Nude in Red

by O'Neil De Noux

  Later – on their way to Mystery Street, with SA Biondolillo and Ocheski following in a gray Ford, Beau comments to LaStanza it’s nice to have a friend whose the ASAC.

  Juanita says, “Grillades are a nice touch.”

  “That and he likes watching my wife get naked in the Jacuzzi after supper.”

  Juanita makes a strange noise that sounds like ‘Huh?’.

  LaStanza adds, “Lizette’s turned flashing into high art.” He taps the back of Beau’s headrest. “She’s been training Jessie since she was eighteen.”

  • Maurepas Street 3:45 p.m.

  “Actually, we have SUVs coming to move her,” says SA Biondolillo. Three of them sit around the small dining room table in the same apartment they had Consuela sequestered. Maria Mirescu, alias Donna Marie, alias Marie Smith, looks from the agent back to Beau. She’s in a sea-foam green jumpsuit, front unbuttoned to show her cleavage.

  “You’re going to have to go with them,” he tells Maria.

  “And this only talking to Inspector Beau isn’t going to cut it.” Biondolillo puts her glasses back on, glances over at her partner sitting on the sofa across the wide room that serves as a dining room and living room. Juanita sits on the other end of the sofa.

  Ocheski is taking notes. He’s about thirty, Biondolillo looks a few years younger but she’s the senior partner, much like Jodie Kintyre and Beau when he first came to Homicide. Pretty, with dark brown eyes, she has a sexy mouth with sculptured lips.

  “As I said when we first started talking. This is an FBI case now. We will take you to a government installation where you will be safe. Other agents will continue your debriefing in a quiet environment while SA Ocheski and I build the case here against the men we’ve just discussed.”

  Maria’s eyes searches Beau’s eyes as the agent rises, says it’s time to pack up. She steps away, calls someone on her radio.

  “I am afraid,” Maria tells Beau.

  He tries a smile. “The FBI will protect you. Better than we can. And when this is all over, when you’ve testified in court, they will give you a new name, a new place to live, a new life.” He stands and stretches and Maria comes around the table, Juanita watching carefully as she and Ocheski stand up.

  Beau takes Maria’s hands before she can get any closer. Holds them in front of him. She press her chest against the back of his hands.

  Oh, Lord.

  “Will I see you again?”

  Juanita moves behind Maria, mouths the words, ‘Oh, brother’.

  “I’ll see you in court. Probably before.”

  Tears well in Maria’s eyes. “You save me.”

  “It’s time for you to save yourself. Tell the FBI everything you know.”

  “Maria,” Biondolillo calls from the bedroom door. “Come along. I’m not your maid. You need to pack your things.”

  Ocheski steps up to Beau and Juanita as Maria heads for the bedroom and tells them, “We have agents at her old apartment now, packing up everything. We’ll help her with her bank accounts.” He heads for the bedroom.

  Juanita waits for Beau to look at her, bats her eyes and whispers, “Oh, please. Protect me while I puff out my breasts at you.”

  “She wasn’t puffing out her breasts.”

  “Yes, she was.”

  “She was just rubbing her nipples against the back of my hands.”

  “Ass-hole.”

  Beau calls ASAC Esposito on his cell phone.

  “It’s working out all right?” Esposito asks.

  “I know this is a big Rico case and all that but we still have two murders on our hands here. Anything y’all find out about the murders I want to know or I’ll fuck up everything.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I know it was a Romanian. Not sure which one, maybe more than one, but I won’t let go of this until I find who murdered Judy and Angelina. I’ll do was NOPD does best. We’re sluggers, not boxers. We get into the clutches and mix it up close. Capish?”

  “Give SA Biondolillo a little time. She’s Sicilian too and one of our best.”

  When they get off the phone, Juanita asks Beau. “What government installation?”

  “Military base. That’s where the put witnesses until they go to court. Big cases, they keep the witnesses at Fort Knox. Pretty good security there.”

  Tuesday

  • Saint Charles Avenue, 7:45 p.m.

