EQMM, November 2006



















* * * *

ELLERY QUEEN MYSTERY MAGAZINE

November 2006

Vol. 128 No. 5. Whole. No. 783

Dell Magazines

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ISSN 0013-6328 published monthly except for double-issues of
March/April and September/October.

Cover illustration by Jenny Kahn.





ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE. Vol. 128, No. 5. Whole No.
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* * * *

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CONTENTS

ABOUT THIS ISSUE

A Word From the Editor

The Artists



FICTION

Libre BY BARBARA HAMBLY

The Sugar Train BY EDWARD D. HOCH

The Death of Big Daddy BY DICK LOCHTE

Dead Men's Shirts BY JULIE SMITH

Monday at the Pie Pie Club BY TONY DUNBAR

No Neutral Ground BY SARAH SHANKMAN

Acts of Contrition BY GREG HERREN

Sneaky Pete From Bourbon Street BY JOHN EDWARD AMES

When the Levees Break BY O'NEILDE NOUX

The Code on the Door BY TONY FENNELLY



REVIEWS

The Jury Box BY JON L. BREEN



POETRY

Eternal Return BY JAMES SALLIS



DEPARTMENT OF FIRST STORIES

Evening Gold BY WILLIAM DYLAN POWELL





LIBRE by Barbara Hambly

* * * *




* * * *

Art by David Sullivan

Barbara Hambly lived in New Orleans for
three years with her late husband, science fiction writer George Alec
Effinger. The city provides the setting for her crime fiction, the
pre-Civil War Benjamin January series. What better way to begin a
journey through time and the New Orleans of mystery-writing imagination
than with a tale of January, former slave and sometime sleuth. Ms.
Hambly's new novel is Renfield, Slave of Dracula.

"If they fear she has been kidnapped, why not call the City
Guard?” Benjamin January paused on the steps that led up to
the gallery of the garçonnière,
looking down at his mother in the narrow yard. He'd just returned from
teaching his first piano class of the winter—new students,
Americans, in the suburb of St. Mary upriver—and had been
hoping to get a few hours’ nap before he had to dress up
again and play for a subscription ball over on Rue Orleans. There was a
saying among the musicians of New Orleans, You can sleep
during Lent—which wasn't entirely true because the
holy season was dotted with “exceptions,” like
Washington's Birthday balls—but the week or two after the
first frost were always the worst. He'd played for the opening of the
French Opera House last night, and had gone on to provide quadrilles
and pantaleones at a ball at the townhouse of a wealthy sugar planter.
The sellers of fresh milk and crayfish had been beginning their morning
rounds when he'd finally returned to his room above his mother's
kitchen.

Afternoon coffee with his mother's friends was not something
he wanted to deal with on three hours of sleep, particularly not when
his mother had that glint in her eye.

"The City Guard.” Livia Lev-esque sniffed.
“You know what they are, my son. If a slave disappears
they'll sober up and hunt for the thief because the owner will give
them a reward. If a libre
disappears—” She used the Spanish term for their
people, the free people of color, though Louisiana hadn't been a
possession of Spain for thirty years now. “—they
have other things to do. You come downstairs now, Ben. Poor Madame
Rochier is nearly mad with fear and grief."

That his mother was up to something—that there was
something about the disappearance of eighteen-year-old Marie-Zulieka
Rochier that she wasn't going to admit in her first preemptory demand
that he undertake the search—January guessed from his
mother's tone, and the way she held her head. He was forty-one, and had
consciously noticed before the age of four—when she and he
and his younger sister Olympe had all still been slaves on a sugar
plantation upriver—all the signs when she was doctoring some
unpalatable truth.

When he followed her into the dining room of the trim little
cottage on Rue Burgundy he was sure of it.

Casmalia Rochier was certainly afraid, and certainly upset.
But in her dark eyes and in the set of her perfect mouth, as she turned
her head to reply to a question, was a world of suspicion and frozen
rage.

Like January's mother—like the other four women
sipping his mother's cook's excellent coffee around the cherrywood
table—Casmalia Rochier was a plaçee,
the free colored mistress of a wealthy white man. Many years ago,
according to custom, banker Louis Rochier had bought her a house and
settled on her the income to raise their mixed-race children in comfort
and safety. A similar arrangement between January's mother and St-Denis
Janvier, now long gathered to his ancestors, had paid for both the
music lessons that led to his current profession and the medical
training in France that had proved to be so completely useless the
moment he returned to the United States ... and, of course, had paid
for this house.

A similar arrangement existed between January's youngest
sister Dominique—currently passing Casmalia the
sugar—and a young sugar planter; between his old friend
Catherine Clisson, who smiled a welcome to him as he came into the
room, and another equally wealthy planter. An arrangement like that had
provided the foundation of Bernadette Métoyer's chocolate
shop and the investments that paid for the gowns of the four daughters
Agnes Pellicot was trying to “place” in
arrangements of their own. Bernadette and Agnes were both angrily
denouncing the New Orleans City Guards to Casmalia and barely glanced
at January, but Dominique got to her feet and rustled to the sideboard
for another cup of coffee for her older brother:

"You are going to find Zozo for us, aren't you, p'tit?"

He was almost twenty years the elder and six feet, three
inches tall, and smiled inwardly at being called “little
one” by this piece of graceful fluff.

"If I can. Have you notified the City
Guards?” He looked across at Casmalia Rochier, and her eyes
ducked away from his. “They may display little interest in
recovering artisans’ wives or market girls when they go
missing, but they're going to look for the daughter of Louis Rochier,
even one born on the shady side of the street."

He didn't add, And what's more, you know it.
But it was in his eyes when she looked back at him. What is
it you all aren't telling me?

"My mother tells me Marie-Zulieka disappeared this morning.
When? How? Surely she wasn't out by herself?"

"Of course not!” Casmalia's back went even more
rigid at the suggestion. “She went to the market with her
sister and Marie-Therese Pellicot. But Marie-Therese was taken ill, and
Zozo left little Lucie with Marie-Therese and hurried home to fetch
Tommy, our yardman, to help her get home—"

Seventeen years of living in Paris brought, Why
didn't she fetch a cab? to January's lips, only to be
reminded, with a small stab of too-familiar anger, that it was against
the law for a man or woman of color to ride in a cab.

Except, of course, as the driver or as a servant perched on
the box.

Catherine Clisson finished softly, “She never made
it home."

"Lucie and Marie-Therese waited for almost an hour,”
added Agnes, her round, rouged face puckered with distress at the
memory of her daughter's illness and the fear that stalked every libre—the
fear of kidnap by slave traders. Of being taken out of New Orleans and
sold. “Finally Lucie asked one of the market women's children
to run see what was keeping Tommy."

"That was the first I heard."

"Is Marie-Therese all right?"

Agnes nodded, and her plump shoulders relaxed. “Just
a little indisposition of the stomach, you know. I tell the girls,
never buy snacks and treats from those market women unless you know
them—who knows what goes into those ices? But of course girls
never listen. She'll be well for the ball at the Salle
tonight.” There was an edge to Agnes's voice. Marie-Therese
had not yet found a protector after one season of attending the
quadroon balls at the Salle d'Orleans, and her mother wasn't going to
let another season go by, however poorly the girl might feel.

January's glance returned to Casmalia. “Has your
daughter a lover?"

"My daughter has accepted a most flattering offer from Jules
Dutuille.” The woman brought forth the name of the sugar
broker with a slow flourish, like a card player spreading four of a
kind beneath the noses of her enemies. But January saw the look that
flashed between Catherine Clisson and his sister, and remembered
hearing something—he couldn't place
what—disparaging about the man.

He knew the odds were only fifty-fifty that he'd get a
truthful answer to his next question. “Was there anyone else?"

"No!” Casmalia dabbed—very
carefully—at her painted eyes with a tiny square of lawn and
lace, and Clisson and Dominique again traded a glance.
“Benjamin, it is vital—vital—not
only that my daughter be found swiftly, but that no word of
this—this terrible tragedy—be allowed to reach
M'sieu Dutuille's ears ... or those of M'sieu Rochier. Poor M'sieu
Dutuille would be devastated—"

"I understand.” And he did understand, seeing how
his mother, Bernadette Métoyer, and Agnes Pellicot all
leaned forward to catch and sift every word. Gossip was the lifeblood
of the free colored demimonde. The fact that Casmalia Rochier,
devastatingly elegant in her expensive simplicity, was inclined to
boast virtually guaranteed that her misfortune would be trumpeted
abroad.

Her own business, of course, but dispensing with an audience
would greatly increase his chances of getting anything like truthful
answers. “Maman, with Madame Rochier's permission I'm going
to walk her home. Please, all of you ladies, finish your coffee. I'll
return in a few minutes. Madame?” He held out his arm, onto
which Casmalia Rochier laid one exquisitely kid-gloved hand.

"You don't think it was slave-stealers, do you?” he
asked, very quietly, as he led Casmalia out through the long French
doors of his mother's cottage and onto Rue Burgundy. Even this far from
the river—nearly half a mile—the sound of the levee
made a jumbled background to the closer noises of passing carriages, of
servants and women talking in doorways and breezeways, of dogs barking
in yards: the noises of New Orleans in the winter season, between
cotton harvest and sugar-boiling, when the planters came into town and
opened up their houses and the city came alive.

Casmalia Rochier glanced right and left, as if making sure
none of her friends had tiptoed after them to listen, and let out her
breath in an angry sigh. “Ben, it is absolutely
imperative—"

He held up a hand. “I know. That M'sieu Dutuille
doesn't hear of it—or M'sieu Rochier. Who do you think it
was?"

"Nicholas Saverne.” Her eyes, green-gray like those
of so many libres, turned steely. “A
lawyer from Mobile, absolutely no family, and
encroaching as a weed. He swears he'll be the wealthiest man in the
parish in a year, but I know his kind!"

"Would your daughter have gone with him willingly?"

"Of course not!” But her glance again fleeted from
his. “Her father went to great lengths to arrange this match
with M'sieu Dutuille, who is absolutely infatuated with her. She would
never do a thing like that to me."

Not, January was interested to note, to him.

"She is a most dutiful girl—and needless to say,
deeply in love with M'sieu Dutuille."

By the defensive note in her voice it was clear to January
that Marie-Zulieka had been nothing of the kind. He handed Casmalia
across the plank that bridged the gutter of Rue des Ursulines; they had
reached the pale-green cottage, with its fresh pink trim, that Louis
Rochier had twenty years ago purchased for his plaçee.
Because January was a man—and no Creole, black or
white, would walk straight through the French doors of the parlor like
a barbarian—he followed her down the narrow breezeway that
separated her cottage from the next, and through the yard into the
dining room: Any of her woman friends would have been escorted through
her bedroom. This custom allowed him to note the layout of the house,
which was substantially the same as his mother's and that of every
other plaçee in the French town. The
four-room cottage faced the street, and the building behind housed
kitchen, laundry, slave quarters, and the garçonnière:
the room or rooms for the growing sons of the house.

A girl who had to be Lucie darted out of the French doors at
the rear of the house as January and Casmalia approached:
“Did you find her?” She raised frightened eyes up
to her mother. “She didn't really get stolen away by the
American animals, did she?"

January replied reassuringly, “I don't think so,
p'tit. But if she gets stranded on foot someplace far away, she might
have to sell her earrings to get home. Might I see her jewel box, so we
can tell how much she'll have with her to sell?"

After a quick glance at her mother, Lucie led the way
self-importantly to the door into the bedroom she clearly shared with
her sister. January had already noted the three sets of bedding that
the housemaid was hanging to air on the railings of the gallery:
Between Marie-Zulieka and Lucie, who looked to be eight or nine,
Casmalia had evidently borne at least three sons. They would be out, he
guessed, either at school or more probably at whatever shops or
businesses to which they'd been apprenticed. The daughters of plaçees
almost routinely became plaçees
themselves, the sons almost universally artisans or clerks.

He recalled, too, from his own childhood, how he—the
ungainly son who too closely resembled his mother's slave
husband—had been early relegated to the garçonnière,
and how Dominique, from her birth, had been given her own
pretty room in the cottage, much like this that Marie-Zulieka and Lucie
shared. The walls were papered with green-and-white French wallpapers;
armoire, bureau, and the bed beneath the looped-back pink cloud of the
mosquito bar were French, and new. Like Dominique, obviously her
mother's lace-trimmed princess, clothed in white mull muslin with whose
simple prettiness even the most exacting Frenchwoman could not have
found fault.

Of a piece with her mother, he thought, glancing back at
Casmalia. Aside from the tignon—the wrapped head scarf
mandated by law to mark all women of color, slave and free, apart from
white women—Casmalia's simple elegance would not have been
out of place in Paris or London.

Yet he'd seen her wearing diamonds, when he played music for
the quadroon balls. Louis Rochier was obviously a generous patron.

And a generous father. The jewel box Lucie opened for his
inspection was a miniature treasure-house of pearls, sapphire, and
aquamarine, expensive and yet carefully chosen to be not one carat more
than rigidly appropriate for a girl just “out.” Yet
something was missing...

"These are the things M'sieu Dutuille sent to her, on the
occasion of her contract being signed.” Rather impatiently,
Casmalia cleared the small stack of books from the corner of the
bureau, and spread out upon it a much costlier parure of rubies.
“Of course completely unsuitable for her to wear as
yet—perhaps ever, if you ask my opinion. She's so fair
they're not her color at all."

It was a subtle brag. Like the white, upon whose power they
depended, most libres saw greater beauty in pale
complexions and silky hair than in the reminders of a slave-born past.
“I suppose she'll have to wear them to please him,”
Casmalia continued airily. “When the time comes, I'll suggest
she have them reset."

"I think they're pretty,” ventured Lucie, and her
mother sniffed.

"Vulgar. But as you can see, Ben, she certainly did not
abscond. Not and leave all this behind. I don't see her pearls
here—there was a pearl-and-aquamarine set that her
grandmother gave her, God rest her soul: far too
showy for morning. I can't imagine she'd have worn it..."

"She did,” provided Lucie. “And I think it
was beautiful."

"Nonsense. It was incorrect to wear in the
daytime—what on earth can she have been thinking? And no one
is interested in what little girls think."

"And I'll bet you have jewels just as beautiful,
Lucie,” said January, who had carefully taken everything out
of Marie-Zulieka's jewel box and gently probed with his fingers every
corner of its satin lining. “Would you show them to me,
before I go?"

They were, as he'd guessed, just as carefully chosen to be
suitable for a girl of nine: a single pearl on a fine gold chain, coral
beads, a gold cross to wear on Sundays ... “And what's
this?” With great care he lifted the tiny, brittle bundle no
bigger than the joint of his little finger, wrapped in pink paper,
though quite properly he didn't open it.

One didn't, with such things. Not without permission.

"That's my gris-gris.” Lucie took the bundle,
unwrapped it to show the tiny dried foot of a bird, a sparrow or a wren
by its size. “It brings me good luck. Zozo has one, too."

"And does Zozo keep hers in her jewel box?"

Lucie nodded.

He refilled and closed the box, and replaced on the corner of
the bureau the books Casmalia had tossed aside: Böckh on
ancient Greece and Lamarck on animals, a Spanish edition of Don
Quixote, and a text on the stars that had been much talked of
in Paris when he was there a few years ago. Inside the cover of each
was marked A. Vouziers, 12 Rue de la Petit Monaie—that
address was crossed out, along with two others he recognized as being
in the same maze of ancient streets behind the Louvre in Paris, and
then—53 Rue Marigny.

He said, “Then we can be sure it will bring Zozo
good luck as well."

* * * *

"I consulted with my sister,” said January that
evening to Hannibal Sefton, at a break during the dancing in the
Théâtre d'Orleans while the guests made serious
inroads on the buffet and the musicians sorted through their music and
flexed the cramp from their hands. Needless to say, the sister January
referred to was not the lovely Dominique but Olympe, his full-blood
sister who'd run off with the voodoos at the age of sixteen.
“She says she didn't sell Zozo Rochier anything to make
Marie-Therese Pellicot sick, but the symptoms sound like hellebore of
some kind. My aunties back on the plantation would give the children
something of the kind when we got worms. I hope Agnes didn't force
Marie-Therese out of bed to come to the ball."

His eyes strayed across the dance floor that had been raised
over the backs of the seats in the pit to the wide double doors that
led through to the lobby. From the lobby a discreet passageway
connected to the building next-door—the Salle
d'Orleans—where a ball was going on for the ladies of the
free colored demimonde, the plaçees and
their daughters.

M'sieu Davis, who owned both buildings, was careful to stagger
the intermissions so that the husbands and brothers of the respectable
ladies attending the ball at the Théâtre could
sneak back in good time to have a cup of punch with their wives, after
dancing with their mistresses next-door.

"Surely she wouldn't.” Hannibal set his violin on
top of January's piano, unobtrusively collected two champagne glasses
from the tray of a passing waiter, and led the way to the lobby. It
wouldn't do for the musicians to be seen drinking the same champagne as
the guests. “Even Agnes..."

"Agnes Pellicot is living on investments that have gone down
in value and has three daughters besides Marie-Therese to bring out."

They traversed the passageway to the upstairs lobby of the
Salle, and emerging, January scanned the room for Dominique:
cautiously, because a black musician who was perceived as
“uppity"—that is, attending a ball designed for
white men in some capacity other than that of a servant—was
just as liable to be thrashed on this side of the passageway as on the
other. Music still flowed like a sparkling river through the archways
that led from the ballroom, and with it the swish of skirts, the brisk
pat of slippers on the waxed floor, the laughter of the ladies, and the
rumble of men's talk. Impossible to tell whether his sister would be
able to gracefully slip from her protector—or whether she'd
remember to do so. In ten minutes he'd have to be back....

A moment later, however, Dominique appeared in the archway, a
fantasia of green and bronze, calling back over her shoulder,
“Darling, if I don't get some air I'll be obliged to faint in
your arms and that would simply destroy the flowers
you gave me—"

January took his untouched champagne glass, picked a waiter's
silver tray from a corner of the buffet in the lobby, and carried the
glass to her with the respectful air of one who knows his place.
“Would madame care for champagne?"

"How precious of you, p'tit! What I'd really like is about a
quart of arsenic to give to Eulalia Figes—such a witch! She
said my dress—"

"Were you able to find out about Nicholas Saverne?”
January had learned years ago that if one truly needed specific
information, ruthlessly interrupting Dominique's digressions upon her
friends and acquaintances was the only way to get it.

"Oh, a perfect chevalier, dearest. He speaks French like a
Parisian, he sends to Paris for his boots—he really does,
p'tit, Nathalie Grillot's mother checked—Bourdet makes his
coats, the best in town, but it's all show. Maman Grillot and Agnes
Pellicot both looked into his finances when he seemed to be showing an
interest in Nathalie and in Marie-Therese, and learned that he's always
borrowing from somewhere or other to invest in lands that he turns
around and mortgages to invest in steamboat shares, but at the bottom
he's not worth the horseshoes on a dead horse. And he owes money to God
and all His saints—to every shirtmaker and tobacconist and
hat maker in town. But men are impressed—bankers and
investors, I mean, and tavern keepers, who're the ones who control
votes. Henri's mama"—Henri was Dominique's protector, son of
the truly formidable Widow Viellard—"says Nicholas Saverne
tries even harder to impress the Americans, and that he's spoken of
running for Congress."

"He may well succeed,” remarked Hannibal, returning
from a trip to the unguarded buffet, a bottle of champagne in hand. As
a white man—albeit an outcast—he ran less of a risk
for helping himself. “Americans seem to be impressed by the
show of wealth and aren't as careful about checking on a man as Mama
Grillot and Agnes Pellicot."

"Handsome?” January asked.

Dominique shrugged coquettishly. “If you like all
your goods in the shop window."

"Does Marie-Zulieka love him?"

The young woman's eyes lost their surface brightness as her
delicate brows tugged together; from playful bubbliness, her expression
shifted, thoughtful and a little sad. “I don't think Zozo
really loves anyone ... except Lucie, of course, and that frightful
old tutor of hers, M'sieu Vouziers. One would think when a girl's
finished with her governess's lessons she'd be glad to toss her books
into the river—heaven knows I was. But
when has any man stopped courting a pretty girl just because she tells
him she isn't interested? He always thinks he can make
her interested. And if that girl's about to be pushed into an
arrangement with the likes of Jules Dutuille—"

"What's wrong with Jules Dutuille?"

"He drinks,” responded Dominique promptly.
“Oh, all men drink, of course—I think they'd go
insane if they couldn't..."

"I certainly would,” put in Hannibal.

"Well, all you do when you drink is recite poetry nobody
understands, and then fall asleep, cher." Dominique
reached over to pat Hannibal's thin cheek. “You're very sweet
about it. You don't say cruel things, or destroy one's letters from
one's family, or kill one's pets.... My maid's sweetheart's cousin is a
maid in Dutuille's household, you see, and anyway everyone knows about
Dutuille."

"I don't."

"That's because you're serious and hardworking and have no
time for idle chatter in the cafés.” She flashed
him a dazzling smile, which sobered again at the recollection of things
she had heard. “He never lets his wife see her
family—they live up in St. Francisville—nor his
son's wife; they go in terror of his rages. He's tried three or four
times to come to an arrangement with a mistress, but Babette Figes
begged her mother not to conclude the contract with him, and so did
Cresside Morisset. Only Zozo couldn't refuse him, you see, because her
father was in business with him. So yes, she could have run off with
Nicholas, only I don't think she did."

"Why not?” asked January, curious, though it was a
conclusion he'd already arrived at.

Dominique shrugged again. “Because if she had, she'd
have taken her jewels, silly! That appalling ruby parure is worth over
a thousand dollars! With his debts, he'd never have let her pass up
that chance. On the other hand..."

She hesitated, and January finished softly, “On the
other hand, Nicholas might have thought himself justified under the
circumstances in slipping poison into Marie-Therese's coffee himself,
and kidnapping Zozo, guessing she'd go without a fuss."

The young woman nodded. “I think that's what her
mama fears."

"And if she didn't take her jewels,” he continued,
“which are worth a thousand dollars, there's no telling when
Nicholas might decide that once Marie-Zulieka has run off to Mobile
with him, she herself is worth fifteen hundred
dollars."

Dominique's eyes widened. The thought had clearly never
crossed her mind. “Oh, no,” she breathed.
“No, p'tit, he wouldn't..."

"Don't underestimate what a white man would or wouldn't do
when there's money involved, and a woman not of his own
race,” said January quietly. “One more thing, and
then we have to get back to the ballroom. Is Nicholas Saverne here
tonight?"

Dominique silently shook her head.

* * * *

"I don't understand,” said Hannibal, some hours
later when next the Théâtre musicians had a break.
“Your sister and her friends are free women, aren't they? If
Jules Dutuille is such a blackguard—and I must say in the
defense of us devotees of Dionysus that a man needn't be a drunkard to
treat women like cattle—Marie-Zulieka can say no. Her mother
might put up a fuss—God knows my aunts did when a cousin of
mine refused to marry a chinless viscount who would have paid off my
uncle's gambling debts—yet there's no way she or anyone can force
her compliance."

January was silent for a few moments, reflecting on the width
of the gulf that even after several years’ residence still
separated the shabby Irish fiddler from the world of New Orleans. Even
Dominique, raised in the free colored demimonde, was separated from the
world of her brother and her older sister Olympe, who remembered what
it was to be slaves. The narrow brick corridor to which they'd
retreated—it led to the kitchen quarters of the Salle
d'Orleans—was at least warm. From it, he and Hannibal could
look across the rear courtyard to the lighted windows both of the Salle
and, beyond, to those of the Théâtre where the
well-bred French and Spanish Creole ladies were still pretending their
vanished husbands and brothers were “out having a
smoke” or “down in the gambling rooms.”
Another world.

Another universe.

"Your cousin is white,” he said at last.
“And presumably lives in a land where law applies to
everyone. Maybe the law isn't always just, and maybe it's not enforced
equally, but it is recognized to apply. You have to understand that
nothing that concerns the free colored here in New Orleans is legally
clear, or as it seems to be. Rules change with a few degrees difference
in the color of a woman's skin. They shift from one hour to the next,
from one house to the next. It's all the custom of the country, and
nothing that concerns us—slaves, or ex-slaves, or the
children or grandchildren of ex-slaves—is official or truly
legal or truly illegal.

"Casmalia Rochier and her children are legally free. But since
she isn't legally married to Louis Rochier, he can make things far more
difficult for her and her family than your uncle could ever make things
for your aunt. It isn't simply a matter of Uncle Freddy going to the
sponging house. Rochier has it in his power to end the education of the
boys, possibly to sell Casmalia's servants—the yardman and
the cook. If he's angry enough to cast Casmalia off, it would be
disaster for the family. Free or not, there was no question of the girl
not agreeing to become the mistress of anyone her father ordered her
to. And no one who matters to him—none of his white relatives
or acquaintances—will think or say a thing about it."

The fiddler opened his mouth to say
something—probably along the lines of, Would a man
do that to his own children?—and closed it. The
lights of the Salle's kitchen, where the other three musicians joked
and laughed with the cook and waiters who served both Salle and
Théâtre, reflected in the dark of his eyes.
Reflected the recollection, January guessed, of the number of
Englishmen and Americans and Irishmen and Frenchmen they'd both known
in their lives who were capable of doing exactly those things to even
their legitimate families, let alone their mistresses and bastards.

Some white men of January's acquaintance loved and cared for
their “Rampart Street families,” their
“alligator eggs,” as tenderly as they did their
white wives and white children.

Some didn't.

The difference was that for the libres,
there was neither legal, nor social, recourse.

No wonder women like his mother, and Agnes Pellicot, and
Bernadette Métoyer, made damn sure the money was in the bank
and in their own names.

In time, Hannibal asked, “Do you think Nicholas
Saverne kidnapped this girl?"

January shook his head. “He might have, but I doubt
it."

"Then where is she?"

A clamor of voices from the kitchen broke his thought. Uncle
Bichet, who played the bull fiddle, called out, “Gotta get
back to the ballroom, boys, ‘fore old Davis has an apoplexy
and fires the lot of us."

January extended a hand down to help Hannibal to his feet.
“I think I know; by noon tomorrow I'll be sure."

* * * *

Though Nicholas Saverne wasn't at either the respectable
Théâtre ball that night or the quadroon
festivities next-door, Louis Rochier attended both. January observed
him on those occasions when he was in the Théâtre
with his wife and daughters, a square pink-faced man with an
incongruous cupid-bow mouth. Most of the time, however, Rochier spent
in the Salle d'Orleans with his mistress Casmalia, with his son and the
other men of the New Orleans business community who likewise either had
mistresses or simply liked to flirt with lively ladies.

After the whites went home—and French Creoles were
notorious for the lateness of their dancing—January and the
other musicians drifted down the passageway and sat in with their
colleagues in the Salle's little orchestra until nearly four, when the
quadroon ladies and their patrons finally, as they said,
“broke the circle” and headed home. Rochier had
sent his white family home in the carriage; January saw the tension as
the man spoke with Casmalia, and guessed that the banker had demanded
where his daughter was, and had been fobbed off with a lie.

It was still pitch-black, and thickly foggy, when January
returned home. Dim clamor still drifted from the wharves along the
levee, and the gambling rooms of Rue Royale, but as he walked along the
Rue Burgundy the stillness was eerie, thick with the molasses reek of
burnt sugar from the plantations along the Bayou Road, and the
cold-stifled stench of the gutters. At his mother's house, Bella the
cook was already starting the kitchen fires. She sniffed in
disdain—like her mistress, Bella had little use for
musicians—but gave him a cup of coffee and bread and butter
before he went upstairs to his garçonnière
to change clothes. She didn't even come to the glowing kitchen door
when he came down again a few minutes later and crossed to the passway
beside the house that led back to the street.

The house itself was silent and dark.

Walking downriver along Rue Burgundy, January had almost
reached Rue Esplanade when he realized he was being followed. In the
fog it would be a waste of time to glance behind him, even when he
passed the intersections where the city's iron lanterns hung on chains
across the streets. To stop and look back would let his pursuer know
that he'd been detected, though January was almost certain who it was.
He turned down Rue Ursulines, and then along Rue Dauphine, and still
his own footfalls on the wet brick banquettes were echoed by the muted
drip-drip of following boot heels. Lantern light up ahead outlined the
dark shape of a man washing down the banquette ahead of him: Country
Ned, that would be, he guessed, Mâitre Passebon the
perfumier's yardman.

As he came even with the old man January called out a greeting
in the sloppy Gombo French of the cane fields, the half-African patois
that the tutors his mother's patron had hired for him in childhood had
never quite been able to beat from his memory. “Got a buckra
hound-doggin'—you be a mama partridge for a
dollar?” he said. “No ewu—”
He used one of the several African words for danger, and the tribal
scars on Country Ned's face twisted their patterns with his grin.

"Shit, Ben, ewu just fluff up my
feathers.” He took the proffered dollar, passed his broom to
January, and walked off down the street without breaking the rhythm of
January's steps. January himself continued to scrape the broom on the
bricks, and swept himself back into the moist dark of the carriageway
from Passebon's courtyard as the pursuer solidified out of the fog.

That it was Nicholas Saverne on his heels, January had never
had a doubt. Casmalia's yardman Tommy might have told the young lawyer
that Marie-Zulieka was being hunted by the big piano player, or the
maid might have given that information, for fifty cents or just because
they sympathized with any girl who'd flee from an
“arrangement” with Jules Dutuille: It didn't
matter. As Saverne passed through the ravelly blotch of lantern light
that had illuminated Country Ned's sweeping, January identified the
blink of expensive watch fobs, the sharp cut of M'sieu Bourdet's
tailoring, and the varnished shine of Parisian boots. He'd meant to
wait till Saverne's footfalls died away into the distance before
himself emerging from his hiding place and circling around in the
opposite direction, but at a guess Country Ned stopped too soon.

While January was still waiting in the carriageway, he heard
Saverne stop, then come striding back, fast. He turned to duck down the
carriageway and into the dark yard but the yellow light veered and
jerked as the lantern was snatched up from the pavement where it had
rested, and a voice called out, “You, boy, stop!"

Since Saverne almost certainly knew who he was anyway, January
halted, stood waiting in the high brick arch for the white man to
stride up to him, Country Ned's lantern in hand. “Are you
Janvier?” He used the familiar address tu—as
most white Frenchmen did to children, pets, or slaves. One day January
supposed he'd get used to being called that again.

"I am."

"Have you found her?"

January folded his hands, replied, “No, sir, I have
not."

"You're lying.” A white man would have called
another white man out for the words—a custom January had
always regarded as perfectly insane. “Where'd you be going at
this hour, if not to her?"

"I guess I'm going home, sir."

Saverne's cane came up, the instinctive gesture of a man who
doesn't take even respectfully phrased impudence from Negroes; January
steeled himself to take the blow rather than risk escalating the
violence by warding it off. But when he didn't flinch, Nicholas Saverne
stopped, as if the idiocy of assaulting the one man who might possibly
help him penetrated his shapely skull and golden hair. He stood for an
instant, his mouth hard with frustrated anger, struggling with the idea
that there were things a black man—or any man—could
not be forced to do.

The rage died out of his eyes. The cane came down.
“You know where she is?” Though he still used tu,
his tone had changed, as if he spoke to a fellow man, of whom one must
ask, rather than casually command. “Where she might be?"

He pulled a wallet from his pocket, fished coins from it that
flickered gold in the oily orange light. January remained standing with
his hands folded, and neither reached for nor looked at the proffered
money.

Saverne lowered his hand. “Don't tell me you agree
with that harpy mother of hers, that'd turn her over to a—a
boar-pig like Dutuille. Talk about pearls to swine! What do you want,
then, to take me to her?"

"Her word that it's what she wants."

For one instant, January thought the young man was going to
snap, Girls don't know what they want! There was
certainly something of the kind on his lips as he drew in breath, then
let it out again.

January said nothing.

After a moment, slowly, the young man said,
“Girls—sometimes they let themselves be pushed, by
their families and their friends. Make no mistake, Janvier: I love that
girl. And she loves me, I know she does. I will treat her like a
princess, like a queen; I'm not a rich man now, but I will be one day
soon. She will never have cause to regret it if she comes back to
Mobile with me. I swear that to you. I swear that to her,
if you speak to her."

"If I speak to her,” said
January, “I'll tell her."

Saverne stepped closer, pleading in his pale eyes.
“Tell her not to worry about her father. I'll keep him away
from her, no matter what he tries or says. In Mobile he can't get to
her."

It wasn't a black man's place to ask whether Saverne had
considered what Louis Rochier might do to the rest of the family, and
he doubted whether the man would consider it if reminded how completely
in Rochier's power Casmalia and Lucie and the several brothers were.

"I love her,” Saverne repeated softly.
“Make her understand."

* * * *

The sun had risen, turning the fog to milk, by the time
January reached Rue Marigny. He loitered outside Number 53, smelling
the smoke of kitchen fires all up and down that quiet street of tiny
wooden cottages, until he saw the white-haired Alois Vouziers emerge,
resplendent in a rusty black coat, and totter off down the street, a
satchel of books on his back. Not long after that a stout young woman
came out the same door, ushering four blond boys of stair-step ages,
from about thirteen by the look of him down to about eight, dressed as
boys would be who are apprenticed to craftsmen or clerks. Not so very
different, thought January, from Marie-Zulieka's brothers, except that
these boys didn't have to worry about being kidnapped on their way to
and from work, and sold up to the newly opening cotton territories in
Missouri. Though the neighborhood was one of poor French and poor
Germans, the refugees from the continuing turmoils in Europe that had
followed Napoleon's downfall, the woman called after the boys in the
pure French of the educated Parisians not to be late for their
grand-père's lessons that night.

When the younger children came out to play January crossed to
the oldest of them, a little girl of six or so, and said,
“Would you take in a note for me, to the young lady who is
staying with your grand-père?"

"Señorita Maria?” asked the girl, and
January nodded.

"Señorita Maria would be her name."

* * * *

"She's passing herself off as a Spaniard, then?”
inquired Hannibal, when January met him later in the day, at one of the
coffee stands at the downstream end of the market. From the rickety
table where they sat between the market's square brick pillars, January
could see the wharves, piled with cargo and milling with stevedores,
sailors, and whores. Down at this end of the market where the river
turned around Algiers Point, they were crowded with ocean-going ships:
the Constellation and the Tribune,
the Waccamaw and the Martha,
bound for Baltimore, Vera Cruz, Liverpool, New York.

Paris, thought January, feeling the
stabbing pinch of regret. As if he'd inadvertantly put weight on an
unhealed break in his leg, he drew back from the thought that he one
day might return to the city where he had truly been free.

He lived in New Orleans now, despite all things, because it
was the home of the only family he had. But he remembered what it had
been like, to know that one's family wasn't enough.

"I thought she would be,” he continued. “I
knew from what Casmalia said—and from the color of her
dresses and her jewels—that Marie-Zulieka was fair enough to
pass. And she'd clearly planned her escape. The only reason she would
have worn evening jewels to the market was because she planned to sell
them and flee."

"The rubies were worth more,” pointed out the
fiddler.

"If she was the kind of girl who'd take jewels from one suitor
to hand to another, she might have.” January picked apart the
little screw of newspaper the coffee woman had sold him for a penny,
fished forth a broken lump of strong-tasting muscovado sugar.
“She could have stuffed them into her marketing basket, along
with the worming medicine that she used to poison Marie-Therese."

Behind and around them, market women, porters, slaves with
shopping baskets came and went among the stalls with their bright heaps
of vegetables, their silver cascades of fish; a thousand elbows and
basket rims brushed his shoulders from behind, like the leaves of a
gently moving tree. “But their disappearance would announce
her intentions more quickly. It's just possible that Nicholas Saverne
would know the voodoos in town, and where to find poison like that to
slip into Marie-Therese's coffee; if he was disguised he could probably
have done it undetected. But if Zozo didn't expect to disappear, why
would she have worn any jewels? No,” he said softly.
“She planned it herself. And she wanted no fortune to hand to
an indebted lover; nothing that came from her family, or the protector
she was leaving behind. That much was clear. She took only what her
grandmother had given her—and her gris-gris. Even if she were
fleeing New Orleans, taking another life and another name, she would
not leave that behind."

"Is that what she did? What she's doing?"

January nodded. Behind Hannibal's shoulder, he caught a brief
glimpse of a thin, stooped, scholarly old man in a rusty black coat,
leading a young woman along the wharves toward the gangplank of the Mary,
bound for Boston, according to the chalked board outside the shipping
office. A lovely eighteen-year-old with dark curls escaping from
beneath her bonnet, and the gray eyes that told nothing of her heritage.

I will not be what my mother was, he
heard her voice again in his mind, the words she had spoken to him that
morning in old M'sieu Vouziers's little house. I will not
take a kind protector, only to save me from an unkind one. It is the
world that I must flee, and not only one man.

The crowd closed around them and they were gone.

"I knew she spoke Spanish from the copy of Don
Quixote I saw in her room—well, half the people in
New Orleans do. And since the only family she has are under the thumb
of her father, I guessed she'd go to her tutor, for advice at least. If
old M'sieu Vouziers trusted her enough to lend her books that he'd
owned for years—books he'd brought with him from
Paris—that argued a bond beyond what her family would
comprehend or even be aware of. I'll have to get the books back from
her mother, by the way, and return them to the old man. I'll do that
sometime after I slip this under the door, early tomorrow morning."

He held up the note she'd given him. A single pale spot on one
edge of the wafer marked where her tear had fallen as she'd sealed it
up.

Hannibal coughed, the racking wheeze of a consumptive that
shook his whole thin frame. “You'll have to be quick about
it, before she sells them.” He fished in his pocket for his
laudanum bottle as January tucked the note back into his jacket.
“She won't have an easy time, you know."

"She knows that. It's infinitely harder for a woman to leave a
man not for another man but for herself,” he went on softly.
“And harder for a woman of color than for a white woman; a
woman of color moreover whose family can conceive of no other position
for a woman, if she's fair-skinned and pretty, than the plaçee
of a white. Not only her family, but her friends—literally
every other person she knows."

"I suppose King Solomon's family thought him insane when he
chose wisdom over riches—not that, as King of Israel, Solomon
was ever in a position of having to wonder whether he'd eat on any
given day. At least in Boston she'll be allowed to hold a position in a
girls’ school somewhere. Louis Rochier won't really cast the
whole family off because Zozo put a spoke in his wheel with his
business partner, will he?"

"I hope not. I don't think so, since she's disappearing from
town. She meant to literally disappear, you know, without a trace, for
that very reason. I convinced her to write to her mother, at least.
Casmalia can let Rochier know, or not."

"Care to take a small wager on what she'll decide to do?"

January sniffed with bitter laughter. “Not a chance."

"I didn't think you would.” Hannibal poured another
dollop of laudanum into his coffee, raised the cup in a toast.
“To Marie-Zulieka, then—or whatever name she'll
take in her new life. Macte nova virtute,
puella, sic itur ad astra, as Virgil said. Blessings
on your youngcourage; that's the way to the stars.
Though we had best pray she succeeds. I doubt Casmalia will welcome
her, if she ever comes back."

"No.” January watched, above the milling crowd on
the wharves, as the Mary's white sails half
unfurled, and the current took the ship from the dock. A dark small
form still stood at the rail, watching the water widen between herself
and all the world as she had known it. “No, she won't be
back."

