Chasing Shadow Demons Page 10

  “Dixie Mafia?” Tom said. “I’ve heard of them. They are some badasses mixed up in drugs and prostitution.”

  “That’s right, and much worse—murder. I brought cocaine from Colombia and transported cash out of the country. My luck ran out when I got busted in the Miami airport with a brick of cocaine. Instead of arresting me, Alric Jaeger, who was working the case for Interpol, made a deal with me. He allowed me to work off my charges by snitching on the Colombians selling the drugs.”

  “Sorry, Zach,” Maddy interrupted. “Tell them about Jaeger’s close ties to the Dixie Mafia.”

  “Oh yeah, his ties went back to the Ronald Reagan/George H. W. Bush administration when the White House and the CIA were using a retired airline pilot from Baton Rouge, Barry Seal, to work undercover to smuggle large amounts of cocaine into the US from Colombia. Seal hooked the CIA up with the Dixie Mafia. They weren’t mafia like the Italian Costa Nostra you see on television. They weren’t that organized. The Dixie Mafia is a loosely related group of criminals in the Southern states who dealt in prostitution, gambling, drugs, and other criminal enterprises. Jaeger’s connections at the CIA introduced him to some of the worst guys in the Dixie Mafia. He used them and they used him.”

  “I’m sorry, Zach, but I just have to interrupt. How does all of that stuff involve us and why are you here?” I asked.

  “Patience, Alexandra. I’m getting there. With the help of Maddy, I got off of the drugs. Jaeger decided to discontinue working with me when Barry Seal was gunned down by the Colombian Medellín Cartel in the streets of Baton Rouge. Then one day I backslid. A former boyfriend introduced me to heroin, and I was hooked immediately. I loved it. Once again, I needed money for drugs, so I turned to my contacts with the Dixie Mafia. They hooked me up with the leader, Kirksey McCord Nix Jr. He was running a lonely-hearts scam on gay men by placing personal advertisements in national gay magazines. When lonely, desperate men responded to the ads, Nix played on their compassion by saying he was having financial difficulties and needed money wired to me or another one of his pawns. Sadly, he received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the scam, preying on those poor, lonely men. I received money and drugs for helping.

  “Maddy got me off drugs again and I quit helping Nix. It was too late; the scam got busted by the feds. Someone in the Dixie Mafia called Jaeger for help. He stepped in to cushion the blow for Nix and the rest of the guys. He told me I had to go back to work for him or I’d go down with the rest of them. I had to help. So you see, Alexandra, when I disappear, I’m doing something for Jaeger.”

  “So why are you here in my kitchen telling me this now?” I asked, disgusted with the whole sordid story he’d just told.

  “Because you, Tom, and Piper are in grave danger.”

  I knew we were in danger because Victor most likely murdered Ethan. But I chose to play dumb, using my God-given investigative reporter talent to make Zach tell me everything he knew.

  “I know Victor wants Piper to go back to Los Angeles, but why would he hurt us?” I asked.

  “There are greater forces at work here. Jaeger told me Victor traffics in girls from around the world. He puts them to work in all convention cities like Las Vegas and Orlando. He wants to expand his prostitution ring into New Orleans. The Dixie Mafia doesn’t want the competition, and you can believe me when I tell you a war is coming. I don’t want you to be caught in the middle. For some reason, Victor wants Piper back in LA. Jaeger wanted me to pass messages to the Dixie Mafia advising them of Victor’s moves. He’s encouraging the war to get to Victor. He really hates the guy.”

  “Why would you put yourself in such a precarious position?” I asked.

  Zach looked at me with beleaguered eyes, much like a caged dog exhausted from trying to escape. “Jaeger threatened to get me prosecuted for my involvement with the Dixie Mafia gay men scam if I didn’t help him. I’ve been clean for more than two years. I don’t want to get mixed up with those thugs. I don’t have a choice. I am taking a big risk telling you all of this.”

  Maddy patiently sat by her brother’s side, not making a sound until she could no longer contain her emotions. Suddenly, the words she was holding in burst from her mouth like a crowd of Christmas shoppers rushing through the doors of Wal-Mart on Black Friday.

