The Best of Lucius Shepard (98 page)

Much
to my relief, no call came the following morning. I thought that Billy must
have checked out Pellerin and Verret, found nothing to benefit him, and hadn’t
bothered getting back to me. But around ten o’clock that evening, I fielded a
call from Huey Rafael, one of Billy’s people. He said that Billy wanted me to
run on out to an address in Abundance Square and take charge of a situation.

“What’s
up?” I asked.

“Billy
says for you to get your butt over here.”

Abundance
Square was in the Ninth Ward, a few blocks from the levee, and was, as far as I
knew, utterly abandoned. That made me nervous.

“I’m
coming,” I said. “But I’d like to know something about the situation. So I can
prepare for it, you understand.”

“You
ain’t need nothing to prepare you for this.” Huey’s laugh was a baritone
hiccup. “Got some people want watching over. Billy say you the man for the
job.”

“Who
are these people?” I asked, but Huey had ended the call.

I
was angry. In the past, Billy had kept a close eye on every strand of his web,
but nowadays he tended to delegate authority and spent much of his time
indulging his passion for reality TV. He knew more about
The Amazing Race
and
Project Runway
than he did about his business. Sooner or later, I
thought, this practice was going to jump up and bite him in the ass. But as I
drove toward the Ninth Ward, my natural paranoia kicked in and I began to
question the wisdom of traipsing off into the middle of nowhere to hook up with
a violent criminal.

Prior
to Katrina, Abundance Square had been a housing project of old-style New
Orleans town homes, with courtyards and balconies all painted in pastel shades.
It had been completed not long before the hurricane struck. Now it was a waste
of boarded-up homes and streets lined with people’s possessions. Cars, beds,
lamps, bureaus, TV sets, pianos, toys, and so on, every inch of them caked with
dried mud. Though I was accustomed to such sights, that night it didn’t look
real. My headlights threw up bizarre images that made it appear I was driving
through a post-apocalyptic version of Claymation Country. I found the address,
parked a couple of blocks away, and walked back to the house. A drowned stink
clotted my nostrils. In the distance, I heard sirens and industrial noise, but
close at hand, it was so quiet you could hear a bug jump.

Huey
answered my knock. He was a tall drink of water. Six-five, six-six, with a
bluish polish to his black skin, a lean frame, pointy sideburns, and a modish
goatee. He wore charcoal slacks and a high-collared camp shirt. Standing in the
door, a nickel-plated .45 in hand, he might have been a bouncer at the Devil’s
strip club. He preceded me toward the rear of the house, to a room lit by a
kerosene lantern. At its center, one of Pellerin’s bodyguards was tied to a
wooden chair. His head was slumped onto his chest, his face and shirt bloody.
The air seemed to grow hotter.

I
balked at entering and Huey said, “What you scared of, man? Lord Vader there
ain’t going to harm you. Truth is, he gave it up quick for being a Jedi.”

“Where’s
the other guy?” I asked.

“Man
insisted on staying behind,” Huey said.

I
had a sinking feeling, a vision of the Red House at Angola, guards strapping me
down for the injection. “Jesus Christ,” I said. “You tell Billy I’m not going
down for murder.”

Huey
caught me by the shoulder as I turned to leave and slammed me up against the
wall. He bridged his forearm under my jaw, giving me the full benefit of his
lavishly applied cologne, and said, “I didn’t say a goddamn thing about murder,
now did I?” When I remained silent, he asked me again and I squeezed out a no.

“I
got things to take care of,” he said, stepping back. “Probably take me two,
three hours. Here go.” He handed me the .45 and some keys. “You get on
upstairs.”

“Who’s
up there?”

“The
card player and his woman. Some other guy. A doctor, he say.”

“Are
they...” I searched for a word that would not excite Huey. “Uninjured?”

“Yeah,
they fine.”

“And
I’m supposed to keep watch, right? That’s all?”

“Billy
say for you to ask some questions.”

“What
about?”

“About
what they up to.”

“Well,
what did he tell you?” I pointed at the bodyguard. “I need something to go on.”

“Lord
Vader wasn’t too clear on the subject,” said Huey. “Guess I worked him a little
hard. But he did say the card player ain’t a natural man.”

* * * *

Some
rooms on the second floor of the townhouse were filled with stacked cots,
folding tables and chairs, and with bottled water, canned food, toilet paper,
and other supplies. It seemed that Billy was planning for the end times. In a
room furnished with a second-hand sofa and easy chairs, I found Verret,
Pellerin, and a man in his fifties with mussed gray hair and a hangdog look
about the eyes. I assumed him to be Doctor Crain. He was gagged and bound to a
chair. Verret and Pellerin were leg-shackled to the sofa. On seeing me, Crain
arched his eyebrows and tried to speak. Pellerin glanced up from his hand of
solitaire and Verret, dressed in freshly ironed jeans and a white T-shirt, gave
me a sorrowful look, as if to suggest she had expected more of me.

“It’s
the night shift,” Pellerin said and went back to turning over cards.

“Can
you help us?” asked Verret.

“What’s
up with him?” I pointed at Crain with the gun.

“He
annoyed our previous keeper.” Pellerin flipped over an ace and made a satisfied
noise. “He’s an annoying fellow. You’re catching him at his best.”

