Good Junk

by Ed Kovacs

  “Here ’tis.”

  Jimmy reached into a heap of flat items and hefted up a bronze plaque, a cornerstone marker that The Times-Picayune reported had been stolen from the exterior of a historic building in the CBD, Central Business District.

  “Your boy Decon brought this in. Maybe two, three day ago.”

  “He used to work for us, for a little minute. Before Herbert,” said Leroy. “Brings small crap in from time to time.”

  “What’s his last name?”

  “Hell, we don’t know. Ask him when you find him.”

  “C’mon, you must know. You gave him a payroll check.”

  “We look like we issue payroll checks?”

  They had me there. “Describe him.”

  “Skinny-assed white boy with blue eyes and long black hair. Short beard. ’Bout tall as you. Lot of tattoos. And an egghead, too. He know some shit.”

  “Where can I find him?”

  “He crazy. Always be hangin’ out in cemeteries.”

  I gave each of them an impatient, skeptical look.

  “Don’t know where he live, but know where he drink at night,” said Jimmy. “You know dat mini-mall off Clearview on the river side a’ I-Ten? Out in Metairie?”

  “I’ll find it.”

  “He drink in them bars there. Always has.”

  “You takin’ it or no?” asked Jimmy, still holding the bronze plaque.

  “Somebody else will come by for it.”

  Leroy’s eyes narrowed to venomous slits. “Let’s see your badge.”

  “Never said I had a badge.”

  I turned away and they followed me out of the stall past the Doberman and the two locked cargo containers.

  “What’s in the containers?” I asked.

  “Ain’t none a your bid’ness if you ain’t police,” barked Jimmy.

  “You trespassin’!”

  I turned to see Leroy with a revolver pointed at my chest, a little Smith & Wesson .38 snubby. But they can make big holes. I’d gotten a bit too lackadaisical with the Jefferson brothers. Leroy had the piece in his pants pocket all along. Over Leroy’s shoulder I saw Herbert tossing the shiny aluminum wheels onto the conveyor belt for the ride into the shredder. And with them went my leverage.

  “Go ahead and make your call. Them rims be gone in a few minutes,” said Jimmy, regaining his piss and vinegar now that his brother had the drop on me. “Now git!”

  The fact that I had the evidence of Kirby Ladue’s stolen rims all recorded on my hidden video cam was moot. I’d gotten a nice boost toward tracking down a guy that the local FBI office had been unable to locate, a guy Agent Harding suspected might be involved in the deaths of Breaux and Parks. But as I left, I felt most curious why the Jeffersons had a Doberman guarding a green and a silver cargo container—and why Leroy had only drawn his pistol when I asked to see what was inside them.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The address DMV and Bell South had on Peter Danforth was a Creole cottage in Mid-City that must have been nice before the Storm, but now it looked like an eyesore that needed to be bulldozed. Looters had stripped away the wrought-iron fence and all the architectural detail. Part of the roof was gone, a wall seemed to be in a super-slow-motion collapse, and most of the windows were broken out. I called Honey with an update from what used to be Danforth’s front yard.

  “I found Danforth’s house, but it’s vacant. Nobody’s here but the rats.”

  “So keep looking.”

  “Does that mean we’re still on the case?” I asked, practically holding my breath.

  “Yeah. I have to report daily to the FBI CI-3 jerks. They get possession of all evidence we turn up.”

  I exhaled with relief. “So we do the heavy-lifting, but they suck up all the hard proof.”

  “They want the two point five million, too.”

  “Oh?”

  “And the chief ain’t giving it to them. They didn’t like it that I had checked those sequential serial numbers. The money came from the Bank of China in Beijing.”

  “Really?”

  “But when you called me earlier? You said Harding didn’t think Breaux was selling secrets,” stated Honey.

  “I didn’t tell her about the money,” I said.

  “She’s FBI. She must know we recovered the cash.”

  “I don’t think the local office is dialed into this, Honey.”

  “The FBI boys I met looked stressed. Like they got a lot on their plate.”

