Chapter 8 Thiago
Chapter eight
Thiago
“Henri didn’t conduct that night.”
Dominic said it without looking at us as he settled into a chair at the kitchen table.
“He organized it. Katrina had scattered musicians from Baton Rouge to Houston to Atlanta. Some hadn’t come back yet. Some didn’t know if they would. Henri tracked each one down individually. Called them. Asked them to come to Jackson Square on the anniversary. He spent weeks on those calls.”
Luca sat with his elbows on the table and his hands loosely clasped. I leaned against the counter behind him.
“The gathering wasn’t spontaneous. That’s what the video made it look like. The cameras arrived after the music had already been going for several minutes.”
I watched as Dominic placed a hand on the table. “And when it moved toward the final chorus—“
“I was there. Someone needed to shape the performance as others joined. I knew how to do that, and I did it.” He paused. “The camera focused on me doing it.”
“And Henri?”
“Henri was behind the musicians.” Dominic looked down at his folded hands. “He stayed there.”
A kettle whistled on the stove. Luca pulled it before it reached full pitch and poured three mugs of tea. He set one in front of Dominic and one near my end of the counter.
“What happened between you afterward?” I asked.
Dominic considered the question. “For some years he attended the anniversary events. We saw each other frequently.” He turned the mug slightly. “Then he stopped coming. I didn’t notice after a while, which is its own kind of failing.” He looked at me. “Only recently has he started appearing again.”
I picked up my mug and sipped.
Luca was working through something. His brow furrowed briefly.
“He told me tonight instead of you,” he said to Dominic. “At the reception.”
“Yes.”
Luca set his mug down. “He’s not being subtle. He wants us to understand exactly what he’s doing and why.”
“He’s a man who wants a witness,” I said.
Dominic looked at me, holding his gaze for a moment, then picked up his mug and drank.
“I should have said something twenty years ago,” he said. “Not to the press. To him.” He set the mug down with a small, decisive click. “I didn’t, and now I owe him a debt that I might have to pay on his or someone else’s terms.”
He pushed back from the table, stood up, and picked up his hat.
“Goodnight,” he said. “The two of you figure it out.”
He went upstairs.
Luca and I remained in the kitchen while Dominic’s footsteps moved overhead and settled. I set my mug down and rested a hand on his shoulder.
He glanced back at me and reached up to cover my hand with his. Then he pushed back from the table and stood. He moved close enough for me to see a faint crease between his eyebrows. He was thinking.
I didn’t move and didn’t speak. He reached for me.
The kiss wasn’t tentative. It was purposeful. He pressed his lips against mine, seeking entry with his tongue.
Luca’s right hand settled against my ribs.
His body was solid. Lean, not heavy. I reached for the back of his neck, and he moved forward, the length of his body pressing into mine.
I parted my lips, and his tongue slipped into my mouth. He reached up and raked his fingers through my hair.
When we finally pulled back, neither of us stepped away immediately.
His hand slid down and rested briefly at my hip before he let it fall.
I started, “That’s another—“
Luca pressed his index finger against my lips. “Not now.”
When he pulled it away, I returned to the conversation about Henri. “Someone who avoids a story for twenty years and then steps back into it—“
“Isn’t doing it by accident.” Luca finished my thought. “He’s been watching the anniversary plans develop for eighteen months. There has been no public announcement, but he knows the concert is Dominic’s farewell.”
“And he’s going to use that knowledge.”
Luca looked at me. “To set his plans in motion.”
“They’ve been in motion,” I said. “We’re catching up.”
After another brief kiss and saying goodnight, I took my tablet to the guest room and sat at the desk without turning on the overhead light. The ceiling fan turned in the dark, with the pull chain ticking like a metronome.
I sent Michael a note asking for Henri Fontenot’s financial records for the past eighteen months and any documented contact between him and the Orpheum’s current production staff. Then I asked for any visible overlap between Bridget Marchand and Henri in the past year.
My phone showed 1:08 a.m.
Down the hall, the gap under Luca’s door was dark.
The Orpheum performance was eight days away.
***
We returned to the theater for another rehearsal the next day. The Orpheum had been standing on University Place since 1921, meaning it had outlasted two world wars, a catastrophic hurricane, bankruptcy, abandonment, and a thorough restoration effort.
We arrived at eight-thirty in the morning, an hour before the first rehearsal call. Dominic sat at a folding table stage left, working through score annotations with the orchestra librarian.
I began my sweep. The floor was original pine, dark with age. I’d read that Ella Fitzgerald had performed here, as well as Louis Armstrong.
I looked up at the balcony. This time, I climbed the stairs to the balcony itself. I was at the railing when Luca stepped up beside me with a man I didn’t recognize.
Jules Guidry was the musician from Lafayette who had been in Jackson Square in 2006. He propped his saxophone case against the seat beside him and carried coffee in a foam cup in his opposite hand.
He was a black man in his sixties, tall and broad-shouldered, with gray hair fringing a bald crown. According to Luca, he was a fixture in the city, a jazz musician who wouldn’t be part of Dominic’s orchestra, but almost everyone present would recognize him on sight.
