The Axeman's Jazz

New Yorker? They’ve got twelve-step programs everywhere.”
    “I’ve had financial reversals. Or haven’t you heard?”
    “How would I have heard in this backwater?”
    “My last book didn’t sell for shit. That one.” He pointed at her lap. “Nobody wanted to hear that stuff.”
    He paused a moment while Skip tried to think of something to say. “Idiots!” he said. “They just want a lot of false hope and stupid sermonettes. Nobody can face the truth about all this crap. They want everything to be rosy and they don’t want to listen to anybody who says it isn’t.” His sudden anger shocked her, seemed out of proportion.
    She felt much as she had when she was talking with Di— as if she were in the presence of some insanity too mild to notice at first glance, but unmistakable up close. And the Axeman would be that way, she thought; he would probably pass as a solid citizen; a little eccentric, perhaps, but wasn’t everybody?
    Why was it that way?
    Because in a sense Alex was right, she thought. If your breakfast companion was a little nuts, you didn’t want to think about it too hard—you didn’t want to think about where “a little nuts” might take him. You wanted to think a nationally known author couldn’t possibly be a murderer, these things just didn’t happen.
    He said, “I grew up here, you know.”
    It was all she could do not to ask him what schools he’d gone to.
    He yawned. “Things are cheap here now. And they’ve got as much of what I need as anywhere.”
    “Material for research, you mean.”
    “Yes. Pretty clever setup when you get down to it. Except I have to live in this hellhole. What do you do here?”
    “You mean what kind of work?”
    “I don’t know. Half the people I’ve met in these programs don’t seem to do a goddamn thing except go to one meeting after another. What’s your poison?”
    “I work. Petty bureaucrat.” She wrinkled her nose. “Civil-service job.” She held her breath. If he asked the next obvious question, she’d have to say she was a cop—it would be too dangerous to lie.
    “What do you do for fun?”
    She thought about it, decided to tell the truth. “Precious little. I guess mostly I’m trying to adjust to the place. I don’t know if I fit in either. Mostly I don’t, I guess.”
    “And so you thought you’d toddle on down to Coda and make some new friends. You wouldn’t be the first.” He swallowed the last beignet nearly whole.
    “I’ll bet you’ve made a few little friends there yourself.”
    He gave her his pirate’s smile. “It’s all research. Anyway, I’m new in town—or newly returned—and I live alone—why not?”
    “You live alone?”
    “Do I seem like the married type to you?”
    No, but your house does
. Instead, she said, “Where do you live?”
    “Uptown.” His chin dropped a little and Skip took note of it. It probably happened whenever he was lying. She hoped she’d remember that. “Why do you ask?”
    “In the meeting you said your mother died. I wondered if you inherited property.”
    “That’s not your business.” He didn’t sound angry, just stating a fact. But stating it very clearly; setting boundaries, as the twelve-steppers said. (As he’d no doubt said himself in earlier books.)
    “Come on, I didn’t ask you what schools you went to.”
    “Why did I get the impression you were changing the subject? About who’s married and who’s not—you, for instance.”
    “Not married.”
    “Otherwise involved?”
    “Um-hmm.”
    “How heavily?”
    She spread her hands, not knowing how to answer.
    “Good. Want to go out tonight?”
    “Otherwise involved.”
    “No problem. Monday.”
    She made her smile discreet, eager not to seem too eager. “Okay, Monday.”
    “I want to be alone with you.” He touched the back of his hand to her cheek.
    In a way she found the gesture repulsive, the sentiment a little scary. Alex struck her as someone in the grip of a giant ego without a lot of brains for backup, as well as a man caught in a peculiar maelstrom of anger, a condition she sensed he didn’t even begin to comprehend. She didn’t like the man and she was wary of him, even a little frightened; yet her stomach flopped when he touched her face.

THIRTEEN
    SHE MEANDERED OVER to the Voodoo Museum on Conti Street. A young black woman with beads and corn rows was minding the store, reading a book on herbal medicine. Plenty of herbs were being offered for sale in the museum’s gift