“Her people. Not our people?”
Beau chuckles, tries to keep this light. “I’m a half-breed. I don’t fit in either world.”
• New Orleans Marina, 11:20 p.m.
Stella stares at Jessie for two seconds, realizes Jessie’s coming in with Beau and scampers behind the sofa.
“She’s beautiful.”
“Don’t look her in the eye right away. If you do she’ll take it as a challenge.”
Jessie moves to the dining table, puts her purse on it as Beau adjusts the AC. She looks around, sees the steep stairs to the loft, the bathroom downstairs just beyond the kitchen area. It’s one big room downstairs.
She turns those pale green eyes to him, running the fingers of both hands through her long hair, smiles warms and says, “This is cute. Is this your bachelor pad? Where you bring girls to seduce so they don’t know where you live?”
“I live here.”
She starts laughing now, moves up, puts her hands on his chest. “You are so sexy-cute. Just like a high-school boy.”
“Whaddya mean by that?”
“This is like a clubhouse.” She goes up on her toes and he meets her lips with his. She pulls back. “A cozy.” Kisses him again. “Club.” Another kiss. “House.” She takes his hand and brings him to the sofa. “Let’s play house.”
She sits Beau down, sits next to him, twists around to gently fall back across his lap, face to face now and the kissing starts. Lips only at first, softly caressing, charging both bodies until the tongues meet and the breathing grows deeper and the kissing continues. Beau’s left hand touches her knee and moves up her thigh, pulling her dress up, brushing over the top of her stocking to her panties then pulling out from under the dress to caress her breast. Then the other breast, felling her nipples through the dress and bra.
Jessie pulls away, eyes batting at him as she reaches up and drops the dress off her shoulders and he sees her sheer, lacy France bra, caresses her breasts. He moves his fingers behind to unsnap the bra, drop it on the floor. The bra moves along the floor, accelerating and he realizes he’s dropped it on Stella. The cat runs out from under the bra, stops and looks back as Beau kisses Jessie’s breasts. They are bigger than he thought with small nipples and pale pink areolas and she gasps as he suckles each, his hand reaching down to fondle her ass. He peeks. Her panties match her bra.
He has her naked quickly, except for her stockings and she works to get him out of his clothes as his hands roam across her body and he kisses her breasts, her belly, then back up to her mouth until she’s managed to get his pants and jockeys down. She grabs his cock and his hand moves between her legs. She looks into his eyes, gnawing her bottom lip as she jerks his dick and his fingers rub through her bush to her pussy lips and slowly, softly slip into her.
“Condom,” she gasps.
“In the loft.”
She shakes her head. “My purse.”
He looks around and Stella is sitting in the middle of the room watching him. He yanks off his shoes, pants, jockeys, socks and goes for the purse. Jessie is on her back, knees open, breasts heaving and looking at him. He works the condom on, which isn’t easy even with it being a lubricated rubber. He moves between her open knees and kisses her right thigh then her left, licking and kissing all the way up to her pussy. He kisses around it, licking her bush. She has a bush, thankfully, soft, silky, sexy, sweet pubic hair. His tongue finds her clit and it’s on. She bucks and he works his wide tongue into her, slipping a finger in to help and Jessie gasps, begins to squeal and he keeps it up.
She groans, bucks harder and he keeps going, his finger all the way in, his tongue still working and she wraps her legs around his head and squeezes and he keeps going. Her legs fall away and open even wider and he keeps going.
“Oh, God. Oh, God. God!”
Jessie feels it rising, rising and rising until it engulfs her and she climaxes and bounces and it’s a big one. She milks it, pulling at the pleasure, then pulls his head up and him as well, reaches down to guide his cock into her and it’s a thick one – thankfully. And it fills her as he works it in and she shudders with the pleasure. She curls her back and lifts him as he starts working that dick inside her.
Beau takes long strokes fucking this gorgeous woman, pushing his body off her so he can look down at hers as he pumps her. He pulls his cock almost out and slides it all the way in and she cries out. He does it again a little faster and again faster until he’s jamming her, slapping against her.
