The Storm Murders (11 page)

He tilted his head further toward her. “In that case, shouldn’t we be trying to stay together?”

“We should. That’s what we’re doing, no?”

True, but it felt good to hear her say so. This was genuine encouragement. Rowing together in the same direction was so much easier than haphazardly flailing their oars. “Are you any closer,”
É
mile started in, knowing that he had to be careful how he phrased this or he could pitch himself into hot water, “to identifying what the core problem is? For you, I mean?”

Sandra fluffed a pair of pillows and arranged them against the headboard. She then lay back, partially upright with the sheet pulled high up. The air-conditioning cycled on again and, naked, she felt a chill. Reaching around to the back of her neck, she pulled her hair forward to let it fall along her right shoulder. Cinq-Mars noticed that strands of gray he detected previously were no longer visible. She must be tinting. A vacation tint. He propped himself up higher as well.

“It’s everything,” she decided. A single hair strayed over an eye and she inhaled and blew out two big puffs to send it back into place. “You mentioned sex, so okay, put it on the list. But you and I both know that sex is an extension of other things.”

“Including that I’m getting older.”

She looked at him then. They didn’t talk about this usually. “You take pills.”

“And I’m grateful to live in an era when that’s an option. But, also, you know, the libido. It’s diminished. That makes everything different.”

“How so?”

He really hadn’t wanted the conversation to come around to this. Now the matter was on him when she had seemed on the verge of opening up herself. He continued to speak cautiously. “When you remove the need, and, you know, the indiscriminate want, from sex—lust, essentially—the equation is different. You have what’s left, which is pleasure, intimacy, good things both.” He studied the ceiling awhile before daring to carry on. “But it’s not driven. That’s what’s hard to get used to. It’s no longer hard-wired. Perhaps I shouldn’t use the word
hard.
” That got her to grin a little. “It’s as if I have to arouse myself by visiting old memories, knowing that I used to feel a certain way, or maybe project myself into old responses or somebody else’s responses, but it’s … an adjustment, let’s say … it’s an adjustment to make love to the woman you love when sex is no longer urgent or a necessity or a response to need or even desire. So it’s—as it just was—fun. But the passion is on a different plane. I can’t pretend to be in the same place I was years ago or even—and this is telling, because you’re younger—even where you may
still
be.”

“So you don’t need sex anymore,” Sandra summarized. “The passion is gone.”

“Not gone. Transformed. And diminished. But I’m not going to lie.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“It’s like the joke I heard this older comedian say once. ‘At my age, if a woman says yes, that’s great! If she says no, that’s okay, too!’”

Sandra laughed. Then she did more than laugh. She leaned across and kissed her husband. In their postcoital ease he found it as natural as breathing to cup her breast, then to run a thumb over and around the lovely large brown nipple. She pulled back, but not away. And looked at him. She placed a hand over his, as if to assist him in caressing her breast.

Then she fell away again and covered up against the cool temperature.

“So I’m younger than you,” Sandra said. “This is not news. I’m not at that stage yet when desire is … diminished, or gone, whatever … and maybe it’s different for women anyway. But if you’re saying, as I think you’re saying—are you saying that even if you’re no longer driven by urge or desire or some rampant horniness you can, with pharmaceutical assistance, perhaps, still enjoy yourself? And enjoy me?”

“And appreciate the whole shebang more than ever,” he added.

“Shebang—no pun intended, I suppose.”

This time he was the one who laughed. “Okay, so, the pun was not intended, but it is appreciated, if you follow my drift. Like sex, it may no longer be
intended
as it once was, but it is enjoyed just as much. Same pattern.”

She loved it when they could playfully joust with each other’s intelligences. In the old days the sessions often proved preliminary, a kind of foreplay before foreplay, and now, were such times to be post-postcoital instead? A shift, but, in the overall scheme of things, a minor repositioning. One she could live with, in any case.

“What else though,” he asked, “because I agree with you, sex is a symptom here, not a cause—what else pushed us off the rails?”

