Book of Secrets (7 page)

"Howdy, Cachelle," I said as I stepped through the beaded curtain into the back of the palm reader's shop. The palm reader, Madame Divinity herself, was heating up a pan of fried vegetables over a hot plate, her back to the door.

  She turned around, all two hundred and fifty pounds of her, the jewelry on her wrist, neck and ears ringing like the bells at the University of Texas clock tower.

  "Spencer, you little bastard," she said, smiling broadly. "How long has it been?" She held her arms out wide, bracelets clattering.

  "Too long, beautiful," I answered, and stepped into her arms. She hugged me like a professional wrestler, almost lifting me off the ground.

  "Let me look at you," Cachelle said and held me out at arms' length. Her eyes took me in, head to foot. "Why didn't you call, let me know you're coming?"

  "Well, I lost my cell, and–" I answered sheepishly, before she cut me off.

  "You are eating right, aren't you?" She wagged a finger at me.

  "I get by. But nothing like your cooking."

  She laughed.

  "Boy, are you full of shit." She glanced at my feet again. "I like the boots though."

  "Thanks. A gift."

  "A gift?" she asked, frowning. "You know that in the Philippines it's considered bad luck to give shoes as a gift. You got to be more careful."

  "Bad luck for the person giving or the person getting?" I asked. Madame Divinity, better known to her friends as Cachelle Humphries, was the world's unacknowledged expert on crazy superstitions. I half expected that she made up most of them, but nobody ever challenged her on them.

  "Aw, hell, I don't know. Who give 'em to you? Not a Filipino, I hope."

  "Nope," I replied. "A beautiful Italian gal who didn't think that anyone from Texas should get to walk around wearing normal people shoes. She ended up leaving me for a painter, but she let me keep the boots."

  "You are one hard luck case, aren't you?"

  "Like I said, I get by." I glanced around the room. This was the backstage, where Cachelle came to relax between performances. The front room was all incense and effigies and altars to the Loa, but back here she was just a middle-aged black woman from small town Louisiana fixing her dinner. "Is the old bastard around?"

  "Yeah, he's up there," she answered. "You better get on up there; he'll be wanting to see you." She paused, scowling. "You really should get by more often. That man's not going to be around forever, you know."

  "I don't know about that," I replied, smiling and putting an arm around her wide shoulders. "Sometimes I think he's going to end up burying all of us."

  "Not without a fight, honey," she said laughing, her mood lightening instantly. "Not without a fight."

I said my goodbyes to Cachelle, promising to stop by before I left, and went around the back to the stairs. I walked on up, silently like the old man had taught me, and let myself in the door. Before I'd taken two steps into the cloakroom I caught a steel cane in my shins.

  "You still make more noise than a chorus line of fat tap dancers," a gravelly voice said, and then laughed.

  "And I could smell you two miles away," I answered, not turning around. "Aren't you ever

going to take a bath?"

"Why don't you kiss my boney ass?"

  I turned in the doorway and saw the old man in the wheelchair. His head was shiny bald, his face clean shaven, and his sky blue eyes were buried in a spider's web of laugh lines. He wore a sleeveless white t-shirt, baggy black trousers, and rope sandals on his useless feet. His arms lay poised on the armrests of the chair, and even relaxed the muscles stood out like cords under the skin. In the years I'd known him, he didn't seem to have aged a day.

  "You bathe," I replied, "and maybe I'd think about it." I walked over and hugged him, his arms circling my shoulders like steel cables. He pounded me on the back a few times, and then pushed me away.

  "It's good to see you, boy," he said, his voice breaking only slightly. "It's been too long."

  "I know, Tan," I answered, lowering my eyes. "I've been busy."

  "Busy? Shit. Why don't you get a real job?"

  "Ah, come on, Tan, you know me. I never had the chops to be a good thief."

  "Bullshit. You were always just too lazy. You coulda been a pretty good burglar if you put your mind to it."