  They settle on Jessie’s green sofa. She’s in a loose pink T-shirt, jeans, barefoot. He’s wearing a white dress shirt and black tactical pants, black Sketchers. His gun, holster, cuff-case, belt are on a small table in the foyer. She points the remote at the TV, flips through channels, trying to find something to watch.

  Beau likes this house. The room aren’t too big. It’s cozy.

  Jessie asks, “Have you ever seen Lizette’s BLUE NUDE?”

  “No.”

  She mentioned it earlier.

  “The oil painting by Janvier Cortez, the last one before he died. He was about a hundred. Friend of Picasso and Dali. Painted it right here on Royal Street. A nude portrait of Lizette.”

  That’s right.

  Beau points to the TV when something black and white comes on the screen and she stops on a scene where two gunmen go up some stairs. Burt Lancaster is inside a room, lying on his bed. The men break in and shoot him to death.

  “The Killers,” Jessie says. “Based on a Hemingway story.”

  “Really?”

  “I love movies about femme fatales. Have you seen this one?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Wait’ll you see Ava Gardner in that black dress.”

  Beau waits until there’s a lull in the action on screen. “Why’d you ask me about that blue painting?”

  “I just got mine today. It upstairs. In red.”

  He looks into those green eyes. “What was that?”

  “Cortez’s grandson painted a nude of me.”

  He waits for more. The movie moves to a nightclub scene.

  “He’s eighteen. Very talented. International sensation, apparently. His grandfather did Lizette in blue. The grandson painted me in red. I finished posing for it just before I met you. It’s up in my bedroom. Torso portrait. No face.”

  “He left out the best part.”

  She leans to the side, pulls her legs across his lap. “You think my face is my best feature?”

  “Everything about you is – but you know you’re stone-fuckin-gorgeous.”

  Ava Gardner is onscreen now in a long, slim, sleeveless black dress, her black hair hanging in long waves, that incredible face, lips in black gloss.

  “Actually. Jesus,” he says, “she’s much prettier.”

  Jessie lifts a leg and drops it on his lap.

  Beau goes, “Umpff.” Smiles at her.

  Jessie says, “Nobody can compete with her. Kate Beckinsale came close in that Leonardo DiCaprio movie, but not close enough.”

  Beau’s thinks about what she’d said as they watch the movie. He was warned she was a handful but Beau knows this, knew from the moment he spotted her crossing Magazine but there was no way he could resist her. Posing nude? Didn’t she flash him and his buddy that first day? This is the kind of woman who draws eyes, the kind every man desires. She is his dream of what a New Orleans beauty is supposed to be. What’s most surprising about Jessie Bella Carini is the lovelight in her eyes when she looks at him. They don’t have to say it, say anything. It’s right there and damn, it’s so fuckin’ good.

  The rest of the movie goes by in a blur. All Beau can think of is Jessie posing naked for an eighteen year old artist, an oil painting in red. What else had LaStanza said? Something about Lizette turning flashing into a high art and training Jessie since she was eighteen. What else did LaStanza say today? ‘You have no idea how much trouble you’re in’.

  Beau smiles at himself. Hell, he’s been in and out of trouble all his life.

  “What’s the smile for?”

  “Let’s go upstai
rs and look at that painting.”

  It’s on the wall on the far side of Jessie’s queen size bed, a recessed light illuminating the life-size oil painting. Jessie’s body from her neck almost to her knees, long hair draping her shoulder, falling down her back and around those luscious breasts to her naked hip. The entire painting is shades of red, even the background – scarlet and crimson, pink bending into maroon.

  “It’s titled NUDE IN RED. I wanted it in oil because my body won’t look like this forever.” Jessie pulls her T-shirt over her head, shakes out that long hair, breasts rising, nipples already pointing.

  “You get turned on posing naked?”

  “The artist liked what he was looking at. Not as much as his assistant, who let me into the studio and brought tea. Looked at me like he wanted to screw me right there. He only has one eye, eye-patch and dark skin makes him look like a pirate. Older man.”

  She climbs out of her jeans as Beau starts to undress. They watch each other and move to stand close, Jessie’s nipples brushing his chest now.

