by Smith, Julie
“Do you still have it?”
“I guess so. I put it in my purse.”
“I know this sounds dumb, but do me a favor and check, will you?”
Skip could almost see her shrugging. “Sure,” she said, and left the line.
She was back in a moment. “It’s funny—I can’t find it. What’s this about?”
“It may have come back to me in an odd way. Has anyone had access to your purse?”
“Not in the house. The cleaning lady hasn’t been here. My daughter’s coming in from Wisconsin, but she isn’t here yet. Oh, wait. I left it on a counter yesterday—in a drugstore. Only for a moment, though—you know how you do when you’re shopping?”
“Was it in your view at all times?”
“No. In fact, I thought I heard someone in the area and I went back to retrieve it. Nothing else is missing, though.”
“Okay. Well, it’s probably nothing. I just wanted to check it out.” She went back to the scene.
Another officer had now arrived, and had had time to put on that disgusted look policemen get at a nasty crime scene. “Can you get over this? Right in his office—somebody probably killed the poor bastard for five bucks.”
The coroner’s van came, and then the crime lab—Paul Gottschalk walked in full of questions. “Phew-ee, how come no one smelled him before?”
“You couldn’t with the door closed. I know—I was first on the scene. The question is, how come nobody heard the shot? If it was a shot.”
“Potato, probably. Look—see that spot over there—betcha anything that’s potato.”
Some months ago, there had been an extremely well-publicized murder in which the perps had stuck a potato on a gun barrel as a silencer. Now everyone was doing it.
Maybe that accounted for the surprised look on the dead man’s face—if you saw a potato, you had to fear the worst.
Skip turned to Denton, the coroner’s deputy. “Check his pockets, will you? I want to know if it’s Allred—the guy who belongs here.”
Denton pulled on gloves, knelt, and turned out the pockets, unearthing a wallet with driver’s license and credit cards.
“Yep. Seems to be.”
The papers proved nothing, of course, but they were a good indication. “Do you have a home address?”
“Uh-huh. Louisa. Not a great neighborhood.”
Gottschalk said, “You want all this paper put in boxes?”
She sighed. “Yeah, I guess so.”
She wondered if she was actually going to get through them. “I’d like to look at his Rolodex—could you dust it and pass it over?”
She couldn’t leave the crime scene until the body had—she might as well do something to amuse herself.
She looked up Fortier first, just to satisfy her curiosity, but neither Bebe nor Russell was in the file. In fact, there wasn’t a single name she recognized except that of Talba Wallis, a young lady she wanted to see almost immediately.
She called her. “I need to see you at my office this afternoon—say at three o’clock.”
“Now look. Just because I was nice enough to—”
“Ms. Wallis. Be there.” Skip hung up.
When they had taken the body, she canvassed the neighbors.
No one had heard the shot, though two admitted hearing a crazy woman yell for help the morning before.
One of them shrugged. “I couldn’t go look. I was on the phone.”
The second had the grace to look frightened, if not contrite. “I was alone. I locked the door until it stopped.”
“Did you call the police?”
“Yes. I dialed 911 and got a busy signal.”
Maybe she had and maybe she hadn’t. Today was Saturday and hardly anyone was working. Probably many more people had heard Talba screaming. Skip wondered if any of them had called the police.
Next she headed for Louisa, a block-by-block street, in terms of safety and degree of gentrification. Gene Allred’s block wasn’t one of the good ones. It was altogether an odd place for a white man to live, but maybe he’d won it in a poker game.
It was a double shotgun, so run-down it surely qualified as blighted property. A black woman stared out one side, through a nearly rusted screen door. “You want Mist’ Allred?”
“Does he live here?”
“Yes’m.”
“Anybody live with him?”
“Nah. Had a wife. She left.”
“Seen anybody around here lately?”
At this, the woman hunched her shoulders, hooded her eyes, even, it seemed, narrowed her nostrils. Someone had most certainly been around. She said: “Nooo. Ain’ seen nobody.”
“Come on, now. Who’d you see? This is a murder investigation.”
The woman’s eyes widened. “Mist’ Allred dead? Wonder what happen now.” She looked frightened.
Skip stared at her, uncomprehending, until it finally came to her. “Did he own the building? Is Allred your landlord?”
