Chapter Eleven

CHAPTER ELEVEN

It was three hours wheels up to touchdown in Miami and we took our time disembarking, careful not to draw attention to ourselves by hurrying. We made our way through Customs and Immigration, but Minka’s work was good. We cleared the official channels with half an hour to spare before boarding our flight to Atlanta on another airline. When we arrived, Hartsfield was thronged with the after-Christmas crowds, everybody pushing and shoving. So much for peace on earth and goodwill to men. It must have gotten thrown out with the reindeer wrapping paper.

It was eleven pm by then, and we caught the last flight to Birmingham, landing after midnight. Natalie was whimpering with fatigue, but I pushed on, followed doggedly by Mary Alice and Helen, who somehow managed to look perkier than the rest of us. I picked up the rental car Minka had reserved for us, and we settled in for the final leg. Natalie dove for the back seat, crashing into sleep as soon as she landed. The rest of us took turns driving, and five hours later I was at the wheel again, crossing the Twin Span Bridge into New Orleans just as the sun came up. I followed I-10 into the city, keeping with the flow of morning rush-hour traffic until we got close to the French Quarter. Mary Alice was dozing in the passenger seat and Helen and Natalie were curled together like puppies on the back seat.

I poked Mary Alice awake. “Better get them up. We’re almost here and we’re going to have to move fast when I stop.”

She roused Helen and Nat and collected the little baggage we had with us. I left the car running on a side street just off of Rampart. Within half an hour it would be in a chop shop, stripped for parts, leaving no trace of how we’d gotten to the city even if anyone managed to track us as far as Birmingham.

“What now?” Mary Alice asked, shouldering her bag.

“We walk,” I said, pointing towards the Quarter. If I’d been on my own, I’d have taken a precautionary lap around the block, but Helen was drooping again and Natalie was barely on her feet. Going without good sleep for twenty-four hours is easy when you’re twenty; it’s a bitch when you’re sixty. I felt every minute of that lost night as we trudged down Ursulines. It was as quiet a block as you could find in the French Quarter. No drunks stumbled down the uneven sidewalks; no vomit pooled in the gutter. It was almost serene.

We stopped in front of a nondescript gate fitted with a keypad. The gate was backed with thick, padded black canvas, obscuring any view into the property. I punched in the code and there was a moment of expectant silence. Then a soft buzz, a clang, and the gate swung open. Beyond lay an arched brick tunnel, softly lit by a single gaslight that flickered. Something scuttled around in the shadows on the damp ground.

“What was that?” Natalie asked, peering into the gloom.

“Probably a rat,” I told her cheerfully. I slammed the gate closed behind them, making sure it locked. “Welcome to my place.”

The tunnel led into a courtyard bordered by four brick buildings, each one more decrepit than the last. The façades, linked by galleries and staircases, leaned against each other for support like elderly women having one last gossip.

The three women stood, turning slowly as they took it in. An overgrown tea olive reared up in the corner between stacks of crumbling bricks. There were more stacks—slates, boards, bags of cement—and pots full of shrubs in various stages of growth. In the center, a fountain missing its jet was full of green water. The surface rippled a little and Natalie jumped.

“What’s moving in that water?” Mary Alice demanded.

“Louie the carp. He came with the house.”

“Well, I suppose it’s nice to have a pet,” Helen said politely.

“It looks like it’s about to fall down,” Nat said, staring up at the flaking black wrought iron holding up the second-floor galleries.

“It might. Watch your step up there,” I said.

“It must have been beautiful once,” Mary Alice said with a stab at diplomacy. “I’m sure it could be nice again.”

“With a little elbow grease and a few sticks of dynamite,” Natalie replied.

“You’re staying for free,” I reminded her.

Mary Alice put on a brave face. “Does the plumbing work?”

“Sometimes,” I said. It was clear Mary Alice and Natalie weren’t impressed. I turned to Helen.

To my surprise, she smiled. “It’s perfect. Thank you for bringing us here, Billie.”

Mary Alice had the grace to look a little ashamed, but Natalie merely yawned. Just then a door—wide, with peeling turquoise paint—opened and a tall, skinny girl emerged. Before I could introduce her, she was on me, wrapping me up tightly and lifting me an inch off the ground. She smelled like maple syrup and burnt toast.

“You scared me. Don’t do that,” she said firmly as she put me down.

“We’re alright,” I told her. “You did great.”

She kept one hand on my shoulder and turned to look at the others, her head cocked like a squirrel’s. “These are friends?”

