Medusa (11 page)

“He can’t be the first guy to have brought you flowers.”
 

“Oh, no. But he’s so . . . intense. With the others, it’s kind of a game. With him . . . I keep expecting him to propose, or something.”
 

“Really? Would you say yes?”
 

Mafalda threw back her head and let out a long, cruel-sounding laugh. The throaty-voiced whore was back. “Honey, be serious. He came on way too strong. He seemed . . . I don’t know, too curious. A little scary. Kept asking me questions about my personal life, and one of the first things you do in this business is to keep that off limits.”
 

I shrugged. A second before I had thought the way to Samson Fain might be through Corsack and this strange young woman. Now I wasn’t so sure. Mafalda was definitely beautiful, but I was beginning to believe that Corsack had brought me to this place to make a fool of me, or to further some agenda of his own with her, motivated only by his glands. In either case, she had nothing to do with his case, as far as I could see. Corsack would have to make an honest woman of Mafalda on his own time.
 

“There was something you wanted to show me.”
 

“There is. I thought maybe we could go somewhere . . . quieter, after my next set. It’s my last for the night.”
 

“Well, Mafalda, you are a lovely woman, and it’s been great talking with you, but I think it’s time for me to go.”
 

The green eyes widened. She clearly wasn’t used to men leaving before she was ready for them to go.
 

“Oh, not already.”
 

“I have to. I have business to take care of.”
 

“Oh. I understand. An early morning. Well, promise me one thing. If you’re here for a few days . . . promise me that you’ll come see me again.”
 

“Hmm. I don’t make promises very often, Mafalda.”
 

She said nothing. Instead, she just gave me a look: smoldering green eyes, pouting red lips, an angel lost in that demon face.
 

“I’ll try,” I heard myself say.
 

“By the way, honey, what’s you’re name?”
 

“Call me Roland.”
 

She shivered and hugged herself, and gave a little squeal. “Oooo. I like that. It sounds so strong.”
 

I went back into the barroom. Tiller looked at my face and rose from his seat. “Anything?”
 

“Nothing.”
 

I looked down at Corsack. “Okay, friend, whatever you are up to with this stripper lady, we’re through with you. This has been a complete waste of our time, just like I figured, and you’ve given us nothing to go on.”
 

“Wait. You are leaving?”
 

“That’s right.”
 

Corsack was on his feet, now. “No, wait, you cannot.”
 

“Yes, I can, and I am. Come on, Tiller.”
 

We walked out the front door, past the beady-eyed bouncers and loitering strippers. Corsack followed us.

“Please, Mister Longville, did you not talk with Mafalda? Did you not ask her questions?”
 

“Corsack, I want you to stop wasting our time. I told you I am here on an investigation. Not to help you chase women.”
 

Corsack grabbed my arm. His face wore a desperate expression.
 

“I told you truth, Longville. You must believe. Here, I give you the proof.”
 

Corsack produced a piece of paper from inside the jacket of his powder-blue suit, and he held it out to me, a pleading expression on his face.
 

It was a flier, a cheap homemade ad with a photograph at the top. I stood and looked at it for a long moment. After a minute, I silently handed the paper to Tiller.
 

Tiller looked at the picture and nodded. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “That’s him.”
 

He handed the picture back to me. It appeared to have been taken at a circus, or a fair. The background featured several garishly painted clapboard booths. Five people stood in the foreground. In the center were two women, one older, looking like a kindly old grandmother. Incongruously, Mafalda stood next to her, in a vintage burlesque outfit. On one side were two men, one large and sullen looking, with limp blond hair covering his eyes. The other man was thin and wiry, with hard black snakelike eyes.
 

On the other side of the two women, however, was a really big man, a head taller and almost twice as broad as the simple-looking blond man. He was densely muscled, with a wide, glowing smile. His head was shaved bald. He wore a pair of wire-rimmed glasses.
 

I sighed and looked at Corsack.
 

“Samson Fain,” I said, in a voice almost too soft to be heard over the dim sounds of the bayou night. I looked at Corsack. The Man from Somewhere Else had eyes as black as the Louisiana night. His face wore no expression, now. The dark eyes were searching my face.
 

“You’ve had this all along?”
 

“No. I steal it from Mafalda’s dressing room while the two of you are outside talking. I know it is there, because I have seen it before when I take her flowers.”
 

“But you still lied. When we first met. You knew when you came up to my hotel room that we were looking for Samson Fain. That’s why you were tailing us in the city. Just how in the hell do you know who we’re looking for in the first place, Corsack?”
 

Corsack opened his mouth to respond, but suddenly his black eyes darted to the foot of the ramp. I turned. There were three men standing down there, burly, country-looking men. Scruffy beards. Flannel shirts with rolled-up sleeves. Blue jeans and work boots.
 

“I’ll teach you to mess with my girl, you black bastard!” The one in the front shouted at me.
 

I smiled congenially. “Being the only gentleman of color present, I assume that you’re talking to me. And judging from your general appearance, you must be talking about the lovely Rhonda.”
 

The big man hesitated for a second, looked back at his friends. “Uh-yeah,” he said, with considerably less bravado. One of his friends mumbled something that ended with the words chicken shit. Great, I thought, an egger-on.
 

