locale of several of Remy’s adventures, judging from the wistful way in which Shawn looked out on it.
“It’s, uh, it’s about eight o’clock,” Nikolaus said softly. “Shouldn’t we be
getting on?”
“Yeah,” Shawn said in a soft voice.
Thiago put a tentative hand on Shawn’s elbow, and Shawn seemed to shake
himself and started walking once more, in the opposite direction from which they had come. They passed by the Café du Monde, where Shawn looked over all the patrons
in the outdoor sitting area carefully before heading on.
Horses clopped by drawing carriages and drunken couples and groups
swayed around them, laughing and giggling. Music wafted from the many bars and
restaurants, and the smells of food and coffee and river mud mingled in the air.
Thiago could definitely see why Remy and Shawn picked this place for their
occasional down time. There was so much activity, they could have walked around in black trench coats with machine guns and no one would have thought it odd.
Even as he thought it, a man walked swiftly past them wearing a long black
cape, a top hat, and carrying a cane with a silver skull on the handle. Yeah. Even Brandt wouldn’t stand out down here.
Shawn didn’t give the man a second glance, merely nodded at him idly in
passing and continued on his way. He turned them left on Rue St. Phillip, and they walked several blocks in silence. Shawn stopped dead in his tracks just as they were coming up on Royal Street once more and stared at the establishment on his left in abject horror.
“Something wrong?” Carl asked softly as he edged up to Shawn.
“It’s gone,” Shawn whispered, forgetting his affected accent momentarily.
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“What?”
“The bar. It’s not here,” Shawn hissed.
“We knew that,” Carl reminded in a low voice as he came closer to Shawn.
“You told us it closed down.”
“But… the bar,” Shawn breathed. “It’s been fronted over. There’s nothing
here.”
“What do you mean? Not here?” Brandt said as he lit a woman’s cigarette
for her and nodded as she thanked him and then moved on.
“Must be a private residence now,” Shawn murmured as he ran his hands
through his hair in agitation.
“What now?” Thiago asked in a patient voice as the man in the cape walked
by them again and entered the pub across the street. Thiago looked after the man
suspiciously. What was he doing, laps?
“Are you sure you didn’t have a Plan B, Shawn?” Nikolaus asked in a quiet
voice as the five of them unconsciously huddled together in the street.
“This is Beignet and Dixie you’re talking about, mate,” Carl said caustically.
“We’re lucky they had a Plan A.”
Thiago jabbed him in the ribs and glared at him even as he tried not to
snicker. Carl put his arm around Thiago and leaned closer to the others as Shawn
frowned in concentration.
“I don’t know. I don’t know where he’d go if he… if….”
“Yeah you do, Beignet,” Brandt said gently. “Just think for a minute. What
would he do?”
Shawn stared at Brandt for several seconds, then turned his head to look at
the bar across the street. Flanagan’s Pub. A sign sat out front advertising nightly Ghost Tours, and Shawn walked over to it slowly as the others followed in his wake.
“These used to start from The Morgue,” Shawn murmured as he pointed at
the sign. “Wonder if they’re the same ones?” he said as he turned to look at Thiago questioningly.
“Let’s just see about tickets then, shall we?” Thiago said pleasantly as he
dragged Carl with him into the pub.
VIII.
CARL looked around the pub warily. It was small. And it was dark. And it was
crowded. And it was loud. Carl did not like small, dark, crowded, and loud, not unless his target was there. It was so easy to kill someone in a place like this.
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The others seemed to know this, too, and even Nikolaus was hanging back in
the entryway warily. The more Carl saw of Nikolaus’s instincts, the more impressed he was with the man.
“See the cape?” Thiago murmured into Carl’s ear. Carl nodded. He had
noticed the man earlier, it was hard not to. “Does that look like a getup Remy would wear?”
“Certainly does,” Carl muttered.
He and Thiago separated without another word and spread out, and Shawn
walked up to the bar, heedless of the danger, to inquire of the bartender what had become of the spot where the Morgue had once stood. He was still taking unnecessary risks, seemingly not giving a shit whether he was putting himself in danger. Carl worried about him, and he worried about the rest of the group. Remy’s absence and Shawn’s indifference were destroying them, one day at a time.
Carl watched the man with the cape, trying to decide whether his
mannerisms and stature matched those of Remy. He didn’t think they did, but then, he had seen Remy morph from frightened little boy into hardcore assassin right in front of his eyes, so he couldn’t really be sure.
Just as Thiago re-entered Carl’s line of sight, the man in the cape jumped
onto a table and began banging his cane on the scarred tabletop. Carl blinked at him, his hand already at the gun in his shoulder holster, even if it was out of reach beneath the sweatshirt he wore, but the pub went silent and everyone turned to the caped man and listened raptly.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! Will everyone here for the Ghost
Tour please migrate over here to me? Thanks folks, if you can just… scoot… there…
nice….” Carl lost what he was saying as the chatter started up once more. Ghost Tour leader. How appropriate.
