Longarm and the Voodoo Queen (13 page)

Or was he?

The rational part of Longarm's brain began to reassert itself. He recalled how Luther had stumbled into the Brass Pelican, gut-shot by Royale's men. The body sprawled on its back in the street had a huge bloodstain on its midsection where Longarm had emptied the Colt into it. That matched Luther's stomach wound, of course, but how could a man who had been dead for over forty-eight hours bleed that much?

But then, how could a man who had been dead for over forty-eight hours be wandering around the streets of NewOrleans and trying to murder federal lawmen? Longarm gave a little shake of his head, trying to keep his mind from wandering too far off down dark paths.

Quickly, before the match went out, Longarm holstered his gun and reached down to grasp the dead man's shoulder. There was one sure test. He had seen Luther shot at nearly point-blank range in the back of the head by one of Royale's men. With a grunt of effort, Longarm heaved the massive corpse onto its side. He held the match closer to the back of the dead man's skull.

There was no bullet hole, no sign of a wound of any kind. With a sigh of relief, Longarm let go of the body and let it slump onto its back again.

So this dead man wasn't Luther after all. He just looked a hell of a lot like the doorman from the Brass Pelican.

Which still didn't answer the question of why he had been trying to kill Longarm... or why he had shuffled along the way he had... or why he had fought in complete silence and stood up for so long against the impact of five slugs from a.44.

Zombie. The word echoed in Longarm's brain.

Grimacing, he shook out the match just before it could burn his fingers and backed away from the body. He turned around and found his hat, picking it up and putting it on as he walked quickly along the street. He headed away from Decatur Street and soon found himself on Chartres Street. The mansion where Annie and Paul Clement lived when they were visiting New Orleans wasn't far from where he was, he realized. He wondered how they would react if he knocked on their door in the cold gray light of dawn and told them he'd just had a run-in with a walking dead man. They'd probably try to have him locked up in an asylum somewhere.

Maybe that was where he belonged. He had always been a rational, pragmatic, even hardheaded man. Carrying a badge made a fella that way. Now here he was thinking all sorts of wild thoughts, considering possibilities that he never would have dreamed he would consider.

There had to be an explanation. There just had to be.

But as he made his way back to the St. Charles Hotel by a roundabout route, he was damned if he could think of what it might be.

He slept the sleep of exhaustion--slept like a dead man, he told himself wryly when he woke up in the middle of the afternoon--but he didn't feel particularly rested. When he showed up at the Brass Pelican after a meal and several cups of strong black coffee, he felt a little better, but the bartender who was working behind the mahogany took one look at him and said, "Lord, you look like death warmed over, Mr. Parker."

Longarm rubbed his jaw and said hoarsely, "Didn't figure I looked that good."

"You coming down with the grippe? I can fix up a tonic for that."

Longarm shook his head. "No, I just... strained my throat, I reckon you could say. It's getting better, but thanks anyway."

"Well, if you change your mind, just let me know."

This fella was a lot friendlier than the one who had unlocked the door for Longarm the day before. Of course, the club was open for business now, so that might have had something to do with his helpful attitude. Longarm looked around the big room. There were quite a few customers drinking and gambling, though not nearly as many as there would be later.

He turned back to the bar and said, "I could use a cup of coffee. And put a dollop of Tom Moore in it."

"Coming right up, Mr. Parker."

When he had first gotten up, Longarm had barely been able to talk at all, and swallowing had been hell. But the muscles in his bruised throat had loosened up, and hot coffee seemed to help the soreness. He was only a little hoarse now, and the discomfort was tolerable. It could have been a lot worse.

He could have been dead, like that poor son of a bitch he'd had to shoot.

The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if the fella had been drugged. In the horror of the night before, Longarm hadn't really considered that possibility. It made more sense than believing in voodoo and zombies, though. Longarm recalled seeing Chinese hatchet men who had smoked so much opium that they might not have noticed right away if somebody emptied a Colt into their bellies.

Maybe Royale had sent the gigantic black man after him. Maybe that was just a new weapon in the war against Millard and anybody who worked for him.

Longarm sipped the coffee the bartender brought to him, feeling the bracing effect of the Maryland rye that had been added to it. He turned to the man and asked, "Where's Mr. Millard? Back in the office?"

The bartender took out his watch and glanced at it. "He's probably upstairs. He usually takes one of the girls up to his room about this time of day, if you know what I mean."

Longarm did indeed. Some men liked their loving on a regular schedule.

Carrying the coffee cup, Longarm wandered around the room, watching the players at the poker tables, the blackjack tables, the roulette wheel, and the faro bank. Not a lot of money was changing hands. The really big players, like Paul Clement, usually showed up at night. For a while, he sat down at an empty table and sipped the rest of the coffee, then got up and walked rather aimlessly toward the door that led to the rear hallway. No one challenged him as he slipped through it and headed for Millard's office.

He hoped that Millard was also a man who liked to take his time when bedding a woman, because Longarm intended to have a look in the office and see what he could find.

The corridor was empty. Longarm checked the knob of the office door, and found it unlocked. He rapped lightly on the panel, and when he got no response, opened the door silently and stepped into the office.

The lamp on Millard's desk was turned down low, but it was lit. Longarm didn't know if that meant Millard would be back soon or not. He eased the door shut behind him, then stepped quickly to the desk. Unless he knew better, he was going to assume there was no time to waste.

Longarm had searched desks before, and he made fast work of this one. He found nothing unusual at first, just the typical paperwork that went with any legitimate business. And for New Orleans, the Brass Pelican was a legitimate business. It was Millard's smuggling activities that put him on the wrong side of the law.

