“I could use a drink, but I should go.” I stand and gather up the transmitter, microphone, and sticky tape. “Look, the Jefferson Parish sheriff leaked to the media that we have suspects. He didn’t name names, but you might want to get ready for that. Get a hotel room or something.”
Smith shakes his head in exasperation. “I’ll do that. Right after I call my lawyer and tell him to get ready to sue the shit out of the government.”
He stands, takes my arm, then leads me back through the house. As we pass the dining room, I glance in at his nude portrait of Oscar Wilde.
“I really like that picture.”
“Thanks.”
Smith reaches for the doorknob, but I stop him by pulling my arm against my side. “Frank, tell me one thing. The brush hairs led the FBI to four suspects: you, Roger, Thalia, and Gaines. Thalia’s out. If you had to pin it on Wheaton or Gaines, who would you pick?”
“Are you kidding? Was Leon under surveillance when Thalia was taken?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm. Well. Roger too, of course?”
“Yes.” A last, desperate thought pops into my head. “Has Wheaton ever told you he was abused as a child?”
Smith sighs angrily.
“I have a good reason for asking, I promise.”
“He never told me anything like that. And if your next question is did I suffer anything like that, my answer is fuck you. All right?” He yanks open the door and stands clear of it. “Come again soon, now.”
I walk out into the pale sunlight and damp yellow leaves of Esplanade, and the door closes behind me. It’s been a long time since I felt this low. Probing private lives has never been my thing. All photojournalism is essentially exploitative, but in photography the act of invasion is mitigated by the wonderful speed of light, which lets you intrude from a distance. No messy questions or awkward silences; just click, click, click.
I turn toward the Mississippi River and start to walk, knowing that the FBI sedan bearing Baxter, Lenz, and John will come alongside at any moment. They’ll be pissed that I pulled the wire, which is fine. I’m pissed that I’ve played the role of pawn in their dead-end investigation. I’d probably feel different if this morning’s interviews had produced a lead, but they didn’t.
The quiet hum of a motor announces my escorts. The sedan pulls up to the curb on my left and, when I don’t stop, keeps pace as I walk. Baxter rolls down the passenger window, and I see Special Agent Wendy Travis driving the car. Her presence tells me John is tied up for the day, that I’m to be left under her watchful eyes yet again.
“Why did you kill the wire?” asks Baxter.
“You know why,” I reply, looking straight ahead.
“What did he tell you?”
“He convinced me that Wheaton’s visits there have nothing to do with the case.”
Baxter glances into the backseat, where Lenz sits beside John. Then he looks back at me. “Do you think you’re the best judge of that?”
“As good as any of you.”
He turns to the backseat again, and I’m certain he’s telling John to use his influence to get me to talk. Baxter may not like me being involved with his old profiler, but he doesn’t mind exploiting the connection. I hope John knows better than to try.
The car stops, the back door opens, and John gets out. He walks to me, his eyes filled with concern.
“What do you want to do?” he asks softly. “Whatever you say, I’ll make it happen.”
“I want to walk.”
“You want company?”
“No.”
“You feel that Wheaton and Smith are both innocent, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I’m going to go back to the office and study the aerial photos of the courtyards. Call if you want to talk. Wendy has a cell phone.”
I’m going to have company after all.
John squeezes my forearm, then motions to Wendy, who gets out wearing her usual Liz Claiborne skirt and jacket combo, the jacket there to hide her pistol. I resist the urge to say something smart; she’s only doing her job as best she can. She falls into step a couple of yards behind me, and the sedan pulls forward and then passes us. As it recedes, I see John looking back at me over the rear seat, his eyes unreadable.
20
As I walk along the oak-shaded sidewalk of Esplanade, Agent Wendy trailing a few yards behind, my mind swirls with images I have no desire to ponder, and my stomach rolls with the low-level nausea I’ve felt since Dr. Lenz badgered Roger Wheaton into telling us his disease rendered him impotent years ago. Frank Smith’s revelation of Wheaton’s plea for euthanasia only made it worse. The impact of my shoes against the sidewalk offers a metronomic distraction from those thoughts, so I focus my mind on that.
From Esplanade I turn onto Royal Street, which farther on becomes the center of the antique trade in the Quarter, but here on the downriver end it’s a peaceful lane of homes and shuttered warehouses. I spent a good deal of time walking this grid of streets when I moved here at seventeen, getting to know a world at once seamier and more exotic than the provincial one I left in north Mississippi. Two decades later the sights, smells, and sounds are the same. Ornate wrought-iron balconies laden with ferns and flags climb the faces of pastel buildings, not so bright as those in the Caribbean, but festive in their stately way; the aromas of baking bread and simmering gumbo drift from the direction of St. Philip Street; and shouted cries of the urban New Orleans patois collide with rapid precise French spoken by tourists standing on the corner of Ursulines.
Just three blocks to my left, beyond Decatur Street and the levee, rolls the Mississippi River, where great ships bob higher than the roofs of the buildings. I feel myself drawn toward it, but since the water is blocked by the wharf at the end of Ursulines, I stay on Royal, walking at a native’s clip. My inner ear confirms what I have long known, that I am below sea level, walking in a world that exists only provisionally, that a hurricane making landfall here would spill the lake and the river into the Quarter like a great bowl and cover everything from the Lucky Dog men to the tourist traps of Bourbon Street, leaving only cathedral spires, Andy Jackson on his horse, and screeching gulls circling the electrical towers.
At St. Philip I break left, making for the river. Wendy’s flats go staccato as she moves to keep pace with me. The sound of a slide guitar jangles from the doorway of the Babylon Club, and with every step the Quarter grows more commercial. There are restaurants and pubs now, lawyers’ offices, small hotels. Yet still the odd doorway leads down a tunnel that opens onto a secluded courtyard, beckoning with the promise of midnight trysts and masked soirees. I shudder in sudden awareness that the Sleeping Women may have been painted in one of these courtyards. How strange to know that last night, while the people down here drank and laughed and loved and slept, government planes crisscrossed the sky above, shooting thermal images of the buildings, searching for a garden private enough in which to paint a dead woman without interruption.
Joan of Arc awaits me at the Place de France, a little concrete island in the traffic. She sits high on a golden horse, holding a golden flag against the gray clouds, an imperfect monument to a woman who overstepped what those in power saw as her place; an honest monument would show her burning at the stake. Wendy moves alongside me here, for suddenly we are awash in a sea of humanity, surging waves of tourists and cars and French Market merchants hawking vegetables, coffee, and strange souvenirs. I can smell the river now, a muddy, fetid scent on the cool air. Slipping between two fat cream-colored columns, I trot up some flagstone steps, and then I’m looking over a narrow parking lot at the levee and the booms of a freighter whose red-painted waterline floats at the level of my eyes.
“Where are we going?” asks Wendy.
