Fairbanks, Nancy Page 8

  Much to my surprise, we entered a place called the Cen­tral Grocery on Decatur Street in the Quarter, hardly the mi­lieu where I expected to find gourmet food, although it had that mouth-watering bouquet of aromas common to good Italian groceries. There we waited in a long line among milling crowds and ever-increasing noise to buy—and I, of course, insisted on paying for my own—two immense sand­wiches. We carried those in paper bags to a bench on the Moonwalk, a charming, landscaped area on the levee by Jackson Square. The area's name derives from the nick­name, Moon, of a former mayor. Perhaps he had been a moon-shaped politician as a result of eating too many muf-fulettas. I certainly felt moon-shaped after we had removed the voluminous wrappings and devoured the contents. But they were wonderful! Also much too big for me to eat. How­ever, the lieutenant was only too glad to finish mine while I finished the story of Julienne's disappearance and my theo­ries of what might have happened.

  Once Lieutenant Boudreaux had disposed of the bags and wrappings, he sat down beside me again, and we watched traffic on the river for a time while he considered all the im­plications of my tale. "You may not know it, ma'am, but we're not supposed to look for adults until they're gone forty-eight hours," he began.

  I'm afraid that the look I gave him was not only disap­pointed but also somewhat unfriendly.

  "An' your friend's been spotted, so that runs the forty-eight-hour time period to at least tomorrow mornin'."

  I positively scowled at him.

  "Still an' all, Ah hate to disappoint a pretty lady who likes muffulettas almost as much as Ah do."

  I began to feel hopeful again. "So you'll—"

  "Ah'll check the police reports, an' the hospitals, an' call some friends Ah got on the river patrols."

  "But—"

  "An' Ah'll do it mahself—the callin' that is. Then, if that don' turn up your friend, an' maybe in this case, no news is good news; better an inconsiderate friend than a dead one; that's mah feelin'. Still an' all, if she don' turn up, then to­morrow, if you can get her husband to report her missin', Ah'll put out an APB on her so every cop in the city'll be lookin' for her."

  "But what if he's the reason she's missing?" I protested. "He thinks she's unfaithful."

  "Lots a that goin' 'round these days. Not too many hus­bands doin' away with their wives because of it, 'specially not professors with professor wives. Mos' smart folks would consider killin' a wife a bad career move."

  "I suppose so," I had to admit.

  "Don' mean it might not be the case. Happens he won't come in, Ah'll have to consider that suspicious. Might be Ah'll have to talk to him mahself. Would you say this Dr. Magnussen is a violent man?"

  Was he? Until lately I wouldn't have thought so. "He spoke to her very angrily, even cruelly. And in public as well as in the privacy of their room. The housekeeper told me about a terrible argument they had at the hotel before din­ner."

  "Lotsa mean-mouthed folks around. Don' mean they take to hittin' or shootin'. He got a gun?"

  "If he does, he couldn't have brought it with him. They came by plane. Wouldn't he have been arrested for carrying a weapon on an airplane?"

  The lieutenant ran a large hand through that thick, black hair. "If security turned it up. Wouldn't be smart to chance takin' one on a plane. You know what kinda camera an' lap­top the lady was carryin' when she ran off?"

  I searched my mind desperately. As for the laptop, I was simply assuming its existence and had to tell him so, but I finally dredged up the name of the camera Julienne favored.

  The lieutenant nodded, took out a notepad, and scribbled a few lines. "That's an expensive one, for sure. Can't hurt to put it on the pawnshop lists. Thief took it off her, he's gonna try to get money for it. It'll turn up. Then we'll have some-thin' to go on."

  I shivered when I actually had to face the implications of what we were discussing so theoretically.

  "You sure you want to pursue this?" he asked kindly.

  "Yes." I had to interrupt our discussion because I had ac­tually been observing, while we talked, someone who looked suspicious, a bearded man sitting on the opposite bench and watching us over his copy of the Times-Picayune. I put my hand on the lieutenant's sleeve and whispered ur­gently, "Don't stare, but do you see that man across the way wearing the cap and rumpled tweed jacket?"

  "Uh-huh," said the lieutenant.