“Mary Alice, Helen, Natalie,” I told her. “This is Minka.”

They made polite noises and she nodded back before turning to me. “I made breakfast.”

“You can’t cook,” I reminded her.

She shrugged. “It is not good. But you should eat.”

She led the way through the turquoise door into a shell of a house. The brick walls that held it up had been left standing but the interior partition walls had been punched out and the upper floor removed entirely so the ceiling was two stories above our heads. An old door laid onto stacks of bricks made a makeshift kitchen counter to hold the essentials—coffeemaker, hot plate, and toaster oven. There was an expensive electric kettle for tea, but that was my only concession to luxury.

A table that could have seated forty for dinner stood in the center of the room with a small scattering of chairs that didn’t match. The windows were stained-glass Bible stories with clear glass in a few places where the original panes had shattered and been replaced cheaply. The rest were mostly cracked, with a long, jagged line marking the upturned face of Mary Magdalene as she knelt before a risen Jesus.

“What is this place?” Mary Alice asked.

“Former convent,” I told her as I pointed them to places around the table. A platter was stacked high with cold, burned pieces of toast, and the butter was upholstered with a layer of crumbs. But the coffee and tea were hot.

We sagged into chairs, each of us taking a mug and ignoring the ruined bread. “The sisters belonged to an order associated with Mary Magdalene,” I went on. “Down the street is a convent that used to belong to the Ursulines. The nuns who built this house came a few decades after. They were a nursing order and they were wiped out by a yellow fever epidemic.”

“It is haunted,” Minka put in cheerfully, coming to sit with a cup of coffee.

Mary Alice turned to her. “Haunted?”

“With ghosts,” Minka added.

“Nun ghosts,” I clarified. “They’ve driven a few owners away, but they’ve never bothered me and they don’t seem to trouble Minka.”

She shrugged. “It is nice to have company when you live alone.”

“You live here, Minka?” Helen asked politely.

Minka nodded. “Yes, I am a proper American now,” she said. Her features were pure Slav: wide, flat cheekbones and deep-set eyes. Her style changed from week to week, but today she was dressed like an extra from a French film with a striped boatneck tee and a little scarf scattered with polka dots. She’d cut her hair again, cropped short, and dyed jet black with cherry highlights. She was wearing a tiny pair of reading glasses with round frames. All she was missing was the bicycle basket with the baguette sticking out of it.

Helen gave me an appraising look. “Is the house in your name?”

“Nope. A holding company from the Caymans. There’s no way to trace it to me.”

“I’ll be damned,” Mary Alice said. “You have your own safe house.”

I shrugged. “A reasonable precaution, in our line of work.”

“I don’t have a safe house.” Natalie was sulking, but Helen still looked thoughtful.

She didn’t say anything else and Natalie turned to Minka. “I hope Billie has at least provided you with an indoor bathroom. It’s a bit rustic.”

Minka’s eyes narrowed like a cat’s. “Billie has provided me with everything.” She stuck around for a few more minutes, but the atmosphere was distinctly chilly, and when she excused herself, Natalie turned to me.

“What did I say?” Nat demanded.

“It wasn’t what you said,” Helen told her. “I think it was the suggested criticism of Billie she resented.”

Before Natalie could roll her eyes, Helen stood up. “I am about dead on my feet.”

I pushed myself up from my chair. “I’ll show you where you can sleep.”

Mary Alice stayed put. “We need to figure this out. We need a plan.”

Helen turned as if to sit down again, but she swayed a little and I put a hand to her shoulder, holding her in place. “Yes, Mary Alice. We do. But we’re exhausted and in no fit state to think straight. We sleep, then we eat, then we plan. Halliday rules.”

I could tell Mary Alice didn’t like it, but she got up and followed as I showed them to the building across the courtyard, the one with the brick tunnel running through the ground floor. On either side of the tunnel were two large rooms, one packed so full of junk, it was impossible to get inside. The other was empty except for a small spiral staircase. Upstairs was a long hallway with a dozen doors opening off of it.

“Nuns’ dormitory,” I told them. “The rooms are small but at least they’re private.”

I opened the first door. Inside, the floorboards were wide and scrubbed clean. A twin-sized mattress, still in the plastic, was shoved against one wall, leaving just enough room to walk past. A niche in the wall held a plaster statue of a saint without a head.

Natalie opened her mouth, but Helen gave her a warning look.

“It’s very nice,” Natalie said faintly. She headed straight for the bed and collapsed down onto it, pulling her sweater over her head.

“Nat, dear,” Helen called. “Don’t you want to at least put sheets on your mattress?”

