Chapter Fifteen

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The thing about gunshots is they don’t sound like they do in the movies. It’s a pop, like a firecracker, higher-pitched and faster than you’d expect. A few people in the square looked around, curious, but after a long minute when nothing happened, they went back to their Hurricanes and their pralines. The gun was in my hand and I’d fired through the table, taking a blind shot and hoping for the best, but I’d been lucky. The small-caliber bullet had entered the front of his chest and stayed there, leaving a single hole under his collarbone and a spreading patch of wet darkness across his navy jacket.

“Sweeney?” I still clutched his hand, but the pulse was already gone, even before his eyes fluttered closed. He slumped in his chair, looking like he had just dozed off in the middle of having his cards read.

I looked up again at the balcony and Helen was staring down at us with wide eyes. Suddenly she seemed to pull herself together and stood, throwing money on the table and disappearing inside. Nat would have heard Mary Alice’s signal and left her paintings, she and Helen making their way back to the house via the twisting routes we’d mapped out. Mary Alice could continue to play, invisible as street performers are. I lifted my skirt and ran, ducking into Père Antoine Alley. I still didn’t know why Mary Alice had signaled, but it was a safe bet she had spotted someone who wasn’t supposed to be there—someone who would now be on my tail if they were following Sweeney. I ripped off the skirt and wig, leaving them in a heap next to a woman sleeping in a doorway. I had sunglasses in my pocket and I shoved them on as I walked away from the square.

With Sweeney’s corpse cooling behind me, I headed up to Royal Street and hung a left, away from the direction of the house. I expected to make a large square and end up at home, but as I crossed Toulouse I saw him. He was dressed like a tourist, his T-shirt tucked into belted jeans like a sociopath. He was wearing only a thin windbreaker, black and gold with a gaudy Saints fleur-de-lys, but there was a fine mist of perspiration on his face. He had a good head of white-blond hair, the sort that everybody else outgrows after toddlerhood but Norwegians keep all their lives.

He was approaching from my left, and on instinct, I cut down St. Louis to Chartres, walking just briskly enough to make it seem like I had business but not fast enough to make it look like panic. I didn’t dare look back. I couldn’t hear footsteps behind me, but I knew he would be wearing rubber soles. I turned right on Bienville and crossed over, making my way to the garage entrance of the Hotel Monteleone. I didn’t turn in, but there was a large convex mirror hanging just over the driveway. I flicked up a glance as I passed and saw him, forty paces back and taking his time. The little shit was enjoying this, I realized. He didn’t know I’d clocked him and he’d apparently decided to give me enough space to play, planning to reel me in when it suited him.

I swung hard left onto Royal and broke into a trot, beating feet towards the end of the block. The street was lined with antiques shops, expensive ones, with crystal chandeliers shimmering in the windows. I dared a glance behind as I turned into the main entrance of the Monteleone and he was only just turning the corner. I saw him give a start of surprise when he realized I wasn’t where he expected. It was check-in time and the hotel’s entrance was crowded with doormen and drivers, bellhops and guests. I eased around them into the main lobby, turning immediately to the right to take the short flight of carpeted steps into the Carousel Bar. The centerpiece of the place was the giant carousel, revolving slowly as drinkers perched on their barstools. It was early, but the joint was already crowded, and nobody was going to look twice at a woman of a certain age who blended into the crowd. I threaded my way through the bar and out the back exit via the restaurant, ending up at the elevator bank. I punched the “up” button and held my breath.

I stretched my neck a little and risked a look across the restaurant and through the windows. He was there, standing with his back to the hotel and scanning the street both ways. In a minute, he would think to canvass the bar and lobby, but if I could get to the roof first, I had a good chance of shaking him. The doors opened and I stepped in, forcing myself to breathe slowly.

“Oooh, hold the elevator!” called a woman in palomino mink as she teetered towards the elevator. She had a tiny dog nestled in her cleavage and I didn’t even bother to pretend to wait. I jammed the “close door” button with my thumb and heard her screech with fury as the doors closed in her face. I held that button and the roof button down and the elevator skipped calls for any other stops. I emerged at the roof level and hit four random floor buttons before jumping out. If anybody was looking at the display panel in the lobby, the numbers for multiple floors would be glowing.

A long wall of glass stretched ahead of me and I glanced outside to the pool deck. On the left side, a bar and dining area were tucked under an overhang. Dead ahead was the pool, surrounded by loungers and large potted shrubs. It was too cold for swimming, but the barman was still there, polishing glasses and listening with a politely vacant smile to some old guy who was obviously droning on. I had reconned the hotel months ago in case of just such a situation, and I knew the door to the pool deck only opened with a key card.

But I also knew how willing people are to do favors for you if they think you belong and especially if you’re older than they are. A young woman wearing a hotel badge emerged from the spa and I marched up to her with a harried expression.

“Excuse me, dear, I seem to have forgotten my key and my husband is too busy boring the bartender to let me into the pool area,” I said, rolling my eyes towards the boor on the barstool.

“Not a problem, ma’am,” she said, smiling as she swiped the key card. I thanked her and strolled in as if I belonged there, paying cash for a drink at the bar.

Beyond the last potted shrub at the end of the pool was a small area sheltered from casual view, a handy little nook that was completely invisible from the rest of the pool deck. I took a lounge chair behind a shrub and sipped slowly as the sun sank in a gory blaze while I surveyed the streets below. My pursuer was pacing in a careful square, taking the streets nearest the Monteleone one by one in a grid pattern. A few minutes after I arrived, I heard the wail of sirens and figured they had found Sweeney slumped in his chair in Jackson Square. Once they cleared up the body, they’d review the CCTV camera footage and eventually they’d work out where I had gone.

But there are lots of ways to disappear in a city like New Orleans. After another quarter hour of ear-numbing wind blowing off the river, I heard a second line parade coming down the street. I hurtled down the stairs to the lobby, taking them two at a time and praying my knees would hold up. In the gift shop I found a pair of oversized Mardi Gras sunglasses and a handful of throws, which I layered over a sweatshirt decorated with a sequined crawfish that told everyone to laissez les bon temps roulez. I looked like any tacky middle-aged tourist from Omaha loose in the Big Easy.

I slipped out the door of the hotel in time to join the end of the parade. At the front, two grooms wearing Tom Ford tuxedos held hands up high, showing off their shiny new wedding rings. The band played “Breezin’ Along with the Breeze” and everyone sang along, waving handkerchiefs and holding up champagne flutes to toast onlookers. A bridesmaid who was three sheets to the wind was drinking directly out of a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and she held it up to me.

“Hey, stranger! You need to party with us!” She handed the bottle over and I took a swig. The champagne was tepid and nearly flat, but I didn’t care. I passed it back and raised my voice as we stepped down Royal Street and into the night.