"Yeah. So when did this happen?"
Lafite's face made a grimace that was the equivalent of a shrug. "No more than nine months ago. All of a sudden he a star player. This is what I heard."
"So where would I look for Leon?" asked Remo.
"You don't want do that, friend."
"Humor me."
"Most of the stories say he live out past Westwego somewhere, in the bayou country. Way back there, you don't find nothin' man, I guarantee."
WHEN LEON GROSVENOR came back to New Orleans, hours after meeting with Merle Bettencourt. he brought other members of his pack along. The Dodge Ram van was crowded, ripe with feral smells: excitement, tension, lust. As he negotiated teeming streets, he kept an eye out for potential obstacles and danger. Once, a mounted traffic cop bent down to peer at Leon through the driver's window of the van, examined him from less than fifteen feet, then smiled and flashed a cheery thumbs-up gesture. Leon was amazed.
Such fools these normals were.
There was no magic in the fact that he had managed to locate his quarry. Bettencourt's informers on the street had been engaged in canvassing hotels, and one of them had bribed a night-shift bellhop at Desire House to describe any "peculiar" guests. It was the ultimate in long shots during Mardi Gras, when damn near everyone was more or less peculiar, but the bellhop had recalled this group specifically: two white men, an old Chinaman and one extremely pretty girl. The female, dressed in Gypsy clothes, had shown up at Desire House on the same night Leon staged his raid against the Romany encampment outside town.
And so, he knew.
Who would the Gypsy woman run to in New Orleans, when she fled her tribe, but to the man who had come seeking after information about loups-garous? The very man, according to Merle Bettencourt's intelligence, who had prevented Leon from completing his clean sweep of targets on the present contract.
The question, then, was whether he could reach his prey in the hotel without creating so much chaos that police were summoned to the scene while he was still at work. Leon had no fear for himself, but men with guns might kill the other members of his pack, and he had no desire to jeopardize them needlessly.
No problem, he had finally decided. They could do it.
Turning down an alley half a block west of Desire House, Leon snarled and mashed his foot down on the brake pedal. Ten feet in front of him, a six-foot mummy was engaged in sex with what appeared to be a human skeleton. It took a closer look, illuminated by the van's headlights, for Leon to discover that the "skeleton" had small, firm breasts beneath her skintight costume, part of which had been unzipped and disarranged to let the sweating mummy ply his stout Egyptian tool.
The glare of headlights did not seem to faze the frantic fornicators, so Leon leaned on his horn. Two faces-one a skull, the other swathed in gauze-swiveled to face him, and the mummy flashed a bandaged middle finger toward the van., went back to thrusting with an urgency that said he wasn't getting much in all those years he spent beneath the pyramids.
That did it.
Beside Leon, the bitch was growling, anxious to be on about their business. Leon took his right foot off the brake and moved it back to the accelerator.
Gentle pressure on the pedal moving the van forward, inch by inch.
It took a moment for the undead lovers to discover what was happening, the visceral excitement of discovery turned into panic as the van bore down on them. The mummy disengaged, backed off a yard or so, his fleshy member bobbing in the Dodge Ram's high beams as he turned and ran. The living skeleton, for her part, scrambled for the cover of a nearby garbage bin, pale cheeks mooning Leon as she tumbled out of sight amid the trash.
He chased the mummy to an intersection, where the north-south alley met another running east-west at the rear of the hotels and shops on Tchoupitoulas Street. Leon turned right, or east, and wondered how long it would take the bandaged sprinter to decide that he was safe. If he forgot to check his fly before he hit the next main street, the mummy would be in for more exposure than he had originally planned, but who could say? He might just find another willing ghoul to help him with his problem.
Anything was possible at Mardi Gras.
The service entrance to Desire House had a little plaque beside the door for the convenience of deliverymen who lost their way. Leon drove past it, hissing at the bitch to stop her grumbling, and parked the Dodge Ram three doors farther east. The van was wearing stolen plates, but he preferred to take no chances with an eyewitness description, just in case.
The bellhop had informed Merle Bettencourt's gorilla that the foursome Leon sought had occupied a third-floor suite that fronted Tchoupitoulas Street. He had the number-304-and took it as an omen that the digits added up to seven, which was always lucky. He ignored the small voice in his head that asked, Lucky for whom?
The true risk started when he parked the van. From that point on, he and the pack would be exposed, their every move a gamble. There was no one in the alley to oppose them at the moment, but there would be staff members and guests in the hotel, and precious time would pass as he led the pack upstairs, the ruckus starting when he crashed the door to 304 and tore into the people he had come to kill.
Four targets now, instead of one. The witness, he would recognize from photographs. The Gypsy woman and the Chinaman would both be obvious on sight. The only man remaining would be Leon's nemesis, the hunter who was seeking information on the loup-garou.
This night, that one would learn more about the wolf man's power than he ever cared to know.
He left the van unlocked, the youngest male detailed to guard it, brooding in resentment when he realized that he would miss out on the kill. It mollified the youngster slightly that there would be no real time for feeding, but they rarely got the chance to kill four humans at a time, and it was still a treat to savor, if you got the chance.
The bitch was on his heels as Leon stepped out of the vehicle, the other four beside him in a moment. They were silent shadows as they moved along the alley, Leon taking point. From somewhere to their left, the muffled sounds of revelry from Tchoupitoulas Street reminded him that there was still a party going on.
So much the better, then. His pack would join in the festivities and add a little flavor of their own. The taste of blood.
CHIUN'S MOOD HAD GONE from bad to worse since his arrival in New Orleans, but the Master of Sinanju knew he concealed it well, presenting a facade of perfect calm to the pathetic specimens around him.
It was bad enough that he was traveling with strangers, forced to stay in a hotel where noisy drunkards lurched about the halls and made commotion in the street around the clock. The desk clerk had insulted him by staring when they registered. The scrawny dwarf who led them to their so-called suite was more respectful, glancing only twice at Chiun, but he had prattled on incessantly about the "big, big party" that was going on outside.
The hotel was an older building, ill maintained, and while Chiun saw evidence of cleaning in their rooms, the maids were clearly not enthusiastic in their work.
But the television was the worst insult of all.
It was an ancient Motorola, ten years past its prime, with washed-out color and sporadic bursts of static that appeared to coincide with the flush of toilets in adjacent rooms. He could have tolerated poor reception, though, if there had been a reasonable choice of channels. As it was, despite the size and splendor of New Orleans, he could pick up only six. One broadcast constantly in French. French!
When it came dawn to it, New Orleans was far too French.
The holy man was on the television again, his face distorted as he waved a Bible at the camera, calling on his Christian brothers to get out and vote for God's anointed candidate. He spoke of Christian love, but with the sound turned low, his face became a twisted mask of hatred, spewing silent bile from narrow, bloodless lips.