Longarm also found a couple of pistols, a Bowie knife, a bottle of cognac like the one he had shared with Millard and the Clements on his first night in the Crescent City, and a smaller bottle of dark brown glass. It had a cork stopper in its neck, and when Longarm pulled it and took a sniff, he recognized the heavy, sweetish smell of laudanum. With a grimace, he replaced the cork and put the bottle back in the drawer where he had found it.

Whatever drug that giant had been full of, it was even stronger than laudanum, thought Longarm.

Under a litter of old lottery tickets in the last drawer he checked, he found a small notebook. Flipping it open, he saw that someone, no doubt Millard, had used it to keep track of shipping activities. The names of ships, departure dates, and destinations had all been written down in a scrawling, looping hand. Longarm turned to the last page where entries had been made. Four ships were listed there, and the date of their departure had been one day before Longarm arrived in New Orleans.

Their destination was listed as Saint Laurent.

Longarm frowned. Saint Laurent was the West Indian island where Annie and Paul Clement lived most of the year, where they had their ancestral sugar plantation. Though Longarm hadn't run across any evidence linking them with Millard's smuggling operation, he could conceive of Millard and Paul Clement joining forces to bring in shiploads of contraband sugar. From what he had seen and heard so far, however, Clement paid the import fees and sold his sugar on the exchange, all open and aboveboard.

Maybe Millard and Clement were smuggling in something else, although for the life of him, Longarm couldn't figure out what it might be. Or maybe Millard was smuggling something into Saint Laurent for the Clements, but again, Longarm had no idea what. And it was always possible that the ships bound for the West Indies had nothing to do with Annie and her brother at all.

Longarm knew he would have to ponder those questions later, maybe do a little poking around down on the docks. For now, he closed the notebook and replaced it under the lottery tickets where he had found it.

Just in time too, because he heard footsteps in the hall and Millard's voice. By the time the club owner opened the door and stepped into the room, Longarm was lounging in the chair in front of the desk, right foot cocked on left knee, one of the Cuban cigars smoldering in his fingers. He looked up and around at Millard, who had stopped short just inside the door, and put a slightly sheepish grin on his face. "Aw, hell," said Longarm, "you caught me."

"What are you doing in here, Parker?" Millard asked sharply.

Longarm gestured with the cigar. "I got a hankering for another of these fancy see-gars of yours, Boss. Didn't think you'd mind if I helped myself to one."

"Well, you thought wrong," snapped Millard. "I don't like people poking around my office."

Well then, old son, you ought to keep it locked, thought Longarm, but he said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Millard. I didn't mean no harm."

Millard came around behind the desk and sat down. "Don't let it happen again," he grunted as his gaze quickly darted around the top of the desk. Longarm knew he was checking to see if anything had been disturbed. Millard wouldn't be able to tell by looking that the desk had been searched. Longarm was too good at his job for that; everything had been put back exactly the way he'd found it.

"Any sign of trouble from Royale today?" asked Longarm, partly out of curiosity, partly to distract Millard from finding him in here.

Millard shook his bald head. "It's been quiet. Maybe too quiet."

That was a suspicious nature working on Millard, thought Longarm. After everything that had happened, he would spook pretty easily. Longarm told himself to remember that; it might come in handy later on. In the meantime, he was wondering about something else. In a tone calculated to seem only idly curious, he said, "That fella Luther who was your doorman, the one who was killed by Royale's men that first night... did he have a brother?"

Millard looked at him with a confused frown. "Not that I know of," he said. "Why do you ask?"

"Well... you might think this is a little strange but I would have sworn I saw Luther on the street last night when I was going home." Longarm didn't say anything about being followed, or the fight with the massive black man, or the fact that for a few harrowing moments, it had seemed like even bullets weren't enough to take down the man.

Millard stared at him for a second, then clenched a fist and brought it down hard on the desk. "Shit!" he exploded. "I knew better... I knew we shouldn't-"

Longarm sensed that he was on the verge of something important here, and it was all he could do not to lean forward eagerly. All he could do was allow himself to appear mildly surprised by Millard's reaction. "What's the matter, Boss?" he asked. "Did I say something wrong?"

"No, damn it, it's just... Are you sure you saw Luther?"

Longarm looked perplexed. "Why, how could I do that? He's dead. I just figured I saw somebody who looked a whole lot like him. That's why I asked you if he had a brother."

"I don't know," Millard said with a shake of his head. "Could be, could be. I suppose that has to be the explanation." He didn't sound completely convinced of that, however.

Longarm forced a chuckle. "The only other thing I could think of was that maybe Luther had been turned into one of those, what you call 'em, zombies or something. After all, this is New Orleans."

The comment provoked a reaction from Millard, just as Longarm had thought it might. Once again the man thumped his fist on the desk and said tautly, "Forget it. That's all just a bunch of made-up mumbo jumbo, and I don't want to hear another damn word about it, understand?" His voice rose as he spoke.

"Sure, Boss, sure," murmured Longarm. He was convinced now that Millard was scared to death of the very idea of voodoo and zombies and such. That meant he was unlikely to have been the one who'd planted the mutilated doll representing Douglas Ramsey on the chief marshal's doorstep.

But that still left Royale.

Longarm went on. "I've been thinking that if we could get a line on Royale, maybe find out who he is-"

"I've tried," Millard broke in. "Lord knows, I've tried. Nobody seems to be able to touch him."

Before Longarm could continue the discussion, there was a soft knock on the office door. At a gesture from Millard, Longarm got up and moved to the side of the door. With all the trouble that had been going on lately, it paid to be cautious. He drew his gun and called, "Yeah?"

The voice of the bartender Longarm had spoken to earlier said, "That you, Mr. Parker? You're the one I need to see, and I thought you might be in there with the boss."