A Quiet Vendetta

TWO

Morning of Monday twenty-fifth. Verlaine woke with a head like a bruised watermelon. The sun had broken early and already his bedroom was like a sauna, the feeling in the air that here was a further reprise of the vicious summer New Orleans had somehow endured.

He rose, showered and shaved; he listened to KLMZ-Heavy Jazz out of Baton Rouge playing ‘Mama Roux’ and ‘Jump Sturdy’ by Dr John. Breakfast was two raw eggs whisked into a glass of milk, two cigarettes, half a cup of coffee. He was out by nine, back to Cipliano’s office by nine-forty, and already the traffic was choking up the atmosphere with its own inimitable brand of filth.

‘The heart,’ was the first thing the coroner said as Verlaine walked through the door. Cipliano spoke through a mouthful of something or other. He went through phases of chewing on things, had given up smoking some years back but never lost the need to have something in his mouth – licorice root, chewing gum, a toothpick, whatever.

‘This trip with the heart. Kept me awake last night. I come in this morning I got a leaper John, a fucking leaper waiting for me like I got nothin’ better to be doin’ with my day. Keeping me busy these bastards are, but what can you do, eh? Anyway the leaper can wait. Like I said, this whole routine with the heart is bugging the shit outta me. Used to be the case some years back, not so much now, but used to be that the families out here, the distillery and bootlegging families you know? They would hold their vendettas as close as their liquor. Tight families, inbred, screwed each other, their own kids and sisters, Christ knows what, little ’uns all ended up looking the same, always ugly, in features and temperament.

‘Anyway, as I was saying, there was a series of different incidents back in the late fifties and early sixties, maybe half a dozen or so, different things, hands cut off, eyes taken out, tongues snipped at the end so the guy couldn’t talk properly. Taking the heart was for a betrayal-’

‘Like the Dvore thing in ’68,’ Verlaine interjected.

Cipliano nodded. ‘Sure, the Dvore thing, but that was way after these. That was maybe the last of the line on this kinda thing. Taking the heart was for a betrayal, someone whom the betrayer counted close would have to do it, someone on the edge of the family, a cousin, a mistress, something like that. I’m not saying that this was the case here, but the fact that the heart was cut out is a similar sort of thing to what was happening back then. Usually you’d only get the heart back, the body would be filled up with stones and dumped in the glades or somesuch. Here you got the same sort of thing, but the heart is put back inside. It’s hard to tell on the blows as well. So many, and all coming at different angles, like whoever did this was walking around the guy in circles while he whacked him.

‘I went down to look at the car early this morning, and I figure that maybe the chest was opened up while the guy was on the back seat. And the way the blood ran off the seat was more like splashes, and that made me think that the body lay on the back seat all opened up for the world to see while the guy was driving down to Gravier. Maybe he figured to leave the body on the back seat, but when he got down to the parking lot and saw how well lit it was he decided to stick the vic in the trunk. There were no prints, gloves worn very tight, perhaps surgical, no grain. The sheet, rope and hammer were all like the first report said, standard hardware gear he could have picked up any place. Your guy is strong in the arms, a little under six feet though I can’t be certain of that. He… I say he because we don’t find many women doing this kind of thing, and also I can only reserve judgement on the possibility of your perp working alone. Whatever, right? Anyway, seems he carried the body out of the back seat, used the rear wing as support, and there are scratches that are consistent with those little rivets they put on denims. If that was what they were, if they were on the top corners of the back pockets and if your man was standing straight as he carried the body, then he’s five-ten, maybe five-eleven. There were no hairs or fibers that couldn’t have come from the back seat or the floor of the trunk, nothing there worth mentioning. You’ve got the killer’s blood type, if that was in fact his blood, and that’s pretty much all you’re gonna get out of me on this one.’

Verlaine had listened intently, nodding every once in a while as he tried to digest everything Cipliano was telling him.

‘You get a make on your prints?’

Verlaine shook his head. ‘Gonna go check again now.’

‘Christ, that crew of yours are a lazy bag o’ smashers, eh?’

Verlaine smiled.

‘So you got any smartass questions for me?’