  “There’s a little boy in me who keeps asking if this is all a dream?”

  She moves her face up and kisses his lips softly, pressing herself against him now, feeling his dick rising against her.

  “This feel like a dream?”

  Making love starts softly, gently, caressing and touching and kissing and feeling the heartbeat rising until the lust takes over and she pulls him atop her and before long he’s bulling her and she’s gasping and crying and clawing at his back as she bulls him back until they fall away and lie on their backs next to one another, trying to catch their breaths.

  His gaze moves to the painting and sees it moving now, the colors crawling and he closes his eyes to see her standing in a studio and a boy and a man looking at her naked body. He would like to see her standing naked for what, an hour? Two hours? He chuckles.

  “What’s so funny.”

  He shakes his head. She could never stand naked two hours in front of Beau without him touching her. He closes his eyes. Maybe take a nap.

  “When you shoot people, does that little boy in you ever think that’s a dream? Indians and cavalry?” She draws a fingernail lightly over his sweaty chest. “You’re both, aren’t you? Sioux and man in blue.”

  “My great internal conflict.”

  “Really.”

  “No.” Beau smiles. “Cajuns and Sioux are so different, there is no conflict. I’m just lucky my papa’s light-heart doesn’t come out when I’m hunting men. I manage to laugh enough when it counts so the warrior in me knows when to lay dormant. He comes forward when I need him.”

  “Tell me a Sioux story.”

  “My memories of the reservation are visits. Snapshots.”

  He keeps his eyes closed and she closes hers and feels drowsiness now.

  His voice comes softly almost distant –

  Three Sioux warriors came upon a party of Crows near a river on Sioux land. The crow men had killed a bull buffalo. That’s what drew the Sioux, a small herd stampeding away from the river. There were five Crow warriors with black feathers in their long hair. Across the river there was a larger band of Crows on their land. The river separated Crow land from Sioux.

  The Sioux wore white feathers and raised their battle lances. One of the Sioux had a Winchester and he took careful aim at the Crow warriors who saw the rifle and bolted for their horses. They were too far away for the Sioux warrior to waste a bullet, so he raised his rifle and let out a war cry, “Hiya! Hiyaaa!

  The Crow warriors raced across the narrow river, leaving three women behind and the dead buffalo of course. The Sioux rode down to the river to watch the Crow warriors racing to their band to gather more warriors. The ponies the Crow women rode had scattered.

  The Sioux and Shoshone are the prettiest of the plains tribes. Crow women are mostly squat and ugly to look upon. The Crow warriors knew the Sioux do not make war on women and would not molest the women, would not steal them either because they were too ugly.

  Yet one of the Crow women was young, not fully grown was only part Crow. She was part Shoshone and part Shoshone and very pretty. She stood with the other women, obsidian knives in hands bloodied from carving the buffalo. Two of the Sioux alighted from their horses and began to slice away the finest cuts of buffalo meat to take with them, while the third Sioux warrior examined the women, especially the pretty one. He was the only one of the three warriors without a wife.

  “I will take you with me,” the warrior told the maiden.

  The other women cringed but she did not.

  “I will not make you a slave. I will make you my wife and we will bring strong warriors into the world and beautiful maidens, like yourself.”

  “You think I am beautiful?”

  “Why do you mock me when we both know you are a fair maiden?”

  “I do not mock you, warrior. I want you to know I am not without fault. My name is She Talk because as a child I talked ceaselessly. That is why I have no warrior back in camp.”

  The two other Sioux warriors gathered around to warn the warrior who desired She Talk that she indeed possessed a trait no man wanted.

  “She will question you.”

  “She will distract your mind with words, as the white women do to their men.”

  “It will weaken you.”

  The warrior who desired She Talk was called Quiet Fox because his mother wanted him to grow as wily as a fox and his father had trouble sleeping because the infant made so much noise at night and calling the child quiet would quiet him down, which it did as Quiet Fox lived up to his name. He was a wily hunter and skillful warrior and said little.

  “I will take you She Talk and you may talk as much as you wish.”