Jules smiled at me and offered a hand to shake. “This here kid from Jackson Square said you wanted to meet me.”
Luca laughed. “I wasn’t a kid when I met you and put twenty dollars in your case.”
Jules snapped his fingers. “You listened to me play ‘Saints,’ and yeah, you were a skinny kid. Look at you now.”
“I was twenty-five.”
Luca formally introduced us, and Jules assessed me with an open expression. When Luca said Dominic had hired me for security, Jules nodded. “Mr. St. Clair runs a tight ship.”
We asked about 2006.
In a languid storytelling style, he confirmed what Dominic had told us the night before. Henri had made the calls. Jules received one himself. He’d been in Lafayette since the storm, staying with a cousin while trying to decide whether to return to New Orleans.
Henri tracked down his number and called on a Tuesday evening. They talked for forty minutes.
“He didn’t ask me to perform,” Jules said. “He only asked me to come home.”
Jules drove back the following week.
On the anniversary itself, the musicians arrived alone or in pairs.
There was no specific program. Henri greeted them quietly, reconnecting musicians who hadn’t seen each other since before the storm.
When the sound gathered and the crowd understood what it was hearing, the whole thing came to life.
“You can’t organize a moment like that into existence,” Jules said. “You can only prepare the ground and get out of the way.”
Then he added one more piece.
Henri stayed behind the musicians the entire time. When Dominic stepped to the center and raised his hand for the final chorus, Henri was in the crowd watching.
“At the time, I thought he was just giving us players the center stage.” Jules paused. “Then I thought about it more later, when the video went around.” He looked at Luca. “Henri’s a proud man. He wasn’t vain—proud. Vain men want applause. Proud men want the record accurate.”
I had one more question. “Have you seen him recently?”
“Yes, and he’s lighter now. You can see it on his face. Lighter than I’ve seen him in years. I thought at first maybe he’d finally made some peace with the square.”
He glanced between us. “You boys eaten? There’s a place on Rampart—“
“He’s working,” Luca said.
Jules glanced at me and understood. “Never mind.” He waved it off. “Tell Mr. St. Clair I said hello.”
He picked up his case and stepped into the aisle.
After he left, Luca turned toward me. “He would have told you things over food that he won’t say in a theater. For Jules, it’s a sacred space. There are things you don’t talk about in church.”
“I know. We’ll catch up with him if we figure out what to ask.”
“He’ll feed you whether or not you’re buying.”
“I’ll bring wine.”
“He’ll tell you it’s the wrong kind.”
Tuning began as an oboe sounded the A. The brass joined in, and the full sound of the orchestra rose until the process was complete.
Dominic entered from stage left, and the musicians were silent. He stepped up to the podium. That was when I saw the mark.
The spike tape was as visible as always—pale gold against the dark pine—but the position was wrong. Someone had moved it forward, maybe six inches.
Dominic stopped and looked down. Then he stood with the baton loose in his hand. He turned toward stage right and nodded briefly.
Micah Landry stepped onto the stage. He spoke briefly with Dominic, who gestured with the tip of the baton.
Micah crouched, produced a small blade, and lifted one edge of the tape.
He repositioned it roughly two inches back, not at the original mark.
Dominic stepped onto the podium in the new position, looked at the assembled orchestra, and nodded.
Micah smoothed the tape flat and returned to stage right.
Dominic stopped the orchestra at the approach to the final chorus of “Saints.”
He tapped the podium with the baton. “We are not celebrating. We are returning. There is a difference. Play it as if you’ve been somewhere difficult and you’ve come back. The arrival is what matters.”
He counted them in, and they played the passage again. The sound was slightly more aggressive, fuller.
During the lunch break, I walked the stage alone.
I crouched beside the tape and measured the distance to the lip with my palm and fingers.
Thirty-two inches to the drop, give or take.
The original documented position had been closer to thirty-six.
I turned around to look toward the house.
I was now far enough forward to be beyond any shadows cast by the proscenium arch. A better sightline.
I found Micah in the stage-right wing, breaking down a cart. He walked me through the changes. When he arrived, someone had already shifted the mark.
“He’s the one who has to stand on it,” Micah said.
I asked for the stage door sign-in sheet covering the previous evening. He said I’d have it within the hour, then turned back to his crates without elaboration.
Luca was sitting in the house, three rows back from the stage with his phone and a coffee. He looked up when I sat beside him.
“Well?”
“Micah found the mark already moved. Corrected it partially and used Dominic’s approval to set the final position.
” I looked at the empty stage. “His behavior across every visit has been consistent, and there is no reason to doubt the story.” I paused.
“He also had the longest unsupervised access to this stage of anyone in the building.”
“So he stays on the list.”
“Everyone stays on the list.”
Luca set his phone face down on his knee. “What Dominic said this morning. About the arrival. Play it like you’ve been somewhere difficult and you’ve come back.”
“Yes.”
“He wasn’t just talking about the music.”
I stood and pulled out my tablet. “I need the stage manager before the afternoon session.”
“I’ll come,” Luca said.
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to.” He stepped past me into the aisle. “I want to see how you ask questions when you think the answer matters.”