‘Ritual or psycho, whaddya reckon?’

Cipliano hesitated. ‘This is criminal psychology you’re talking here. I’m a coroner, but from what I can see-’ He shook his head. ‘This is not my field. I can’t give you anything other than a hunch.’

Verlaine nodded. ‘So give me a hunch.’

Cipliano shrugged. ‘I’d say you have someone who did this for someone else maybe-’

‘Why for someone else?’

Cipliano was quiet for a moment. ‘There’s a mentality, a thinking pattern, always some sense of motivation back of these things. If they run into a serial there’s always a common thread, and usually it’s not until the third or fourth killing that you find it. Then you look back and see that common factor right the way through, like it’s an embryonic thought, something that grows, like he’s testing something out, putting something there, getting whatever kick he gets out of his own reasoning. He gets a bit adventurous, embellishes the original idea, really makes it obvious, and that’s when it comes to light. That’s when you have the trademark. This one… well, this one’s different. If you had a psycho working for himself he’d have maybe left the vic where he killed him, perhaps cut the body up and distributed it someplace. The psycho thing is all about showing everything for the world. Here he wants the thing seen, but he hides it first. He wants it known, but not immediately… almost like it’s a message to someone perhaps.’

Cipliano scratched the back of his head. ‘The majority of actual psychopaths, serial killers, they have the desire for others to share in what they’ve done, for others to understand, appreciate, sympathize. It’s an explanation. The killing is an explanation for something – guilt, sadness, rejection, desperation, anger, hate, sometimes just as simple as getting mom and dad’s attention. Your man here, he beat the shit out of the vic because he wanted to, but I think the heart was something else entirely. I think the heart was cut out and then left in the chest because he wanted someone to know something. Then you have this shit with the quinine. I mean, what in fuck’s name was all that about?’

Verlaine shook his head.

‘You gotta understand, I don’t really know a thing about this, right?’ Cipliano grinned and winked. ‘All of that I just told you could be complete bullshit and I’m just making out I’m smart. You go check on your prints, and let me know who he was, okay?’

Verlaine nodded. He turned and started towards the door.

‘Hey, John.’

He turned back to Cipliano.

‘Thing to remember, however bad it might get, is it’s never as bad for you as it is for these poor suckers.’

Verlaine smiled. It was a small mercy indeed.

The image of the constellation drawn on the victim’s back haunted Verlaine’s thoughts as he drove back to the Precinct House. It was a twist, perhaps significant in the fact that quinine was used, perhaps in the constellation itself. It would all start to open up with the identification of the body. And, figuratively speaking, that was where it had ended as well.

He pulled into the car lot back of the Precinct and went up the steps into the building. Duty sergeant at the desk told him the captain was away for the rest of the day; also told him there’d been one message left for him.

Verlaine took the piece of paper and turned it over.

Always. A single word printed in the duty sergeant’s neat script.

Verlaine looked at the sergeant.

The sergeant shrugged his shoulders. ‘Don’t ask me,’ he said. ‘Some guy called up, asked for you, I told him you were out and about someplace. He was quiet for a moment, I asked him if there was any message and he said that. Just one word. “Always”. And then he hung up before I had a chance to ask him who he was.’

‘You thinking what I’m thinking?’ Verlaine asked.

‘If you wanna go there that’s your choice, John.’

‘Seems to me I don’t have a choice, right?’

The sergeant shrugged his shoulders again.

‘Can you call Prints and ask if they have a make on my trunk vic?’

The sergeant lifted the receiver and phoned through. He asked if they had an ID, and then nodded and held out the receiver towards Verlaine. ‘They wanna speak to you.’

Verlaine took the handset. ‘Yes?’

He was silent for a moment, and then ‘Okay. Let me know if anything comes up.’

The duty sergeant took the receiver and replaced it in its cradle.

‘Security tagged,’ Verlaine said.

‘Your prints?’

Verlaine nodded. ‘It’s come up as a security tagged print.’

‘No shit! So it’s a cop or somesuch?’

‘Or federal or military or CIA or National Security Agency, who the fuck knows.’

