Jimmy Fox - Nick Herald 02 - Lineages and Lies (28 page)

Nowell took a deep breath, scrutinized his situation, and seemed to feel more at ease.

Nick needed more time, time for Nowell to make a mistake.

“I suppose there’s no harm,” Nowell began. “Not everything is a lie. Where the outside world and actual facts and events have provided convenient dovetails for our history, we have included them. This even enhances our credibility. Whatever does not contradict the gospel of the
Allégorie
is welcome here. And, of course, much of the succeeding genealogical research, in itself, is of a very high quality indeed. It is simply that the assumptions founded upon the story of the
Allégorie
are,

shall we say, flawed. We also have filled in a great many lacunae in the historical records of other events. Where we discovered a
problem in the seamless continuity between actual events and our special history, we exercised creative genealogy—”

“You faked what you needed,” Nick interrupted. “And now others are using your falsified history.”

“As you wish. You know, I find it highly hypocritical and ironic,” Nowell said, as if he were addressing an assembly of genealogists studying methodology, “that simply because we give people pleasure in their illusions, and allow them to wear a grand costume of scholarship and distinction, we are guilty of committing some kind of crime. How do we differ from the good folks at the neighborhood church, or at Disney, or at the television networks, I would like to know?”

“The good folks at Disney and the networks don’t blow up people in real life, and the churches have been out of the crusade business for a few centuries.”

“Yes, I see what you mean,” said Nowell, like a polite debater conceding a point to an opponent. “I shall always regret that we never got the chance to work together, Nick. You have a sharp imaginative mind and an aggressive empirical sense that would have served the Society well. You’re very much like Woodrow Bluemantle at his best, in that sense.”

“He smelled something rotten, didn’t he?”

“Early on, I confided to Woodrow a minimum of details regarding our special historical situation, and he always
seemed
supportive. I sent him to London to analyze the newly discovered records. We had heard only rumors until then. He reported back to me that there was nothing threatening in the London material. He lied. He didn’t deserve to wear our ring. Even in death.”

Nick understood Bluemantle now, better than ever before: at first it was probably the pay and perks that had dazzled him; but he was by nature a warrior for truth, and soon he began plotting one final charge against genealogical charlatanism. He must have known of the dangers; still, he was determined to expose the scam.

“I was serious in my offer of the job to you, though of course you took it only to use us.” He sighed in what Nick took to be genuine sorrow. “Now, I must have the book. Where is it?”

That’s his Achilles heel, my ticket out of here.

“Before I tell you where it is, tell me why it’s so important. Satisfy a dying man’s last wish. I know at least what Nelson knew. Why hide the rest from me?”

Nowell nodded. “The book contains the ship doctor’s daily journal from the voyage of the
True Faith
, or the
Allégorie
, as we refer to it. This young doctor had grown fond of his shipmates, convicts though most of them were. He also knew of the improvised spying mission of the two surviving crewmen; they had told him. For these, and I suppose, other reasons we shall never know, he remained in New Orleans, acquiesced in the scheme, began a family with one of the female convicts from the ship. The ship itself, by the way, was sold to several of the colony’s plutocrats, with the proceeds distributed among the First Families. The
Allégorie
group remained very close, blended in with New Orleans society, and grew with the town. Most of them were quite successful, and many of the lines to this day possess power and wealth.

“For thirty-five years this doctor used the same book to chronicle the lives of the passengers and crew and their descendants. Of
course, this information is of priceless value to the Society. It is the foundation of our knowledge of these people and times. In a way, what’s in there,” Nowell said, pointing the rifle to the Rare Documents Room, “is indeed mere stagecraft.”

Nick said, “Awkward, to have in the same book what brought the Society into being, and what could destroy it. A risky thing to keep around. The doctor was William Montooth, a.k.a. Guilliame Montenay, wasn’t he?”

Nowell looked surprised. “You’ve done a fine job of getting to the bottom of our little mystery. I should never have underestimated you, Nick. And as for those incriminating yet obscure public records in England which Woodrow failed to inform me accurately about, if you were to survive you would soon hear that a terrorist bomb unfortunately will destroy them. Our organization is quite capable of defending itself. Have I answered all of your questions? Now, where is the book?”

