Dead Sleep

16

Thalia Laveau lives on the second floor of a three-story Victorian rooming house near Tulane University. Nine other women and two men live in the house, which is a nightmare for the NOPD surveillance team. Seven doors, twenty-one ground-level windows, and two fire escapes. Parked on the student-dominated block, we hunch inside the FBI surveillance van like J. Edgar Hoover-era G-men spying on “outside agitators.”

“The plan is for John to take the lead on Laveau,” Baxter says, looking at Dr. Lenz. “Does anybody want to change that before you go in?”

Kaiser and Lenz glance at each other, but neither speaks.

“I do,” I tell them.

All three men look at me in confusion.

“What do you mean?” asks Baxter.

“I want to go in alone.”

“What?” they cry in unison.

“This is a woman, guys. Maybe a gay woman. I’ll get twice as much out of her as you could.”

“The point isn’t to get something out of her,” Baxter reminds me. “It’s to find out whether she’s seen you before, and therefore your sister. And since no one else seemed to recognize you – except Smith, who didn’t try to hide it – this interview may be critical.”

I look him dead in the eye. “Do you really believe a woman is behind all these disappearances? Or even involved?”

“Let her do it,” says Dr. Lenz, surprising me. “The odds that Laveau is involved are low, and her nude paintings will probably tell us more than she will. But if Jordan can gain her trust, we might learn something valuable about one of the men.”

“You saw how Smith responded to me,” I press Baxter. “I think he would have opened up to me if I’d been alone. Wheaton, too.”

“Smith was responding to your fame,” says Kaiser, who looks uncomfortable with the idea. “Not your gender.”

“If you went in alone, what would you say?” asks Baxter.

“I won’t know that until I get there. That’s the way I work.”

The ISU chief looks tempted but worried. “Jesus, the liability-”

“What liability? I’m a private citizen walking up to someone’s door. If she invites me in, so what?”

“What if she sees you and freaks?” asks Kaiser. “Attacks you? If she’s involved, that’s a real possibility.”

“I wouldn’t turn down a gun if you offered me one.”

Baxter shakes his head. “We can’t give you a gun.”

“How about some Mace?”

“We don’t have any.”

“This is a bad idea,” says Kaiser.

“It’s better than sending you and Lenz in there,” I insist. “Look, I’ll know whether she’s seen me before as soon as she answers the door. Then I’ll tell her you guys are outside. I’ll tell the truth. I’m the sister of one of the victims, trying to find some answers, and the FBI is kindly providing some protection for me.”

“Let her go,” Lenz says. “We need to know what Laveau knows. This is the best way to find that out.” He looks at Kaiser. “You disagree?”

Kaiser looks like he’d like to argue, but he doesn’t. “Put the wire on her, and I’ll stand just outside the house with a receiver.” He watches me, his hazel eyes intense. “If you sense it going bad in any way, yell for help. And I mean yell. No codes that can be misunderstood.”

“That works for me,” Baxter says. “Let’s move, before Laveau decides to go out and get her hair done.”

“Get the T-4 off,” Kaiser tells Lenz., who removes his coat and starts unbuttoning his shirt, his elbows bumping us in the tight quarters. Baxter unstraps the tape from Lenz’s ribs, and Kaiser chuckles at the psychiatrist’s grimaces.

“She’ll see that transmitter under this blouse,” I point out, holding out the thin cotton.

“You’ll have to wear it under your skirt,” says Lenz, cradling the transmitter, dangling antenna, and microphone in his hands.

“Do you have more tape?”

Baxter digs into a metal drawer and comes up with a roll, which he hands awkwardly to me.

“This is no time to be shy,” I tell them, pulling my skirt up. “I am wearing underwear.”

“And very nice underwear it is,” says Dr. Lenz, looking at the cream silk bikinis.

“Come on, tape it on.”

“I don’t really know what I’m doing,” Lenz protests.

“Give me that,” snaps Baxter.

He takes the transmitter from Lenz, and under the close scrutiny of the other two leans over and tapes the transmitter and antenna securely to my inner thigh, high enough to give me goose bumps despite my bravado about modesty. When he’s done, he hands me the tiny microphone, which is connected to the transmitter by a thin wire.

“Run that under your waistband and up to your bra.”

“Why don’t you guys shut your eyes for this part?”

They do, and I secure the mike between the cups of my Maidenform with the tiny clip attached to it. “Ready or not,” I say softly. “Let’s do it.”

They open their eyes, and Kaiser opens the back door.