Copyright © 2006 Barbara Hambly

* * * *

A Word From the Editor

When Hurricane Katrina swept through New Orleans she
devastated not only a place belonging to the real landscape of America,
but a resource for the creative imagination. For what city presented to
the mind more possibilities for romance, drama, mystery, and intrigue
than the Big Easy before Katrina?

Will the New Orleans that emerges after Katrina be as
inspiring to musicians, artists, and writers as NOLA before the storm?
Much will depend on how many of its people return to reconstitute the
mix of cultures that gave rise to New Orleans’ verve.

The fiction in this issue, devoted entirely to NOLA, is a
tribute to its unique weave of traditions and ethnicities. We've chosen
chronological order for the 11 stories, which portray the city in
various phases of its history—from before the Civil War to
the early and middle 20th century, and finally to the days just before
and after Katrina. It is our hope that the inspiration the writers
found in their material will communicate itself to readers as a desire
to participate in New Orleans’ rebuilding.

Scores of churches and relief organizations, big and small,
are hard at work in the Big Easy. Those whose advertisements appear in
this issue offer services that include temporary and permanent housing;
aid to children and adolescents in crisis; counseling for those
displaced; restitution of libraries; and support for individual
creative artists and cultural institutions. Donations to the
participating charities can be made through EQMM's web site:
www.themysteryplace.com.

©2006 by Barbara Hambly





THE SUGAR TRAIN by Edward D. Hoch

EQMM's regular contributor Edward D. Hoch
took his fans to New Orleans once before, with the sames series
character he employs here, the turn of the last century's Ben Snow.
Alas, the story did not appear in this magazine but in the now-defunct
The Saint Magazine (12/63). See “The Ripper of
Storyville,” reprinted in The Ripper of Storyville and Other
Ben Snow Tales.

Ben Snow concluded his business in New Orleans on Ash
Wednesday, which in that year, 1901, fell on February twentieth. The
frivolity and music of Mardi Gras had ended, and he had every intention
of heading back to Texas the following morning. The Southern Pacific
Railroad had a relatively new route that extended from New Orleans
across Texas to El Paso and beyond, but when he reached the downtown
terminal there was a surprise awaiting him.

"Ben Snow!” a familiar voice called out, and he
turned to see Detective Inspector Withers striding toward him along the
platform. That English accent, with a trace of the South in it, was
unmistakable.

"I thought we were done with each other yesterday,”
Ben said with half a smile. “You come to arrest me?"

"Not hardly, Mr. Snow. You helped me out a lot with this
Ripper case and I wanted to get your assistance on something else."

"My train leaves in thirty minutes,” Ben told him.

"Do you have to go right back? Could you spare me another few
days?"

Ben was in no hurry to deliver some sad news to his client
back in Texas. “I suppose I could do that,” he
agreed. “What's your problem?"

"Ever heard tell of the Sugar Belt Railroad? A plantation
owner named Colonel Grandpere built it about six years ago and
pur—chased a steam locomotive to haul sugarcane north from
his plantation to the refinery, a distance of some twenty miles.
Horseshoe Plantation is located in the area between the Mississippi and
Lake Pontchartrain, and the railroad passes through several parishes on
its way to the refinery. Lately someone has been trying to sabotage it,
blowing up tracks at night. I'm short-handed right now and the colonel
will pay someone to patrol the area, maybe catch whoever's responsible."

"You have any ideas about that?"

The detective shrugged. “Rival plantation owners,
maybe. The sugar crops can be big business around here. You might be
able to catch them at it in one or two nights."

"I'll have to return to my hotel. And I'll need a horse to
cover twenty miles of track. I retired my own to stud back in Texas a
few months ago. Didn't think I'd be needing him, heading east."

"I can get you a horse. That's no problem. I've got a carriage
waiting. We can ride out and see Colonel Grandpere now if you'd like."

"Why me?” Ben asked.

"He asked if I knew any gunfighters."

* * * *

Horseshoe Plantation, just a few miles from the city's center,
was a collection of sugarcane fields grouped around a great old
plantation house with white pillars framing the front entrance. A black
servant met them at the door and ushered them into a parlor that seemed
to have been furnished by a woman. When Colonel Grandpere en-tered,
walking with an ivory-handled cane and smoking a thick Cuban cigar, he
seemed completely out of place in his surroundings.

"You are the man who'll be protecting my railroad?”
he asked, making no effort to shake hands.

"Correct, sir. Ben Snow's the name."

The colonel's eyes dropped to Ben's holstered pistol.
“Gunfighter, are you?"

"I have been, when necessary."

The colonel seated himself with some difficulty, favoring his
right leg. He patted it with the cane and said, “Got that
right here in New Orleans when the Union army captured the city back in
‘sixty-two. It was the end of the war for me. I was
thirty-two years old and a colonel without an army."

A quick calculation told Ben he'd be seventy-one sometime that
year. “That's when you got into the sugar business?"

"After the war. This house was my family home and with the
abolition of slavery some of the adjoining plantation owners were only
too willing to sell to me. I realized the same men who'd been our
slaves would continue working the plantations as free men. I've built
this into one of the largest plantations in the state. We have all the
modern conveniences here, including a telephone line to our neighbors."

"And your own railroad, from what I hear."

He nodded, obviously proud of his accomplishment.
“About ten years ago I started building a little tram to
transport sugarcane to the refinery. We used strips of iron attached to
heavy pieces of wood for the crossties. As the cane was harvested, the
sections of track could be moved from field to field. At first the cars
of cane were pulled by mule teams, but in ‘ninety-five I
bought a steam locomotive and made it into a real railroad. That sugar
train is worth a fortune to me."

His conversation was interrupted by the appearance of a
strikingly handsome woman clad in riding costume. “Are you
boring your visitors, darling?” she asked, bending to kiss
him on the cheek.

"This is my wife, Bedelia. Inspector Withers of the New
Orleans police and Ben Snow, who's going to safeguard our railroad."

"Thank heavens!” she said with enthusiastic
approval. “They've been blowing up sections of track every
few nights lately, and the police seem powerless to stop them."

"I can recommend Mr. Snow highly,” Inspector Withers
told them. “He'll get the job done."

"Who do you suspect?” Ben asked. “The line
must cross other properties on its way to the refinery. What sort of
agreement do you have with them?"

Bedelia Grandpere smiled. “My husband could charm
the birds from the trees. Our neighbors hold him in great esteem, and
each year he presents them with a three-hundred-pound barrel of sugar
for permission to cross their land with our railway. But you must put
an end to this terrible sabotage. Come out here at sundown the next few
nights and patrol the area."

"I'll do what I can,” Ben promised. Grandpere
mentioned a generous fee, with a bonus if the bomber was caught or
killed. Ben quickly agreed to it.

"Do you have a horse he could use?” Withers asked
the colonel.

"Certainly. Bedelia, please show Mr. Snow to the stables and
help him choose a suitable horse."

"My pleasure."

Ben followed her out of the parlor while Withers remained with
the colonel. “It must be a great deal of work keeping such a
large plantation running,” Ben said, making conversation
while they walked through the great old mansion.

"My husband has some excellent overseers, and I help out when
I can.” They walked through an enormous kitchen and exited
the house by the back door. He could see the stable about fifty yards
behind the house. When they reached it, a tall young man with a
moustache was brushing down a chestnut colt. “This is our
hostler, Rubin Danials. Rubin, Mr. Snow here needs a good horse."

Danials ceased his brushing and turned his attention to Ben.
“You an experienced rider?"

Before he could answer, Bedelia decided for him.
“How about Duke? He's a good gentle mount."

Rubin saddled the horse and Ben mounted with ease. He was
surprised when Bedelia gripped the reins before he could ride off.
“Could I speak to you a moment? It's about this sabotage
business."

"Certainly.” He dismounted and followed her a little
way away from the barn, leading Duke behind him.

"There's something you should know, and I'm certain my husband
won't mention it. I don't imagine it will surprise you to learn that
I'm his second wife. My predecessor died five years ago and I met the
colonel during Mardi Gras two years later. He has a grown daughter,
Matty—Matilda—from his first marriage. She left
home a few months ago and has been living in the French Quarter. There
was no love lost between them, and I wonder if these attacks on the
railway might be instigated by her. They began in early January, about
six weeks after she left home. She might have hooked up with some
unsavory characters in the Quarter."

"Have you seen her since she moved out?"

"Just once. I was shopping for some candlesticks in the
Quarter, before Christmas, and she was working at a little store there.
I told her we'd welcome her back home, but she wouldn't speak of it.
She viewed her father as an evil man bent on ruining her life."

"What was the name of the shop?"

"La Belle Fleur. It's on Iberville Street."

"Thanks for the information. Tell me something else. Why is
sabotage on the rail line such a grievous blow to your husband's
plantation? Surely the cane could still be hauled in wagons."

She smiled like a teacher imparting knowledge to a backward
pupil. “Once cut, the cane begins to lose its sugar content.
The faster it reaches the refinery, the more valuable it is."

"I see. Is the harvesting continuous?"

"Given the right weather conditions, with enough sun and
moisture, a stand of cane can be harvested many times. When you ride
out you'll see that the workers move from one field to the next, with
the train tracks moving right along with them."

She left him and headed back to the mansion. Ben rode Duke for
a mile or two, watching while the cut sugarcane was loaded into rail
cars and trundled off to the permanent tracks that led to the refinery.
A locomotive stood ready to haul the train on its way as soon as the
proper number of cars had been filled. It became obvious to Ben at once
that one man on horseback could hardly patrol twenty miles of track in
the dark. Perhaps his best bet was to contact Colonel Grandpere's
daughter.

* * * *

The French Quarter in the days after Mardi Gras took on the
air of a sleeping village. Ben visited it on Friday morning after
riding along the track to make certain there'd been no new damage
overnight. The temperature, in the mid fifties, enabled him to hide his
gun belt beneath a leather jacket without attracting undue attention.
La Belle Fleur proved to be a tiny shop wedged between two cafes,
selling candles, beads, and amulets that suggested a possible
connection with voodoo and the occult. But there was nothing the least
bit eerie about the pale-complexioned young woman behind the counter,
despite the plain gray shift that she wore. She had a ready smile and a
friendly manner as she asked if she could help him.

"I'm looking for Matty."

She bit her lower lip. “That's me. Did my father
send you?"

"I'm doing some work for him, but he didn't mention you. I
just heard about you working here and thought you might be able to
help."

"I don't help my father with anything. I'm on my own now."

"The French Quarter can be a dangerous place for an attractive
young woman alone. A few blocks further along this street is
Storyville, a sector with legalized prostitution."

Her face hardened. “I know that. I've lived in New
Orleans all my life. Did you come here to buy something?"

Ben studied the display case and picked out a coiled snake
bracelet for five dollars. She seemed pleased enough at the sale and he
started in again. “It's about your father's railroad."

"The sugar train? What a joke that is!"

"How so?"

"It's a joke on the other property owners. He gives them a
barrel of sugar every year for the right to run his train across their
land."

"Someone's been blowing up his tracks at night."

The news seemed to surprise her. “No doubt a
dissatisfied neighbor."

"Do you know anyone who might be doing it?"

"Of course not!"

"What about some of your new friends in the Quarter?"

"I've only been here since November. I don't have many
friends."

"Perhaps if you returned to Horseshoe Plantation you and your
father could work out your differences."

She shook her head. “Never! He was nearly fifty when
I was born. I always felt closer to my mother, and not just in age.
I'll never go back there."

"Is it his wife you object to?"

"Bedelia? She's part of it, but it's mostly my father. He's
never gotten over the South's losing the war. He'd be happy if all his
workers were still slaves."

"The war's been over a long time."

"Not at Horseshoe Plantation."

Ben left her then, clutching his purchase in a small paper bag.

* * * *

He doubted that a young, attractive woman like Matty Grandpere
would be without friends in the French Quarter, and he waited across
the street until he saw her close the shop for an hour at lunchtime and
go next-door to a cafe for something to eat. She chose a table near the
rear and sat with her back to the bar, so he was able to enter and
order a beer and keep her in view. The place catered to a mixed group
of shopkeepers and laborers, none of them black. It wasn't long before
a sandy-haired man in a checkered work shirt entered and stood at the
door as if searching for someone. Ben wasn't surprised when he headed
for the rear table and joined Matty.

The two conversed casually, and from his distant observation
post it seemed to Ben they were no more than friends. The man left
before Matty and called a greeting to the bartender as he departed.
“Was that Mark Despard?” Ben asked the man,
inventing the name.

The bartender frowned. “Who? The guy that just left?
Tommy Franz, he's a regular here. Never heard of Despard."

"I must have been mistaken, but I know I've seen him
somewhere. Does Franz work down at the docks?"

"He does some fishing, but he's no longshoreman. He hires onto
boats sometimes. Maybe that's where you saw him."

"Maybe,” Ben agreed.

"Whatever he's doing these days, he's making money at it. He
spent a bundle during Mardi Gras."

Ben wandered around the docks for a time and then returned to
his horse. He picked up the tracks for the sugar train just outside the
city and followed them, this time all the way to the refinery. Colonel
Grandpere's locomotive had just pulled in. For a time he watched
workers unloading the cane from the cars, carefully weighing and
recording each load before sending it into the main refinery building.
Ben rode close enough to ask some of the workers if they knew Tommy
Franz, but the name meant nothing to them. His tracking of the
colonel's daughter had gotten him nowhere. There was no hint that Franz
was anything but a casual friend.

As he thought again about the explosion that had blown up the
tracks, Ben wondered if Inspector Withers had checked local sources of
dynamite or black powder. He rode back into downtown New Orleans and
called at police headquarters. “How's it going,
Ben?” the inspector asked. “Gotten anywhere on the
sugar-train sabotage?"

"Not yet. I was wondering if your department checked for
recent sales of explosives."

"Well, folks use a lot of fireworks during Mardi Gras."

"I didn't mean that. Do they sometimes use dynamite to remove
old tree stumps?"

"Sure. You realize we've been pretty busy around here lately.
No time to check things like dynamite sales."

"Where could I check them out myself?"

"There are just three places locally. Of course, the dynamite
could have been brought in from Baton Rouge or almost
anywhere.” He jotted the names on a sheet of notepaper.
“Let me know if you find anything."

* * * *

Ben visited all three places that afternoon and found nothing.
All of the big plantations ordered dynamite along with other supplies,
but there were no recent purchases by individuals. “It's the
best way of getting rid of tree stumps,” one dealer told Ben.
“You drill a hole in the stump, slide in a stick of dynamite,
and light the fuse."

Ben carefully wrote down the list of plantations that had
purchased dynamite, including the Horseshoe. It proved nothing, except
to show Colonel Grandpere he'd been earning his pay. He stopped back at
the bar where he'd seen Matty with Tommy Franz, but neither of them was
there. After a beer and a light supper he rode back out to Horseshoe
Plantation.

It was past sundown and Colonel Grandpere greeted him on the
dimly lit porch. “I've been waiting for you, Snow. I think
our man is on the move."

"Tonight?"

"Right now! One of my neighbors telephoned that he saw someone
with a sack crossing his field at sundown. I've got Rubin, our hostler,
along, too. We'll ride out and catch him in the act. Got your pistol?"

"I'm never without it. I went around to a few places that sell
dynamite and made a list of their customers. You might want to look it
over."

"Later,” the colonel said, folding the paper and
slipping it into the breast pocket of his jacket.

Rubin Danials was mounted and waiting back near the horse
barn. “Hello, Ben. Good night for hunting, eh?"

Ben glanced up at the moon, barely visible thorough the
scattered clouds. “Good night for blowing up tracks, too. Do
we know where this guy is?"

"There's a bend in the river brings it within a few miles of
Pontchartrain. The colonel thinks he's there."

They rode out into the darkness, guided only by the occasional
moonlight. Danials, who seemed to know the route best, led the way,
with Ben and the colonel behind. “Keep your gun
ready,” the colonel told Ben. “If we find him, he
could be dangerous."

Soon they reached the sugar-train track, running along the
side of a field and heading northwest away from the city and toward the
refinery. They traveled faster now, following a path along the
railroad. Presently Ben spotted the flare of a match up ahead.
“There!” he pointed.

They rode up fast and Ben was off his horse before the others.
A long fuse was burning toward a single stick of dynamite under one of
the rails. As he yanked it out a slender figure with a double-barreled
shotgun appeared from behind a tree. It was Matty's friend, Tommy
Franz. He fired a blast at Rubin Danials, blowing him off his horse,
and then aimed a second barrel at the colonel. “Get him,
Snow!” Grandpere shouted in the same instant the second
barrel was fired. The old man fell back, clinging to his reins, just as
Ben put two quick bullets into the killer's chest.

Franz stumbled back, dropping the shotgun, as Ben rushed to
the aid of the wounded men. He saw at once that Rubin Danials was
beyond saving, and turned his attention to the colonel, lowering him to
the ground as he stripped away the bloodied jacket and shirt. His chest
was peppered with a dozen or more shotgun pellets, causing a bit of
bleeding, but there was none of the massive damage that had ended the
hostler's life.

"Did you get him?” the colonel managed to gasp.

"I got him. He's dead. But so is Danials, I'm afraid."

"Can you get me back to the house?"

"You haven't lost much blood,” Ben said.
“But we'd better head for the nearest house. Where is
it?” He checked over the colonel's horse, which seemed
unharmed, and tied his employer onto the saddle so he wouldn't fall.

"The—the Crabtree place, through these woods."

Ben led the colonel's horse in the direction indicated, and
presently a large farmhouse came into view beneath the moon. After some
pounding on the door, Ben was rewarded by the appearance of one of the
Crabtrees. “What's going on?” the man wanted to
know.

"Colonel Grandpere's been wounded and there are two dead men
back by the railroad tracks. Do you have a telephone here?"

"Well—yes, we do. These farms are connected and we
have a line running into the city. What happened?"

"Another attempt to sabotage the sugar train, but that's over
now. Call Inspector Withers and let me speak with him."

Withers wasn't at police headquarters that late, but they
contacted him and he rode out in his buggy shortly after other officers
had arrived on the scene. The colonel was already on his way to the
hospital, and Withers had only the bloodstained shirt and jacket Ben
had stripped from the old man. “He was lucky.”
Feeling around in the perforated jacket, he came upon the paper Ben had
given the colonel with the names of the local dynamite customers.
“What's this?"

Ben held the paper up to the lantern light and explained that
he'd been trying to determine if there'd been any dynamite sales to
individuals. “None of these places made individual sales, as
you can see.” The inspector took the list to examine Ben's
notations. The paper was so thick no light passed through it.
“Of course, the dynamite could have come from upriver or
almost anywhere."

Withers uncovered the dead man, his chest torn open by the
buckshot blast. “Rubin Danials,” he muttered,
“a good man with horses.” He walked over to the
second body, the man with the shotgun. “Do you know
him?” the inspector asked Ben.

"Not really, but I think his name is Tommy Franz. I saw him at
a bar in the French Quarter with Grandpere's daughter."

"Matty? I'm sorry to hear she's involved in this."

"We don't know that she is."

Withers sighed. “I'd better have her picked up for
questioning."

* * * *

Ben slept only a few hours that night. Though the shooting of
Tommy Franz had been more than justified, he wondered at Matty
Grandpere's involvement in the case. Was her alienation from her father
so severe that she would enlist a man like Franz to sabotage the sugar
train?

By morning Matty had been located and brought in for
questioning. Since he had fired the shots fatal to Tommy Franz, the
inspector wanted Ben present, too. “I have to get to the
bottom of this,” he told them both.

"How is my father?” Matty asked. Her face was drawn
and pale, and Ben wondered if it was the colonel's wounding or Franz's
death that upset her most.

"His wounds aren't serious,” Withers told her.
“The doctors picked about a dozen bits of buckshot off his
skin. None of them penetrated very deep. He'll be out of the hospital
in a day or two."

She shifted her gaze to Ben. “You were the one who
killed that man?"

"I had no choice. He fired his double-barrel at Danials and
your father."

"Miss Grandpere—Matty—what was your
relationship with Tommy Franz?” Withers asked.

"There was no relationship. I barely knew him. I started
having lunch at that cafe when I took the job at La Belle Fleur. He
talked to me one day and after that he often came over to my table. I
never saw him outside the cafe."

"Did he ever mention your father, or the sugar train?"

"Never. I doubt if he knew who my father was."

Withers looked doubtful. “Grandpere isn't a common
name. I'm sure he knew."

"But what did he hope to accomplish by attacking the railroad?"

The detective made a few quick notes before he replied.
“At some point he may have been planning to extort money from
your father in exchange for stopping the attacks. We may never
know.” He picked up Ben's list of dynamite suppliers.
“I'll check these out and try to discover where he bought the
stuff, not that it makes much difference now."

"Do you need me any longer?” Matty asked.

"Not right now. Maybe you should go see your father at the
hospital."

"If you want to, I'll go with you,” Ben offered.

"Oh, all right,” she agreed, hardly concealing her
reluctance.

Colonel Grandpere had been taken to the Tulane University
Hospital, one of the city's oldest. They found him in a private room
being attended by his own nurse. “Daddy,” Matty
said softly, entering the room with some hesitation.

He lifted his head and peered at her. “You've come
back, my darlin’ daughter."

"Not for good, just to see you. How do you feel?"

"Pretty good for someone my age who took a load of buckshot in
his chest. Lucky you were there, Snow, or he'd have finished me off."

She went over to his bed and kissed him lightly on the cheek.
“The police think I was somehow involved with this Tommy
Franz, but I barely knew the man. He only had lunch with me a few
times."

Colonel Grandpere frowned. “He did? That man was no
good."

There was a noise at the door and Ben turned to see Bedelia
Grandpere entering. “Well, Matty. You've come back."

The colonel's daughter gave her a sour look. “Only
for a visit. I thought you'd be in mourning after Rubin was killed."

Bedelia ignored her remark and went to the colonel's bedside.
“We'd better be going,” Ben suggested to Matty. He
thought he understood one reason why she'd left home.

* * * *

Colonel Grandpere returned to the plantation two days later,
accompanied by Bedelia. Ben had only to collect his pay and move on.
He'd done the job as best he could and there was nothing else for him
in the city. He would head back to Texas later that day.

And yet, there was something unsettling about the entire
matter, even after Inspector Withers assured him no charges would be
brought against him for shooting Tommy Franz. “It was
self-defense,” he told Ben. “The man had already
shot two people."

"Have you been able to trace the dynamite?"

Withers spread out Ben's list on his desk. “It
appears he got it from one of these big plantations, or else he brought
it in from upriver."

Ben was staring at the sheet of paper, suddenly wondering how
he could have been so dumb. “I'm on my way out to Horseshoe
Plantation to collect my fee and return their horse. It might be a good
idea if you came with me."

Inspector Withers gave him an appraising look. “All
right,” he said finally. “If you want me to."

They reached the plantation a half-hour later, and Bedelia
ushered them to her husband's study. It was a more masculine room than
the parlor where Ben and the colonel had first met, with bookshelves
holding Civil War histories and volumes on sugarcane cultivation.
“Good to see you on your feet again, Colonel,” the
detective said.

"It's a miracle I'm still alive,” Grandpere told
him. “I have you to thank, Mr. Snow.” He handed
over a check, which Ben quietly pocketed.

"Will you be going back to Texas?” Bedelia asked.

"There, or somewhere else. I'm a wanderer."

Colonel Grandpere smiled. “You can do a good deal of
wandering with the money I paid you."

Ben was uncertain till that moment what he would do, but he
knew he could not leave New Orleans with the truth untold.
“It's hardly enough to commit murder for you."

The color drained from the old man's face. “What are
you trying to say, Mr. Snow?"

"That this entire charade was carefully planned by you for the
purpose of killing Rubin Danials. You then arranged for me to kill your
triggerman, Tommy Franz, insuring that you'd be safe. It would have
been the nearest thing to a perfect crime I've ever come
across.” Bedelia was staring at him, open-mouthed. She turned
to her husband and demanded, “What is he saying? Tell me it's
not true!"

"Darling, the man is insane."

Inspector Withers joined in the conversation. “Why
would the colonel want Danials dead?"

"Matty made a remark that implied Bedelia might have had a
relationship with him. If that was the case, or if the colonel even
suspected it, he'd have a motive.” Bedelia said nothing, and
averted her husband's gaze. “I think the colonel hired Tommy
Franz just as he hired me. He supplied him with dynamite to damage some
of the sugar train's tracks, and then hired me to guard them. It was
Tommy's own idea to meet up with Matty. Last night the colonel said he
received a telephone message that the bomber was near the tracks, but
the nearest neighbor seemed surprised at our presence. That was just a
trick to get Danials and me out there. He probably told Franz that I'd
be along as a witness that the killer shot him, too."

"But they were both shot!” Withers protested.

"Were they? How could one man have his chest ripped open while
the other was barely scratched and his horse not even touched? Remember
that sheet of paper I used to list the dynamite sellers and their
customers? I'd given it to the colonel and he placed it in the breast
pocket of his jacket. You found it there after he'd been shot. But I
remembered thinking later that the paper was so thick no light passed
through it. No light. How could the buckshot have gone through the
colonel's jacket and shirt to cause those minor surface wounds without
penetrating that paper? It couldn't have! Franz's first shot was strong
enough to kill Rubin Danials outright, but the second shell contained
only powder, no buckshot. The colonel had made careful holes in his
jacket and shirt beforehand—which went unnoticed in the
dark—and even nicked himself with a knife to produce a bit of
blood. A dozen rounds of buckshot were stuck to his skin with drops of
glue. Franz was to fire the first barrel, killing Danials, and then the
second barrel before running off. What he didn't know was that the
colonel had brought along a gunfighter to kill him, too."

"You figured all that out from the sheet of paper?"

"There were no holes in it. This is the only possible
explanation."

The colonel started to rise, reaching for his cane, but
Bedelia got there first. She raised it and swung at him, and she might
have killed him if Withers hadn't grabbed her and pulled her away.

* * * *

Later, as Ben Snow walked from his hotel to the train, he
heard the sound of a saxophone from somewhere on Basin Street. It was
the first music he'd heard since the end of Mardi Gras, and he paused
for a few minutes to enjoy it. New Orleans was a great city. It always
would be.

Copyright © 2006 Edward D. Hoch





THE DEATH OF BIG DADDY by Dick Lochte

New Orleans-born Dick Lochte's first
novel, Sleeping Dog, won the Nero Wolfe Award and was named one of the
100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century by the Independent Booksellers
Association. Two of his crime novels feature his hometown: Blue Bayou
and The Neon Smile. His ninth novel, Croaked!, is set in California,
where he now lives with his wife and son. In this story we see New
Orleans circa 1970.

On that afternoon in May, so many years ago, every seat on the
Delta flight from New York must have been filled, judging by the mass
of departing passengers staggering into the bright terminal at Moisant
International. Still, I had no trouble at all spotting my quarry. He
was the only passenger wearing a slightly rumpled white linen suit, a
flowery Hawaiian shirt open at the neck, large dark sunglasses, a
jaunty beret, and an expression of utter bewilderment on his moderately
famous, bearded face.

"Tom?” I said.

"Eh?” He backed away in near terror.

"It's Harold LeBlanc."

When that had no apparent effect, I added, “From the
Royal Street Bookshop in the Quarter."

His spine seemed to unlock, which I took as a good sign.
“Harol', o’ course. You mus’ fo'give me,
baby. I am not myself at the moment. I mistook you for a reporter.
They've been doggin’ me since that Cavett Show. What a
pleasure seein’ you again."

He swayed and I reached out a hand to steady him.
“You okay?"

That prompted one of his oddly humorless, cackling laughs.
“Not eg-zack-ly. I may need your assistance to make it to the
baggage section."

I offered him my arm, and off we went.

"It's the airline's fault,” he said.
“There was some mix-up about my First Class arrangement. I
explained that I could not fly Coach because of my condition, my fear
of suffocation. I'm afraid I had to rant a bit, but I sincerely doubt
they would have treated Mr. Neil Simon so offhandedly.” He
smiled and emitted another cackle.

"Eventually they saw the error of their ways and, to
compensate, overdid the kindness, supplying me with several more vodka
martinis than I actually needed. Do you think you could retrieve my
luggage for me, baby? The theater was supposed to send somebody, but
they either forgot or changed their mind."

"They sent me,” I said.

"Ah, a splendid choice,” he said. “I shall
take it as a sign my ghastly notices have not used up all of my
cachet.” Another cackle.

* * * *

In spite of the still-boiling three-o'clock sun and the
humidity that has always blanketed New Orleans, Tom insisted I lower
the top on my Mustang for the drive to his house in the French Quarter.
“I am devoted to tropical climates,” he said.
“It's why I keep residences here and in Key West."

Not being devoted to tropical climates, I turned on the car's
air conditioner once we were on our way. This amused him immensely.
“Icy air in an open car,” he said, shouting through
the wind. “Ah, technology.

"How are they treating my Cat, by the way?"

He asked the question with a forced casual air, as if the
answer weren't as important as the cigarette he was trying to light in
the wind.

I told him in truth that I had no idea what they were doing
with his play. “We nonparticipants have been locked out of
rehearsals. Harmon Kane's orders."

"That sounds like Harmon.” He gave up on the
cigarette and put it and a black holder back into his coat pocket.
“I was not exactly overjoyed to hear he was directing the
production as well as starring in it. He's a bit too much of a
‘genius,’ if you know what I mean. It's made him persona
non grata in Hollywood. Tends to be hard on his players,
which must make it especially rough for local actors. But I expect his
Big Daddy will be something to see."

"A columnist for the Picayune said it was
the first time an actor might have to go on a diet to play the role."

This time the cackle had some mirth to it. “He has
been mistaken for the Goodyear blimp,” he said.
“But there was a time when he was as svelte as you, Harol'.
Before his appetites got the better of him. Speaking of which, how's he
been behavin’ himself?"

"I've caught his act a few times,” I said.
“Most recently in Antoine's, cursing his waiter for having
the temerity to bring him an after-dinner coffee he hadn't requested."

"Was he in the bag?"

"I hope so."

"Prob'ly didn't understand that in this
tradition-lovin’ section of the world an after-dinner
demitasse is considered part of the meal,” Tom said with an
air of dismay. “He took the brew to be the waiter's
commentary on his inebriated state."

"I suppose,” I said.

"And, of course, he was playing to the room and to the
wide-eyed admirers at his table."

"Just one wide-eyed tablemate,” I said.
“Eugenia Broussard, an artist at Webber Advertising and our
local Kim Stanley. She's playing Maggie the Cat."

"They ... involved romantically?"

"I gather they are."

Tom sighed. “Never a good idea to mix business with
romance,” he said. “I learned that lesson a long
time ago."

He leaned back and closed his eyes, offering his face to the
sun. “Were the ‘sixties good for you,
Harol'?” he asked.

Though we were only a few years past that decade, the answer
to the question required some thought. I'd survived my wife's death,
quit my job at the same ad agency where Eugenia now worked, bought the
bookstore, seen my country enter a war it couldn't possibly win, and
lost a son to the priesthood ... well, better lost to that than to a
sniper's bullet.

"It was the worst period of my life,” Tom continued,
making me realize his question had been rhetorical. “After Night
of the Iguana, everything went to pieces. Plays folding
almost before they opened. The critics like vultures feedin’
on my stringy old remains.

"Frank dying.” That would be Frank Merlo, his
long-time companion, a cancer victim. “And Diana Barrymore.
And my dear Carson.” Carson McCullers. “So many of
my friends. All gone. All the doomed people."

I couldn't think of a thing to say to that.

After a few minutes of silence, he said, “Don't pay
any attention to me, Harol'. It's those martinis talkin'. I have
survived the ‘sixties. I'm alive and reasonably healthy. My
past plays are being performed and I have new ones on the horizon. I am
sitting in an air-cooled automobile with the sun on my face, heading
into a city that is my spiritual home. As the great Robert Louis
Stevenson once noted, ‘The world is filled with such a number
of things, it's a wonder we all aren't happy as
kings.’”

* * * *

At the entrance to his two-story house on Dumaine Street, I
offered to help him with his single piece of luggage but he assured me
that he could handle it. “That delightfully windblown drive
has delivered me into sobriety,” he said, “a state
that I shall attempt to alter at the first opportunity."

"I have several first editions of Roman Spring
and some of the plays at the store I'd like you to sign,” I
said. “How long will you be in town?"

"Maybe a week, this trip,” he said. “I
told Megan I'd look in on the final rehearsal tomorrow. And then the
opening night, of course. You'll be there, right?"

Megan Carey, the play's producer, and I had been keeping
company for a while. I told him I'd be on hand opening night.

"Good,” he said. “I'll try to stop by the
bookstore before then. Otherwise, I'll see you at the theater."

* * * *

It rained the next afternoon, just enough to clean the French
Quarter's streets and cool and freshen the night air for the usual
flock of tourists.

In those days, I often kept the shop open late on the
weekends, ever the optimist as I watched the crowds pass by with their
go-cups and Pat O'Brien glasses in hand. That Friday night, just as I
was about to turn the sign around on the door, Tom appeared. With him
was Jason Dupuis, a blond, blue-eyed young man (in his twenties, I
guessed) who'd been tending bar at the Barataria Lounge when Harmon
Kane noticed his resemblance to Paul Newman and cast him as Brick, the
alcoholic husband of Maggie the Cat in Tom's play.

Tom was dressed in suit and tie. Jason, who had the habit of
staring at you with an insolent sneer that I presumed was his
“method” pose, wore patched Levis, battered tennis
shoes, a flounced white silk pirate shirt, and, in spite of the season,
a blue velvet blazer. The three colorful plastic bead necklaces he wore
were either his homage to Mardi Gras or a sign that the hippie
influence had not quite vanished from the earth.

He strolled by the shelves studying titles while Tom sat at my
desk, signing the small stack of books.

"How went the rehearsal?” I asked.

"The Broussard girl is surprisingly effective,” Tom
said. “As is Mr. Dupuis.” He grinned, glanced at
the young bartender-actor, who was pretending not to hear, and
continued. “Harmon is a splendid Big Daddy, almost on a par
with Mr. Ives."

He signed the final book with a flourish, placed the pen on
the desk, and rose to his feet, swaying slightly.
“Durin’ our drive in from the airport, you
neglected to mention that you and Megan Carey were an item, as they
say."

"I didn't think you'd be interested."

"Ah'm always interested in matters of the heart,” he
said, his eyes drifting unconsciously to Jason, who was perusing a
book. “Anyway, the rest of the cast is adequate, at the very
least."

"And eager to take on New York,” I said.

"What do you mean?"

"Megan tells me that Harmon is bringing the production to New
York,” I said. “Isn't he?"

"He'd better be,” Jason said, suddenly aware of our
discussion.

"You both are askin’ the wrong man,” Tom
said. “Ah'm just the playwright, the last to know."

"I gave up my job at the lounge,” Jason said.
“Harmon better be playing straight."

"Did you like slingin’ drinks?” Tom asked.

"It was okay."

"Was it as satisfyin’ as acting?"

"Hell, no."

"Then whatever happens, Harmon did you a favor."

Jason begrudgingly admitted this was true.

He held out a well-thumbed trade paperback of An
Actor Prepares. “I'd like this,” he said.

Tom took out his wallet, but I told him to put it away.
“It's just a reader copy."

"That's very sweet of you, Harol',” he said.
“We're off to The Absinthe House for cocktails. Love to have
you join us."

I thanked him, but declined. Three was a crowd and booze was
something else I'd left behind in the ‘sixties.

"Till the big night, then,” Tom said.

* * * *

The Saenger Theatre has stood on the corner of Canal and
Rampart since the ‘twenties, when, after a three-year period
of careful construction (at a cost of $2.5 million), it emerged as the
city's leading home for silent films and stage plays. In the
‘thirties, talking movies became its sole attractions.

They remained so until the mid ‘sixties, when a
renovation, partially financed by the sale of eleven of the building's
original twelve stunning chandeliers, transported from a vacation spot
for French royalty near Versailles, resulted in a
“piggy-back” theater. A wall transformed the
balcony into a cinema, while the ground floor served as a 2,700-seat
venue for touring theatricals.

That Saturday evening, it was standing-room only. The idea of
being present on opening night of a Tennessee Williams play, directed
by and starring the near-legendary Harmon Kane, with the playwright
himself in attendance, was almost too much for New Orleans’
social- and literary-minded citizens to handle. They arrived in force,
dressed to the nines.

And, judging by their cheers as the curtain descended on
Eugenia Broussard's Maggie and Jason Dupuis’ Brick facing an
uncertain future, they enjoyed the play as much as I did.

"You've got a hit,” I said to Megan.

She was never less than lovely, but her smile that night
turned her transcendent. “I think you're right. Harold, I'm
going to have a play on Broadway."

The members of the large cast assembled for their curtain
calls. After considerable clapping and bravos, the
actors portraying the house servants and the “little no-neck
monster” children curtsied and left the stage, followed by
the show's unctuous Reverend Tooker (a life-insurance salesman named
Carl Godet) and the brusque Doctor Baugh (New Orleans Recreational
Department's Sam Gottfried).

Next to exit were Jacques Boudreaux (a druggist who appeared
frequently in local stage productions) and Felicia Martinez (the
hostess of a children's show on WWL-TV) who had appeared as Big Daddy's
mendacious son Gooper and his tart-tongued wife Mae.

Before their departure, the production's credible Big Mama,
Mildred St. Paul, another frequently used local thespian and the
housewife of a vice president at Henderson Petroleum, and Jason Dupuis
(Brick), were given standing ovations that they almost deserved. That
left the stage to the elephantine Harmon Kane, who, with surprising
grace, gathered Eugenia Broussard in one massive arm and pulled her
close, both of them regarding the standing, cheering crowd with an air
of noblesse oblige.

When the applause began to wane, Harmon turned to the wings
and summoned the other two primary players—"Millie and
Jack"—to rejoin them.

More applause.

A young man in an ill-fitting tuxedo raced down the aisle
bearing two rose bouquets that Harmon presented to Eugenia Broussard
and Mildred St. Paul. Then Harmon stepped toward the footlights and
gestured the crowd to quiet down.

"Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, his magnificent
voice rumbling effortlessly without benefit of amplification,
“we would like to thank you for your warm and enthusiastic
response to our little production."

The audience was silent now and a bit mesmerized.

"I, myself, am particularly in your debt,” he
continued. “Since I have been absent from the theater for
nearly twenty years, laboring in the Hollywood vineyards, there were
some who needed assurance that I had not lost my ... flair for
stagecraft.

"Tonight your applause has given them all the proof anyone
would need. As a result, on Broadway this fall, I will be directing a
new play by a promising young writer named David Mamet, starring myself
and Mr. Kenneth McMillan.

"Until then, I remain your humble servant in the arts."

More applause.

But Harmon's cast members didn't seem to be sharing his good
spirits as they took their final bows and the curtain descended.

"He had no intention of bringing this production to
Broadway,” Megan said, her eyes wet with tears. “We
were just a test case. How could he be so cruel?"

Tom, standing in the aisle a few rows from the stage, saw her
and began to thread his way toward us. With the crowd of theatergoers
jabbering and calling his name, he took Megan's hand and said,
“I'm so sorry, my deah."

She drew a deep breath and when she exhaled her unhappiness
seemed to disappear, replaced by a determination that hardened her
beauty in a way I'd never seen before. “Did you know what he
was planning, Tom?"

"Not until I saw Mr. Edgar Weisman in the seventh-row aisle
seat."

"Who's he?” I asked.