Carl shot Thiago a wry look across the room and started making his way
back toward Brandt and Nikolaus at the door.
“Sir? Sir? Please,” a small voice said from behind Carl, and it took him a
moment to realize that the woman was speaking to him. She tugged on the hood of his sweatshirt and he turned around to look at her. She was young and petite and sort of plain, not pretty but certainly not hard to look at. She blinked up at Carl as if he had surprised her, and he waited patiently for her to find her tongue, all the while keeping most of his attention on the patrons around him. Thiago was warily sidling closer to them, and Brandt and Nikolaus had begun to move toward him as well. “I was– that
is– we were wondering if you– my friends and I– if you would maybe… do us a,
uh… a favor,” the girl stuttered as she gestured toward two other women, both similar in height and build to her. Carl looked at them silently and then back at her, waiting for her to spit it out. “There are these guys… they’ve been following us around all night…,” she drifted off and her brown eyes widened theatrically.
Carl felt a presence behind him and turned slightly to see a man loitering at
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his left shoulder. The girl’s eyes widened further and she actually took a step
backwards.
Carl looked at the man and then back at the three girls, who were now fairly
cowering, and he turned to let his shoulder face the man in a subtly combative stance.
Carl’s eyes found Brandt, and Brandt’s eyes flicked to where Carl knew Nikolaus to be. Thiago and Shawn were probably hovering around somewhere as well, and this
man and his two buddies didn’t stand a chance if they decided to pick a fight.
“Can I help you, mate?” Carl asked coolly as he stepped in front of the little
brunette and into the path of the man’s drunken glare.
“Mate?” the man mimicked, and he turned to his two friends to have a nice
little chuckle.
Carl looked over his shoulder at the woman and raised his eyebrows
inquiringly. She nodded and stepped closer to him for protection.
“Please make them go away,” she pleaded in a whisper.
Carl turned back around to look at the three giggling morons and sighed
inwardly. This would take finesse. Carl wasn’t in the mood for finesse, goddammit!
He wanted to kill something!
He restrained the natural instinct to reach out and snap the man’s neck with
his pinkie finger, and he turned his back on the three men to face the girls once more.
“Were we going on this Ghost Tour, then?” he asked cheerfully, and they all
looked up at him gratefully. Carl put his hands out to the sides in a friendly manner, and they drifted toward him as if the circle of his arms would protect them from the three now angry men. With his outstretched hand, he gestured subtly for Brandt to join him.
“Oi! Mate! ,” the Head Moron said sarcastically in a horrible imitation of Carl’s accent. “I think you need to mind your own business.”
Brandt made his way through the tight crowd like a heated knife cutting
through butter, and Carl turned deliberately around to look at the men again. When he was facing the Three Morons once more, Brandt was standing beside him, his arms
crossed and his silver lighter in his hand, flicking, lighting, snapping closed. Nikolaus materialized from out of the crowd and stood on Carl’s other side, introducing himself to the three frightened women and calming them with easy smiles and humor.
Carl took a step toward the first man and smiled pleasantly. “Are you trying
to enlighten us as to what our business may be?” Carl asked icily, and he heard
Brandt’s lighter flare and snap closed behind him.
The man’s eyes widened and he backed away slightly, shaking his head. The
Three Morons made their retreat, and Carl turned to grin at Brandt. He hadn’t gotten to kill anything, but it had been rather fun, regardless.
Carl caught Thiago’s eye as he turned, and Thiago slid through the crowd to
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speak to him.
“Looks like we’re going ghostbusting,” Carl murmured as he watched
Nikolaus chat up the three women.
Brandt hovered as only Brandt could, and though the three women gave him
several wary glances, they looked to be more relaxed now that the immediate threat was gone.
“Keep an eye out. Shawn told me that Remy loves these things,” Thiago
whispered as he gestured toward the man in the cape. “The tours and ghost stories and shit. Watch for anything that might appeal to him. Tell Niko as well, he seems to know Remy’s… whatever it is. Preferences.”
Carl nodded and stepped toward the others, but Thiago grabbed him and
looked at him carefully.
“Stay out of trouble, if you can. And watch for Remy. He may be here.”
“Got it. What about you?”
“We’ll be around. Meet you back at the house in three.”
Carl nodded again and Thiago was gone, disappearing into the crowd. Carl
sighed heavily and turned around to look at the others.
Nikolaus smiled at him and said, “And that’s Barney,” Nikolaus said to the
three women. They all smiled shyly at him and Carl nodded.
“Thanks so much for that. They were really starting to creep us out,” the
alpha girl said sincerely.
Carl smiled. “No problem,” he said softly. It looked as if they would be
stuck with these women for several hours. The three of them turned to listen to the rest of what the Caped Crusader was saying, and Carl glared at Nikolaus. “Barney?”
he hissed.
“Hey, I could’ve used one of Remy’s names,” Nikolaus whispered back.
“You could’ve been Beauregard or Cletus or something, so no bitching.”
IX.