‘Christ, you got yourself into a wild one there, John Verlaine.’

‘Verlaine said nothing. He looked at the sergeant and then turned back towards the rear exit of the building.

‘You gonna head down to Evangeline, gonna go see Always and find out if he knows anything?’

Verlaine slowed and hesitated. He shook his head. ‘Right now seems the only direction to take.’

‘Suit yourself, but take care, eh?’

‘Call me on the cellphone if Prints come back to you with anything more, would you?’

‘Sure John, sure. You figure you should take someone with you?’

‘It’ll be alright,’ Verlaine said. ‘Me an’ Daddy Always haven’t crossed paths for a few years.’

‘Don’t mean he’ll have forgotten you.’

‘Thanks,’ Verlaine said. ‘That’s very reassuring.’ He walked on to the rear door and returned to his car.

The rain came as he pulled away from the car lot. By the time he reached the junction it was flooding down in torrents. Verlaine drew to the edge of the road beneath the overhang of a tree and prepared himself to wait until the worst had passed. Down across the sidewalks, petals of wisteria and magnolia, mimosa and Mexican plum littered the way like confetti, scattered pockets of white and cream, yellow and lilac-blue.

When the rain lessened he began moving again. He took the longest route out of Orleans, left across the south-west limits, noticed a highway sign jutting from the ground – Don’t Take A Curve – At Sixty Per – We Hate To Lose – A Customer – BURMA-SHAVE – an artefact from some bygone age. The further he drove the more the city dissolved away into nothing. The colors were vague and deep, shades of bruising, of bloodshot eyes and wounded flesh. Where he was headed, a small town called Evangeline, was a place to leave, never a place to arrive in or be born into, but to escape from as soon as age and ability permitted. There were dreams, there were nightmares, and somewhere in between was reality, the truly real existence one found not by listening but by looking, by following these strange-colored threads, vague lines that ran from circumstance to coincidence, and from there into the indelible effects of brutal humanity in its most merciless forms. People like the heart-killer were everywhere: standing in stores, waiting for trains, leaving for work, looking no less human, no less real than ourselves, carrying with them the perfect privacy of who they really were, their imaginations running riot with the colors and sounds of death and sacrifice, of some urgent necessity to enact their irrevocable maniac nightmares.

The glades unfolded as Verlaine drove, a demarcation point more of sound and smell than vision, for here the undergrowth began to drift from the verges into the road, the hot-top worn and beaten, here and there broken up and allowing small stripes of vegetation to creep through. The air seemed closer, harder to breathe, and the shroud of trees provided a cover that daylight found hard to penetrate. The heat held the rain up, evaporated a good deal of it before it reached the ground, and the mist hung like a pall over everything. The sound of the engine was swallowed, and Verlaine – feeling for perhaps the first time the full weight of his present situation, its possibilities, its potential repercussions – sat uneasily in the driving seat. He slowed the car some and eased through the beginning of this shifting, ever-changing country like someone invading a private and personal territory. He was thankfully unfamiliar with this land, the rise and sweep of verdant plantations, the gaps between the solid ground where the earth would swallow you effortlessly in mud and filth and depthless suffocation. Walk out here with uncertain feet, and those feet would walk you quietly to your death. No-one was ever heard out here; however loud they screamed, that sound was snatched away and evaporated by the heat, the solidity, the thick atmosphere. People died out here like it was one moving, living cemetery, and there was no retrieval for burial or cremation. Once this land had you, well, it had you for keeps.

Verlaine’s mouth was bitter and dry. He thought of wharfside bars, of cool lemonade, of sweet Louisiana oranges from the French market along North Peters and Decatur.

He drove for close to an hour, and as he felt the beaten dirt road dip beneath the wheels of the car he also felt the intuitive awareness that something was close. He slowed the car, rolled it leftwards and stopped it beneath a deep overhang of head-height branches. But for close inspection – cover afforded by the mist, the trees themselves – the car was almost invisible. Verlaine thought for a moment about what he was doing, whether he would walk out there and never find his way back. As he exited the vehicle his heart hung in his chest like a fist of tense muscle, beating only because his brain dictated it. His pulse was shallow, his head tight and giddy, his hands shaking. He felt nauseous, a little overwhelmed. He felt watched.