"A representative of Greystone Theaters,” Tom said.
“They operate the Waterford on 47th and Broadway, which I
assume is where Harmon will appear in his
‘promising’ young playwright's bit of twaddle."

"I'd better get backstage,” Megan said.
“Those poor actors must be terribly depressed. I want to make
sure they're still coming to the party. After all their hard work, the
least I can do is provide them with food and drink and the opportunity
to tell the loathsome Mr. Kane precisely what they think of him."

We both watched her maneuver through the crowd.

"After dropping that bombshell, you don't suppose Kane really
will show at the party?” I asked.

"'Course he will, Harol'. He's got to get another five
performances out of those poor disillusioned actors and he's a big
enough ham to think he can talk them into it."

"You theater folk,” I said, prompting one of his
cackles. “I suppose you'll be at the party?"

"As things stand, I wouldn't miss it,” he said,
turning to the crowd of men and women offering him pens and playbills
to sign.

* * * *

Megan's cast party was being held in a penthouse suite at the
Royal Orleans Hotel that probably cost about the same per night as a
month's rent of my bookshop three blocks down the street. A bar had
been set up, and a groaning board filled with iced shrimp and crawfish,
raw oysters, roast beef, a ham, dirty-rice, two kinds of salads,
crudités, and tiny hamburgers and little links that were
mainly for the children.

She had been successful in corralling most of the cast, though
the party proceeded in a subdued and semi-gloomy manner for over an
hour without a sign of either Harmon or Eugenia. The children and their
stage parents seemed to be enjoying themselves, along with the
African-American contingent that had portrayed Big Daddy's household
staff. They'd had no illusions about Broadway, having been informed at
the start that their relatively minor roles would be recast by New York
actors.

The others were finding it difficult to set aside their sense
of betrayal, even with their stomachs full and their wine and cocktail
glasses being constantly refilled. Jason Dupuis, suspicious that Tom
had been in on the deception, was giving the playwright a hard time of
it.

"Don't touch me, old man,” he said, jerking his arm
from Tom's hand. “I prefer not to associate with people I
don't trust."

"I learned of Harmon's plans when you did,” Tom
protested.

"You're lucky I don't know for sure, or I'd give you what I'm
gonna give the fat man."

"You physically attack him and he'll sue you. The publicity
will make him stronger and destroy you."

"Oh yeah? Like I got anything to destroy. In any case, hanging
around with you's lost all its appeal. What can a has-been like you do
for me now? Dig?"

We both watched the method former bartender swagger off toward
Eugenia Broussard, who'd just arrived, alone. “He'd seemed
like such a nice boy,” Tom said, not at all sarcastically.

"Sharper than a serpent's tooth is an ungrateful
actor,” I said.

"The sad thing is, I've been treated worse,” Tom
said and cackled mirthlessly. “Time for me to refill the cup.
Can I get you something from the bar, Harol'?"

I told him I was fine.

I watched him collect a large clear drink and take it to join
Megan, who was saying goodbye to the departing children and their
parents. Jason, meanwhile, had turned his full glowering method stare
on Eugenia and she seemed to be flowering under its intensity.

Actors.

* * * *

Harmon Kane arrived nearly two hours late for the party.

By then, we were down to a skeleton crew. Jason and Eugenia
were “discovering” themselves on a couch in the
corner. Jacques Boudreaux, the once and, it now appeared, future
druggist, was ranting to an obviously inebriated and disinterested Tom
about being relegated to a life of “rolling pills,”
while his wife Lula, a country girl from Jeanerette, was confessing to
me that, “as good as mah hubby is pretendin’ to be
Gooper, I just wouldn't'a felt right about livin’ in New
Yawk, with Jacques associatin’ with drug addicks
an’ all."

Mildred “Big Mama” St. Paul and Megan were
standing at the food table, deep in a discussion—of calories,
I guessed. Her husband, the vice president of Henderson Petroleum, had
been backed into a corner by insurance salesman Carl Godet and was
trying to edge away gracefully.

All conversation ceased when Harmon entered.

He looked uncharacteristically harried, his hair mussed and
his round face an unhealthy shade of gray. “Forgive me for
arriving so late,” he said to the room, “and for
... everything. If you'll allow me, I'll try and explain ... but first,
could someone be so kind as to point out the facilities?"

"There,” Megan said flatly, indicating the doors
leading to the darkened bedrooms and baths.

As soon as he stormed away, energy began to flow through the
room again. Lula drifted in the direction of her husband and I strolled
to the window where Tom stood staring at the lights along the
Mississippi.

"Lovely view,” he said.

"Not exactly like the lights on Broadway,” I said.

"No, but you know, Harol', these folks do have some talent.
And if they really want Broadway, they'll find a way to get there."

We watched the lights for a few minutes in silence.

"Okay. I've had enough of this bull.” Jason's angry
voice drew us both from the river view.

He strode angrily into the bedroom and continued to the closed
bathroom door. “People out here want to talk to you, fat
man,” he shouted. “Enough with the Frankie Machine
bit."

The door remained closed.

"C'mon out, you lyin', sorry son of—"

Jason's flow of invective was interrupted by the opening of
the bathroom door.

Harmon stood wild-eyed and mountainous in the doorway, nearly
blotting out the light from the bathroom. He had removed his tux
jacket, pulled his bow tie apart, and unhooked his cuffs and the top of
his shirt. He stumbled forward, then stopped and took a stiff-legged
backward step, as if attempting a Frankenstein-monster parody.

But there was nothing comedic about his condition.

Jason, his handsome face registering surprise and, I think,
fear, distanced himself as the big man started forward again, gasping
for air and reaching out his arms. As he entered the lighted room where
we stood his body began to spasm.

I rushed to offer whatever help I could, but I was too late.
He went down hard on his side, hitting the carpet with an ugly thud. He
rolled onto his back and lay there, his mouth opening and closing,
reminding me, I hate to say, of a bloated, beached frog.

He stared up at me, his face wet with perspiration and tears.
“Meg ... Meg ... did it...” he said. Then,
apparently annoyed with himself, he shook his massive head. He mumbled
something.

I knelt beside him, sensing rather than seeing the others in
the room move closer. There was an oddly familiar chemical smell coming
from his body, pungent, but not unpleasant. I placed my ear near his
mouth and heard him whisper his final words.

I stood and looked down at his still body, only then realizing
that a hypodermic needle was dangling from one huge fleshy arm, caught
in place by the open French cuff of his shirt.

There was little doubt that he was dead, but I felt for a
pulse anyway.

Jacques Boudreaux, the druggist, stood right behind me.
“Oh, man, ain't that somethin'?” he said.

"What was it he whispered to you?” Tom asked.
“His last words?"

I pointed to the needle. “He said, ‘the
heroin.’”

"Good Lord,” Mildred St. Paul said. “Was
he on heroin?"

"On something,” I said.

"Actually, according to the insurance policy we needed for the
play, he was a diabetic,” Megan said coldly. “Not
that that rules out heroin, of course."

"Diabetic?” Jason said. “Then that's what
killed him."

"Either that or a drug overdose,” I said.
“In any case, we should all move back from the body and find
a comfortable place to sit and wait for the police. They won't want
anybody using that bathroom."

"Shouldn't we cover him with somethin'?” Tom asked.

"I think we'd better leave him like he is,” I said,
and, ignoring the buzz of their questions and comments, I took it upon
myself to notify the night manager of the hotel.

He in turn summoned the police.

* * * *

A pair of uniformed policemen, one fresh and brash, the other
seasoned and bored, answered the call and quickly ushered us to one of
the hotel's vacant suites, leaving the death scene to technicians from
the coroner's office and various other minions of the law.

Eventually we were joined by two homicide detectives, Burke
(pronounced “Burkie") and Mamahat, who, for the next two
hours, interviewed each of us singly in the suite's bedrooms.

Finally, Mamahat, a small, sad-eyed, olive-skinned man who
seemed to be the ranking member of the NOPD, emerged from a room with
Lula Boudreaux, the last of us to be interrogated. “I'm sorry
we had to keep all you folks heah,” he said, looking as if
that really were the truth. “But, in point o’ fact,
Mr. Harmon Kane, a man of international fame, is now officially a
victim of homicide, making this, unofficially, what we call a
‘don't make a mistake or your butt winds up walking a beat on
Bourbon Street’ murder investigation."

He crossed the room to where Megan and I were together on a
loveseat. “Miz Carey,” he said, his eyes looking
sadder with each word, “you have any idea why Mistah Kane
said you were the one who killed him?"

Megan's hand squeezed mine suddenly. I tried to gather my
thoughts.

"That's not what I heard him
say.” Tom's voice was a weary drawl, but it worked to
distract Mamahat.

"Then you seem to be in the minority, suh,” the
detective said.

"Words are my business, Detective,” Tom said.
“I don't much care for im-prov-i-zation. The word
‘kill’ was not used, nor any of its many synonyms.
What Harmon said was, ‘Meg did it.' That
could mean, ‘Meg brought me to New Orleans,’ or
‘Meg got me to come to this dreadful party.’ The
word ‘it’ can be so dawgone vague, n'est
pas?"

"With all due respect, Mistah Williams, when a man has just
injected himself with a toxic substance he thought was insulin and
realizes he is about to ex-pire, I truly do not believe he's gonna be
concerned with who invited him to a party."

"A toxic substance?” Tom said. “You mean
heroin?"

"Wasn't no evidence of heroin. Not in the hypodermic needle or
in its leather case that we found in the bathroom,” Mamahat
said. “Way it looks, somebody slipped something into the dead
man's insulin supply and he shot it into his arm. We'll identify the
toxin soon enough. The assistant coroner said it smelled like a
petroleum substance of some kind."

Hearing those words, I recognized the odor I'd smelled when I
was close to the dying man. And I knew exactly who had killed him,
though I was less clear on what I should do about it.

Mamahat returned to Megan. “Miz Carey, you were
aware that the deceased suffered from diabetes, right?"

She nodded.

"Then that knowledge, together with the victim identifying
you..."

I saw where the detective was headed. “A lot of
people knew he was a diabetic,” I said. “Or, to be
more correct, they knew he used a needle."

"Yeah? I got the idea they found out about his condition from
Miz Carey after the man expired."

"Lula,” I said to Jacques Boudreaux's wife,
“you told me you were worried about your husband associating
with drug addicts. Were you talking about Harmon Kane?"

She looked at her husband for help. “Jacques?"

"I may have heard something about him bein’ on the
needle,” Boudreaux said, frowning.

"Did you hear it from Jason?” I asked.

"Whoa,” the ex-bartender shouted. “Leave
me out of this."

"When you were calling for Harmon Kane to exit the bathroom,
Jason, you said he should stop ‘the Frankie Machine
bit.’ What'd you mean by that?"

Jason slumped. “Okay. Frankie Machine. Man
With the Golden Arm. Sinatra's greatest role."

"Heroin addict,” I said.

"Yeah. One of the cleaning guys at the theater interrupted
Harmon shooting up in the head. He thought it was dope."

"So who else knew the deceased used a needle?”
Mamahat asked.

"It's a fact of backstage theater life, Detective,”
Tom said, “that if one person in the company possesses that
kind of information, everybody does."

"Okay, so everybody knew,” Mamahat said, with some
heat. “Big deal. I still have the dead man singling out one
person by name."

"Detective,” Tom said, “has anyone
mentioned to you that no one refers to Miz Carey as
‘Meg,’ not even her ... gentleman friend? It is
always ‘Megan.’”

"So what? Kane was dying. He wasn't able to get the full name
out."

"Finally, we agree,” Tom said. “Are you
familiar with my play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?"

"I saw the movie,” Detective Mamahat said,
“back awhile."

"Good man,” Tom said. “You remember Miss
Elizabeth Taylor in the film?"

"She went around in a slip, flirtin’ with Paul
Newman?"

Tom smiled. “More or less correct. The character's
name is Margaret, but she is also called Maggie the Cat. Maggie ...
Mag. Sounds a lot like Meg, no?"

"You're suggestin’ what?” Mamahat asked.
“That he was talking about some character in a story?"

"More like the actress playing that role,” Tom said.

"That's crazy!” Jason yelled. He was sitting next to
Eugenia Broussard, his arm cradling her in a protective manner.
“Why wouldn't he have used her real name?"

"I think you'll agree Harmon wasn't quite himself at the
time,” Tom said. “He was dying and mentally
confused, not unlike the character he'd been playing only hours before.
Isn't it possible he was still thinking of Miz Broussard as Maggie?"

"You're not buying any of this, are you, Detective?”
Eugenia asked. “The ravings of an old drunk?"

Mamahat looked a bit uneasy. “It is a little ...
far-fetched, Mistah Williams."

"Then let's draw it closer to reality,” Tom said.
“In spite of her lies and manipulations, some consider Maggie
to be the heroine of the play. I do. And I believe Harmon did, too.
That's why his dyin’ words to Harol’ LeBlanc were
‘the heroine,’ indicating the lady, not the drug."

"This is absurd,” Eugenia said.

"Most of the people here, Miz Carey included, had one reason
to wish Harmon ill,” Tom said. “But only you, Miz
Broussard, had a second reason. The man had pretended to be your lover.
A broken contract might result in anger and frustration. But a broken
heart, now that's a motive for murder."

We all were looking at Eugenia now. Even the suddenly quiet
Jason, who, perhaps unconsciously, had slipped his arm from around her.

"Harmon didn't break my heart,” Eugenia said.
“But even if he had, do you suppose I carry poison around in
my purse just in case I get dumped by a fat old fraud?"

"Not in your purse,” I said. “But, in this
case, the poison was benzoyl. I recognized the odor from my days at
Webber Advertising. It's used by the artists to clean the glue from
their boards. You've been working in Webber's art department. They
still use the stuff?"

She remained silent, staring at me.

"You didn't have much time after Harmon's curtain
speech,” I said. “The agency is only a few blocks
away. I imagine you raced right over there in a fury, filled a plastic
bottle with the most toxic product you could lay your hands on, and
then ran directly to Harmon's hotel. What happened there? A full-out
fight, maybe. You locking yourself in the bathroom, pretending to cry
while you doctored his medicine?"

"That's your story,” she said.

"An’ what's yours, ma'am?” Mamahat asked.

"I don't need one,” she said. “These are
all fantasies."

"If that's the case, the night watchman at Webber won't have
checked you in tonight,” I said. “And the desk
clerk and elevator operators at Harmon's hotel won't have seen hide nor
hair of you."

"And I suppose your fingerprints won't be on any of the vials
in Harmon's medicine case,” Tom said.

Eugenia stood, head held high, arms at her side. Her
glittering green eyes scanned the faces in the room. “Oh, you
weak, beautiful people,” she said, repeating Maggie the Cat's
final words from the play. “What you need is someone to take
hold of you—gently, with love, and hand your life back to
you, like something gold you let go of—and I can."

She took a step toward Tom, focusing on him. Detective Mamahat
made a move to stop her, but Tom waved him off.

"I'm determined to do it,” Eugenia continued.
“And nothing's more determined than a cat on a tin
roof—is there? Is there, baby?"

She reached out and touched his cheek, gently.

Then she backed away. “I'm ready now,
Detective,” she said.

Mamahat took her arm and escorted her from the room.

Suddenly, everyone began to talk. “Wasn't that the
damnedest...?” “She murdered him?”
“I wanna go home, Jacques.” “Yeah. Let's
get the hell out of here."

As they filed out into the hall, Tom remained where he was.
“I've never heard my words performed more
eloquently,” he said and his eyes filled with tears.

* * * *

We led him from the room and out of the hotel.

Royal Street was still throbbing with music and expectations.
He stared at the passing parade. “Things are
fallin’ apart in this old world,” he said.
“The pressure builds up in people and they crack. People
you'd never expect. Like Eugenia. So seemingly strong and capable."

"We'll walk you home, Tom,” Megan said.

"Thank you, my deah, but I'm still a bit too sober to be going
home."

"Then we'll keep you company,” I said.

"That's kind of you, Harol', but tonight I shall seek the
kindness of strangers."

We watched him wander off down Royal in his tuxedo, drawing
the attention of passing tourists who either recognized him as one of
the world's great playwrights or pegged him for being just another
wealthy eccentric in a city full of them.

Copyright © 2006 Dick Lochte





DEAD MEN'S SHIRTS by Julie Smith

* * * *




* * * *

Art by Herbert Kearney

* * * *

Born in Savannah, Julie Smith's first job was in New
Orleans, as feature writer for the Times Picayune. But it was the
1960s, and San Francisco beckoned. There she would work for the
Chronicle, and start writing fiction. She returned to NOLA, the city
where her novels are set, in 1996. She's an Edgar Award winner (and a
P.I.!) whose new book is P.I. on a Hot Tin Roof.

For Pig Man Latrelle's funeral, they had a horse-drawn
carriage driven by a distinguished gentleman in tails, top hat, and
white tennis shoes. They had the Rebirth Brass Band, but not playing
dirges, only party stuff. And they had the damn Dead Men's Shirts, now
offered as part of a package deal by the funeral homes. In recent
years, they'd been renamed “Memorial Shirts” as if
they were something respectable. Pig Man's whole family was wearing
them, all his little nieces and nephews, every single member of his
posse, the P-Town Soldiers, all his little girl-friends, and every one
of his babies by different girls (definitely not women—Pig
Man was only nineteen).

Pig Man's T-shirt had his picture on it along with his
birthday under the label “Thug-in,” and also the
day of his death, “Thug-out.” In addition, it
sported a legend informing the world that “Real Soldiers
Don't Die—Now I'm With God, Up in the Sky."

The Reverend Ray Turner Thompson, who officiated at the
service, was pretty sure Pig Man was actually burning in hell and he
wasn't sure he wasn't damning himself as well just by delivering the
eulogy. But he managed to pull out some pap about there being good in
the worst of us and God loving all his children, and then he recalled
Pig Man—whom he called by his given name,
Jermaine—as a cute little kid the reverend used to see at
neighborhood barbeques. Lately, as neighborhood
“soldiers” fell like bowling pins, he'd gotten good
at that kind of thing, but it never failed to turn his stomach.

Just about everything about Pigeon Town turned his stomach
these days. The violence was at the top of his list, but not the very
top. He hated the glorification of it even worse. Sometimes the Dead
Men's Shirts said “Thuggin’ Eternally,”
as if the good Lord had a separate heaven he kept for criminals, who
got to sell drugs and blow each other away even after death. And the
reverend knew these kids knew what was in the
Bible; he'd read it to them himself. What the hell was wrong with
everybody?

Well, he'd had to keep his mouth shut at Jermaine's funeral
for the sake of Pig Man's mama, who'd had two sons gunned down in as
many years, both of whom probably deserved what they got. But
just wait till Sunday, he thought. I've been
sitting on my hands way too long.

As soon as he could peel himself away from the crowd of
teenage murderers and drug dealers and gangsters who shot up the
neighborhood and then had the nerve to come into his church like they
belonged there, he went home and began composing Sunday's sermon. On
the one hand, he knew the people he wanted to reach wouldn't be in
church to hear it; they only came for funerals. But on the other, he
had to get some dialogue going, some buzz started. Some things off his
chest.

The thing was, he was fifty-five years old and a graduate of
Dillard University as well as a respected Baptist seminary.
Furthermore, he was the son of a preacher who was also
college-educated. Education was what happened in his
family—and also in the recent past, if he remembered
correctly. People worked hard and lived good, productive lives. What
had happened to that?

How dare you come into my church, he
wrote, wearing shirts that proclaim eternal thugging? Who
gave you the right? And as for you parents, who gave your sons and
daughters the right? This is still a house of God, and God, if I
understand anything about this life, does not condone even earthly
thugging, much less eternal thugging.
Thugging and drugging and shooting and murder. Rape and violence and
revenge. No! These things are not of God. Where is your respect,
people? Where are your values? What are we
teaching our children these days? LET ME TELL YOU
SOMETHING—BILL COSBY IS RIGHT! WE ARE FAILING OUR CHILDREN!
WE ARE FAILING THEM AT EVERY LEVEL."

He stopped to imagine the way he'd bellow out those last few
lines, doing it now in his mind and finding it entirely satisfying. He
needed a bridge to Cosby, though. Well, maybe old Bill didn't belong in
this sermon at all. Poor parenting actually seemed minor compared to
what was happening in Pigeon Town, which was a turf war between the
P-Town Soldiers and a gang a neighborhood over, in Hollygrove. Jermaine
Latrelle was only the latest casualty and judging by what the reverend
knew about him, at least he was an actor in the drama.

Not so all the victims. So far, two innocent people had been
killed as well as three gang members. The killing continued because
every witness so far—and there were quite a
few—either refused to come forward or recanted after being
threatened. The threat was as real as Pig Man's dead body, too.

But this had to stop somewhere. Somebody, somehow, needed to
get some cojones. The reverend changed focus on the
sermon, made it even stronger.

Are we going to stand by and let our innocent sons
and daughters be gunned down in broad daylight?

We must trust in the good Lord that we'll be safe.
The good Lord and the tip line, brothers and sisters. Those who are
afraid, phone in anonymous tips—and pray for the courage to
come forward into the light. Those who are not afraid, come forward now
if you dare!

We've come to a time when Miss Ella Fauntleroy down
there in the front row can't even sell her homemade frozen cups to the
neighborhood kids. Yes, Miss Ella, I've seen you, poking your old arm
out through your door, holding those frozen Kool-Aid cups out to any
kid brave enough to come up on your porch, too scared even to show your
face.

And I know the Boudreaux family reunion's been
canceled for fear somebody's going to come shoot it up. Yes, Brother
Boudreaux, I know. Y'all have every reason to be scared.

But somebody'sgot
to speak up. This killin's got to stop.

He delivered the sermon Sunday, complete with the references
to the Dead Men's Shirts, and there was hardly a dry eye in the house.
True, there'd only been about twenty people in church that day, most of
them—except for his daughter and his grandson—as
old as the reverend himself, but he saw them nodding along with him, he
heard their shouted “Amen"s. He'd touched a nerve and he knew
it.

That afternoon, just a few hours after church let out, four
men in a white pickup fired into a crowd on a porch, wounding three
more people and killing a three-year-old girl. Then the pickup rolled
on down the road and killed two other men sitting in a car.

When the reverend heard the news, he wept. Just put his head
in his hands and cried like a baby. His wife Maureen came in and held
him, no need to say anything. After thirty years of marriage, they were
practically telepathic. She knew exactly what was wrong with him.

The next day, Monday, a young girl who'd been on that porch
came to him for pastoral counseling. She knew who did it, she said,
she'd gone to high school with those boys, and one of her cousins was
among the wounded. But she had a baby and the baby's father had been
killed in a previous shooting, and even though she knew the right thing
to do, she didn't think she could come forward. Was there some way he
could intervene for her? Maybe tell the po-lice, but withhold her name?

Damned if he knew what to tell her, except that he could
intervene and he would. But he didn't add that that wasn't going to get
the shooters convicted, that the po-lice were going to need her
testimony. Confronted with a real person with a real problem, that was
just something he couldn't bring himself to do. So what did he believe,
he asked himself? Was he just an old bag of wind when it came down to
it?

He talked to Maureen about it and then he talked to God. And
he realized that what he really thought was, things were so rotten in
Denmark—meaning Pigeon Town—that he didn't really
know where to start. Because this was all about the drug culture
getting out of hand, so out of hand it had spawned the hip-hop culture,
which told innocent kids that the thuggin’ life was the cool
life, the good life. That differentiating yourself from white people
was the primary virtue of the ghetto, even if it meant you couldn't get
a job because you couldn't speak good English and had no education and
wore jeans so baggy you looked like a clown. In fact, that you didn't
need a job because selling drugs was the “black”
thing to do.

But who in Pigeon Town was going to buy that? Who under fifty,
anyhow? Saying something like that would make him an object of
ridicule, a black man pandering. That was the thug's-eye view, and it
was so pervasive no one dared disagree. Only thing to do, he decided,
was to tackle the problem from the bottom up. Start with the kids. He'd
announce an outreach program he should have started long ago. He'd
distance himself—for the moment—from pleading for
cooperative witnesses; he'd focus on the only people in the
neighborhood whose minds were still supple. Because Bill Cosby was
right about the way kids were brought up these days, the twisted things
they believed. Baggy pants and bad grammar didn't make you a man or
anything at all except a clown. He liked that line. He put it in his
next sermon, and it went over. Everything he had to say was just dandy
with the over-fifty crowd.

It's gotten to the point, he said, that
if you're going to teach English in a black neighborhood, you'd better
teach it as a second language. And I'll tell you what we're going to
do, he wound up, we're going to do exactly that!
Ain’ no kid in this hood can get a job long as he
talk like a thug. He paused for everyone to get the joke and
then he said, Hey, don't go away—y'all know what I
meant.

That got him a laugh.

First thing he was going to do, he said, was start a class in
standard English, right in the church, as an after-school program. And
not only that, he was going to teach the class himself.

That actually got him applause.

But on Wednesday, the day of the first class, exactly one
student showed up, his own seven-year-old grandson, Darnell, wearing
baggy thug pants and a sullen face. “Mama said I had to bring
him,” his daughter D'Ruth said. “So here he is.
Just don't tell his daddy, you mind? Marcellus finds out, he'll kill
me.” She meant her husband, the reverend's worthless
son-in-law.

"Why?” the reverend asked.

"You know why, Daddy. It's not his scene."

"You telling me he's got some problem with educating his son?"

D'Ruth answered with a shrug.

The reverend stifled the urge to ask her why she'd married
him, anyhow, and turned to Darnell, who wasted no time in asking,
“Why I gotta do this?"

"You mean, ‘Why do I have to do this?', don't you?"

Darnell looked at him suspiciously. “Whassup
wi’ dat?"

It took the reverend a moment to realize the boy wasn't
smarting off, he really didn't know. So there was hope here. Ignorance
beat attitude by a mile in his book. He ended up spending a reasonably
pleasant hour with his grandson, and wished he'd thought of this
before. Maybe it wouldn't keep the kid off the streets, but it was
bringing the two of them closer, anyhow.

So he preached about that on Sunday: the rewards of working
with your kids, of helping them with their homework. All the gray heads
nodded, but except for D'Ruth and Darnell, gray heads were all there
were. This was going nowhere.

That Tuesday there were two more shootings, which meant
another funeral at his church. This time, the reverend noticed, the
Dead Men's Shirts announced the victim's dates of birth and death with
the labels “Dude-rise” and
“Dude-set.” This kid, Le'Devin Miner, was also
going to be “Thuggin’ Eternally,” if the
shirts were to be believed.

The reverend didn't keep his mouth shut this time. He told the
story of his older son, Thomas. There used to be a famous
drug dealer lived in these parts, named Rafael Conway, y'all remember
Rafael? When my boy Thomas was fourteen years old, he just had
to have a certain pair of shoes. What's so important about
shoes? I ask you. How'd a thing like sneakers get to be a symbol of how
rich and important you are? Well, my boy Thomas wanted a pair of
forty-dollar Dr. J sneakers and we were too poor to buy ‘em
for him.

So Thomas asked a kid he knew worked for Rafael if
he needed a little help selling pot. The kid said he'd get back to him,
and the very next day, who you think came to school to pick up Thomas?
In a big ol’ purple Cadillac. Rafael Conway himself, that's
who. And Rafael said to my boy, “Thomas Thompson, I catch you
selling drugs or even talkin’ about
selling drugs, I'm gon’ put a whippin’ on you."
Everyone under thirty-five gasped. No one expected that.

Rafael Conway said, “You play football,
don't you, Thomas? I'm gonna give you ten dollars for every sack you
make this season."

So Thomas says, “Why you do
dat?” Now if he'd been speaking proper English, he'd have
said, “Why would you do that?", but
Thomas was just like all of y'all, thought it made him more of a man to
talk like he'd never been to school a day in his life. So he said,
“Why you do dat?", just like he didn't have a day's worth of
education, and you know what Rafael Conway says?

He says, “Listen, man, you've got a way
out of here, and that's sports. Me, I'm stuck. Either I'm going to die
before I'm forty or I'm going to spend the rest of my life in
jail.” And then he popped open his trunk and handed Thomas a
brand-new pair of Dr. J's.

And his prophecy proved true. Five years later, he
was gunned down in the courtyard at the Iberville. That was the year my
boy Thomas was a freshman at Dillard.

Now the point of all this is: That's the story not
from me, not from your mama, not even from God. That's the story
straight from the horse's mouth. From the biggest drug dealer
this town has ever known. And the story is this: If you've
got a way out, you take it; if you haven't, you make one for yourself. I
wish—He paused here, looking very sorrowful—I
just wish I'd've been able to tell Le'Devin Miner that story. Maybe we
wouldn't all be here today.

Then he got even more sorrowful before he said, “Let
us pray."

Maureen, who'd cried while he was telling the story,
congratulated him later on having the courage, but D'Ruth just looked
sad at him, and Marcellus looked like he'd like to hit him with a
baseball bat. Other than Maureen, nobody mentioned his sermon, except
for young Junior Heavey, who came up to him (wearing pants so baggy he
had to hold them up) and thanked him for it. “By the
way,” Junior said afterward, “I think I remember
Thomas. How's he doin’ now?"

The reverend made himself smile and nod. “He's fine.
Lives out of town now.” Yeah, he was out of town, all
right—doing ten to fifteen at Angola. He'd gotten good advice
and hadn't taken it. But all the same, the story was true, and the
reverend fervently hoped somebody took it to heart. Darnell in
particular.

But Darnell already knew where his uncle was. He said,
“How come Uncle Thomas so smart he in jail, Paw-Paw?"

Even later, nobody called him about that sermon, not a soul
spoke to him about it, not a single person except for Junior Heavey,
and he was pretty sure the kid was taunting him. Maureen said they just
weren't ready to hear it, but the reverend thought maybe he might have
gone too far for a funeral, maybe Le'Devin's people didn't want to be
reminded about how their son had died, but that was still denial in his
book. He was sorry if he'd hurt their feelings, but he still felt it
had to be done.

Nobody new came to his outreach program, either, but Darnell's
mama kept bringing him because her own mama would tan her hide if she
didn't.

And the turf war continued. People kept on getting killed, no
matter how much it hurt the reverend to realize he couldn't do a thing
about it. At his wit's end, he preached again about the need for
witnesses to come forward, and thought he saw some people nodding in
the back row. But not in agreement this time—they seemed to
be falling asleep, all except Darnell, who was smiling and saying
little “Amen"s.

Nevertheless, that sermon—the one about the
witnesses—brought Marcellus over to the house, Darnell in tow
and happy to hang with Maw-Maw while the two men talked. As usual, the
reverend silently bemoaned his fate at having such a son-in-law.
Marcellus wore gangster clothes, talked ghetto talk, and had twice been
in minor scuffles with the law. He worked as a bartender at the
Pussycat Bar, one of the meanest joints in town, and D'Ruth had to work
at City Hall to keep the family together.

"Daddy Ray, you're makin’ waves,” he
started out.

"Good!” The reverend made a fist and banged it on
the arm of his chair. “That is exactly my intention."

"No, Daddy, you don't get it. Some dangerous folks out
there—real dangerous. They don't like you
gettin’ up in their business."

"Their business! This is neighborhood
business, son. ‘Case you haven't noticed, we've lost eleven
people in two months. Somebody's got to stand up."

"Way the P-Town Soldiers look at it, they own
the neighborhood—they own me, and they own you, and they got
the guns to back ‘em up."

That infuriated the reverend so much he took the Lord's name
in vain. “Marcellus, be a man, goddammit! We sign it over to
them, we've lost. Lost the neighborhood, lost our souls, man. You got
an ounce of backbone or not?"

He was so mad he'd mostly just been spewing, but now he saw
that when his son-in-law spoke, his face was slightly
twisted—in some kind of pain, maybe. Or fear. The younger
man's skin looked gray and splotchy. “Daddy Ray, this is
somethin’ you just don't understand."

Suddenly the reverend did understand. He felt the blood
draining from his own face. “They threatened you. That's it,
right? You're here because they made you come. What'd they say? They'd
kill me if I don't shut up? They wouldn't say they'd kill you—then
you'd have to come here and beg for your life and you probably wouldn't
do that. So they'd have enough sense not to put you in that position.
They said they'd kill me, didn't they?”
He could see by Marcellus's face that he was right. He was starting to
have new respect for his son-in-law, even a little affection.

He softened his voice, put a hand on Marcellus's shoulder.
“Well, son, I appreciate your coming like this. I know you
mean the best for your family and D'Ruth's. But I can't knuckle under
to that gang of lowlifes. I've got to do what's best for this
community, and if that's the end of me, so be it. I've had a good life,
and I'll go when the good Lord's ready for me. You better go home now.
Darnell'll be getting impatient."

Marcellus bowed his head in agreement. “All right,
then, we'll go. Mind if I use the bathroom first?"

While Marcellus used the facilities, the reverend called the
boy and the three of them went out on the porch to say goodbye to each
other. The reverend meant what he'd said, and he knew Marcellus knew
that. His son-in-law had done his duty by delivering the warning. He
ought to be relieved now, but he still looked tense. Sorrowful, really.
The reverend was trying to cheer him up when he saw the white pickup,
and saw who was driving it—Junior Heavey. Somehow, he didn't
know how (unless it was the echo of the white-pickup murders), he knew
what was coming. He leapt for Darnell just as Junior opened fire, felt
himself hit the floor, the boy underneath him, and felt Marcellus fall
on him.

He also felt fire in his side.

For a while there was nothing but silence—the shock
of shattered peace. And finally Darnell began to cry. A woman began to
scream, Maureen, he thought. Gradually, people began to come out of
their houses to sort out the mess.

When they pulled Marcellus off the reverend, and the reverend
off Darnell, it became clear that not only was the reverend hit, but
also Marcellus. The reverend had gotten to Darnell fast enough, and
Marcellus had done for him what the reverend had done for his grandson,
fallen on him to protect him. But he'd been too late.

The reverend himself, he realized, was the target, exactly as
he'd deduced earlier, but, ironically, Marcellus seemed to be the more
severely injured. The younger man was unconscious, but the reverend
could talk a little, enough to try to reassure Darnell, though that
took most of the fight out of him. He closed his eyes with the effort,
thanking God that for the moment the family had averted tragedy.

Or at least averted death. Because there is more than one form
of tragedy, the reverend thought. It was tragic when one relative
betrayed another, bestowed, so to speak, a Judas kiss. The reverend
knew it was no accident that Marcellus had used the bathroom right
before they went outside. He must have called Junior and told him he
was leaving, that they'd all be on the porch in a minute. In other
words, he'd set his father-in-law up, but at the last minute put
himself in the line of fire.

That would explain his tenseness, the tragic way his face
twisted. He didn't want to do it, the reverend concluded, but the gangs
had threatened him, possibly threatened D'Ruth and Darnell. The
reverend didn't fault him for it. On the contrary, he quite literally
felt Marcellus's pain, on that account, and a lot of his own, a whole
lot of his own because he knew what was going to happen next. He
remembered Darnell in church with those little “Amen"s.

The white po-lice were going to be here soon and Darnell knew
Junior Heavey, had certainly seen him driving that truck. If someone
didn't stop him, he was going to do what his Paw-Paw had been preaching
about for weeks now.

The reverend's heart sped up, probably, he thought, pumping
the blood right out of his body. But that was the last thing that
worried him. He wasn't afraid of dying. He was only afraid he wouldn't
live to undo what he had done.

"Darnell,” he said, “listen to Paw-Paw.
Listen, now...” Though the boy was looking at him, he didn't
respond.

The reverend knew he was speaking—he could feel his
lips moving, he could see Darnell looking at him, could feel Maureen's
arm around his shoulder—but somehow, hard as he tried, he
couldn't seem to make the sound come out.

Copyright © 2006 Julie Smith





ETERNAL RETURN: TO THE CITY OF NEW ORLEANS
by James Sallis

* * * *




* * * *

City of secrets, where even the land

beneath our feet is a lie. Now, with the waters,

history irrupts into our present: we are a false island,

ground unfairly regained, still unpaid for.

—

Mysteries are afoot, old friend, and good

as it has been here with you

(in our moment of repose, on this island,)

I must venture back out into the world,

—

back to where our shadows wait, large as mountains,

on city walls, back to barricades and the tumble

of levees, back to the world of murder, avarice,

and dogs in the nighttime.

Copyright © 2006 James Sallis





MONDAY AT THE PIE PIE CLUB by Tony
Dunbar

Tony Dunbar is the author of the Edgar-nominated
Tubby Dubonnet mystery series, whose seventh entry, Tubby Meets
Katrina, provides an incisive look at the hurricane's aftermath. A
25-year NOLA resident who evacuated to Tennessee when Katrina hit and
later worked in a field kitchen feeding recovery workers, the author is
now back in the city with his wife and son.

Mondays started slowly at the Pie Pie Club. People who should
have gone home on Friday night, but didn't, were finally giving it up
and drifting away on Burgundy Street. Miss Lana's girls all got to
sleep late. The waitresses reported in drowsy.

Though the lunch crowd was normally small, Chef Baranca always
tried to plan something special. Today it was going to be sweetbreads
with gonger mushrooms and a mustard sauce. He had dreamed that up while
walking to work.

Guarding the entrance to the Pie Pie Club, Pascal Parette, the
doorman, watched a pair of street-washing trucks blow noisily past,
sucking up the discarded remnants of oyster po'boys and plastic cups,
leaving behind their invigorating mist. The French Quarter began to
wake up.

A businessman in a double-breasted suit careened off a parking
meter, reoriented himself, and hurried along toward his post in the
Central Business District. He wiggled a sleepy-finger hello to a
shirtless red-bearded giant he knew slightly. The man's splendid Afghan
hound was relieving itself on a fluted metal porch stanchion.

Across the street two tourists in sun hats and matching yellow
shorts sipped Bloody Marys from plastic cups while they peeked through
a decorated iron gate. It concealed a peaceful patio where residents,
when they tired of the colorful bustle of the city, withdrew.

Then Parette saw the two hoods. He knew them both. Johnny
Lepeyere and Melvin Dubuisson, the one short and stubby like a used-up
cigar, and the other big and chubby like an over-the-hill college
fullback, which is what he was. His college being Holy Name of Jesus,
across the river. Lepeyere had on a flat porkpie hat he had bought in
New York City and which he graciously tipped to Parette.

"Good morning, old soldier,” he said, friendly
enough, looking up at the doorman's large and doughy countenance.
“We're here to see your boss."

Dubuisson, the other one, just rotated his head and worked out
a kink. He ran his forefingers under the crimson suspenders that held
up his pleated pants while he watched the rooftops.

"I'm glad to see that you two gentlemen can share a sidewalk
without knifing each other,” Parette said benignly. He jerked
his thumb. “He's expecting you. Do you know how to walk
upstairs?"

"I ain't forgot yet,” Lepeyere said as he stepped
around Parette's size-fifty-five form. Dubuisson prepared to spit out a
wad of gum, but caught the big doorman's eye and swallowed it instead.

Parette watched the pair saunter up the steps and swagger past
the sign that set out the simple rules of the joint: “Welcome
to the Pie Pie Club. This Is Your Night. Treat It Right."

Old soldier! He had to laugh at that.

Inside, ceiling fans cooled the elegant dining room and its
Brazilian cherry dance floor where, during the evening hours, beautiful
babes and guys in white suits did their tangos. The receptionist
pointed the way to the narrow door by the bar through which invited
guests reached the private club upstairs.