  "Well…"

  "Not like that little Mexican boy you used to bring around. Shee-it, he was good for nothing. What was his name? Elbow, Humidor–"

  "His name is Amador, you old bastard," I interrupted, "as you well know." Pulling off my coat, I dropped it on a low table and then tossed my wallet, keys and knife on top. I turned, and made for the main room.

  "Come on, Tan," I said. "I need a drink, and then I'm going to need your advice."

  Without a word, the old man swung the wheelchair around and followed me down the hall.

  Besides the cloak room, and a small bedroom on the other side, the entire second floor of the building was one large room. Two entire walls were made up of floor-to-ceiling windows, looking down on Royal and St. Peter Streets. The floor was hardwood, polished to a mirror finish, and the walls plain and unadorned. In the center of the room was a skylight, and the ceiling was covered with hooks, exposed beams, suspended ropes and ladder-looking affairs that ran from one end of the room to the other. There was no furniture in the middle of the room, and only a single table and a couple of chairs in the far corner. Along the wall near the next corner over stood a tall cabinet, dark wood with brass fittings. Otherwise the room was empty.

  Tan wheeled across the floor to the cabinet and opened one of the lower drawers. He took out a bottle and a couple of glasses, and then rolled over to the table.

  "Come on, boy," he called to me, "get it while it's still room temperature."

  I crossed the room, pulled out a chair, and sat down opposite him. Tan spun the top off the bottle and filled the glasses. He slammed the bottle down on the table top, and then took up his glass.

  "To the one that got away," he said, raising the glass to the ceiling. He'd always made the same toast, as long as I known him, but he never answered when I'd asked what it meant. After long enough I stopped asking. It made as good a toast as any.

  "And to the one who never even came close," I added, like I always did. Tan didn't know what that one meant either, and I figured that was fair.

  I took a drink. I got about a mouthful of the stuff down before I started coughing. Irish whiskey. It meant bad memories.

  "You never could hold your liquor, could you boy?" Tan scolded. "Always had a beer in your hand, like a little kid." He poured himself another shot and killed it in one go. "You gotta learn to drink like a man."

  "Listen, old man," I answered, still grimacing at the taste. "I gave up trying to keep up with you a long time ago. You drink your way, I'll drink mine."

  "Alright, then," he said, "what's this all about? I know you didn't drive all the way out here just to look at my pretty face."

  "Tan, I need your help."

Tan had told me once that a cat burglar's style, the technique they use, is as individual as a fingerprint, and that someone with a trained eye could look at a job and, just as if it had been signed, tell you who did it. Add to that the fact that, while there were four or five hundred cat burglars worth their salt worldwide by the old man's estimation, only a third of those were living in the United States. And only a lesser number were currently not incarcerated. Therefore the candidates for the Pierce job numbered only in the order of one hundred to one hundred fifty, and if Tan could pick out enough of the "tells" left by the thief, I would have a good idea who'd pulled it off.

  I brought up the box of photos and notes from the car, and only after opening it realized I had the wrong box.

  "What's with all these magazines?" the old man asked, rifling through the contents.

  "Shit, that's my grandfather's stuff," I answered.

  "Your grandfather?" Tan said, surprised. "You been to see him?"

  "Just missed him. He's dead."

  The old man's smile faded, and he shook his head solemnly.

  "That's too bad," he said quietly.

  "Why? The old guy was a fucker."

  Tan whipped his cane around faster than I could follow and clocked me in the shins.

  "You watch your mouth, boy. Don't speak ill of the dead, unless you want them tasking you after they've gone."

"Yeah, yeah."

  "And you're
way
too old for all this bitterness. It's just juvenile. You're not a kid anymore, you know. That old man did right by you and your brother, whatever you think."

  I just shook my head. It was like all old white guys were in a club and had to watch each other's backs. First O'Connor, now Tan. I'd had enough of it. I went back downstairs to the car and brought back up the right box.