  “I’m beginning to think Breaux and Parks were merely appetizers at an all-you-can-eat buffet.”

  Honey and I made plans to meet up later tonight and try to track down the homeless guy named Decon. Meanwhile, we followed up different leads, meaning I was going to talk to a guy about a chair.

  Jack Dempsey’s Restaurant occupied a remodeled double-shotgun house over in the Bywater, across the street from the East Bank element of Naval Support Activity, and just a couple of minutes from Scrap Brothers. Barry Morrison, the antiques dealer acquaintance of mine, had agreed to meet for a very late lunch, or maybe it was early supper, although I hadn’t told him what I wanted to discuss.

  Jack Dempsey’s featured huge portions and waitstaff to match. Barry, a salad kind of guy who had searched the menu for something healthy to eat, settled on a chicken salad which arrived with nine pounds of fried chicken sitting on three leafs of iceberg lettuce and could feed a family of five. He tried not to look aghast. I knew better than to try to order healthy in Dempsey’s. The condiment caddy on the red vinyl tablecloth included both Tabasco and Crystal hot sauce and thirty-two-ounce squeeze bottles of homemade Ranch dressing and tartar sauce, 642 grams of fat per half-teaspoon serving, give or take. Old R&B played on the jukebox, but the main reason I liked the place was that they weren’t chintzy with where they set the thermostat on a searing hot day.

  As much as I hated chit-chat, Barry was the kind of guy you had to schmooze a little. And since he had helped me out once when bad guys were trying to kill me, I indulged his idle gossip, pretending to be interested. It wasn’t until the entrées came that I got down to business.

  “I’m working with NOPD on that double murder case—Del Breaux and Ty Parks.”

  Barry lit up like the Steamboat Natchez on a dinner cruise. “You’re kidding! I couldn’t believe it when I read that in the paper. They were clients of mine!”

  Barry wasn’t the tricky type and hadn’t figured out that I already knew that.

  “How well did you know them?”

  “My partner and I went to a few parties at their house. We weren’t close friends, but Del bought a number of very expensive pieces from me.”

  “How expensive?”

  “A couple of them went for over fifty-thousand dollars.”

  “Pricey. How did he pay?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Check, credit card—?”

  “Cash, now that you mention it. Del always had a fat roll in his wallet. And he didn’t just buy from me. He bought from practically every high-end dealer in town.”

  “He had a company called Breaux Enterprises. What kind of business was that?”

  “He said it was international trading,” said Barry, moving chicken around on his plate in a vain search for something green.

  “Trading of what?”

  “Commodities, I assume. I don’t really know.”

  I hated euphemisms like “commodities.” You could be talking about heroin, whoopee cushions, or barrels of beer.

  “I need a straight answer here. Did Del Breaux do drugs?”

  “Sure. Viagra, Cialis, Levitra—”

  “Got it. What about Ty Parks?”

  “His drug was yoga. They were big drinkers, but I never heard any chatter that they used drugs.”

  “You know if either of them owned a gun?”

  “They were anti-gun. But then, they’ve never been robbed or mugged, like I have.” Barry smiled and patted his attaché case, suggesting he had a firearm concealed inside
. Barry’s anti-gun comment confirmed my suspicion that the Steyr M9 would not be traced to the victims.

  “So how did you meet Breaux and Parks?”

  “Through an acquaintance. Peter Danforth.”

  Bingo.

  “I heard that a guy named Peter Danforth worked for Breaux.”

  “Yes, he’s been working for Del. And he did consulting work for him as an interior designer.” Barry took a sip of water. “Of course, maybe there were some other things going on, but I don’t like to gossip.”

  Barry loved to gossip; just don’t call it that. Now his pump was not only primed, it was gushing.

  “Look,” I said, “we’re not gossiping here; this is a murder investigation. And you’re being a huge help.”

  “Well, Peter has exquisite taste. Some people have—I don’t know if it’s breeding or what—they just have an instinct for color and arrangement and composition, design, fabrics and materials, everything. Peter is handsome and smart, and utterly sophisticated.”