  "He's been staring at us," I whispered. Of course, the man wasn't staring at us now, but he certainly had been. During my conversation with Alphonse Boudreaux I had taken several peeks to confirm my suspicion.

  "Could be," the lieutenant agreed.

  "Don't you find that suspicious under the circum­stances?" I asked.

  "No ma'am. Likely he thinks you're pretty—Ah sure do—or he's someone Ah arrested sometime or other."

  "A criminal?" I whispered.

  "City's full of 'em," the lieutenant agreed casually. "Also full a men starin' at pretty women. Don' let it bother you, Miz Blue. If he's lookin' at you, he's not gonna come over an' invite you to have a drink with him, not when Ah'm here, 'cause Ah'm bigger'n he is. An' if he was lookin' at me ... Well, there he goes, headin' off toward the street. Most likely he was lookin' at the cathedral. Got a good view of it from his bench."

  I breathed a sigh of relief as the man in the cap disap­peared into the crowd. I was being a ninny, and it occurred to me that this sudden attack of paranoia would not impress the lieutenant. He might think I'd imagined the whole thing about Julienne. I gave him my most earnest look and said, "I do appreciate your offer to make inquiries about Julienne. We're so worried about her. Well, not Nils, but then he's not thinking straight, or else he's—" I stopped, chary of contin­uing to accuse a man, whom I had known for years, of doing goodness knows what to his wife.

  "Glad to do it, Miz Blue." He glanced at his watch and I glanced at mine, noting that I had only twenty minutes to get back to the hotel where I was to meet Broder for our search of the quarter.

  "Well," I said, standing up, "I, for one, intend to put the afternoon to good use."

  "What good use?" the lieutenant asked, looking worried. "Hope you're not plannin' any foolish—"

  I had to laugh. "Believe me, Lieutenant, I'm not given to foolish ventures. Faculty wives are notoriously sedate." I smiled reassuringly at him. "I'm just rushing off to meet a professor of Calvinist theology. What could be more in­nocuous? I'm going to show him the Quarter."

  "Well, y'all have fun," said lieutenant, looking as if he doubted that would be possible, given the companion with whom I planned to spend the afternoon.

  10

  Cajun Bloody Mary

  Poor Broder was in shock. We'd passed The Unisex World Famous Love Acts/Men and Women, where the male and fe­male genitalia in the drawings were discreetly screened by black patches, and then a place called The Orgy. Now we were standing in front of Wash the Girl of Your Choice, one of the choices being a merry-looking damsel with pancake breasts and wet hair. She was standing under a shower, laughing. Presumably, the customer was invited to join her there. Photos of other naked females in various poses sur­rounded her. Most were wearing high heels. Did the cus­tomer wash the lady of his choice while she was still shod? Did the establishment or the performers have to pay for soggy shoe replacement?

  I didn't share these speculations with Broder, who was stammering and red-faced. I heard him mutter something about Sodom and Gomorrah. Fortunately, Julienne had not mentioned showing me any of these particular clubs in the city of her birth. I did take pictures (which I knew Jason would find amusing; Broder didn't) before hustling my pro­tector away toward less bawdy surroundings, if I could find them. As I scouted out the Absinthe House, a favorite of Julienne's, Broder went on and on about the decadence of New Orleans and all the horrible fates that could have be­fallen our old friend: rape, murder, rape and murder, kidnapping by white slavers and incarceration in a house of ill repute where debauched customers might even now be ... I had to stop listening and vowed never
again to go anywhere with Broder McAvee. I'm sure he is a well-meaning man, but he was herding me in the direction of a nervous break­down. How could he think of nothing but sin when all around us were marvelous old brick buildings with their lus­ciously ornate grillwork balconies? How did Carlene stand living with him? Maybe she took Prozac.

  The Absinthe House, which Julienne had mentioned, has two incarnations, one in an 1806 building, the second down the street. The second has "Bar" tacked on its name and fea­tures the original marble-topped bar on which rests the orig­inal brass water-dripper, once used to add water to absinthe, no doubt to slow the progress of poisoning the absinthe drinkers. Broder warned me about the dangers of absinthe, but I assured him that no one in this country served it any longer. The bar top, dripper, and other fixtures had been spirited away during prohibition when the historic drinking establishment, then a speakeasy, was raided by federal agents. Both Absinthe Houses encourage customers to tack their business cards on the wall.

