Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead (32 page)

“Now,” I said. “I talk you into turning yourself in. I'll make bail right away. You won't spend more than a night or two locked up, not until the trial.”

He shook his head. “No way,” he said.

“You been sleeping much lately?” I asked.

Terrell didn't answer.

“Eating?”

I'd noticed Terrell was rail thin. He didn't say anything.

“This is how you get your life back,” I said. “I know it's awful. I know you're terrified. But this is how you start again.”

He nodded. We sat still for a while. Some could have eaten and slept just fine. Some people could have pretended much better than him. But not Terrell.

“That night,” Terrell said. “It was like—like before that happened? When I was going down to the water, on my way there? Walking through the city? It was like—like I thought I was gonna be a hero or some shit. Like I was gonna be savin' people. I saw this, like a picture of myself, like a picture in my head. Like a movie, you know? And I was on a boat. Just like he was. And I was savin' these kids, these boys, from the water. And it seemed
so real
. Like I was seeing the future.” Tears poured down his face. “And it was—shit.”

He stopped and turned away.

“And you were happy?” I guessed.

Terrell turned back and nodded, still crying. “I felt like I was really—it really felt good, you know? Like I'd already done it. Like the movie, the thing I was seeing in my head, me saving all those kids, I'd already done it. So I don't understand how . . .”

He broke off, crying. For the first time I saw how Vic felt in his last moments. Proud. Good. At home with himself. Probably for the first time.

But that didn't help Terrell.

It was cold in the truck. I turned the heat up. I looked at Terrell, crying, his head hanging down. All defenses were gone. All pride was lost.

A door was open. But Terrell needed the right clue to lead him through it.

There are no coincidences. Only opportunities.

“‘Consider the possibility,'” I said, quoting Silette, “‘that what we perceive as the future has already happened, and intuition is only a very good memory.'”

Terrell didn't say anything. But I could tell he was listening, and his crying quieted a little.

“There will never be any shortage of floods,” I told him, reaching over to take his cold, rough hand. “There will always be people who need to be rescued. And there will never, ever be enough people to save them all.”

Terrell nodded, still crying. He knew that was true. He knew it because he had needed rescuing over and over again, and he had drowned over and over again, and no one had ever come to save him. No one except Andray.

I called Mick. Mick met us in the parking lot and together we took Terrell to a federal agent Mick knew at their headquarters out in Metairie. We didn't turn him over until we got a promise of protective custody right away—not from the other inmates, but from the local cops. The feds disliked the locals as much as Mick and I did, and they promised to keep him safe.

When they took Terrell away he looked scared. Terrified. That's not always a bad thing. Now he could face his terrifying thing and finish it once and for all. He'd come out the better for it.
If
he came out. But this was his best hope of becoming the person he was meant to be—the man who saved children from drowning.

One of the feds had known Vic Willing.

“Vic Willing?” he said incredulously. “That guy? He . . . you know?”

“He sure did,” I said. “Terrell's not the only one.”

“Jesus,” he said. “You just never know with people.”

“No,” I said. “You never do.”

By the time we were done with Terrell and the paperwork and explaining everything to the feds, it was noon the next day. Mick and I left our cars in the federal parking lot and walked down the street—if you can call anything in Metairie a
street
—to a little sandwich shop and got po'boys. I got shrimp and Mick got oyster and we shared both, and they were, maybe, the most delicious thing in the world. We didn't talk much. After we ate we walked back to the parking lot where our cars were. We looked at each other. Mick was okay. It wasn't the happy ending he'd wanted, but then again, it wasn't an ending at all. Just a break while the fat lady changed costume. There was plenty of time to get Terrell back on track before the next show.

“Well,” Mick said, grudgingly. “I guess you were right. I guess your way worked after all.”

“My way always works,” I said. “But next time, you won't believe me all over again. It'll be just like this never happened.”

“You think there'll be a next time?” Mick asked. I couldn't tell if it was hope or dread in his voice.