  “Okay.”

  “Anyway, the whispers were that he and Del were having—an indiscretion.”

  “Recently?”

  “No no no. This is history. From just after the Storm.”

  “So Danforth was sleeping with the guy he was working for.”

  “Yes. Then maybe six months ago certain tongues started wagging about Peter and Ty.”

  “You’re suggesting that this Danforth guy gets around.”

  “To say the least. He’s had an off-and-on-again boyfriend for years—Joey Bales—but Peter is a player.”

  “So these affairs caused problems for Breaux and Park’s relationship?”

  “Not at all. They had an understanding, as many gay couples do, especially when there’s a younger partner involved. Certain freedoms granted, if you get my drift. They threw big parties and liked to—have fun.”

  “But what about the sometimes boyfriend, this Joey Bales guy? Could he have been jealous of Danforth and Breaux being an item?”

  “You mean like jealous enough to kill? I think not, otherwise, half the gay population in New Orleans would be deceased.”

  “I need to find Peter Danforth. Right away. Can you track him down for me?”

  “I should think so,” he said, pulling out his cell phone. “But I want a favor for it. Find out if Del has any heirs. They may want me to broker the sale of those pieces he bought.”

  Barry was a sensitive-enough guy but seldom missed a chance to make a buck.

  As I worked on my fried redfish plate, he made a couple of calls and actually got Peter Danforth on the line. He rang off, removed a leather-bound pocket notebook from his attaché case, scribbled out an address onto monogrammed stationery, and handed it to me.

  “He’ll see you at seven tonight.”

  After grabbing a shower in my loft and doing some Internet research, I drove the Bronco toward the meeting with Danforth, who was apparently running scared and holed-up in a gay gentlemen’s club called the Academy. The club took up an entire three-story former warehouse over by the old Falstaff brewery. Honey was swamped checking out Breaux’s and Park’s financial records and gave me the go-ahead to meet Danforth alone; I guess she really did need my help.

  I hadn’t been aware of any place called the Academy, but a number of new restaurants, bars, and clubs had opened since the Storm. Optimistic entrepreneurs rolling the dice on doing business in a city still in ruins were either bold visionaries or patently insane. In a sense I was one of those entrepreneurs, and on any given day I wondered if I wasn’t half-nuts to remain in the ravaged city suffering from fractured infrastructure, decades of corrupt neglect, and the mostly laissez-faire attitude of a citizenry that tolerated it all. Of course, my business thrived upon the problems of others, and there were plenty of problems to go around in New Orleans.

  The Academy stood in a neighborhood that had been crappy before the Storm made everything crappier. Trashed and abandoned buildings sat hobbled, corpses of past industrial might long gone; broken glass littered empty lots where no vehicles cared to park, anyway; street signs, when present, tilted askew at crazy angles implying a lack of care on the part of either the city or its workers.

  There didn’t seem to be much recovery going on in this neighborhood. Yet big money flowed into New Orleans from around the world; it had to be going somewhere.

  If one didn’t take into consideration the tragic loss of life, maybe at the end of the day, the Storm would be a good thing. Maybe the millions pumping into the area would mean change for the better, providing funds that heretofore had been lacking and inspiring a renaissance of thought, word, and deed. Maybe the pot-holes would finally get fixed; maybe the city-wide free Internet plan would reach fruition; maybe the water pressure would get fixed, maybe the pumping stations would get fixed, maybe the levees would get built right; maybe some of the blight could get eradicated; maybe a new city Master Plan would actually have some common sense and not just be a load of feel-good Utopian wishful thinking; maybe there would be money to pay police and firefighters a decent wage; maybe principals and teachers and custodians wouldn’t steal what was meant for the students; maybe local business owners and restaurateurs would pay their workers better and stop gouging their customers; maybe the politicians and bureaucrats would steal less and instead funnel cash into projects that put people to work; maybe some of the intergenerational-on-the-dole-lazy louts of every color would get off their butts and take one of the legion of job offers that went begging; maybe subsidence would subside and the city could stop sinking; maybe what little industry we had left would stop its flight to more sensible locales.

