Catacomb (11 page)

“We’ve got the room at the end of the hall, Dan. Abby’s in the office. I know you’re probably internet starved so I’ll get my laptop set up and grab the Wi-Fi password from Steve.” Jordan stopped in the hall and flicked on a light switch, bringing one of the old chandeliers to life. “You can have first dibs on the bathroom, Abby. Hot water’s a little sluggish, so give it a minute.”

He led Dan to their room, which was small but reasonably tidy, with two ancient futons in opposite corners, both of them made up with mismatched flannel and cotton sheets.

“This place gives new meaning to the term ‘bachelor pad,’ but I bet you two will get on famously,” Dan said, dropping his backpack onto one of the futons and sitting down. A spring from the frame bounced up to jab him in the rear.

“Hey!” Abby glided in through the open doorway, bringing her camera with her. Her dark eyes slid to where Jordan was booting up his laptop on the table under the window. “Mind if I leave these to upload while I take a shower? I’m running out of space after the cemetery.”

“Uh-huh, now it’s obvious you two only want me for my computer,” Jordan said. He submitted to a playful ruffling of his hair from Abby, then abdicated his chair to her. “All yours. And then yours,” he said, glancing at Dan. “You’re doing a good job of not saying anything, but I know you’re dying to email that Maisie chick.”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Yup.” Jordan tossed Dan one of the sodas and then cracked his own open. “Jesus, Abby, how many damn pictures did you take?”

“A few?” she answered sheepishly, giving him a goofy smile before zooming out the door. “Thanks!”

“That girl . . .”

Jordan took a few sips from his soda and then placed it on the desk next to his computer. He flung himself back on the
futon, sighing as he nestled down into the pile of blankets and pillows. “Oh, mattress, how I have missed you.”

Rather than watch his friend flop back and forth listlessly on the futon, Dan stood and went to the desk, taking a few gulps of the fizzy root beer Jordan had given him. He sat at the folding chair in front of the laptop, watching Abby’s files transfer into a new folder, the preview thumbnails popping up every few seconds.

“Wow, yeah, she really did take a lot, didn’t she?” Dan moused over a few of the thumbnails. He noticed the pictures from the cemetery, shuddering at the image of the child’s jawbone. So she hadn’t deleted that photo after all. “Oh, nice. That woman at the library let her take pictures of the gangster’s stuff in the archive.”

“What was in there? Cigars? A bowler hat?”

Dan leaned closer to the laptop, squinting. The photographs showed an aging cardboard box that was beginning to collapse in on itself, which was placed inside a sturdier wooden box.

“A few postcards, a tin for something, cigarettes maybe . . . an old lighter, a copy of
Julius Caesar
. Weird. Wait, ugh—are those
bones
?”

“What? Awesome!” Jordan popped up from the futon, leaning on the back of Dan’s chair to get a look. “Oh, dude, I think those are bones. Fingers maybe? Probably fake.”

“Fake? Jordan, he was a gangster. Back in his day, even the medical models of skeletons were real.”

Down the hall, he heard the squeak of the shower being turned off.

“Damn,” Jordan whispered

“Yeah, damn,” Dan said. “I wonder why Abby didn’t mention this?”

D
an wanted to stay forever in the warm, cozy bubble of feeling brought on by the warm café au lait in his hand and the improbable number of beignets in his stomach. Licking the powdered sugar left on his fingertips, he watched Uncle Steve talk Abby into yet another of the dusty white doughnuts. She didn’t put up much of a fight. None of them had.

Cafe Du Monde was nothing like Dan had pictured. For some reason, the name conjured images of writers and poets, silver-haired old men chain-smoking and reading tattered books or scribbling their masterpieces by hand. Instead the café existed in a constant state of bustle, the white and green interior blurred by the constant coming and going of tourists, who stayed for five minutes to get the token experience before trundling away, three or four beignets heavier.

“So what next?” Jordan asked. His loose black tee was dusted with sugar, but in his infinitely cool way it looked intentional, or at least artsy.

