Farley Nuckolls, New Orleans police detective, has few — but well chosen — words for me in general. He detests what I do, but he can’t prove a thing. All he knows is that I frequently pop up with some piece of information that makes his case, and I occasionally present him with a grisly little problem which falls under police purview.
Nuckolls is a gaunt broomstick of a man with a hawk nose and no chin but lots of turkey wattle. His shoulders are stooped. He resembles nothing so much as a cartoon turtle. He has a lisp, the kind of sound made when you talk without moving your upper lip. Beyond that, he is the best detective I’ve ever met — tenacious, intuitive, and dedicated. That’s probably why he constantly teetered on the brink of burnout.
“What do you know about this case, Gallegher?”
“Just what Claire Sturges told me. The guy wheedled his way into her life, took ten thousand dollars from her, and disappeared.”
“What about the story he gave her?”
“From what I heard, I can come up with a couple of possibilities. I don’t think this Flatt character is schizophrenic. He’s just a bit too intact. He could have bipolar disorder, stuck in a particularly lengthy episode of mania, or he could simply be a psychopath.”
“Psychopath,” he echoed.
“A guiltless wonder. He would take advantage of anyone to get what he wants. Lie, steal, forge, whatever it takes.”
“I know what a psychopath is, Gallegher.”
“Psychopaths are generally very intelligent people who never, for some reason, develop through the moral stages like the rest of us. Because they’re typically so smart, they make great bogus-check passers and con men.”
“Are they normally paranoid, though?” he asked.
“Absolutely not. That’s the problem. Most of these guys are so convinced they’re head and shoulders above the rest of us that they never bother to look back to see if anyone’s catching up. They’re too cocky. If a psychopath wants something, he generally finds some way to get it, regardless of how it hurts others. Find yourself a psychopath who thinks he is in danger, that he’s being persecuted and threatened, and I hate to think what could happen.”
He fiddled with a couple of paper clips on his desk, and asked, “You said you could think of a couple of possibilities. What was the other one?”
“That Flatt’s exactly what he says he is, and he’s built one hell of a cover for himself pretending to be a nut. That would make him twice as dangerous, because he has more to lose. According to Ms. Sturges, Baxter Flatt said he had been placed ‘out of sanction.’ Have any idea what that’s about?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “I do, unfortunately. And I’m surprised you don’t. Don’t you read spy novels?”
“Did Marcel Proust write any?”
“Operatives are placed out of sanction if they’ve turned, or if their control thinks they are going to turn.”
“You mean defect? And what’s a control?”
“A control is just that — another operative who gives directions and orders to a deep-cover field agent. ‘Controls’ him. Sometimes, they’re called ‘handlers.’ And an operative doesn’t have to defect to ‘turn.’ He could simply start acting as a double agent, or turn completely renegade. It’s happened.”
“What happens if you’re out of sanction?”
“Nothing good. They could put out a contract on you, if you’re important enough, or simply leave you out in the cold. A field agent, even a deep cover like Flatt claims to be, makes a lot of enemies on each side. Their game includes extortion of the sleaziest variety, and there’s not an operative in the world that thirty people wouldn’t love to see dead. Or worse.”
I gave Farley my most suspicious look. “You didn’t learn all that from novels.”
He smiled. “Sure I did. Got the James Bond decoder ring to prove it.”
He clearly didn’t want to discuss his past, so I thanked him for his time and begged off. It was time for my gig at Holliday’s.
My six hours on stage passed like kidney stones, as my mind was full of Baxter Flatt, and all of the alternate realities his story presented. Kook or spook, he had taken ten grand from Claire Sturges and disappeared, and she was paying me a damn sight more than a P.I. would charge to recover it and get him the help she felt he needed. Whoever Flatt turned out to be, he had her money, and that was reason enough for me to track him down. Whatever happened after was none of my business.
I had told Claire Sturges that I knew the Flanders Arms. It’s across the street from the hangout of a street musician named Petey. He stands on the sidewalk across Royal Street from the Flanders and conjures heaven and earth out of the cauldron of his bari sax. Some nights, when I’m not playing at Holliday’s, I like to walk down Royal, stand in the shadows at the Flanders, and listen to Petey’s fingers make love to the ivory-inlaid keys. I never leave without dropping a ten in the open sax case at his feet. When I’m bucks-up, he gets a twenty.
I owe Petey. Back in the bad old Leduc days, the boss sent me to the wrong side of the Quarter to collect on an overdue chit. I was younger and greener then. Leduc had only recently pressed me into indentured servitude to pay off an enormous gambling debt I knew I’d never make good. I leaned on the wrong person for information, and wound up facing down four golem-sized Cajuns with big frowns and bigger knives. The look in their eyes made it clear they would take the utmost pleasure in carving little fleshy pieces of confetti out of Leduc’s big dumb collector.
I can run faster than any other six-and-a-half-foot husky guy you ever saw. I proved it that night. The Cajuns were gaining, though, until I ducked down a dead-end alleyway. Petey was playing across the street. I’m sure he saw me huff and puff down the cul-de-sac, but when the Cajuns asked him which way I had gone, he pointed off in the direction of Canal Street. He’s made more than a thousand dollars off me since, in ten- and twenty-dollar drops. I offered to get him a gig at Holliday’s once, but he seems to prefer the streets, wailing away for nickel and dime donations. Go figure.
If Baxter Flatt was staying at the Flanders Arms, Petey would have seen him come and go. Petey doesn’t miss much. I showed him the picture Claire Sturges had given me. He squinted and wiped his mouth, then his yellowed eyes brightened.
“Yeah, I know this cat. Sneaks around a lot. Walks in the shadows. But he’s not at the Flanders, nope. Next door, at the Duvalier. Don’t know which floor.”
I thanked him, pressed a twenty into his gnarled hand, and crossed Royal to the tattered awning of the Duvalier Apartments. A quick check of the mailboxes raised some concern. No Baxter Flatt listed. A second perusal revealed a B. Flagg in room 209. It fit into a nice open space on my puzzle. Flatt would probably use a fake name.
I try to stay away from guns. I believe the brain shuts down about the same time the safety clicks off. Guns have the power to make ordinarily smart people do really dumb things. I do carry a weapon, though — a foot-and-a-half ebony dowel drilled out and filled with lead shot. It’s easily hidden, and won’t result in an arrest for concealment as readily as a nine-millimeter automatic.
With my fingers coiled around my improvised billy stick, I walked nonchalantly through the lobby to the stairway. It was an old building, and the steps remained uncarpeted. My size-thirteens clopped loudly on the varnished hardwood. It was a tradeoff. If Flatt was who he said he was, and if he expected trouble, he might have memorized the footsteps of all the regular tenants. On the other hand, a person pleasantly stamping up the steps would likely be considered a harmless visitor, while an untoward creak of the floorboards could signal danger sneaking up the stairs.