  The photos and hand-written pages spread out before him on the table, Tan seemed to forget all together that I was there. He was at work, immersed in the craft he loved, and I was just a distraction.

  "Alright," I announced, not expecting an answer. "I'm going to go out for a while, and you can tell me what you got when I get back."

  To my surprise, Tan lifted his hand in an almostwave. I figured that was as good as I was going to get, and went back downstairs.

I decided I would ramble around the old neighborhood for a while, it being an off season and the tourist traffic fairly low. I headed down St. Peter towards Jackson Square, considering stopping in at a Voodoo museum run by a friend of mine. But when I cut across to that street I saw it closed down. I wasn't surprised. A lot of the New Orleans I remembered was gone, washed away by Katrina.

  It was late afternoon, and there were only a few herds of tourists moving around the French Quarter, so my best bet would be to get somewhere quiet and cool. I started over to an old haunt of mine, and along the way passed a little used book store I used to steal magazines from. Realizing I had nothing better to do, I ducked in and browsed.

  On a little table near the register was a book called
The Great Pulp Heroes
, by Don Hutchison. I picked it up, and glanced through it. Walter Reece's name jumped out at me from one of the pages, so I dropped a few bills on the counter, smiled at the pretty young clerk, and went back outside.

  A short while later I was at the bar, a dive down on Chartres Street, becoming acquainted with my first beer of the day. There was no one in the place I knew, which was fine with me. I didn't feel up to any reunions. The bar was small, dimly lit, little more than a wooden door and a hand-painted sign from the outside, which meant that most tourists passed right on by on their way to the flashier spots. Again, that was just fine with me. I had no interest in contributing to the local color for a pair of young newlyweds from Des Moines.

  I focused my attention on the book I'd bought, and with little trouble found the section on Reece.

"Les Maxwell, one of the most unlucky figures in the history of the pulps, first made his mark with tales for T
op Notch
and
Popular
for Street & Smith. Maxwell was prolific, writing in a solid if perhaps florid style, and from his years as a reporter in San Francisco for the local Hearst organ knew the importance of a deadline. On the strength of this and his past work, he was asked to produce a new series for the house. The writer went home, and came back the next day with the first installment of what he expected to be a long and profitable series. The series was to feature a dark avenger of the night, who would characteristically emerge from the mists to right wrongs and squelch evil, only to vanish again. The character's name and basic motif were cribbed from a western series which first debuted over twenty years before, La Mano Negra. Appearing in Athena Press' Tr
ue West
ern Tales
, the adventures of La Mano Negra, or "The Black Hand", were written by J. C. Reece, and ran intermittently for some three years from 1918 to 1921, at which point the magazine ceased publication. Maxwell simply updated the character for a modern setting, gave him twin automatics in the place of Colt Peacemakers, and generated a slightly aboveaverage potboiler. The house name used for the series, Walter Reece, can charitably be seen as a nod to the true originator, and uncharitably as a sneer. Sales for the first issue of
The Black Hand Mysteries
were healthy, and Maxwell was ordered to begin work on the follow up.

  However, before the second issue went to press, S&S was presented a cease and desist order. It appeared that the fictional guise Maxwell had devised for the Black Hand's true identity, Richmond Taylor, was the name of a real life business man in San Francisco who was well connected enough to put the fear of God into the house. Whether Maxwell had known of Taylor and used his name intentionally, or whether it was simply an unlikely coincidence is unclear. In any event, Maxwell was sent back to work to revise his second installment to remove any reference to Taylor or his likeness. Then the other shoe fell. An unnamed firm had purchased the publishing rights for all of Athena Press' characters, including La Mano Negra. Street & Smith were threatened with a copyright infringement suit for the resemblance of the Black Hand to the earlier character, and quickly decided the series just wasn't a good bet. Maxwell was put to work on the aviation pulps, and
The Black
Hand
was canceled, before the second issue had even reached the stands."