replica of the
I paid the old shrimper and jumped onto the dock before he’d even come to a stop. Captain Woodget watched me walk the fifty feet or so between us. He removed his garden hat as I got close and leaned on the railing of his ship. I stopped and admired the
“I heard you’d retired,” I said with a grin I couldn’t conceal. “But I thought gardeners planted seeds, not clipper ships.”
“Holy Trident!” he shouted. “If it did not walk and talk, I would think it a ghost.”
He scrambled down a makeshift ladder and we embraced warmly. He was older, thinner, but his eyes were bright and he held my shoulders with hands as strong as any that still worked the sea.
“The last time I saw you, lad, you were spinning a good yarn to a customs agent.”
“I still do, on occasion.”
He laughed and stepped back, running his eyes up and down me. Aye,” he said. “You wee people amaze me,” and he looked around him, then up at the sky. “God in his infinite wisdom and all that, I suppose.”
I smiled and said, “I suppose.” Then I asked for a tour of his ship and he showed me everything, top to bottom, all fifty-three feet of her. He was proud, but hesitant and slightly embarrassed, as if I might think the project crazy. It was crazy; crazy and beautiful.
I asked him if he missed his old life, and just as on the first night I met him, he paused and filled his pipe before he answered.
“I miss nothing about that damn business, Z, but I miss the smells, all of them, good and bad, on the ship, in a thousand different ports and especially the smell of the open sea itself.” He lit his pipe and took two long pulls. “Do you think I’m over the top, lad? Should I be scuttled before it becomes too obvious?”
“I don’t think so, Captain, not yet.” We both laughed. “And I agree with you about the smells, except for a few places in China.”
“China?” he asked. “So, you’ve been to China, have you?”
I nodded and he put his arm around my shoulder and led me on a walk through his property and gardens, which covered several acres to the north and east toward Covington. As we walked, he told me the names of hundreds of flowers and gave me a season by season history of plantings and cutbacks. We walked by trellises of roses in every color and under long arbors of bougainvillea. At first, it seemed a wild and random maze, but soon I saw the overview, the grand plan of wildness within order. He told me of his love for Isabelle and how it grew along with his chaotic gardens, unplanned and unavoidable. He said when he walked with her through the disordered beauty, it was the only time she felt peace. Somehow, that made more sense than anything else.
He showed me through the mansion, which had seen better days, and around sunset he cooked a savory meal of catfish and fried potatoes. Isabelle never made an appearance, but I did hear her singing on and off from somewhere in the upper rooms.
He asked me to stay the night but I refused, telling him I still had business in the city that evening. As usual, he inquired no further and drove me to the ferry in Mandeville without my asking. I caught the last crossing of the night and promised to return. Inside, as was usual for me, I had no idea when that would be.
Ray and I were invited to St. Louis for the holidays, but we refused, giving various and vague excuses. Ray even passed on a chance to see Nova on her twelfth birthday, an event I was sure he had promised to share. We were both burning out from our complete lack of success in finding even a trace of the Fleur-du-Mal.
Owen Bramley finally moved to St. Louis from San Francisco in March 1906, just ahead of the earthquake. Ray reminded me of Nova’s prediction and Owen Bramley said his building had indeed been in the center of the collapse and fire. We both agreed Nova may have been born with an “ability” rare for Meq and Giza alike.
We continued to make our rounds in Storyville and the French Quarter. Ray established new contacts in places like Mahogany Hall and the San Jacinto club. Meanwhile, the New Orleans summer seemed to turn everything, even time itself, into a thick, slow-moving syrup.
I was tired of questions and secrets and I felt the weight of not telling things, not telling Ray the truth about Zuriaa, and not telling Carolina the truth about Star. Self-loathing was gaining on my hatred for the Fleur-du-Mal. Even Ray was showing the strain. We rarely laughed or enjoyed much of anything.
Then, in September, Owen Bramley came for a visit and quite by accident, almost as an afterthought, everything changed.
He arrived by train on the afternoon of the fifth and, after a brief meeting with the hotel management, joined us on the balcony outside our suite. The heat was stifling. He wore a three-piece suit, but within minutes had removed his jacket, tie, and vest and resembled the Owen Bramley I remembered, wiping his glasses on his white shirt and complicating the obvious.
“Much warmer here than it should be,” he said. “I’ve talked with several meteorologists and they all agree there is some sort of bulge in the Gulf — overlapping lows or something to that effect.”
“Drink some iced tea,” Ray said and he poured out a tall glass and handed it to Owen Bramley. “It seems to help.”
He drank the entire glass, asked for another, and got right down to business.
“I brought the photographs and negatives of the man who shot Baju. I would have delivered them sooner, but I wanted a friend of mine, a detective of sorts in San Francisco, to see what he could find out first. He found out two things — the man is nearly a ghost and he is not freelance; he works for a single person, a woman, although her identity is unknown.”
My pulse jumped and quickened. Maybe the Fleur-du-Mal had told the truth, maybe the man was working for Opari.
“The problem is,” he went on, “the photographs are ten years old. The damn man has disappeared.”
“Does he have a name?” I asked.
“No, not a proper one, anyway. Evidently, several years ago in Macao, he did some particularly nasty work that the locals referred to as ‘the work of the Weeping Widow.’ He is half Portuguese and half Chinese and supposedly an ex-eunuch, if that is even possible.”
I took the photographs and stared at the fuzzy image of the man with the razor-thin eyes, caught in the act of murder. I was hoping to find some reason or truth hidden somewhere in the picture, but I saw none of that. I only saw a killer.
Ray asked about Eder and Nova and Owen Bramley assured him they were doing fine. He said Eder, and especially Nova, did wonders for Carolina, keeping her spirits high and rejoicing in the new baby. Owen himself, though he masked it well in his speech, showed new lines of concern in his face around the eyes and mouth, and there were streaks of gray in his red hair. I couldn’t help but think that if I had been Giza, I would have shown the same lines and streaks.
At one point, he happened to notice the five phonograph players crowded together in my room and he asked about them. I glanced at Ray, who shrugged, and I had to tell him they were “gifts” from the Fleur-du-Mal, part of a game of psychological torture he was playing where the “gifts” served as a reminder that he could find us, but we could not find him.
Owen Bramley asked if they had come with any notes or messages of any kind and I told him about the discs and the same woman singing from different operas. Then, after we had exhausted every angle and nuance as to what they might mean, he asked if he could take one of the discs with him, “just for the hell of it,” he said. I carefully packed three of them and the next day they left with Owen Bramley and his luggage on his return to St. Louis.
Exactly two weeks later, on September 19, I was awakened by two loud raps on my door and told there was an urgent telephone call for me at the desk. It was ten o’clock in the morning. The temperature had dropped at least twenty-five degrees overnight and gusts of wind were blowing in through the open doors to the balcony. Ray was nowhere in sight. I closed the doors and dressed as quickly as possible, then ran down to the lobby and the telephone. There was static on the line, but I could hear Owen Bramley shouting at the other end.
