mini-mal illumination. The light was as murky as the waters of a fish tank that had gone too long without cleaning.
There was a chance, a slim one, that Vikki had found shelter in a neighboring apartment, but Jack lacked the time or resources now to make a room-to-room search. Instinct told him it was unlikely she was still in the building. If she was somewhere on the premises, that'd be a break, because she could be picked up later when CTU reinforcements had arrived. He wasn't counting on it, though.
Toward the front of the building was a landing and a stairwell. The stairs slanted down to a street-level door, the one used earlier by Paz when he'd stepped out onto the sidewalk and set off the fireworks.
In the opposite direction, toward the rear of the building, a second set of stairs led to a ground-floor back door. Outside, Pete Malo was covering that one, though it was probably a case of locking the barn door after the horse had vamoosed.
Jack made for the front stairs. Ahead, on the left, a door suddenly opened and a man stepped out onto the landing. Jack leveled the gun at him.
The other saw him at the same time. He was a fat man in a sleeveless undershirt and a pair of pants with suspenders. The suspenders were unfastened and hung in loops at his sides. His bare feet were stuffed into a pair of flip-flops.
He lurched, recoiling, the floorboards groaning under his weight. He threw up his arms in a hands-up position. His hands were empty of weapons. He cried, 'Don't shoot!'
He goggled at the gun. Fear had drained the color from his face, leaving it white and pasty as baker's dough.
Jack moved closer, keeping him covered. He asked, 'Who're you?'
'Shelburne! Drake Shelburne!' The fat man quivered, triple chins bobbing as he gasped for breath. 'I'm the manager here!'
'Where's Vikki Valence?'
'I don't know!' Then, after a pause, he added, 'I should have known she'd be mixed up in this!'
Jack said, 'Why?'
'The company she keeps, playboys and artists and foreigners and I don't know what-all!'
Jack wagged the gun barrel, indicating the door through which Shelburne had just emerged. 'That your place?'
'Yessir!'
'Go back inside and stay there.'
Shelburne still had his hands up. 'Jeez, you like to give me a heart attack, waving that gun around — I'm going now, I'm just letting you know so you won't shoot… '
'Move!'
'I'm moving, Oh Lordy, here I go… '
Shelburne edged back into his room, pausing at the threshold. He'd recovered enough nerve to ask, 'Say, what's it all about, anyway?'
'Police business,' Jack said, figuring that that was the kind of answer that the manager of a strip club like the Golden Pole would understand. 'Go inside and stay there until you're told otherwise.'
'I'm cooperating,' Shelburne said over his shoulder as he waddled back inside his room, closing the door behind him. Not slamming it but easing it into place. A cautious man.
Jack descended the stairs and exited through the side door onto Fairview Street.
The scene was the same as when he'd left it. Littered with corpses. The two bodyguards, Baca and Espinosa, lay sprawled on the sidewalk; the five attackers, Herm, Dixie, and the three shooters from the back of the truck, were strewn about the street.
Seven dead. Quite a body count, even for New Orleans, the new-crowned murder capital of the United States.
So much for keeping a low profile to avoid scaring off Beltran.
The air was so still and dead that a pall of gun smoke still hazed the street, hovering motionlessly a few feet above the pavement, undisturbed by even the slightest breath of a breeze.
At the south end of Fairview, a pickup truck rolled west on Bourbon Street, the driver oblivious to the carnage. On the far side of the square, a handful of people stood together in a clump, peering and gawking at the gunfight site. Civilians, spectators. The curious.
Jack looked around, catching sight of Pete Malo standing north on Fairview, near the rear of the club. Earlier Jack had gone up the balcony stairs to check on Vikki's apartment, while Pete stayed at street level, covering the club's side and back doors.
Jack fitted his gun back into the shoulder holster and went to the other. Pete said, 'Vikki?'
Jack shook his head no. 'Gone.'
'I figured as much. Our bird has flown the coop,' Pete said. 'She was already plenty jittery — on the tape of her call to the CTU hotline, she sounded spooked, scared. When the shooting started, she must've jumped like a scalded cat and hightailed it out of there.'
He gestured toward the back of the building, where a brown-painted metal door was connected by three stone steps to an alley that met it at right angles. 'Probably went out the back door,' he said.
Jack said, 'Let's hope so. At least that puts her in the opposite direction from Colonel Paz. It might not go so well for her if he should bump into her now — he might think she set him up for the slaughter. We know better — why contact CTU if the object was to lure Paz into a death trap? — but he doesn't know that.'
Pete said, 'The Colonel's a hard man to kill. The machine gun in the briefcase was a neat trick.'
'One we missed.'
Pete indicated the corpses in the street. 'Better them than us.'
Jack said, 'Cal Randolph may have a different opinion on that score.'
Randolph was Director of CTU's Gulf Coast Regional Center, the branch office located in the New Orleans area. Pete worked for him out of GCR Center. Jack worked out of CTU Los Angeles, but was on assignment here for the Beltran case.
Pete made a sour face. 'Car's been notified. I already talked to him and told him what happened.'
Jack said, 'How'd he take it?'
'About as well as you'd think. He's got a bloodbath before breakfast, and our lead to Beltran is gone, too.'
'Maybe not. Vikki Valence isn't exactly inconspicuous. She'll have a tough time blending in with the woodwork,' Jack said.
Pete said, 'She doesn't drive, either — at least our preliminary background check revealed no driver's license or car registration in her name.'
Jack said, 'That's something, anyway.'
Pete's expression was doubtful. 'Trouble is, Vikki's been around. She knows her way around the Quarter. And a gal like her has plenty of friends she can lay up with — men friends — not to mention those who'd like to be her friend.'
Jack made a quick decision. 'If she's on foot, she may not have gotten very far. Maybe I can spot her hanging around in the vicinity. It's worth a try, anyway. Let me have the keys to the SUV.'
Pete said, 'I'll go. I know these streets a lot better than you do, Jack. This is my town.'
'You also know the local lawmen better, too. It's best that they see a familiar face when they show up here. I'm a stranger to them, and a massacre is no place to strike up an acquaintanceship.
'Speaking of which, I'd have thought that the cops would be here by now,' Jack added.
'You would — being an out-of-towner,' Pete said. 'Truth to tell, our New Orleans Police Department falls a long way off from being in the front ranks of law enforcement. With a storm coming — a big one, from the looks of it — there's already been a lot of absenteeism on the force. A number of the fellows don't want to be trapped here in the city if another one like Katrina hits.'
He fished the car keys out of his pants pocket and tossed them to Jack, who snagged them out of the air. 'Okay, Jack, you win.'
'I'll cruise around and see if I can pick up her frail,' Jack said. 'Or Paz's.'
'Good luck. I'll hold down the fort here,' Pete said.