“Nope.” The word was muffled but the flap of the hand was clear enough.

We closed the door on her and Mary Alice and Helen took the next two rooms in line without a word. I went to mine and dropped to the bed, falling straight into sleep, the heavy kind of sleep that leaves you feeling gritty all over and worse than if you hadn’t tried at all. I woke up at sundown with the sheets twisted around my legs, sweating off a hot flash. I rolled out of bed and had a quick wash, then reached for the small stack of clothes I left in the house. Bootcut jeans and a ratty Janis Joplin T-shirt would do just fine for what I had in mind. I threw on my favorite cowboy boots, a bomber jacket older than Minka, and my sunglasses. I snagged a baseball cap on my way out the door. I hadn’t seen any signs we’d been followed, but I wasn’t taking chances.

I eased out of the gate and headed down Ursulines towards Decatur. My stomach growled as I passed Central Grocery, calling out for a muffaletta, but the closed sign was out and I kept on walking. I made a circuit of the quarter, zigging and zagging a bit, poking into a few alleys, but nothing triggered my Spidey sense. I stopped by Café du Monde for five orders of beignets and got back to the house with my arms full of paper sacks wilting from steam and grease and smelling like heaven.

Helen must have showered. Her hair was damp and combed neatly into its platinum bob. She was paging slowly through an issue of Vanity Fair from 2009 while Nat, wrapped in my favorite kimono, was drumming her fingers on the table. Mary Alice liberated the bags of beignets, passing them out with paper towels and the cups of chicory.

I looked around the room. “Where’s Minka?”

“Out,” Mary Alice said shortly.

“I think I just ovulated,” Natalie said as she lifted the first beignet. She bit into the warm dough with a low moan, puffing powdered sugar into the air. “Heaven.”

I shrugged out of my jacket and tossed my cap onto the table. “Beignets in New Orleans is a cliché but it’s a good one.” They were quiet, eating with studied enthusiasm, and I looked around, sizing them up. They were a little the worse for wear, but hanging in there. Just then Minka returned with bags from the carryout kitchen around the block—gumbo and potato salad, with bottles of red wine from the corner grocery. There was bread and a king cake that was so early for the season, it could have only come from one of the tourist traps on Bourbon Street.

“Bless you, child,” I said as Minka unpacked the bags. She turned to get bowls and spoons as I opened the first container. “We can talk while we eat.”

Helen took one of the bottles and a corkscrew, giving a narrow look at Minka’s back.

“Pas devant la petite fille,” she warned me.

Minka didn’t turn. “La petite fille parle français, madame,” she replied.

“Merde,” Helen said.

Minka faced us. “If you don’t want to talk with me, I will go to my room.”

“Of course not,” Mary Alice said, smoothing things over. “We all know what we owe you, Minka.”

She shot Helen a warning look and Helen handed over a glass of wine with a thin smile. “Certainly. I just didn’t know how much of the specifics of the next steps we wanted to bore Minka with.”

It was a bullshit piece of politeness, but I was too tired to call her on it.

Minka shrugged and ladled her gumbo over a scoop of potato salad, digging in her spoon while Nat watched in fascination. “Is that good?”

“Try,” Minka ordered.

Natalie did as she was told and took a spoonful, her eyes rolling back. “Holy shit. That’s amazing.”

Minka grinned and they applied themselves to their food with the enthusiasm of teenagers.

“You’re going to need an antacid later,” Mary Alice told Natalie when she reached for a bottle of hot sauce.

“I’ll sleep sitting up,” Natalie said. “It’s worth it.” She turned to me. “So, what now?”

“Time to take stock,” Helen said briskly. She ate a beignet with small, dainty bites, then pushed her sack aside. Not even a speck of sugar on her hands. Her bowl of gumbo was untouched but her wineglass was half-empty.

“Fine,” I said. “Let’s take stock. We have obviously been targeted by the Museum for termination, but we still don’t know why.”

“I keep thinking it must be a misunderstanding,” Helen offered. “I mean, we’ve all been competent and occasionally exceptional at our jobs. And we’re finished. Why take us out now?”

“That’s the $64,000 question, isn’t it?” I said. “If we know why, everything else will make sense, because right now, nothing does.”

“What is this Museum?” Minka asked through a mouthful of gumbo.

Natalie looked at her curiously. “You know what Billie does for a living?”

“Yes,” Minka said. “You are friends from work? You kill people too?”

“They do,” I confirmed. “The Museum is the organization that we work for. And it seems the Board of Directors has decided to terminate our existence.”