The two visitors ascended until they encountered a second
door. They tapped and were buzzed through by Polly. She ran the
upstairs bar, and Melvin Dubuisson and Johnny Lepeyere entered her
small dark lounge and casino, perfectly air-conditioned, but empty on
this slow dawning of any high-rollers. It was calm and mellow inside
there. The two hoods hadn't been to bed yet, and neither had Polly.

"Whaddya say, sweetheart?” Lepeyere inquired in
passing, and the ebony-skinned woman with pink and silver hair raised
her eyebrows, which were accented with small golden loops. She tipped
her head toward the left.

The last entrance down a long hall belonged to Max Moran. He
opened the door before either of the men even had a chance to knock.

"Johnny, Melvin,” he said. “You both look
like hell. Come on in and have a chair."

Moran stood aside, a tall and slender man, black hair combed
straight back, wearing neat khaki slacks and a black T-shirt that
advertised nothing. Lepeyere pumped his hand. “Good to see
you, Max,” he said. “Always a real
pleasure,” Dubuisson mumbled, and did the same.

They each found an armchair and looked around, feigning
appreciation of the modern art on the walls, while Moran got
comfortable on the sofa between them.

"Nice place you got here,” Lepeyere said, crossing
his short legs.

Max acknowledged the compliment with a nod. He knew his home
was nice, just like everything else in the Pie Pie Club. It was better
than nice.

"A lot fancier than the Witch's Hat, huh?” Dubuisson
beamed, proud of himself for having come up with a good dig at Lepeyere
and the tavern where he kept his office.

Lepeyere started to make a smart reply, but Moran cut him off.

"I understand that you two have a problem,” he said,
by way of getting the meeting going.

Lepeyere collected himself. “Here's what,”
he began. “Melvin and me have our respective spheres of
influence in that he collects from certain businesses, and I collect
from certain other businesses."

"Your racket is protection,” Moran stated flatly.

"Whatever.” Johnny made a clown face. “We
see that nobody has any problems with the City. It's insurance, really.
And well worth it, I believe, but the main thing is, we do not overlap."

"'Cause that would make trouble.” Dubuisson added in
his two cents.

Moran nodded. He understood paying protection.

"Right,” Johnny Lepeyere continued. His fat hands
began to wave in the air to help him make his points. “The
thing is this. Shoemaker's Flower Shop over on Dauphine—she
won't pay either one of us."

"This is America, isn't it?” Moran asked.
“She's got a right to say no."

Both men waited to see if he was serious, then laughed in
unison.

"Let's put it this way,” Dubuisson said.
“She'll pay, all right, but me and Johnny are having a
disagreement over who gets her."

"I know Oscar Shoemaker, the florist,” Moran
interrupted. “What happened to him?"

"That's just it,” Lepeyere explained. “He
died."

"I didn't know,” Moran said, a hint of sadness in
his voice. “Well, who was he paying?"

"Nobody, so far as I know.” Lepeyere appeared to be
mystified. “I think he just slipped through the cracks."

Moran looked at Dubuisson, who spread his hands flat.

"Beats me,” the big grafter admitted. “He
could have been paying my dad, but Pop passed away last month at Hotel
Dieu."

"Anyhow, it's got to be straightened out,” Lepeyere
said, “so we come to you for advice."

Max frowned at them both. “You guys don't divide up
your territory by blocks or something?"

"In a way, yes,” Lepeyere said uncertainly,
“but Dauphine Street, where this shop is, is kind of in the
middle. A lot of it is what's tradition, you know."

"So I should flip a coin?"

"If that's what you say, Max,” Dubuisson said,
squirming, “but that don't seem fair. It really should be
mine because I got nearly everybody on that side of the street. And
there could be more to this. Maybe somebody new is trying to slip into
our business."

"And I say it should be mine because I got two, maybe three
other flower shops in the Quarter,” Lepeyere said.
“There's common problems to think about. We're trying to keep
the peace here.” There was menace in his voice.

Moran stole a look at his watch. This was the time of day,
before it got too hot, when he liked to tend to his herb garden on the
roof.

"I'll look into it,” he said abruptly.

Upon that promise the meeting adjourned, and the unelected
councilmen took their leave.

* * * *

After lunch, Moran took a walk and visited the shop. On
entering he could see a pretty girl behind the counter, clean, kind of,
just a little lipstick, with her blond hair pulled severely back. The
smell of so many flowers in the confined space, almost as sweet as
incense but fresher and far cooler, stopped him in his tracks. The club
owner was a fan of fragrances.

"Can I help you?” the girl asked, glancing up. Her
voice was as sweet as a finch. Smitten, Moran gave her a little wave.

She returned it without interrupting the work of her busy
fingers, which were building an arrangement of variegated tulips and
Queen Anne's lace.

Moran regained his composure and made his way to the counter
like a regular customer. He was more than six feet tall, and he had to
duck to get under a hanging fern.

"Are you Ava Shoemaker?” He gave her some teeth. It
was an engaging smile.

"Why, yes,” she said, eyeing him approvingly while
she shook bits of greenery from her fingers. “Did I win the
lottery?"

"I don't know. I'm afraid I didn't bring you a prize."

"So who are you? I hope you're not selling a mutual fund."

"No. Is that rodriguesiana?” he asked, indicating a
mass of red and pink blooms surrounding a fountain bubbling in the
corner.

"Sure is, but it's not for sale, I'm afraid."

"I don't want to buy it. I've just never seen one so large.
Hello. My name is Max Moran.” He offered his hand, and she
took it. “I knew your father, Oscar."

"Yes?” she said expectantly. She reclaimed her hand
and gave him an inquiring look.

"Yeah, I knew him for a long time. You never heard of me?"

"Maronne?"

"No, Moran.” He was a little hurt.
“Anyway, I want to talk seriously to you.” He
looked around to verify that there was no one else in the shop.
“Johnny Lepeyere and Melvin Dubuisson have both spoken to me
about a problem, which is getting paid, you know what I mean?"

Her eyes narrowed and one hand slipped under the countertop.
Her expression was suddenly unfriendly.

"You got a weapon down there?” he asked.

"Do you want to find out?"

"Not me. I'm not going to hurt you. Like I said, I knew your
father."

"Then you must know how he died?"

"No, I never heard.” Moran was embarrassed. He
hadn't really known Oscar all that well—just someone glad to
make special bouquets for the Pie Pie Club at odd hours, just a man who
had sent him a nice evergreen wreath, a respectful wreath, at
Christmastime. “What happened to him?"

"They found him floating in the Mississippi River by Poland
Avenue."

"Oh. That's a shame. He fell off a barge or what?"

"My father? He sold flowers. He was never anywhere near a
barge in his life.” Her voice was rising, and her neck went
from pale to red. “He didn't even like the river, and he
didn't fall in. That's what I told the police."

"Ah,” Moran said, averting his eyes. He wished she
would bring her hand back on top of the counter where he could see it.

"Somebody killed him.” She spat it out like she was
accusing Max. Then she took a deep breath and put both hands back to
work building her flower arrangement. “So what are you here
to bother me about?” she asked.

"It's a territorial question,” he began.
“First, I must ask you, are you opposed to paying protection
as a matter of principle?"

"Not exactly,” she said. “But I can't pay
for two. I can barely support myself as it is.” A very nice
complexion, he thought, though she was way too young for him.

"Well, we need to sort this out. Who did your father make his
arrangements with?"

"I haven't the faintest idea. I was going to school at Tulane
when he died. I dropped out to save the store."

"Did he leave any books or papers behind?"

"Sure, a whole filing cabinet full. I couldn't make any sense
out of them, so I just started over."

"I wouldn't mind taking a look at what he left. Would it be
okay?"

"What's all this to you?"

"I'm trying to settle the dispute between Melvin and Johnny
without anybody getting out of line. Just keeping the peace."

"You're a judge?” Her look was sceptical.

"Not on a day-to-day basis. I run the Pie Pie Club. Sometimes
people come to me for advice."

"I know where your place is, but I've never been inside. Sure,
if you want you can look at the papers. They're in the cooler with the
roses."

"That's a good place to store things,” Moran said.
He had also been known to hide things of importance among his plants.

* * * *

Max and Lana Heart were communing on the flat rooftop that
crowned their club, leaning over the low brick wall and watching the
evening lights of the French Quarter flicker on. They had a crow's-nest
view of the river, and could see a cruise ship slowly rounding the bend
into the port of New Orleans. It was being guided fore and aft by red
Bisso tugboats which were churning the water into great muddy waves.
Lana extracted a rhinestone comb from her red hair to let it drop
lazily around her neck. The evening breezes were warm and carried the
scent of salt from the Gulf of Mexico. Throwing back her head to take a
deep breath of it, Lana stretched her cobalt blue cocktail dress to the
limit.

"Wouldn't you like to go on a ship sometimes?” she
asked dreamily.

"No, I like it here,” Moran said. He was sipping
Dewars from a leaded crystal glass and thinking about pouring it on the
head of a drunk three flights down who was taunting pedestrians with
meaningless insults.

"I mean a trip for fun, like to the Caymans or Jamaica. It
would be nice to get away."

He shrugged. Lately, anywhere but the French Quarter, Max felt
strangely nervous, but he didn't want his partner to know about that.

"Do you know Ava Shoemaker?” he asked to change the
subject. “She runs a flower shop over on Dauphine."

"No. Why?” It wasn't exactly true that Lana got
jealous whenever Max mentioned another female. She had eight of the
most exotic, educated, and desired women in the Southern U.S.A. in her
employ downstairs, but she could usually keep tabs on their rovings. It
was only when Lana heard a new name that her ears perked up.

"Oh, just a problem Johnny Lepeyere and Melvin Dubuisson
brought in,” Moran replied vaguely.

"Lumpy Dubuisson? I once voted for his father when he ran for
sheriff. Fix me a drink, Max."

"I never heard Melvin called Lumpy.” He took her
glass and moved off toward the small rooftop bar with its four tall
stools.

"I think it was when he played sports in high school at
McDonough 13 or something,” she said, following him.

The sounds of a calliope floated high above the dormers and
balconies of the Quarter from a steamboat pushing out into the current.

"Her father got drowned, you know,” Max told her.
“He was pulled out of the water right about there.”
Moran pointed behind him to a distant spot now awash in the wake of the
cruise ship.

"I don't remember hearing about it,” Lana said,
“but I see that look in your eye."

"What look?"

"You're interested.” She watched his reflection in
her glass.

"It doesn't seem right,” Max said. “He
used to make beautiful flower arrangements when we needed them for the
club, day or night."

"So now you want to solve his murder?"

"I didn't say that."

"Sure.” She knew what could happen if Max got
interested in something. “The girl, is she pretty?"

"Old and ugly as a bat,” he assured her, and he shut
her up by handing her a fresh glass and massaging her neck.

* * * *

Still, Moran wandered back to the flower shop the next day.

Ava offered him a bunch of old ledgers and checkbooks to look
through. Seated on a folding chair beside a Mary Rose, he perused these
with one eye while watching her work with the other.

Between customers, he learned that Ava had been studying
zoology, with an emphasis on frogs, before she left school. It was not
an avocation for which she had found a practical use. She asked Max if
he had always known so much about flowers.

"I used to have a problem with drugs,” he told her
honestly. “When I gave them up, I gave myself smells as a
reward. It's a mind thing."

"Isn't everything?” she asked.

"No. Some things are real."

In silence, she clipped dead sprigs off a rose.

"My father's death was real,” she said eventually.
“He was in the water for three days, and the only way I could
identify him was by his wedding ring. My own dad.” She was
crying softly. “He was a sweet man who didn't bother people.
He went to Mass at Cathedral every day and never even complained about
the brass bands playing for the tourists outside."

"That is sad,” Moran said. “Why would
somebody kill him?"

"I don't know. Maybe he saw something."

Moran, idly flipping though the yellow papers, thought he saw
something.

* * * *

The hoods were back.

"I've looked into your situation,” Moran told them.
“I'll make one observation, which is that it seems to me that
neither one of you is performing any actual service for the Shoemaker
girl."

"Why, I sure am,” Lepeyere said. “She
ain't had no trouble with any City health inspectors, has she? Big
Eddie ain't been around, has he?"

"She's got a delivery van double-parked in front of her shop
every time I go past,” Dubuisson protested. “You
never seen a parking ticket on it. Wonder why!"

"Well, I don't intend to upset your traditions,”
Moran said. “We've all got to make a living and the world's
got to keep turning around. Melvin, the account is yours. Johnny,
you're out of luck and should stay away from that particular flower
shop."

Dubuisson grinned and popped his suspenders.

"That ain't fair!” Johnny Lepeyere shouted, half
rising from his chair. “Give me one simple reason why you're
taking his word over mine!” Moran gave him his fish stare,
and Lepeyere settled back into his seat.

"The simple reason, Johnny, is that the girl's father always
paid Melvin's father. I know this because the ledgers say so."

He handed Lepeyere a piece of paper. “Right below
where it says ‘Flower Pots, $80,’ it says,
‘Lump, $100.’ Am I right?"

"Yeah?” Lepeyere agreed.

"That's my pop, and they call me Lumpy, too,”
Dubuisson cried happily. “And one hundred dollars a week is
just about right."

"So it seems to me,” Moran concluded, “the
Shoemakers are in Melvin's parish, so to speak."

Much satisfied, Dubuisson jumped up and shook Moran's hand
vigorously.

"That ain't exactly proof!” Lepeyere shouted.
“'Lump’ could mean crabmeat. It could mean
anything."

Moran shook his fingers free. “I say it's proof, and
that will end the disagreement. And somebody killed her old man, you
know. It wasn't you, Johnny, was it?"

"Of course not.” Lepeyere was on his feet, too.

"Wasn't me, either,” Dubuisson chimed in, but Max
ignored him.

"Well, I've taken an interest in her and what happened to her
old man. You understand me, Johnny?"

Lepeyere glared back at Moran, but then remembered himself and
doused the fire in his eyes.

"You're barking up the wrong lamppost, Mr. Max, but you have
my respect, as always.” He bobbed his head one-fourth of an
inch, the hint of a bow.

"Help yourselves to a drink at the bar on your way
out,” Moran said, showing them the door. “It's on
the house."

He watched them walk down the hallway. They both seemed to be
in a hurry to get away and skipped the drink.

There was something about the Shoemaker girl Moran liked. It
wasn't right, killing a man who made flower arrangements for a living,
who sent wreaths to Max Moran. He would see about it. Old Oscar's
papers held other clues.

And one of them was an entry near the end that said,
“Delivery to Witch's Hat, 8 P.M.” The Witch was as
close to the river as you could get without getting wet, and Johnny
Lepeyere, well ... It was something to think about. What might Oscar
have seen?

Copyright © 2006 Tony Dunbar





NO NEUTRAL GROUND by Sarah Shankman

The author of the Samantha Adams mystery
series as well as the Louisiana-based novel Keep-ing Secrets, Sarah
Shankman grew up in small-town north-eastern Louisiana—what
she calls the no-dancing, no-drink-ing, no-fun part of the state.
“I treasure my time in NOLA in the late
‘60s,” she says, “as part of the founding
staff of New Orleans magazine.” She visits the city often,
and is at work on a kids’ adventure novel.

Diana stood, distracted—furious,
actually—on the St. Charles neutral ground. A late spring
afternoon, the rain was pouring on that grassy median strip down the
middle of the boulevard where the streetcars run.

It wasn't like Diana to let her emotions get the best of her.
The chair of the English Department of the university just across the
way, Diana Banks was a focused woman. An extremely busy focused woman.
On her plate: a creative writing seminar, the deadline looming for a
collection of her own short stories, endless committee meetings, and a
department contentious as the Balkans.

The peacekeeping was particularly wearisome. Just this
afternoon, even before the incident that had moved her to rage, Diana
had said to her friend Abby, “Cristabel is having another
nervous breakdown. Peter's complaining that Marcus isn't pulling his
load on the honors issue. And Gloria and Phil are at it again, duking
it out on the hiring committee."

"As if hiring itself weren't demanding enough, right here at
term's end,” Abby, a university research librarian,
commiserated.

"I know. We've got to make a decision this
week on the new instructor. And snipe, snipe, snipe, that's all
Gloria's done since Phil won the editorship of the journal. I wish
she'd just go ahead and slash his tires, get it out of her system."

Diana had called to see if Abby could give her a ride to pick
up her car from the repair shop. Her friend couldn't, but while Diana
had her ear, why not vent a little?

Abby had laughed. “Well, you know what they say
about academe."

"The politics are so bitter because the stakes are so low? And
we're locked together forever, like lifers with no parole."

"Tell me about it. Despite the pain of hiring, if it weren't
for the occasional new blood, I think I'd shoot my brains out. Speaking
of which, did you see the new men's baseball coach? A dead ringer for
the young George Clooney. Hubba hubba."

"You're a naughty woman, Abigail Markson. I'm telling Steve on
you."

"How do you think we've stayed married twenty-six years? It's
my dirty mind that keeps Steve panting."

But Diana hadn't heard Abby's answer. Her friend's hubba
hubba had taken her elsewhere.

Taken her to thoughts of Rob, an adjunct in her own department
and one of the candidates for the full-time position. The candidate she
was rooting for. No, amend that. The candidate Diana was set on hiring,
come hell or high water.

Rob, Rob, Rob, that's where Diana's mind was now, while her
body stood in the downpour, waiting for the streetcar. Behind her
sprawled Audubon Park, its green lawns puddling, mighty spreading oaks
spectral through the mist.

"The bod of a thirty-year-old,” Rob had whispered to
Diana more than once, the sweet words more intoxicating than the small
crystal pitcher of Sazerac that had become part of their pre-loving pas
de deux.

Clever man, Rob.

What words could a woman hovering on the cusp of fifty more
want to hear?

Now, from behind her, from Riverbend, Diana heard the hum of
the streetcar approaching. Here it came, rain pelting off the top of
the olive-green electric car from the 1920s trimmed with reddish
mahogany. She climbed on impatiently, her black mood not improved by
the dripping gaggle of tourists, the handful of laughing students.

Thank God, there on the river side of the car was a pair of
empty seats. Diana piled her things in the aisle seat to discourage
takers. She turned, then frowned at her reflection in the window, her
brunette curls gone to frizz.

"Sexy, sexy hair” was another endearment Rob had
murmured more than once, loosing it from the barrettes keeping it out
of her face. Keeping it more professional.

Certainly no paean to her intellect had ever flipped the same
switch as Rob's honeyed pillow talk about her looks. Not for Diana,
who'd been told since girlhood how smart she was.

"This little girl of mine's gonna be a lawyer, you mark my
words,” her daddy had said more than once. At seventy-five,
he was finally retiring this year, crowned in glory, sheriff of the
rural parish in the northern part of the state where she'd grown up.
“Gonna be a lawyer and world-class skeet shooter."

Her mother had given him a hard look when he'd talked like
that. Smart girls, lawyers, didn't find husbands,
and she'd never approved of his dragging their only child along with
the dogs and the guns on hunting expeditions. Though Diana had been a
pudgy child, her teeth a train wreck, so what were her chances of a
decent husband anyway?

But braces had fixed Diana's smile, and she'd grown out of the
pudge into a rather attractive woman. When she'd returned south from
Boston with a shiny new Ph.D. in hand, the engagement ring she'd
sported was even more dazzling.

"How long were you married?” Rob had asked her on
their second date, about six months earlier, just before Thanksgiving.

Their second surreptitious date. Dinner at a place out by the
lake where no one ever went anymore.

Diana closed her eyes and settled into the streetcar's
mahogany slotted seat, rainwater dripping off her cherry-red raincoat.
Audubon Park disappeared, and a bit of her anger, too, as she let the
memory of that evening wash over her.

It wasn't really the done thing, a department chair dating an
adjunct, one of that roving band of academic gypsies who subsisted by
stringing together a class at one college here, another there, praying
for full-time faculty to retire or die so a real job, with benefits and
decent pay, would open up.

Also, Rob was twelve years her junior. Boy toy. Diana could
just see the smirks.

"Honey, I was divorced before you were born,” she'd
laughed, that second date.

"Awh, come on.” Rob had laid his slow grin on her.
Cocked one eyebrow beneath dark golden locks.

He was a near dead ringer for Harry Connick, Jr., that lean,
languorous home-grown crooner, that hunka hunka burnin’ love.
Rob had then tapped her hand with one long finger, his touch like heat
lightning.

* * * *

Now the streetcar was passing Temple Sinai, a simple stone
building with three tall iron doors. Diana never passed the temple
without smiling at the memory of David Markson, Abby and Steve's son,
manfully delivering his bar mitzvah speech from the bema with not a
hint of the stutter that had tortured his childhood. He was an
ear-nose-and-throat surgeon now, doing a post-doc. Diana couldn't be
prouder of David.

She had no children of her own.

She often said that her students were her children. Not the
same, of course, but she did invest enormous passion and energy in
them. Something very much like love.

"Nawh, really, tell me,” Rob had insisted.
“How long did that lucky man enjoy the supreme pleasure of
your company?” Exaggerating his south Alabama drawl.

Sharecroppers, he'd said, his people. Po’ whites.
Diana wasn't so sure that that was true, but it fit Rob's bad-boy
image. The slightly dangerous English instructor/bartender/writer. He
was working on a noir screenplay. L.A.
Confidential meets The Big Easy.

Diana had been writing a collection of short stories for a
couple of years now, stories linked by various characters’
connections to Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, just around the corner from
her house.

"And how could that fool stand to give you up?” Rob
kept pushing. “Or did he die of consumption or somethin'?"

No, that wasn't what happened to Richard, the smart-as-a-whip,
thin-as-a-whippet, handsome young Jewish dentist she'd met in grad
school in Cambridge. Richard had always thought New Orleans was
“ever so romantic” and had been thrilled to pieces
when the university had tendered Diana a position.

He'd also been thrilled with the house they'd found in the
heart of the Garden District, on Fourth near Coliseum.

He'd been thrilled with fixing it up, spending endless hours
in antiques and junk stores on Magazine Street. Talking fabrics and
color chips with designers. Meeting with armies of landscapers,
gardeners, painters, plasterers.

What hadn't thrilled Richard was Diana's snuggling close to
him after they switched off the ever-so-charming lamps he'd chosen for
their ever-so-handsome bedside tables. He was the only man Diana had
ever lived with, so it had taken her a long while to realize that she
wasn't the problem.

She'd been crushed, then furious, and, ultimately, humiliated
when Richard, and the truth, finally came out.

"Three years,” she'd answered Rob, letting him lead
her onto the dance floor of the place out by the lake where nobody went
anymore. Nobody she knew, anyway. “We were married three
years from start to finish."

Diana loved to dance. She and Richard had been like Fred and
Ginger on the dance floor, one of the ways, she'd realized later, he'd
seduced her into marrying him.

And why? Now there was a mystery. Richard had said he'd loved
her, truly, deeply loved her, but—

It was a big but.

She'd been talking about Richard earlier today in her
creative-writing seminar. Obliquely, of course.

Revenge was the theme she'd assigned the class for their next
stories, and they'd spent nearly an hour discussing that primal urge:
an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

One girl recounted her humiliation by a bully at summer camp,
and how she'd stolen the bully's diary and photocopied the juiciest
pages, then turned them into mess-hall placemats.

There was talk of turning the other cheek.

Destroying someone with kindness.

And what exactly did that Bible passage mean:
“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord"?

It had been more than twenty years now since Richard had left
Diana for Jeffrey, a lighting designer. At first she'd lain awake night
after night, plotting to burn down their ever-so-elegant house, just
around the corner, dammit, from hers. When she did sleep, poison,
knives, guns, ropes, and bottomless caverns filled her dreams.

After a while, she'd rested easier, but she'd never forgiven
Richard. She'd tried, but maybe she was too much her daddy's little
girl. She knew her dad had never meant the first half of that old
lawman's adage: Forgive your enemies, but never turn your
back on them. When Richard was dying of AIDS, there was a
little part of her that felt—not that she was proud of it,
but there it was—Serves you right.

Diana had never married again. Not even close. Which is not to
say that she hadn't had her share of good times. This was New Orleans,
after all, the country's epicenter of good times. Laissez les
bons temps rouler. Diana had dated quite a bit, in fact,
keeping rather steady company with more than one beau.

But there'd been no one with whom she was willing to take the
plunge—the risk of incurring that kind of pain again. Not
that the decision was conscious. Diana had scores of rationalizations
for avoiding commitment. Her suitors were too needy, too controlling,
too depressed, too married to golf, too fat, or too just plain damned
boring.

And they all drank too much.

Of course, nearly everyone in NOLA overindulged. The
philosophy was you might as well drink, smoke, too, eat all the fried
foods you wanted here in the murder capital of the U.S.A. Carpe
diem was the general consensus, ‘cuz any day now a
bad guy might hit you in the head just a little too hard.

(In fact, just this week, there'd been two home intrusions in
Diana's very own block, one especially frightening, as the owners had
been home, the burglars armed.)

Then there were the poisons spewed by the petrochemical plants
up and down the river, delivering cancer to the water, the air, the
land.

And don't forget the surety that one of these days a hurricane
would blow your house down.

Such fatalism was part of the city's charm. That sense of
living on the edge lent a certain frisson to the everyday, the humdrum.

Just like the part-time, no-strings (no-pain) pleasures of a
handsome man.

As Handsome Rob had twirled Diana around the floor on that
second date, he'd asked the question she'd heard a million times:

"How come nobody's snagged you since?"

"Maybe I'm just too picky.” Her standard response.

"Picky? I can sure understand that. Woman like you, picky,
that makes sense."

Then Rob had flung her out with one strong arm, let her stay
there distanced from his touch, his body's heat, his scent—a
mix of lime, smoke, leather, and sweat—until she began to
long for him as if he were cool water on an August afternoon. An
eternity, then he reeled her back in.

She'd laughed, trying to cover her yen for him. He was an adjunct,
for chrissakes, and way too young.

Buckwheat Zydeco came on the jukebox with “Give Me a
Squeeze, Please,” and she'd begun a step-pause-step-step by
her lonesome.

"Or maybe nobody's been able to keep up,” she'd
teased.

In north Louisiana, where Diana was raised among the Southern
Baptists and the even more conservative sects—Assembly of
God, Church of Christ, Church of the Nazarene—dancing was
frowned upon if not outright forbidden.

What was that old joke ... ?

Why do Baptists disapprove of screwing?

Because it looks too much like dancing.

There was, of course, the flailing around that the
Pentecostals called divine: a kind of non-partnered floor-flopping
punctuated by speaking in tongues and foaming at the mouth.

South Louisiana, NOLA its capital, was a whole other
continent. In NOLA everybody danced.

"Can't keep up? Oh yeah?" Then Clever,
Handsome, Hot Rob had grabbed her in his arms and whirled her around
the floor in one floating side step after another until she was
breathless. And damp.

Then he'd taken her home and slid her right into bed.

* * * *

Over her own thoughts, the drumming rain, and the hum of the
streetcar, Diana heard a familiar voice from a few seats up.
“I've got so much work, really, I'm ready to kill
myself.” Pause. Giggle. “And a hot date with You
Know Who."

"I know. Me, too.” Sigh. “The work, not
the hot date. But I'm kinda looking forward to doing that story for
Banks."

It was the mention of her own name that made Diana crane a
look forward, and, yes, there two rows directly in front of her, she
spotted the unmistakable red-gold mane of Amber Reynolds.

Amber would be the one with the hot date: a real dazzler,
campus queen bee, and a bit of a bitch, but still, one of Diana's
favorites. Amber was a talented writer with a great eye for detail.

Beside her, Chloe McClain, Amber's dark-haired, less
attractive, and even more talented friend.

Diana was quite fond of both of them.

Probably going downtown to shop, she thought.

"I'm going to write about my wicked stepmother,”
said Chloe, in that penetrating voice all girls seemed to have these
days. Too nasal. Too loud. Broadcasting their business. “You
know, about how I really tried when my dad married her, after my mom
died, but she was so awful to me. Though she was sweet as pie when Dad
was around. Then one day—"

* * * *

The streetcar rattled on past the columned mansions of St.
Charles, the sidewalks a tumble of concrete uprooted by dripping oaks.
It stopped every couple of blocks. Thirteen miles from one end,
Carrollton and Claiborne to its terminus downtown at Canal, though it
was only about ten, the part of it from the university to Erato Street,
just before Lee Circle, where Diana would get off to walk a few blocks
to the auto shop. The trip would take forty-five minutes, more or less.
Breakdowns on the streetcar line were more common than not.

Up ahead Diana spotted the Milton Latter Library, housed in a
Neo-Italianate mansion, a gorgeous old pile occupying the entire block
between Soniat and Dufossat Streets and one of the city's two small
hills.

And a landmark in her love affair with Rob. How fitting, she
always thought, that it was a library where their games had begun.

Chloe's voice rose even higher. “I was always
telling Wicked Step-mom she ought to be more careful about locking the
car when she parked it. And she always blew me off. Like, Yadda
yadda, Chloe.

"Then one day she had borrowed Dad's BMW that he loved more
than life itself, and she drove it, like just two blocks, to the store,
she coulda/shoulda walked her fat butt, and left it unlocked,
naturally, in the parking lot.

"So I stole it."

* * * *

"Vivien Leigh lived there, in what's the library
now,” a tourist with a tight blond perm said to her red-faced
husband, the two of them sitting directly in front of Diana, behind
Amber and Chloe, “when she married a rich local lumberman."

"Actually, it was Marguerite Clark, a star of the silent
screen,” said Diana, leaning forward despite her desire for
solitude. She couldn't resist correcting the tourist, the schoolteacher
in her, she supposed.

"Oh, really?"

Yes. The house had been built by a department-store magnate,
then was bought by elegant Harry Williams, the lumber baron and
aviation pioneer who was said to have charm to burn—the charm
that won Marguerite, a rival of Mary Pickford. The house was given to
the city for a public library by a later owner, in memory of a son who
died in World War II.

"It's worth seeing,” said Diana. “The two
front downstairs rooms are gorgeous, with frescoed ceilings imported
from France. The large reading room has a Flemish mantel over an onyx
fireplace."

* * * *

It was the green Louis XIV French parlor that was Diana's
favorite, however, with its curtains and wall panels of cherry-red
brocaded damask and a magnificent crystal chandelier.

"Let's go to the Latter tomorrow afternoon,” Rob had
said casually, about a week after they'd discovered themselves to be a
sweet fit.

"The library?"

Diana had really meant it when she'd told Rob that, no, she
obviously couldn't resist his charms, but really, truly, they were
going to have to be discreet.

"Just pretend that I'm married,” she'd said.
“It simply won't do to have us gossiped about around school.
It isn't appropriate."

"Inappropriate," he'd teased. Then he'd
lowered his voice to that husky register that made her bone marrow
vibrate and commanded, “The library."

The truth was Diana was so lust-struck at that point, she'd
have followed Rob if he'd jumped off the Huey P. Long Bridge.

"There's something I want to show you,” he'd added.
“I'll meet you in the parlor. Wait for me there."

At the appointed time Diana had settled herself onto the
parlor's crimson loveseat. Moments later, an older, elegant couple, in
their seventies, had taken chairs to one side of Diana's perch. They
began leafing through travel books, planning a trip to France,
obviously not their first.

Then another man entered the parlor. For a moment Diana didn't
recognize Rob. He'd donned serious horn-rims and slicked his hair back
with a silvery gel. A baggy jacket made him look older—and
heavier.

She had to stifle her hoot of surprise and delight. A
disguise! Oh, Clever Rob. She'd said discreet and...

But he warned her into silence with a raised finger and a
shake of his head.

"Here's the book you asked for, miss,” he said, as
if he were a librarian, handing her a large-format volume.

The older couple looked up briefly, smiled, then bent their
heads back to their research.

"Let me show you what I was talking about.” Rob
gestured with an open hand. Could he join her on the loveseat?

The book was a collection of exquisite erotica. Beautifully
rendered line drawings of the seduction of a young man by a voluptuous
older woman.

"Where did you find this?” she'd whispered.

"Shhhh,” he'd cautioned. Library. No talking.

The older couple smiled once more.

Five minutes later found Diana and her younger paramour locked
together in the single-occupancy Ladies’ Room, half naked and
crazy, crazy, crazy.

* * * *

"Maybe we'll come back and see the library
tomorrow,” said the permed blond tourist. “Howard
wants to go back to the hotel and take a nap before we have
dinner.” She paused, then added smugly, “At
Antoine's."

Of course. Sure, the Oysters Rockefeller were still good, and
the pommes de terre soufflés terrific,
but Diana could have told the blonde of a hundred better places both
high and low, Bayona to Domilise's Po-Boys. But tourists always wanted
to drop Our dinner at Antoine's into conversation
back home.

* * * *

Once again, the girls’ voices. “Shut
up!” said Amber. “You did not steal your dad's car!"

"Oh, yeah. I'd been scheming for this. I was so ready. I'd
nabbed a pair of her panties out of the clothes basket—"

"Yewh!"

"And I left them under the driver's seat with a ripped condom
wrapper. So the cops find the car about five minutes after Dad dials
nine-one-one, a Beemer emergency, all ranting. And then, when the cops
bring it back, he's going over his ride, inch by inch, and—"

"Hello! Panties! Condom! But how would he know for sure they
were hers? Not the ‘ho of the banger who pinched it?"

"'Cuz she always wore this one kind of black panties, really
expensive, and REALLY big—"

Diana laughed. So did Howard, the tourist hubby in front of
her.

The wife elbowed him.

Not funny, Howard.

* * * *

After the Latter, Diana and Rob had fun seeing just how
creative (and discreet) they could be.

Let's Pretend was a good model.

The operating principle was fantasy and role-playing (while
hidden in plain sight).

And disguises were an essential part of secrecy, weren't they?

The weeks leading up to Mardi Gras, with its masks and
costumes, had been a particularly interesting time.

But there were parades and dress-up balls of one kind or
another in New Orleans practically every day.

Not all of their encounters were production numbers, of
course. Many nights Rob came visiting, and they made dinner and then
love with no games, no frills.

Oh, maybe just a bit of “Let's pretend I'm the cable
guy.” Rob tapping on the sun-porch door, the front doorbell
broken for eons. Diana answering his knock in the black silk dressing
gown he loved.

Or she'd remind him, “...that time you had me meet
you at the bar in the Maple Leaf, and we pretended that we were
strangers."

"Yeah, and you let someone buy you a drink before I got there,
and then we almost came to blows over who you were going home with."

"I loved that,” she sighed.

She loved him, too.

* * * *

"I'm crazy in love with him,” cooed Amber.

Passengers up and down the streetcar grinned. Ah, youth.

"He is so much fun. Last weekend we went
dancing at the Rock ‘n’ Bowl. He's a mad dancer,
and when we rolled out of there, like one A.M., he said,
‘Wanta go for a drive?’ And the next thing I knew,
we were all the way down in Grand Isle. A friend of his has a beach
cottage there."

"Oh, I've always wanted to go,” said Chloe.
“Was it as romantic as Chopin portrayed it?"

Now Diana smiled. Such smart, literary girls, alluding to Kate
Chopin's feminist-novel-before-its-time, The Awakening,
while talking about boys.

"It was heaven,” sighed Amber. “He was
fabulous, sweet as could be the whole time. And we stayed for the
sunset the next evening. I've never seen such a sunset."

"Oh, I wish I were in love,” Chloe longed.

"You will be. Any minute now. You'll see."

* * * *

Love, oh love, the last thing that Diana had expected. Or
wanted.

The affair with Rob was meant to be like all the others. Just
for fun, right?

Though unlike her other lovers, Rob wasn't just a roll in the
hay who managed to hold her attention for a candle's length. He also
sported that perfect trifecta of intelligence, imagination, and
sweetness.

Rob wasn't just for laughs.

Rather, he made her laugh.

What a world of difference between those two.

(Though sometimes she asked herself, as their games-playing
grew ever more filigreed, Is this love or sexual obsession?)

In any case, how ridiculous that the one who'd finally
battered down the gates, bridged the moat, and scaled the steep walls
to her heart/whatever was so inappropriate.

An adjunct! A baby adjunct. A man without a full-time job in
the very field at whose apex she stood.

Okay, at thirty-seven, Rob wasn't really a baby, but still...

The moment she'd realized that she could no longer imagine her
life without him, she'd begun to fret.

What if he grew tired of her? What if he wandered? Someone at
the university uncovered their secret and compromised her position?
What? What? What?

Yet losing implied having. She had no claim on Rob. It wasn't
as if they used the L word.

Diana worked herself into a perfect frenzy. Her love-making
took on a desperate edge. What new trick to titillate her lover? She
spent hours poring over the Good Vibrations catalogue.

"Is something bothering you?” he asked.

"No. Why?"

He shrugged. “I don't know. You seem, what, worried
about something. Need more space? Want to see less of me?"

"No!"

He laughed. “More of me?” The question
delivered with that cocked eyebrow, a fiddling with his top shirt
button. Followed by a sweet tumble.

Get a grip, she told herself. Don't screw this up. Don't be a
ridiculous older woman. Don't grasp.

And then, late February, Rob used the L word.

It just wasn't the one she wanted to hear.

"Livingston,” he said. “It's a small
liberal-arts school in Cambridge, Mass. Great rep. An old friend's in
the English department there. Gave me the heads-up that they're going
to have a full-time slot. He has a lot of pull. You loved Cambridge,
right?” Then he'd stopped, seeing her face. “Oh,
honey bun, you know I don't want to leave. I love New Orleans. I love
being here with you.” Then, finally, finally, dear Lord,
“I love ... you."

And there it was. He loved her, but also he needed a real job.
With real tenure. Real benefits. Real pay. Real retirement.

"Have you already applied?"

"Well, yeah. I mean..."

"I know. I know.” She'd hugged him close. And then
the question occurred. “Other places, too?"

He shook his head into her shoulder. “Livingston's
the only one where I have some kind of inside chance."

What was he talking about? Was she not an insider at the
university right here? Did she have no influence?

But what she didn't have, unfortunately, was an opening in her
department. No retirements on the horizon. No one on leave who might
not return. And no one was ever fired unless—to use the
infamous words of ex-governor Edwin Edwards speaking of himself as a
shoo-in for a second term—he were “caught in bed
with a dead girl or a live boy."

Then lightning struck. Diana had an inspiration. There was one
possibility. A little tricky, but possibly doable. Probably. No,
definitely. She would make it work.

And, oh, what sweet revenge: exchanging Arnold Venable for Rob.

* * * *

"I just wish we could spend more time together,”
Amber complained. “But he's so busy. And then
there's—"

Chloe jumped in, “Yeah, but you're busy, too. Like
have you finished your senior thesis for the psych course?"

"No. But he's helping me with it. I mean, he's been reading
what I've got, and he makes such great suggestions."

"Well, sure, he's—"

Then Amber interrupted. “Look! The Columns.
Ohmygawd! We spent the most incredible night there."

A heavyset woman across the aisle from Amber and Chloe shook
her head. A frown of disapproval rumpled her handsome brown face. A
church lady, no doubt.

Diana, however, smiled. The Columns Hotel, once upon a time a
family mansion, had starred as Madame Nell's bordello in the film Pretty
Baby. In actuality, the turn of the previous century's
red-light district, Storyville, had been downtown, fronting Basin
Street.

The Columns did, however, possess an aura of naughtier, bygone
times: its bar elegant with chandeliers and fireplaces, the rooms
upstairs tricked out in flocked-velvet Victorian finery. Diana and Rob
had frolicked there one night in an amazing four-poster bed.