“Can
you help us?” Verret asked again, with emphasis.

“Probably
not.” I pulled a chair around and sat opposite the two of them. “But if you
tell me what’s going on with you, what’s the relationship between the Darden
Corporation and Tulane, the Ezawa project ... I’ll try to help.”

Pellerin
kept dealing, Verret gave no response, and Crain struggled with his bonds.

“Do
you know where you are?” I asked. “Let me you clue you in.”

I
told them who had ordered their kidnapping, mentioning the Alice Delvecchio
incident along with a couple of others, then reiterated that I could probably
be of no help to them—I was an unwilling participant in the process. I was
sorry things had reached this pass, but if I was going to be any help at all,
they ought to tell me what was up; otherwise, I couldn’t advise them on how to
survive Billy Pitch.

Verret
looked to Pellerin, who said, “He ain’t that damn sorry. Except where his own
sorry ass is concerned.”

“Is
he telling the truth?” she asked.

“More
or less.”

Crain
redoubled his efforts to escape, forcing muted shouts through his gag.

“I
guess that’s why you’re so expert at the tables,” I said to Pellerin. “You’re
good at reading people.”

“You
have no idea, Small Time,” he said.

I
wiggled the gun. “You’re not in a position to be giving me attitude.”

“You
going to shoot me?” He gave a sneering laugh. “I don’t think so. You’re about
ready to piss yourself just hanging onto that thing.”

“Josey!”
Verret started to stand, then remembered the shackles. “I’ll tell you,” she
said to me. “But I’d rather do it in private.”

Crain
threw a conniption fit, heaving himself about in his chair, attempting to spit
out his gag.

“You
see,” she said. “He’s going to act like that every time I tell you something. I
have to use the restroom, anyway.”

I
undid the shackles, then I locked Crain and Pellerin in and escorted her down
the hall, lagging behind a step so I could check out her butt. When she had
finished in the john, we went into one of the storerooms. I set up a couple of
folding chairs and we sat facing one another.

“May
I have some water?” she asked.

“Help
yourself.”

She
had a drink of water, then sat primly with the plastic bottle resting on one
knee. I knew I had to watch myself with her—I’d always been a sucker for tall
brunettes who had that lady thing going. She must have had a sense of this,
because she worked it overtime.

“Here’s
what I know,” I said. “The Ezawa project was investigating voodoo remedies. And
Josey Pellerin, according to your bodyguard, is not a natural man. That
suggests ... well, I’m not sure. Why don’t you just tell me everything?”

“Everything?
That’ll take a long time.” She screwed the bottle cap on and off. “The project
wasn’t considered important at the outset. The only reason Ezawa got funding
was because he was a golfing buddy of one of the trustees. And he
was
brilliant, so they were willing to give him some leeway. He isolated a
bacterium present in the dirt of old slave graveyards. He used dirt from the
graveyard at the Myrtles—that old house over in Saint Francisville? The bodies
were buried in biodegradable coffins, or no coffins at all, and the micro-organisms
in the dirt had interacted with the decomposing tissues.”

She
left room for me to ask a question, but I had none.

“A
DNA extract from datura and other herbs was introduced into the growth medium,”
she said. “Then the bacteria were induced to take up DNA and chromosomes from
the extract, and Ezawa injected the recombinant strain into the cerebellum and
temporal lobes of a freshly dead corpse. The bacteria began processing the
corpse’s genetic complement and eventually the body was revivified.”

“Whoa!
Revivified?” I said. “You mean it came back to life?”

She
nodded.

“How
long were these people dead?” I asked.

“On
the average, a little under an hour. The longest was about an hour and a half.
The process required a certain amount of time, so the bodies had to be secured
quickly.”

“Makes
you wonder, doesn’t it? Getting the paperwork done for releasing a body
generally takes more than an hour.”

“I
don’t know,” she said.

“Jesus.
Ezawa was basically making zombies. High-tech zombies.”

She
started, I presumed, to object, but I headed her off.

“Don’t
bullshit me,” I said. “I grew up voodoo. Datura’s one of the classic
ingredients in the old recipe books. I bet he tried goat’s rue, too ... and
Angel’s trumpet. The man was making zombies.”

She
frowned. “What I was going to say was, the term was appropriate for most of the
patients. They were weak. Helpless. They rarely survived longer than a day. But
there were a few who lived longer. For months, some of them. We called them
‘slow-burners.’ We moved them out to a plantation house in bayou country and
brought in a clinical psychologist to assess their new personalities. You see,
the patients developed personalities markedly different from the ones they
originally had. The psychologist, Doctor Edman, he believed these personalities
manifested a kind of wish-fulfillment. His theory was that the process changed
a portion of the RNA and made it dominant. ‘The bioform of their deepest wish,’
that’s how he put it. The patients manufactured memories. They recalled having
different names, different histories. In effect, they were telling us—and
themselves—a new life story, one in which they achieved their heart’s desire.
The amazing thing was, they had abilities commensurate with these stories.”

I
could have used some of Pellerin’s ability to read people. What she had told me
had a ring of authenticity, but if I were to accept it as true, I would have to
rearrange my notion of what was possible. I started to speak, but I was on
shaky ground and wasn’t certain which questions to ask.