Dan felt sticky and slovenly, and glanced around for a place to wash up.

“The market, definitely. It’s just there,” Steve said, pointing to a wall of the café and what presumably lay beyond. “Anything you want, you can find there. Food, clothes, souvenirs.”

They vacated their table, and a server in a paper hat and apron swooped in immediately to tidy it for the next customers. A line stretched out from the back of the café as eager caffeine addicts waited in line for the takeaway window. Jordan and his uncle began to discuss plans for the fall. Jordan was attending Tulane, a private college right here in New Orleans, and Steve was paying, a fact that clearly made Jordan sheepish. His uncle was giving up a lot to help Jordan out with tuition and a place to stay, and Dan couldn’t help but admire the man for it.

Dan pulled at his shirt, trying to break the sweaty seal it had formed against his chest. Pennsylvania got hot, but it had nothing like this relentless humidity that sat over the city in a soupy funk. Everyone moved slowly here, as if wading through an actual liquid atmosphere. At least
everyone
was sweaty and gross, which made Dan feel less conspicuous when his hairline dampened.

The sun hung low behind a hazy stream of clouds. Following Steve, Dan let himself be buoyed along by the crowds surging toward the outdoor market. He spotted a long stretch of tents set up in the street, which was wide enough to be a square. Cop cars and wooden blockades kept traffic from turning directly onto the strip where the market buzzed.

The four of them dodged into the shade of the tents, vendors hemming them in on both sides. Counters to buy fresh or cooked seafood sprang up, and stands to buy sandwiches, oysters, lobster. . . . Dan didn’t know how it was possible to be hungry again after wolfing down so many pastries, but the smells were intoxicating.

Abby snapped pictures of some of the stranger stands. One selling taxidermied alligator parts interested her in particular.
The shop next door sold a vast array of Mardi Gras masks, from the two-buck plastic junk to handmade masterpieces embellished with beads, crystals, and ostrich plumes.

“Hey, Steve,” Dan said, nodding toward the masks. “There’s a picture hanging on your stairs of some people in weird masks. And I saw masks like them before, at a library in Shreveport. Is that a thing down here?”

“Oh, those creepy old things.” Uncle Steve laughed and smoothed back the gray hair from his forehead. “Back in the day that was the tradition for Mardi Gras. They didn’t much use the more ornate Venetian style you see around now. Myself, I found those pictures at a flea market a few years back, thought they fit the house.”

That certainly made the masks less creepy, Dan thought, flicking the chin of one of the sparkly, grinning faces that hung from the booth.

Abby lowered her camera, letting it swing by its strap. She shouldered up next to him, her bare, brown arms glistening from the heat.

“What is it with us and masks?” she asked.

“I know. Masks and hoods and motorcycle helmets. Maybe we should buy some of these and see what we’re missing,” he said. “I saw some of your photos uploading. They look good.”

“Thanks.” Abby beamed up at him, a tiny spot of powdered sugar stuck to her chin. Dan was about to reach up and wipe it away for her when he felt his phone vibrating in his pocket.

Please be Sandy texting
, he silently begged.

He drew out his cell phone. He could already feel his stomach tightening.

Not this again.

Abby read his expression. “It’s him, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Dan said. “But it’s basically blank. Just a few ellipses.”

“Can you block the profile? This is getting ridiculous.”

Dan agreed, but hadn’t this Micah impersonator warned him the other night of the visitors to their tent? He looked up, wondering if maybe this was another warning. Scanning the fringes of the square, he looked for motorcycles, someone photographing them—anything at all suspicious or out of place. But that was just about everything in New Orleans, he decided, seeing two half-dressed women drunkenly grinding against each other outside of a sports bar.

But wait . . .

His eyes focused behind them, and there, sitting on the hood of a red vintage muscle car, were a young man and woman.

It was them—it had to be. Without a second thought, Dan took off running. And this time, he wasn’t going to stop until he got some answers.