Minka tipped her head. “Explain.”

The table was covered with oilcloth that had seen better days. The previous owners had left it behind, probably after taking one look at the dark, unappetizing stains and cigarette burns. I motioned for Minka to bring me something to write with. She found a marker, bright blue and smelling like fruit, the sort of thing My Little Pony would use to sign a slam book. I sketched out three boxes at one end of the cloth and jotted a name in each one.

“ ‘Thierry Carapaz, Provenance. Günther Paar, Acquisitions. Vance Gilchrist, Exhibitions,’ ” she read aloud.

“Correct,” I told her. I drew a bracket to collect the three together and labeled it Board of Directors. Above that I wrote, Museum.

“The Museum has a board of three directors, each overseeing their own department.” I touched a finger to the first. “Carapaz is in charge of Provenance. Those are the computer geeks. They do research, deep dives into government databases. They also do digital surveillance. Their only job is intelligence gathering.”

“For what purpose?” Minka asked.

“To identify two types of people who are of interest to the Museum,” Helen told her. “Potential targets and potential recruits.”

Minka nodded and I moved on, tracing a line from Provenance to the board. “Provenance briefs the board at quarterly meetings, introducing dossiers on people they think need to be killed or to be trained to become field agents. The board debates and discusses in closed-door sessions and then they vote. It takes all three agreeing, a unanimous vote, in order for either a kill order or an offer of employment to be issued.”

I pointed to the next box. “Once the kill order has been issued, Acquisitions—under the direction of Paar—is responsible for supply and logistics. They can do everything from creating fake social media profiles to building bombs. They provide weapons, wardrobe, travel arrangements. Whatever we need in order to make the mission successful. With me so far?”

Minka nodded and tapped the last box. “Exhibitions. These are field agents who kill? This is you?”

“This is me,” I told her. “This is all of us. We work under Vance Gilchrist and we are responsible for carrying out the missions.”

“You forgot the curators,” Helen said, peering at the sketch through her reading glasses.

I squeezed three small boxes underneath the directors. “The directors each have a curator who deals with the day-to-day working of their department.” I filled them in. “Naomi Ndiaye works under Thierry Carapaz in Provenance. Martin Fairbrother is Günther Paar’s second in Acquisitions.”

I hesitated over the empty box under Vance Gilchrist’s name.

“Who works there?” Minka asked.

“Nobody now,” Natalie told her. “The last one died six months ago and they haven’t gotten around to finding a permanent replacement. Vance can be persnickety.”

“Only women are ever called persnickety,” Mary Alice said. “Men get to be ‘detail oriented.’ ” She pushed her empty bowl away, letting the spoon rattle. “Moving on. We need a plan. And fast.”

It wasn’t like Mary Alice to be quite so brusque, but I knew she was thinking of Akiko. The sooner we cleared up this mess, the sooner she could find her wife and figure out how to patch things up.

“Agreed,” I said. “We’ve bought ourselves some time but we can’t stay here forever. We have to figure out why we’ve been targeted.”

“I can’t believe the board would turn on us,” Natalie said with real bitterness. “After all we’ve done.”

“Maybe it’s because of what we’ve done,” Helen said. “Maybe we killed someone we weren’t supposed to. Or maybe we saw something we shouldn’t have.”

“There are a thousand possible reasons for the board to decide we’re a problem,” I said. “They’re the only ones who can issue a termination order and they would have done it unanimously. We have to find out exactly why they sent this one.”

“Too bad we can’t ask,” Natalie said.

Mary Alice spoke up for the first time. “Why can’t we?”

It was an audacious idea, and I was glad Mary Alice was the one to suggest it. She hadn’t completely lost her nerve if she was thinking so far out of the box.

“But ask who?” Helen ventured. “We can’t very well go straight to the board. They’re the ones who ordered the hit.”

Minka picked up the blue marker and drew a thin line over the names of Gilchrist, Paar, and Carapaz.

“The curators?” Mary Alice suggested.

“No way,” Natalie said flatly. “I don’t trust Naomi as far as I can throw her,” she added, poking at her name. “She’s in charge of Provenance, which means she was responsible for briefing the board. Whatever she told them is why they’re after us.”

“We don’t know that,” Mary Alice began, but Natalie cut her off.

“When have you ever known the board to do anything that wasn’t suggested by Provenance? It’s literally their job to propose targets,” Natalie argued. “Besides, I try to stay away from Provenance as much as possible. They give me the creeps, spying on people through their keyboards like that. It’s weird.”