Now she spied their private balcony, right there. That's where
they'd sipped morning-after mimosas.

* * * *

Arnold Venable had been the department chair for eons before
Diana took that post, and few were the toes he hadn't mangled. Even
when young, which he certainly wasn't anymore, Arnold had been
imperious, affecting a British accent, grandly furnishing his office
with Persian carpets, subdued lighting, and a slender walnut desk.
Arnold didn't hold office hours; he received. He held court. And he'd
long ago perfected the art of slipping a silver dagger into one's soft
spots, his targets universal. University president to office cleaner,
no one escaped Arnold's withering blue gaze or razor tongue.

Immediately upon succeeding Arnold as chair, some six years
earlier, Diana had been swamped by the English faculty's campaigning
for a piece of the pie of privileges he'd hoarded.

"Not fair that Arnold never takes a lower-division class."

"Not fair that he's had a lock on Shakespeare and the Romantic
poets from time immemorial."

Diana couldn't agree more, having herself suffered from
Arnold's barbs and slights, and drawing up that next term's class load,
she assigned Arnold a section of English 101. Freshman grunt
composition. Arnold refused it, sneering as if she'd handed him a bag
of manure.

Fine. So be it. And, as was the university policy, Arnold
taught less than a full load, though for full pay.

This pattern had continued year after year, with Arnold
accruing an ever-growing debt of classes owed.

Just a week after Rob's announcement of his application to
Livingston College, Diana had casually, ever so coolly, brought up The
Arnold Situation at lunch with an administrative dean.

He'd jumped. “We absolutely must do something. Just
yesterday the president was laying down the law about tightening all
financial belts, closing all loopholes. Now.” He'd leaned
closer to Diana. “Do you have any ideas?"

Why, yes, she did.

"Three sections of 101?” Arnold
had slammed through Diana's office door without knocking. He'd
delivered the question as if she were a ridiculous child who'd donned a
clown outfit for a wedding.

"Yes. Three. Close the door, Arnold. Come in and sit down."

Then Diana had the delicious pleasure of explaining to Arnold
Venable that he'd reached the end of the line. Administration had done
the toting—she handed the figures across her desk to
him—and he was in arrears for so many classes untaught but
salaried that he must a) teach whatever offered with zero compensation
for the next two years, b) pay back the money advanced, or c) take
early retirement, effective the end of the term, and the debt would be
forgiven.

Within hours Arnold had begun packing the leather-bound tomes
that lined the walls of his office.

Oh, what sweetness, what joy as, later that same evening, just
as Rob, spent from love-making, sleepily pulled up the sheets, she
whispered into his ear, “Guess what?"

And wasn't it terrific that they'd been so discreet, that no
one at the university knew that they were lovers? Now Rob's application
for the position could be tendered like any other candidate's.

Any other, except, of course, that he had the advantage of
being a known quantity. Well-liked by both students and faculty, Rob
had done a terrific job with his classes. Yes, Rob definitely had the
edge.

"Darlin', you genius, you Wonder Woman!” He'd jumped
out of bed and danced his happy dance. Then he'd grabbed Diana up and
two-stepped her around the room.

He was a shoo-in, Diana exulted. He'd win the post, and then,
and then ... Well, after a semester or so it wouldn't be so untoward,
would it, if they were to “begin” dating? No, the
age difference between them would never lessen, but with the change in
Rob's status, their having a liaison—and, well, who knew
where that might lead?—wouldn't be nearly so scandalous.

* * * *

"When's he going to tell her?” Chloe asked.

"Not for a while yet. The timing's got to be right."

Hmmm, thought Diana. Amber's boyfriend already had another
girl.

The church lady was shaking her head again.

From somewhere beyond the Mississippi, thunder rumbled, and
the church lady rolled her eyes.

See? Lord don't like that nonsense. That fooling
around with somebody else's man? You go doin’ that stuff,
ain't nobody gonna want you.

Oh, please. Diana read the church lady's body language. It's
not that serious. Amber's young, and men really are
like streetcars. There's always another one.

* * * *

The stumbling block to Diana's plan was the presence of those
sworn enemies, Gloria and Phil, on the hiring committee.
They—dammit—and Diana were the three designees from
the English department, and while Phil gave Rob highest marks, Gloria
was busy with equivocations.

Just to spite Phil.

The other five members, from various departments and branches
of administration, were poised to approve Rob and get on with it. End
of term and summer vacation were within sniffing distance. Everybody
was antsy.

"I really think she has stronger qualifications,”
said Gloria, tapping the application folder of a young blond thing from
California. Yes, she'd interviewed beautifully, this smart cookie with
the body of a Victoria's Secret model.

"But her concentration is feminist theory. We don't need
another one of those,” said Phil.

"Now, wait a minute!” steamed Gloria, who was
herself a feminist theorist.

Diana shook her head. What the hell was Gloria thinking? Did
she really want a younger woman, particularly someone who looked like that,
in her sandbox?

"Well,” said the dean, trying not to drool on the
blonde's app. “I have to agree, she is an attractive
candidate."

Diana was beside herself. She couldn't support Rob too
strongly for fear of arousing suspicion, though maybe that was just
paranoia. Yet both Phil and Gloria would rather die than give an inch
to the other.

"Well, what about Dawn Moriyama?” ventured another
committee member.

Jesus. The Japanese-American candidate, a distant third on
paper, and she'd stumbled badly in the interview. But once they got
into ethnic-diversity territory, Diana's ship would have sailed.

Phil looked at Gloria. Gloria looked at Phil. They both
shrugged. Why not?

With that, Diana stood, collecting her papers. “We
should sleep on this,” she insisted, slapping down her
department chair's prerogative like a trump card. “I think
we've lost our way."

Everyone groaned but agreed to one more meeting.

* * * *

"He has so much to lose, if he doesn't play it
right,” said Amber.

The church lady shook her head so hard Diana thought she might
cross the aisle, grab Amber, and shake her, too.

Now it sounded as if Amber were involved with a married man. A
beautiful young thing like her, a whole world of gorgeous young single
boys to choose from?

"You think she's the vengeful type?” Chloe wondered.

She.

The wife.

* * * *

"Do you think it's possible,” Diana had said to
Gloria, taking her arm as they crossed the quad after the committee
meeting, “that your attitude toward Phil is clouding your
judgment. Just a tad?"

Gloria had stiffened, pulled her arm free, and turned to Diana
with a blank stare. “No,” she said flatly.
“I don't."

"Now, Gloria..."

"Don't you Now, Gloria me. I just don't
happen to think Rob is the best candidate."

"You know Moriyama's not going to make the cut. Do you really
want that young hottie lusting after your classes?"

Gloria recoiled, then struck. “Don't talk to me
about young hotties, Diana. Not when you're throwing all your weight
behind your own."

Just like that. Gut-shot, Diana reeled. Her skin stung with a
thousand pricks of adrenaline. Her world tilted, whirled.

"I don't know what you mean,” she finally managed.

"I think you do,” said Gloria with a wintry smile.
“Just so you know, I've not discussed your ... indiscretion
... with anyone else."

So clever, Gloria, hoarding her intelligence like gold until
it would bring the greatest yield.

"I'll give you Rob. You'll give me the classes I want in
perpetuity. And the editorship of the journal."

"Gloria, even if there were reason to..."

Gloria's smile was cruel. She had the goods, and she knew it.

"I can't guarantee..."

"I'm sure you'll work it out.” With that, Gloria
gave Diana her back and strode away. Then she paused, turned.
“Pleasure grows ever more expensive, don't you know, Diana,
as time moves along."

* * * *

Blackmail. That's what it was. Blackmail, plain and simple.
After she picked up her car should she drive to the NOPD district
office on Magazine and report Gloria? Or did blackmail fall under Vice,
housed on South Broad?

Right. Diana could just hear herself explaining the situation
to a cop up to his ears in murder, home invasion, tourist muggings,
drugs, child abuse, and the thousand and one other felonies perpetrated
in New Orleans every day. The city was a sewer of crime.

No. Gloria had her. There were no two ways around it. Diana
had been furious and sick with disbelief.

Though now that she'd this streetcar ride to collect herself a
bit, to reflect, and to taste once more through the mouth of memory the
many pleasures of her sweetheart, she'd realized her id would allow no
other choice: If this were the price of keeping Rob, so be it.

But she still needed to frame her response to Gloria. Generous
but cool, that was the ticket. Agreeable, yet firm. God forbid that
Gloria think she now had carte blanche.

Maybe what she ought to do, after she picked up Picayune, her
much-loved little brown Mercedes 280L roadster, was turn up her tape of
Tina Turner's “Proud Mary” and take the causeway to
her favorite dive in Abita Springs. Soothe herself with an oyster
po'boy and a couple of beers. Yes, the long drive across the lake
always cleared her head.

The streetcar rattled on. Diana could see the freeway overpass
up ahead, beyond it Lee Circle where a statue of General Robert E. Lee
stood upon a tall pillar, facing north, so he'd never have his back to
his enemies. She wasn't far now from her stop.

Rob wasn't coming over till much later this evening. Nineish,
he'd said. Then she could give him the good news, minus the
complicating details. With Gloria's vote, his job was in the bag.
They'd crack open a bottle of champagne, celebrate. Maybe play one of
their favorite games. Strangers assigned to a sleeping car on the
Sunset Limited to Los Angeles? Or ... wait. Rob had suggested something
earlier on the phone. Still rattled by Gloria, she couldn't remember
what....

* * * *

"Vengeful? Well, I never thought so, particularly, but when we
were brainstorming in class today, I totally changed my mind."

"Yeah,” Chloe agreed. “That story she told
about how, a long time ago, somebody wronged her, and she fantasized
about burning his house down? But then, like she said, everyone has
revenge fantasies. The real question is whether people act on them or
not."

"I know,” said Amber. “But just the way
she said it, Burn his house down, it gave me
shivers."

* * * *

Wait a minute. Diana was about to pull the signal cord,
gathering her things. The girls were talking about Amber's married
boyfriend, Amber did say he was married, didn't she, and now they were
talking about her class? Her
story assignment? Her?

"He's been so careful,” Amber continued.
“And it's really brilliant, the way that whole pitiful
charade she's insisted on, his being her secret boyfriend, has played
right into his plan. But once he has the job, well, anyway, by
Christmas of next year, he can dump her. And then we can go public. My
momma is crazy about him, you know. She thinks he's the spit and image
of Harry Connick, Jr."

"And your dad likes Rob, too, right?"

"Oh yeah, he..."

* * * *

Diana didn't hear Amber's reply as she stumbled blindly
through the rear exit door and fell out into the rain.

Her feet had barely hit the wet grass of the neutral ground
when her stomach heaved and she spewed hot yellow vomit.

"Oh my God!” someone cried.

"Ma'am? Can I help you?” another asked.

But Diana waved them away. Please don't. Don't look at me.
Don't touch me. Don't pity me. Don't.

She didn't remember much between that spinning moment and
stepping out of a taxi at her own doorstep. She must have hailed the
cab, must have realized she couldn't drive, her ears ringing, her eyes
blind to this world.

Once inside her house, Diana fell on all fours to the faded
red-and-blue Kirman in the foyer, one of the ever-so-tasteful treasures
Richard had left behind. She writhed. She howled like a dog. She tore
at her hair, her clothes. She cursed Rob's name. She cursed Amber.

And then Amber's words cut through the din and the frenzy: pitiful,
secret boyfriend, played into his plan, the job, dump her.

Amber, the golden girl. Amber, one of her favorites. Amber,
whom she'd taken to her heart. Amber, the fresh young bitch.

Pitiful, pitiful, pitiful, the chorus
resounded.

They'd made a fool of her. A tidal wave of shame washed her
from top to bottom.

Eventually, after what seemed a year, a decade, an eternity of
agony, Diana made it to the sideboard and sloshed three fingers of
bourbon into a glass. As she tossed it back, her stomach lurched once,
then settled, and the amber fire felt good.

Excellent, in fact. The burn in her belly would help her focus.

Not as if there were that much to decide, really. Not many
options.

First, of course, she'd “compromise.”
She'd withdraw her support for Rob's candidacy and cast her vote for
the young blond feminist.

That would be just deserts for Gloria and take care of the job
question.

Not that it would be even a step toward addressing the hatred
that had begun to bubble in her belly for Rob. Oh, Rob. Rob,
Rob, Rob. A bubble that would eventually fill her to
bursting, she was certain of it. Just like the hatred she'd felt for
Richard. The hatred that had had her dreaming of fire, rat poison,
knives, guns. The hatred that still lingered even now, long after AIDS
had devoured him. And the need to get even. There was no way such
humiliation could go unpunished. Revenge would be
hers.

But first things first. No position for Rob. No reward for
Gloria.

Though, wait. Not too hasty. What might Gloria serve up in
return? Thwarted Gloria, who no more wanted the blond hottie hired than
she wanted a third arm, the young woman just a tool in her scheme?
Diana had long been witness to Gloria's wrath. Gloria would not take
being crossed lightly.

No. She couldn't risk it. She needed to think.

Just then Diana's phone began to ring. Let it. She sloshed
more bourbon into her glass. Let it ring, ring, ring off the hook.
There was no one on God's green earth she wanted to talk to. No one.
She couldn't even imagine forming words.

Once again Diana doubled over with pain. Hot tears cascaded
down her face like boiling rain. She felt as if someone had ripped her
skin off in one piece, discarded everything inside but for her hatred,
then left the husk. She was a semblance of a human being. But only a
facsimile. She would never be whole again. Never.

Then a deep voice boomed through her answering machine.
“Hey, darling, it's Fred.” Her neighbor, a lawyer,
and the head of the block association.

"Just wanted to remind you you need to be hypervigilant until
the cops catch this burglarizing s.o.b. Not that there won't be another
one right behind him. Marcia Pennington said she thought she heard
somebody snooping around her back porch this afternoon. Lock up and
batten down, hon."

* * * *

Diana froze, staring in the direction of Fred's voice, her
glass halfway to her lips. Now she remembered what Rob had said
earlier. Now she recalled the game he'd proposed.

* * * *

Two hours later, a little after ten, Diana's living room.
Fred, in striped pajama bottoms and a faded Tulane T-shirt, stood with
a strong arm around Diana. The red-and-blue flashers atop the small
fleet of NOPD cruisers outside lit up the room, lending it an eerie
carnival air.

"Like I said, I called her and reminded her to be extra
vigilant,” Fred rumbled to the officer in charge, Officer
Jackson, a mountainous black man whose powder-blue uniform shirt was
damp with the rain still pouring outside.

"Absolutely.” Jackson nodded. “Way things
been in this neighborhood recently, you can't be too careful."

"But I wasn't careful!” Diana cried, her face
smudged with tears. “If only I'd checked the outside door to
the sun porch, he'd never have gotten that far. It's my fault. I'll
never forgive myself,” Diana wailed, shaking her head.
“Never."

Behind them, back through the dining room, was the sun porch
in question. Rob's body lay half-in, half-out of the French doors
between it and the dining room, his blood pooling on the hardwood in a
dark red lake.

Fred hugged her tighter. “Now, darlin', you know it
wasn't your fault. How were you to know that boy would come round so
late to talk? Stupid ass, like that was the way to get a job? Busting
onto your sun porch ‘cuz your front doorbell's broke?"

"But I should have recognized him,” Diana moaned,
running a hand through her hair, clutching at her black silk dressing
gown. “Like I said, he'd mentioned something at school today
about dropping by, and I'd said, no, that wasn't a good idea. It wasn't
appropriate...."

"Ma'am, it was dark. It was raining. Way he was dressed?
Break-ins all over the neighborhood. It's a shame, but what're you
gonna do?” Officer Jackson shook his massive head slowly,
looking for all the world like a giant mournful Rottweiler.
“I say, despite the mistaken ID, it's a good thing you had
that gun."

He cast an envious eye on Diana's 12-gauge Italian-made Verona
lying on the loveseat in the living room where she'd tossed it before
calling 911. Over four thousand dollars’ worth of
high-tensile steel and Turkish walnut, the shotgun had been a gift from
her dad after she'd won a statewide women's skeet competition.

"And,” the officer went on, “what kind of
fool goes around in the middle of the night tapping on folks’
doors, all in black, stocking cap pulled down so you can barely see his
face? I'd'a thought he was a burglar myself. Yep, burglar for sure."

* * * *

Rob had let himself in, as he did every time they'd played
burglar. He'd come through the unlocked outside door of the sun porch,
then stood jiggling the locked interior French doors.

Diana had entered from the kitchen, the black silk dressing
gown he loved half-open. She was naked underneath.

The way the game went, he'd jiggle the door harder. She'd
shrink, then shriek, “Oh no! Please go away!"

Her gown would fall open. He'd bang the door, bang it again,
and just before he looked to be about to dash a pane of glass, reach
in, and unlock the deadbolt from inside, she'd open it. He'd race
through and grab her up, her robe falling to the hardwood.

Sometimes they'd make it up the stairs. Sometimes they
wouldn't.

This time, he'd jiggled the door hard. And harder yet. But
Diana didn't open the door.

"You bastard!” she screamed, reaching for the
shotgun she'd propped against the china cabinet. She threw its
beautiful steely length to her right shoulder. Such a sweet fit.

Rob's eyes grew wide. What? Then he'd laughed. A new wrinkle
in their game. A twist.

"Oh, baby,” he crooned. “You got a gun? I
got a gun, too.” He winked. “Got a red-hot pistol
for you, darling.” His face was pressed against the glass.

* * * *

Louisiana is a right-to-bear-arms state, but there might be
some gray area here, legally speaking, considering that Rob wasn't
actually all the way inside the house.

Shoot ‘em. Then drag ‘em
through the window. Every schoolchild knew that.

She obviously couldn't let him in from the sun porch, however.
Why would she open her door to a burglar?

Luckily, she'd had plenty of time to make a plan, weigh the
options, after Fred's call. Before Rob's first footstep on the porch.

A woman alone in a house. A college professor. Department
chair. Sheriff's daughter! Recent home invasions in the neighborhood. A
rainy night. A man in black.

This was, after all, Louisiana, where a jury had taken only
three hours to acquit a Baton Rouge homeowner of shooting and killing a
Japanese student whose crime had been ringing his bell. The kid had
been dazzling in his all-white Saturday Night Fever
suit before it blossomed blood-red, he and his friend mistaking the
house for one down the street where a Halloween party was being held.

* * * *

Diana wanted Rob as close as possible.

You didn't have to be a crack shot; any fool could hit someone
with a shotgun loaded with buckshot, and many heedless fools did. The
pellets covered a fairly wide pattern from a distance.

But if you wanted to kill someone, you stepped closer, closer,
closer still. Then the pellets would rip a huge hole.

That was what Diana wanted, tit for tat, to tear her lover to
pieces.

"Come on, sweetheart.” Rob had urged her closer with
an upturned hand, fingers wiggling, a tough-guy gesture. In character.
Playing a role.

She'd racked the shotgun, loving that sound. Loving the
well-oiled smell of it. Loving to shoot.

She'd pulled the trigger, racked again, firing twice through
the French doors. The first blast had ripped Rob's heart loose and
flung it against his chest wall. The second took out his guts.

* * * *

Fred stayed until everyone was gone. “Just a
formality,” Officer Jackson had assured them of the
crime-scene crew. “Want to follow procedure here. Dot all our
i's and cross all our t's. I'm
sure you appreciate that, being a lawman's daughter. No question but
this has every appearance of a home invasion."

After the EMS vehicle carried Rob's body away and the last
cruiser departed, Fred urged Diana to come home with him, to spend the
night with his family.

"No. No, thanks, Fred,” she assured him.
“You've been a brick. I couldn't ask for a better friend. But
really, I'll be okay."

And she would be, Diana thought later, lying in the stillness
of her bedroom, the lilac-papered boudoir where she and Rob had shared
so many delicious romps.

She had her prestigious job. Her ever-so-terrific house. A
raft of good friends. And she lived in the Big Easy.

Then, over the rain on the rooftop, she could hear Rob
crooning Brother Ray's words just as surely as if his head were on the
pillow next to hers.

Well it don't make no difference if you're young or
old...

no matter whether, rainy weather...

you got to get yourself together...

and let the good times roll....

With that, Diana's heart convulsed once more with loss. Dear
God, she'd miss him so. Rob, the last of her lovers, she was sure of
it. She could never, ever again expose herself to such grief.

Her final scream of anguish ripped through the sweet-scented
room, and then quiet blanketed it once more. After that, there was
nothing, nothing but her own breathing and the falling rain.

Just before tipping over into darkness, Diana thought, First
thing. First thing, bright and early, she'd call Gloria and
tell her about the awful accident.

Gloria would understand. Gloria would get it. And Gloria would
keep her mouth shut, or...

And Amber?

Well, she was young, with the recklessness of a true beauty.
What was one boyfriend, more or less, to such a girl? Besides, Amber
was smart and clever enough to protect herself.

And Chloe? Chloe had already tasted the fruit of revenge and
found it sweet.

With that, Diana turned over and dove headlong into the
blissful sleep of the avenged.

She dreamed it rained so hard and rained so long that the
pumping stations failed. The water rose and rose until all the streets
flooded. She saw herself floating in her darling little Mercedes
roadster, its top down, past Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, then hanging a
right into the middle of St. Charles. She was waving like a homecoming
queen, smiling and waving and flirting to beat the band, floating,
floating, floating down the neutral ground.

Copyright © 2006 Sarah Shankman





THE JURY BOX by Jon L. Breen

According to the epigraph of O. Henry's “A Municipal
Report,” Frank Norris be-lieved only three major American
cities were “story cities": New York, New Orleans, and San
Francisco. O. Henry took the implied challenge by setting his classic
story in Nashville, but few then or now would argue with the inclusion
of New Orleans as a great fictional locale. Certainly the city
currently coming back from the devastation of Hurricane Ka-trina has
attracted many mystery writers, from Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning in
the 1930s, Brett Halliday in the ‘40s, and John Dickson Carr
in the ‘60s to such contemporaries as James Sallis, Dick
Lochte, Julie Smith, Barbara Hambly, Tony Fennelly, Chris Wiltz, and
those considered below.

**** Poppy Z. Brite: Soul Kitchen,
Three Rivers, $13.95. Rickey and G-Man, life partners and owner-chefs
of the New Orleans restaurant Liquor (every recipe uses booze), hire a
gifted cook who was convicted ten years earlier of the murder of his
boss. Despite a corpse in the opening pages, the mystery plot is
extremely slight, but good writing, involving characters, and a
detailed culinary background, including some pointed satire on the
foody avant-garde, make this my top choice of the books under review.
According to an au-thor's note, the novel was completed the night
before Katrina hit.

**** Tony Dunbar: Tubby Meets Katrina,
NewSouth, $24.95. Big Easy lawyer Tubby Dubonnet's titular opponent is
not only the hurricane but also an escaped murderer who identifies with
the storm. The first fully post-Katrina suspense novel is a first-rate
job, crisply written and expertly paced, offering a harrowing,
sometimes sardonic description of the city's physical and psychological
state before, during, and after the disaster.

*** David Fulmer: Rampart Street,
Harcourt, $25. French Creole private detective Valentin St. Cyr's third
case brings to life the Crescent City of 1910, with its
“jass” music and flamboyant vice, its social,
racial, sexual, and political complexities. When a wealthy citizen is
murdered in the wrong part of town, his daughter refuses to accept the
obvious sordid explanation.

*** O'Neil De Noux: New Orleans Confidential,
PointBlank/Wildside, $16.95. Private eye Lucien Caye, operating in the
French Quarter of the late 1940s, takes on eleven highly varied cases,
three new to print, ranging from heartfelt tributes to the World War II
generation to full-out erotica. One common element, the vivid depiction
of the sights, smells, and sounds of the city, is augmented by James
Sallis's beautifully written introduction.

*** James Lee Burke: Pegasus Descending,
Simon and Schuster, $26. New Orleans is a secondary background in the
latest case for New Iberia cop Dave Robicheaux, whose cases are steeped
in Louisiana ethnic, political, and religious culture. The action is
pre-Katrina, but the effects and aftermath are addressed in an
optimistic epilogue. Despite Burke's over-fondness for macho
confrontation and the rambling nature of the complicated plot, there's
no denying the beauty of the writing.

*** Barbara Colley: Married to the Mop,
Kensington, $22. In her fifth appearance, housecleaning entrepreneur
Charlotte LaRue helps a mobster's battered wife prepare for a Mardi
Gras party. Apart from a good punning title, the book has sound
writing, construction, and characterization; and a reasonably
intriguing plot (though unclued in the classical sense) culminating in
a moral dilemma.

** Laura Childs: Motif for Murder,
Berkley, $22.95. In the early pages of this intermittently amusing,
nancydrewish cozy, Carmela Bertrand alternates unbelievably between
agony over the kidnapping of her worthless jerk of a husband and bright
banter in the sitcom world of her French Quarter scrapbooking shop,
Memory Mine. While promoters of tour-ism will applaud the depiction of
a post-Katrina New Orleans restored to business as usual, others may
find it somewhat insensitive toward the bulk of the displaced
population.

** Jay Bonansinga: Twisted, Pinnacle,
$6.99. At 347 pages, FBI profiler Ulysses Grove's storm-tossed battle
with a serial killer called The Holy Ghost is more supernatural horror
than mystery and exemplifies thriller bloat. Numbing repetitiousness,
soggy romance, and clichéd dialogue detract from good action
writing and interesting technical detail as a hurricane devastates New
Orleans. The novel was written before Katrina but revised after.

Copyright © 2006 Jon L. Breen





ACTS OF CONTRITION by Greg Herren

* * * *




* * * *

Art by Herbert Kearney

* * * *

Greg Herren is a longtime resident of New
Orleans and has written five mystery novels set there, including Mardi
Gras Mambo. He has been nominated for three Lambda Awards for Best
Mystery, and his novel Bourbon Street Blues was cited by InsightOut
Books as the best mystery of 2003. He lives in the lower Garden
District and has no plans to relocate. Ever.

Help me, Father,” she cried. Her brown eyes were
wide open with terror. The rain was falling, drenching them both,
soaking her white T-shirt so that it clung to her body. Her dreadlocked
hair was dripping with water. The water ran down her face, streaming
from her chin as she gripped his arms with her black-fingernailed
hands. She reached for one of his hands and drew it to the crevice
between her breasts. “Please, Father,” she pleaded
again. He didn't pull his hand away from her cold chest. He knew in his
heart he should, but somehow he couldn't. He let it rest there, feeling
her frantic heartbeat through her cold, wet skin, and closed his eyes.
This is a test, he reminded himself, a test. But still he left his hand
there, betraying the collar he was wearing, betraying his God. He tried
to pray for strength, for guidance, but all he could think about was
the feel of her skin beneath his hand. Push her away,
reprimand her for her temptation, do something, anything, don't just
stand here with your hands on her ... be strong, find strength from
your love of God, but don't just keep standing here....

His hand remained where it was.

And she began to laugh, her lips pulling back into a smile of
exultation. Her eyes glowed with triumph.

"Fallen priest, fallen priest,” she chanted between
her laugh-ter, “You're going to hell, aren't you, Father?"

He pulled back from her, staring at her face as it changed.
She wasn't Molly anymore, the sweet young runaway he was trying to
help, she was something else, something evil. The hair on the back of
his neck stood up, and he opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came
out.

"Fallen priest, you're nothing but a fallen priest.”
Her voice deepened and she took a step forward, her lips still curled
in that horrible smile. She tore at the collar of her T-shirt, ripping
it downward and exposing herself. She grabbed his hand again, and
pulled it to her breasts.

"Get thee behind me, Satan,” he finally managed to
choke out, provoking her to more laughter. It echoed off the alleyway,
and a light went on in a house a few yards from where he was standing.
“Stop,” he whispered, glancing at the lighted
window.

"What are you so afraid of, fallen priest?” she
leered, her lips pulling back even further. “That you'll be
exposed for what you are?” And she laughed again, throwing
her head back and sending the sound upward, to the spires of the
cathedral, and more lights were going on up the alleyway.

"Please,” he said, and pulled his hand away from
her. Where the knife came from he had no idea. One moment there was
nothing and in the next it was there, in his hand, the sword of the
Lord. It glowed with a righteous, cleansing blue fire. It pulsed and
throbbed in his hand with an almost unimaginable power. Tears filled
his eyes as he raised his hand. “Please,” he
whispered again, not wanting to do it, knowing he had no choice. He
brought the knife down into her chest. Black blood splattered, spilling
down her stomach and onto her wet denim skirt. Yet still she laughed,
and he brought it down again, tears flowing down his face and mingling
with the rain. She must be cleansed, she must be cleansed,
she must be cleansed, he thought as he kept swinging his arm.
She must be cleansed ... cleansed ... cleansed ... and
he hacked at her, the blood spurting and splashing, mixing with the
rain, and yet still she laughed....

* * * *

He sat up in his bed, wide awake and shivering, his body damp
with sweat, his short, graying hair plastered to his scalp. He wiped at
his face. It was still raining, the windows fogged up. He sat there,
hugging his thin arms around himself trying to get warm. The digital
clock on the nightstand read 9:23 A.M., but it was still dark as night.
Lightning flashed, so near it was merely a sudden bright light blinding
him, followed almost immediately by a roar of thunder that rattled his
windows. It had been raining for days, one storm rolling in after
another, filling the gutters and streets with water, swirling as the
city's pumping system desperately tried to keep up. The ground was
soaked, the big elephant ferns outside his door waving in the wind and
drenching him every time he walked outside. He tried to slow his
heartbeat by taking deep breaths, and he slowly felt warmth creeping
through his body again. He threw back the covers and swung his bare
feet down to the cracked linoleum. He walked over to the opposite wall.

The walls of his apartment were cracked, the plaster buckling.
The ceiling was covered with brownish water stains, and he could hear
the steady plopping of water landing in the pots and pans he had set
out in the kitchen to catch the leaks.

In the center of the wall was a huge crucifix.
Jesus’ face, blood running down the sides from the crown of
thorns, was turned imploringly to the sky, his beautiful features
twisted in agony. Blood leaked out of the wound in his side, his ribs
pressing through the pale skin; the nails in his hands and feet were
drenched in red.

He grabbed the worn rosary from the small table and clutched
it. Carefully he lit the votive candles, then sank to his knees and
began praying. His knees ached from contact with the hard floor. The
Latin words rolled off his tongue easily, feverishly, as he counted the
beads with his fingers. After a few minutes, when his heart had slowed
to a normal pace and he felt calm again, he finished his prayers and
crossed himself. He rose to his feet, walked to the window, wiped the
condensation away, and looked out into the street.

Such a horrible dream. He still felt chilled, rubbing his arms
to increase the circulation. Was it a sign from God? he wondered. The
feelings—of lust and desire—the girl aroused in him
had been dormant for so long. He knew they weren't wrong, but after so
many years of self-denial through prayer, his vows were ingrained too
deeply in his head to shake off easily. There was no reason anymore for
him to feel ashamed of his feelings or to deny them, but even though he
was no longer a priest, he kept his vows. Maybe she was sent by God to
test his dedication to Him. He'd been released from his vows for nearly
five years now, so perhaps it wasn't really a test ... but then again,
God moved in mysterious ways. Maybe he was supposed to save her.

No one knows the mind of God.

She was one of the street people, a runaway. One of the
disposable teenagers, the throwaway children who somehow made their way
to the French Quarter to hang out in coffee shops or in doorways,
cadging change and cigarettes from passersby. She couldn't be older
than fifteen, he thought, but then again, as he got older he found it
more and more difficult to judge the ages of the young. It was possible
she was older. He had found her—was it only three weeks since
that evening he had found her asleep in one of the back pews at St.
Mark's when he'd gone in to pray? At first he'd thought it was just a
bundle of rags someone had left there. Then the pile had moved, and he
jumped, startled. It had only been three weeks. He hadn't stopped
thinking about her since that moment she'd sat up in the pew, coughing.

Three weeks only.

"What's your name?” he'd asked, slipping into the
pew beside her.

She just smiled and said, “Call me Molly,
Father.” He opened his mouth to correct her, but closed it
again without saying anything.

It was the smile that brought the memories back, memories so
strong he had to catch his breath. There was something about her that
reminded him so strongly of Carla Mallory ... the girl he'd loved when
he was young, before he'd answered the call and entered the seminary.
She'd been so angry when he told her his plans. Her pretty face had
contorted with rage before collapsing into tears. But I
thought you loved me, she'd accused him, I thought
we were going to get married.

"The streets are dangerous, Molly,” he'd said to
her, putting thoughts of Carla firmly away. “There's a killer
out there, preying on girls like you. Don't you want me to call your
parents? Don't you want to go home?” There had been a story
in the paper just that morning about the latest girl, found near the
French Market, her young body carved up. Just another teenager thrown
away, not missed and with nobody to mourn or care. She was the tenth
one in the last eight months.

Molly looked back at him with eyes suddenly old and tired.
“Sometimes home is more dangerous than the streets, Father."

He'd taken her hand, rough and dirty with the nails painted
black. “Please be careful, and know you can always come here.
We minister here to homeless kids, Molly. You can always come here, get
some food, take a shower, get cleaned up.” He gestured back
to the office area at the rear of the chapel. “I can get you
a list of shelters...."

"And sometimes shelters are just as dangerous as
home.” She shook her head, the multicolored dreadlocks
swinging. “But a shower would be cool."

"But where...?” He shook his head. Sometimes there
was nothing he could do for them. “Come with me.”
He stood up and started walking towards the front.

It was after hours, and against the rules, but he used his
keys to open up the shower area and get her a fresh towel. Father
Soileau would not be happy, but there was no need for him to know or
find out. Besides, even if Father Soileau did find out, the most he
would get would be a reprimand, and not a strong one for that matter.
Father Soileau depended on him too much for the work he did with the
teenagers, and it would be hard to replace him. Who wants to
work for the pittance they pay me? he thought bitterly as he
handed her a towel and shut the door behind him.

While she showered, he heated a can of soup for her, found a
package of crackers, got her a fresh bottle of water.

She was so pretty with the dirt scrubbed off her face. So like
Carla. He watched her as she slurped down the soup, crunching the
crackers into the broth, and gulped down the water. There was a wounded
innocence about her. She wouldn't tell him where she was from, or where
she'd been. And when she was finished, she patted his hand in thanks,
before slipping out of the church and back into the night.

He'd prayed for her that night, and every night since.

He prayed she'd come back.

He found himself coming back to St. Mark's every night at the
same time, hoping she would show up. Sometimes she did, most nights she
didn't. He didn't ask questions he knew she wouldn't answer. It almost
became a kind of routine on those nights when she showed up. He would
get her a towel and while she showered he made her something simple to
eat. While she ate, they'd talk about little things, nothing important.
And when the food was gone, she would slip back out into the night.

He worried sometimes that Father Soileau would find out. It
wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that he would be fired. Rules
were rules, and the Church was very big on rules. He knew that very
well. It was why he wasn't a priest anymore. “But I've done
nothing wrong!” he'd begged them up in Chicago as the
archbishop shook his head.

"We cannot take that risk, Father Michael.” The
archbishop shrugged. “We have to release you from your vows.
Even the slightest hint of impropriety must be avoided. But there's a
place you can make yourself useful, down in New Orleans. There's a
small church just outside the French Quarter, St. Mark's. They minister
to homeless teenagers, the kind of work you enjoy. The Church will get
you a small place to live, and pay you a small salary, and you can
continue your work."

"But the boy is lying...."

It didn't matter. They'd shipped him off to the foul-smelling
little apartment in New Orleans, sent him to work for Father Soileau,
and the anger burned in his heart. But he was working with the
teenagers again, the ones who needed him, and while he'd been released
from his vows, he kept them.

But Molly ... Molly changed everything.

She made him feel like a man again. She awakened the feelings,
the emotions that had lain dormant for so long.

He prayed for guidance, but none came. He found himself
thinking about her, worrying about her while he attended Mass. He found
himself going to confession at St. Louis, unwilling to confess his
feelings to Father Soileau. He received his penance, said his prayers,
counting the beads as he repeated the words over and over again. And he
worried about her, where she was sleeping, what she was doing for
money. So many of them sold their bodies to strangers for a warm bed
and a twenty-dollar bill, for something warm to eat. They were so
fearless yet somehow wary at the same time. But there was pained
innocence in her eyes, and he longed for her to tell him her story,
what had led her to the streets of the French Quarter. He warned her,
over and over again. There was a killer stalking the alleys of New
Orleans, mutilating young girls, raping them and then mutilating them.
He begged her to go home, to call her parents. The streets were not
safe at night.

She would just smile, and shake her head. “The
streets are as safe as anywhere."

Was that what the dream had meant? he thought as he stared
into the rain. That Molly was in danger? That Molly was dead?

He went cold, and sank to his knees in front of the crucifix
again. Please, God, watch out for Molly, she is just a child,
for all her bravado and airs. Hers is an innocent soul, protect her
from the evils that lurk out there in the night and the rain, bring her
safely home...

He was climbing out of the shower when the knock came on the
door. He wrapped a towel around his waist and peered out at a tall
black woman in a dove-gray suit, shaking off a dripping umbrella with
one hand. He opened the door without removing the chain. “Can
I help you?"

She smiled, flashing a badge at him. “Michael
O'Reilly?"

"Yes."

"Detective Venus Casanova, New Orleans police. May I come in
and talk to you?"

He felt a wave of nausea, the coffee he'd drunk burning an
acidic hole in his stomach. “I just got out of the shower.
I'll be a moment while I get dressed, is that all right?"

"Take your time.” She kept smiling as he shut the
door again.

He dressed hurriedly, his mind racing. This was how it started
back in Chicago: The police showed up at the rectory with the boy's
accusations and their knowing smiles. Calm down, he
told himself as he finished buttoning his shirt. There's no
need to be afraid.

He walked back to the door and opened it. He smiled.
“Sorry, I was...” He stood aside to let her in.
“Come in. Would you care for some coffee?"

She shook her head, giving her umbrella one last shake.
“No, I thank you, though.” She walked in, glancing
around the apartment and then giving him a big smile. She was
beautiful, her hair cropped close to the scalp, with high cheekbones
and strong white teeth. Her face was unlined; she could have been any
age between thirty and fifty. “I'll try not to take up too
much of your time, Mr. O'Reilly.” She sat down in the worn
thrift-store reclining chair. “This rain is something, isn't
it?” She shook her head. “Everyone complains about
the heat and humidity, but I just hate rain."

"It's depressing, isn't it?” he replied, and his
voice sounded false.

Detective Casanova nodded. “Yes.” She
reached into her bag, removing a small spiral notebook and a pen.
“Have you been reading the newspaper, Mr. O'Reilly?"

He shrugged, and felt his hands start to shake. He grabbed the
sides of his own chair. “Sometimes."

"Then you know we have a serial killer here in the Quarter
preying on runaway teenaged girls?"

"Yes, I work with the street kids over at St. Mark's, so I
know about it, yes."

"There was another murder last night. Another runaway girl,
couldn't have been older than fifteen. Unidentified, of
course.” She clicked her tongue. “She was found
this morning in Pirate's Alley, right beside the Cathedral."

Like in my dream! he thought, biting his
lower lip. “Sweet Jesus,” he whispered. It was
Molly, it had to be Molly, why else would the cop have come to him? Father,
why hast thou forsaken me?...

"I've just been by St. Mark's, and Father Soileau sent me over
here.” She reached into her bag again. “He thought
maybe you knew her.” She pulled out a Polaroid and handed it
over to him. “Do you recognize this girl?"

