* * *
Chapter 21: Tchoupitoulas
The building looked like nothing.
That was the point, probably. A two-story commercial structure on Tchoupitoulas, brick facade, roll-up metal door on the ground level, a single exterior light that buzzed faintly in the dark. The street was quiet, warehouse district at eight in the evening, the kind of neighborhood that had daytime purpose and nighttime absence. A few cars. No pedestrians.
Dominic parked a block away. They walked without speaking.
He had the key, an actual physical key, old-fashioned, the kind that came with properties that hadn't been updated in decades. The lock on the side entrance was newer, a deadbolt added at some point after the acquisition, but the mechanism was the same: simple, functional, un-alarmed.
He pushed the door open.
I went in first.
* * *
The ground floor was storage. Metal shelving units, some full, some empty, the residue of a business that had used the space without ever really occupying it. The air was the particular stillness of a place that was maintained but not inhabited, dust on the surfaces, but not heavy dust. Someone came through regularly. Not regularly enough.
I had a flashlight. He had one too. They didn't speak, had agreed before arriving that sound was a variable they could control and that controlling it was worth the inconvenience.
I went left. He went right.
The ground floor took twelve minutes. Nothing.
The stairs were in the back, metal, industrial, the kind that announced each step. I went up slowly. Dominic followed.
* * *
The second floor was different.
It had been an office once, the ghost of a drop ceiling, fluorescent light fixtures, the rectangular shadows on the floor where furniture had stood for years and left its impression in the grime. Someone had cleared it out. Not recently, the clearing-out had been done a long time ago, and then the space had been left.
There was a door at the far end. I moved toward it.
The door was locked. Not with a key, with a combination padlock, the kind you bought at a hardware store, the kind that looked identical to the locks on a thousand storage units in a thousand cities and for that reason attracted no attention.
I looked at it. Then at Dominic.
He reached into his jacket and produced a piece of paper, small, folded twice. He unfolded it and held it toward my flashlight. A sequence of numbers, handwritten, in a script I didn't recognize.
I looked at him.
"My father's files," he said quietly. "I didn't know what it was for. It was attached to the building documentation." A pause. "I brought it in case."
I looked at the padlock. At the numbers.
I spun the dial.
The lock opened.
* * *
The room behind the door was small, maybe eight feet by ten. Shelving on two walls, empty. A workbench along the third wall, scarred and old. And on the workbench: a metal document box, the kind with a simple latch, the kind that was fireproof and waterproof and had been manufactured in large quantities in the 1990s for exactly the purpose of keeping things safe in an era before everything was digital.
I stood in the doorway for a moment.
Then I walked to the workbench and opened the box.