Out of Body

Chapter 11

“This had better be good,” Gray said. He slid to face Nat in a booth at Ambrose’s, a bar and diner across from Café du Monde on Decatur Street.

“I got you coffee,” Nat said.

“And I got three hours of sleep last night. Maybe less.”

Nat had called before six and the summons to Ambrose’s didn’t fall into the friendly invitation category. Nat sounded pissed.

“Drink,” Nat said. “You aren’t the only one around here who’s sleep deprived.”

The coffee tasted burned, or old and reheated, but it was strong and that mattered to Gray. The tone of Nat’s voice on the phone had been irritating enough—and interesting enough to get Gray from his home in Faubourg Marigny to the appointed place in half an hour. The city wasn’t awake yet. Pigeons still snoozed on statues in Jackson Square. The pickings from sidewalk diners weren’t worth pooping for yet.

“Tell me what you’ve got and let me get back to bed,” Gray said. He hung over the table, hands clasped between his knees, head bowed.

Nat tapped the rim of Gray’s mug with a fork. “Shut up and drink some more coffee.”

The detective’s plate overflowed with a muffuletta big enough to roof a round shack. Olive salad and cheese spilled from inside and Nat carefully stuffed every scrap back into the sandwich. He picked it up in both hands and took a big bite.

With a mouthful of bitter coffee not wanting to go down his throat, Gray watched his buddy chew slowly and swallow.

“Hey, Ambrose,” Gray called to the establishment’s owner, who sat on a stool beside a pocked, wooden bar and took all food orders. “I’ll have what he’s got.” He pointed at Nat’s plate.

That got him a grunt, but the food would arrive quickly and be good.

“Bucky Fist’s on his way,” Nat said. “He had a short night, too.”

Gray took a swallow from Nat’s water glass. “Damn,” he said. “It’s warm.”

“You hear what I said about Bucky coming?”

“Yeah. So I’ll bite. Do you and your partner hang out in here every morning, or does Bucky have news?”

Nat paused with what was left of the muffuletta halfway to his mouth. “Maybe he’s got something interesting to tell us.”

“You don’t know?”

“Where were you late last night?” Nat asked. He’d laced his own coffee with cream and tipped down half the mug. “Don’t tell me you were interviewing another singer.”

Evidently the Bucky Fist tack was a diversion. Gray left it alone. “I wasn’t interviewing anyone,” he said. He took Nat’s lead and dumped cream in his coffee. “How come this place makes the best food and the worst coffee?” he said, not expecting a sensible answer.

He got one. “Ambrose makes money on booze, not coffee. Order a Bloody Mary and you’ll go to heaven.”

“Why am I here?” Gray said, hoping the screwing around with “niceties” was over.

“I already said. Where were you late last night?”

“When did that get to be your business?”

Nat rescued several fallen olives and put them in his mouth. “When you came into my office with some bullshit story about looking for a woman we already knew was missing. That and other things.”

He could shut up and wait, let Nat get at this when he was ready or try to hurry things. Hurrying wouldn’t work. Gray got down more coffee.

“You were at Scully’s,” Nat said. “Down at the Hotel Camille.”

“If you know, why ask me?”

“Why do you think? To see if you’d own up to it on your own.”

Gray hated cat-and-mouse conversations. And he wasn’t thrilled with Nat’s manner. “How do you know where I was last night? I wasn’t followed.”

Nat’s eyebrows arched and he set down his fork. “You don’t know that.”

“I sure as hell do,” Gray told him. “I was at Scully’s, but I wasn’t followed there.”

“Maybe you were followed when you left.”

“Not then, either,” Gray said. “The streets were empty. You could have heard a gnat swallow. You know I’d know.”

Begrudgingly, Nat nodded. Gray had been a good cop, a good detective—and more than one said, a loss to NOPD. They used to say he had a sixth sense….

Screwing up his eyes, Gray swung from the booth and bought thinking time by wandering to the bar to check on his food.

Ambrose could be sixty or ninety. His white hair curled in a tight skull cap and his face shone dark and deeply lined. Gray had come here for years and Ambrose, sitting on the same stool every time, didn’t seem to change.