  “He’s trying to warn you, dammit! He doesn’t have to be here risking his life and freedom for you. He’s just trying to help,” she said as tears welled in her reddened blue eyes.

  “OK,” I said. “Thanks. I just wanted to know the bottom line. What are you telling me to do?”

  “You need to get out of town for a while. Why don’t you go to your farm in Indiana to lay low till everything blows over?” Zach said.

  Blood rushed to my face as my heart pounded in my chest. I felt my fists ball up instinctively. I narrowed my eyes at Zach. “We aren’t fucking going anywhere. New Orleans is our home. Piper, Tom, and I are a family. New Orleans is where we live, and New Orleans is where we’ll die if we have to. We won’t run and hide. That’s not what Americans do. Not after 911, not after Katrina, and certainly not after some Russian Mafia asshole threatens our family. Let the bastard come after us. We’ll be ready, right here, right now, in our city.”

  Tom rose to his feet, began pacing, and said, “You’re damn right we’ll be ready. We’ll fight the devil himself if that’s what it comes to. We are staying put!”

  Zach bowed his head. “You are right, Alexandra. My deal-making with Jaeger just prolonged my misery. I just felt like I needed to tell you what you’re up against. If you want to fight them, Maddy and I are with you till the end.”

  Maddy gave me her contact information before she and Zach left my condo. We decided to proceed with our lives, a little more cautiously but not frozen in fear. We talked about getting better locks, not letting our guard down, and one of us always being with Piper. Tom was adamant about that—not that I disagreed. For some reason, Piper was in the middle of this, and we needed to protect her. Then Tom went to work. Piper and I dressed in shorts, comfortable cotton tops, and walking shoes. We headed to the French Quarter.

  Charlotte, always Miss Punctual, sat at her favorite table by the sidewalk. She nibbled bird-style on a beignet while she sipped her black coffee. As usual, tourists and locals mixed among the tables in Café du Monde. Piper once again avoided the beignets but guzzled the café au lait. Piper and Charlotte really hit it off, and I saw how charming Piper could be with strangers. She steered the conversation toward Charlotte’s life history, avoiding revealing her own. We were so engrossed in our conversation, we didn’t notice the pale, blond-maned figure dressed in solid black approach the table.

  “Hi, Charlotte. Hi, Alexandra. Hi, dhampir,” the sullen figure uttered.

  I looked up to see a morose version of the person formerly known as Mandy Morris, party queen of New Orleans. She wore a floor-length black dress with lace trimming complemented by an even blacker bonnet-style hat accented by a black veil covering her pale face.

  “Good morning, Mandy,” Charlotte said without the slightest surprise in her voice. “You already know Alexandra. I’d like you to meet Piper.”

  “You really think I look like a dhampir?” Piper asked. “I always wondered if I were a mixed breed.”

  Mandy fixed her gaze on Piper, smiling brighter than she’d probably done in months. Mandy and Piper thoroughly inspected each other, making no sound for a full minute.

  Finally, I broke the silence. “What the hell is a dhampir?” I asked, not quite sure if I’d said the word correctly.

  Piper responded with the quickness and vigor of youth, “It’s a young female offspring of a vampire and a human . . . Duh! Vampire Academy?”

  Mandy nodded her approval. “I can see you will enjoy the tour today. Alexandra, as a New Orleans resident you ought to keep up with current popular literature of the bloodsucking persuasion.”

  What
ever. “What exactly are we going to tour?” I asked.

  “I am taking you on a haunted French Quarter tour. You’ll see the places where ghosts have been spotted by tourists and locals.”

  “Awesome,” Piper said. “I’ve read about ghost tours. I want to see Marie Laveau’s house.”

  Before she spoke another word, the rosy color drained from her petite face. Her mouth flung open. She turned to me to say, “Victor is sitting at that table in the center of the room.”

