Death Before Facebook (8 page)

Pearce skipped Sex, Games, and Weird Stuff tonight. He was addicted to Writing for the companionship with other writers, and to Books and Movies because they provided lots of scope for what he did best—writing and thinking.

But tonight Confession was the undisputed hot ticket. Poor old Geoff wasn’t even cold and the TOWN had turned him into a game. Still, Pearce had to admit, Geoff was its leading citizen right now, which might have pleased him. Geoff hadn’t been much of anything in life, except a nerd, much like everyone else on the TOWN.

Pearce typed out G
CON
—“get Confession”—and then went to “Out on the TOWN.” But in the end it was disappointing; nothing new, really. The latest topic, “TOWN Without Pity,” had some merit if you liked to observe the maunderings of self-righteous assholes. Predictably, all the politically correct, put-you-in-the-wrong types were posting here. Living in New Orleans instead of L.A., Pearce had never met them, but he knew who they were: guys with scrawny shoulders and dirty blue jeans, women with fifty pounds they didn’t need and scrunched-up, toady little faces. There were those types, the PC ones, and then there were the Henry Clays, those who’d missed out on dynamic careers as diplomats permanently assigned to the Bureau of Tempests in Teapots. They were always posting the sort of little gem that was meant to defuse but made you want to rip their throats out: “I can really see Lefty’s point, Bilious, but I just wonder if it isn’t time to put this behind us and quit fighting among ourselves. After all, what’s really important here?”

Out-self-righteousing the PCs.

Back to “Out on the TOWN.” At least Lenore hadn’t posted today. One of the worst things about Geoff’s murder, as far as Pearce was concerned, was the ready-made stage it gave Lenore. Privately, he called her “the TOWN crier.” If Lenore had a problem, the whole TOWN had to be consulted, and if she didn’t she was going to make one up.

So far they’d seen her through unwed motherhood. “Should I Have an Abortion?” was the topic she’d posted in Confession. The woman had no shame. That was followed by “Lamaze or No?” and a seemingly endless stream of self-involved dramas having to do with whether she should tell the baby’s father the kid existed, what she should name it, and of course, how much motherhood meant to her, she’d known, of course, she’d been told, but she really couldn’t have imagined…

Right Firm grasp of the obvious. That was Lenore.

Pearce had helped to get “Out on the TOWN” going; that had been fun (though at the time, the way he felt it seemed more like a necessity—he had to talk to somebody, even if it wasn’t really talking). But it was fun because it was an opportunity to use his mastery over his subjects. He always enjoyed that.

However, the thing it had become wasn’t his cup of tea. These people were serious. They were sorry Geoff was dead and they were seriously trying to do something about it (in their lame little ways, of course). They actually thought they could solve a murder just by yakking electronically at each other. All of which might be amusing if it wasn’t such bad taste to display wit in the face of grief, and wit was Pearce’s forte. His baby had turned into an ugly duckling.

Disgustedly, he typed
EXIT
. He might as well use his computer for what he’d bought it for.

He opened a file called “Regrets,” possibly a chapter in something, he wasn’t sure yet, but definitely an exercise he needed to do right now. He typed 1967, and the very sight of the four digits excited him, conjured up the scent of patchouli oil and pot smoke; the sounds of throngs shouting “Hell no, we won’t go!”; the touch of a thousand skinny girls in peasant blouses, with center-parted waist-length hair. The most beautiful of them all was… he couldn’t bear to think of her, not yet, not without setting the stage.

He rummaged through his vinyl records—he still had all of them, along with his old-fashioned stereo. The CD player would come, as soon as he sold a novel or two. Or his screenplay. That was probably what he should be working on—everyone knew it was easier, quicker, and worth more money. But lately, he’d been working on this other thing, this “Regrets,” whatever that was. That was the way writing worked for him; it bubbled up and couldn’t be stopped. If it wanted out, he released it.

Bob Dylan was what he wanted, something along those lines. But what he found was better—the Jefferson Airplane,
Surrealistic Pillow
. He found “Today,” the cut that, of any song in the world (except maybe “Light My Fire”) was the most evocative of 1967, of the way he’d felt about her. It began like this: “Today I feel like pleasing you.”