She had to think about it, or perhaps her delayed response sheltered what she would prefer not to say. Sensing her reluctance, Cinq-Mars grew worried, feeling a cloud, a larger issue he might neither have anticipated nor necessarily desired to spring from its hiding place.

When finally she spoke, he understood that his premonition was accurate. In a millennia he’d never have anticipated this response, not from her, and he wasn’t at all sure that, for once in his life, the truth was something he wanted to know. That the issue had nothing to do with him made it all the more perplexing.

Sandra said, “I think I’m done with horses.”

Whoosh.
A wind blew through them both. Cinq-Mars felt a seismic lurch.

The silence lingered awhile, then she pressed, “You have to say something.”

“I can’t. I’m stunned.”

“I know. I
know.
It doesn’t seem possible.”

But there it was. He had quit policing, but time had brought that on. A difficult end to a career integral to his being. Nonetheless, in the realm of personal choices a necessary one given his age and physical condition. Retirement had always been an expectation, even a reward, and given the dangers inherent in what he did—and what
he
in particular had done had been dangerous, taking on the various mobs and the bikers and on occasion the police department itself—retirement had been a logical conclusion. But for Sandra, at forty-six, to relinquish her one abiding passion sounded an alarm. A condition of her marriage, of leaving New Hampshire to come and live in Quebec with
É
mile in a French milieu foreign to her had been this singular demand: they had to live on a farm and she had to have horses. Cinq-Mars knew now that he wasn’t dealing with a mere malaise or a common marriage slump. This was serious. Life changing. The whole of her foundation was in upheaval, and her inner psyche could only be disheveled as a result.

“Then I’m not the only one in the family,” he said, glad to be able to speak, to respond at all, “who’s holding up under a strain.”

Their talk dissolved into hunger, and with a renewed burst of energy the couple dressed for a night on the town.
É
mile paused at the concierge desk downstairs to ask how far it might be to the French Quarter. Did he require a cab? He was tempted to ask his questions in French, but resisted, and was both surprised and pleased to be informed that, “We’re located in the French Quarter, sir. It’s outside the door.” The warmth of the black woman’s smile allowed his humiliation to feel entirely worthwhile. So in the end the Hilton Garden Inn may have been somewhat safe and dull but not totally un-cool.

They hit the streets.

The hunger jag kept their initial jaunt short, but after a stop for gumbo—the first item on Sandra’s list, which proved delicious—they did a short walking tour of the area, spending time in Jackson Square at the St. Louis Cathedral. They strolled along St. Peter Street, and Royal, and came back down Bourbon. These narrow streets, with their muted colors and patina and old-world charm and balcony life, offering up an other-era sense of festivity, almost beckoned them to kick up their heels, though no band played. Cinq-Mars yearned to see a funeral march, for the music, and said so. “I hope somebody important dies.”

“
É
mile!”

“Come on. You know it would be cool.”

Palm fronds rattled as they walked. They liked that.

And the sudden warmth from their winter was amazing.

Reaching St. Peter and Bourbon, he noticed a man he had checked out earlier near the cathedral. A brown-skinned man with patches on one cheek where the pigment was blemished, easy to identify after spotting him twice. He believed he could distinguish tourists from locals, but this guy seemed out of place among either clan. For someone who had shown up in different locations, or perhaps had followed him around for several blocks, he seemed disinterested in his surroundings and rather preoccupied with doing absolutely nothing. Typical cop behavior, he noted.

“What’s wrong?” Sandra asked, detecting the change in his mood.

He shrugged. “I’m being paranoid, I guess.”

“Seriously? Nobody here knows you,
É
mile.”

“Maybe that’s it.” His laughter seemed coy. “The total lack of notoriety.”

At least he succeeded in getting her to take his mood lightly.

“What do you want to do?” she asked.

“Drinks?”

Up for that, she remembered a place she had read about that they passed earlier. Down a few doors on St. Peter Street they stepped into a tourist mecca called Pat O’Brien’s, or more commonly, Pat O’s. Cinq-Mars was skeptical. Five hundred beer steins hanging from the ceiling seemed too obvious an effort to make an impression, but the talk around them proved convivial and the house speciality, a rum concoction known as a Hurricane—“I guess living here you need to find ways to lessen your fear of the word”—hit the spot.