  Chapter Twelve:

  A Haunted World

  As I turned to look, my eyes met his. His photo didn’t do him justice. He was truly a handsome man, his bright green eyes visible from across the room. Had I not known he was an evil bastard, I might have thought him the most handsome man I’d ever seen. He was definitely the same guy I’d seen at the Court of Two Sisters. He mouthed, “Hello, Alexandra Lee.”

  Holy shit! He knew my full name. I’d seen this tactic before. Bart Rogan tried to scare me by showing up at a bail hearing using my name before we’d met. I knew he was trying to intimidate me, and just like Rogan he was a bully and a beast. His type can’t be reasoned with, because they only know the business end of a strong left hook. Or, if necessary, a bullet between the eyes. I looked away and instructed Piper not to even glance his way again.

  “Have a seat, Mandy. I’ll buy you a coffee,” I said.

  She declined, saying, “We should go now and begin our tour. Don’t want to disappoint the spirits. Disappointed spirits are angry spirits. And angry spirits are mean.”

  Great, I thought, a live asshole here and dead assholes on the tour. Not exactly the day I had planned. It was a good idea to leave Victor by himself wondering if his plan worked. Let him stew.

  As it turned out, we were dressed perfectly for the day ahead. Mandy was taking us on a walking tour of the Quarter. She began by taking us to the house of Marie Delphine LaLaurie, long considered a must-see spot in New Orleans.

  Madame LaLaurie lived at 1140 Royal Street, in a house befitting a person of means, with her second husband, Jean Blanque, a prominent banker, merchant, lawyer, and legislator.

  A kitchen fire revealed her heinous crimes when rescuers discovered she’d been torturing and killing slaves for years. Firefighters and eyewitnesses reported several men had eyeballs poked out and genitals mutilated. Women were chained to beds and mutilated, their abdomens sliced so their intestines could be wrapped around their waists. Other victims had amputated extremities. Some said another man’s joints were dislocated in order to force his limbs into positions resembling those of a crab. The good citizenry, led to an attic full of mutilated slaves by survivors of her attacks, formed a mob to track down and punish Madame LaLaurie. Unfortunately, she escaped through a back door to spend her remaining days in France.

  Mandy spoke in a low guttural tone as she related the history of the mansion to us. “Many visitors to this house report seeing spirits in chains wandering the halls, some horribly disfigured.” Oddly, she had a slightly upbeat lilt to her voice as if she was taking a ghoulish pleasure in the story.

  Piper hung on every word, snapping picture after picture of the house. She ooohed and aaahed her way through the next three houses we visited. Mandy told stories of brutal murders, suicides by hanging, and every sort of human depravity imaginable all with the same bass, gleeful tone in her voice. She sounded like the recorded voice you’d expect to hear welcoming all who dared to enter a haunted house on Halloween.

  We made our way to 941 Bourbon Street, to Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop. This is a bar that claims to be the oldest in the country. It served the pirate Jean Lafitte and his older brother, Pierre, during their respites from smuggling excursions in Barataria Bay near the mouth of the Mississippi River. Jean Lafitte worked his way out of trouble by helping the fledgling United States government defeat the British in the war of 1812. Patrons have seen ghosts of swashbuckling pirates and fully outfitted soldiers walking throughout the premises well into the late hours of the night. “They don’t seem to be dangerous, just thirsty,” one regular patron of the bar commented.

  Onward we trudged to a building I knew too well. Mandy smiled at me as we entered. “This is the condo owned by the infamous Quarter Killer,” she said. “He is credited with murdering and mutilating at least seven women, eight if you count his mother. Many of his victims were stabbed to death in the bathtubs, allowing them to bleed out without detection. The Quarter Killer currently resides in the Louisiana State Hospital for the criminally insane in Jackson, Louisiana, a short, two-hour ride from here. Some say the murdered gather here at night awaiting his return. Maybe revenge is their motivation.”

  Holy shit, she just creeped me out to the max. This was where Tom and I consummated our relationship. Right here on this balcony on Mardi Gras night. Mandy failed to mention that she regularly went to visit Bob in the asylum. How weird was it for her to tour us through this place? Weird or not, I couldn’t help but tingle remembering Tom entering me for the first time on the balcony.