“Remember,” says Baxter. “You get a weird vibe, sing out, and the cavalry will bust in there.”

“Nothing’s going to happen.”

Laveau’s rooming house needs a new roof and a coat of paint, neither of which it’s likely to get in the next ten years. The door to her second-floor apartment stands at the head of some rickety wooden steps attached to the peeling clapboard exterior of the house. I cling to the handrail as I climb the steps, since I’m about as comfortable in heels as I would be in snowshoes. The door and facing are scarred from years of careless tenants. I knock loudly and wait. After a moment, I hear footsteps.

“Who is it?” calls a voice muffled by the wood.

“My name is Jordan Glass. I want to talk to you about your paintings.”

Silence. Then: “I don’t know you. How did you know where to find me?”

“Roger Wheaton sent me.”

There’s a sound of bolts sliding back; then the door opens to the length of a chain lock. One dark eye peeks out and examines me.

“Who did you say you are?”

So much for my face rattling her into a confession. “Ms. Laveau, do you know about the women who’ve been disappearing from New Orleans over the past eighteen months? Two were taken from Tulane.”

“Do I know about them? I’ve been carrying a gun for three months. What about them?”

“One of them was my sister.”

The dark eye blinks. “I’m sorry. But what does that have to do with me?”

“I found some paintings of the victims. The paintings were in Hong Kong, but the FBI found special sable paintbrush hairs stuck in the paint, and they traced them to Roger Wheaton’s program at Tulane.”

The eye widens, then blinks twice. “That’s crazy. Paintings of the kidnapped women?”

“Yes. They’re all nudes, and the women are posed like they’re either asleep or dead. Ms. Laveau, I’m trying to find out if my sister is alive or dead, and the FBI is helping me. Or letting me help them, rather.”

“Why would they do that?”

I feel odd talking to a crack in a door, but I’ve done it more than once in my life, and you work with what you have. “Because my sister and I were identical twins. The FBI is parading me in front of suspects, hoping I’ll rattle the killer into revealing himself.”

“Or herself?” asks Laveau. “Is that what you’re telling me? That I’m a murder suspect because of some brush hairs?”

“No one really believes you’re involved, but the fact that you have access to these special brushes forces the FBI to try to rule you out.”

“I guess you want to come in?”

“I’d like to, if you’ll talk to me.”

“Is my choice you or the FBI?”

“That’s pretty much it, yes.”

The eye disappears, and I hear her sigh. The door closes, the chain rattles, and then the door opens again. I slip through before she can change her mind, and she shuts it behind me.

Facing Thalia Laveau at last, I realize how misleading the photograph of her was. In the pictures I saw last night, her black hair looked cornsilk fine, but it must be kinkier than that, because today it’s done in long thick strings that look like dreadlocks but aren’t, and that hang almost to her midriff. Her skin is as light as mine, despite her African blood, but her eyes are a piercing black. She’s wearing a colorful robe that looks Caribbean, and her expression is that of a woman comfortable in her own skin and amused by the pretensions of others. The overall effect is exotic, as though she were a beautiful priestess of some obscure tribe.

“Why don’t you come into the back?” she says, waving at the tiny front room. “There’s not enough room in here to cuss a cat without getting fur in your mouth.”

Her voice is throaty and devoid of accent, which tells me she’s worked hard to get rid of the sound of her childhood. I follow her through an empty door frame into a larger room.

I half expected a den filled with beads, incense smoke, and voodoo charms, but instead I find a conventional room furnished with rather spartan taste. There’s a comfortable sofa, which she motions me to, and a chair with an ottoman, which she takes. After she sits, a heavy striped cat that looks half wild creeps out from behind her chair. It gives me a suspicious glare, then leaps onto Laveau’s thighs, preens, and settles into her lap. Laveau tucks her feet beneath her and strokes it between the ears. She sits with remarkable ease, watching me as though she could wait forever for me to explain myself.

On the wall behind her is a painting of the St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square. This surprises me, because the cathedral is probably the most overpainted image in New Orleans, done and redone by students and hacks who hawk them to the tourists in Jackson Square. It seems an unlikely adornment for the apartment of a serious artist, though this rendering seems several cuts above the usual.

“Did you paint that?” I ask.

Laveau chuckles softly. “Frank Smith painted it, as a joke.”

“A joke?”

“I told him he wasn’t a New Orleans artist until he’d painted the cathedral, so he took an easel, walked down to the square, and sat for four hours. You never saw anything like it. By noon all the artists in the square had gathered round him like the Pied Piper. They couldn’t believe how good he was.”