“You kin carry your own plate, then,” Ambrose said, flashing a gold front tooth. “You in such a a’mighty hurry t’eat.”

The food arrived from the kitchen as Gray got to the bar. “I’ll do that,” he told Ambrose. “Thanks.”

“Good to see you back on the beat,” Ambrose said. “Don’t be a stranger no more.”

Gray didn’t set him straight. “Thanks, Ambrose.” Loaded plate in hand, he made his way back to the booth, passing a few early customers and a few really late all-nighters on the way. The late ones had the fixed stares and disconnected hand-eye coordination of the past-drunk, legally comatose brigade.

He wondered how long Nat would take to get to the point and whether his ex-colleague was waiting for his partner before dropping some bombshell. If he had to guess, Fist either wouldn’t show, or didn’t have much to drop.

Nat waited until Gray’s mouth was full to say, “That nutty little redhead was with you at Scully’s, right?”

Two could play games. Gray kept his face in neutral and chewed. He pointed at his mouth to indicate he couldn’t talk yet and considered his response.

After a swig from his mug, he said, “I don’t know any nutty redheads.”

That brought Nat’s battered notebook from the pocket of his shirt. He slid a stubby pencil from the wire spiral and flipped a page over. “Marley Millet,” he said, looking down as if Gray would believe his ex-colleague would forget a name that fast. The kind of name that belonged to the kind of owner it had.

“Nice woman,” Gray commented.

“You were at Scully’s with her last night. The two of you talked to Danny Summit, the bartender.”

The picture got clearer for Gray. “How is Danny doing this morning?” Somehow he hadn’t expected Danny to follow through with his threat to call the cops.

Nat straightened against the back of the banquette. He indicated to a waitress that he wanted more coffee and Gray sat silent until the woman had come and gone.

This wasn’t going to work the way Nat wanted, which was for Gray to start saying things Nat might not already know.

The sound of cutlery on thick china didn’t bother Gray. Nor did Nat’s steady stare.

“You were there with her and Danny,” Nat said. “Now I want to know what you talked about.”

Gray smiled. “How do I know you know I was there? With Marley?”

“You already said you were there. And she’s Marley now, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Shit.” Nat threw the notebook on the table. “You could make this easy.”

“For whom?”

“Okay.” In a forceful move, Nat leaned hard across the table. “One way or the other you’ll tell me what you’ve found out.”

“Because you don’t know anything?” Gray said. “If that’s right, you’re off your game. I don’t know exactly how you found out where I was last night—although I can guess—but you’re on a fishing trip. Tell me what you’re trying to find out and I’ll see if I can help.”

“Did you call Marley at the shop where she works and make a date? That would have been after you left my office.”

“No, I didn’t. I’ll tell you this much and you ought to feel like an ass. Sidney, the woman Amber Lee sings with—I found out she showed up at Scully’s last night. I went there looking for information. Marley was already there. We talked and Danny Summit was there, too. That’s it.”

“Then you left with Marley?”

“I left right after she did.”

“You didn’t walk her home?”

“Yes.” Why deny it? “She couldn’t get a cab so I went with her.”

“And?”

“Nothing. Not a thing.” He wouldn’t voluntarily share that he hoped to see her again.

“Do you know some of the stuff they say about her family—and her?”

“I can imagine.”

“Witches, wizards, voodoo,” Nat said, but he smiled a little.

“That’s crap,” Gray said. “Maybe Marley thinks she sees things. And knows what’s going to happen before it happens.” Kind of like he was starting to do.

“And she says she leaves her body and goes other places—that’s what she told us,” Nat said.

Gray said, “Hmm.” She believed what she’d told them with enough conviction to pretty much convince Gray.

“Pretty crazy in my book. And they’ve all got red hair,” Nat pointed out.

“So what? Red hair runs in families.”

“From what I’m told, every member of the family has red hair. They only marry redheads.”

Gray spent a few moments on his food.

“A call came in a couple of hours ago,” Nat said. He pulled an already knotted tie from beneath his jacket on the seat and slipped the noose over his head.

