Kneeling in front of the door, I took another deep breath and relaxed my shoulders. It was night and the heavy fog helped reduce visibility but I closed my eyes anyway, relying on touch. I couldn’t see the lock with my eyes open but closing them was a habit that I couldn’t break.
When I was first learning how to lock pick, I would practice in a dark room and visualize the inner mechanism. That dark room practice had evolved over the years to my eyes closed approach. It had worked for me on countless prior occasions and it worked now. I felt the tumbler give just a fraction more than it had when it was locked and twisted my tension tool clockwise. The door swung open noiselessly and a gentle breath of air-conditioned air wafted across my face. Pocketing my pick and tension tool I stood up and peered around the edge of the house, back through the carriageway.
There was a streetlamp directly across from the carriageway entrance and, as the fog drifted past in random thick and thin bands, strange shadows were thrown onto the brick walls of the carriageway. With just a cursory glance it appeared as if myriad grotesque creatures were creeping through the tunnel-like structure from the street. And then a car passed and ruined the illusion; the carriageway was devoid of both monsters and men. I turned toward the open door and noticed for the first time how the air-conditioning, when it hit the moisture that had condensed on my face, caused me to feel even more chilled.
The door I had opened gave entry into a kitchen with stainless steel appliances that gleamed in the light cast by a range hood. I entered and as I crossed the threshold I heard what sounded like faint footsteps from upstairs. The home was owned by Dr Clayton Masterson and according to his sister, he was missing. So he shouldn’t have been home.
Using the hood light I made my way to an open doorway on the other side of the kitchen. I looked around the jamb and saw stairs to the right that led to the upper level of the house. As I placed my foot on the first stair I heard more noise from above; this time the faint sound of papers rustling. I did my best to be quiet as I went up and was mostly successful.
Once I reached the upper hallway I stood still and waited. From a room at the end of the hall I could see the light from a flashlight flicking back and forth and I could hear more footfalls and papers. I began to move toward the room but as I did, my weight caused a floorboard to creak loudly. Instantly, the light went out and silence descended. I could picture someone standing inside the room doing the same thing I was doing, holding their breath and trying to be quiet.
For a long moment there was nothing but the faint glow from the streetlamp across the street shining on the floor of the hallway. Then, as I watched, a shadow blocked out the light. I leaned back against the wall and tried to make myself a smaller target. As I inched sideways, trying to get back to the stairs, a man appeared in the doorway to the room. He was around my height, and the part of his face I could see, an eye with laugh lines and one half of a downturned mouth, looked old. If I had to guess I would have put his age in the sixties. The light shining on half of his face made him look like my grandfather about to tell me a ghost story. And then he smiled at me and all thoughts of my grandfather flew from my mind; this guy looked downright sinister. As I stood at the top of the stairs he drew aside the trench coat he was wearing and the next thing I noticed was the dull glint of a gun in his hand. Before I could reach for my own weapon, he pulled the trigger.
From the muzzle flash I could see that he had aimed for the floor. And he had done a good job of hitting it, too. While my ears were still ringing, he spun around and ran back into the room he had come from. Against my better judgment I followed, unholstering my gun as I did.
By the time I made it to the doorway, the mystery man(I was already thinking of him as Mr. Trench) was passing through a pair of French doors that led to a balcony. I had started to follow him across the room – it was a bedroom and the floor was covered in loose pieces of paper – when he reached the iron railing. Before I could tell him to stop, Mr. Trench vaulted over the railing. I caught a glimpse of his coat billowing up behind him and then he was gone from view.
I kept going to the balcony, thinking maybe he landed on a delivery truck or a van and I could do the same, but I was wrong. He had dropped thirty feet to the street below and was getting up to begin running again. I decided to let him be the badass and retraced my steps through the bedroom.
It didn’t take long for me to get back down the stairs and resecure the door I had entered by. As I exited out the carriageway onto the street I could see, a half block away under another streetlamp, the fog shrouded form of Mr. Trench turning left onto Bourbon Street. By the time I got to the corner, he may as well have given me the slip.
Ever since the city of New Orleans had decided it would be a good idea to close Bourbon St. to vehicle traffic in the evenings, it had become an even wilder place to be. Day and night, even on a foggy night like this one, there were hundreds of people walking up and down. The people that weren’t actively drinking from a geaux cup were stumbling about looking for another bar to go into. Add in the young people acting foolish, loud music and the ever present threat of physical violence and all I could do was slow down.
Mr. Trench could have gone into any one of the dozen establishments lining this block. As I passed open doors I craned my neck around people in an attempt to spot him, but I knew even before I reached the end of the block that he was gone.