“That sounds like him.”

“You’ve talked to Frank?”

“Yes.” Suddenly self-conscious, I pull my skirt down over my knees to be sure she can’t see the transmitter taped to my thigh.

“Who else?”

“Roger Wheaton. Gaines.”

“So, you saved me for last. Is that good or bad?”

“The FBI suspects you the least.”

She smiles, revealing white teeth with a hint of gold toward the back. “That’s good to know. Did your plan work? Did any of the others freak out when they saw you?”

“It’s hard to say.”

Laveau nods, acknowledging the fact that I can’t be completely candid about some things. “Were you close to your sister?”

The question takes me aback, but I see no reason to lie. “Not in the way most sisters would say they were. But I loved her.”

“Good. What was your name again?”

“Jordan. Jordan Glass.”

“I like that.”

“However things were between my sister and me, I have to find out what happened to her.”

“I understand. Do you think she could still be alive?”

“I don’t know. Will you help me find out?”

“How can I?”

“By telling me what you know about some things.”

Her lips disappear between her teeth, and for the first time she looks uncomfortable. “Talk about my friends, you mean?”

“Is Leon Gaines your friend?”

She wrinkles her lip in distaste.

“May I call you Thalia?”

“Yes.”

“I won’t lie to you, Thalia. After I leave, the police are going to come here and question you about your whereabouts on the nights the women disappeared. Will you have any trouble giving alibis for those nights?”

“I don’t know. I spend a lot of time alone.”

“What about three nights ago, after the NOMA event?”

Confusion clouds her eyes. “The papers said the woman taken that night was unrelated to the others.”

“I know. The FBI has its own way of working.”

“Then – oh God. He’s still taking them. And you think I-”

“I don’t think anything, Thalia. I was just asking a question and hoping you had an answer that could keep the police off your back.”

“I came straight home and did some yoga. It was a week-night, and I wasn’t feeling well.”

“Did anyone see you or call you? Anyone who could confirm that?”

Lines of worry now. “I don’t remember. I don’t think so. Like I said, I’m alone a lot.”

I nod, uncertain which way to go with her.

“You are too, aren’t you?” she says.

My first instinct is to change the subject, but I don’t. Sitting here facing this woman I’ve never met, it strikes me that I’ve been surrounded by men ever since I arrived from Hong Kong. There’s Agent Wendy, of course, but she’s fifteen years my junior, and seems almost like a kid. Thalia is close to my age, and I feel a surprising comfort with her, a kind of relief in the essentially feminine security of her home.

“I am,” I concede.

“What do you do?”

“How do you know I do anything? How do you know I’m not a housewife?”

“Because you don’t act like one. And you don’t look like one, even in that skirt. You should pick a better disguise than heels next time, unless you have plenty of time to practice in them.”

I can’t help but laugh. “My sister was a housewife. Before she disappeared, I mean. I’m a photojournalist.”

“Successful?”

“Yes.”

She smiles. “I’ll bet it feels good, doesn’t it? That validation?”

“It does. You’ll get there too.”

“I wonder sometimes.” Thalia strokes the cat’s back, and with each caress it rises against the pressure of her hand. “I see you want to ask me questions. Go ahead. I’ll tell you if I mind.”

“Some of these questions are the FBI’s. But if I don’t ask you, they will.”

“I’d rather have you ask them.”

“Why did you leave Terrebonne Parish and go to New York?”

“Have you ever been to Terrebonne Parish?”

“Yes.”

Surprise flickers in her eyes. “Really?”

“I worked for the newspaper here once. A long time ago. I spent a few days down there.”

“Then you know why I left.”

“What I remember is people who didn’t have much in the way of material things but loved the place they lived.”

She sighs bitterly. “You weren’t there long enough.”

“Why did you want to study under Roger Wheaton?”

“Are you kidding? It was a one-in-a-million opportunity. I always loved his paintings. I couldn’t believe it when he selected me.”

“You submitted female nudes for your audition paintings?”

“Yes.” Her hand goes to her mouth. “My nudes make me look like a suspect, don’t they?”

“To some people. Why did you switch from nudes to painting people in their homes?”

“I don’t know. Frustration, I guess. My nudes weren’t selling, except to businessmen who wanted something for their offices. Something arty with tits, you know? I wasn’t put on earth to fulfill that function.”

“No.”

“Have you seen any of my work?”

“No. It’s just a feeling I have about you.”

“That’s interesting.”

“Thalia, do you know a man named Marcel de Becque?”