He took the photograph, his hands shaking, and forced himself
to look at it. He let out his breath in a rush. This girl had black
hair, no dreadlocks, her face pale and eyes closed. Thank
you, Lord ... “No, I'm sorry, I don't know this
girl."

She took the photograph back and slipped it into her bag.
“Each one of these murders has something in common, besides
the fact that each is a runaway teenaged girl. Something we haven't
allowed the press to catch on to.” She gave him a searching
look. “You do a lot of good for these kids, and I know you
care about them—and obviously, they aren't too interested in
talking to me or the uniformed police. Have any of the kids you work
with said anything? Do they talk to you about this?"

He shook his head. “Only in general terms."

She reached into the pocket of her jacket. “Each one
of the victims had one of these in her hand.” She held up her
hand.

A strand of black rosary beads dangled from her fingers.

"And between her breasts, a cross was carved."

The beads swung in her hand, and he felt bile rising in his
throat. He glanced over at his own rosary, still on the scarred coffee
table. “That's—that's just sick.” He
closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. “It's
blasphemy."

"I think it's some kind of religious freak,” she
said slowly. “Someone who sees these poor girls as
evil—most of them are working as prostitutes, after
all—and he is cleansing the world of their sin by sending
their souls to God; he probably thinks he is saving them as
well.” She shook her head, standing up. She placed a business
card on the coffee table. “I've taken up enough of your time.
If any of the kids who come by St. Mark's say
anything—anything at all, no matter what, please give me a
call right away. We have to catch this guy.” She walked to
the door, shook his hand. “You'll call me?"

"Yes, of course.” The moment the door shut he ran to
the bathroom and threw up. He splashed cold water on his face, brushed
his teeth again, and stared at his red eyes in the mirror.

He watched for Molly all day, hoping that she'd break her
usual pattern and come into St. Mark's during its normal hours. As he
ladled soup into bowls, cut sandwiches, handed out towels, he listened
to the kids talking. No one was talking about the latest
victim—maybe they didn't know yet, which would be unusual.
Normally, that kind of news spread through the street kids in no time
flat. No, there was talk about the usual inane things—good
corners to ask for money, places to avoid, business owners who chased
them off and others who were good for some money or something to eat, a
great place to get cheap clothes, and on and on and on. He looked at
them with their multiple piercings, tattoos, and wild hairstyles and
colors, and wondered, as he often did, what drove them to the streets.
He opened his mouth a few times to ask about Molly, but then closed it
and said nothing. She never came in during this time, and who knew if
they would even know her as Molly?

He walked home after closing, the rain still coming down, the
gutters full of water spilling over onto the sidewalk. By the time he
got back to the miserable little apartment on St. Philip Street, his
pants were soaked and he was shivering. He pulled off his pants,
toweling his legs dry and slipping on a pair of sweatpants. He sank to
his knees in front of the crucifix and prayed again for Molly. As he
clicked off the beads, nagging thoughts kept coming into his mind,
interfering with his prayers.

It's just like before.... Surely that police
detective was just grasping at straws, trying to get information and
help from wherever she could.... It's silly to be afraid of the police
just because of what happened before.... Stop thinking like this,
you're supposed to be praying, communing with the Lord.... But I can't
go through that again, the boy lied, why wouldn't anyone believe me?


He opened his eyes and placed his rosary back on the coffee
table.

He walked into the kitchen, ignoring the roaches as they
scurried off the counters, and made a peanut butter sandwich, glancing
at the clock. Only a few more hours until her usual time.

The boy lied.

Joey Moran. A pudgy boy of thirteen with an acne problem and
thick glasses who always seemed to have a runny nose when it was cold.
Shy and introverted, the only child of a shrew of a mother,
overprotected and hovered over. He cried often and easily, and the
other boys at St. Dominic's made sport of him, taunting and teasing,
tripping him and knocking the books out of his hands in the hallways of
the school. He'd felt sorry for the boy—with that horrible
mother, his life had to be miserable—and tried to make
friends with him, tutoring him and trying to protect him from the other
kids. Until that day when the police officer came by the rectory and
told him what the boy's mother was saying. It was like being punched in
the face. “Lies,” he'd told the cop. “I
never laid a hand on that boy."

The knowing smirk on the cop's face. The endless meetings with
his superiors until the archbishop himself had called him in, and no
one, no one believed him.

"We've reached a settlement with Mrs. Moran,” the
Archbishop said, frowning at him. “She'll drop the charges on
condition that..."

No one cared that it was all a lie. “For the good of
the church, it's best that we do this ... We're releasing you from your
vows, but we've found a job for you ... It's best that you leave
Chicago ... Of course I believe you, Michael, but we just can't have
another one of these scandals, and it's just better to resolve things
this way ... You've met the mother, you know what she's like, she's
threatening to go to the papers and you know what will happen then,
other families will smell blood and a chance to get money out of us ...
It's best this way."

Best for everyone but Michael O'Reilly,
he thought angrily, glancing over at the crucifix.

The boy LIED.

He started trembling. He picked up his beads and started
praying for strength, for serenity, for peace.

The string snapped in his hand.

He sank to his knees and wept.

* * * *

He waited for Molly for over an hour, watching the cars drive
by in the rain. Finally, he gave up and walked back home through the
deserted streets. Where could she be? Was she safe and warm and out of
the rain somewhere? The worry bubbled within him as he unlocked his
door and stepped out of the rain. The rosary beads were still scattered
all over the floor where he'd left them. He knelt down and started
scooping them up into his palm. He glanced up at the crucifix just as a
flash of lightning lit up the room.

Jesus’ eyes seemed alive, glittering and angry.
Unforgiving.

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned...” he began
reciting the words.

* * * *

"Fallen priest, fallen priest..."

His eyes snapped open. He was lying on the floor in front of
the makeshift altar, the votive candles burning and flickering in the
dark. The room was cold, very cold. The rain was still pounding away on
the roof; he could hear the dripping water in the kitchen. He was
trembling, his heart pounding in his ears. I fell asleep and
had the dream again, he thought, glancing over at the clock.
Almost midnight. He struggled to his feet, his knees stiff, his back
and neck aching from lying on the hard floor.

She was in danger.

He had to save her.

He grabbed his raincoat and his umbrella, blowing out the
candles and grabbing his keys. He took a deep breath, opened his door,
and stepped outside. The rain was pouring, the water gushing off the
roof. The street was under water, swirling dark water carrying debris,
rising halfway up the tires of the cars parked on the streets. The
street lamps feebly tried to illuminate the night, but only succeeded
in giving off a dull yellow glow. She was out there somewhere. He
opened the umbrella and stepped down the creaking wooden stairs and
took a few hesitant steps into the night.

"Hail Mary, full of grace,” he muttered as a car
went by, throwing up a sheet of dirty water, continuing the prayer as
he started down the sidewalk, not sure of where he was going.

There was a thick mist, and the streets were silent, except
for the rain and the hissing of streetlights, and the mist moved and
swirled like lost souls, dancing the dance of the dead in the
stillness. He began to walk down toward the waterfront, knowing somehow
that that was where she was, and there was danger, danger for her, some
madman with rosary beads and a knife wanted to wipe her off the face of
the earth, send her soul to God....

He tasted blood in his mouth, could smell it in the wet air.

He began to run.

His footsteps echoed in the mist, the sound bouncing off the
buildings that stood so silent and reproachful, almost contemptuous in
their silence. The mist continued to dance as he ran, and he was
sweating despite the cold, and he threw the umbrella, which was doing
him no good, only slowing him down, into the gutter, thinking I'll
pick that up later, not realizing how foolish the thought
was, all he could think of was her, and he continued praying as he ran,
please God, oh heavenly Father, save her save her save her,
let me be in time she is young she is innocent do not take her...

He heard a scream. “No, mister, please, don't..."

He ran harder, and still the screams continued and his lungs
felt as though they would explode, and he was crying as he ran, and the
prayers and pleas were running together in his mind, forgive
me Father for I have sinned and yea though I walk through the valley of
the shadow of death hail Mary full of grace our Father who art in
heaven please protect her let me save her ... he saw them,
through the mist, as though the dancing souls were parting for him, and
he closed the gap, and grabbed the man's upraised hand, the hand that
held the dripping knife, and just like in his dreams it was flashing
blue fire, it was the knife, the sword of the Lord, the sword of the
righteous....

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” the man
with the knife said softly, then shrugged him off. He stumbled, falling
down into the water with a splash, and it was cold. The man swung the
knife at the girl again, and it flashed fire, a holy, pure fire, and
the girl screamed, and he could hear the sound of bones splintering as
the knife tore at them, and it was Molly, or was it Carla, the mist was
confusing him, and he lunged for the lunatic again, trying to grab his
knife arm, shouting, “Run, Molly, run!” as he
struggled, trying to get the knife, to protect her, and then...

He heard her giggle again.

He stopped fighting.

"What?” He turned and looked at her, and her face
changed, she was Molly, she was Carla, and she was Molly again.

"False priest, false priest,” she chanted, dancing a
jig in the mist, her feet throwing up water, and she was laughing.

He rubbed his eyes, her face was like liquid, changing shapes
and then reforming again.

"Save her, Father, heavenly Father, she is good and innocent,
save her.” It was his voice, coming from behind him, and he
turned and stared at the man with the knife. It was his own face,
beneath the rain cap, smiling at him. It was spattered with blood.

And then it changed into Father Soileau's face.

Then the archbishop's.

And Joey Moran's.

Back to his own.

He took a few steps backward.

"False priest, false priest."

"Save her, Father, save her, oh God, save her, protect..."

"...priest, false priest..."

"...heavenly Father, save her..."

"...false priest..."

"...Father..."

"...priest..."

He started screaming.

* * * *

It stopped raining just before the sun rose, and the pumps,
which had been straining for days to keep up, finally managed to drain
the water from the streets. Throughout the French Quarter, people were
getting up, getting ready for work. Businesses were unlocked, lights
turned on, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief that the rain was
finally over. The sun beat down, evaporating the water, and the air
thickened.

"Have you tried to get the knife away from him?”
Venus Casanova asked the beat cop as she sipped at her coffee, her eyes
taking in the scene, the girl's rain-soaked dead body, her shirt open
to reveal the cross carved between her breasts, the rosary beads
dangling from her left hand. Her eyes were open and staring up at the
blue cloudless sky, her mouth frozen in a scream. Venus shuddered. You
never get used to it, she thought as she turned her
attention to the mumbling man holding the knife.

"I haven't tried, we thought it better to wait for
you,” the cop, who couldn't have been more than twenty-five,
replied. Two other uniformed cops stood safely out of reach on either
side of the man, their guns carefully trained on him.

"What is he mumbling?” she asked.

"Prayers,” the cop replied. “Hail Marys
and Our Fathers."

Religious mania, she thought as she
walked over and knelt down. “Michael?"

He stopped mumbling and slowly turned his head towards her.
His eyes were wide, bloodshot, and empty.

"Can you put the knife down?"

It clattered to the ground.

She breathed a sigh of relief, and nodded to the other
officers, who moved in, grabbed him by the arms, and raised him to his
feet. They cuffed him, moved him over to a squad car, and she could
hear them reading him his rights. He was docile and didn't say a word
as they put him into the backseat. She waved the crime-lab guys over,
and they started their work.

She glanced over at the body, and shook her head. It was over.

She looked up at the sky.

It was going to be a beautiful day.

Copyright © 2006 Greg Herren





EVENING GOLD by William Dylan

The author of half a dozen non-fiction
books, including Houston Then and Now and Austin Then and Now, William
Dylan Powell works as an advertising copywriter in Houston, where more
than 150,000 New Orleans evacuees were provided food, shelter, and
jobs. This fiction debut was inspired by a visit to the French
Quarter's M.S. Rau Antiques one month before Katrina hit.

I once read that if you're a shoe salesman and you don't show
up for work, people will miss you. But if you're a writer, not a sole
will care. That's not entirely true. The original author of that maxim
left out the un-conditional love for writers found in all creditors and
often many members of the law en-forcement community—both of
which were sorely disappointed to see me go the day I officially died.

The hour I remember most clearly that day was seven in the
evening; I was in my brother's bathtub, listening to the cicadas buzz
through the window screen and trying to take my mind off having
generated almost a million dollars’ worth of debt earlier
that day. For some people, that's not a lot of cabbage—maybe
a bad hand at the MGM Grand. But for me, that's almost a million
dollars more than I had in the Des Moines Community Credit Union. And I
don't gamble.

The water scalded my skin, the air in the bathroom as wet and
alive as the dank Louisiana air outside. I'd tricked my brain into
temporarily forgetting the day's events, the way we all do, if only for
a split second, when something bad happens—like a torpedoed
ship sealing off flooded compartments. My eyes had just closed, my
hands folded across my chest. I was wondering if a man could drown in
his sleep when I heard an explosion coming from the driveway that
jolted a loofah brush off the towel rack above and squarely into the
sweaty iced tea I'd been drinking.

Had I been in anyone else's home, I would have been petrified.
But my brother Bob—a mining-explosives
specialist—ate, slept, and watched Matlock
reruns amongst dozens of crates of explosives. Though he did use them
for work, he didn't really need them here; he just liked them here.
They were part of the furniture—like milk crates in a college
dorm. So when I heard the explosion, I assumed it was just another
something of Bob's that blew up. I was wrong.

Bob's silky terrier, which had fallen intensely in love with
my down jacket and insisted on dragging it all over the house since my
arrival, had for once dropped its soggy orange sleeve and retreated
into the bedroom closet. The motion-activated driveway light clicked
on. From the bedroom window, I stood gaping at the unmistakable sight
of money snowing from the sky, spiraling down like the helicopter seeds
of a maple tree and occasionally scraping the window pane. I rubbed my
eyes for a good three seconds—making sure I really hadn't
fallen asleep in the bathtub—but I was awake, all right.
Money was literally falling from the sky; you'd have thought it
would've been my best day on Earth—not my last.

But thinking back to the previous night's conversation with my
agent, when I was still in Des Moines, I should have known better.

"What does ‘shop it around’ mean, in terms
of time, Phil?” I asked, flipping through a half-dozen
utility and credit-card bills, most of which I planned to pay with the
contract we were currently discussing.

"It just means that we need to find a house that shares our
vision of another Detective Demitrez novel being successful in the
marketplace. These last guys thought your latest work lacked a certain
... humanity. We just need to get the formula right, that's
all—it takes time."

"Time? Last time we talked, words like
‘series’ and ‘optioning’ and
‘obscene promotion budget’ kept coming up."

"You've still got your teaching gig, right?"

"Yeah. But Des Moines Community College doesn't pay enough for
the twelve-hundred-calorie-a-day lifestyle to which I've grown
accustomed."

We talked for another ten minutes, but it boiled down to only
an apology, more promises, and a one-way ticket to my brother's house
outside of New Orleans to let off some steam. While he and his wife
were in Houston, I would turn his place into the Area 51 of self-pity
(and his liquor cabinet into a dangerous crater).

New Orleans oozes literary inspiration, so as my plane touched
down I'd had a sense that big, easy changes were afoot.

Next morning I'd breakfasted at Brennan's, with mimosas and
red wine; I'd gone to Faulkner House in Pirate's Alley and bought a
signed first edition of a Tim Gautreaux novel (all courtesy of
Mastercard). Then I ducked into Pat O'Brien's and spent the rest of the
morning drinking, smoking cigarettes, and reading the Times
Picayune and Le Monde. The stories all
sounded the same. Kamikaze impersonators in the Middle East blowing it
off the map. Police impersonators in New Orleans smuggling blow from
offshore. Elvis impersonators in Vegas helping fat Americans blow their
paychecks. All around me, people were pretending to be something else
and, for the most part, achieving their personal goals in the process.
I, on the other hand, was doing a lousy impersonation of a writer. My
body of work was emaciated, and missing major organs.

Deep down, every writer knows they are playing a role; that
they're not the real deal—their big smarts and swagger mere
threat displays of a jungle creature with small teeth and a lousy
dental plan. They live in a world where accusers lurk under parked
cars, on editorial boards, in mirrors, and threaten to leap at them any
moment—exposing them for the fakes they really are. Every
imposter I read about seemed like a distant relative.

None of this introspection darkened my mood, though,
especially when reading Le Monde. I often savored a
single issue for two Des Moines weeks, being proud of my French and apt
to carry the paper around everywhere waiting for someone to comment on
it so I could show off. Sitting in Pat O'Brien's that morning, I was
surprised at how much I still retained from my time in the Peace Corps
at Burkina Faso.

Just west of Niger among the deforested flatlands of West
Africa, Burkina Faso achieved independence from France in the
‘sixties, but retains its language. It's a land whose sons
and daughters inherit little more than dust and disease. There's not
much to see if you only look with your eyes; yet it's also a world
where the visceral human will to survive runs through the streets like
mercury. And four dollars will get you a house.

Looking back, I sometimes think those were the happiest days
of my life. Teaching English in mud-brick huts. Living on baguettes and
Sovobra beer. Sleeping under the stars during the hot season. My
writing might lack humanity, but at least I knew I wouldn't lack lunch.
Next month looked a bit shaky; but today food wasn't a problem. That
thought put my recent career setback into perspective, giving me a
smile Huey Long himself couldn't corrupt.

When I stepped out to the street from the blackened bar, the
sun sent goosebumps up my arms and neck. The rays burned through my
thinning brown hair and onto my scalp like an imaginary lover kissing
the crown of my head. This was just what I needed to forget about the
Detective Demitrez disappointment and get on with my writing; maybe
even on to something bigger and better! I lit up another cigarette with
a grin and began the hunt for what I now know was the last lunch of
this life.

Passing an antiques shop, I saw a painting by Winston
Churchill. “Is that cool, or what?” I asked a lady
next to me as she frowned and walked away. It depicted a coastline,
with placid waters imposed on an ominous wall of cliffs and rocks. Over
half a million bucks! Whoa! We have antiques stores in Des Moines, but
nothing like this. I went inside, walked past a half-dozen clerks
fawning over a well-dressed Indian couple, and walked to the rear of
the store. The room buzzed with financial appreciation. Never had I
seen such a collection: a 1795 Swiss birdcage for a quarter-mil; an
apropos pair of enormous globes once belonging to Napoleon; King Louis
XV's war plans for the Seven Years’ War, framed and mounted
in 48-karat gold. But it was when I saw the bedroom suite that things
went south: a mahogany and mercury-gilded seven-piece Empire-style
bedroom suite once belonging to an Egyptian king. I was enthralled, and
not exactly paying attention to what I was doing.

The security camera's grainy black-and-white footage showed a
trim man in a suit, formerly of Indian-couple fame, running at full
speed, knocking over a Spanish suit of armor and jumping over a
footstool once owned by the pirate Jean Lafitte, to hunt down the
distinct smell of cigarette smoke. Across the store, it showed a
frumpled, lanky pseudo-academic from Des Moines in a red Hawaiian shirt
leaning against the painting-lined wall and staring at the Egyptian
bed, then throwing his hands up like a night clerk being robbed after
realizing what he'd done. Together, both men stared at the tragedy: a
perfect circular, cigarette-shaped void on the canvas of Evening
Gold by John Atkinson Grimshaw. The price tag, still blown by
the displaced air of the flying proprietor, read $775,000.

Grimshaw was an English genius; a painter whose works were
produced in counterfeit even before his death in 1893. But the one I
branded was as real as a prison cell. Depicting the artist's
nineteenth-century Victorian home, it was painted in 1885 and preserved
by dozens of galleries and private owners from Leeds to Louisiana until
finally meeting its end at the hands of a half-drunken novelist from
Des Moines.

Smelling the burnt canvas, I became like one of those mimes
out at Jackson Square: limbs locked in an impossible position hoping
some dentist from Chicago would put a dollar in my box so I could
spring to life negotiating an invisible world. But it would take a lot
of dentists to get me out of this mess. I shoved my way back to the
street, where I vomited violently into the tall hair of a short
housewife from Texas.

"Contrary to popular belief, jail doesn't really give you time
to think about what you've done, you know,” I told Big Winkie
the bail bondsman a few hours later. Public intoxication. Destruction
of private property with intent to split. Assault with potentially
hazardous biological pathogens.

Mr. Winkie was a shaven-headed Creole with a chest like two
oil drums and a Patek Philippe wrist watch. He and I were talking in
French and, complemented by the international language of intimidation,
he told me that if I skipped out on my bail he'd make in me another
little black hole. This caused an uncomfortable pause in the
conversation. “It's actually pretty loud in there all the
time,” I went on, out of nerves. “The yelling. The
clanging. The bodily functions.” There's an old Chinese
saying that the emptiest containers make the most noise, and there's a
lot of emptiness going on in the slammer.

The events of earlier that day were all the more reason the
greenbacks in Bob's driveway had my attention. After it was evident
that the explosion was over, and the money shower wasn't, the terrier
and I ran to investigate—orange jacket in tow. My
sister-in-law's Volvo was crushed as flat as a crêpe, an
impossibly configured humanoid on its roof wearing a white helmet and
half-deployed parachute. On the satellite dish hung a huge, ripped
canvas satchel, more like a three-person tent, really—and the
apparent source of the mysterious cashola. I started picking money from
the ground so it wouldn't blow away as I waited for the sirens,
neighbors, and news crews. Then I ran and put on my good baseball cap
and got my wallet so I could have ID handy for the police, like on TV.
I picked up a copy of Scientific Explosives that
had blown from the car and thumbed through it as I stood in the
driveway and waited for what seemed like an hour.

But no one came. Bob's nearest neighbors live miles away here
in this little agrarian exurb far from the New Orleans city limits. No
sign of any pursuer or official. No curious neighbors. No news
crews’ talking hairdos. Just me and the money and a dead man
on my sister-in-law's flattened Volvo. Eventually I climbed up and got
the satchel, went inside, and started counting. Having already been to
jail once that day, I needed to think carefully about my next move;
about how important money was in comparison to my integrity; and about
what kind of man I really was. It didn't take long.

You can stuff an amazing amount of cash into your
sister-in-law's duvet cover if you roll it just right. One thing I knew
for sure, though. That Volvo, my only dependable wheels in the Big
Easy, wasn't rolling anywhere—and I was too old to lug a
seven-foot-long cash-and-cotton enchilada a thousand miles back to Des
Moines. I lit a cigarette and watched the terrier roll up on the giant
money bag with my jacket and go to sleep, clawing and assembling a
suitably comfortable nest the way dogs do. Like me, he didn't think the
money was going anywhere soon. I couldn't drive it home. I couldn't
take a taxi. There was no room on my Mastercard to rent a car. And
since Southwestern Airlines had been known to pick all the green
M&M's out of my checked baggage, much less refrain from
stealing actual cash, flying it up there wasn't an option, either.

I went back and spent a few minutes examining the distinctly
non-Swedish aftermarket luggage rack in the driveway. Its face was a
bruise, revealing nothing of its past but speaking volumes of his or
her future. I set my wallet on the roof of the Volvo next to our
unexpected houseguest, thinking that I wouldn't need—or
want—to show the police my ID right away after all. Then I
wedged my hand under the roof just far enough to put the car in neutral
and push it into the garage next to Bob's antique Fiat, which, being
both Italian and thirty years old, was wholly unsuitable for dependably
moving corpses, mystery money, or itself. As I imagined my brother's
take on discovering a dead skydiver, most likely a drug smuggler, in
his garage, the doorbell buzzed.

Looking through the peephole of the front door, I saw the brim
of a state trooper's hat and a black windbreaker.

"Good afternoon, sir,” said the trooper, looking
past me into the house as I opened the door.

"Hi."

"Have you seen or heard anything unusual this evening? There
was a plane crash nearby and we're trying to piece together what
happened.” His Louisiana Highway Patrol windbreaker was
cracked and faded, with bright yellow block letters. A .45-caliber
pistol hung at his side. He mumbled something into a radio and started
moving room to room, shining his flashlight in each one, even though
every light in the house was on. I followed, watching an enormous snake
tattoo peek from under his jacket with every jab of the flashlight.

"No, sir. This is actually my brother's house. I'm just
house-sitting. I'm a writer."

"A writer, huh? You didn't write The Da Vinci Code,
did you? That was the best book ever! It was so ... so ... human."

"No. But I did write a mystery novel: The Corn
Killer of Council Bluffs. It's part of the Detective Demitrez
series. Perhaps you've heard of it?” Without knowing it, I
lit the last cigarette of my existence.

"Uh, no."

When he reached the bedroom, the sight of the duvet stopped
him cold. He walked over to it and took out his nightstick, poking it.
“Maid got the night off?” He grinned. Just then,
the terrier came out of the closet and walked up to the stranger,
grinning, tail wagging, and with a hundred dollar bill stuck to his
foot.

"Well, lookie here.” He chuckled. “Is this
a donation to the department?” He put his nightstick back in
his holster, and my cigarette revved like a steamboat engine. The man
held the bill up to the light and studied it carefully. I was forming a
confession when a windbreaker-and-snake-wrapped elbow made my brain
bounce against the inside of my coconut. Through the critical mass of
pain radiating from my mouth, I remembered: Louisiana hadn't had
highway patrolmen since the ‘fifties. Today they're called
the Louisiana State Police, and they don't wear hats like that. I
tasted salt and was surprised to find the floor where it was, pressing
my cheek into my nose. With my ear to the hardwood, the round he popped
off with his .45 was that much louder.

The bullet lodged in the floor next to me as my cigarette
landed squarely on the duvet and I smelled the unmistakable scent of
burning feathers. I squinted so hard I could've cracked two pecans.
With the gun pointed my way, the non-cop started trying to get a good
bead on me, simultaneously unwrapping the duvet to pat out the flames.
I was sort of rolling around, trying to make aiming that much harder,
when I noticed the smoking corners of the duvet spreading out all over
Bob's makeshift bookcases. Then I remembered where I was. And what the
bookcases really were. Without thinking and before he could react, I
sprinted out of the room, hearing a shot and feeling the air near my
left ear pulse. Once outside, I dove into the ditch in front of Bob's
house and did my best impersonation of a nesting crawfish.

Before I saw the explosion, I felt it—like a warm
front jumping on my chest. The yard's sprinkler system had been on
earlier and the cold water in the ditch soaked my Hawaiian shirt,
turning its cheery red into a dark burgundy. The cops were coming now,
that was for sure. I figured it was just as well they find me in a
ditch. And then I felt a wetness in my ear that was neither ditchwater
nor the goodbye kiss of a killer. It was Bob's silky
terrier—a little singed around the edges but basically
okay—dragging a singed orange jacket piled with
hundred-dollar bills.

It wasn't $775,000, but it was enough to pay off Big Winkie
and get him to make me a fake passport to boot. With any luck,
crime-scene investigators, coroners, creditors, editors, and antiques
dealers wouldn't know that I wasn't Volvo Man for weeks—and
by then it would be too late. I had a thirst for Sovobra, and the raw
humanity of a good night's sleep under the stars.

Copyright © 2006 William Dylan Powell

* * * *

THE ARTISTS

JENNY KAHN (cover) was born and raised in New Orleans and left
to study painting at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and the
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. She has exhibited in NYC,
Philadelphia, New Orleans, and elsewhere. When Katrina struck she was
again living in NOLA: She lost her home, her studio, and much of her
work, and plans to relocate to San Francisco. (See jennykahn.com or
contact the Cole Pratt Gallery in New Orleans.)

HERBERT KEARNEY was born in Ireland. He lived in NYC and San
Francisco before settling in NOLA three years ago. A poet, painter, and
sculptor, his work with the almost-forgotten art of bone carving has
been exhibited in the U. S., Europe, and Australia. He's currently at
work on a sculpture dedicated to New Orleans, entitled “Why I
Go On.” (Contact through Contemporary Arts Center, NOLA.)

DAVID SULLIVAN was raised in NOLA. His home in the lower
Garden District was spared serious flooding but Katrina cost him one of
his university jobs teaching digital art. He illustrates for companies
such as RC Cola and UPS, and featured in the shows “Katrina,
You Bitch” (Barrister's Gallery, NOLA) and
“Watermark” (Oculus Gallery, Baton Rouge). (See
www.swampmonster.org.)





SNEAKY PETE FROM BOURBON STREET by
John Edward Ames

Michigan-born John Edward Ames has lived
in New Orleans since 1986. Under his own name and several pen names he
has written 61 novels, the latest of which (writing as USA Today
bestseller Ralph Compton) is Deadwood Gulch, a frontier mystery from
Signet (11/06). He returned to NOLA only seven weeks after Katrina to
find that his apartment in the heart of town was mercifully spared most
of the storm's wrath.

I've gone to school on you, Mr. Sloan,” Justin
Breaux assured his visitor, extending a welcoming hand across the bar.
“I'm told you rate aces high."

Reno Sloan gripped the bartender's hand. It felt moist and
gummy, and seemed to peel away when he let go of it. And no
wonder—the August day was still, hot, and humid, the trees
motionless as paintings, and only the dark half of the Ragin’
Cajun Club appeared to be properly air-conditioned.

"Spot of the giant killer?” Breaux added.
“It's on the house."

"Vodka martini,” Reno decid-ed. “I'd
prefer beer, but once I hit forty it started going right to the
waistline."

He cast his eye around the French Quarter barroom while Breaux
mixed the cocktail. The bon ton of New Orleans
didn't hang around here, mostly tourists and French Quarter
habitués. The décor consisted mainly of regal
purple and gold hangings, the official colors of Mardi Gras, and photos
of local musicians who'd gone national.

Breaux set the drink in front of Reno on a napkin.
“What I called you about, Mr. Sloan, is a homicide."

Reno hesitated for the space of a few heartbeats.
“Homicide? That can get tricky for a private investigator. If
it's still an open case, the D.A. can have my license pulled for
obstruction."

Breaux shook his head. “This one's in the books, far
as the police are concerned. My brother's a cop in the Sixth District,
he poked into it pretty good."

"Who was killed?"

"Fellow named Peter D'Antoni."

"I can't place the name."

Breaux crossed his arms over his chest. “No reason
why you should. The first impression he gave was—well, have
you ever known one of these whining sad sacks who's been stood up by
life? Poor guy had some mental problems, and he was antisocial in a big
way. He earned a nickname on Bourbon Street—everybody called
him Sneaky Pete."

Sloan raised inquisitive brows. “Not exactly a
flattering handle."

"He always kept to himself,”
Breaux explained, “and he hardly ever went out of his place
until everyone else was off the street. He didn't know about life on
the treadmill—nobody was even sure how he made his living
except me. See, he lived in the apartment over this bar, and his mail
was delivered down here. Pete got a disability check every month from
Social Security."

"When and where was he killed?"

Breaux pointed overhead. “Little over a month ago,
right upstairs in that four-room walk-up. Same place he lived in for
the last twenty years."

"Have you known him all that time?"

"Only ten years of it."

Reno asked the bartender, “You're sure the death was
ruled a homicide?"

"According to my brother, that was never in doubt. Pete was
shot once through the heart, probably as he answered his door. And
there was no gun found in the apartment, so it wasn't suicide."

"All right, so NOPD nosed it and couldn't find the killer. No
offense, Justin, but what's the percentage for you? It's not usual for
anyone except family to hire a P.I. and nose into a murder cops have
closed out."

Breaux's mouth quirked, not quite a grin. “I sense
more than I can explain, okay? Actually, I tried to investigate it
myself—you know, on the Internet with those P.I. services? I
found no family or known associates. Pete never owned a car, never had
a driver's license or criminal record, never even had a
phone—the only paper trail he left was his utility bills. As
for my interest in the matter..."

Breaux shrugged a shoulder. “I got a wife and three
kids, and without them I'd go nuts. Pete had nobody, and I was the
best—probably the only—friend he had. We're open
all night here, and he'd come down sometimes toward sunrise when it was
slow. We'd talk. He wasn't sneaky, just shy and messed up."

Breaux moved down the bar to make change for a customer who
disappeared into one of the video poker booths.

"I'm also thinking,” he resumed when he returned,
“how Pete could have been rich if he'd
had an ounce of business sense. I think he was one of those ... idiot
... you know..."

"Idiot savants?” Reno suggested.

"Yeah, that's it. Just a second."

Breaux did a deep kneebend and rummaged on a shelf beneath the
register. When he turned around he laid a cheap composition book in
front of Reno. “If you decide to take this case,”
he said, “you'll want to read a good chunk of this. Read a
couple of pages now."

While the bartender filled a few more orders, Reno did. It was
all neatly printed in purple ink. The work was fiction, and the heavy
emphasis on looks, clothing, and turbulent emotions soon identified it
as romance.

"You sure Pete wrote this?” he
asked Breaux. “I don't read the bodice-ripper stuff, but my
ex did and I used to look at it to get her idea of a real man. Ask me,
this reads more like it was copied from a published book."

Breaux's grin of expectation upgraded itself to a victory
smile. “You think so too, huh? Hell yes, Pete wrote
it—in the wee hours he used to fill dozens of notebooks like
this sitting right here at the bar. This is one he asked me to keep.
Romance novels were the only books he read—three or four a
week, he claimed. His apartment's stacked full of them."

"How ‘bout the notebooks—they still up
there?"

Breaux's smile melted like a snowflake on a river.
“The cops thought I was the landlord and let me go up there.
The only notebooks were blank. But this is why I'm
suspicious—I watched Pete fill up those notebooks and then,
as regular as the equinox, take them with him to the post office. Where
was he sending them?"

Reno read a few more paragraphs. One sentence especially
impressed him and he read it aloud: “'Hers was a more subtle,
sloe-eyed beauty that left glowing retinal afterimages when he closed
his eyes.’”

He looked at Breaux. “Has the apartment been cleaned
out yet?"

Breaux shook his head. “Landlord lives in Lafayette.
Hasn't got around to it yet."

Reno said, “There's no proof that Pete's notebooks
are linked to his murder, but I'll shake a few bushes and see what
falls out."

* * * *

The first indigo traces of evening colored the sky in feathery
fingers by the time Reno retrieved his Jeep Commander from the
U-Park-It on Decatur. He did his best thinking while behind the wheel,
so he spent the next half-hour cruising St. Charles Avenue, just
dogging the streetcars and trying to let some daylight in on the life
and death of one Peter “Sneaky Pete” D'Antoni.
Unlike police detectives, who were steeped in the inductive method and
gathered a ton of information to obtain a pound of conclusions, Reno
applied Occam's razor to crime detection—keep the theories as
simple as possible. Genius, he reminded himself, is the ability to see
what's been there all along.

I sense more than I can explain. Despite
understanding what Breaux meant, Reno still had too little information.
He swept right, onto Broadway, and bisected the Tulane fraternity
ghetto, picking up Freret Street and heading downtown again. Lights
blazed a halo over the French Quarter by the time Reno started up the
rubber-runnered stairs behind the Ragin’ Cajun. All he had to
sweat, he realized at a glance, was a conventional lock at least twenty
years old. He dug the key ring full of copper shims out of his hip
pocket and went to work on the mechanism. In thirty seconds the tumbler
surrendered with a metallic snick.

Night heat was more suffocating, especially in New Orleans,
and someone had closed and fastened the wooden shutters, turning the
small apartment into a sweatbox. For a moment he stood just inside the
door, listening. Only the wheezy rattle of a dying fridge and the
distant sissing of water in pipes. He moved farther inside and detected
the musty smell of old dust and lingering food odors.

He slapped at a light switch and sent a quick glance around to
acclimate himself. The dingy little walkup cried out for painting,
plastering, and paper-hanging, but was at least orderly. Even the
waist-high stacks of romance novels that overflowed several large
bookcases and lined every wall were neatly aligned.

Reno moved through a doorless archway into what was intended
as a small dining room. However, D'Antoni had evidently used it as a
reading room—a blue chintz easy chair was surrounded by more
stacks of books, all romance paperbacks. The minimalist kitchen
contained a ‘fifties-era refrigerator, a four-burner stove,
and an ancient soapstone sink.

He popped open cabinets and pulled out drawers but found
nothing that seemed useful. Reno rolled a seven, however, when he poked
through the small bedroom that opened off the front room. He found a
USPS Express Mail receipt tucked into a ceramic vase. The writing on
the customer's copy had faded, but he could make out the date: June 19,
2002. It was the address, however, that instantly focused his mind:

Romance Writing Contest c/o Lydia Collins

28 Audubon Lane

New Orleans LA 70118

Reno read Gambit and other local media
aimed at the culture vultures, and he recognized the name of Social
Registerite Lydia Collins, a lawyer turned literary agent who was said
to be the éminence grise behind some
successful local writers. His reaction to the name was less a clear
idea than a premonitory tingle. By the time he'd locked up and headed
back to his car, however, the tingle had become a hunch.

* * * *

"I confess I'm somewhat intrigued, Mr. Sloan,” Lydia
Collins said as she led Reno into a salon featuring Regency furnishings
and an Italian marble fireplace. “Why would a private
investigator be interested in our writing group's annual
romance-fiction contest? I don't normally associate it with
hugger-mugger and derring-do."

Reno got a good look at her in the afternoon sunlight. She was
an attractive mid-forties, with honey-blond hair and lovely arching
eyebrows. She wore a cool sleeveless dress of crème de
menthe silk.

"It's probably just a fishing trip,” he admitted.
“I've been hired to look into the death—murder, I
should say—of Peter D'Antoni, a longtime French Quarter
resident."

"Murder? And am I a suspect?” There was a teasing
lilt in her voice. “That's delicious."

Reno ignored her lame remark. “You've heard of Mr.
D'Antoni?” he essayed again.

"Not that I recall. Has someone suggested otherwise?"

"I understand that, a few years ago, he submitted some romance
fiction to you as an entry for a writing contest."

"Perhaps he did,” Lydia replied. “These
contests are sponsored by local chapters of our national group, and
open to anyone. The number of submissions is staggering."

"Just curious: What happens to them after they're read?"

"If a stamped envelope is enclosed, we send them back. If not,
I shred them."

"I suppose that not many men submit."

"Of course not. Bear in mind it's not a genre most men can
master—or would want to."

Reno kept his voice carefully neutral. “But if that
atypical man had strong talent, and a woman were to submit his work,
she could hold the keys to the mint, right?"

"I do believe you're fencing with me, Mr. Sloan. I was hoping
we might get along—you make an exciting first impression. Now
you're spoiling it."

"I can't help my manners. My father taught me that politeness
is a form of weakness."

Her laugh was pleasantly musical. “See why most men
can't master the romance genre? But you can't be
seriously suggesting that I—what? Stole this deceased
gentleman's writing and sold it as my own?"

"I'm not even hinting at it,” he assured her.
“Just fishing. You wouldn't need to sell it as your own. You
were an attorney; you could easily create a persona to cash checks and
so forth."

She gave him a pitying look. “What about the
inevitable phone calls from New York editors, many of whom know me and
my voice? What about the jacket photo and local interviews? You're out
of your element, Mr. Sloan."

Reno wasn't sure if that odd contortion of her mouth was meant
as a smile. If so, it wilted at his next remark. “All of
those problems you just mentioned would evaporate, right, if one of
your published authors submitted the work as her own?"

Until that moment Lydia Collins had treated his visit as the
cocktails-and-gossip hour. Now, however, her face closed like a vault
door. When she replied, her nuance of tone was colder than the words.
“I trust you can find your own way out?"

* * * *

Reno headed down St. Charles toward the Quarter, braking for
the noontime gaggle streaming into Audubon Park. He wasn't at all
confident he was on the right track—like a sloppy scientific
theory, his suspicion of Lydia Collins raised more questions than it
answered.