The biggest man, the one smitten by Lady Rhonda, the self-proclaimed biggest whore of the Blue Bayou, came at me with a whiskey-fueled roar of rage. I stood and let him come up the ramp. When he got there, I ducked under his wildly launched roundhouse swing and gave him a quick, hard jab in the ribs, and another in the solar plexus. The wind went out of him, and I was around behind him, and had him in a full Nelson hold.
 

“You going to give me any more trouble, country boy?”
 

The man shook his head sluggishly. The fire of his rage had suddenly gone out, and now he was just a deflated man with a little too much Jim Beam in him.
 

“I shorry. Pleash just let me go.”
 

I did let him go, and directed him toward his friends with a stern pat on the nape of the neck. I looked down at the man’s glaring friends.
 

“You fellas want any more trouble?”
 

The men started backing warily away with their deflated friend in tow. The clump of booted feet behind them made me, Tiller, and Corsack all turn back to the door of the Blue Bayou. It was the bouncer. He stood looking at us with a comically stern look on his face.
 

“Okay, mister, I told you already. No more trouble, remember? You’re banned.”
 

I grinned and gave him a theatrical bow. “With pleasure.”
 

Tiller grimaced on the way to the car. “Christ, Longville, I can’t take you anywhere.”
 

We climbed back into the car. I turned and looked at Corsack.
 

“Okay, you’ve made your point. This dancer is connected to Fain. I need to talk to her some more, obviously. So can I assume that you know where she lives?”
 

“Yes. Yes, I know.”
 

“While we’re at it, would you mind telling us how you knew who it is we are looking for in the first place?”
 

“Do not be so modest, Mr. Longville. I remember the face of this Fain from the news years ago. I go into Mafalda’s dressing room, I see his face. Later, I search Internet to make sure, and in the results I find your name and picture. When you come here, I recognize you, too.”
 

I mulled the likelihood of all of that over for a second. “So, Corsack, was it you that contacted me? Sent me those clippings? Left me those messages, telling me Fain was down here somewhere?”
 

Corsack shook his head, slightly. “I do not know what you mean.”
 

I looked hard at Corsack for a minute. My gut instinct told him that he was telling the truth. I started the car and pulled out of the parking lot and headed back toward the lights of New Orleans.
 

The car fell silent. I drove for a while, receiving occasional directions from Corsack, who eventually navigated us to an apartment building near a neighborhood of brownstones called Lafayette Square. “Here is where she lives. The Medusa. I am most curious about the photo from the dressing room. I have asked her often about where she once lived, but she refused to tell me. She likes you. This I can tell. Perhaps you can get her to tell you these things.”
 

“Christ, this guy’s a stalker,” Tiller mumbled.
 

I smiled to myself. If only you knew, Tiller.

Chapter 13

Later, after we had dropped Corsack at a seemingly random place on the streets of New Orleans, I returned to Mafalda’s apartment building around 3:00 a.m., and even the streets of the Big Easy were quiet at that hour. I walked through the central courtyard of the Brownstone where Corsack had taken us earlier, and up to the front door of Mafalda’s ground level apartment. I rang the bell and stood squarely in front of the door, so that whoever was inside could inspect me through the peephole lens embedded in the center of the door, just above an old-style brass knocker.
 

After a second, I heard the faintest patter of feet inside, and the peephole darkened. Then there was the rattle of locks, and the door opened a slit. Mafalda stood there in the half light for a second. She had a strange look on her face.
 

“Roland,” she said simply.
 

“I wanted to talk some more,” I said in a quiet voice.
 

“What happened to your early morning?”
 

“Let’s forget that for right now. I’d rather talk to you.”
 

“It is getting late . . .” Mafalda said, but her voice trailed off and she smiled slightly and gave a little shrug. She backed away, opening the door. “Oh, never mind. Why not? I mean, I practically invited you, after all.”
 

I walked behind her into a small foyer that opened onto a big main room, the back wall of which was all clear glass that boasted a view of a lighted swimming pool. It was furnished very nicely, I thought: high grade leather furniture, real paintings from artists I couldn’t identify, healthy tropical plants; a huge aquarium with exotic, colorful fish.
 

“Very nice place you have here,” I observed aloud.
 

“Oh, thanks, but it’s not really mine. It belongs to a friend of mine who’s out of town.”
 

Which might mean it belongs to a sugar daddy of mine who lives out of town, I mused.
 

“Drink?” Mafalda asked, her back to me, as she moved to a bar along the wall to the right.
 

“No thanks.”
 

I do not drink. I am a recovering alcoholic, and have been dry for some seven years. Some days I think that I have beaten it forever. Other days I know that is almost impossible.
 

“Suit yourself.” She mixed, what I could tell from its coloration even at this distance, a good quality Scotch and soda, with plenty of ice. She took a swallow and stood looking at me with a smile, swirling the drink. I heard tiny tinkles as the ice clinked against the sides of the glass. Her eyes were exceptionally green at that moment, and I was pointedly aware of her deep sexuality. I tried to put her svelte body and the smell of the Scotch that now wafted faintly to me aside. I was here to find Samson Fain, and this woman knew him, maybe even knew his whereabouts . . . and she was perhaps even helping to hide him. Danielle LeGrandville was missing, and might still be alive somewhere.
 

I have to find her, before it’s too late.
For a moment I felt like a man falling into a deep dark hole.
Her body, don’t think about her body . . . the Scotch, don’t think about the Scotch.