  Piper loved the place and the story. “Tell me more about this Quarter Killer guy,” she said. “This is the finest place in the Quarter.”

  Mandy cast a coy glance my way and answered, “Maybe another time. We have to move on now. Disturbing the spirits’ privacy isn’t a good idea.”

  The more we toured, the more Piper came alive, hanging on every morbid word out of Mandy’s mouth. Electricity seemed to bolt from her eyes as we stood outside of the house on the corner of Ursulines and Royal, formerly belonging to Jacques St. Germaine. She grabbed my arm with excitement before Mandy uttered a single word about the house.

  Mandy directed her words to Piper, “This house used to belong to a young man from the picturesque South of France. He immigrated to the United States in 1902. His immense wealth gained him immediate social status in New Orleans. He was invited to society diners where he only drank one certain red wine he brought with him to each soiree. He never touched the food, delivering an unforgivable social insult to his hosts. His stay in the city was cut short when he attacked a young woman with his teeth, biting her viciously. The New Orleans Police raided this very house and were shocked to find a vast collection of wine bottles filled with his private label mixture of wine and human blood. Traces of human blood were found throughout the house. Ever since, he has been known as the Vampire of New Orleans. Some say he never left the city and still stalks the streets at night quenching his thirst.”

  Well, I thought, New Orleans, is a food city. I guess there’s something for everyone. Piper, Charlotte, and Mandy were so engrossed in the grisly stories of murder and mayhem they didn’t notice the two men stalking us during most of the tour. I kept an eye on them, studying their faces, clothes, and mannerisms. Clearly they weren’t from New Orleans. No one in the Big Easy wears dress slacks and wing-tipped shoes walking the streets of the Quarter for hours. I kept my purse strategically slung over my shoulder giving me easy access to my loaded .38.

  After the tour, I took Piper to see the artists in Jackson Square painting their masterpieces. She walked from one to the other asking questions while admiring their work. The musicians took a shine to her as she danced to their music doing a teenage jig unrecognizable to me. Most likely one of her own creation, unrecognizable to anyone else either. The men following us had disappeared. I wondered if they were lurking somewhere along the narrow streets in the Quarter preparing to ambush us. I stayed vigilant the entire trek from Jackson Square to our car, ready to display my Annie Oakley quick draw abilities. My eyes darted side to side each step of the way as Piper prattled on about the sights and sounds she’d experienced during the day. She had fallen headlong in love with the Big Easy, begging me to buy a place in the French Quarter for us to live.

  My mind kept spinning, working to figure out how those overdressed stalkers knew where to find us. Did Mandy set us up? Too many unanswered questions circulated through my wea
ry brain. Once in the car, my muscles relaxed—until my phone rang, making me nearly jump out of my skin. It was Detective Baker again.

  “Alexandra, I need you to come to the precinct.”

  “When?”

  “Now,” he said.

  Piper and I walked into the familiar confines of the police precinct, still dressed in our haunted tour clothes. I felt a little underdressed and certainly overexposed. Who could I trust? Victor was in the city, Zach and inspector Alric Jaeger had some type of clandestine relationship, and Mandy was just plain weird. Walking into the interrogation room did nothing to ease my fears. Jaeger sat next to the two men who’d followed us all day. What the hell was going on here? Piper sat at the table and scooted her chair closer to my side, butting against my chair. She hooked her arm in mine as she looked across the table at the assembled trio.

  Baker looked at Jaeger and nodded.

  “Ms. Lee,” Jaeger started. “As you know, we are investigating a group of criminals from Russia doing business in the United States. Our information confirms Victor Ivanovich has business with you. At our last meeting the girl said she had no idea what Victor wanted from her. Does she remember now?”

  I cast my eyes toward Baker, who sat in silence, motionless. “I have no business with Victor Ivanovich, and neither does ‘the girl.’ And for your future reference, her name is Piper. Who are these two guys, and why did they follow us all day?”