Gray said nothing while he watched the man fasten the top button of his shirt, put up the collar, arrange his tie and smooth the collar down again.

“So who called?” Gray decided to throw Nat a couple of bones just to help his day. “And what did they want?”

“What did Danny Summit say to you?” Nat asked.

Gray yawned and shook his head. “If there’s nothing else, I’m going back to bed. I’m betting you know just about every detail about the missing women’s lives, who their families or whatever are and a bunch of other details. That’s all more than I know. I’ll have to catch up.”

“Why do you need to know anything? You can sit back and wait for us to sort this out.”

“I could do that, but you know and I know that there’s something obvious about these women. I spoke to two of them and was about to talk to Pipes—I’m not counting the dead woman. I never heard of her. Wouldn’t you want to do what you could to help solve this…if you were me?”

Nat frowned. “I—This isn’t about me. Gray, I want you to back off. Just tell me you’ll do that. Otherwise I’ll have to look for a way to…” He let the threat trail off.

“Something’s happened,” Gray said. “Did someone else go missing?”

“You’re messing with my case,” Nat told him.

Denying it would be pointless and an obvious lie. “I’m going through some harmless motions.”

“This Sidney. What did she talk to you about?”

“Not a damn thing, Nat. She said she had to get home.”

Nat didn’t look convinced. “So you backed right off and didn’t push her? That doesn’t sound like you.”

“It isn’t. I asked if we could talk later and she said she’d think about it. At least, that was the impression she gave.”

Massaging his temples, Nat stared into Gray’s eyes.

Bucky Fist arrived and clapped Nat on the shoulder. “Hey, my man,” he said. Young, not more than thirty or thirty-one, stocky with a good-humored grin that showed square teeth with a big gap in the middle, Bucky wore a baseball cap turned back to front. Sandy hair showed at his sideburns and nape.

“This is Gray Fisher,” Nat said.

Gray had met the man before, but he said, “Bucky,” and offered his hand.

Bucky pumped his fingers in a punishing grip and sat beside Nat.

“Just heard Shirley Cooper was a maid, not a singer,” he said. “She was last seen leaving work at a club. I don’t know why the boyfriend didn’t tell us that right off. He may not be involved but I’ve told him not to leave town.”

Nat grunted.

“Not a singer, huh?” Gray said. “Are we relieved?” He was. So far he hadn’t interviewed maids for any article.

“Ask me in a week if we still don’t have someone in custody,” Nat said. “The dead woman worked in a club. She could have been killed by someone who mistook her for a singer.”

Gray grunted.

“So what d’you think?” Bucky asked, looking from Gray to Nat. “I guess it could be true. But the kid could also be making the whole thing up.”

“What kid?” Gray said.

“I haven’t told him about that yet,” Nat said.

Bucky nodded. “A kid called down at the big house for Nat. A boy. I talked to him. He said he’d been told to let us know they didn’t like you interfering at Scully’s, Gray. The kid sounded scared.”

“Any idea who ‘they’ are?” Gray asked. This was coming from nowhere.

“Nope. He didn’t say it straight out, but he could be in danger. Someone doesn’t want you poking around in this case.”

That didn’t make Gray feel bad. “I’m getting under their skin so I must be doing something right. Are you sure it was a kid who called?”

“He more or less said you could get him hurt if you don’t quit meddling in this case,” Nat said. “He said he’s called Alan and he’s Amber Lee’s boy. We checked. Amber may have a son, but no one seems to know where we’d find him.”

Gray thought he saw a trap, or at least got a whiff of one. Amber hadn’t mentioned a kid to him and he thought she would have. But he hadn’t finished interviewing her yet.

His cell hummed in his pocket and he leaned away to work it out of a jeans pocket.

Any way he looked at it, Danny was behind contacting Nat and trying to pull Gray away from the case.

“Who’s that?” Nat said.

While the phone buzzed a second time, Gray stared at his old friend. “Do I ask you about your telephone calls?”

Nat shrugged. “Always worth a try. I could catch you off guard.”

Gray didn’t recognize the incoming number. When he clicked on and answered, the line went dead.