One flew over and landed on my shoulder. I laughed. The man laughed too, and we smiled at each other.

The bird's feet scratched and tickled my shoulder. He gently pushed his beak into my hair.

"Erk," he said into my ear. "ERK."

"I never knew who I was before," the man said. But now he was Vic Willing.

"Erk! Erk!"

"You'll see, Claire," he said, smiling, in his mellifluous southern voice, "when you open your eyes."

"Erk!"

"The blood just washes off." He looked down at his hands, clean and white.

"It's like," he said, and I got the idea that he was telling me something very important, "it's not like it never happened at all," he said, the birds preening his white hair. "That wouldn't mean anything. It's like it all happened, every last bit of it. But somehow, you can go on anyway. Somehow, you can know every last bit of it and still go on."

Vic looked happy but I was overcome by a sour feeling. Jealousy.

I looked down, and my own hands were covered in blood.

"Your time is coming," Vic said. "Ain't no one forgotten about you, girl. But you got to be patient. Maybe the most patient of them all. But at the end, I promise you, is something glorious."

When I woke up, I knew the Case of the Green Parrot was closed.

And I knew that, like Jack Murray, I would go to h.e.l.l and back before I solved the rest of my mysteries.

58.

AFTER SOME COFFEE I drove out to the Industrial Ca.n.a.l and dropped in the gun I'd bought and the weapons I'd taken from Andray. Back in my room I put together a little package explaining who'd done it and why with a bill for my services and put it in an express mail envelope for Leon.

When I was packed and ready to go I sat on the bed and made a call to Washington, D.C.

I'd missed my flight into New Orleans because of a case I solved that involved a Homeland Security officer and a girl who wasn't his wife.

But I wasn't going to miss my flight out. I had a favor I'd been saving for a rainy day, and today it was pouring. I wanted to get out of here and back home to California as soon as possible.

"I'm sorry," the man who answered the phone said brightly. "The senator really can't talk to anyone without an appointment."

I hadn't talked to the senator in three years, not since I'd solved a mystery no one else could fix for her. She didn't want to owe me. But she owed me all the same.

"Could you tell her?" I asked. "You could just tell her I'm on the phone."

"I'm sorry, I-"

"You could try," I said. "Because she'll want to talk to me. Just write it down. Write it down on a little slip of paper and-"

"The senator really can't-"

"She can."

"She won't-"

"She will," I said.

Less than a minute later the senator picked up the phone.

"Sorry about that, Claire," she said. "He's an aide-he didn't know."

"It's okay," I said. "But listen. I could use a favor."

"Name it," she said, all business.

I told her about the trouble I'd been having flying.

"So I was hoping you could help me out with that," I said. "I was hoping I could just get on the airplane from now on, you know, like a normal person."

"Of course," she said. "Absolutely. It's done."

"Thank you," I said. "Thanks a lot. I really appreciate that. But the thing is, I've got a flight tonight. A flight home from New Orleans. Louis Armstrong Airport. And I really, really don't want to miss this flight."

The senator had come to me when no one else would help her, when there was no one else she could trust. It's funny how people forget those times. You'd think I was the one who put her daughter in that opium den.

She paused for a second too long before she answered. But it was the right answer. "Of course," she said. "I'll take care of it. I'll call the airport myself. I'll do it as soon as we're off the phone."

We thanked each other again and I hung up.

I picked up my suitcase. I felt like my bones had been replaced by lead, my blood by oil.

That's the thing about being a private eye. The job will bleed you dry. No one ever says, Hey, maybe the PI needs a break. Hey, let's buy the PI a drink. No thank-you cards, no flowers, no singing telegrams, and half the time you don't even get paid.

59.

A FEW DAYS BEFORE Constance died we stayed up late one night talking in her parlor, each of us on one of her long velvet sofas. Of course, I didn't know she was going to die soon. But I knew change was coming. I felt it in my blood, I saw it when I slept. That night she was in a rare mood. Usually she taught by example and metaphor, dream and command, but tonight we drank wine and talked and she answered a few of my questions directly. Her white hair was piled on her head and she wore black silk pajamas from Hong Kong. She smelled like violets always, and sometimes like a special shampoo she used from Paris, and the old-fashioned makeup she bought on Ca.n.a.l Street.

Not many good things had happened to me before I met Constance. But after I met her I knew how to recognize the good parts of life and stay with them for a minute or two before they flew away, joining the dead wherever the dead go. This was one of the good moments: her hair, her smell, her house, Mick sleeping in the spare room, all of us a family.

I loved New Orleans. I thought I was finally home. I loved the city so much, it hurt sometimes.

"The truth is a funny thing," Constance said. "Just when you think you've got a hold on it, it slips away."

"Then why do it?" I asked. "Why bother to solve mysteries? Don't they ever end?"

Constance laughed. "Oh, no," she said. "No. Mysteries never end. And I always thought maybe none of them really get solved, either. We only pretend we understand when we can't bear it anymore. We close the file and close the case, but that doesn't mean we've found the truth, Claire."

"Then what does it mean?" I asked.

"It only means that we've given up on this mystery," Constance explained. "And decided to look for the truth someplace else." She yawned. "That's enough for now, dear. You go on and get some sleep. I'll see you in the morning."

"Good night," I said. I stood up and turned around. But then a strange feeling overcame me and I turned back around. Suddenly tears were streaming down my face.

"I..." I began.

"Yes?" Constance said. It was dark, and she couldn't see I was crying.

"I ... Thank you," I said. I realized I had never said it before. "For everything. Thank you."

Constance looked at me and smiled.

"You're welcome, my dear," she said. "You are very, very welcome."

I nodded. Then I turned and started toward the door. I would never see her alive again.

"And yes," Constance called out behind me. "I love you too, Claire."

Acknowledgments.

Thanks to Dan Conaway, Andrea Schulz, Angus Cargill, Megan Abbott, Mark Levine, Suzanne Gran, Warren Gran, Dawn Asher, and Bobby Urh for their time, generosity, help, and kindness to this book-and to me-over the years it took to write it.

end.