I stood up and stretched. It was just past five, and I wanted to take a quick shower before heading down to meet Paige for dinner. My neck was sore from hunching over the computer screen. I tried calling the people on the list again, but once again didn’t get anyone. I made a mental note to check in with Rosemary again after dinner, to see if she had in fact called them all for me.
At five forty-five, I pulled into a parking spot just past St. Philip Street on Burgundy. It was about a six-block walk to Port of Call from there, but my standard rule of parking in the French Quarter is to always grab the first parking spot I saw-there may not be another one in the entire neighborhood. And there’s nothing I hate more than driving around trying to find one. Besides, I always enjoy strolling through the Quarter-and Paige would be late as she always was. I decided to walk up Ursulines past Glynis’s house-it was on the way. I got out and walked down to the corner at Ursulines, and turned right. It was already dark, and the street lamps were casting their glow over the sidewalk. There wasn’t another soul to be seen anywhere. I looked over across the street. The gas lights on the front of Glynis’s house were flickering. There was no sign of light behind the closed shutters. I glanced at my watch-five fifty-two. I shrugged and started walking down the street.
I was about halfway down the block when Glynis’s front door opened. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a man step out and slam it loudly. I stopped walking and looked over to watch. He came down the front steps in a hurry, almost stumbling on the bottom step and having to grab the metal rail to keep from falling onto the sidewalk. He was wearing a loose-fitting pair of jeans, and a hooded purple sweatshirt with LSU emblazoned on the front in bright gold. The jeans hung down low enough for me to see his lower abdomen and the waistband of his underwear. The hood was pulled up over his head, hiding his hair. It was also pulled down low in the front, covering the top of his face. Something flashed in my brain-I know that guy-as I watched him, trying to remember who it was and where I knew him from. There was something about the build, the way he carried himself, that struck a familiar chord.
New Orleans is a small town, and that happens a lot. Everyone looks familiar, but when I see them out of a familiar context, at first I blank on who they are and where I know them from. I once had a long conversation with a guy in a bar, never once giving away that I had no idea who he was or where I knew him from. Two days later, when I went into Café Envie, one of my regular Quarter hangouts, there he was, working behind the counter-and thankfully, wearing a nametag.
This guy across the street didn’t seem to notice me, and I was just starting to think I was mistaken when he reached the bottom of the steps and turned to walk towards the river. In that moment, he was directly under a street lamp, and I did a double take.
It was Freddy Bliss.
I opened my mouth to shout hello before crossing the street, but before I could form the word in my throat, he started walking up the street at a very fast pace, breaking into a run when he got to the corner at Dauphine. I stared after him until I lost him in the darkness.
I glanced back at the house. It was silent, no sign of life there other than the gas lights. That’s odd, I thought, what the hell was Freddy doing there? A cold chill went down my spine as I remembered my call to Loren. Surely Loren had passed the information along…had Freddy gone over to confront her?
You might be fooling the world with your do-gooder act, but I know what you really are.
I shuddered in the chill evening air.
I laughed to myself a little bit, trying to shake the feeling. I crossed the street and stared at the front of the house for a moment. I debated whether I should knock or not.
The house was completely silent.
A dog barked, and I jumped.
Get a grip, Chanse. Besides, it’s really none of your business, is it now, what Freddy was doing there?
I shrugged, put it out of my head, and headed to Port of Call.
Chapter Four
Port of Call is on the edge of the French Quarter on the corner of Dauphine and Esplanade streets.
I was on Dauphine about halfway down the block between Barracks and Esplanade when I was assaulted by one of my favorite smells in New Orleans: burgers, being cooked over an open flame. I stopped for a moment, standing there on the sidewalk, my eyes partly closed, savoring the smell. My knees got weak, my stomach growled, and my mouth filled with saliva. There’s nothing I love more than hamburgers-and if they’re cooked over an open flame or charcoal, so much the better.
Every publication and website having to do with New Orleans always ranks Port of Call as one of the best places in the city to get a burger. They also have great drinks.
I was hoping there wouldn’t be a wait-the majority of tourists who’d come in for Mardi Gras were probably already on their way home, nursing their hangovers and swearing off liquor permanently. I crossed my fingers as I reached the corner, please, no line, please no line. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I got a whiff of the grill, and now I was starving. As I walked around the corner, I breathed a sigh of relief-not only was there not a line; but, miracle of miracles, Paige was sitting on the steps leading to the door, puffing on a cigarette.
Paige is an unrepentant smoker; I’d finally managed to quit, although the desire for a butt never really went away. Louisiana had finally passed a law about smoking in restaurants, something to do with how much of the place’s income derived from food vs. liquor…after which Paige swore she would never eat anywhere that wasn’t legally considered a bar rather than a restaurant.
Her protest didn’t last long. It was harder to swear off Port of Call than it was to quit smoking.
She stood up when she saw me come around the corner, and flicked her cigarette into the street with a practiced snap of her fingers. She was wearing a rather nice knee length black skirt, a red silk blouse, and black high-heeled shoes. If given her preference, she would dress more like a gypsy, but her new editor at the Times-Picayune, whom she referred to as “that bitch Coralie” had imposed a dress code on the reporters…which was also driving her crazy.
“More professional, my fat white ass,” she’d snarled when she told me about it. “Does that stupid bitch really think it makes me a goddamned better writer if I dress the way she wants me to? God, I hate her.” Paige’s shoulder-length red hair with blonde streaks looked tangled, and her lipstick had rubbed off on her cigarette butt. The most striking thing about Paige was her eyes-they were mismatched: one green, one blue. “Christ, what’s wrong?” She asked as she presented her cheek for me to kiss. “I got here before you? I am surely slipping in my old age.”
I showed her my watch. “You’re even early.”
She ran a hand through her hair. “Oh, dear lord. It surely must be the end times.” She laughed and shrugged. “Well, these days I can’t get out of the office fast enough. That bitch Coralie was definitely in rare form today.” Paige’s longtime editor, Joe LeSeuer, had retired after the hurricane and left New Orleans. “Maybe the book will sell for a million dollars and I can tell her where she can shove her fucking dress code.” Ever since we graduated from college, Paige had been puttering around with a romance novel called The Belle of New Orleans, set during the War of 1812s. A few months after the flood, she’d taken all of her accrued vacation, grabbed her laptop, and rented a cabin in the Tennessee mountains for eight weeks, determined to finally finish the thing.