off-loading along the far perimeter of the east pit, two hundred yards to his left. This ten-story deep hole had been two-thirds filled with trash over the past few years.
Wide-track bulldozers — tagged “garbage galleons” by Nick and his crew — rode the sea of trash and distributed it more evenly across the pit than the trucks left it.
To his right lay the west pit, not quite as large as that to the east, but somewhat fuller.
Downslope, to the south, two previous sites had been filled and subsequently capped with eight feet of earth. Methane-gas vent pipes punctuated those grass-covered mounds.
North of the current two pits, excavation of a new east dump had been under way for two months. The chug and growl of earth-moving machines echoed down from those heights.
Nick turned his back to the busy east and studied the quiet west pit, from which incoming semis had been diverted for the day.
This moonscape of rubbish stirred his two hearts as nothing else could. Compacted chaos, waste and rack and ruin: These bleak, toxic barrens spoke to that part of him that might have been occupied by a soul if he had been of the Old Race. He felt at home here as he would never feel in woods or grassy fields, or in a city. The desolation, the filth, the mold, the rancidity, the ash, the slime called to him as the sea called a sailor.
Within a few hours, a van would arrive from New Orleans, loaded with corpses. Three were city bureaucrats who had been murdered and replaced by replicants, and two were police officers who had met the same end.
A mere year ago, such deliveries had been made twice a month. Now they came twice a week, often more frequently.
These were exciting times.
In addition to the five dead humans, the van carried three gone-wrongs, creatures created in the Hands of Mercy that had not turned out as Victor hoped. They were always interesting.
After nightfall, when everyone within the fenced perimeter of Crosswoods Waste Management would be of the New Race, Nick and his crew would carry the dead humans and the gone-wrongs into the west pit. In a ceremony that had gradually become richer over the years, they would bury them in that slough of garbage.
Although these nocturnal interments had lately become frequent, they still thrilled Nick. He was forbidden to kill himself; and he could not slaughter members of the Old Race until the day when Victor launched the Last War. He loved death but could not have it or deal it out. Meanwhile, however, he could wade the sea of trash and filth, shoving the dead into reeking holes where they would bloat and ripen, intoxicated by the fumes of decomposition — which was a fringe benefit that he cherished.
In the morning, the scores of incoming semis would be directed to the west pit, and the loads they deposited would be spread across these new graves, like another layer in a parfait.
As Nick gazed out across the west dump, longing for sunset, a flock of fat glossy crows, feeding in the garbage, suddenly exploded into flight. The birds took wing as though they were a single creature and shrieked in unison, swooping toward him and then up into the sun.
About a hundred fifty feet from the rampart on which he stood, a twenty-foot length of the dense trash trembled, and then appeared to roll, as though something swarmed through it. Perhaps a pack of rats surged just below the surface.
In recent days, members of Nick’s crew had half a dozen times reported rhythmic shiftings and pulsations in both pits, different from the usual swelling and settling related to the expansion and then sudden venting of methane pockets.
Little more than half a day ago, past midnight, strange sounds had risen from the east pit, almost like voices, tortured cries. With flashlights, Nick and his crew had gone in search of the source, which had seemed repeatedly to change direction but then had fallen silent before it could be located.
Now the pulsing trash went still. Rats. Surely rats.
Nevertheless, curious, Nick descended the sloped wall of the earthen rampart, into the west pit.
Chapter 15
Aubrey Picou had retired from a life of crime to have more time to tend his garden.
He lived on an oak shaded street in Mid-City. His historic house boasted some of the most ornate decorative ironwork — fence, balcony railings — in a city dripping with such weighty filigree.
The front porch, draped with trumpet vines and hung with basket ferns, offered two white bench swings and wicker rocking chairs, but the shadows seemed no cooler than the sun-scorched front walk.
The maid, Lulana St. John, answered the doorbell. She was a fiftyish black woman whose girth and personality were equally formidable.
Leveling a disapproving look at Carson, trying to suppress a smile when she glanced at Michael, Lulana said, “I see before me two well-known public servants who do the Lord’s work but sometimes make the mistake of using the devil’s tactics.”
“We’re two sinners,” Carson admitted.
“ ‘Amazing grace,’” Michael said, “ ‘how sweet thou art, to save a wretch like me.’”
“Child,” said Lulana, “I suspect you flatter yourself to think you’re saved. If you have come here to be troublesome to the mister, I ask you to look within yourselves and find the part of you that wants to be a
“That’s the biggest part of me,” Michael said, “but Detective O’Connor here mostly just wants to kick ass.”
To Carson, Lulana said, “I’m sorry to say, missy, that is your reputation.”
“Not today,” Carson assured her. “We’re here to ask a favor of Aubrey, if you would please announce us. We have no grievance against him.”
Lulana studied her solemnly. “The Lord has given me an excellent crap detector, and it isn’t ringing at the moment. It’s in your favor that you have not shaken your badge at me, and you did say please.”
“At my insistence,” Michael said, “Detective O’Connor has been taking an evening class in etiquette.”
“He’s a fool,” Lulana told Carson. “Yes, I know.”
“After a lifetime of eating with her hands,” Michael said, “she has mastered the use of the fork in a remarkably short time.”
“Child, you are a fool,” Lulana told him, “but for reasons that only the Lord knows, in spite of myself, I always take a liking to you.” She stepped back from the threshold. “Wipe your feet, and come in.”
The foyer was painted peach with white wainscoting and ornate white crown molding. The white marble floor with diamond-shaped black inlays had been polished to such a shine that it looked wet.
“Has Aubrey found Jesus yet?” Carson wondered.
Closing the front door, Lulana said, “The mister hasn’t embraced his Lord, no, but I’m pleased to say he has come as far as making eye contact with Him.”
Although paid only to be a maid, Lulana did double duty as a spiritual guide to her employer, whose past she knew and whose soul concerned her.
“The mister is gardening,” she said. “You could wait for him in the parlor or join him in the roses.”
“By all means, the roses,” Michael said.
At the back of the house, in the immense kitchen, Lulana’s older sister, Evangeline Antoine, softly sang “His Lamp Will Overcome All Darkness” as she pressed dough into a pie pan.
Evangeline served as Aubrey’s cook and also as an amen choir to Lulana’s indefatigable soul-saving efforts. She was taller than her sister, thin, yet her lively eyes and her smile made their kinship obvious.
“Detective Maddison,” Evangeline said, “I’m so glad you’re not dead yet.”
“Me too,” he said. “What kind of pie are you making?”
“Praline-cinnamon cream topped with fried pecans.”
“Now that’s
“Cholesterol,” Lulana informed them, “won’t stick if you have the right attitude.”
She led them through the rear door onto the back veranda, where Moses Bienvenu, Aubrey’s driver and handyman, was painting the beautifully turned white balusters under the black handrail.