  In Lafitte's Old Absinthe House, on the corner of Bour­bon and Bienville, I did so. Imagine me with a business card! I'd ordered them the very day I signed my contract with the publisher. "Carolyn Blue, Writer," they said in a very discreet format. Black on white. Raised type. They even give my E-mail address, about which I still feel amazed—that I have one. My husband and children may have used computers for years, but not I. I more or less edged into the computer age. First, I wrote a letter to my fa­ther on Chris's computer and at Chris's insistence. He was a sophomore in high school at the time and perhaps embar­rassed to have a mother as backward as 1.1 was so enchanted with revision capabilities that did not involve erasures or bottles of White-Out that I continued to use the computers in the house for letter writing and even for that first article on eating goat.

  Then Gwen, my daughter, called long distance to an­nounce that she had found a web site called "Medieval Fem­inists." Well, I could hardly pass that up, so I ventured out on my first www adventure. And finally, my agent, on hear­ing that I had no E-mail address, insisted that I get one. Jason added me as a second user on his home computer. Gwen is now saying that I need my own web page and has threatened to set one up for me.

  Young people are amazing, aren't they? I can remember thinking that an old-fashioned, manual typewriter was a magical device. Of course, I was four years old at the time, and my father, when he caught me adding letters to a manu­script page of his, forbade me to enter his study again. By the time I was once more allowed in, to dust the furniture after my mother's death, he had an electric typewriter, which I was still forbidden to touch. A psychiatrist would probably say that my reluctance to use computers is the re­sult of psychological damage done to me at an early age by my father. My father, of course, would say, "Rubbish," and I rather imagine he'd be right.

  Well, I put my card on the wall, hoping Julienne might see it.

  Broder refused to produce his, but who can blame him? I didn't find any business cards identifying Calvinist theolo­gians. I did find a few cards from Roman Catholic priests, and I found Julienne's card, but couldn't tell whether it was new or old. I also found a bartender who, on studying her picture, thought he might have seen her sometime Sunday. She had been wearing jeans and a jean jacket.

  Since the bartender asked me three times during the in­terrogation what I'd have to drink, I studied the menu and ordered a Cajun Bloody Mary, prepared to take notes for my book. However, I wondered wistfully what the bar's most popular drink in the nineteenth century, the absinthe frappe, would have tasted like. It sounded too delicious to be poisonous. Broder, after some prodding, ordered Jell-O shots. Ev­idently, he thought he was getting dessert. My drink was amazingly spicy and filling. Even though I have become ac­customed to the chili peppers that imbue the Mexican food in El Paso with its unique flavor, my tongue was burning after the first sip, no doubt from Tabasco sauce, that staple seasoning of Cajun cooking.

  Legend has it that Louisiana boys off fighting the mid-nineteenth-century war in Mexico were mustered out with renewed enthusiasm for hot peppers. One such soldier named Mcllhenny brought special Mexican pepper seeds home to Avery Island, where Tabasco sauce was born as a result. I suppose one could say that some good comes out of a war, but I'd just as soon my son Chris didn't have to fight in any, no matter what seeds he might bring home to im­prove our various national cuisines.

  Cajun Bloody Mary

  1.1/2 oz. vodka

  3 oz. tomato juice

  1 dash ea. steak sauce and Worcestershire sauce

  1 tsp. canned beef bouillon

  1 tsp. horseradish

  2 dashes Tabasco

  1/2 tsp. ea. black pepper and celery salt

  Combine in a mixer and shake.

  Serve over crushed ice in an old-fashioned glass.

  Garnish with a slice of lime and pickled okra or pickled green bean.