  A shy smile crossed She Talk’s pretty face and she reached up and Quiet Fox pulled her up on his horse and the three Sioux departed before a Crow war party could assemble to drive them away.

  At the Sioux camp, men, women and children came to share the buffalo meat and look at She Talk. The men agreed she was a beautiful maiden but as she spoke, they also agreed she would not make a good wife and turned away from her. The women shunned her because she was part Crow. This brought a smile to Quiet Fox for he had indeed found a good wife, a woman to warm his bed and keep his mind sharp –

  Jessie waits for more, nudges him.

  Yes. She Talk, who did not bathe with the women for they disliked her. She bathed alone and every evening she could be seen atop the low bluff above the creek where the women bathed and the golden sun would caress her lovely body with orange and red light. She became known as The Nude in Red and many famous painters came from Europe to paint her –

  Jessie pokes him in the side. “How much of that did you just make up?”

  “Every word.”

  Jessie starts to giggle. “A Sioux story with a Cajun ending. I think I could be the one in trouble here.”

  Wednesday

  • Police Headquarters, 9:49 a.m.

  Mark Land steps into the office, says, “Your manikin killer got life.”

  “Figures,” Beau says.

  “You should have shot the bastard,” Juanita says.

  No kidding.

  Mark shrugs, leaves. Juanita waits for Beau to look up from the report he’s reading, FBI report on the history of La Cosa Nostra. He knew the first Mafia family was here in New Orleans, back in the 1890s, preying on Italians occupying the old French Quarter and how the first New Orleans Superintendent of Police David Hennessey was murdered by Mafiosi. How the mob’s web of criminal families spread across the country was intriguing.

  “So what do we do now?” Juanita asks.

  “We still don’t know who killed Judy. Until we do, we work the case. Unless we can get someone to talk, we have to rely on the fingerprints from her room.” Beau pulls a sheet out of his briefcase. “I asked the ASAC for names of suspected Bucuresti. Ashton’s contacting his Minnesota counterparts for names to compare to the DeSaix prints. Apparently most of t
he prints are partials so they need a name to get a hit.”

  Juanita turns to her computer. “I wonder if there’s anything online about the Bucuresti.”

  “History stuff.”

  She plays with her computer while Beau goes back to reading. A half hour later, he asks, without looking up, “You going out this Saturday with your banker?”

  “Yes, big brother.”

  “You’ll let me know how it goes?”

  “Yes, big brother.”

  They go back to reading until Juanita says, “That’s your message tone.”

  “Huh?” Yeah, his cell’s going off. He pulls it from the small pocket on his left pants leg, sees there’s a text from Jessie that reads – ‘I took a good picture of it for you. Wallpaper it.’ There’s an attachment. He taps it and her NUDE IN RED pops up.

  He types, ‘Thanks, Babe.’ Manages to reply without a problem.

  “You wanna see an oil paining of Jessie called NUDE IN RED? She’s nude but it’s sort of impressionist. Very cool.”

  Juanita sighs, reaches her hand over and he has to get up to hand the phone to her.

  “Very nice.” She hands it back. “Who painted it?”

  “Some eighteen year old grandson of a famous painter.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Good question.”

  Before he can slip the phone back into his pocket there’s another message from Jessie.

  “What’s a selfie?” He looks at the phone again, realizes there’s another attachment.

  “Tap the attachment,” Juanita says.

  “Whoa.” It’s a picture of naked Jessie standing in front of a full-length mirror with her cell phone in hand. Full frontal nude.

  “Selfie,” Juanita says, “self portrait.”

  He smiles at Juanita who holds up a hand, says, “No. I don’t want to see that one.”

  Thursday

  • North Carrollton Avenue, 10:22 p.m.

  Detective Sergeant Jodie Kintyre brushes strands of blond hair from her face as her former partner, John Raven Beau steps up with his new partner. Jodie’s writing notes on a pad. They’re on the banquette just down from the front doors of Merendino’s Restaurant where three uniformed cops stand. Between the cops and Jodie lie two bodies in a large pool of blood. The picture window of the restaurant is shot up and only ‘…endino’s’ remains of the name painted on the glass.