From the dash he had taken his gun; he headed on foot the way he’d been driving, sticking to the boundary of the road, careful not to miss the verge and wander into the glades.

Verlaine heard the sound of voices before he saw the house. Imagery again, strange and anachronistic, as he turned through dense branches, through the grasping fingers of thorned and flowered trees. He stopped at the edge of a fence that ran as far as he could see in both directions. He stood there immobile, right within the heart of Feraud family territory, and his heart thudded noisily.

Approaching a turning in the road he found an unlocked gate and, passing through it, he started up the driveway towards the vast frontage of the wooden house. Painted yellow some eternity before, the woodwork had not so much surrendered its color to the heat as absorbed the quality of the environment into itself. It was shadowed and oppressive in some way, the gaudiness of its age-old decoration at variance with its soul. Here was the seat of jurisdiction for this territory; here was the Feraud family with all its many tentacles; here was Daddy Always, the head of this dynasty.

By the time he was twenty yards from the house he could see men standing along the veranda, could hear their voices more clearly, French dialects similar to those found in the wharfside bars, in the Creole gambling haunts, around the cockfight arenas in the harbor houses by Toulouse and Bienville. These men carried carbines, and handguns in belt holsters; they laughed like men with careless minds and careless trigger fingers, absent of compunction, remorse, reason, or responsibility to any law but their own. These men belonged to some bygone age. These men were not the impulsive gun-happy teenagers and gangbangers that Verlaine collided with in his usual line of work.

The hairs on Verlaine’s neck rose to attention, his stomach tightened, he felt pearls of sweat break from his hairline and start down his brow.

When the men saw him walking towards the house they fell silent. They stood motionless, almost to attention. They would know who he was. No-one but cops came down here in a shirt and tie. They knew well enough not to cause trouble unless it was started by someone else. They would think nothing of killing him, he knew that, but he would have to give them ample provocation first.

‘Attendez! ’ a voice barked somewhere to Verlaine’s right.

Verlaine stopped walking.

A man appeared, armed much the same as those on the veranda. He ambled from the trees and came towards Verlaine as if he possessed all the time in the world.

‘Vous attendez,’ he said again as he neared. ‘You are police, no?’

Verlaine nodded.

‘What is it you want here?’ the man asked, his accent thick, his tone threatening.

‘I came to see Mister Feraud,’ Verlaine said.

‘You did, eh?’ the man said, and smiled. He turned towards the veranda. His attention seemed to be held for a moment, and then he turned once again to Verlaine.

‘He asks you to come?’

Verlaine shook his head.

‘So he is not here peut-être.’

Verlaine shrugged. ‘If he’s not here I’ll come back another time.’

The man nodded and looked down. He appeared to be considering his options. ‘Vous attendez ici. I will see if Mister Feraud is in.’

Verlaine opened his mouth to thank the man but he had already turned and started walking towards the house. Verlaine watched as he reached the veranda, shared some words with another man by the door, and then passed inside.

He seemed to be gone for an eternity while Verlaine stood on the driveway with a dozen eyes watching him intently. He wanted to turn and run.

Eventually the man returned. He again spoke to one of the men by the door, and then he raised his hand.

‘Venez ici!’ he shouted, and Verlaine started walking.

Daddy Always Feraud was as Louisiana as they came. A lined and weathered face, creases like ravines running from his eyes, his mouth, the edge of each nostril. His eyes were like washed-out riverbed stones, almost transparent, piercing and haunted. He sat in a deep blue leather armchair, his legs crossed, in his right hand a cigarette. He wore a cream three-piece suit, and held in his left hand a panama hat which he waved every once in a while to cool himself. His hair was fine silver, combed neatly back, but for one unruly spike that protruded from the crown where he had leaned against the chair. He watched Verlaine as he walked towards him from the doorway of the room. His eyes were distant and yet possessive of an expression that said he’d seen too much for too long to let anything slide by. Bruised light filtered through ceiling-high windows graced with the finest organdy curtains. The old man did not speak, and at each shoulder stood two other men, as still as cigar-store Indians, men that could only have been his sons.