“Oh, fuck me! Yes. Yes. Fuck me! Work that cock in me.”
He looks at her face and her eyes are open and her face dark with pleasure and he smiles and she smiles back and they kiss as he fucks her. They have to pull their mouths apart, gasping for air and Beau tries to slow down, to make this last but she’s bouncing under him the muscles in her pussy working his dick until he comes and it’s a gusher.
He goes to the bathroom first, loses the condom comes back and Stella is couched in the center of the room with a sock in her mouth and eye-balling Jessie.
“You wear pink socks?”
Beau looks closer. “No. That’s just what left of my last girlfriend after Stella got a hold of her.”
Jessie gets up, brushes his lips with hers as she heads for the bathroom. Stella bounds over to the sofa when Beau sits and head butts his side and he pets her and she give him a low, “Rowl. Rowl.”
“I know. She’s hot.”
“Rowl. Rowl.”
He rubs Stella’s face and head and keeps petting her until Jessie comes out, walking like a sex-kitten to the steep stairs up to the bedroom loft, goes up slowly, rolling that naked ass. Half way up, she turns, peeks at him through her long hair and says, “You comin’?”
Stella races back to the sock and attacks it as Beau follows the naked ass up to his bed.
“At least it’s queen size,” Jessie says as Beau cranks open the portholes on the three sides of the bedroom. Rain peppers the houseboat and a fine mist floats through the portholes as the AC keeps it cool inside and Beau climbs next to her and kisses her neck.
She grabs his cock that’s already a blue-veiner and strokes it as he caresses her breasts and it’s on again. Jessie rolls him on his back, kisses her way down his stomach and flicks her tongue across the tip of his dick, kisses it, encases it with her mouth and works her mouth until he’s pumping. He pulls her up and hands her the condom he’d pulled out of his nightstand. She dresses his stiff cock, climbs atop, guides it into her and settles on it.
He grips her small waist as Jessie moves up and down his cock. She’s all long hair, brushing his face, all soft lips kissing him, breasts suspended above him as they take a long, hot, bouncing second fuck.
It takes a while to catch their breaths after and Beau gets up to lose the condom.
“Beer or wine?”
“Zinfandel?”
“I have Liebfraumilch and Zeller Schwarze Katz.”
“What’s the second one?” She looks spent, lying spread eagle on her back, hair spread wide across the entire top of the bed, body damp with perspiration, nipples still erect. Damn, she’s hot.
“Black Cat wine. German. Very smooth.”
“I’ll try it.”
He brings her a glass and a bottle of Beck’s Light beer for him. Stick with the Germans.
She sits up, take a sip and nods. “Very smooth.”
They sit on the bed and listen to the rain and Stella jumps up on the dresser to see what they’re up to now, her eyes picking up the moonlight and glimmering at them.
Later, as they lay side by side, sleep gripping Beau’s eyes, Jessie reaches over and strokes his cock asks, “You ready for thirds?”
His cock throbs and comes to life and he says, “I’m Cajun French from the waist down.”
“I thought that tongue was French.”
Sunday
• New Orleans Marina, 2:15 a.m.
Beau wakes to find Stella’s face next to his. She’s lying between him and Jessie.
When she was a kitten, she slept next to his face. Now, in the spring she usually sleeps down on the sofa, in winter at the foot of his bed. She follows him into the bathroom and rubs herself between his ankles as he stands and pees.
He goes down and put a little food in her dish and she eats.
Back up in the loft, Beau stands over Jessie. She’s on her back again, arms by her sides, legs open. His eyes trace their way from her feet up past her bush to her breasts and up to that pretty face. After thirds, she’d gone in to remove her make up and lying with the moon beaming on her face, she looks so lovely. This is one good looking woman. And damn – the sex was cataclysmic.
He climbs in next to her and drifts back to sleep.
Later – long after the sun is up, the shower wakes Beau. He rolls over and sees it’s 11:20 in the morning.
Is that his clothes dryer going?