He poured himself another bourbon and settled down to write:

She was older than I was, but not by much. Twenty-nine, I thought, maybe even thirty, which excited me in an odd sort of way, because of course that was over the line. It meant you couldn’t trust her. But then trust was the last thing on my mind when I saw her there, smoke swirling blue around her head, the glare of the lights cruel as napalm; and yet even whited out as she was—a lesser beauty would have been a caricature of harsh lines and tiny sags—she exuded a tropical lushness; smelt, practically, of ylang-ylang or plumeria.

A rubber band held her hair at the nape, but loosely, so that it fell in wings to her chin, and when she bent her head—so serious, so moody—over her guitar, a shadow fell across her chest. She wore bell-bottoms and a white peasant blouse. A ropy sort of belt that she had woven and then decorated with some flowered thing was tied round her waist, the ends allowed to flow at her right side. The same trim, a strip of pink flowers embroidered on a yellow background, had been sewn to the hems of her jeans.

But the thing you noticed most was the way she clutched that guitar—like a lover; like a baby; like the thing she held dearest in the world. She was singing an Appalachian folk song, a ballad about a faithless husband and the unfortunate way he’d disappeared one day, after seeing something odd in the woods—

Pearce stared at the screen. He could recall every detail of her clothing, her expression, he even knew how long her nails were (clipped short), but he couldn’t remember the words of the song. What had the husband seen in the woods? An elf or something? A dead animal? This was why it was so hard to finish things. They had to be right. He knew he couldn’t finish this piece until he had the song. He’d have to go to the library and research it. He put an asterisk on the page; it was going to take up the rest of tomorrow.

The mood didn’t end. He didn’t have the song, but he couldn’t shake the rest of the memory. To his amazement, it was coming out against all odds.

When her set was over, I found my mouth dry, my tongue stuck on the roof of my mouth, my feet paralyzed. What if she didn’t come back? What if I never saw her again?

She came back! She did “Wildwood Flower” for an encore, and it was oddly appropriate, somehow described her. It evoked a mossy smell, a springlike scent, a mysterious waft from something ephemeral and delicate, like the thing the faithless husband had seen in the woods. Something magical, something that would escape if you blinked.

Like her.

I saw now that this was who she was; despite her lush appearance, her bold tropical beauty, in her soul she was a wraith; she was Rima from Green Mansions, or maybe some tiny winged creature from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was her voice that gave her away—so high, so clear, and pure as the heart of a nun. I knew that now she would disappear for good, and she did. A being like that does not drink in a bar.

And yet, the next time I saw her, it was in a bar—the Dream Palace on Frenchmen Street, the kind of place you went in 1967 for an interracial kind of experience, a bohemian thrill in a safe (though often noisy) kind of way. It was a dark, ramshackle old cavern of a place, with tiny tiles on the floor and a celestial mural on the ceiling.

She was with friends, a man and a woman, all three of them wearing jeans, the man looking like the pictures of Jesus in my Bible story books. Thinking they must need another man to join them—wishing that, actually, not thinking anything at all—I marched over as if I had all the confidence of a person on drugs (which, at that moment, I wasn’t).

“Aren’t you Marguerite Kavanagh?” I said, for the first time thinking it odd that so exotic a being should be Irish.

“Yes.” And she gave me a smile that said she knew what was going to come next.

“I heard you sing. I just wanted to say…” I was losing my nerve “…I thought you were…”

“Yes?” This time it had a teasing quality.

I am not given to hyperbole, and, if the truth be told, I find it hard to compliment people; I’d rather not. And yet, I’d never in my life so desperately wanted to be liked.

“You were wonderful,” I said, hoping my Adam’s apple wasn’t bobbing like a rube’s.

“That’s very kind of you.”

The man she was with, the Jesus impersonator, waved casually at a vacant chair. “Sit down. Join us, why don’t you?” and I glanced for a moment at Marguerite to see if she approved. I thought I saw something in her eyes, something that said she didn’t, but it looked more like fear than anger. I didn’t care, I was sure I could change her mind. I was going to sit there if the place caught fire in the next thirty seconds.