I shrugged. “Yeah,” I said. “I think there'll be a next time.”

We hugged goodbye.

“Call me sometime, okay?” I said. “You could e-mail too, you know.”

“Yeah,” Mick said. “Okay.”

When we broke apart I saw that he was smiling.

We got in our cars and left.

O
N MY WAY BACK
to my hotel I called a law office in New York where I knew someone I could ask for a favor.

“MacGowen, MacGowen and MacGowen,” the bright receptionist said.

“Give me the middle MacGowen, please,” I said. “And tell him it's Claire DeWitt.”

In a minute MacGowen got on the phone.

“Claire DeWitt,” he said, pretending to be happy to hear from me. “What can I do for you?”

“It's what I can do for
you
,” I said. “Because I have got the pro bono case of a lifetime for you, my friend.”

“Jesus, Claire,” MacGowen said. “I got three kids going to college next year, I got a wife who eats money for breakfast, I got a mortgage—”

“But wait,” I said. “There's more.”

I told him about the case. I told him about the storm. I told him about Terrell and the abuse he'd lived with. I told him about how much his friends loved him, about how he was a kid born in the worst circumstances, a kid who no one had loved and no one looked out for, a kid who raised himself from nothing and turned out pretty fucking good. I told MacGowen that Terrell was kind and smart and if he went to prison it would be a fucking shame. A fucking shame for everyone.

MacGowen didn't say anything for a long time. I heard him sigh.

“Okay,” he said. “I'll do it.”

We went over all the details. Before we got off the phone I said:

“Listen. There's this young detective, just starting out—he knows the kid, knows the victim, knows about the case, and he'll work for free, or close to it. He will be an invaluable asset. Name's Andray Fairview. I'll e-mail you all his information.”

“He's good?” MacGowen said. “He'll really help?”

“Oh, he's good,” I said. “Almost as good as me.”

“Wow,” MacGowen said. “I've never heard you say
that
before.”

“Well, it's true,” I said. “And someday, he'll be better.”

When we hung up I made another phone call.

“Claire DeWitt,” a woman hissed in a thick Bhutanese accent. “You never to call here again. Very clear with you. Never call again.”

“Just get the lama on the phone,” I said.

“Lama never talk to you,” the woman insisted. “Lama not talk to Claire DeWitt ever again.”

“He'll talk to me,” I said. “You'll see.”

After a few minutes of arguing she relented and got the lama on the phone. Constance had sent me to study with him years ago. Some of it took. Most of it didn't.

“Claire DeWitt,” the lama said in his California accent, betraying his origins as a Santa Cruz surfer. “My biggest failure. How the hell are you?”

“I'm okay,” I said. “And thanks, I'm flattered.”

“I had high hopes for you, Claire,” he said.

“Well, I aim to disappoint,” I said. “But listen. You still doing that prison ministry?”

“Sure,” he said. “What's up?”

“I got this kid,” I said. “I mean, I know this kid. And he really could use someone like you.”

“Someone like me?” the lama said. He sounded amused.
“Gee, Claire, if I remember right you called me a useless, pathetic, creepy piece of—”

“Well, I'm not saying I was wrong,” I said. “But you're probably better than nothing, and if anyone ever needed that shit, it's this kid. He . . . he got dealt a bad hand. That's the short version. And he's got friends, but he needs to learn some things. He needs to learn to live with some really heavy shit, and I don't think they can help him do that. And the stuff you taught me—he could use that. He could really, really use that.”

The lama was quiet for a minute. I felt something in my skull—like a headache, but without the pain. I held back the urge to curse the lama.

“Claire DeWitt,” he finally said. “There might be hope for you yet.”

“Don't bet on it,” I said.

“Oh, I'm not,” he said with a laugh. “Believe me. But yeah, of course. Of course I'll work with the kid. Hook it up.”