  Maybe a new New Orleans could rise from the rubble to reclaim past glory and be anointed as the belle of the South, as a city that mattered, as a city on the move to the future.

  Maybe.

  But probably not.

  In place of any signage at my destination, armed guards protected the entrance to the gated private parking area of a solid old brick building that looked as imposing as a fortress. What does it say about our city that this new private club appeared more secure than Fort Knox? The guards checked my name against a list before letting me pull in. If Danforth truly feared for his life, this might not be a bad place to be.

  But it wasn’t a good place for a guy out of uniform, as I discovered at the front desk.

  “I’m here for an interrogation; I’m not joining.”

  “Sir, all guests are required to be in dress uniform to enter the premises during the dinner hour, which is now.”

  I flashed on the navy whites in Breaux’s and Parks’ closet. Had they been Academy members? Peter Danforth would probably clear that one up, but between him and me stood two doormen dressed as U.S. Navy MAs with nightsticks on their duty belts and semi-autos in their leather holsters. They were big beefy guys, and this was a private club with its own set of rules.

  “I wasn’t informed about the uniform rule.”

  “Sir, we have a small wardrobe room right over there.”

  I was there on official police business, but my letter from the chief didn’t convince them. I could just go along with their program and pay twenty-five bucks to rent a set of ensign’s dress whites. I liked Halloween and enjoyed a good costume party as much as anyone, but I wasn’t much for dress-up games. It wasn’t as if they were doing some kind of historical re-enactment, or even a WWII-era dinner-dance replete with an orchestra playing Glenn Miller music; no, these guys—civilians—dressed in military uniforms every time they came to dinner at their expensive members-only club.

  “If you want to see uniforms,” I told the fake military cop at the desk, “I can arrange to have about twenty of them here in ten minutes. They’ll be wearing blue, be heavily armed, and I will help them shove those nightsticks on your belts up your asses. You have ninety seconds to clear me to come in, or I make the call and take Peter Danforth into police custody.”

  “So NOPD is outsourcing its homicide investigations now
. What a joke,” said Peter Danforth as he disdainfully handed the chief’s letter back to me. He lit another cigarette, forgetting he still had one burning in the ash tray.

  We sat in overstuffed leather club chairs in the library. A massive oak conference table in the center of the room could seat twenty. Newspapers from around the world dangled from wooden racks. Other than a couple of husky guys standing guard at the door, we had the place to ourselves. It had been strange to see over twenty-five men in uniform eating in the main dining hall with Bette Midler on the sound system when I first entered. Even in the bizarre world of New Orleans, having to be in uniform to gain entrance to a place for dinner kind of boggled my mind.

  I lit a cigarillo and sipped a glass of Buffalo Trace Kentucky bourbon poured neat.

  “Nice place. Breaux and Parks were members here, weren’t they?”

  “Yes, but they didn’t come often. Usually only when there was a special event.”

  “How did you meet them?”

  “In the bars. I met Ty maybe five years ago. I didn’t meet Del until after they got together. I did some design work on their house and consulted Del on purchases for his art collection.”

  “So you became better friends with them over time.”

  “That’s right.”

  “How would you describe your relationship with them at the time of their deaths? Were you close friends, best friends—?”

  “Close friends.” Using very formal mannerisms, he took a sip of mineral water. But his hand shook slightly; he was nervous. He wore two stars on his dress whites, the navy rank of rear admiral, and I wondered if there was a play on words there somewhere. Awarding himself flag rank clearly indicated he thought highly of himself. Pale with soft features for a thirty-year-old, he didn’t strike me as an outdoorsman. His hands told me he’d never done a day of manual labor in his life.

  “What do you know about Breaux’s work at Michoud?”

  “He consulted on some classified project. He certainly never struck me as being a scientist dealing in secrets. I mean, engineers are usually a certain kind of personality type. Del didn’t fit that mold. Of course, I met him after he came out of the closet. I heard he was different way back when he was closeted.”