I had met Naomi a handful of times and even liked her a little. She was thirty-something with a couple of kids and a foot firmly on the next rung of the career ladder. Every board member mentored the curator under them, which meant she was in line for Carapaz’s job when he retired, and she made no bones about wanting it. She didn’t make bullshit conversation just to hear herself talk, and I could see how that would make Natalie uncomfortable.

I crossed her off the list. “Martin?” I asked.

“Do we really want to do that to him?” Helen put in. “I feel sorry for the boy.” Martin Fairbrother wasn’t a boy. Like Naomi, he was mid-thirties, but that was about all they had in common. Where she was confident and took no bullshit, Martin was diffident and preferred his gadgets to conversation. We’d once sat next to each other at a daylong conference on hydro-explosives and he had said exactly one word to me. Pen? His had exploded, leaking ink all over his cuff. I’d given him my ballpoint and gone back to sleep. But he was very good at his job, ensuring we had everything we needed for each mission, no matter how small. If Mary Alice wanted peppermint Lärabars or Helen requested hollow-point ammunition with Chinese manufacturing stamps, Martin was the guy.

“He put some calcium chews in my work bag because he heard me complain about my last bone-density scan,” Helen added with a smile. “Chocolate macadamia.”

“And he got me the sweetest little yawara the last time he was in Nagasaki,” Natalie put in.

They looked at me and I shrugged. “He got me a slapjack from a leathermaker in Texas.” It was a nice little weapon. It looked like a Bible bookmark but it had enough lead in either end to crush a man’s temple. “He’s good at details and he’s thoughtful.”

“See? A nice kid,” Helen said. “Look, the board obviously believes we did something wrong, wrong enough to kill over. And by now they know the first attempt to take us out didn’t work. They’ll realize the natural thing for us to do is ask questions, and whoever we ask is at risk.”

“And Martin is the first person we’d ask since Vance’s curator is dead,” I finished. I rubbed a hand over my face. “Helen’s right. Contacting Martin could put him in danger.”

“We don’t know that,” Mary Alice argued.

I held up a hand. “Let’s call Martin Plan B. There has to be someone else who might have a line on what’s going on. Someone less vulnerable than Martin but with an ear for gossip.”

We were silent a moment, thinking. I tipped back in my chair, balancing on two legs as I considered. Natalie picked up the marker and started to doodle on a corner of the tablecloth while Mary Alice plucked at her paper napkin, tearing little pieces off and putting them into a pile. Helen simply sat, staring into the middle distance, and Minka finished off the last of the beignets.

Suddenly, I set the legs of my chair down with a thump. “Sweeney would talk.”

“I haven’t seen Sweeney in twenty years,” Mary Alice said.

Helen sat forward. “It might be worth asking. He’s always been very fond of us.”

“He retired last year,” I said thoughtfully. “He might not be as inclined to keep Museum secrets now that he has his pension.”

“Provided he knows any secrets,” Mary Alice pointed out. “If he’s not active, he might not be up on the latest gossip.”

“Targeting four active operatives is not exactly a story they’re going to be able to keep a lid on,” I said. “Trust me, people are talking.”

Nat looked up from her sketch—a male nude that was in danger of crossing over from tasteful to mildly pornographic. “Sweeney will help.”

I flicked her a look. “You sound pretty sure of yourself.”

Her expression was smug. “I ought to be. I slept with him last year.”

Anybody listening to what came next would have mistaken us for the world’s oldest slumber party.

“Euw, Nat, Sweeney—”

“You don’t like redheads.”

“Was he any good?”

The last was from me. Natalie grinned. “Better than you’d think.”

“But how?” Helen asked plaintively.

Natalie gave a satisfied little stretch, remembering. “It was in Osaka. We’d been assigned two members of the same crime family. Somebody in Provenance screwed up and didn’t realize they were related because the surnames were different. Otherwise we could have coordinated the job. As it was, when we crossed paths in the Ritz, we almost blew our covers. We had to compare notes, so he came to my room. One thing led to another.” She shrugged.

“So, you can get in touch with him?” I asked.

She shook her head. “We had a quickie before the job and then a nice encore after. He was out of my room by dawn. He had an early flight out.”

Helen gave a sudden exclamation and dove into her bag. “I’ve got it,” she said, waving her address book. She flipped through the pages. “McSween, Charles. Kansas City.”

She jotted down the number and offered it to Natalie. Nat stared at it like she’d offered her a spoonful of roadkill on a cracker. “I am not calling him.”

