As I look back at Smith, the portrait in his dining room clicks in my mind. “Is the man in the dining room painting Oscar Wilde?”
His eyes light with pleasure. “Yes. I used the photo on the cover of the Ellmann biography for his face, and various other photos to get an idea of the rest of his body. Wilde is a hero of mine.”
“I love the cottage,” I tell him, laying a hand on his arm to gauge his reaction. He clearly enjoys it. “Do you have a garden?”
Smith beams. “Of course. Follow me.”
Without paying the slightest bit of attention to Kaiser or Lenz, he escorts me to the front door, which leads to a walled garden filled with citrus plants, roses, and a gnarled wisteria that’s probably as old as the house. One wall of the garden is formed by an old servants’ quarters, which appears to have been converted into a wing of the cottage. Rushing water from a three-tiered fountain fills the courtyard with sound, but what holds me rapt is the light -glorious sunlight falling softly through the foliage with the perfect clarity I remember from Marcel de Becque’s Sleeping Women.
“It’s lovely,” I say softly, wondering if my sister ever lay unconscious or dead on the paving bricks before me.
“You have a standing invitation. I’d love to entertain you. Please call anytime.”
My second invitation today. “I just might do that.”
Footsteps sound on the porch behind us. Kaiser says, “Mr. Smith, we’d like you to keep Ms. Glass’s presence in New Orleans to yourself.”
“Spoilsport,” Smith retorts, cutting his eyes at me. “They’re no fun at all, are they?”
“And please do not contact Thalia Laveau about his visit.”
Anger flares in Smith’s eyes. “Stop giving me orders in my own house.”
In the awkward silence that follows, I suddenly want out of this place, away from this man who could have been the last person my sister ever saw.
“We really must go,” Lenz says.
“No rest for the wicked,” Smith quips, his humor inexplicably back in gear. Taking my arm, he leads me back through the house to the porch facing Esplanade Avenue.
“Remember,” he says. “You’re always welcome.”
I nod but do not speak, and without a word to Kaiser or Lenz, Smith turns and goes back into his cottage, leaving us on the small porch.
“So much for the element of surprise,” Kaiser says as we cross through traffic to the van. “How about that picture of Oscar Wilde?”
“Beautifully done,” says Lenz, who appears preoccupied by something.
“Smith reminds me of Dorian Gray,” I think aloud. “A beautiful amoral man who will never age.”
“Why amoral?” asks Kaiser. “Not because he’s gay.”
“No. It’s something I sense about him. He’s like de Becque, yet different somehow. What do you think, Doctor?”
Lenz has a strange smile on his face. “You know what no one remembers about Dorian Gray?”
“What?”
“He murdered a man, then bribed a chemist to come to his house and destroy the body. The chemist used special compounds to burn the corpse until there was nothing left.”
“You’re kidding,” says Kaiser.
“No. Wilde was ahead of his time in many ways. Dorian Gray’s theory of murder was no corpse, no evidence, no crime.”
16
Thalia Laveau lives on the second floor of a three-story Victorian rooming house near Tulane University. Nine other women and two men live in the house, which is a nightmare for the NOPD surveillance team. Seven doors, twenty-one ground-level windows, and two fire escapes. Parked on the student-dominated block, we hunch inside the FBI surveillance van like J. Edgar Hoover-era G-men spying on “outside agitators.”
“The plan is for John to take the lead on Laveau,” Baxter says, looking at Dr. Lenz. “Does anybody want to change that before you go in?”
Kaiser and Lenz glance at each other, but neither speaks.
“I do,” I tell them.
All three men look at me in confusion.
“What do you mean?” asks Baxter.
“I want to go in alone.”
“This is a woman, guys. Maybe a gay woman. I’ll get twice as much out of her as you could.”
“The point isn’t to get something out of her,” Baxter reminds me. “It’s to find out whether she’s seen you before, and therefore your sister. And since no one else seemed to recognize you – except Smith, who didn’t try to hide it – this interview may be critical.”
I look him dead in the eye. “Do you really believe a woman is behind all these disappearances? Or even involved?”
“Let her do it,” says Dr. Lenz, surprising me. “The odds that Laveau is involved are low, and her nude paintings will probably tell us more than she will. But if Jordan can gain her trust, we might learn something valuable about one of the men.”
“You saw how Smith responded to me,” I press Baxter. “I think he would have opened up to me if I’d been alone. Wheaton, too.”
“Smith was responding to your fame,” says Kaiser, who looks uncomfortable with the idea. “Not your gender.”
“If you went in alone, what would you say?” asks Baxter.
“I won’t know that until I get there. That’s the way I work.”
The ISU chief looks tempted but worried. “Jesus, the liability-”
“What liability? I’m a private citizen walking up to someone’s door. If she invites me in, so what?”
“What if she sees you and freaks?” asks Kaiser. “Attacks you? If she’s involved, that’s a real possibility.”
“I wouldn’t turn down a gun if you offered me one.”
Baxter shakes his head. “We can’t give you a gun.”
“How about some Mace?”
“We don’t have any.”
“This is a bad idea,” says Kaiser.
“It’s better than sending you and Lenz in there,” I insist. “Look, I’ll know whether she’s seen me before as soon as she answers the door. Then I’ll tell her you guys are outside. I’ll tell the truth. I’m the sister of one of the victims, trying to find some answers, and the FBI is kindly providing some protection for me.”
“Let her go,” Lenz says. “We need to know what Laveau knows. This is the best way to find that out.” He looks at Kaiser. “You disagree?”
Kaiser looks like he’d like to argue, but he doesn’t. “Put the wire on her, and I’ll stand just outside the house with a receiver.” He watches me, his hazel eyes intense. “If you sense it going bad in any way, yell for help. And I mean yell. No codes that can be misunderstood.”
“That works for me,” Baxter says. “Let’s move, before Laveau decides to go out and get her hair done.”
“Get the T-4 off,” Kaiser tells Lenz., who removes his coat and starts unbuttoning his shirt, his elbows bumping us in the tight quarters. Baxter unstraps the tape from Lenz’s ribs, and Kaiser chuckles at the psychiatrist’s grimaces.
“She’ll see that transmitter under this blouse,” I point out, holding out the thin cotton.
“You’ll have to wear it under your skirt,” says Lenz, cradling the transmitter, dangling antenna, and