SHAWN and Thiago stepped back out into the cool night air together, and Shawn
sighed heavily.
“I’ve got shit for luck,” Shawn murmured as he looked at what used to be the
Morgue.
“Quit your sulking,” Thiago chastised with a slight smile to soften the blow
of his words. Shawn nodded and pursed his lips. “What did the bartender say?”
“The Morgue closed back in March of 2003,” Shawn said as he dug in his
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pocket for his cigarettes. He laughed humorlessly and shook his head. “It’s a private residence now. Fucking place,” he said as he lit his cigarette and offered the pack to Thiago.
“What’s the plan, then?” Thiago asked as he took a cigarette out of the
proffered pack and leaned in to light it with Shawn’s. Through the smoke, Shawn
could smell Thiago’s scent, and even as his body responded to the erotic memories it produced, his heart felt heavy with sadness and guilt.
It wasn’t a rational guilt. He and Remy had never been anything close to
exclusive. They’d shared notes on partners in the past, and by Shawn’s count, Remy had been with each of the other four men at least once. And that was the way both men liked it. But now, Shawn felt guilty at the drop of a hat.
“I’ll give you a tour,” Shawn told Thiago gruffly.
They headed toward Royal Street, walking slowly and without purpose,
simply enjoying the atmosphere and the semi-solitude. Shawn pointed up the street to indicate where the house was located, just to allow Thiago to regain his bearings.
“How did Remy afford that?” Thiago asked carefully as they walked.
“I never asked,” Shawn responded sadly. “I never asked him a lot of things I
should have.”
“He’ll be here, Shawn,” Thiago said sympathetically. “I can feel it.”
“Wish I could say the same,” Shawn said just before he grabbed Thiago and
pulled him out of the road as a vehicle flew by. Thiago looked at him with wide blue eyes and snorted. “Louisiana is one of the only places in the world where pedestrians aren’t given the right of way,” Shawn said as he patted Thiago on the head and
grinned. “They’re allowed to run you over. Which, when combined with the fact that pedestrians are allowed to carry open alcoholic beverages as they stumble through the streets, is probably not all that good a combination,” he added thoughtfully as a group of tourists walked by. Many of them held plastic cups with various kinds of almost lethal concoctions. Thiago smiled in amusement.
“Lovely, that,” Thiago murmured as they continued on.
It reminded Shawn of so many nights in the past when he and Remy had
walked like this. Just walked and enjoyed the companionship. They didn’t get much down time, but when they did, they always came here. Shawn closed his eyes and
breathed in the familiar scents. He could see Remy, walking beside him and smiling, gesticulating wildly as he told a story and waving to strangers and acquaintances alike. He could feel Remy’s body pressed to him, gripping him and pulling him into a side street for a stolen kiss, and he could hear him laughing merrily when they were caught by drunken tourists. He could smell him, that sweet familiar smell that was so like Thiago’s and yet unique. He could taste him.
God, he missed him.
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Shawn’s breath caught in his throat and he choked back the threat of tears. If
Remy didn’t show, he would end it. He would en
d it and put himself out of this
misery. Take the easy way out. The pain and guilt were almost unbearable now, and what little good his earlier cleansing had done was suddenly wiped away as the ghosts of New Orleans assaulted him.
Suddenly the hairs on the back of Shawn’s neck pricked up, and he knew
instinctively he was being watched. He felt Thiago stiffen almost imperceptibly
beside him, and he turned his head casually to look at the other man.
Thiago was on the alert, a trained eye could tell that much, and they shared a
concerned look before Thiago slowly bent down to tie his shoe. Shawn watched him, looking for movement out of the corners of his eyes, and Thiago took the opportunity to look behind them as he knelt.
“Anyone there?” Shawn asked without moving his slightly parted lips.
“I thought… someone’s out there, but I can’t see anything,” Thiago
murmured as he stood back up and they continued walking.
Shawn said nothing and kept his head down as he walked. Did he dare to
hope that it could be Remy? If it was, then they wouldn’t catch a glimpse of him.
They wouldn’t know it until Remy wanted him to know. Them. They wouldn’t know
it until Remy wanted them to know.
X.
THE Painter stood in the shadows of the sunken doorway he’d stepped into as refuge from the Argentinean’s seeking eyes. He watched as the two men walked slowly
away. They hadn’t seen him, but he’d gotten careless and they’d marked him
somehow.
His job was to watch and wait. He was, essentially, the laser that painted the
target, and he’d followed them all the way from Sydney without them sensing his
presence. But the amount of unbridled activity in this town made him edgy, and he’d been afraid of losing them. He had moved in closer and overstepped, and now they’d marked him.
“Fuck,” the Painter muttered as he looked at his watch and sighed. Two more
days of this and the Hunter would be here to clean up this mess.
He would have to back off and follow the other three. Trying to get close to
two Class One agents had been an idiotic thing to do, and the Painter mentally kicked himself for trying it. He waited until the two men had walked far enough away, then he started back down Royal Street toward Flanagan’s.