I dodged a few cars and walked out into the middle of Bourbon St’s intersection with St Peter Street. Going north up St Peter led toward a more residential area and there were fewer people up that way. None of them looked as if they were wearing a trench coat. I pushed south past a group of college age kids, ignored a car horn and squinted south down St Peter. Still no luck. I couldn’t believe I had lost a guy who looked as if he should have broken a hip when he leapt off that balcony.
Deciding enough was enough, I started walking south down St. Peter. I had nothing in mind except stopping by Café du Monde for a café au lait and a bag of beignets and that was good enough for me. At the end of the block I turned left onto Royal Street in order to make my way to Jackson Square via Pirate Alley.
I had made my way down Royal and was about to turn into Pirate Alley when the hit came. I was trying my best to put Mr. Trench out of my mind and was actually succeeding, thanks in part to the young couple that was walking behind me.
Apparently, the guy had just proposed to the girl and she was ecstatic about it, making all sorts of promises about what she would do to him when they got back to their hotel. I’ll admit I was kind of wishing that I was him.
In a movie, when someone gets hit by an object or punched, they’re always cool about it. You’ve seen it before: The burly bad dude gets punched in the face and doesn’t even flinch, just proceeds to grab the hero and throw him across a room. Well, it must be something about being a bad guy in the movies ‘cause when I got hit in the stomach with a two-by-four, all I could do was curl up in the fetal position and croak out “Sonuvabitch.”
The young couple saw me go down, thinking I had only tripped over something, and offered their help. I took the outstretched hands, stood up and tried to get my breath back.
“Thanks. Now, go away.”
I’ve found it’s easier like that. When you need people to leave an area so they don’t die, just be rude to them. Not so rude you end up involved in a fight, just rude enough to offend their sense of duty. I hated to be mean to the couple but they seemed sweet and I had no desire to have their blood on my hands. After I got suckered in the gut I hadn’t heard the footsteps of whoever did it; which meant they were still close by, just out of sight in the thick fog.
After the couple walked off, my hunch was confirmed. I heard a low chuckle and turned to look down Pirate Alley. Mr. Trench stood about fifteen feet away and I put my hand on my pistol to make myself feel better.
“You do not want to shoot me yet.”
“Why not? The sooner you die, the sooner I can go home.”
“There is so much you do not know. There is so much I can tell you.”
“Is that why you took off running and then hit me in the stomach? So you could tell me something? Then let me tell you something in return, pal: Go fuck yourself.”
Mr. Trench chuckled again. “Typical low-brow. I will let you live tonight. It is more fun to toy with you. But when you see me again, I will kill you.”
With that, he turned away into the fog, giving me a parting glimpse of his coat billowing. Before I could make out anything else I was left staring at a swirling, amorphous pattern of nothing. This time I did hear footsteps reverberating off the walls of the alley, growing fainter and finally going quiet.
The hit to the gut had put an end to my running for the night and I slowly followed. On the moist cobblestones where the man had stood, I discovered a photograph lying face up on the ground. I bent over, wincing at my bruised stomach, and picked it up.
It was a head and shoulders shot of a distinctly Italian-looking man – dark hair, intense eyes, beak-like nose – and appeared to have been taken candidly. The man in the photo had his head turned slightly to his right and his mouth was partially open, as if he were speaking to someone walking beside him.
I flipped the picture over and looked at the back; there appeared to be something written there. I walked over to a gaslight hanging above a doorway and tilted the picture until I could see what it said. The ink on the back of the picture had been slightly smeared by the moisture but by the sickly, yellow glow of the light I was able to read: Richard Fasol; DOT 06-11-09.
I turned the picture back over and studied the face again.
“Richard Fasol?,” I murmured to myself. The name sounded familiar but I couldn’t place it.
I don’t believe in coincidence so I figured that Mr. Trench had put the picture there for me to find. I put it in my pants pocket and walked back over to where he had stood. There was nothing else on the ground.
Looking back toward where I had stood during the verbal exchange I noticed an unsettling thing: I had been standing in the wash of light from a streetlamp. In other words, if he hadn’t gotten a good glimpse of me back at Masterson’s house Mr. Trench now surely knew what I looked like.
I briefly considered going back to Masterson’s but quickly dismissed the idea. That gunshot would have alerted neighbors who would have called the police. His house and the street would probably be crawling with New Orleans’ finest by now.
I thought about how it seemed as if Mr. Trench made the right move before I even knew I had a move to make. If he hadn’t found what he was looking for, he had made sure that I wouldn’t be able to find it either by firing that one shot and alerting neighbors.
“To hell with this,” I said to myself. “I need java.”
Once more glancing at the ground to make sure I hadn’t missed any clues and not seeing any, I started hobbling in the direction of Café du Monde and the enticing aroma of beignets that I could smell from a block away.