  With my tongue still tingling, I left Broder to have a second helping of Jell-O while I went to the telephone to call Linus Torelli and Nils. I wanted to ask if Linus was sure that Juli­enne had left wearing the red dress and Nils if she had brought a jean jacket with her. Neither was in his room, and I doubted that having Torelli paged at the conference would be productive or, if productive, a welcome interruption. But a jean jacket didn't sound like Julienne. I couldn't remem­ber her wearing any such thing. Her Southern-belle mother, Fannie Delacroix, would never have approved. Was the bar­tender mistaken in his identification? If not, could Julienne have fitted both jeans and jacket into the shoulder bag Torelli had said she was carrying when she came to his room?

  When I rejoined Broder to finish my Bloody Mary, he told me that Jean Lafitte, the notorious pirate/patriot, had used a secret room upstairs, now a restaurant, for meetings.

  "Shall we go up for a snack?" I asked eagerly. Maybe Julienne had eaten there. If not, I was, after all, researching a book on New Orleans food. Did they have authentic pirate food upstairs? I took a picture just in case I located any recipes for pirate cuisine.

  Broder gave me a reproachful look and reminded me that we had to find Julienne. I must say, he was more cheerful and less likely to terrify me with dire predictions of Juli­enne's fate in Sin City after his second helping of "dessert." In fact, while we were looking for the voodoo museum, an­other favorite of Julienne's, we stopped to listen to a black street band that featured a tuba player in shorts, two men on trombone and drums, and a portly woman in a white dress who sang and played several instruments herself. Along with haunting blues songs, she did some gospel, after which Broder actually hopped the street barriers that surrounded the group and shook the woman's hand.

  "Finally!" he exclaimed. "A good Christian woman!"

  I was afraid she or her companions might take him to be some kind of dangerous religious fanatic. The men were cer­tainly scowling suspiciously. The singer, however, beamed at Broder and asked, "You a man a' God, brothah?"

  Before he could launch into a convoluted academic ex­planation of his calling, I, too, slipped between the barriers , and whipped out Julienne's photo. "We're looking for a friend," I said quickly. "She's been missing since Sunday." Even the bartender couldn't place her after Sunday.

  "Why you think we seen her?" demanded the tuba player, towering over my shoulder.

  "Well, I..." Had I somehow offended them? "We're asking everyone."

  The drummer abandoned his stool, and the trombone player ambled over to look at my photograph. "Das you," said the tuba player belligerently.

  "Yes," I agreed, glancing backward apprehensively. "Taken about ten years ago."

  "Honey," said the woman, "Ah don' notice folks when we on da street playin'. You oughta try da po-lice."

  "Like sayin' you oughta try da mob," muttered the drum­mer.

  "The Mafia's here, too?" gasped Broder.

  "Excuse me," said a paunchy tourist in an embroidered shirt. He was in the act of dropping a five dollar bill into the open trombone case on the street. "Could you play The Saints' for my wife
and me? We always wanted to hear it played in New Orleans. Somehow it's not the same, hearing it on TV or in Indianapolis."

  "Sure we can, honey," said the singer. She smoothed down her tight, white dress and began to sing even before the instrumentalists could play any introductory music. Ev­idently she wasn't interested in staring at Julienne's picture any longer. So much for one Christian coming to the aid of another.

  "Come on, Broder, let's find the voodoo museum." He did not looked pleased to hear our next destination and told me it was once thought that white children were captured and sacrificed in voodoo ceremonies.

  "What luck our children aren't with us," I replied. I, too, was feeling the effects of alcohol. Unfortunately, Broder's Jell-O shots seemed to be wearing off as new anxieties over­whelmed him. He lectured me on the evils of combining pagan African rituals and snake gods with Roman Catholi­cism, of which he also seemed to have a horror. I, in my pre-trip reading, had found the whole subject fascinating, although not something I took very seriously.

  The museum itself proved to be—well, there's no other word for it—spooky. It was dark and smelled like old houses that need a good airing ... very atmospheric, I suppose. The entrance fee almost caused Broder to rethink his offer to protect me from evil. However, Christian knightliness spir­ited the five dollars from his pocket, and in we went, but not with any luck, initially. The attendants could hardly see the photograph in the gloom but were anxious to offer us ap­pointments for cemetery tours, voodoo ceremonies, psychic readings, even voodoo tours that included visits to voodoo pharmacies, a prospect that moved Broder to nudge me and hiss, "Absolutely not. Absinthe was bad enough."