He sits up and Jessie steps out of the bathroom. She’s runs a towel through her long hair, head tilted to the side.
“Everybody calls you Beau, don’t they?”
“Yeah.” His parents called him Johnny but he’s never told anyone that.
She shakes our her long hair. “You’re John to me, Darling. I hope you have a hair dryer.”
“It’s on the top left drawer above the sink. You drying something downstairs?”
“I washed my clothes.” She came over and kissed him. “I was about to check out your fridge.”
“I got a better idea.”
Her legs still look great, even without the thigh-high stockings.
“Come here,” he says.
She moves over and he takes the brush from her land, sits back on the bed and has her sit with her back to him and so he can brush out her long hair in soft, smooth strokes. He sees in the dresser mirror her eyes are closed and there’s a hint of a smile on those lips. He kisses her shoulder and keeps brushing her hair until she says she’ll just let it air-dry now. He kisses her shoulder again.
“Damn, you are gorgeous.”
“You’re not so bad yourself. But I need a little make-up before we go eat.”
Jessie feels like a little Chinese so he takes her to How Toy Restaurant on Lake Avenue in Metairie, orders the best egg rolls in the city, along with roast pork strips, egg foo young, Peking duck, lemon chicken, pork fried rice.
“I’m hungry,” she says, “but not this hungry.”
“Left overs.” He narrows that right eye at her. “Hoping you might wanna stay for supper.”
She puts an elbow up on the table, cups her chin in her hand and smiles, “I was hoping you’d ask.”
It’s about half-way through the meal that Beau realizes Jessie’s stopped eating and staring at him.
“What?”
Her eyes are soft, almost glistening. She takes in a deep breath, smiles and says, “I think I might get into real trouble with you John Raven Beau.”
“Your cousin warned me about you.”
“What? I’m a heartbreaker?”
“A maneater.”
She laughs, brushes her hair aside in a soft, sexy move and hits him with that dazzling smile and he knows he’s already in trouble with this one.
Monday
• Police Headquarters, 9:23 a.m.
Det. Tim Rothman steps into their office, announces he’s just come from an autopsy of a working girl found murdered last night.
“What?”
“I don’t think it’s connected to your case.” Rothman nods at Juanita as she moves from a filing cabinet back to her desk. “Nice short dress.”
“It’s a skirt and it’s not too short.”
“I didn’t say it was too short.” Rothman shrugs at Beau. Another old partner from Beau’s days as a patrolman.
“Victim didn’t look like high-priced talent.” Rothman’s frizzy hair is too long, looks almost like a Sixties afro on a lily-white, pale Hebrew whose been toying with emigrating to Israel for years. He wear a dark green suit, or is it brown-green.
Beau pulls out his note pad. “Where?”
“Dumped body on Soraparu Street. White girl in a red disco dress, nothing under it.”
“Disco dress?”
“Straight from 1977.”
“Garroted?”
“Stabbed thirty-two times.” Rothman waves his hand in front of his chest, “All in the chestal area.”
Beau laughs and so does Rothman.
Juanita looks from one to the other.
“How is Chestal doing these days?” Beau says.
“Third District. Just staying low.”
Juanita leans back in her chair, opens her arms to Beau with a look of – What the hell.
Beau leans back in his chair, says, “This is how nicknames come about. Howie Jones went through the academy with us. We had a lesson where they gave us photos of dipshits and we had to write a description. They projected the pictures on the wall and we each read our descriptions. One of the dipshits had multiple tattoos. Howie described the man pretty well, the tats on the man’s arms and face. When he started in on the torso, well, Howie went to New Orleans public schools and tried to dress up the script, instead of just saying ‘on the chest’ he said ‘on the chestal area’. Everyone laughed so hard the academy director came to see what the fuck was going on and Howie became Chestal.
Juanita narrows her eyes, then smiles. “New Orleans public schools? That sounds almost racist.”
“Racist?”
“Howie Jones? Inner city public school? He African-American?”
“Chestal’s whiter than our pale Jewish warrior here.”
