Every Dead Thing

“Who’s dealing with the case?”

“Morphy’s bunch, in theory. In practice, a lot of it is likely to devolve mainly to us, since it matches the MO on Susan and Je

“You’re cutting me out.”

“You can’t be too involved in this, Bird. You know that. I’ve told you before and I’m telling you again: we’ll decide the extent of your involvement.”

“Limited.”

“Damn yes, limited. Look, Bird, you’re the link to this guy. He’s called once, he will call again. We wait, we see.” He spread his hands wide.

“She was killed because of the girl. Are you going to look for the girl?”

Woolrich rolled his eyes in frustration. “Look where, Bird? The whole fucking bayou? We don’t even know that she existed. We have a print, we’ll run with that and see where it takes us. Now pay the check and let’s get out of here. We’ve got things to do.”

I was staying in a restored Greek Revival house, the Flaisance House, on Esplanade, a white mansion filled with dead men’s furniture. I had opted for a room in the converted carriage house at the rear, partly for the seclusion but also because it contained a natural alarm in the form of two large dogs who prowled the courtyard beneath and growled at anyone who wasn’t a guest, according to the guy ma

When we reached the Flaisance, Woolrich turned on an early morning game show and we waited, unspeaking, for Brillaud to arrive. He knocked on the door about twenty minutes later, long enough for a woman from Tulsa to win a trip to Maui. Brillaud was a small, neatly dressed man with receding hair, through which he ran his fingers every few minutes as if to reassure himself that there was still some there. Behind him, two men in shirtsleeves awkwardly carried an array of monitoring equipment on a metal trolley, carefully negotiating the wooden external stairway that led up to the four carriage house rooms.

“Get cooking, Brillaud,” said Woolrich. “I hope you brought something to read.” One of the men in shirtsleeves waved a sheaf of magazines and some battered paperbacks that he had removed from the base of the trolley.

“Where will you be if we need you?” asked Brillaud.

“The usual place,” said Woolrich. “Around.” And then he was gone.

I had once visited, through Woolrich, an anonymous room in the FBI’s New York office. This was the tech room, where the squads engaged in long-term investigations-organized crime, foreign counterintelligence-monitored their wiretaps. Six agents sat before a row of reel-to-reel voice-activated tape recorders, logging the calls whenever the recorders kicked in, carefully noting the time, the date, the subject of the conversation. The room was almost silent, save for the click and whir of the machines and the sound of pens scratching on paper.

The feds do love their wiretaps. Back in 1928, when the FBI was called the Bureau of Investigation, the Supreme Court allowed almost unrestricted access to wiretaps of targets. In 1940, when the attorney general, Andrew Jackson, tried to end wiretapping, Roosevelt twisted his arm and extended taps to cover “subversive activities.” Under Hoover ’s interpretation, “subversive activities” covered anything from ru

Now the feds no longer have to squat by junction boxes in the rain trying to protect their notebooks from the elements. Judicial approval, followed by a call to the telephone company in order to have the signal diverted, is usually enough. It’s even easier when the subject is willing to cooperate. In my case, Brillaud and his men didn’t even have to sit in a surveillance van, smelling one another’s sweat.

I excused myself for five minutes while Brillaud worked to hook up both my own cell phone and the room phone, telling him that I was just heading for the kitchen of the main house. I left the Flaisance and strolled through the courtyard, attracting a bored glance from one of the dogs huddled in the shadows. I walked down to a telephone by a grocery store one block away. From there, I called Angel’s number. The machine was on. I left a message telling him the situation and advising him not to call me on the cell phone.

Technically, the feds are supposed to engage in minimization on wiretapping or surveillance duties. In theory, this means that the agents hit the pause button on the recorder and tune out of the conversation, apart from occasional checks, if it becomes apparent that it’s a private call unco

“We can order coffee up, Mr. Parker,” he said disapprovingly.

“It never tastes the same,” I replied.

“Get used to it,” he concluded, closing the door behind me.

The first call came at 4 P.M., after hours of watching bad TV and reading the problem pages in back issues of Cosmo. Brillaud rose quickly from the bed and clicked his fingers at the technicians, one of whom was already tugging at his headphones. He counted down from three with his fingers and then signaled me to pick up the cell phone.

“Charlie Parker?” It was a woman’s voice.

“Yes?”

“It’s Rachel Wolfe.”

I looked up at the FBI men and shook my head. There was the sound of breath being released. I put my hand over the mouthpiece. “Hey, minimization, remember?” There was a click as the recorder was turned off. Brillaud went back to lying on my clean sheets, his fingers laced behind his head and his eyes closed.

Rachel seemed to sense that there was something happening at the other end of the line.

“Can you talk?”

“I have company. Can I call you back?”

She gave me her home number and told me she pla

“Lady friend?” asked Brillaud.

“My doctor,” I replied. “I have a low tolerance syndrome. She hopes that within a few years I’ll be able to cope with idle curiosity.”

Brillaud sniffed noisily but his eyes stayed closed.

The second call came at six. The humidity and the sound of the tourists had forced us to close the balcony window, and the air was sour with male scent. This time, there was no doubt about the caller.

“Welcome to New Orleans, Bird,” said the synthesized voice, in deep tones that seemed to shift and shimmer like mist.

I paused for a moment and nodded at the FBI men. Brillaud was already paging Woolrich. On a computer screen by the balcony, I could see maps shifting and I could hear the Traveling Man’s voice coming thinly through the headphones of the FBI men.

“No point in welcoming your FBI friends,” said the voice, this time in the high, lilting cadences of a young girl’s voice. “Is Agent Woolrich with you?”

I paused again before responding, conscious of the seconds ticking by and the “number withheld” message on the cell phone display.

“Don’t fuck with me, Bird!” Still the child’s voice, but this time in the petulant tones of one who has been told that she can’t go out and play with her friends, the swearing rendering the effect even more obscene than it already was.