“It’s gone. Someone left with it before you got here.”

Nowell shook his head. “I am disappointed in you. I thought you were a man of reason. No matter. I’ll find it, and I’ll find her. After I’ve taken care of you. Turn around, please.”

Nick looked into the dark reading room where he had sat talking to Coldbread the week before. “Air seems just fine in there.”

“The reading room retains a normal breathable atmosphere at all times; the reduced temperature and humidity are constant. We use the gases only in the smaller glass-walled enclosure where the material is actually stored. And that is where, tragically, you’ll be trapped. Go in.”

Nick decided he wasn’t going to die like a roach on its back. The time for a brilliant move was now or never—if only he had one.

From below, a noise made Nowell jerk his head a quarter turn. He backed up a few steps to try to see over the balustrade. The noise was moving now, a low rumbling, apparently rising through the floor they were standing on. The noise filled the dark alcove to the left of the Rare Documents Room, and then suddenly stopped.

The elevator! The doors were opening!

Nowell began firing into the darkness the moment he realized it, fearlessly walking directly toward the elevator as if he were taking a Vietcong machine-gun nest. He cocked the bolt expertly after each of the three shots.

The noise was viscerally jarring to Nick. He heard the bullets slam into the metal and wood of the elevator, invisible in the darkness. For a while after that, he couldn’t hear much.

“Bullet holes all over the goddamned place!” Nick shouted. “Gunshots in the night! even in New Orleans, urban warfare gets reported. How you gonna explain that, Preston?!”

Nowell ignored the questions. He glanced down at the spent shell casings, as if wondering who had been so profligate with his bullets.

Nick’s head felt full of singing metal. He couldn’t be sure he heard Jillian screaming, and elevator doors opening.

Nowell strained to listen, trying to determine the origin of the sounds. Then, something bulky, waist-high, and shiny shot from the darkness at high speed directly at him.

Hawty’s chariot—minus Hawty—hit Nowell’s bad knee with all the force of fifty pounds traveling ten miles an hour. The pain crumpled him. He bent double, just stopping himself with his gun arm from falling over the wheelchair.

The rifle was flat on the floor below his hand.

Nick sprang at Nowell, managing at the same time to kick the rifle away, toward the hallway, where the busts impassively stared at each other in their marbleized world of deception.

Nowell’s combat instincts activated his hands and elbows, though the damaging blow to his knee had worsened his already impaired agility. It was all Nick could do to get in a partially effective left undercut on the bigger man that temporarily bought him some time. Nowell’s strong hands closed around his neck. Nick tried the same thing, but Nowell knew what he was doing, and he was winning this strangling contest. In an instant, Nick couldn’t breathe.

They grappled, dragging each other toward the railing.

“The knee, the knee!” Jillian cried. “Use your right leg, Nick! Kick him and stomp down on his foot! Can you hear me?!”

Nick caught a fleeting glimpse of the model of the
Allégorie
over Nowell’s head, before his vision became obscured, blurred and watery. He felt that he was sinking, plummeting down through blue-green airless water, following a glinting anchor chain that at times seemed to be men and women connected hands to ankles. He sank for miles and miles, and finally, at the bottom, there was Coldbread and the Packenham Five, guarding a huge, humpbacked trunk attached to the end of the chain. Coldbread opened the trunk, waving Nick forward, and inside was … Bluemantle, who
said in a torrent of bubbles,
All is not shipshape, Nick, Bristol fashion. Use your right leg, my boy! Kick the son-of-a-bitch in the knee!

With a last reserve of awareness, Nick savagely kicked Nowell’s left knee and came down hard on his opponent’s instep. Nowell screamed in pain, and his grip loosened. Then Nick snapped his forehead into Nowell’s face—a trick he suddenly remembered from action movies on late-night television.

Nowell staggered sideways, hitting the railing, blood now flowing into his eyes from the gashed bridge of his nose and a split eyebrow. His mangled glasses clattered to the floor.

Stunned only slightly less than Nowell by the head-butt, Nick watched Jillian, as if in slow-motion, dash from the darkness like a long-jumper, and heave with both arms and all of her strength the silver case, which was as big as she from the waist up. In the arc of flight, the flapped case released the journal her ancestor had faithfully kept.

