Everything is calm for a few days. Van goes on some dates, Angelina reads up on Arthurian mythology, Gavin practices as always. The Strausses decide that having Gwen able to eat would be very useful, and start poring over Hawley's notes. Alexandra builds a bunch of models which sit about on her workbench snapping and swallowing. They also talk to Gwen about it, and get her to allow them to examine her insides. Her whole front is on hinges!
The team also takes some time to name itself, finally settling on S.I.L.V.E.R. There is some disagreement on whether that stands for anything. The narrator personally likes "Sometimes I Like to Visit Emergency Rooms".
On Wednesday night Ryan Morrison turns up with an assignment from TNI. It turns out that the previous team at the Hospice went missing while on assignment in Louisiana. They were thought to have run off, and TNI searched for them for a while but found nothing. Then an operative bought something in Mama Jinky's voodoo shop in New Orleans.
The object in question is the severed forearm of one of the missing inquisitors. Its distinctive Mom-Heart-Ship tattoo identifies it. For those who are interested, it is the left forearm. Strangely out of the entire team, only Angelina seems disturbed by the arm.
Ryan goes on to describe what the team was looking into - one Georgie Bock, a man who claims to be 150 years old and to have been a slave before the Civil War. The team reported that they didn't really believe him after a couple of days of investigation, but was checking out a few last things. Then they were never heard from again.
The previous team: Louis Battanago, a former private eye from Detroit, who looks something like Peter Lorre. Jane Redbook, who has had plastic surgery and a new identity while running from really bad gambling debts. Her former name was Jennifer Lopez, and she is an entropomancer. The final member was Martin Derelle, a Louisiana native and general backwoods badass. It is Derelle's left forearm that turned up in a voodoo shop.
They apparently stayed for a couple days at a Best Western near Chateau Rouge (the little town where Georgie Bock lives) but never checked out, though their stuff was gone and the rental car was never found.
Van spends the evening with Tina before flying out, going to see "The Man Who Didn't Leave", a teenage romance film about a girl who dates a bad guy but reforms him in the end. Van realizes he doesn't like this type of film very much. Everyone else just packs, and arranges to have their various equipment - including the arm - sent to the Best Western. The next day they fly to New Orleans.
In New Orleans, Esteban and the Strausses decide to check out Mama Jinky's while the other two go to check in at the motel. The investigators visit a number of touristy voodoo shops as preparation, but don't really find anything useful, so they head to Mama Jinky's. The Strausses go in first and pretend to be German tourists.
The front room of Mama Jinky's has the same tourist crap as every other shop, but the Strausses poke at it anyway and chatter in German. Van comes in afterwards and goes for a direct approach, explaining that someone bought an arm in this shop and it was someone he knew, would she tell him where she got it? Mama Jinky prefers not to tell anyone anything, in order to keep her girlish figure. The narrator must in fairness note that she is roughly pyramidal, except for a tubular afro coming off the top of her head. She seems to be able to tell that Esteban is a mage, though not a very experienced one. "You got that new car smell!"
A bit of charm gets Van into the back room where Mama Jinky sells him a spell that will tell him if someone is alive or dead for $500. Van finds a preserved pair of feet - a woman's - and buys those too for $400, thinking that they might be Jane/Jennifer's. He escapes without having to flirt too much with the immense shopkeeper. The Strausses leave soon afterwards, and they head out to the Best Western which is about two hours drive from New Orleans. We should mention that on the way Van buys nine little goldfish from a dip-tank and three cute kittens, as well as a dozen eggs, a wooden bowl, and balsamic vinegar.
At the hotel, everyone is dismayed to learn that the kittens are going to be used in a ritual, and Angelina and Gavin absent themselves, leaving the mages to their work. Van writes "Jennifer Lopez" on an egg, cracks it into the bowl, mixes it with the vinegar, and dips three of the fish into it while chanting in bad French. Then he coaxes one of the kittens to eat the fish. The ritual seems to work, but the kitten lives, indicating that Jennifer is alive. Esteban tries the ritual twice more with the other two names, but it fails both times, leaving them with a little information and three live kittens. Later on that evening Van tries to dip some minnows out of the Mississippi but only gets wet and muddy (the fish have to have been caught by the caster).
The next day they make the hour-long drive into the bayou to Chateau Rouge, which proves to be about sixty buildings (trailers included) in the middle of swampy woods. There is a church, a couple of little stores, and two restaurants. One is extremely fancy and much better built than the rest of the town, and the other is a run down barbecue shack. The sheriff and an extremely wrinkly old black man are siting on the porch of Jack's BBQ Shack. The team confers a bit and then enacts two plans at once. The Strausses pretend to be lost while Angelina pumps the Sheriff for information.
The find out that the old man is Georgie Bock. He asks them if they've seen Frankie, who the Sheriff tells them is Georgie's pet monkey. They've got bald swamp monkeys around these parts. Georgie also is willing to go on semi-coherently about having escaped from slavery during the war and come here. He'll also talk about famous Civil War battles incoherently. It's hard to tell whether he's 150 years old or just old and senile. Sheriff Wain - Eustace Wain - seems to be mostly of the latter opinion, though he obviously likes Georgie.
They also find out from the Sheriff that the three they were looking for were in town in the spring and pestered Georgie a lot before heading off again. And they find out that the fancy restaurant, Mudbug Hollow, opened a few months ago and is a spot for yuppies to come and pretend to be slumming. "That's as real as they can take," says Eustace. He recommends Jack's himself. They actually see one of the naked swamp monkeys from a distance before it shrieks and runs off. It's pretty ugly.
Jack turns up and opens the shack and the group treats Georgie and Eustace to lunch. A huge pile of short ribs, long ribs, shredded pork, slaw, cornbread, and hush puppies costs them $100 with beer included. It's extremely good. Georgie spends most of the meal gnawing the meat off one long rib with his four teeth, but everyone else tucks in and enjoys themselves. After lunch they nearly run over another swamp monkey on the way out of town, but it runs off before they can catch it or get a good look at it.
In the afternoon they scout out the nearby riverboat casino, which puts off from Potter Bend at noon, 3, 6, and 9. The get on the 3:00, and Esteban finds out that Jennifer Lopez - or someone who looks like her, anyway - gambles there regularly. In fact, she was on the boat that morning, but got off just before they boarded. Gavin calls Ryan and gets cautioned that if she has been gambling a lot, as an entropomancer she's probably loaded for bear.
That evening Esteban goes on a date with the waitress he learned about Jennifer from and sees "The Man who Didn't Leave" once again. Everyone else watches the people who get on and off the boat, but fail to spot Jennifer or either of the other two. They all return to the motel and plot their next move.