Bu her hesitation, whatever it was, was immediately replaced by a warm light, the beginnings of flirtation. “This is Geordie,” she said “And Joyce. A matched pair.”

“Pair o’ wot, I couldn’t tell you,” said Geordie. He had a vaguely British accent.

“And who might you be?” said Marguerite.

“Pearce Randolph,” I said wanting her to hear both names, to remember them.

“Oh, my God! The reporter.”

“You know my work?” I puffed out my chest a bit.

She twirled her glass and looked at it, embarrassed “Well, no, I don’t think I do.” She looked up again. Defiant. “Just your name.”

“Oh?”

“From my husband.”

I died a little inside.

“My husband speaks of you.”

It came to me who she must be, and I was overcome with regret—that I’d become a reporter, that I’d ever been born, certainly that I’d ever embarked on a certain fruitless investigation of police corruption. And yet, I still couldn’t believe the connection, couldn’t imagine such a thing. “Leighton Kavanagh?” I said “You’re married to Leighton Kavanagh?”

He was a monster, this man. A great big ugly redhead with shoulders that would hold up an overpass, nasty penny-size freckles on his face and arms, hair so short he must have shaved it. But no belly; the man was in shape. And he was ornery—“the orneriest sunbitch in Louisiana,” according to some of his colleagues—some who’d given me a bum steer now that I thought of it, but still, if ever there was a case of Beauty and the Beast…

She cupped her chin in her hand, using the other to play with her straw, flirtatious as you please. “Sure am. Beautiful little baby son, too—would you like to see a picture?”

I started to stand up. “Look, I’m sorry I bothered you. I’m sure you—”

“Don’t go,” she said.

And I stayed.

FEELING GRUMPY FROM lack of sleep, Skip was thinking with distaste that the case, despite its high-tech aspect, was actually hung with Spanish moss, steeped in the miasma of ancient fears and rages, the stink of memory, of acts better forgotten, never forgiven, of passion just below the surface.

What I’ve got here is a geriatric unsolved murder,
she thought, and poured herself a cup of the pitchy substance they called coffee in Homicide.
The entire department couldn’t figure out who killed one of its own and now I’m supposed to do it twenty-seven years later.

Her heart speeded up at the hopelessness of it, the panic it spawned, and yet she recognized a tiny simultaneous surge—the triumph of hope over common sense, the same thing that made a dog hare off after a cat, probably even the thing that caused Layne Bilderback to piece out crosswords. The challenge. The thrill of the chase. She might not get to the bottom of this, but she’d kill herself trying.

The thing to do was get as much background as she could on the case and the major players. Maybe she could solve the whole thing from the office, like Nero Wolfe or somebody.

Dream on,
she thought.

Still, another cup of coffee would go down well while she made a few phone calls. She poured one and dialed her friend Alison Gaillard, who knew everything about everybody.

“Officer Langdon. I was just thinking about you. I might write a reference book—Who’s In Who. What do you think?”

“Why were you thinking about me?”

“I need your opinion, of course.”

“It’ll never sell—you’d have to update it every twenty minutes.”

Alison hooted. “Especially in this town.”

Alison and Skip had been sorority sisters at a time when Skip had about as much business belonging to a sorority as to the Ladies’ Black Hand Auxiliary. From a distance, she had thought Alison beautiful, shallow, brainless, and malicious; until she had become a cop and one day needed information. In fact, she had found her warm and bright—they’d made friends for the first time. And if Alison ever called in her markers, Skip was going to owe her big—she’d provided information on so many cases Skip had lost count.

“You calling for a consultation?”

“Mmmm. Usual giant fee, of course.”

“It’ll be about Marguerite Kavanagh, I guess.”

“Now how on earth did you know that?” Skip had perused the paper quickly, and there was no mention of Geoff’s death or the department’s interest in it.

“Emmeline Norwood called her to say she was sorry about Geoff and Marguerite told her about you.”

“Which Emmeline couldn’t wait to report to you.”

“Not exactly. She told Reenie Vauxhall, who’s my day-care lady. Marguerite’s a lot older than we are, of course, but I took music lessons from her mama; half the kids in town did. Christina Julian—remember her?”