been to Louisiana and New Orleans itself many times, and he certainly didn't feel nervous about going there again.
'That's a little out of our usual territory, ain't it?'
'That's why you're going,' said Vail. 'I know some of your cases have taken you to New Orleans in the past, but you're not well known there, by any means. You wouldn't be as likely to be recognized as you would be in, say, Cheyenne or Deadwood.'
Longarm inclined his head slightly in acknowledgment of his boss's point. 'I reckon that's right.'
'We got a request from the U.S. marshal's office in New Orleans-'
'For somebody to work on a case incognito, as they say,' Longarm concluded for Vail.
'That's right.' Vail shoved the stack of papers across the desk toward Longarm. 'Take a look at these reports, Custis.'
Longarm leaned forward and picked up the documents, then began reading them quickly. He was long since accustomed to scanning official reports like these and picking out the essential elements in them, so that he could mentally digest the important information without wasting any time. In this case, he saw right away that the reports concerned the murder of a U.S. deputy marshal named Douglas Ramsey.
Longarm's eyes narrowed as he read how Ramsey's body had been pulled from a bayou by some boys who had been out fishing before making their grisly discovery. Half of Ramsey's body had been pulled from the bayou, Longarm realized as he read further. That was all that had been left. The rest of the lawman had undoubtedly wound up as alligator bait.
'Damn,' breathed Longarm. 'That's one hell of a way to go.'
'Ramsey didn't die from the alligator attack,' said Vail, not needing to ask which part of the report had prompted Longarm's comment. 'The coroner down there established that he had been murdered. He had a knife wound in his back, and he was dead before he ever went into the water. Feeding him to the gators was just the killer's way of disposing of the body.'
'But it didn't work,' Longarm pointed out.
'Nope. For some reason, part of the body was left in the water, and when it filled up with enough gas, it bobbed to the surface just in time to scare a couple of years' growth out of those boys who found it.'
Longarm paged through the reports. 'According to this, Ramsey was working on a smuggling case. There's always been a heap of smuggling all over that Mississippi Delta. What was important enough about this one to start a federal deputy poking around?'
Vail grimaced as he said, 'Politics. You know how corrupt the city government of New Orleans has always been--before the war, during the war, during Reconstruction. And now, a few years after the Reconstructionists were chased out, everything's still just about the same. Only the names and the faces change, and the graft goes on. That's led to a strong reform movement in the city. It never really seems to accomplish much, mind you, except to swap one set of rascals for another, but it's there anyway.'
Longarm nodded, even though he wasn't sure where this conversation was going. Vail wasn't really telling him anything he didn't already know.
'One of the reformers managed to get himself appointed as a special prosecutor, and he petitioned the federal government asking for help in cleaning things up. One of the groups he's been going after are the smugglers. The legitimate merchants in New Orleans have always been frustrated because it's easier to buy just about anything from the smugglers, rather than through legal channels.'
'So the deputy marshal who wound up in the bayou, this fella Ramsey, he was working for the special prosecutor?'
Vail nodded. 'That's right.'
'And that's what you want me to do,' Longarm said, his voice flat.
'The difference is, nobody in New Orleans knows you, like I said before. You'll be able to find out who's behind the smuggling by working in amongst the people who are carrying it out.'
Longarm sighed, unsure what to tell Vail. He had never turned down an assignment outright, and he didn't want to start now. He had a reputation, whether justified or not, for being able to handle the tough cases. Longarm figured he was good at his job. He wasn't given to false modesty. But he knew as well how often luck had been on his side, and from everything he had read in those reports and everything Billy Vail had told him, this case was going to require an extra amount of good fortune.
To gain himself a little extra time to think about it, Longarm said, 'I still don't understand why you asked me if I was superstitious, Billy. I reckon Ramsey ran into some bad luck and all, what with being knifed and then half-eaten by a gator, but that was just the doing of the crooks he was trying to chase down.'
'I suppose so,' Vail said heavily, 'but there's one thing that's not in those reports, Custis. The chief marshal in the New Orleans office wired me personally about it when he asked for the loan of my best man. Ramsey's body was found day before yesterday. Yesterday morning, something else turned up on the doorstep of the marshal's office.'
Vail looked down at the desk, and Longarm waited in silence for him to go on.
'It was a little cloth doll,' Vail said when he finally looked up again. 'It was made to look sort of like Ramsey, right down to the badge pinned on his chest. And it was cut in half, Custis. The bottom half was nowhere to be found.'
Well, thought Longarm a few days later as he stepped onto the wharf where the riverboat Dixie Belle had tied up, nobody had ever accused him of being overly smart. Some men would have refused this job, even if it had meant turning in their badges. Not him. He had come to the Crescent City to take over the case that had gotten the last man not only killed but also hexed somehow. That crude doll left at the chief marshal's office had been an unmistakable warning. Some kind of evil voodoo magic was at work in New Orleans.
Or at least that was what somebody wanted the authorities to believe. As Longarm had told Billy Vail, he wasn't a superstitious man. He was much more worried about a knife in the back or a hidden gunman than he was about witchcraft.