He ate lunch in an oyster house on Bienville, reading more
from D'Antoni's composition book and contrasting it to a bestselling
romance novel he'd picked up at a drugstore. The unpublished fragment,
in his uninformed opinion, left the bestseller in the dust.

He retraced his route along St. Charles, again wondering if
going with his first lead was hampering this case. The lack of any
other leads seemed like a mountain in his path. Justin Breaux was still
in the mix—a Bourbon Street bartender could clear five
hundred a night in tips, but why spend more than half that on a
gumshoe's fee to possibly solve the murder of a mere acquaintance?

Since his divorce three years earlier Reno had rented the left
half of a clinker-built shotgun duplex on Cherokee Street, half hidden
in a lush riot of banana plants. A few moments on the Internet turned
up a Web site for the Collins Literary Agency. Several of her more
prominent local writers were named, and Reno took special interest in a
Garden District resident named Samantha Maitland. Based on the amount
of copy devoted to her, she was one of Lydia's divas.

Not only was Samantha Maitland listed in the Uptown Directory,
she readily agreed to speak with Reno that evening. That sparked his
curiosity—he expected Lydia would have called her local
clients by now and declared him toxic waste to be avoided.

The writer lived on Harmony Street in the Garden District, a
roomy pink stucco with a facade of Spanish tile. Reno eased into the
drive, chunks of white marble gnashing under the Jeep's tires. He
parked and followed a cobblestone walkway around to the front porch.
The yard lights were generous, and his eyes swept over the immaculate
beds of African violets and gardenias, the lawn trimmed as taut as the
green baize surface of a card table.

He crossed a marble-flagged vestibule and pressed the smooth
nacre button of the doorbell, hearing atonal chimes sound within. Again
self-doubt assailed him—it seemed absurd, surrounded by all
these accouterments of wealth and upbringing, to associate Uptown
mansions with the dingy little walk-up on Bourbon.

The door swung open, and Reno was caught
flat-footed—instead of a maid in crisp linen, the woman
smiling at him wore a white flounce-bottom skirt and matching jacket,
open-toed pumps, and delicate gold butterfly earrings. She was a
seraph-faced beauty in her early thirties, with liquid brown eyes and
ginger hair coiled in a tight Psyche knot.

"You must be Reno Sloan,” she greeted him.
“But I was so hoping you'd be wearing a
snappy fedora with a rakish brim. I've always wanted to say to a real
private eye, ‘What's the grift,
hawkshaw?’”

Reno threw back his head and laughed. “Well, you
just did, Miss Maitland."

"Technically it's Mrs.,” she corrected him as she
led Reno down an oak-floored hall. “My husband and I are
separated. A mésalliance, as they say.
By the way—I noticed your surprise when I answered the door
myself. You see, according to my agent, I'm paperwork rich but pocket
poor."

She led him into a parlor off the hallway. Sheer curtains and
brocade overdrapes covered the windows, and needlework tapestries done
in fine Elizabethan tent stitch adorned the walls.

"As a matter of fact, I spoke with Lydia Collins earlier
today,” Reno remarked. “Not about you, of course."

"Oh? You two spoke about the man you mentioned to me on the
phone—Peter D'Antoni?"

Reno nodded. She waved him into a comfortable leather chair
and settled herself on a loveseat in the embrasure of a window.

"I'm sorry he was murdered,” she said,
“but I'm sure I never met the man."

He nodded again. “I didn't think so. Mainly, I hoped
to solicit your expert opinion on some writing—romance
writing."

He started to rise so he could give her the composition book
in his left hand. But she stole a march on him, crossing to his chair,
taking the book, and flumping down onto a velvet hassock a few feet
away, one hand smoothing her skirt. After reading perhaps ten pages she
looked up at Reno, eyes bright with roiled emotions. “This is
simply superb. I've had twelve romances published, three of them
bestsellers, and this makes me jealous. Is the author local?"

"He was. Pete D'Antoni evidently wrote this. And it's possible
he entered this, or other samples of his work, in the local romance
writing contest."

"Oh my ... so that's why you spoke with Lydia?"

"Yeah.” Samantha made no effort to leave the nearby
hassock, and her proximity made Reno feel a tight bubble rising in his
chest. “I wanted her to read this, too, but I managed to
insult her and she tossed me."

Samantha giggled. “Well, Lydia is certainly no
saint, but it's just impossible to think she could be involved in any
serious crime such as murder. She's been too busy with her agency and
her own writing—I take it she mentioned to you that she
recently sold her own first romance after years of selling them for
others?"

"Actually, no. How recently?"

Samantha's eyes widened and she aimed an entreating gaze at
Reno. “Oh, don't get me wrong! It was sold several months
ago, but it was definitely her writing. I adore her, but she's not a
first-rate talent when it comes to writing fiction. I read the entire
manuscript, and it simply can't match this writing you brought tonight.
In fact, Lydia sold her book to a fairly obscure publishing house for a
very modest advance."

Samantha fell silent, watching her visitor. “Did you
speak,” she finally added, “with the other contest
judge?"

"There are two?"

"Until last year, yes. A former client of Lydia's helped out."

"But D'Antoni's submission was sent to your agent,”
Reno pointed out.

"They all are, to keep things simple. Lydia gave half of them
to Susan Gray. She lives up near Riverbend. She no longer writes."

"Burnout?"

Samantha's heart-shaped lips pressed into a frown.
“No, legal distractions. She's had recent difficulties with
the IRS, something about hiding assets, as well as two civil suits for
plagiarism."

"She's a romance writer?"

"That's debatable,” Samantha replied. “I
know my claws are showing, but I've never liked her. She likes to
‘set off whispers,’ as they say, and her
on-the-make husband would seduce a Vestal Virgin. She's more flashy
than talented, and the male love interests in her fiction are too much
like her real-life husband James: solitary men with cold manners. Her
‘love’ scenes are mere mechanical descriptions
devoid of warmth or feeling."

"How recently was she still a client of Lydia's?"

"Until last spring. Susan fired her after a royalty dispute. I
don't know any details."

Upstairs a child cried. “Thanks for your time, Mrs.
Maitland,” Reno said as he stood up. “I'll let
myself out."

* * * *

New Orleans was called the Crescent City because it was
situated on the first of two large bends in the Mississippi River. The
second bend formed the suburban Riverbend area, and Reno noticed signs
of old money everywhere. But the fine old houses and crumbling slate
curbs had the patina of faded glory.

James and Susan Gray lived on Panola Street in a two-story
house of vine-covered stone. Neglected crape myrtles languished in the
strip of side yard. Based on what Samantha had told him last evening
about the couple's legal troubles, Reno had decided on a drop-by
instead of a phone call. He eased into the crushed-shell cul-de-sac out
front and was halfway across the lawn when the front door opened.

A tall, broad-shouldered man in a seawater-blue silk robe bent
to scoop up a newspaper. He had a handsome but despotic face under a
thatch of unruly, sand-colored hair.

"Mr. James Gray?” Reno inquired.

"Since birth. Who and what are you?"

"The name's Reno Sloan. I'm a private investigator. I wonder
if I might speak with your wife?"

"Ahh, the fog lifts. You're here about the so-called
plagiarism charges—"

"I'm not. No charges are involved. Is your wife home?"

His mouth curled into a sneer. “You're out of luck,
shamus. She's disporting herself abroad. We take separate vacations."

Reno glanced past him. All he could see was a short hallway
with a large Chinese vase on a teakwood base.

"I can't invite you in,” Gray added. “I
have company downstairs, and at the moment she's in dishabille."

"You pick odd times to read the paper."

"Bottle it, Sloan. Unlike a lowly security guard, you don't
even have a badge."

Reno spread his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I
just have a few questions. Maybe you could help me?"

"Normally I'd just toss you, but I'm curious to know what
Susan has done now. That woman can ride out any scandal, but I worry
about the legal costs. Fire away."

"I understand your wife used to be one of the judges for a
local writing contest?"

"Writing contest? Hell, she paid a Tulane grad student to read
that dreck."

"Did she ever have dealings with a man named Peter
D'Antoni?” Reno asked.

"She's had dealings with plenty of men, so
I can't say no. First I've heard of him, though."

"Has she ever employed a ghostwriter?"

"Possibly. She's a lazy wench. If so, she kept it secret from
me."

Reno suddenly felt weary. James Gray's sneering attitude
boiled down to one word: whatever.

"Well,” he told Gray, “back to the salt
mines. Thanks for your time."

* * * *

The second time Reno stopped by the Maitland residence, in the
middle of the afternoon two days after his first visit, a young black
woman with stiffly sculpted hair answered the door.

"May I speak with Mrs. Maitland?” he inquired.
“My name is—"

"Hello, Mr. Sloan!” Samantha's voice called from the
hallway. “It's all right, Yolanda, please let the gentleman
in."

The maid disappeared into the bowels of the big house while
Samantha led him into the side parlor. She wore matching white khaki
shirt and shorts and a rose-colored sun hat.

"I notice you didn't answer the door yourself this
time,” Reno observed as he sank into the soft leather chair.
“Is there a secret hall porter, too?"

Her playful tone implied he was a naughty thing.
“Did I ever once say I don't employ a maid? She's off at five
P.M."

A mechanical smile was the best he could muster.

"Was your visit with Susan Gray productive?” she
asked.

"I didn't talk to her."

"You didn't—? But why?"

"Because you were using her as a smoke screen to throw me off
and buy a little time—maybe to leave the country."

An ugly constriction of her mouth transformed her into another
woman. “I should throw you out, but I confess I'm curious to
hear your ‘evidence’ for such a conclusion."

"To begin with, no one has ever confused my mug with Fabio's.
Yet you and Lydia both came on to me. And both of you were dressed to
the nines to receive a lowly keyhole peeper."

Her confidence was back. “What did you
expect—a riding crop and handcuffs?"

"Both you and Lydia,” he pressed on, ignoring her,
“were too willing, and quick, to see me. Nobody has
to talk to a private dick, and in my experience it's often the guilty
parties who are most eager to cooperate and create the illusion of
innocence."

"This isn't evidence!"

"Not in court, but it works for me. Another
thing—within thirty seconds of meeting me, you described
yourself as ‘paperwork rich but pocket poor.’ If
that were true, you'd hardly parade the fact—especially as a
writer with a public image to maintain."

"Good luck proving anything in court,” she lashed
out. “All this is so thin it's not even circumstantial."

"This is a bit more damning,” Reno replied, pulling
a paperback titled Cypress Nights from a back
pocket and flipping it open. “My ex is one of your biggest
fans, she loaned this to me. Here's what first caught my eye:
‘Hers was a more subtle, sloe-eyed beauty that left glowing
retinal afterimages when he closed his eyes.’”

He looked up at her. “I figure he mailed all the
tablets to you, but he must have copied one for proof. The first forty
pages of Cypress Nights are almost verbatim from
Pete's composition book. His handwriting can be factually established,
and it will do no good to say he copied it from your published
book—forensics can date the drying of ink to within a few
days."

The lull after he fell silent became painful, then
excruciating. The color ebbed from her face.

"Even if you manage to ruin my career by proving D'Antoni
wrote some of my novel,” she finally replied, “it
doesn't prove I killed him."

"No, but I suspect that gun making a bulge in the side of your
handbag might. Amateur killers seldom bother to get rid of murder
weapons. And before you try to douse my light, just
a warning: Under my shirt there's a .45 automatic in an armpit holster."

A haggard slump of her shoulders was Samantha's only visible
response. When Reno fished the nickel-plated .38 snubby from her bag,
she suddenly collapsed into a wing chair, her face bloodless.

"I tell people my husband and I are split up,” she
said as if the words were being wrenched out of her. “In
truth, he left me for an ‘actress’ in L.A. I was
devastated, I couldn't write, and I had just signed a three-book
contract worth almost a half-million dollars. Lydia only showed me
D'Antoni's work—a sort of nudge. It was I who looked him up
from the address on his submission."

She sent Reno a pleading glance. “It was only meant
as a desperate stopgap until I could get my muse back. I never
expected such success. D'Antoni already had several entire novels, so I
typed one into my computer and my editor raved over it. I bought two
more—all three made the Times list."

"I take it you paid him?"

She blushed to the roots of her hair. “Yes, but just
barely enough to salve my conscience. He didn't seem to value his work
all that much, and I feared that paying him too much would, well, tip
him off."

"That'll earn you jewels in heaven,” Reno barbed.

"My efforts didn't matter. He became aware of the
books’ success and got quite upset with me."

"And instead of just brooming him, you had to kill him?"

"Yes," she said emphatically.
“It wasn't the money, he didn't care. He wanted recognition
for his work. Even if he couldn't have proved he wrote the books, I
couldn't risk being linked to such an ... unromantic figure. And if he could
prove authorship I would have been devastated
financially—ghostwriters can be kept secret from readers, but
never from editors. I would have been forced to pay every dollar back."

Reno tapped the number of the Sixth District police
headquarters into his cell. Before he sent the call he met Samantha's
eyes. “You may decide to fight this. But there's a good
chance Lydia will be charged in a conspiracy and turn state's evidence,
adding stronger motive to the forensics evidence. It's a lead-pipe
cinch that most juries will be hostile to a rich, prominent woman who
grinds up a man as poor and maladjusted as Pete D'Antoni. Just
remember: Plead guilty and there's no jury."

Reno sent the number. While the phone burred, he glanced
outside through the parlor windows and watched the rapid onsweep of
dark clouds. The mother of all storms was said to be gathering strength
out in the Gulf and might even be drawing a bead on New Orleans. It'll
blow past us, Reno thought idly. They usually do.

Copyright © 2006 John Edward Ames





WHEN THE LEVEES BREAK by O'Neil De
Noux




* * * *

Art by David Sullivan

* * * *

Born and raised in New Orleans, where he
was a police officer in adjacent Jefferson Parish for twelve years and
a P.I. for six years, O'Neil De Noux is cur-rently in Lake Charles, LA.
Still displaced by Katrina, he's attempting to resettle along the north
shore of Lake Pontchartrain. His new book, New Orleans Confidential, is
a collection of 1940s noir P.I. stories.

Five days before Katrina blew into town, topping the levees in
Jefferson and St. Bernard Parishes, breaking through the levee at the
17th Street Canal, the London Avenue Canal, and Industrial Canal to
inundate New Orleans, Detective John Raven Beau started his vacation by
having his houseboat raised into dry dock. Five days after Katrina,
Beau sat in a flat-bottom pirogue next to Sad Lisa.
The hurricane had lifted his houseboat off the dry dock and deposited
her between the remains of two huge boat sheds and the skeleton of Joe
Boughten's Boat Repair Yard, which had shielded the big winds from Sad
Lisa, now floating in eight feet of water that covered the
entire area. Lake Pontchartrain had taken the land as far as Beau could
see.

With the strong summer sun beating down on the brown water,
Beau and his partner had to shield their eyes from the glare with hands
over brows, although both wore dark sunglasses. The stench was the
worst part, reeking of dead fish, mildew, and a thick petroleum smell.
The oaks were dying, the ones that hadn't toppled over. The roofs of
large trucks could be seen on what used to be high ground, boats
littered the entire area, most upside down, half-sunk, pleasure crafts
next to shrimp boats. A half-mile away, the levee breach at the 17th
Street Canal was still pouring into the city.

"Well, she's not listing,” said Beau's new partner,
Juanita Cruz. Five years younger than Beau, Cruz was twenty-five and
had been promoted to detective a month before Katrina—or B.K.
as it was now known. For the rest of time, this new New Orleans would
be A.K.—after Katrina. Her brown-black hair pulled into a
bun, she wore a black T-shirt over baggy black nylon pants and black
combat boots. Across the rear of her T-shirt, NOPD was stenciled in
silver letters. Beau wore the same getup, his .9mm Beretta Model 92F in
a canvas holster along his right hip.

Beau tied up against his houseboat, heard a noise, and looked
up into Joe Boughten's face. Joe smiled weakly and said,
“She's seaworthy. Only one around here that is."

Beau climbed aboard, followed by Cruz. Joe, in a soiled
T-shirt that was once white, baggy gray shorts, face unshaven, eyes
bleary, held up a can of beer and said, “Want a brew? They're
hot, ‘a course, but that's the way the British drink it,
ain't it?"

"Engine ruined?"

"No gas. We emptied the tanks, remember?"

"How'd you get beer?"

"I stocked up before the storm.” Joe belched, then
excused himself to Cruz, who stared at him real hard.

"Tell me you didn't ride out the storm,” Beau said
as he looked around Sad Lisa. Pieces of railing
were missing, so were the seat cushions of the built-in seats, but he'd
stored the radar and antennas below before putting the boat into dry
dock, so it didn't appear much else was missing. Then he saw the tarp
on the roof. Joe had covered a hole.

Joe waited for him to look back before saying, “It
was like bein’ in the middle of an atomic blast.”
He turned to Cruz. “Wind so strong, rain slammin', waves
crashin', things flyin', hittin’ everything.” He
belched again and took a step back. “Been listenin’
to the radio. Is it true about all the shit at the Dome?"

Beau shrugged. Cruz told him some of it was true.

Joe waved his hand. “No looters been by here yet,
but they will, I'm sure."

"Unlikely for the moment,” said Beau. “We
had to get through two checkpoints. Coast Guard and National Guard
stopping everything on the water."

"Good. Bet they don't check at night. Never seen it so dark
around here."

Beau went inside and dug out a canvas suitcase and started
packing clothes. He could smell bacon now, saw a pan on the stove with
three slices in it. There was enough propane to last awhile.
“Hey,” he called out to Joe.

"Yeah.” From the deck.

"Thanks for saving my boat."

"It saved me."

Cruz came down and Beau grabbed another bag, shoving every
T-shirt he had inside, along with extra jogging shoes. He wished he had
something that would fit Cruz. They'd just come from her apartment on
Fleur de Lis. Seven feet of water and still rising. She'd lost
everything. The woman looked shell-shocked, eyes trying to focus. She
moved in slow motion. Lack of sleep. Neither had slept much.

"Hey,” called out Joe. “I hear they're
gonna put y'all up on a cruise ship."

"Not us,” Beau called back. No need explaining that
they were stationed at the airport, which was dry, living in the main
terminal with doctors, nurses, National Guardsmen, and a platoon of
Royal Canadian Mounties, the same Mounties who were the first ones to
go into St. Bernard when no one else bothered. Beau could imagine the
people on their roofs getting rescued and asking, Who are you guys?

Mounties. From Canada.

Back up on deck, he found Joe sitting in a lawn chair he
didn't recognize. “You're coming with us?"

"No. No. It's peaceful here.” Joe raised the beer
can. “Got five more cases. Could use some grub, though."

They had three dozen MREs in the pirogue and twelve gallons of
water, figuring they'd find people on roofs, so they left nearly all
with Joe.

"You want my off-duty piece?” Beau asked.

Joe lifted his T-shirt to show a revolver tucked into his
shorts. “My trusty Colt'll do the trick."

Beau went into the tool chest and brought out a can of red
spray paint. On the blue tarp covering the blown-out windows of Sad
Lisa he printed NOPD. Then he went down and took out one of
his uniform shirts.

"When the Coast Guard or National Guard come around, put this
on and tell them you're my uncle or something."

"This is still my boatyard.” Joe belched again.

"This is also a mandatory evacuation area."

Cruz climbed back into the pirogue, sitting up front again.
Beau went to the motor.

"Thanks for the grub,” Joe called out.

"We'll be back in a few days."

"I'll be here."

Beau took his time maneuvering out of the boatyard back across
what once was West End Park. A huge black helicopter carrying three
large sandbags passed overhead, heading for the levee break. The hot
air was thick with the stench of burnt wood as they passed the shell of
the Southern Yacht Club, which had burned to the ground, the waterline
actually, just after the storm hit. Beau had heard about it as he tried
to get back into the city from his vacation. He'd gone back home to
Vermilion Parish. Stopped at a roadblock on I-10, he was eventually
brought to the airport, where he linked up with his lieutenant, who was
surprised to see him back in town.

"I got an assignment for you,” Lieutenant Merten had
said, sweat glistening on his dark brown face. They were outside the
main terminal of Armstrong International Airport in Kenner.
“I want you and the rookie to stay out here and log in the
bodies."

"What?” Beau had come back to rescue people.

"You and the rookie.” Merten actually tapped Cruz
atop the head. “Log the bodies they bring out of the city. I
need a homicide team to check for 30-victims. Get all you can on them
before they whisk them away to St. Gabriel. IDs if you can ID them,
describe wounds, anything. I want someone who knows a murder victim to
spot them. Before these military doctors get around to posting the
bodies. We need to know how many murders we got. I want you to stay
here. So don't argue with me."

Beau wasn't arguing.

Merten wiped the sweat from his face. “We got
snipers shooting at the Corps of Engineers who're trying to get to the
holes in the levees, got looters all over the city. We need the army, a
couple of airborne divisions."

"The navy,” Beau said. “They have the
boats."

"Freakin’ A.” Merten wiped his face again.

It made sense to Beau, an experienced homicide team at the
airport, but he didn't like it. In the first thirty-six hours, he and
Cruz confirmed only one murder victim, a street punk he recognized
immediately. Jimmy Bigelow, a.k.a. Killboy, was on NOPD's top-ten
wanted list, a drug-dealing murderer from the lower ninth ward.
Arrested twice for first-degree murder, Killboy never went to trial.
The ever-inefficient D.A.'s office nol-prossed each charge, claiming
they couldn't get witnesses to testify. Beau was the investigating
officer in one case and didn't need witnesses, he'd recovered the
murder weapon with Killboy's fingerprints on it next to a body lying
inside Cassandra's Social and Pleasure Club on St. Claude Avenue, but
the D.A. didn't feel it was enough.

Beau had to admit, seeing Killboy with a neat hole in his
forehead made up for not bringing him to trial. Only he wondered how
many crimes Killboy had perpetrated in the two years since the
Cassandra case.

Merten had pulled Beau aside before he led the rest of the
assembled NOPD back into the city. “We got a buncha people
AWOL. Glad you came back.” Beau, on a three-week vacation,
certainly didn't have to return, but how could he do anything but? As
Merten backpedaled away he added, “Take care of the rookie."

That was Saturday, September third, and this was Monday, and
instead of turning back to the lake to return to Bucktown, Beau guided
the pirogue away from the levee breach into Lakeview. The water was
nearly to the roofs of the houses and probably still rising in this
brown-water world. He waited for Cruz to ask what they were doing now,
but she just faced straight ahead, probably seeing nothing but the
memory of her apartment.

The smells were even stronger away from the levee, a rotting,
mildew stench, oil floating on the water. They moved through patches
reeking of sewerage. Cruz waved at a patch of churning water to their
right. “What's that?"

"Gas main. Natural gas.” That particular stench was
added to the rest as Beau maneuvered away from the bubbling water.

Eventually Cruz turned her head and asked, “Where
are we going now?"

"Looking for someone to rescue. I'm tired of waiting around
for bodies."

She nodded and said, almost under her breath, “We
should get back."

This was their off time. Rest time. Sleep time. Their
twelve-hour shift was approaching. Another team, two homicide
detectives from Eugene, Oregon, was covering the day watch. Young, both
in their late twenties, they'd handled exactly one murder in their
careers. Eugene wasn't a hotbed of crime. Back at the airport, cops
were still arriving from all over, volunteers trying to help with the
greatest natural disaster in American history. Beau had never seen so
many different badges.

The strong sun was hot on Beau's head and he wished he'd taken
the green baseball cap offered by the Eugene cops. A University of
Oregon Fighting Ducks cap. The logo looked like a
pissed-off Donald Duck. When he was at LSU they played the Ducks his
freshman year. He got in a couple plays, ran a quarterback bootleg for
fifty-six yards and a touchdown. Headline the next day in the Baton
Rouge paper read: Tigers Feast on Duck 47-0.

"Seriously, Raven, we should be getting back.” She'd
turned to face him and tapped down her sunglasses to glom him over the
top. He saw Cruz was back. Those chocolate-colored eyes were focused
now, serious again.

He glommed her back. “Don't call me Raven."

She thought it was cute, a joke between the two of them. He
didn't like it. She'd started it back when she'd worked with him on a
case where Beau tracked down a cop killer who called himself The Wolf.
Ran the man to ground and watched him commit suicide.

Beau was half Cajun, half Sioux. At six-two he towered over
Cruz. He was lean at one-eighty pounds, with dark brown hair in need of
a haircut and a square jaw. He'd been told he had the look of a
predator with sharp, light-brown eyes and hooded brow—a hawk,
actually, with his thin nose. Not shaving regularly gave his normal
five o'clock shadow a deeper hue.

It began to smell a little like the swamp around Vermilion Bay
and for a moment Beau was taken back to the pirogue he'd paddled with
his father when he was little and the world seemed a magical place to
fish, hunt, and explore. That was until he went to school and was
called a swamp rat by the other kids.

Cruz turned around again. “You never told me how
your mother and father met. How did a Sioux woman from North Dakota
meet a Cajun from south Louisiana?” Since partnering with
Beau, Cruz had asked more about his background than any partner he'd
known. Maybe because she was Hispanic and big on her heritage, part
Cuban, part Costa Rican.

"South Dakota,” he corrected her.

"Okay, South Dakota. How'd they link up?"

Jesus. The questions never stopped. Beau took in a deep breath
of sticky air. “My mother was a mail-order bride from the
reservation."

"Really?"

"No."

"Raven!"

"Don't call me that."

Her eyes went wide with impatience. Beau almost smiled.

"They met at a USO show. He was in the army and she was a
singer."

He could almost hear his mother's soft voice singing him to
sleep in that old Cajun daubed cabin they'd lived in back on Vermilion
Bay. Built by Beau's great-grandfather, its walls filled with swamp mud
to keep the house almost cool in summer and warm in winter, it was
unpainted and the greatest place for a boy to grow up.

Cruz was more interested in his Sioux half, asking to see the
obsidian knife he carried in a sheath at the small of his back. Why was
it sharp on only one side? Why a rock knife? Why the bone handle? He
told her it was the way of the plains warrior, the Lakota, called Sioux
by the white-eyes and their enemies the Crow and Pawnee.

Another withering stare from Cruz had Beau turn the pirogue
around and head back toward West End. Sticking to the center of the
streets to keep from running into the roofs of cars, they passed the
carcasses of two dead dogs as they eased through an intersection, the
street signs indicating they were at the corner of Colbert and
Chapelle. A meow turned them both to the right. An orange-striped cat
atop a roof meowed again and took a hesitant step their way.

"Over there,” Cruz called out.

"I see it.” Beau turned the pirogue and cut the
engine as they neared a one-story brick home. Cruz grabbed the roof's
gutter and called up to the cat, which just meowed back.

"You might have to snatch it,” Beau said just before
the cat lowered its ears and crept close enough for Cruz to stand and
grab it by the scruff of its neck.

"It's only a juvenile,” she said. It looked skinny
to Beau, whose Catahoula hound dog was thankfully safe back at his
uncle's cabin on Bayou Brunet. He eased the pirogue away from the house.

"There aren't any people to rescue here."

"They evacuated early."

"It's the people in the Ninth Ward, Lower Ninth, Mid-City,
Hollygrove,” Cruz said, petting the cat which she held
tightly in her arms. “They don't have cars."

That Beau knew; some made it to the Superdome and Convention
Center but some of the old ones, young stubborn ones, others who didn't
believe the weathermen, just stayed home. Beau couldn't blame them. He
was tired of hearing the gloom-and-doom from the weathermen. Hadn't the
city evacuated for Hurricanes Georges and Ivan for no reason? Sixteen
hours in gridlocked traffic just to turn around. Every time a tropical
storm inched into the Gulf, the weathermen came on the air with special
reports, each network trying to outdo the other, scaring everyone with
bulletins crying Wolf—wolf; The sky is falling, the
sky is falling. They were bound to be right once and Katrina
was it.

Beau looked around at the devastation and his heart sank even
further.

"I heard the Quarter hasn't flooded,” Cruz called
out. “Yet."

To illustrate her point, another chopper flew overhead with
big sandbags for the levee break. Beau thought of the French Quarter.
Hopefully, it wouldn't flood. It was the first dry place the French
discovered when they came up the Mississippi. Too bad the city had
expanded away from the river into the marshland. If the Quarter was
destroyed, New Orleans was gone.

Cruz called the cat Lucky—a female not a year old,
according to a veterinarian at the airport. They wanted to put Lucky in
a cage but Cruz would have no part of it. She took the cat to her room,
little more than a closet along Concourse A. She scored some cat food
from the vet, went in with the cat, and didn't come out until shift
change.

Three bodies were brought in at the beginning of their shift,
two bloated from being in water, the third fresh. Beau stepped into the
hangar serving as a temporary morgue and watched an army pathologist
examine the corpses as the black body bags were un-zipped. The floaters
appeared to have drowned. Unzipping the third body bag, the pathologist
turned to Beau and said, “This'll be for you."

Another young African-American male, slim, light-skinned,
clean-shaven, with a bullet hole in his forehead, dead center like
Killboy, and like Killboy there was also a neat hole in the back of the
head. Through-and-through with no sign of scorching or burn marks. Shot
from a distance and the trajectory of the bullet was straight, too
straight. It certainly wasn't a hollow-point round, like Beau carried,
which would mushroom and blow a huge hole out the back of the head.

"Armor-piercing round,” said the pathologist.
“Saw a lot of this in Iraq."

Beau glanced at the man's nametag: Sumner.

"Gordon Sumner,” the man said as Beau jotted down
his name. Beau narrowed his eyes, the name sounding familiar, which
drew a nod from the pathologist. “Same name as Sting, but I
had it first.” Beau stepped back to let the doc at the body.

"Find an ID, let me know.” Beau moved to the two
state troopers and NOPD sergeant who'd brought in the bodies. He knew
the sergeant from the Second District. Stu Copeland had a beer belly
and short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, his face red from exertion as
he took a hit of an icy Mountain Dew.

"Where'd you find the fresh one?"

"Levee. Hayne Boulevard. Levee's still holding up there but
the Intracoastal Waterway's got the east under water, man. Did you hear
Notre Dame Seminary burned down?"

"The whole place?"

"Probably arson, former altar boys getting back at the
priests."

Jesus Christ.

As Beau moved back toward the pathologist, Copeland waved at
the body with his Dew. “It was only about a mile from where
we found the other one with the hole in the head."

"Killboy?” Beau remembered the notes on Killboy.
He'd been found atop a house on Mayo Road.

"Yeah,” Copeland confirmed. “Mayo and the
levee. It's right near South Shore Harbor. Where the casino used to be,
the one capsized in the lake.” Copeland took another sip of
drink. “I know I'm no homicide man, but that first body had
been moved. Looked like it was dropped on that roof."

"Moved?"

"Postmortem lividity was all wrong. You know. Blood settled on
his backside but we found him facedown."

"Maybe somebody rolled him over to check for vitals before
y'all came around."

"Could be."

Dr. Sumner pulled a brown wallet from the victim's pants
pocket. Beau put on a pair of surgical gloves as Cruz stepped up. They
used the hood of a blue police car from Hot Springs, Arkansas, to lay
out and inspect the contents. There was a Blockbuster card in the
wallet, pictures of three different women, one with a baby in her arms,
a wrapped condom, four pieces of paper with writing on them, but the
papers had been in water and the ink ran, and an expired Louisiana
driver's license with the victim's picture on it. Freddie London,
twenty-one years old, of 9111 Tricou Street. Beau took down his date of
birth and social-security number.

"Lower Ninth Ward."

Beau dropped the wallet and contents in a brown paper bag,
writing his name and unit number on the outside, along with Freddie
London's name, and passed it back to the pathologist, who would send it
along with the cadaver.

Cruz followed Beau into an office where a computer actually
worked. The NOPD and Louisiana State Police computers were down, but
the FBI was up. Freddie London, same DOB and SSN, had fourteen arrests,
from rape to armed robbery, extortion, burglary, and two heroin busts.

"Jesus, what's he doing on the street?” Cruz said as
Beau reached into the small NOPD file on the desk to pull out a
printout of NOPD's Most Wanted. Freddie London was number twelve on the
list.

Beau sat in the gray metal chair behind the gray metal desk
and looked out the small window at the bright sky outside. He pulled
his shirt away from his chest and fanned it. There was some sort of air
conditioner working in the hangar at least.

"What are the mathematical probabilities?” he said.
“Two of our most-wanted stone-freakin’ criminals
are found a short distance from one another with holes in their heads,
bullet trajectories nearly identical, through-and-through wounds so we
can't compare bullets."

Cruz shrugged.

"Who is Sting?"

"You gotta be kiddin'."

Beau shrugged.

"You didn't have MTV in that cabin?"

Copeland peeked in and said, “They're bringing in
six more."

Floaters. Three black, two white, one Asian, a teenager. Beau
and Cruz watched Dr. Sumner examine them, keeping as far away from the
stench as possible.

Beau found Copeland later, napping on a cot.

"You awake?"

"Huh?” Copeland blinked open his eyes and yawned.
“I am now."

Beau pulled up a folding chair and took out his notepad.
“Describe everything, will ya? The area, how the bodies were
lying, everything.” He handed Copeland a fresh Mountain Dew.

* * * *

Juanita Cruz found a CD player and a Led Zeppelin CD and began
playing one particular song over and over again, letting it reverberate
through the hangar. After the first fifty times, Beau'd had enough of
the little ditty called “When the Levee Breaks.” He
hoped someone would complain. No way he could tell a partner who had
lost everything that the high-pitched male voice bemoaning that when
the levee breaks he'll have no place to stay was gettting to be too
much. The electric guitars just kept groaning and the man kept singing
about how crying won't help you, praying won't do you no good, ending
with the refrain “going down, going down.” He
watched Cruz and knew she was listening intently, but her face revealed
no emotion. It was creepy.

During that shift nine bodies were brought in, all natural
deaths. Drownings, classified accordingly by the pathologists, using
the NASH classification system. Humans died a natural death, accidental
death, suicide, or homicide. In New Orleans, where things were done
differently on purpose, Beau had seen deaths listed beyond the NASH
system. “Death by Misadventure” was the most
common. Nearly everyone in Louisiana knew someone who'd died that way.
Usually it was preceded by the victim calling out to friends,
“Hey, y'all, watch this.” The victim would then
jump off a roof or dive into a sluggish bayou that looked deeper than
it was.

Beau thought “Death by Stupidity” would be
more appropriate. That evening as the pathologists, Sumner and two
others, examined the bloated bodies of these latest Katrina victims,
Beau exchanged stories with them. Stories of weird deaths, morons
playing chicken with trains, idiots playing Russian roulette, one
particular cretin who told his buddies he was going into the house
next-door to investigate a bad smell and lit a match in a house with a
gas leak.

Cruz gave Beau a pained expression when the stories stopped
and he had to explain. “The more of this you see, the more
you need to laugh. Release the pressure. You should know that."

Just before dawn, Copeland brought in a third body with a
bullet wound in the forehead. He looked at Beau and said with a sly
grin, “You been sneaking out and popping these dudes?"

Beau gave him a long, withering stare, the stare of the plains
warrior, unsmiling, unemotional. Copeland shuddered, maybe teasing,
maybe not, and stepped away. John Raven Beau had a reputation. He was a
killer, plain and simple. Since joining NOPD he'd gunned down five men,
the most infamous in the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge, the
only living swamp within the city limits of a major American city,
23,000 acres’ worth. Beau tracked a cop killer through the
swamp through the night and left his body next to a railroad trestle.

In the eyes of every rookie he met, once they realized who he
was, Beau saw the recognition, the morbid fascination, and the
distancing, because Beau was a dangerous man, no doubt. It kept Beau on
the outside, kept him separate from the brotherhood of cops, kept him
isolated and alienated as he'd been his entire life from his first day
in kindergarten when the kids stared at him as if he came from an alien
world.

Beau moved to the body bag and waited for Dr. Sumner. Cruz
came out of the office, carrying her CD player, the taller of the
Oregon cops in tow. His name was Al and he seemed smitten with Juanita
Cruz or was just simply on the make, big-time. He spent a lot of time
schmoozing with her and Beau couldn't think of a better way to distract
her.

She turned on the CD and the wailing guitars and driving beat
of the levee-breaking song echoed through the hangar. Dr. Sumner shook
his head as he unzipped the body bag, which held a dark-skinned man
with long black hair and a bullet wound in his forehead.

"This one's older."

Up closer, Beau saw the man had some gray in his hair and
obvious age lines on a face flaccid in death. The man was wet, but
hadn't been in the water long. Sumner found a wallet with three
Louisiana driver's licenses with three different names but the same
face on them. The oldest license had the man's real name, one familiar
to everyone in the NOPD. Abdon Jeffries, listed as an
AA—African American—by NOPD, although Abdon was a
mulatto with a white mother. Some things never changed in the South. If
you were part African, you were African. A convicted felon with
thirteen arrests, Jeffries was number three on NOPD's Most Wanted list.

"Wound's perforated, right?” Cruz asked as she
stepped closer.

Sumner lifted the head, felt under it, and said,
“Yep."

Through-and-through, like the others, round, neat, clean.
“Straight path,” Beau added. “How do you
do that?"

"Sniper?” said Cruz.

"Have to be dead-on perfect."

Beau stepped over to where Copeland sat with one of the triage
nurses from the next hangar, where they worked on the injured, and
asked the sergeant, “Where?"

"South Shore Harbor. Next to the capsized casino."

Cops didn't believe in coincidences, even if the word was in
the dictionary.

"I didn't recognize him,” Copeland said.
“Abdon Jeffries, right? That's the bastard who shot that
Seventh District cop. Crippled him, remember?"

Beau closed his eyes for a second. Yeah, he remembered.
Jeffries hired a sharp lawyer and then the D.A. went in unprepared and
Jeffries walked. He'd seen the crippled cop in a wheelchair getting
into the “police only” elevator at headquarters,
going up to the radio room where he worked as an operator. A desk job
for a paraplegic.

Beau let out a long breath, opened his eyes, and spotted his
lieutenant entering the hangar. He went straight to him, about to tell
him about the three men with holes in their heads, but Merten shook him
off, heading over to a pair of men standing in the far doorway.

Merten came back with the men and introduced them, a third
pair of detectives who would work with them examining the bodies. From
Philadelphia, these guys were older, both Italian-Americans, both
grizzled veterans of the homicide wars. They asked for the midnight
shift and Beau quickly gave it up to them. The Oregon guys wanted the
evening watch, so Beau and Cruz would take the day watch.

Merten took Beau and Cruz aside. The big man's eyes were
red-rimmed. “It's bad out there. People on roofs, starving
dogs everywhere. Thirty people died in an old-folks home in St.
Bernard. The employees left them to drown. We got a full-scale riot at
the Convention Center but I gotta go over to the First District. We're
raiding the Iberville Projects in boats. Snipers been shooting at the
district station since the storm.” He took in a long breath
and let it out, wheezing in fatigue. He gave Beau a long look and said,
“No. You know I need you here."

"You want to hear what we've come up with?” asked
Cruz.

"Not now."

Beau went back to Copeland for details and got, “The
body was right on top of the levee. Like I told you, South Shore
Harbor."

Beau put it in his notes.

Copeland also said, “It wasn't Notre Dame that
burned. It was the big place across the street.” Beau knew
the area well. There were lots of big places but he wasn't in the mood
to ask.