She shakes her head. “Who is he?”

“An art collector. What about Christopher Wingate?”

“No.”

“He’s a big art dealer in New York.”

“Then I definitely don’t know him. I don’t know any big dealers.”

“You’ll never know this one. He was murdered a few days ago.”

This sets her back a little. “Was he part of this? The disappearances? ”

“He’s the man who sold the paintings of the victims. The series is called The Sleeping Women.”

“May I see one? Do you have a photo or something?”

“No. I wish I did.”

“Are they good?”

“Connoisseurs say they are.”

“Do they sell?”

“The last one sold for two million dollars.”

“God.” She closes her eyes and shakes her head. “And the woman looked dead in that picture?”

“Yes.”

“The buyer was a man, of course.”

“Yes. A Japanese.”

“Isn’t that typical?”

“What do you mean?”

“A dead naked woman sells for two million dollars. Do you think another type of painting by the same artist would have sold for that? A landscape? An abstract?”

“I don’t know.”

“Of course it wouldn’t! Roger’s paintings don’t sell for that.”

“They sell for a lot.”

“A quarter of that. And he’s been working for decades.”

“Now that I think about it, you’re right. This artist’s first paintings were more abstract, and they didn’t sell. What started the phenomenon were the ones where it was clear the women were Occidental, nude, and asleep or dead.”

Thalia sits with her mouth shut tight, as though she refuses to lower herself to discuss what makes her so angry.

“Tell me about Leon Gaines. What do you think about him?”

“Leon’s a pig. He’s always sniffing around, telling me what he’d like to do to me. He offered me five hundred dollars to model nude for him. I wouldn’t do it for ten thousand.”

“Would you model nude for Frank Smith for five hundred?”

“I’d model for Frank for free, but he only paints men.”

“What about Roger Wheaton?”

A strange smile touches her lips, an emblem of private thoughts that will not be shared. “Roger would never ask me to model for him. He’s still distant after two years. I think I intimidate him. Maybe he’s attracted to me and doesn’t want to cross some line, I don’t know. He’s a complex man, and I know he’s sick. He doesn’t talk about it, but I can read the pain in his face. Once I walked into his studio when he was buttoning his shirt, and his chest was covered with hemorrhages, from coughing. It’s in his lungs now, whatever it is. He feels something for me, but I don’t know what. He’s almost embarrassed around me. I think he may have seen some grad student’s paintings of me in the nude.”

“Does he know you’re gay?”

Thalia’s body stiffens, and her eyes go on alert. “Has the FBI been spying on me?”

“No. But the police have. You didn’t notice them?”

“I saw some cops watching the house. I thought they were narcs, staking out the two guys who live here.”

“No. They’ve only been on you for one day, though.”

She looks relieved.

“The FBI does want to know whether you’re gay or not. They do a lot of psychological profiling in these cases, and they feel that’s important.”

She purses her lips and looks at the coffee table between us, then raises her eyes to mine. “Do you think I’m gay?”

“Yes.”

She smiles and strokes the cat. “I’m strange. I don’t really fit anywhere. I have a sex drive like anyone else, but I don’t trust it. It betrays me. It makes me want to use sex to get noticed. So when I need someone, I go to women.”

“What about love and tenderness?”

“I have friends. Mostly women, but men too. Do you have a lot of friends?”

“Not really. I have colleagues, people who do what I do and understand the demands of my life. We share experiences, but it’s not, you know, the real thing. And I spend so much time traveling that it’s hard to make new friends. I have more ex-lovers than friends.”

She smiles with empathy. “Friends are hard to find when you’re forty. You really have to open yourself up to people, and that’s hard to do. If you have one or two friends left from childhood, you’re lucky.”

“I left the place I grew up, like you did. Do you have friends left back home?”

“One. She’s still down on the bayou. We talk on the phone sometimes, but I don’t go back to visit. Do you have any kids?”

“No. You?”

“I got pregnant once, when I was fifteen. By my cousin. I had an abortion. That was that.”

“Oh.” I feel my face growing hot. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s why I hate the place. My father abused me from the time I was ten, my cousin later. It really messed me up. I ran away when I was old enough, but it took me a long time to come to terms with it. I’ve never really gotten over it. I can’t have a man on top of me, no matter how much I might care for him. That’s why I choose women. It’s a safe harbor for me. I used to think that might change, but I don’t think it ever will.”

“I understand.”

She looks skeptical. “Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Were you sexually abused?”

