“The office has chartered a bus, with a bathroom, to take everyone who doesn’t have a ride to Baton Rouge. They’ve got a contract with a home… with a residential facility there to house and feed everyone for up to a week.”
“You said a home. What kind of home is it, an old-folks home?”
“It’s a retirement community. Just like this one.”
“Will I have my own room?”
“I doubt it, Mother. If you have to evacuate, it’s because a hurricane is coming and more than a million people are leaving. You get three meals and a bed.”
“You said it was for people who don’t have rides. Why don’t I have a ride? I have a son, don’t I?”
“I’m a policeman, Mother. I can’t leave.”
“Last time I nearly died in the heat, stuck in traffic for twelve hours on the interstate, and I hated Baton Rouge. I don’t want to go there again.”
“A bus and the retirement home were the best I could do. Last time, you nearly drove the family you were staying with crazy.”
She plucked the cigarette from her mouth. “I did no such thing. They were rude, and those kids were obnoxious brats, all of them.”
Murphy had heard differently.
As Katrina took aim at New Orleans, and it looked more and more likely that the storm was going to be the big one forecasters had been warning about for years, Murphy had arranged for his mother to hitch a ride out of town with the family of a fellow cop. The guy owned a Suburban and was sending his wife, their three kids, and his own mother eighty miles north to Baton Rouge to stay with his wife’s brother, the brother’s wife, and their two children.
Five kids under one roof. Big mistake.
Murphy’s mother had stayed with them for eight weeks. According to what Murphy learned later, his mother had complained nonstop about the food, about the house being hot at night, about the kids hogging the television and playing loud music, about how she couldn’t get to the pharmacy to get her medicine. One thing after another for two months.
“I won’t ride on a bus,” his mother said.
Murphy stared at the pack of Pall Malls lying on the table. He thought about pouring himself a drink and having a cigarette. He didn’t think he could stand his mother’s company for that long, though.
“If you loved me, you’d drive me to Baton Rouge yourself,” she said. “There’s no way I’m leaving here just so I can take a bus to Baton Rouge and stay in a halfway house.”
“It’s not a halfway house,” Murphy said. “It’s a Christian retirement home that’s been kind enough to make room in case of an emergency.”
“Protestant, I’m sure.”
He ignored her.
“You could drive me up there and be back in a few hours,” she said.
“You know I can’t leave the city during a hurricane. Two hundred policemen got fired for doing that when Katrina hit.”
“Theresa would drive me to Baton Rouge.”
There it was, Theresa the saint. If only she lived here everything would be just fucking peachy.
“If Theresa lived here she could drive you because she would be evacuating with you,” Murphy said. “She wouldn’t have to stay.”
“Listen here, Mr. Big Shot, don’t try to act like you’re the only one with an important job. Your sister is a nurse and she takes care of sick infants. Of course she would stay here with her patients if a storm came, but she would at least drive her mother to Baton Rouge and make sure she was safe before worrying about her job. Some things are more important than work.”
This from a woman who hadn’t worked since her part-time job at a snowball stand in high school.
Murphy felt the tiny balcony closing in on him. “Well, you know what, Mother, it doesn’t really matter what Theresa would do, because she doesn’t live here. She lives in northern California, about as far away from New Orleans as she can be and still be in the United States.”
His mother stared at the ice in her empty glass.
“And you know what else, she lives there by choice. She moved away and I stayed. She’s not here to take care of you. I am. So if I were you…” Murphy’s guilt was already kicking in. Lay off your sister, he told himself. She’s got enough of her own problems.
His mother stared up at him with her venom- and vodka-filled eyes. “If you were me, you’d do what? Say it!”
Murphy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He looked down at the blue-haired nag who was his mother. “If I were you I’d shut the fuck up and appreciate the fact that at least one of your kids is still around to take care of you.”
Her eyes bulged and her mouth dropped open. For a moment she was speechless. Finally, she found her voice. “How dare you talk to your mother like that, especially about your sister. If your father were here, God rest his-”
“Give it a break, Mother. Your bitching is what put Dad in his grave.” Murphy yanked open the sliding glass door. “If you don’t like the arrangements I’ve made for you, make your own. You’re not helpless.”
He stepped into the icy blast from the apartment, then turned around, his hands braced across the open doorway. “Better yet, call Theresa. Ask her to send you a plane ticket to San Francisco. You can stay with her and Michael until the end of hurricane season.”
He threw the door closed, turned around, and stormed out of her apartment.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Thursday, August 2, 11:15 PM
The club is crowded.
The sound system shakes the air with high-energy techno music while a 1970s-era disco ball twirls beneath the ceiling, sending a rainbow of refracted light racing across the walls and dance floor.
The killer pushes through the throng of jumping, sweating bodies as he walks along the edge of the dance floor. Most of the hundred or so patrons are men. The few women in the bar look more masculine than the men, short-haired dykes flashing body piercings and tattoos.
The Red Door Lounge is a sodomite club that takes up the top floor of an old three-story brick building on the periphery of the French Quarter, at the corner of Chartres and Iberville.
A stream of sweat runs down the killer’s back as he walks toward the bar. He believes the club is kept warm on purpose, to add to the sexual tension that pulses through the crowd. He carries a canvas messenger bag slung over his shoulder. Inside are the simple tools he will need to complete his work.
The killer elbows his way to the bar and orders a Corona with lime. The bartender, a handsome young man with dark eyes and thick coal black hair, says something as he sets the beer down, but the killer can’t hear him over the din. He asks the bartender to repeat himself.
The dark-haired man holds up five fingers and blows him a kiss. The killer tosses a five-dollar bill onto the black lacquered bar. The bartender glances down at the bill, then shakes his head as he picks up the money.
Even if I gave you a tip, you wouldn’t get to spend it.
The killer turns around and leans against the bar. On the other side of the dance floor are a pair of side-by- side unisex bathrooms.
Only moments before, when he stepped into the bathroom on the right, he found two men in the same stall, pants around their ankles, one behind the other, grunting like pigs. He backed out quickly and peeked into the bathroom on the left. There was a line for the toilets but nothing vulgar going on. He urinated behind a locked stall door and got out as fast as he could.
Just to the right of the bathrooms is a short, narrow hallway, barely more than shoulder width, painted