T
HAT NIGHT I WANDERED
around the city. I wondered if it would be the last time. I couldn't imagine ever coming here again. But I'd thought that before. I drove out to the park where on my last last night in New Orleans I'd seen an Indian gang chanting. There was no Indian gang tonight. Instead there were about a dozen kids on these little toy cars and motorcycles—they looked like the little cars the Shriners drive in parades, powered by electricity or gas, making little put-put vroom-vroom sounds as they drove around the park. The projects across the street were closed but someone had wired some lights up for the park, probably taking power from the city, so the kids could play at night. There were a dozen kids or more between maybe eight and thirteen years old, mostly boys. They rode their little cars and bikes around in circles and figure eights, hitting each other and getting up again, racing to a dead tree and back, shrieking and laughing, all under the jury-rigged lights.

I wanted to go home.

On the way back to my hotel, on an empty block, I saw a man sitting on the curb, drunk and crying. I didn't think twice. It was a pretty common sight in any city, let alone here. But as I got closer I realized I recognized his white jumpsuit.

It was the Wildlife and Game man. The man who eliminated parrots.

I parked the truck and went over to him and sat next to him.

“Come on, buddy,” I said. “Let's get you home.”

If he recognized me he didn't give any sign of it. He just kept crying. His face was wet with snot and tears. He looked at me like I'd been sitting next to him the whole time.

“He was looking at me,” he said in between sobs. “Just looking at me like,
Jorge
. Like he was saying my name. Just looking at me like he was so sad.”

“It's okay,” I said. “It's all gonna be okay. Where are you staying?”

But he wouldn't budge. “He was
looking
at me,” he said. “He wouldn't stop looking at me. And I held him in my hand—”

“Okay, pal,” I said. “Come on. Time to go home.”

“I held him,” the ugly man went on, still crying. “I felt his little heart beating and his blood—his blood was all over my hands. His heart didn't know to stop beating, that his blood was just all—”

“We all have blood on our hands,” I said. “But it's time to go home now.”

“I realized,” he went on, sobbing, “I realized what I had done. It only wanted to live. It just wanted to live and be left alone. Just like they all did. I couldn't do it again.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let's—”

“I couldn't do it again,” he went on. “I promised him that he would be the last. Now I don't know what to do with them all.”

I felt a little sick. “All?”

I looked at him. I realized he wasn't drunk. Just miserable.

“I don't know what to do,” he said. “I need help.”

His ugly face pleaded with me.

“Take me,” I said. “Let's see.”

He kept crying.

“I won't hurt them,” I said. “Come on.”

He stood up, wobbly, and we walked to his car. It wasn't locked. We got in and he drove, still crying, out toward the Industrial Canal. At the bridge he kept going. In the Lower Ninth we stopped in front of a house that was, impossibly, standing, upright. It was a run-down pink cottage.

He got out of the car and I followed. He'd stopped crying now. We slipped through the driveway to the back of the house. I noticed the front lawn was overgrown with weeds almost as high as my head. No one lived here.

“Shhh,” he said to me. “Don't scare them.”

He was smiling now. Slowly and quietly we crept around to the back door. From the pocket of his jumpsuit he took a little scrap of steel wire and stuck it in the keyhole. He twisted it this way and that until the lock clicked open.

“Babies,” he cooed softly as he opened the door. “Hey, babies. Hey, birds. Daddy's home. He brought a friend but she's okay. We can trust her.”

I smelled them first; the clean-dirty smell of earth and seeds I'd first smelled in Vic Willing's terrace. Then I heard them, a thousand little coos at once. Then the man in the jumpsuit flicked on the light and I saw them.

Parrots. Everywhere.

The house was furnished and we'd come in through the kitchen. It was an ordinary poor person's kitchen—cheap vinyl tile on the floor, Formica kitchen table, empty wood boxes stacked as shelves—except on every available perch there was a green parrot. There must have been fifty in this room alone. And every one of them seemed happy to see the ugly man. They squawked and flapped their wings and did little dances in place. Two couldn't wait and flew right toward him, landing on each shoulder.