If he was being followed, the stalker did not tramp inside after him.

They enjoyed a second round, and these were not light drinks, but when
É
mile started scouring out a local’s politics, Sandra hauled him away. On the streets again, their weariness felt sublime. After the long flight, the round of sex, their talk, the good food and feeling awash in liquor, their mood was bright and sad and a trifle sassy even as they turned contentedly bone-tired. A stray, sultry voice lured them into another bar and
É
mile was into the Scotch now. They each had a shot, not planning to stay long. The female blues singer with the soulful sound caught their attention, but when the piano player dipped in for a quiet riff they fell in love with New Orleans. He paid homage to the tune but altered the song, transforming a narcotic sadness to a homily on love, and when the woman returned to the lyrics she conveyed a more poignant nuance on life’s travail. Simple and riveting in its way. Arm in arm, Sandra and
É
mile strolled back to the Hilton and given his mood Cinq-Mars might have forgiven himself had he missed the signs, but as it turned out he did not.

The man in the foyer who had tried to snatch his wallet earlier caught no more than a glimpse of him, then sent an elevator up empty. Seeing that he was identified, the fellow gave him a stern look, a virtual challenge, but Cinq-Mars didn’t fall for the bait. Rather than chase him out the door again he summoned the next elevator, which opened for him almost immediately, and they ascended.

“Stay behind me when we get out,” he warned his wife.

“Excuse me?”

“Well behind me.”

“I heard you.
É
mile!”

The doors opened. Out he jumped and she chose to do as he asked. Close to their room she saw the problem. The door stood ajar with a wastebasket jammed in the gap to keep it open. An intruder wanted the rightful guests to identify themselves before entering. Instead, Cinq-Mars pulled the basket out to the hall and shut the door quietly. “Go downstairs,” he whispered. “Get Hotel Security.”

She was on her way when the door pitched open. Out flew the man who had previously pilfered her purse. He drove into Cinq-Mars like a running back, a shoulder ramming his chest, knocking him to the opposite wall, where he regained his footing though many steps behind the fleeing intruder now. Sandra looked frozen and terrified as he appeared set to barrel right through her. But he tucked in a little feint to the left and burst to the right, racing past Sandra like an errant wind. Cinq-Mars was running after him and his wife tried to get in his way, to reason with him through gestures but managing only to slow him down a tad, giving the culprit time to stab the elevator buttons, then, when no door spontaneously opened, sprint to the stairway. Cinq-Mars chased him as far as the stairs, but at the top looked down. He heard the miscreant leaping down the stairs a half dozen at a time in an accelerated burst to freedom.

Cinq-Mars let him go. No use pretending that he could compete on the same athletic scale. Besides, he was supposed to be retired.

Sandra, in any case, was pleased to see that he discontinued his reckless pursuit. The elevator door called by the trespasser opened behind them. “Catch that,” he said. When she hesitated just a second, he added, “We’ll go see Security.”

He insisted that the hotel staff call the police. When the Latino Head of Security suggested that they keep this “in-house,” Cinq-Mars volunteered to call the cops himself.

“There’s no need, sir, really,” the man insisted. “We’ll file a report with the police ourselves.”

“This is not an in-house type of incident,” Cinq-Mars told him.

“How so?”

He’d rather not tell him. “I’m a retired cop myself,” he revealed.

“Which means what exactly?” The hotel man was small and lean and in a way his body-type was remarkably similar to that of the two men who had now accosted Cinq-Mars twice. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t trust him. But he realized that the man was only following an appropriate procedure. As a cop, he never appreciated hearing from hotels about every little break-in. They could afford their own security so they should use it. He only wanted to be let in on the big stuff and the repetitive crimes, otherwise, just submit a report. He saw that the man had his dander up. He knew what this looked like: an old cop looking down on a much younger security staffer because he represented the minor leagues of law enforcement, without ever considering the difficulties and responsibilities of his position. The hotel employee felt irritated.