shoulder.
She passed beyond the camera and out of range. End of sequence.
That was all.
Jack said, 'Run it again, only this time freeze it on the face.'
This was done. Jack said, 'Vikki Valence.'
Pete said, 'In the flesh.'
'We know one thing, at least: she was alive at seven o'clock.'
'I know that arcade, too,' Pete said. 'That Shelton Street neighborhood's like a maze, filled with back alleys and passageways. You couldn't ask for a better place to get lost in — or to lose anybody that's looking for you. She knew what she was doing when she ducked in there.
'But it cuts both ways. Because of the layout, it's a natural for criminal activities, namely drug dealing, prostitution, muggings, public urination. So it's covered by a lot of cameras. Too bad most of them don't work. Not since Katrina.'
Jack said, 'It's something, anyway.'
Center said, 'We're checking on other cameras in the area and beyond to see if we can pick her up. But we're hampered by the technology gap. The NOPD surveillance system is spotty, glitchy. Whatever they've got, it takes time for them to call it up and send it to us. They're understaffed, too, more than usual, since a lot of personnel took off from work in order to evacuate ahead of Everette. We'll get what they've got — eventually.'
Jack said, 'Any police patrol cars operating in that or adjacent areas that might have spotted her before the alert was given?'
'If they did, they haven't reported it to us yet,' Center said.
Pete said, 'Try the streetcar conductors in that zone at around that time; maybe Vikki boarded one.'
Center said, 'We're checking on that that, and on the taxicab companies too. No luck so far.'
Center signed off. Jack said, 'Vikki's not the type who can fade back into the woodwork so easily. So how does she slip the dragnet and drop out of sight?'
Pete said, 'She knows the turf and how to work it. She could've gotten clear of the area before it was cordoned off. Or she could still be hiding in it, somewhere. At that hour, there weren't a lot of public places open for her to duck into, like cafes and whatnot. But there's plenty of private places she might know about, illegal gambling dens, brothels, bottle clubs, after-hours clubs — hell, crack houses and heroin shooting galleries, if it comes to that. She knows the spots; she's a player and a party girl.'
Center came back on the line. Pete was so pent with frustration that he answered by saying, 'What?'
But this time Center came back with something solid. 'Our LAGO source reported in. Raoul Garros is at the Mega Mart building.'
Pete said, 'Susan Keehan's place.'
Jack said, 'Let's go.'
They went.
Where the Mississippi River empties into the Gulf of Mexico, it was inevitable that a mighty port would come into being. The locale was strategically and commercially valuable, the advantages irresistible. Such was the seed of New Orleans, now one of the great port cities of the world, ranking with such other maritime giants as London, San Francisco, Macao, and Hong Kong.
Its waterfront is extensive, encompassing mile after mile of docks, piers, quays, wharves, shipyards, and warehouses. A city within a city, it's part of New Orleans but apart from it, a kind of private floating world.
Dockside facilities are generally self-contained. Like other places of business, such as factories and truck terminals, they're off-limits to the casual visitor. An industrial zone, not a public playground.
Crime is rampant on the docks. Smuggling, of such contraband as drugs, weapons, exotic animals, and people. Labor racketeering. Cargo theft.
Law enforcement is no less involved, with officialdom represented by the Coast Guard, Harbor Patrol, tax collectors, safety inspectors, maritime regulating agencies, and occupational and environmental groups.
The sheer size and sprawl of the waterfront is a great guarantor of anonymity, offering innumerable cracks and crannies to hide in, lending itself to covert activities. The riverside booms with places that are alive with activity; colorful, dynamic wealth generators.
Pelican Pier was not one of them.
It sat on the right bank of the river, the New Orleans side, in a relatively isolated and run-down area several miles upstream from the Mississippi River Bridge that connects the city with the left bank.
A two-lane roadway ran parallel to the shoreline. The road carried plenty of truck traffic day and night, making deliveries to and from the docks.
Between the road and the water stood Pelican Pier, a long wharf jutting out from the shoreline at right angles. There was seemingly nothing about it to make it stand out from its similarly drab neighboring facilities.
The shoreward side of the pier was walled in and fenced off, restricting access and screening the site from public view. Above the top of the wall could be seen the roof of a warehouse and, at the far end of the wharf, an old, rusted derrick crane for loading and unloading cargo.
The absence of a thing can be as significant as its presence. Sherlock Holmes once famously solved a case based on the clue of what a dog didn't do at night.
In an ecosystem, the sudden disappearance of a species is a red flag pointing to a serious imbalance in the environment.
A similar warning was to be found in the lack of something in the vicinity of Pelican Pier. What was missing were the human derelicts with which the rest of the waterfront abounded.
These were the folks who'd fallen into society's abyss, homeless outcasts who haunted the docks and made them their homes. Among them were hopeless alcoholics, drug addicts, the mentally ill, those broken in spirit or body or both.
On dry land, they would have gravitated to the local equivalent of skid row, that sinkhole where the defeated follow their downward path to the null point where they come to rest.
In a port city such as New Orleans, though, legions of the lost wind up on the waterfront, to grub for such minimal necessities as a crust of bread, a bottle of cheap wine, a rock of crack cocaine, and a hole to hide in.
Previously Pelican Pier had been such a resting place, a closed site turned den for these living ghosts of the waterfront.
Then, no more than a month ago, the pier had been reopened and reclaimed, occupied by a new crew of tough, hard-eyed strangers. They were on a mission, and the pier site clanged with their cryptic activities.
And a not so fanny thing began happening: the living ghosts that were the derelicts haunting Pelican Pier began disappearing. Vanishing without a trace, except for an occasional shriek in the night or a pattern of blood spatters left drying on a wall.
Word went out along the grapevine that these living ghosts weren't living anymore, that they'd been done in and dumped in the river, which carried their bodies away.
Those who'd managed to avoid the initial purge spread the news that Pelican Pier was a place to be avoided like, well, death.
So the creatures of the night, the winos, crackheads, bums, and crazies, all absented themselves from the area, finding new places to dwell.
The cops were ignorant of the incident. They had better things to do than go in search of a bunch of missing bums, even if they'd known they were missing. They'd just as soon have said good riddance to them, had they been aware of the great disappearance.
Whatever purpose Pelican Pier was being used for continued to advance without interference or even outside observation toward fruition.
Now, today, that purpose was about to be made manifest. Saturday, an hour or so away from noon, when seen from the outside, Pelican Pier resembled nothing more than another dockside facility, indistinguishable from its neighbors.
The shoreward side of the pier was fenced and gated, with masses of green tarps strung behind the fence to
