People were carrying equipment and furnishings out of storefronts to pack them into the vans crowded along the sidewalks. The unlit interiors of some businesses had turned shop windows into mirrors dark as muddy pools, reflecting distorted images of the streetcar as it rolled down one of the city’s main streets. Though not deserted, the avenue seemed tired and lifeless.
He left the trolley at Bourbon and walked up that street. The heat was overwhelming. He saw a police cruiser in the distance. The restaurants and bars were shut, but he heard music playing inside some strip joints.
The heat seemed to get worse with every step. Breathing heavily, he looked up and caught sight of an elderly woman and a girl no older than ten who were removing flowerpots from balcony boxes and lining them up against the wall. The woman’s tears glinted in the sun. Dupree was surprised by a sudden, intense feeling of alarm. Her eyes met his. She watched his progress and slowly shook her head. She said one word. He read it on her thin, discolored lips.
“Bazagrá.”
His back tensed. Refusing to acknowledge her, he walked away, keenly aware of her watery gaze on his back. He quickened his pace. At the nearest corner, he turned left onto Ursulines Avenue, but he couldn’t keep himself from glancing over his shoulder for just an instant. The crone raised a small, dry hand that looked like a wrinkled leather glove. She waved at him. Her thin lips smiled and mouthed a word. He felt a sudden stab in his shoulder and a pain deep beneath his old wound. He gasped as memories flooded back, and pressed his palm to a spot just above his heart.
Dupree found himself in a blind alley and had to turn back. He hadn’t recognized the shop. He didn’t remember the address, and the carved wooden signs usually posted above the sidewalk had been removed so the winds wouldn’t carry them away. At last, he spotted the familiar front window. It was boarded over with newly sawn lengths of pine board. He saw the store’s familiar dark-maroon doors and ancient shutters.
He grasped the white porcelain doorknob and entered. Inside, a boy and girl, mere teenagers, were packing up merchandise from display cases, wrapping it in sheets of white paper, and carefully stowing the bundles in old fruit crates. Dark hair cascaded almost to their shoulders and long bangs dangled in front of their liquid brown eyes.
“We closed!” they chorused without stopping their work.
Dupree closed the door behind him. “I’m here to see Antoine.”
The girl stopped what she was doing and gave him a wary look.
“M’sieur Meire ain’t here,” she said in a melodious voice, watching him closely for a reaction.
“I’m sure he’ll be here for me,” Dupree said and reached into the interior pocket of his jacket. The boy put a hand under the counter, ready to grab a weapon if the situation called for it. Dupree smiled. He slowly showed them his two fingers and used them to extract a translucent cellophane envelope containing a banknote from his pocket. He held it so they could see the portrait of the president.
“Y’all tell him Grover Cleveland lookin’ for him.”
The kids grinned and exchanged a glance. The girl came to him, accepted the envelope, opened one end, tried the quality of the paper between her fingers, nodded, and gave it back. The boy gestured toward the back of the store, inviting him in. “Welcome, Mr. Cleveland; M’sieur Meire gonna see you now.”
The boy led him around dozens of cartons heaped high against the walls. In them Dupree saw card trinkets, empty skulls, and crude rag dolls with beads for eyes.
“Phony voodoo,” the boy muttered.
“What?”
“Crap for tourists.” He gave a little shrug of apology. He showed Dupree to the back and left him at the foot of a steep, narrow staircase, completely unlit, that seemed to stretch up at least two stories. As Dupree climbed into its darkness, he made out a dusky orange light at the far end, as if the third floor were on fire. The irregularly spaced steps echoed hollow beneath his tread.
The top floor was a loft. The stairwell appeared to be the only way to access the room. The air was heavy and still. Shafts of sunlight, insufficient to illuminate the room fully, came through a half dozen small vents. A number of gas lanterns carefully hung from the ceiling produced the strange yellow-orange glow he’d seen from the stairs. At the far end of the loft were two men, one white and the other black, both wearing coveralls, gloves, and surgical masks. They were packing gauze-wrapped objects that looked like dried roots or chunks of tree bark. The smell of earth, talcum powder, and musty flowers filled Dupree’s nostrils.
He knew they hadn’t noticed him, so he took a moment to watch them work. The black man was Jacques, who’d always been Meire’s assistant, as far as Dupree knew. The white man was Meire himself. His deep tan ran right up into his receding hairline, where it contrasted with a bushy white mane combed back in a style that reminded Dupree of Christopher Lee.
Meire’s left eye was blind. While playing in a harvested corn field at the age of three, he’d fallen headfirst and a jagged stalk had penetrated that eye. He didn’t lose it entirely, but the pupil and the iris were destroyed, their colors mixing to resemble a tiger’s-eye marble. Nana always said there are some folks who see too much, so fate maintains balance by depriving them of an eye. Antoine wore tortoiseshell glasses with a magnifying lens for his good eye and a plain lens for the blind one.
Meire and Jacques carried their dusty load to a metal table where a bag lay open. They wrapped the soiled contents in a second layer of gauzelike fabric that resembled a shroud. Dupree looked away and suppressed the urge to gulp for air.
“I’m always tempted to ask how they find ’em.” Meire’s voice was just as dusty as the brown residue on the surgical mask he pulled off his face with gloved hands.
Meire stood in front of him. That blind eye looked different than Dupree remembered. Its owner, aware of its hypnotic effect, held Dupree’s gaze for five seconds before giving him a sly wink. “Show it to me.”
Dupree held out the thousand-dollar bill. “The fact is—”
“Not a word!” Meire cautioned him. “I said I’m always tempted, but I never said I give in.” He pulled off his gloves, extracted the banknote from the cellophane envelope. With his other hand, he adjusted an overhead lantern and held the bill up against the light. “Grover Cleveland, our twenty-second president. And our twenty-fourth. The only man to occupy the White House in nonconsecutive terms.”
“I guarantee it’s real,” Dupree said.
“I know it’s genuine, even though those notes got no stripes or watermarks. Wasn’t the custom back in those days. There aren’t enough in existence to make counterfeiting worthwhile, and besides, my babies wouldn’t have let you up here unless it was real.” He smiled.
“Caleb and Emma?” Dupree was surprised. “My God, how the time passes! I remember when . . .”
Meire stepped toward Dupree and raised his glasses to peer into the agent’s face. “My, my—if it ain’t Andrew Aloisius Dupree!” he muttered. He stepped closer and for an instant seemed about to hug his visitor, but instead he put his glasses back on, took Dupree’s hand with both of his own. “Must be somethin’ serious. You wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
Dupree pressed his lips together and looked over his shoulder as if to admire the strange variety of goods that filled the room. He didn’t want to look into that eye. He fixed his gaze on the different colors of cascading human hair that hung like a curtain from a rod fixed to the ceiling. On one table, a bowl with a cork lid was full of molars. He saw cardboard boxes of dried animal parts. Silky shrouds, still marked by the reddish-brown outlines of bodies that had lain in them for years, were draped from hangers suspended from the ceiling, as if the souls of their deceased owners still inhabited them.