help me find Baxter. He mentioned you worked at one time as what he called ‘muscle’ for a gangster to whom you owed money.”
“That would be Leduc,” I said, glaring quickly at Cully. There were some things he was not supposed to discuss. This was one of them.
“He told me Leduc died, and since then you do occasional work helping people who are in trouble.”
“Did he tell you that I have scruples?” I asked, then took a long pull on the Dixie for emphasis.
“He said that you always tell the police if you run across something they should know.”
“Soon as I get around to it. Is that a problem?”
“Of course not! I want you to tell them. Find Baxter Flatt, Mr. Gallegher. Please. Turn him in to the police. There’s an outstanding warrant for his arrest, I’ve seen to that. I want him to get the help he needs.”
“Do you have any idea where he might be?” I asked.
“I know where he was two weeks ago. I was back in Jackson Square yesterday, looking at some prints by a young photographer. There was one picture in particular, a shot of an apartment on Royal Street, the type of photograph the tourists like to buy. The photographer caught Baxter standing in front of the building. I bought the print and asked the photographer when he took it. He said it was about two weeks ago, during a walk in the French Quarter.”
She took a sloppily matted eight-by-ten matte print out of her oversized handbag. It was a nicely composed shot of one of the older wrought-iron bedecked apartment buildings, the type that would have made Tennessee Williams sob with envy. A lean, haggard man who looked forty going on eighty stood in front of the building with his hands in the pockets of his baggy jeans, staring out at nothing in particular.
“I know this building,” I told her, “The Flanders Arms. It was rebuilt right after the Great Fire, then gutted around nineteen forty for internal refurbishing. You think Flatt is staying there?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve been afraid to check. If he were to see me, he might run away again, and I’d never find him. Tell me, Mr. Gallegher. How much do you want to find Baxter?”
Here is where things always get sticky. I’m not a private detective. I’ve never been a private detective. What I am is big and menacing, and pretty smart to boot. And I’m lucky as hell. Luckiest guy you ever met, at least so far. It served me well when I was shaking down gamblers for overdue vigorish. After I left that part of my life behind, it has also been an advantage in my infrequent adventures finding lost people and objects for people who either can’t go to the police or have found the police unhelpful. After a few uncomfortable moments of negotiation, we arrived at fair compensation for my time.
Something about Claire Sturges’s story resonated with me. There was a time, half a life ago, when I was a forensic psychologist assigned to assist a police department in New Hampshire. That turned out badly, which is one of the reasons I now make my living as a jazz cornet player at Holliday’s. During the time I worked with the police, I came into contact with more than my share of psychotics. Something in Claire’s description of Baxter Flatt just didn’t fit. I couldn’t put my finger on it, precisely, but something was definitely out of kilter. Since she had already consulted with Farley Nuckolls, I decided to pay him a visit.