“I must admit this is pretty cool,” Jamilla said. “Quite the stunt. So visual. Now what?”
Daniel was followed onstage by eight men and women in crisp white palace uniforms. And two white tigers. It was a pretty amazing spectacle. Two female performers held up a huge oriental fan in front of Daniel and his high-stepping horse. My eyes were glued to the stage.
“Jesus,” Jamilla muttered. “What the hell is this?”
“They’re ripping off Harry Houdini, like the man said. And they’re doing it well.”
When the two women slowly pulled the fan away, Daniel was gone. Now Charles was seated on the white horse.
“Once again—Jesus,” said Jam. “How do they do that?”
Somehow, Charles had changed into black trash and glitter. The smirk on his face was totally, incredibly arrogant. It showed utter disdain for the audience, but they seemed to love it, to love him. A puff of smoke, and the audience gasped as one.
Somehow, Daniel was back onstage, standing alongside Charles and the beautiful horse. The illusion was masterful. Everyone in the audience jumped up and clapped wildly. The screams and piercing whistles hurt my ears.
“And that,” Daniel announced, “is only the beginning! You ain’t seen nothing yet!”
Jamilla looked at me and her mouth sagged. “Alex, these guys are very good, and I’ve seen Siegfried and Roy. Why are they playing at these little clubs? Why are they wasting their time here?”
“Because they want to,” I told her. “This is where they look for prey.”
Chapter 62
JAMILLA AND I watched both magic shows that night. We were amazed by the calmness and the confidence exuded by Daniel and Charles. Following the second show, the magicians went home. The agents on surveillance there said it appeared the two were home for the night. I didn’t get it, and neither did Jamilla.
Eventually, around three in the morning, she and I returned to the Dauphine. Two FBI teams would stay near Daniel and Charles’s place until morning. We were becoming frustrated and confused. We had a lot of manpower working their butts off.
I wanted to ask Jamilla up for a beer, but I didn’t. Too complicated for right now. Or maybe I was just getting chickenshit as I got older. Maybe I was even a little wiser. Nah.
I was up again at six, making notes in my hotel room. I was learning some things I didn’t want to know, and not just about magic tricks. I now knew that in the vampire underworld, the area surrounding the main home of a sire, regent, or elder was known as the domain. The FBI and the New Orleans police had staked out the neighborhood in the Garden District where Daniel Erickson and Charles Defoe lived.
The house was located on LaSalle near Sixth. It was grey-stone and probably had as many as twenty rooms. The house sat on a hill, with a high, reinforced stone outer wall similar to the outer curtain of a castle. It also had a large, deep cellar, which wouldn’t have been possible in the swampy, sea-level terrain without the elevation of the hill. No one on the task force would admit that they believed in vampires, but everyone knew that a series of brutal murders had been committed and that Daniel and Charles were the likely killers.
Jamilla and I spent the next two days surveilling the house, the domain. We worked double shifts, and nothing could relieve the tedium. A scene that sometimes comes to mind when I’m on stakeouts is the one in The French Connection, Gene Hackman standing out in the cold while the French drug dealers eat an elaborate dinner in a New York restaurant. It’s like that, just like that, sometimes for sixteen or eighteen hours at a stretch.
At least LaSalle Street and the Garden District were pretty to watch. The sugar and cotton barons of the mid-nineteenth century had originally called this home. Most of the hundred- and two-hundred-year-old mansions were beautifully preserved. The majority were kept white, but a few were painted in Mediterranean pastels. Placards informing the frequent “walking tours” about the esteemed residents were affixed to intricate wrought-iron fences.
But it was still surveillance, even sitting side by side with Jamilla Hughes.
Chapter 63
DURING THE stakeout on LaSalle Street, she and I found that we could talk about almost anything. That’s what we did through the long hours. The topics ranged from funny cop stories to investments, movies, Gothic architecture, politics, then on to more personal subjects, like her father, who had run out on her when she was six. I told Jamilla that my mother and father had both died young from a lethal combination of alcoholism and lung cancer—probably depressio
n and hopelessness too.
“I worked for two years as a psychologist. Hung out a shingle,” I told her. “At the time, not too many people in my neighborhood in D.C. could afford treatment. I couldn’t afford to give it away. Most white people didn’t want to see a black shrink. So I took a job as a cop. Just temporary. I didn’t expect to like it, but once I started I got hooked. Bad.”
“What hooked you about being a detective?” she wanted to know. She was a good listener, interested. “Do you remember an incident, any one thing in particular?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. Two men had been shot down in Southeast, which is where I live in Washington, where I grew up. The deaths were written off as ‘drug related,’ which meant not much time would be spent investigating them. At the time, that was SOP in D.C. Still is, actually.”
Jamilla nodded. “I’m afraid that it is in parts of San Francisco too. We like to think of our city as enlightened, and it can be. But people out there are good at looking the other way. Makes me sick sometimes.”
“Anyway, I knew these two men, and I was almost certain they weren’t involved in selling drugs. They both had jobs at a small local music store. Maybe they smoked a little weed, but nothing worse than that.”
“I know the types you’re talking about.”
“So I investigated the murder case on my own. A detective friend named John Sampson helped. I learned to follow my gut. Found out that one of the men had been dating a woman who a local dealer thought he owned. I kept digging, following my instincts, digging a little deeper. Turns out the dealer had murdered the two men. Once I solved that case, it was all over for me. I knew I was good at it, maybe because of all the psych training I’d had, and I liked making things right. Or maybe I just liked being right.”