“Not like that. Not by family. But…” I’m suddenly hyperconscious of Baxter and Lenz and Kaiser in the surveillance van, monitoring every word. I feel like a traitor, both to Thalia and to myself, and I want to yank off the transmitter I’m wearing. But if I did, Thalia couldn’t possibly understand.

“Take your time,” she says. “Would you like some tea?”

“I was raped,” I say softly, not quite believing the words as they fall from my mouth. “It was a long time ago.”

“Time doesn’t mean anything when it’s that.”

“You’re right.”

“Was it a friend?”

“No. I was in Honduras, during the war in El Salvador. I was just starting out, really. I’d been photographing this refugee camp with a couple of print reporters, and we got separated. They left without me, and I had to walk back to the town. This car came along and stopped for me. There were government soldiers in the car. Four of them, one an officer. They were polite and smiling. They said they’d take me into town. I was always really careful, but it was a long way back to town. I took the ride. A mile down the road, they turned off and drove me into the jungle. So far that no one could hear me screaming. I know, because I lost my voice that night.”

“It’s all right,” Thalia murmurs. “I’m here with you.”

“I know. But it’s not all right. It’s never gotten all right. I’m more ashamed of that than anything I’ve ever done.”

“You didn’t do anything, Jordan. What did you do? You accepted a ride from men who said they’d help you.”

Tears of anger and self-disgust sting my eyes. “I’m not talking about the rape. I’m talking about after. Before they started, they tied my hands behind my back. There was no way to fight, and it went on for hours. At some point during the night I passed out. At dawn I woke up with my arms numb but my hands free. I followed the tire tracks out to the road, then limped into town bleeding and crying. I didn’t tell a soul what they’d done. I thought I was so tough, but I didn’t have the nerve even to go to a hospital. I thought if the people I worked for found out what had happened, they’d pull me out of there before I knew what hit me. Not to protect me, but because they’d think I couldn’t handle myself. You know? I hate myself for that fear. I’ve been haunted ever since by the women who might have been raped after me because I didn’t report those men.”

Thalia slowly shakes her head. “There were probably women before you and women after. But it’s over now. You’ve punished yourself enough. Those soldiers are dead. If they’re not physically dead, their souls are. What matters is how you are now. That’s the only thing you can change.”

“I know that.”

“Your head knows it, but not your heart. That’s where you have to know it, Jordan.”

“I know. I try.”

“You’re afraid for your sister, aren’t you? Afraid she’ll have to go through something like that.”

“Or worse.”

“Okay, but look what you’re doing. You’re doing everything humanly possible to find her. More than any other relative of these women, I’ll bet.”

“I have to know, Thalia.”

“You will, honey. You’ll know.” She lifts the enormous cat and sets it on the floor, then walks over and pulls me to my feet. “Come in the kitchen. I’m going to make you some green tea.”

“I’m sorry I did this. You’re the first person I ever told that to, and I don’t know why I did. I don’t even know you.”

Thalia Laveau places both her hands on my shoulders and looks deep into my eyes. “You know what?”

“What?”

“You just found a friend at forty.”

A strange feeling akin to religious absolution rolls through my chest.

“Now, come on in this kitchen, girl.”

Thirty minutes later, I walk down the rickety stairs and hear John Kaiser whispering to me from the corner of the house.

“This way, Jordan.”

I don’t want to see him, but there’s no avoiding it. When I go around the corner, he falls into step beside me.

“I’m sorry we heard that,” he says. “I’m sorry it happened to you.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” I must be walking very fast, because even with his long stride, Kaiser is having trouble staying beside me.

“I’m sorry about the way I talked about the rape Roger Wheaton stopped in Vietnam,” he says.

The van comes into sight, rolling slowly toward us along the street.

“What do you want, Jordan? Just tell me.”

“I want to go to my hotel and take a shower.”

“You’re on your way.”

“And I don’t want to ride in the van.”

“I’ll get a car here. I’ll wait with you, then drop you. Okay?”

I don’t look at him. I feel a powerful, irrational anger toward him, and at the knowledge that he desires me. He wants to hold me now, to comfort me, but he can’t. Only a woman I foolishly believed could have been involved with my sister’s disappearance could comfort me, and she has already done what she could.

The surveillance van stops, and its rear door opens. Kaiser trots over behind the door, then jogs back to me.

“A surveillance car is on the way. In one minute, you’ll be on your way to your hotel. Okay?”

I fix him with a level gaze. “Thalia didn’t know me. She’d never seen me before in her life. Which means she’s never seen Jane. You got that, right?”

“Right.”

“Good.”