Nowell, blood obscuring his vision, lunged for the book, using his good leg for spring. He latched onto a corner of the heavy volume, and might have regained his balance if the balustrade had held and stopped him.

It didn’t.

Jillian at that moment rammed him with Hawty’s wheelchair.

He crashed through the railing, the heavy book augmenting his own momentum, carrying him even farther out toward the center of the downstairs reading room.

Nick heard a sickening sound from down there, as of a shovel plunging into gravelly, wet earth. Then something heavy landed on the floor.

Dizzy, gasping for breath, Nick walked to the splintered gap in the railing and looked down.

Nowell, on his back, was impaled upon the stone sword of the captain of the
Allégorie
. the book rested at the base of the sculpture. Blood flowed down the alabaster stone and began to pool around the doctor’s journal. As life drained from Nowell, his head fell slowly back, the eyes open, gazing one last time at the model of the
Allégorie
on the far wall.

Nick saw two brown hands, then the top of a black-haired head he recognized. It was Hawty, using the backs of the sturdy reading chairs to work her way clear of the overhanging gallery above her. She was walking, or almost.

“Thank the Lord, you’re okay!” she said, looking up at Nick, her anxiousness giving way to joy. She let go of the chair back … and stood unaided. “Where’s Jillian?” she asked, sudden worry chasing away her earlier relief.

Jillian, exhausted and crying, joined Nick. He put his arm around the small of her back, as glad as she was to have the support. They both stared in amazement at Hawty, their rescuer, down below.

“Now I can tell Kedric he’s got about all the bugs out of my remote control,” Hawty said. She held up the small black box on a lanyard around her neck, pressed a button, and the wheelchair beside Nick and Jillian scooted a few feet backward, like a crawfish making an escape.

“Hawty, you’re standing on your own!” Jillian said, through tears.

Nick knew they were tears of just retribution accomplished, and of happiness for Hawty.

“Well, I’ll be,” Hawty said, looking down. She seemed puzzled, surprised, detached, as if she were observing someone else performing this simple miracle. Then her legs gave way; she fell.

Nick was running for the stairway when Hawty called out, “I’m okay, I’m okay! Don’t worry about me. Nothing broken, I’m well padded. Just got so excited, I started congratulating myself and lost my concentration.” Then, looking up at the ghastly sight atop the bloody sculpture, she said, “We’d better call someone, boss.”

Nick remembered the cell phone in his pocket. He called 911 and reported Nowell’s death.

“I’m sure he’s dead, operator. You’d better track down Detective Dave Bartly, Eighth District… . That’s right, the Vieux Carré station. He’s in homicide. Tell him Nick has the truth behind the
Allégorie
… . Never mind, just mention my name, Nick Herald… . Yeah, I’ll be here.”

CHAPTER 28

F
rederick Tawpie opened the door of Napoleon House and stepped inside. A seemingly impenetrable mass of bodies confronted him just a foot within the doorway. Two young women behind him asked to get by; they were dressed appropriately—skimpily—for the ninety-degree heat of the late May afternoon outside.

Tawpie put on his most ingratiating grin.

“Oh, but of course, young ladies. It would be my very great pleasure,” he cooed, stepping aside with stagy chivalry. “Perhaps if we were to meet again inside, you would allow me to buy you both something cool to drink, or …”

The two lovely women looked at each other, exchanged facial pantomime that suggested gagging, and then merged with the dense crowd.

People treated him like an obnoxious tourist, no matter where he was—perhaps a reaction to the cruise leisurewear he favored. Tawpie sighed, ceased holding in his gut, checked his curly orange hair in the mirror within the arches of the nearby bar, drew his fine monogrammed leather portfolio under his
left armpit, and waded into the famous old French Quarter bar and restaurant.

He instantly was caught in several eddies of movement. After a twenty-minute involuntary tour of the dining room and the patio, he found himself once again standing before the bar, where he ordered a mineral water, two lemon slices, please. He stood in the few square inches allotted him, contemplating the lucky possessors of the tables in this front room.