The Julius House

Sooner than we had any right to expect, our vigil was rewarded. Carl must have been persuasive or righteous over the phone. A pickup squealed up, a white one with a fancy pattern of fuchsia and green flames painted trailing down the side. "Don't know where he can park," Angel muttered. "There's only one spot left on the whole street, and that's right in front of us ... Shit, was I stupid! Get down!" The pickup did indeed maneuver into the space against the curb ahead of our rental car. The driver would have to walk right past us. I dove down onto the floor board and compressed myself into as tiny a ball as possible. Angel, as usual, had had her hair pulled back in a ponytail; now she yanked out the band that held it, fluffed her hair quickly, and unfolded our New Orleans map with hasty fingers. She held the map up, partially obscuring her face, where the bruises were fading and there were only a few scabs left. I heard the pickup door slam and heavy steps pass quickly by the car.

"Is he going to their house?" I whispered.

"Shut up! Yes!"

After a long moment, Angel said, "Okay, you can sit up. He's inside."

"Did you get a good look at him?"

"Yeah." She had the strangest expression as she gathered up her hair and bound it back into her customary ponytail. "So?"

"It was the man who tried to kill us."

The ax-man, somehow in league with Melba Totino and her sister Alicia? So he wasn't in any way involved with my husband's Latin American ventures; we could safely have called the police when he attacked us. We could be on the right side of the law, instead of Martin's side.

"So. We follow him?" Angel asked.

"I guess so," I said. "Can you figure this out?" Angel shook her head. But she wasn't unconcerned; her mouth was compressed into an even thi

From being basically indifferent about what she considered a personal obsession of mine, Angel had graduated to being vitally interested in the Julius case. So we both watched eagerly for the man's emergence from the little house. "We better not be here when he comes out again," Angel said, and she started the car. We drove around the block until we were positioned on a cross street so that when he came out, we would be able to fall in behind him unless he did something crazy, like attempting a U-turn on the narrow, crowded street. I was able to see him for the first time when he shut the door of Alicia Manigault's house behind him. He was tall and muscular, and he looked younger than I'd remembered him. He wore jeans and a work shirt, with the sleeves rolled up. His hair was dark and curly, and he was cleanshaven; Angel and I had been good witnesses. It was hard to square this ail-American blue-collar hunk with the maniac waving an ax who'd so nearly mowed me down a few days before. "He's walking a little stiff," Angel said happily. "I think we banged him around some."

"I hope so."

He strode to his lurid pickup truck and started it up. We drove out of Metairie and across the Huey E Long Bridge and went south steadily. After at least twenty miles, he turned right, and we followed him. He didn't seem to be looking out for cars following him, or for anything else. "An amateur," Angel muttered. I couldn't tell if she was pleased by our attacker's amateurism, or disgusted, or enraged. If it was difficult following him at night, she didn't say so.

Now we were on a narrow road with a bayou on one side, houses on the other. There were boats lining the bayou, with signs for swamp tours, promising alligators and abundant wildlife. Most of the signs featured the word "Cajun." The lighting wasn't good, but the white truck with the bright blazes painted on the side was fairly easy to spot. Finally it slowed and turned into one of the narrow driveways. We had to drive on past, and I stared as hard as I could in the dark to see a sort of cabin with a screened-in front porch. Ax-man had parked the truck under a carport, which the truck shared with a battered blue Chevy Nova and a tarp-covered boat.

"That's the car he was driving in Georgia," Angel said. We drove on until we came to a juke joint, where Angel pulled in and parked. We looked at each other questioningly.

Neither of us knew what to do next.

"We could watch all night, or we could come back tomorrow, or we could call Shelby from a pay phone in there." Angel nodded her head towards the bar, from which came loud zydeco music and a fairly constant flow of in-and-out traffic. I wasn't about to go in there.

"Let's find out more before we call Shelby," I said. "I want to know who lives in that house."

Chapter Sixteen

IT RAINED THE NEXT MORNING, steamy relentless rain that made the inside of the rental car damp and sticky despite the air-conditioner. We went from the Hyatt Regency in urban New Orleans to the cabin in rural south Louisiana, a sort of cultural leap that sat better with Angel than it did with me. By the time we got there, the truck was gone, but the old Nova was still parked where it had been the night before.

There were neighbors close to this cabin; lots facing the bayou were as valuable as waterfront property anywhere, especially since most of the people along this stretch of road apparently made their living giving tourists swamp tours. On the other hand, since tourists were common, we didn't stick out as obviously as we might have. A tiny souvenir shop sitting cheek-by-jowl with a boat tour departure site was already open. The man inside, dressed in camouflage greens and browns, his rough black hair in tousled waves, looked like a refugee from a Rambo movie. Angel put on some lipstick and slid from the car. "He's more my type," she told me. "I'll see what I can find out." The rain had settled down to a very light drizzle.

She'd left her elastic band off this morning, and her blond hair fluffed prettily around her narrow face. In a pair of tight jeans, a sleeveless T-shirt, and sneakers, she could stop traffic if she chose, and this morning, she did choose. She sauntered up to the service window of the little shack, rested her elbows on the sill, and within a minute was deep in conversation with the dark-haired man, whose white teeth flashed in a constant grin. Angel was smiling, shrugging, tossing back her hair, and in general behaving atypically. But it seemed to be quite effective. When she started back to the car, she turned around several times to call back, as he extended the conversation. "Whoo," she said in relief, as she slid into her seat. "Talk about Cajun! He had an accent so thick you could cut it, and could charm the birds from the trees, too."

"What did he say?"

"I told him this long story... I'd met this guy in a bar last night, and I didn't know his name, but he had this really distinctive truck and lived somewhere right about here. And then I said I'd lost the napkin with his name and phone number, but I was trying to track him down before he called me, because I suspected he was married. And I wanted to know for sure before I went out with him."

"And?"

"This guy in the souvenir booth wanted me to forget about the man I'd met last night and go out with him instead, but I told him I'd promised the man I'd meet him tonight, though I'd shove him off if he was married." Angel made a circular sweep with her hand to indicate how long this badinage had taken her. "What it all boils down to—the ax-man is renting this cabin, has been for a couple of years now. No one owns a house along this road that isn't Cajun, by the way, because of some law that the houses go to family members and no one ever sells, but this particular house, the only son is in the Army right now and just wants someone to live in it until he comes back from his tour of duty—or something like that."