Later, as their shift ended and Beau was in his portioned
cubicle, Cruz stepped in from her shower with a towel wrapped around
her head. She had on a terry-cloth robe and carried clothes in her hand.

"Why do we want to work the freakin’ day
shift?” she asked, leaning her head forward to rub the towel
through her hair. Her hair was shiny from the bright overhead light,
traces of reddish brown mixed in with dark brown. Juanita was naturally
pretty, looking younger now without makeup.

"I want to be free at night,” he said.

"Night? You found some action? Some nurse?"

He almost smiled.

"We've been sleeping through the steamiest part of the day,
you silly Cajun. Why work in the heat?"

She dropped the towel on the small table next to Beau's cot
where he sat with his notepad. He'd finished consolidating his notes on
the killings. Homicide cases were built with paperwork. He was closely
examining a city map, checking out the South Shore Harbor area.

"What's with the map?” Cruz asked. When he looked
up, she dropped her robe and picked up a T-shirt. In her bra and
panties, she was facing Beau, who blinked twice. She pulled on the
T-shirt and climbed into a pair of lightweight gym shorts before
looking back at him.

"What the hell is this?” Beau sat up stiffly on the
cot.

"What?"

"The little bra-and-panty show. I'm your partner, not your
sister."

She huffed, narrowing her eyes. “Maybe I'm just
trying to get your attention."

Beau tried to keep from getting aroused, an automatic physical
response. He glared at her, turning the excitement into anger.
“You never fool around with your partner. You know that. A
partner's a partner. Closer than a friend. But not a freakin’
lover.” He stood and walked to the rear of his enclosure.

He turned back to her and she snapped, “I don't know
anything anymore.” She opened her arms.
“Everything's changed. Everything! The whole damn world's
changed!” She stormed out.

Beau went out a few minutes later with her towel and found the
Oregon cops sitting next to the empty examining table. Al was reading a
Spiderman comic. He dropped the damp towel in Al's
lap. “Go give this to Juanita."

"Juanita?” Al stood up.

"Yeah. She could use some company."

"Okay.” Al took off for Cruz's room.

The other Oregon cop said, “I thought you were her
partner."

Beau gave him a deadpan look. “I said she needs
company."

The cop shrugged.

Beau left. Over his shoulder he said, “I thought
y'all were from Oregon. Not Disneyland."

The next morning, Beau located the Wildlife and Fisheries
agent who'd lent him the pirogue to visit Cruz's apartment and Sad
Lisa and asked if he could use a pirogue that evening. The
agent jotted Beau a note authorizing the use. The man's name was
Prejean and he hailed from Abbeville, parish seat of Vermilion Parish,
where Beau grew up.

"Give this to the supervisor,” he said, passing the
note to Beau.

Six more drowning victims came in that afternoon and one
murder victim shot three times in the back. No ID. Body pulled out of
the Industrial Canal. Beau took a nap after their shift ended, setting
his alarm for eleven P.M., and was surprised when Cruz, decked out as
he was in all black, came into his cubicle and asked, “Where
we going?"

"Um, I've got something to check out."

She pulled out her Beretta and checked its ammo.
“You planning to go without me, Raven?"

"How'd you find out about this?"

"I'm a detective,” she said smugly, holstering her
weapon. “We're headed for South Shore Harbor, or what?"

Damn, he wanted to do this alone. Didn't want her anywhere
near this. Not because she was a woman or even a rookie. He worked
better alone. But as he looked at her, he knew if he dumped her it
would tear her down and she'd been torn down enough. A partner was a
partner and they'd face the danger together.

He nodded and checked his weapon and ammo clips. They took
radios, which didn't work, and their cell phones, working about as
well. Beau secured three large flashlights from two National Guardsmen
from St. Louis and talked two other National Guardsmen into taking them
with their Humvee to the Bonnabel Boat Launch in Metairie, where
Wildlife and Fisheries was set up.

On the way, the guardsman riding shotgun kept looking back at
Cruz. She tried discouraging him with a yawn but the guy asked question
after question, about NOPD, the high crime rate, Bourbon Street, Mardi
Gras. Beau read his nametag: Smith. The other was Jones. Jesus.
Milquetoast Midwesterners.

"I seen it on the Internet,” he said.
“Women showing their boobs for carnival beads. We don't get
that in South Dakota."

Cruz gave Beau a smirk as she asked them, “Y'all
from South Dakota?"

"Sioux Falls."

She pointed a thumb at Beau. “He's half Sioux.
Oglala. His mother lives on the Pine Tree Reservation. That near Sioux
Falls?"

Pine Ridge Reservation, thought Beau, but
correcting her would only encourage the conversation.

Smith stared at Beau and answered, “It's on the
other side of the state."

Jones turned around and said, “You look half
Sioux.” There was no malice in his voice but Beau knew his
people and the white-eyes of both Dakotas didn't mix much.

"Show them your knife,” Cruz said.

Beau, who'd assumed a deadpan, blank expression as soon as
he'd heard these guys were from Dakota, gave his partner an
unresponsive look.

"It's obsidian,” she went on, sitting up now,
getting a kick out of it. “Sharp as a razor."

Beau turned his gaze to Smith, who nodded and turned around,
and thankfully, the questions stopped.

The Wildlife and Fisheries supervisor read the note
authorizing Beau to use a pirogue and said, “Y'all sure about
this?"

Beau nodded. The man shrugged and said, “We got no
radio for y'all. All the towers are down."

"We'll be fine."

"We'll need it back before daybreak."

"No problem.” Beau thanked the man and moved to the
pirogue. This one was aluminum, the outboard looked new and started
immediately.

"You got a full tank,” the supervisor called out as
they pulled away from the boat launch into Lake Pontchartrain, heading
east to ride along the big levee that had protected most of Jefferson
Parish. The levee had been topped by Katrina in Kenner and parts of
Metairie, but most of JP had escaped the flood. Beau had heard eighty
percent of New Orleans was now under water.

Moonlight reflected off the tiny waves in the lake and
starlight added a faint hue to the entire scene. The levee loomed as a
dark shadow to their right. Beau was so used to the smell of the salty
water, it didn't register until the scent changed as they approached
the 17th Street Canal, where water from the city had mixed with the
lake, giving the area an oily stench. Huge lights lit up the area
around the canal entrance. Helicopters, lit up like Christmas trees,
moved back and forth to the break in the levee to drop their sandbags.

Looking to his right, Beau couldn't see the boatyard or Sad
Lisa and wondered how Joe Boughten was getting along.
Probably fine, so long as the beer held out. Veering to port, they
skirted West End. It took awhile, moving carefully, to travel the next
eleven miles to Lakefront Airport. There were some lights on there but
the entire place was under water. South Shore Harbor, two miles beyond,
was darker. Beau saw a cloud had moved in front of the moon.

"Remember, when we go ashore, stay with me,” he told
her. “Partners never split up. No matter what happens. Don't
separate."

"Okay, okay."

"I'm serious.” Beau wasn't being overprotective.
He'd learned years ago to stick with his partner. Whatever happens to
one happens to both. Can't protect each other if you split up, like
they did on TV. Hell, just about everything cops did on TV shows was
flat-ass wrong.

They reached the levee just beyond the harbor, the capsized
casino looming overhead like a black mountain. Turning off the engine,
they paddled along the levee. Thankfully the cloud moved and the
moonlight came back. When he was studying the map, Beau figured there
was one way to find out about this, one possible way.

Not five minutes from the casino, he spotted a boat pulled up
to the levee and his heart raced. He pointed to it and Cruz nodded. It
was a boat made for speed, a huge outboard motor, all painted black.
Beau was surprised they'd left no guard. They were that confident. The
boat was tied up to a large chunk of concrete. The base of the earthen
levee was littered with huge blocks of concrete all the way to the
water's edge. He pulled the pirogue next to the speedboat.

He unfastened the boat and handed Cruz the rope. She tied it
to the pirogue's stern and they towed it about fifty yards, pulling it
up on the levee between two larger concrete blocks. Then they paddled
the pirogue an additional fifty yards to tie it up. They left the
flashlights and walked the levee back to where the speedboat had been
originally.

Moving to the top of the levee, they looked at the eastern
portion of the city. The moon and starlight gave a silvery pallor to
the dark water and the roofs were black spots. As far as Beau could
see, the city was under water.

Beau and Cruz positioned themselves back down the levee, each
behind chunks of concrete on either side of where the speedboat had
been. Beau eased his weapon from its holster and rested it against his
leg as he sat. He covered his right eye with his hand and used his left
eye for five minutes, then switched. When he opened his right eye the
light seemed brighter since his pupils had dilated in the blackness
behind his hand. He focused his hearing away from the lake lapping
against the levee and concentrated.

He ran it all through his mind again. Someone was dumping
these bodies where they would be found. No other way to get here except
by boat. They probably had one on the other side of the levee to
navigate canals that were once streets, but this was how they got in
and this was their exit point. He knew he was lucky to find their boat.

An hour later, a helicopter came from the direction of
Lakefront Airport and flew out over the east, its running lights extra
bright, two searchlights scanning back and forth. From the moonlight,
Beau thought he caught a white sheen on the craft. Coast Guard chopper.

He settled back and thought of the word describing where he
and Cruz lay in wait. It was called a batture, a
colloquial term indigenous to New Orleans. Possibly from the French battre:
“to beat.” Here on the land between the top of the
levee and the water's edge, along the lake and the river across town,
was where the original French settlers beat their washing, against
rocks that naturally dotted the area, long before the levees were built
up. He could envision the women in long dresses leaning over with their
wash as they chattered with one another to ease the boredom. His Cajun
ancestors most likely did the same along Vermilion Bay and its bayous.

Beau spent the hours keeping his breathing regular, keeping
his senses tuned, keeping himself calm. The Sioux called it the battle
calm, a relaxed state bordering on tranquility so when battle
was joined a warrior maintained the cool hand and struck true, while
his enemies, particularly the white-eyes, let their blood rise to
levels that made their aim unreliable.

Over the lapping of the waves, Beau heard the faint scrape of
footsteps. He peeked around the concrete and eased off the safety of
his .9mm Beretta model 92F. Its rubber grips were tacky from the
humidity, providing extra grip, although Beau's hand was not sweaty in
the least.

A figure rose to the top of the levee from the other side,
followed by a second, one carrying a rifle, the other a machine gun,
and both wearing all black. When the first paused to glance up at the
sky, Beau saw the man was wearing night-vision goggles. Damn! Who were
these guys?

More footfalls, faint and yet firm, revealed a total of five
men now. Besides the one with the rifle, two carried what looked like
Steyr machine guns. One started down the levee their way. Beau inched
around so he could keep that man and the others in his line of vision.

It didn't take long for the man to realize and call out,
“The boat's missing!"

"You sure we're at the right place?"

"Look for the red marker."

One of the men disappeared beyond the levee momentarily and
came right back. “It's right here."

"Dammit to hell!"

Feet shuffled and a sharp voice said, “Someone's
here!"

It was instantly followed by, “Police!
Freeze!” The second voice was Cruz.

Beau peered around and saw his partner standing with her
Beretta in the standard two-hand police grip, her knees bent slightly
as she aimed her weapon at the closest man. The men had their weapons
trained on her.

Beau flipped the safety back on his Beretta and holstered it,
stood with his hands spread, and called out, “Over here."

Three of the men wheeled toward him.

"We're NOPD,” Beau said. “And there's more
of us in the boats.” A bluff.

No one moved for three heart-thumping seconds before one of
the men in back, one carrying a handgun, eased forward and said,
“Beau? Is that you?"

The hair stood out on Beau's arms and the back of his neck.

"All right, everyone put your weapons down,” said
the same man as he came forward, removing his night-vision goggles.
Lieutenant Merten's eyes shone like bright agates as he stepped up to
Beau. “What the hell are you doing here?"

Behind Merten the men lowered their weapons and began pulling
off their goggles. Beau recognized a robbery detective and an old buddy
from the Second who was now on the SWAT team. The fourth man looked
young and Beau didn't know him. The fifth man, taller than the others,
kept his goggles on. He was the only white man in the group.

"Put your weapon down, Juanita,” he called out, and
Cruz slowly lowered her gun. Beau looked back at Merten and said,
“Where'd you leave the latest one? Where it'll be found
easily. So word'll get out. The criminals will know."

"Jesus, Beau. What are you doing?” Merten seemed in
pain. He leaned closer. “I told you to stay
by the airport."

"Only we know where to find our Most
Wanted.” Beau's voice was deep and even, without emotion.
“Only we know who they are, know they're
bad enough to stay behind, too entrenched to evacuate. Wasn't hard to
figure it had to be us."

"Is he solid?” from the fourth man, the young
unknown face leering at Beau.

The fifth man finally removed his goggles and stepped forward.
Beau felt a weakness momentarily in his knees. Assistant Superintendent
Ashton Garner, the man most NOPD felt should be
Chief of Police, the former head of the Training Academy who'd trained
his men and women to be like brothers and sisters. It was Garner who
made them all feel as if NOPD was family. Us against the world.

Garner tapped the fourth man on the shoulder as he passed and
said, “He's as solid as they come. Notice he's saying we
and us and not ‘y'all did
this,’ isn't he?” Garner arrived next to Merten and
stared Beau in the eyes. Beau gave him a poker-faced, lingering,
emotionless stare in return.

"This is John Raven Beau,” Garner went on.

"Oh,” said the unknown man. “I hearda him.
He's killed more'n us."

Killed, Beau thought, not executed, but he kept his mouth shut.

Merten shook his head. “Can't believe you brought
the rookie."

Beau turned to him. “Looks like we're all in this
now."

Garner took in a deep breath.

Beau stepped around them and moved to his partner, getting
between her and the men, nodding for her to holster her weapon, which
she did reluctantly. He turned back and told them where the boats were.

"We'll show you.” He led Cruz through them to the
top of the levee.

No one moved behind them for a few moments before Merten and
Garner came along. When they reached the spot where the speedboat was
tied up, Beau pointed to it, then turned back to face his lieutenant
and assistant superintendent. He waited until the stragglers arrived
before he said, “That better be the last one."

"Who the hell are you to tell us that?” snapped the
unknown man. “What is your major malfunction? Man, we nailed
Abdon Jeffries, didn't we?” He raised the high-powered rifle
in his hands, the one with the big scope. So this was the sniper, the
triggerman.

Beau stared into Garner's eyes. “If I figured this
out, someone else will. And there's no ‘us’ with
the Feds. They'll nail every one of us, me and Cruz, too, because we
know."

He waited for the recognition to come to Garner's eyes. He
turned to Merten with, “So we're in this together and
tonight's the last one."

Beau took Cruz by the arm and they went on to the pirogue,
neither looking back. As they were climbing into the flat-bottom boat
they heard the angry growl of the speedboat as it backed into the lake,
growling louder as it pulled into the dark waters.

* * * *

Just after they'd passed the 17th Street Canal, they hit
something in the water and the outboard died. Beau got it started but
it wouldn't propel them. He raised it and saw why. They'd lost the
propeller. So they grabbed the oars and rowed the pirogue over to the
Bucktown levee, pulled it up on the grass, and shoved the anchor into
the ground before going to the top of the levee to wait for dawn.

Cruz lay on her back, hands behind her head, knees up. Beau
sat cross-legged, like a plains warrior sitting around a campfire, and
looked out at the lake. He faced the eastern horizon and waited.
Motionless, except for breathing and blinking, Beau watched the
horizon. He tried his best to keep his heart from racing, as it had
when the shadowy figures had closed in on him on the levee. But his
heart raced as he watched the horizon; goosebumps covered his arms.

John Raven Beau hadn't been frightened since he was a kid.
There was no fear when he'd gunned down the men he'd chased, no fear
when their bullets whizzed past his face with the sound of an angry
hornet. As a child he'd been frightened, as most children, of wild
sounds coming from the swamp at night, of imagined bogeymen. He'd been
frightened when his grandfather told him about Coyote-man, the mythical
enemy of the plains warriors, the Sioux and their cousins, the
Cheyenne. Stories of the sly trickster who stole the breath from
babies, leaving them cold and dead, of tricks played on battlefields
when a warrior's bow broke or an arrow didn't run straight or a pony
tripped on a gopher hole, sending its rider crashing to the ground.
Coyote-man drew warriors to watery deaths in lakes and swollen rivers
where their soul would never escape, for a warrior who drowned could
never rise from the depths.

Beau knew better than to think it was Coyote-man who drew
Katrina's hot winds to New Orleans, knew the myth was just
that—a myth. But something drew the storm here. Something
drew it from the gulf. Steering currents, or was it, after all, the
rotted breath of Coyote-man that sucked the storm ashore? And was the
trickster sitting on a rooftop cackling at Beau as he studied the
horizon wondering if it would be the same sun rising in the east?

When the sun finally rose, with Juanita Cruz gently dozing
next to him, Beau felt a hammering in his chest as he watched the sky
turn from black to charcoal gray then lighten into reddish orange
before streaming into yellow. It was the same sun and it made him feel
as if his heart would collapse from the pain.

"What is it?” The voice came from a distance.
“What is it?” It was a familiar voice. He turned to
it but only saw a blur. He wiped his eyes and it was his partner,
sitting up now, staring at him, her brows furrowed.

"Are you all right?” she asked.

Beau felt his head shake, felt his heart hurting so badly he
wondered how he could breathe. He looked back at the sun. It should be
off-kilter, askew, every object should be a fraction of an inch from
its true place. Everything was wrong, but nothing looked wrong. It was
the same sun.

He looked back at his partner and told her that.

"You're not making sense,” she said, brushing grass
from her pants.

"Don't you see?” he heard himself say.

"No.” She looked him in the eye again and said,
“You talking about back there? What they're doing, isn't it
what we'd all like to do sometimes? Just clean house."

Beau felt himself shivering in the heated air. “On
purpose,” he said. “They're even leaving the bodies
to be found on purpose, so word'll get out."

"Sure,” Cruz said. “You said it. Word to
the criminals. See what we can do when we want to."

The pain still shot through his heart but Beau could breathe
now. He needed the breath to explain. “We don't do that."

Cruz leaned back, a haughty look on her face. “You
saying it's bad?"

"No. I'm saying we don't do that. We kill ... I killed ...
when I had no choice. It was me or them. We don't execute people."

"It bothers you that Killboy's dead? That cop-shooting Abdon
guy? I forget the third one."

"That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying, hell, you said it: Everything's
changed. The whole damn world's changed."

Cruz looked at him a long while before getting up and holding
out her hand to pull him up. He grabbed it after a few seconds and she
tugged him up. Beau looked back at the city, at the roofs protruding
from brown water like cypress stumps in a bayou. He felt the stab again
in his heart.

"Is that why you were crying?” Cruz asked.

"No. Yes. Maybe.” How could he explain it when he
didn't know? A plains warrior didn't cry. They never showed their
emotions like the white-eyes. Maybe it was his Cajun side. Certainly
his father would not have hidden his emotions if he saw the great
Louisiana city, la Nouvelle Orléans,
inundated in brown water.

It took Cruz to say it aloud. “Tonight never
happened. We're solid. There's no other choice.” She pointed
to the construction site next to the canal. “Lets get some
help with the motor. Maybe get a lift. Check on Joe and Sad
Lisa."

Beau started to follow, but his legs wouldn't move. And he
realized he knew why it bothered him. It was right there in front of
his eyes. There was no going back. Nothing would ever be the same again.

This was New Orleans, A.K.

Copyright © 2006 O'Neil de Noux





THE CODE ON THE DOOR by Tony Fennelly

Edgar Allan Poe Award nominee Tony
Fennelly came to New Orleans in 1969 and on her first night in town
“spotted a beautiful French-speaking Cajun boy,” to
whom she has now been married for over 30 years. Her Margo Fortier
mystery series is set in NOLA, where the actress/writer returned after
Katrina.

City officials are brag-ging that murders in New Orleans have
gone way down since Katrina.

Yeah, big deal. Now, five months later, our population is
still less than one-third of the pre-storm number. Fewer folks to kill
and fewer ill-wishers to kill them. But while the crime rate has
dropped here, it has hurtled upward in Houston and Baton Rouge where so
many of our lowlifes landed.

With most of the drug dealers and gangsters still out of town,
the usual shootings and stabbings over turf have given way to more
sensible killings done by respectable people. I learned about one of
those while waiting in line at a FEMA facility.

I chose the one in the Jewish Community Center on St. Charles
Avenue because I could park nearby for free, and gathered documents
proving my ownership of a once-great car, now a flooded-out derelict
rusting in the driveway.

The door was guarded by a brawny employee of a private
security contractor. I thought him overqualified for a job entailing no
more serious a confrontation than, “Sir, would you please
take that orange juice outside?” and was curious enough to
elicit that he was only deployed here briefly between tours of Iraq.
Well, good for him, I thought. I'd hate for all the muscles and
military comportment to be wasted on the likes of us here.

I was settled in with a flier about sorting
“hurricane-related debris” for pickup when I heard,
“Hey, Margo Fortier!"

It was my Uptown friend, Caroline, waving her reptile purse
from a middle row of chairs. She gave up her place in line to sit with
me in the rear.

"Oh, Margo! I'm so glad you're back!"

That's the common greeting these days. We're all glad anyone
is back, even if we didn't know them before.

"Almost two weeks,” I told her. “Julian is
working at the LaBorde Gallery, cleaning flood-damaged
artwork.—How did you ride out the storm?"

"Our insurance handled the damage, but it was awful for
us.” Caroline fanned herself with a kidskin glove.
“On August twenty-seventh, we saw the report that Katrina was
coming and decided it was a good day to fly up to our summer place in
Charlotte. Then we had to watch all that devastation on the cable
news.” She clasped her hands. “We felt just
terrible.—How about you and Julian?"

"Taillights on I-10, like the rest of the masses. We left the
twenty-eighth with our dog and enough clothes for the three days we
expected to be away."

"That's what everyone thought, three days. So where did you go
when you couldn't return to New Orleans?"

"We had a choice,” I said. “Julian's Cajun
cousin, Verbus, volunteered a camper on his farm in Turkey Creek. The
road was a half-mile away through the cow field and we would always
have to watch where we stepped."

"That doesn't sound very tempting."

"It doesn't. Then my brother Tom offered to put us up in New
York City."

"New York City!” Caroline clapped her hands.
“Yes!"

"...in a two-bedroom apartment he shares with his wife and
teenaged daughters. We would get the couch in the living room."

"Oh.” Her hands dropped.
“Well—how were those cows?"

"They mooed a lot."

She shrugged. “You were safe and dry,
anyway.—Wasn't it terrible about old Angus Crawford?"

"Angus?” I sat up straight. “What happened
to him?"

"The poor soul died in his house on Maya Street, like so many
others."

"But he had a two-story!"

"I know."

"We tried to take him with us."

Julian and I were on our way out early that Sunday morning,
him at the wheel and me beside him with the map. Catherine, our
Catahoula hound, panted over our shoulders. A city bus passed us with a
loudspeaker exhorting residents to climb aboard and be taken to a
shelter at no cost. I didn't see anyone get on.

We stopped for some road food on Maya Street and happened to
pass Angus Crawford's place. The old man himself was in the front yard
picking up his lawn furniture, his thick brush of hair looking whiter
than the Greek Revival house behind him. We knew him from our Civic
Pride meetings as the most vocal of the anti-development faction.

Julian pulled up to the curb and waved.

"Mr. Crawford?! Is your son coming to pick you up?"

"Doug?! That flowerpot?!” The old man screwed up his
face and spat in the grass. “I haven't talked to him in a
year!"

"Never mind him, then.” I leaned out the window.
“Throw a few things in a bag and ride with us!"

Catherine wagged a welcome, happy to have company in the
backseat. I remember that Crawford just frowned and shook his head.

"We're driving north and west,” Julian persisted.
“We'll take you anywhere you want to go: Gonzales? ... Baton
Rouge? ... Alexandria?"

"I'm not going anywhere! I sat out Betsy and Camille right up
there in my living room. I'll do the same for Katrina."

"But this will be three times the size,” I warned.
“The mayor is calling it mandatory."

"No bald-headed mayor is going to make me leave my home!"

Then we watched him stride up his steps, across the porch, and
back inside.

As Julian turned the wheel to head down toward I-10, I looked
out the rear window. “I'm glad the old buzzard isn't coming
along. He's so disagreeable."

"Yes, he could have ruined the disaster for all of us."

"But what if there is a flood, and the
water gets in his house?"

"Then he'll just go upstairs."

We spent the next nine hours in evacuation traffic, being
“counter-flowed” all over creation, and didn't
think about Mr. Crawford again.

Now I turned back to Caroline. “We were hoping the
old man's son, Doug, would drive by and carry him to safety."

"I'm sure he would have, but Doug Crawford was busy in
Lakeview all week.” She fluttered her kidskin glove.
“He and his friend Steve rode around in a flatbed boat,
plucking people off their roofs. You might have seen them on the
national news."

"Maybe we did. We watched the network coverage on a portable
TV in our camper."

"That's the saddest part. By the time he and Steve rode their
boat to his father's house, some National Guards from New Jersey had
already been there. The code was on the door."

"The code?"

"They had spray-painted a ‘1 D’ for
‘One Dead Inside.’ That's how Doug found out about
his father. Isn't that the blackest irony? He had saved a hundred lives
only to lose the one dearest to him."

* * * *

I drove home by way of South Claiborne. Feel like stopping at
one of the dozens of fast-food places that line the avenue for a roast
beef sandwich? Milkshake? Fried chicken? Pizza? Nyah, nyah, you can't
have any of them. All of those franchises are closed and dark along
with the drugstores, service stations, supermarkets ... everything.

You know what I miss most? Miss more than electricity? More
than my microwave? More even than phone service so I wouldn't have to
hike to the Fair Grinds cafe to read my e-mail? Traffic
lights, that's what I miss. Most of them in the city are still down, so
we observe the protocol of a four-way stop. Whoever hits the
intersection first gets to go. But what if it's a tie
to the intersection? What if it isn't clear who was first? What if
someone doesn't want to wait his turn? I could get seriously killed
around here.

I parked my car at the house, between piles of rubble, wrote
out checks to pay some bills, and went walking through
“Debris City” to the one post office that's still
open, built high up near Bayou St. John. Why not wait for the mailman,
you ask? What mailman? I haven't seen one on my
block since August. Have you?

I waved to my neighbor, Thelma, who was still in her robe and
sticking her head out her front door for a breath of fresh air. The
flood didn't cause her any structural damage, but the mold growing in
her house is making her sicker by the day.

I passed the horrendously expensive coffee place where a giant
yellow banner declares “NOW OPEN” in foot-high
letters. If a thirsty believer parks his car and hurries over to grab a
hot morning java, he will see the banner's smaller print with the
address of the company's other franchise way across town that actually is
open. This location is closed, locked, and bare to the walls.

As he fumes and curses, the thwarted customer can read that
the place across town is hiring “barristas.” From
the name, one might surmise a “barrista” to be a
little lawyer, or maybe someone who builds prisons for Chihuahuas. But
it's actually a person who makes a living pouring horrendously
expensive coffee.

Ubiquitous as blue tarps on roofs are the “NOW
HIRING!” signs. With the city's working poor scattered among
forty-two states, there is no unemployment here anymore. Anyone willing
to get up in the morning can have a job.

Most of the eager laborers who have poured into town are
Hispanic, some in the country legally, others not. The change in the
makeup of our population is audible. Streaming from screened doors and
car radios are Mexican harmonies instead of rap rhythms.

I passed piles of debris ten feet high: dented
“white goods” (refrigerators and washing machines,
not sheets and pillowcases), soggy Sheetrock, faded furniture, muddy
children's toys, and felled giant live oaks that would make enough
firewood to power the whole city till summer if only Entergy could burn
it for fuel.

I passed a skeleton propped up in a window holding a crude
cardboard sign: “WAITING FOR FEMA."

I smelled something dead, bigger than a cat, smaller than a
person, and crossed the street.

The supermarkets are boarded up for miles around, but a
mom-and-pop Italian grocery is back in business on a cash-only basis.
They can't process credit cards without a phone.

Walking along Orleans Avenue, I trod on multiple stencils of
an invective directed toward a certain public figure. The public
figure's name has four letters and so did the invective.

I detoured down narrow side streets looking for watermarks.
The one at our house is about the height of the front porch. But this
neighborhood was considerably below sea level and the grainy brown
lines were almost as high as the rafters. I passed blocks of abandoned
houses and stopped at one to decode the graffiti on the door. There was
spray-painted a large X. The space on top had the date,
“9-6.” To the left were the initials or ID number
of the rescuers. “AZ” for the Arizona National
Guard, for example. Or “TX": There's Texas. “NJ":
Yay, New Jersey!

The right space designated “NE” for
“No Entry” or “LE” for
“Limited Entry.” At the six-o'clock position was
the number of people found, living or dead. Usually this number was
zero. The zero always had a slanting line through it so it wouldn't be
mistaken for the letter “O,” as in
“OK,” for the Oklahoma National Guard. Two blocks
over, the messages included “TFW,” for
“Totally Full of Water” and if you don't believe
the words, note that they appear at an elevation of eight or ten feet
and the scribe had to be sitting in a boat at the time.

SPCA volunteers had made the rounds soon after the Guardsmen
and left their own messages: “Two Dogs Under House”
or “One Cat Outside” and “Dog Food
Drop” or “Cat Food Drop.” Someone had
left a pan of dry cat food and fresh water in a clean and sparkling
glass bowl. A thoughtful amenity for a fastidious feline refugee.

I saw a little yellow house spray-painted in red:
“SPCA: Need F/W” (food and water) “2 Pit
Bulls, 1 Baby."

Oh dear! There was a baby in there with
those pit bulls? ("Wah! Wah!") I think they probably meant
“puppy.” A human baby wouldn't live very long in
the custody of a pair of ravenous pits.

We have a strong dog and cat culture in this town. One of the
stirring images of the Katrina coverage was that of a young black man
kneeling on the I-10 overpass, clinging to his dog's neck. He had
probably been up there without food for days but refused all offers to
ride to a shelter. The dog wouldn't have been allowed to go with him.
It was only a mutt of no real value, but the man declared that it had
saved his life and he wouldn't abandon it no matter what. Then the TV
cameraman who was supposed to be neutrally recording the episode did an
unprofessional thing. He took the pooch aboard his news helicopter and
taped the reunion in Baton Rouge two days later, the man in tears, the
dog wagging and licking.

Multiply this situation by thousands of New Orleanians who
stayed behind in the city, enduring terrible hardship, even dying,
because they wouldn't leave their pets to drown or starve.

I walked three blocks down to see Angus Crawford's house with
its grisly message on the door. The date on top was
“9-5.” The figure at the six-o'clock position was
that chilling “1 D” for “One
Dead.” Looking closer, I was surprised that the waterline was
only halfway up the window frames on the first floor. The old cuss
could have just walked upstairs.

Why didn't he just walk upstairs?

I saw a man-shaped shadow move across a front window and
decided it must be Angus's son, Doug. One of the heroes of the storm.

On reaching the post office, I picked up a
flier—"Get Rid of Mold"—and got into line. While
reading the cleaning formula (one cup of bleach to one gallon of water)
and trying to figure out what an N95 mask was, I eavesdropped on two
postal workers. The letter carrier said he was living in a tent until
the sodden, crumbling Sheetrock in his house could be replaced. The
clerk behind the counter said he was still waiting for his FEMA trailer.

"I was five days on the neutral ground. The water was all
around us."

"You spent five days sleeping in your car on the neutral
ground?"

"I didn't have the luxury of a car."

"What did you sleep in?"

"My clothes. I had two women with me—my wife and our
daughter—so we couldn't go to the Superdome."

No, they couldn't. What happened to some women and girls up
there was much worse than staying outdoors during a category-three
hurricane.

"Then they put us all on different buses,” the man
went on. “My wife and daughter wound up in Houston and
Dallas. I got a cot in a skating rink in Mamou."

Our cow-pasture accommodation was starting to look like the
Paris Ritz.

* * * *

When I got home, I joined Julian in the backyard and helped
him refill the generator with gasoline, my mission being to hold the
funnel. “Good day at the gallery?"

"Not really. It was so cold this morning that I wanted to keep
the windows shut."

"But you're working with strong solvents. Don't the fumes...?"

"Right. I almost fainted on top of this moldy wizard painting."

"Wear your warm sweater and keep the windows open.... I passed
by Angus Crawford's place today."

"I heard about poor old Angus.” Julian emptied one
can and picked up another. “The water filled his house?"

"No, it only flooded the first floor."

"Then why didn't he just walk upstairs?"

"That's what I wondered."

Julian stopped pouring, adjusted the choke, and pulled the
crank to start the noisy roar of our power source.

"He could have slipped on the wet steps and fallen, hit his
head, drowned."

"Could have."

Our generator, from which extension cords snake all throughout
the house, runs the washing machine but not the dryer, so Julian had to
string a clothesline across our back porch.

Living a lot more like my grandmother than I ever wanted to, I
carried our wet laundry outside and started pinning it up. At least I
had those new-fangled clothespins with the wire hinges.

We're slogging through the usual rainy New Orleans January and
I have to take clothes down and hang them back up several times to get
enough cumulative sunlight to dry them. Pinning up our towels, I sang,
“No phone, no lights ... not a single luxury..."

The Gilligan's Island theme refers to
“Robinson Caruso.” Of course
“Caruso” was a tenor. The stranded guy was
“Crusoe,” but the song required a three-syllable
name. Also, the sitcom was about a bunch of ignoramuses who never heard
an opera or read Defoe.

Except maybe for “the professor,” who was
brilliant and handsome. If I had been “Ginger” or
“Mary Ann,” I would have set up hut-keeping with
the professor. I wonder why they never thought of it.

Julian opened the door behind me. “Let's pay a
condolence call on Doug Crawford."

* * * *

Young Doug Crawford and his friend Steve Marks were both
wearing nothing but jeans and bronzer. They looked like an ad for a
“Meet Friends” phone line.

"Margo and Julian!” They swung the door open wide.
“We're so glad you're back."

"We're glad you're back, too."

"I can't say we ever left, really.” Steve stepped
around one of the dozen scented candles illuminating the living room.
“Our apartment in Lakeview was totaled, so we slept at the
deputy station for a month. Then, when the water receded, we moved
here. Upstairs, of course."

"The first floor must have been ruined,” I said.
“But I see you're bringing it back."

"Yes, ma'am,” Doug agreed. “We tore out
the old Sheetrock the first week and put up new the second."

"We're going to enclose the back porch and make it into a
sunroom.” Steve waved. “The whirlpool tub will be
right over there."

"That old kitchen table will be gone, gone, gone, replaced by
an island, with stainless-steel sinks. And our copper-pot collection
will hang up there. You see that?” Doug pointed to three
paint cans on the counter. “My father was about to redo this
kitchen in white. Zinc white! Can you imagine? It's all going to be
‘Prudent Primrose’ now."

Steve picked up a brush and fanned the bristles.
“We'll get ourselves a spread in New Orleans
magazine. Bet on it."

"We were trying to understand your father's terrible
accident,” Julian said. “We asked ourselves, why
didn't he just walk upstairs?"

"Oh, but he did. Let me show you.” Doug pointed to
the staircase and we all followed him up to the second floor.
“Dad must have lived up here by himself for three or four
days. He had a generator out on that balcony off the bedroom. He'd
stocked jugs of gas, bags of freeze-dried food and bottled drinks."

Julian stepped out onto the balcony and leaned over the gas
cans. “Your father's generator is like ours. It wouldn't take
more than eight gallons a day, even running constantly."

Doug and Steve looked at each other. “So?"

"I see three empty twenty-gallon cans. He could not have used
all that gasoline in three or four days."

Doug's Adam's apple moved. “Then the cans couldn't
have been full when he started."

"That would explain it."

Once back on the sidewalk, Julian stepped up to examine the
scrawled writing. He opened our car doors with the remote.

"Margo, the glove compartment. Get the flashlight and my kit
from work."

"Check."

The “kit from work” is just a box with
nothing in it but cotton swabs and a bottle of paint solvent. Julian
opened the solvent, which smelled strong enough to make me dizzy even
out in the fresh air, and addressed himself to the code on the door. I
stepped back to the car as he dipped the swab in and applied it to the
center of the “D” for “Dead.”
He dabbed carefully in a tight circle and in less than a minute, a
black smear emerged from beneath the white.

I held my breath and came in for a close look.

"That was the slanted center line of a zero!"

Julian heaved a sigh and knocked on the door twice, above the
“1 D.” In a few seconds, we heard running
footsteps. Doug pulled open the door, then saw Julian's smear and
gasped. Steve appeared behind his shoulder and went pale.

"We can reconstruct the events here.” Julian capped
his bottle. “The Guardsmen came on September fifth, but Angus
wouldn't have let them rescue him in any case. When they rode their
boat down this block, calling for survivors to carry to safety, he
would have turned off his generator, hidden upstairs, and kept mum. The
Guardsmen would mark the house empty and move on."

Doug nodded slowly, as if in a trance.

"Your father was still alive when you got here a few days
later. You killed him and left him in the water. Who would notice one
more drowning victim during the greatest natural disaster in the
country's history?"

Steve opened his mouth, then closed it as Julian continued.

"Crawford already had some white paint in the kitchen. You
used some of it to paint over the line in the zero, which you turned
into a ‘D,’ and wrote the number one beside it."

"That was taking some chance, doing it out in the
open,” I put in.

"The neighborhood was still troubled. The lights were all out
and there was no one around to see them but maybe a cat."

"It was me!" Steve stepped out on the
porch. "I did it."

"Oh, shut up!"

"No, Dougie. I want to tell the truth.” He beckoned
us back into the vestibule and lowered his voice. “Please try
to understand. We had been thirty hours without sleep, living on coffee
and donuts, pulling people off their roofs and carrying them to dry
land. I wanted to sack out, but Dougie just had to steer the boat over
this way and make sure his father was all right.
‘Why?’ I asked him. ‘Your old man doesn't
care if you live or die.’”

"I thought he would be proud of me. Everyone else told us we
were heroes.” Doug rubbed his eyes. “We saw the
code on the door, the zero meaning no one was inside. But I knew Dad
was just hiding. He wouldn't leave. So I used my old key to get in and
he heard us and came down the stairs. I was so glad to see he was all
right. I ran to him but..."

"He just started blasting at Doug.” Steve made two
fists. “Got red in the face like a monster. Kept cursing and
screaming how he was ashamed of his miserable excuse for a son. And
poor Dougie was..."

"Yeah, I was breaking down,” Doug admitted weakly.
“I was so exhausted, I could hardly stand up, and then I
expected him to welcome me with open arms, but with all that..."

"Hollering filthy names at him, how he was praying to God that
Dougie had drowned."

"I had always told myself that my father really loved me no
matter what. But now I knew..."

"I had the heavy police-issue flashlight we were using to
search the houses,” Steve interrupted. “I just hit
that vicious old man on the head with it, only to shut him up
so he would stop hurting Dougie! That's all I wanted to do, shut him
up. But he fell like a stone."

"Dead before he hit the water,” Doug said.
“Whiting out the code on the door was my idea. I used Dad's
paint to cover the zero, then sprayed on the ‘1 D'."

Then he began to cry. “I loved my father. Why did he
hate me so much? What's so terrible about me?"

His friend held him in a protective hug. Julian gave me the
raised-eyebrows sign and we left them to assail their demons.

Getting back into the car, I asked, “Where are we
headed now?"

"I could use a good night's sleep."

"Me too."

Copyright © 2006 Tony Fennelly





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