Verlaine stopped three or four yards from Feraud. He nodded his head somewhat deferentially. Feraud said a word that Verlaine did not hear and someone appeared with a chair. Verlaine sat without question, cleared his throat, and opened his mouth to speak.

Feraud raised his hand and Verlaine fell silent.

‘There is always a price to pay,’ the old man said, his voice ›rumbling from his throat and filling the room. ‘You have come to ask me for something, I imagine, but I must tell you that the principle of exchange holds court in my kingdom. If there is something you wish from me, then you must give me something in return.’

Verlaine nodded. He was aware of the rules.

‘Someone was found dead in the trunk of a car,’ Feraud said matter-of-factly. ‘You believe there is something I might know about this and you have come to ask me.’

Verlaine nodded once again. He did not question how Feraud knew who he was or why he had come.

‘And what makes you think that I might know something of such a thing?’ Feraud asked.

‘Because I know who you are, and because I know enough to realize there is nothing that escapes your attention,’ Verlaine said.

Feraud frowned, raised his right hand and took a draw from his cigarette. He did not exhale through his mouth but allowed the smoke to creep in thin tendrils from each nostril and obscure his face for a second. He wafted the brim of his panama hat and the smoke hurried away revealing his face once more.

‘I received a message,’ Verlaine said.

‘A message?’

‘It was simply one word: Always.’

The old man smiled. ‘Seems the whole world believes I have something to do with everything,’ he said.

Verlaine smiled with him.

‘So tell me a little about your man in the trunk of his car.’

‘His heart was cut out,’ Verlaine said. ‘Someone cut his heart out, and then replaced it in his chest. They drove him across town in the back seat of a beautiful old car, and then they put him in the trunk and we found him three days later. Right now we have very little to go on, but there was one thing. Whoever killed him drew a pattern on his back, a pattern that looked like the Gemini constellation.’

Feraud’s expression registered nothing. He was silent for some seconds, seconds that drew themselves into minutes. The feeling within the room was one of breathless tension, anticipatory and oppressive.

‘Gemini,’ he eventually said.

‘That’s right,’ Verlaine said. ‘Gemini.’

Feraud shook his head. ‘The heart was removed, and then replaced in the chest?’

Verlaine nodded.

Feraud leaned forward slightly. He sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. ‘I think you may have a problem,’ he said quietly, his voice almost a whisper.

Verlaine frowned.

‘If this is who I think it might be… well, if this is-’ Feraud looked up at Verlaine, his transparent eyes now sharp and direct. ‘You have a serious problem, and I do not believe there is anything I can do to help you.’

‘But-’ Verlaine started.

‘I will tell you this, and then we will not discuss this any more.’ Feraud stated bluntly. ‘The man you are looking for does not come from here. He was once one of us, but not now, not for many years. He comes from the outside, and he will bring with him something that is big enough to swallow us all.’ Feraud leaned back. Once again he closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Walk away,’ he said. ‘Turn and walk away from this quickly and quietly, and if you believe in God then pray that whatever might have been the purpose of this killing has been served. This is not something you should go looking for, you understand?’

Verlaine shook his head. ‘You must give me something. If there is something you know you must tell me-’

Feraud once again raised his hand. ‘I am not obligated to tell you anything,’ he said, his voice edged with irritation. ‘You will leave now, go back to the city and attend to your business. Do not come here again, and do not ask anything of me regarding this matter. This is not something I am part of, nor is it something I wish to become involved in.’

Feraud turned and nodded at the man to his right. The man stepped forward, and without uttering a word made it clear that Verlaine should leave. Confused and disoriented, he was shown to the door, and once out on the veranda he started walking back the way he’d come, again feeling that eyes were burning right through him, his heart thudding in his chest, sweat glistening his forehead – a sensation that he had somehow walked into something that he might seriously regret.

He reached his car and sat for a while until his heart slowed down. He started the engine, turned around, drove back the way he’d come for a good thirty minutes before he finally slowed and stopped. He got out and leaned against the wing of his car. He tried to think in something resembling a straight line, but he could not.