“How do you know your victim was a hooker?” Juanita says.
“Three arrests for prostitution. She was forty-seven but they were hard years. Just thought I’d let you know another working girl was murdered.” Rothman walks out and Juanita wonders aloud that every knows they’re working on the DeSaix murder.
“It’s not a secret. Why we’re working on it is.”
“I looked up the Department of the Interior on the net,” Juanita says as they settle back to their second cups of coffee and re-reading of the statements from the DeSaix. “Didn’t know it was responsible for the tribal nations, besides all the national parks.
“Your mother lives on the Pine Ridge Reservation, doesn’t she?”
Beau looks up with a weary look. “We don’t talk about the Res.”
She can’t tell if he’s serious with that expressionless look.
“Especially to white folk.”
“I’m Latino.”
“Especially the Spanish. The English could be brutal, the Americans had their share of massacres but nothing compares to the Conquistadores.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“Hell, no. We just don’t talk about the Res.”
After a minute, Beau adds, “After lunch we’re heading for the Sixth District. Melpomene Street.” He looks up again. “Got a whore to catch before she goes to work.”
Monday
• Melpomene Street, 1:36 a.m.
Cherry’s skin is as dark as black satin, her large brown eyes peering at them through the closed screen door as Beau and Juanita stand on the small front porch of the double shotgun house a half block from Coliseum Square. She wears a pale pink bra and a white half slip, puts a fist on her hip and cocks her head, tells Beau, “Gotta be bad news.”
“I’m always bad news.”
“Who’s your little friend?”
“Inspector Juanita Cruz. Can we come in?”
“I ain’t decent.”
“We can wait ‘til you’re decent.”
“Ziff that’ll ever happen.” Cherry unlatches the screen door. They follow her and she tells them to close the door, save the air conditioning. It’s almost cold inside and the living room is clean as a new hotel room, looks that way with Motel 6 furniture. Cherry steps into the kitchen. Whatever air freshener she uses is vanilla scented.
“Y’all want something cold?”
“No thanks.” Typical co
ppers, Juanita remains near the door but not in front of it, her back to a corner while Beau moves to the center of the room. Juanita’s got his back. Cherry comes out with a glass.
“Ice coffee,” she says. “Get it at Walmart in a milk carton. All mixed with milk and equal.” She takes a sip. “Low calorie and fulla caffeine.” Cherry moves to a beige sofa, sits, crosses her long legs. “So what you need, Detective Raven Beau?”
“He’s Chief Inspector Beau now,” Juanita says.
“Such a cute Hispanic accent.” Cherry raises her glass to Juanita. “Pretty face too. Ever wanna start selling that pussy, I can make you enough to clear this town in two years. Go back to Mexico and live like a queen.”
Beau cringes.
“I’m not Mexican.”
“Neither am I but I’m headed to Baja California. Eventually.”
Cherry focuses on Beau now and he moves to sit next to her, opens his portfolio and shows her the copies of the pictures they’d picked up from the police photo lab before coming over. He shows her the face of Judy Allure taken at her last visit home. Then he shows her the best still of Donna Marie from the surveillance camera behind the desk of the DeSaix.
“High priced gals.” Cherry says. She takes a long look at both, shakes her head. “Can you leave these with me?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” Cherry takes another hit of coffee and Beau stands.
Cherry catches Juanita’s eye. “I’d offer him a blow job. I sure owe him enough but he won’t go for it.”
“Thanks for the help, Cherry.”
“Hey.”
When Beau looks back, Cherry pushes the straps off her shoulders to show her D-cup boobs. Amazing what a good saline job can do. They are gravity defying.
“My newest set,” Cherry says. “Pretty hot, huh?”
He agrees, hands her one of his detective business cards.
“That’s my cell number on back. Call me.”
“You know I will, Baby.”
Beau and Juanita step back into bright sunlight, step off the porch to move down to Coliseum Square where the SUV is parked. Three little boys, with a little girl, sitting on a front stoop, watch them. So do several men along the street.
Nude in Red Page 6