“But why?” Mary Alice asked. “You’re the last one who had any contact with him.” If she hadn’t been so preoccupied with Akiko, she might have snickered at the word “contact.” God knows I wanted to. But she was annoyed, speeding up the on-ramp to seriously pissed.

I grabbed the piece of paper from Helen. “I’ll do it. Talking to an ex can be awkward.”

“You would know,” Mary Alice shot back. I didn’t flip her off that time, but I made a note to start a mental tally. I headed out, stopping by the drugstore for a fresh burner I bought with cash. I threaded my way through the narrow streets, cutting over to Jackson Square. It was getting dark now, the fortune-tellers and jugglers all packed up for the day, leaving the shadows for the vagrants. I passed a few benches where people had bedded down for the night, although it wouldn’t last. The NOLA police station was two blocks away and the cops would be along soon to encourage them on their way. They’d shuffle along to the darker side streets, bunking in doorways with elaborate arrangements of cardboard and moldy sleeping bags to keep out the chill.

One of the benches was empty, and I sat facing the river. I took a deep breath before keying in the number Helen had scribbled onto a piece of paper. I waited—three rings, then four. I was just about to give up when Sweeney answered, sounding a little sleepy. I could hear the annoying squeaks of a televised basketball game in the background. He must have dozed off watching, and I glanced up at the clock face on the front of the cathedral. Ten to seven.

I told him who it was and waited for the inevitable.

“Billie? Hey, it’s been a while—hey,” he said, drawing out the syllable in a long breath. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

“Just call me Lazarus,” I said.

“What the hell? I mean, what the actual hell?” His voice rose and the volume of the basketball game suddenly fell. He must have muted it as he waited for me to answer.

“It’s complicated. I can’t explain now, but I think we should meet.”

“Meet,” he repeated. He was playing for time, and I pressed him a little.

“Sweeney, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

“If you’re alive, what about the others? Are they alive too? What about Nat?” God, it was like seventh grade all over again. Next he’d be asking me to leave a note in her locker after gym class. do u like me, circle y or n.

“Not on the phone,” I told him. “I can meet you tomorrow in New Orleans.”

“Tomorrow? Not a chance,” he said flatly. “It’s New Year’s Eve.”

“Shit,” I said. I’d lost track of the time. “Wednesday, then. The second.”

“Gimme a minute. I need something to write with. Where the hell are my glasses?” he mumbled.

“On your head,” I told him.

“Hey, how did you know? Can you see me?”

“Sweeney, I’m not in Kansas City, peering in your windows. I guessed.”

“I gotta say, I’m a little disappointed,” he replied. He was quiet a minute and I heard him tapping away on a keyboard.

“Okay, I found a flight first thing Wednesday morning. I’ll arrive about three. Where do you want to meet?”

“Jackson Square, four o’clock.”

“How will I find you?”

“I don’t know yet, but don’t worry. I’ll find you. If anything comes up or you’re delayed, then meet me at the Sazerac Bar at the Roosevelt Hotel at nine pm. If you can’t make that, leave a message with the bartender. Got it?”

“Why can’t I just call you back?”

“Because I’m throwing this phone away as soon as I hang up.”

“Shit, you are in trouble, aren’t you?”

“I think so.”

He sighed. “I’ll be there.”

“Safe travels.”

I pressed the little red phone icon before he could answer. I powered off the phone as I walked towards the Cabildo, the museum tucked just to the west of the cathedral. A small street with nice wide gutters ran beside it. I didn’t even have to break stride as I let the phone slip out of my grasp and into the storm drain.

I cut through the little alley between the Cabildo and the cathedral. Here and there, doorways sat in pools of light with long shadows stretching in between. Most were occupied with vagrants stretched out on their beds of flattened cardboard, but in the last doorway, a clown sat on the steps, holding up a piece of broken mirror as he applied his greasepaint. I pulled out a five-dollar bill and dropped it into his tip bucket as I passed. There was nothing else in the bucket except for a few dimes. Hard week to be a clown, I guessed. I started to walk away, but he called me back.

“Hey, lady.” The clown held something out. It was a laminated prayer card, the kind you buy in church gift stores. This one was worn and soft with age. The picture was of a man in a red robe carrying a toddler across a river, both of them wearing sunny halos.

“St. Christopher,” he said. But I already knew that. The image matched the small medal I wore on a thin chain around my neck.

“Thanks,” I said, pocketing the card.

“Happy fucking New Year,” said the clown.

“You too.”

I tightened my scarf as the wind rose, and I headed for home.