Eventually he climbed back into the car, started the engine, and drove back to the city.

The FBI were waiting for Verlaine when he reached the Precinct House. The dark gray sedan, the dark suits, dark ties, white shirts, clean shoes. There were two of them, neither of whom looked like they’d smiled since their teens. They knew his name before he reached them, and though they shook his hand and introduced themselves respectively as Agents Luckman and Gabillard there was no humor in their tone, nothing warm or amicable. Whatever this was it was business, straight and direct, and when they expressed their wish to speak with Verlaine ‘in confidence’ he understood that somehow he’d managed to step on the toes of something that he was regretting more and more as each minute passed.

Inside his office it was cramped. Verlaine asked if they wanted coffee; Luckman and Gabillard declined.

‘So how can I help you?’ he asked them, looking from one to the other as if there really was no discernible difference in their faces.

‘A body was discovered,’ Agent Gabillard started. His face was smooth and untroubled. He looked singularly at ease despite the awkwardness of the situation. ‘In the trunk of a car last Saturday evening a body was discovered. An attempt was made through your Prints Division to identify the victim, and that is the reason we are here.’

‘The security tag,’ Verlaine stated.

‘The security tag,’ Luckman repeated. He turned and looked at Gabillard, who nodded in concurrence.

‘The identity of the victim cannot be divulged,’ Luckman went on, ‘save to say that he was in the employ of a significant political figure, and was here in New Orleans on official business.’

‘Official business?’ Verlaine asked.

Gabillard nodded. ‘He was here in the capacity of security for someone.’

‘The significant political figure?’

Luckman shook his head. ‘The daughter.’

Verlaine’s eyes widened. ‘So this guy was babysitting some politician’s daughter down here?’

Gabillard cracked his face with a smile that seemed to demand a considerable effort. ‘This is as much as we can tell you,’ he said. ‘And the only reason we are telling you is that you have a very credible and distinguished record here in New Orleans, and we trust you not to communicate anything regarding this matter beyond the confines of this office. The man you discovered in the trunk of the car was attending to a matter of personal security for the daughter of a significant political figure, and with his death the case becomes a matter of federal jurisdiction, and as such your attention to the killing and any subsequent investigation is no longer required.’

‘Federal?’ Verlaine asked. ‘She must have been kidnapped then, right? You guys wouldn’t get involved if it was simply a murder case.’

‘We can say nothing further,’ Luckman said. ‘All we ask of you at this time is to turn over any paperwork, case files, notes and reports that have been made thus far, and we will speak to your captain when he returns and clarify the position we are now in regarding this investigation.’

Verlaine frowned. ‘So we just drop it? We drop the whole thing, just like that?

‘Just like that,’ Gabillard said.

Verlaine shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t know whether to feel frustrated or relieved. ‘Well, okay. I don’t see there’s a great deal more we have to talk about then. Medical Examiner and County Coroner will have their reports. You can collect those from the respective offices, and as far as I am concerned I haven’t yet filed a report. Hadn’t even gotten the thing off the ground.’

Gabillard and Luckman nodded in unison. ‘We appreciate your co-operation,’ Gabillard said, and rose from his chair.

They shook hands again, and Verlaine directed them to the front exit of the building. He stood on the steps ahead of the Precinct House, watching the generic gray sedan pull away and disappear down the street, and then he turned and walked back to his office.

He wondered why he’d said nothing of the message he’d received, of his visit with Feraud. Perhaps nothing more than the desire to hold onto something, to keep something of this as his own.

John Verlaine stood for a time, thinking nothing at all, and then he remembered the words Feraud had said, and the gravity with which they had been pronounced: Turn and walk away from this quickly and quietly… This is not something you should go looking for, you understand?

Verlaine understood little of anything at all. This morning he’d woken with a murder case, and now he had nothing. He did not resent the FBI’s involvement; he’d been around long enough to know that every once in a while a case could be taken right out of his hands. This was New Orleans, heart of Louisiana, and one thing he knew for sure, as sure as anything in his life: there would never be a shortage of work.