“Was. He was my landlord.”
She turned and disappeared into the house. Skip tackled the other side. It came as no surprise that it was as thoroughly ransacked as Allred’s office. It stank of mildew and dirty dishes left in the sink. The furniture was beyond secondhand—probably picked up at dumps. The place must have been numbingly depressing before the ransacking.
What sort of person could Allred have been, to look so neat and live so pathetically? A drunk, perhaps. Someone who was long past caring. Or a loner, someone unable to connect with people or things, just doing his job and muddling through. Maybe the other tenant could help some.
The woman was older—sixty, perhaps—and rail-thin, with a white handkerchief tied around her hair. Probably she normally wore a wig, but couldn’t be bothered on a Saturday morning. Up close, Skip saw that energy crackled from her. She was obviously much sharper than Skip had first thought—she might be quite a good witness if she could be persuaded to talk.
“I’m Detective Skip Langdon.” Skip produced her badge and offered to shake hands, but the woman declined. Skip waited, but no introduction was forthcoming. “May I ask who you are?”
“I’m Mist’ Allred tenant. Miz Smith.”
“Mrs. Smith. If you didn’t see anything, you must have heard something—that place looks like a war zone.”
“Oh, yes’m. You didn’t ax nothin’ about that.” She cackled. “Didn’t ax nothin’ ’bout that.”
“Fine. What did you hear?”
“Oh, just some noise. Car stoppin’ and startin’ up. Break-in noise, and then throw-things-around noise.”
“When was this?”
“Two nights ago. Three, maybe.”
“Two or three?”
“Fo’. I don’t know.” For some reason, she wasn’t going to say. Skip wondered if she’d done something to rub the woman the wrong way.
“Did you see anybody?”
“Nooooo. I already tol’ you that.”
“Tell me about Mr. Allred’s wife.”
“Now, her I know too much about. He own this buildin’, but he useta rent out the other side to somebody like me—you unnerstan’?”
Somebody poor and black. And probably a little bit desperate.
“Well, the wife musta kicked his white ass right out on the street—’cause he kick out th’ other lady and he move in his own sorry self. Two, three years ago. I ain’ sure.
“She a fool though. That woman ain’ got the sense God gave a earthworm.” She chuckled at her own metaphor. “Yes, Lord, some earthworms smarter.”
Evidently, she had to be drawn out. “Why do you say that?”
“ ‘Cause that crazy woman still aroun’! Got rid o’ his sorry ass, she still over here all the time, drinkin’ beer and runnin’ aroun’ in her slip. They fight all the time, yellin’, keepin’ everybody awake. Law, a baby earthworm got more sense than that woman.”
“What makes you think the woman you’ve seen is his wife?”
“That what he call her. He say, ‘Ve
rna’—tha’s my name, Verna—he say, ‘Verna, you see my wife aroun’ here yesterday? Verna, my wife comes, tell her I lef’ without her.’ Maybe she ain’t his wife, I don’ know. I know one thing—nice-lookin’ young lady come to see him, day or two ago. Young lady in her thirties. Pretty blond hair, all neat and everything—that wife of his, she always look like she just get out of bed. He treat this one bad, too. She wait nearly a hour for him, he don’t show up.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“Sho I talk to her. She come up on the porch and ax me to give him somethin’. I never got the chance, come to think of it—Mist’ Allred ain’ been home in a couple days.
“Guess he been dead that long. How he die? Somebody shoot him or what?”
Skip was startled. “Why do you ask that?”
Verna shrugged. “So many people gettin’ shot these days—I had to ax.”
Maybe it had been a lucky guess. “What did the lady leave for Mr. Allred?”
She shrugged again, her face slightly uneasy. “Business card.”
“Could I see it, please?”
“I don’t see why not—Mist’ Allred’s not gon’ need it.”
She left and returned with the card, again looking nervous. Skip looked at it and promptly lost her cool. It was Jane Storey’s card. “Jane Storey? You didn’t tell me the lady was a reporter.”
Verna seemed to have grown a couple of inches. She spoke with utmost dignity, yet softly, barely above a whisper. “Well, I didn’t know.”
She doesn’t read. Shit. What a dork I am. Skip stopped herself from apologizing, realizing that would make things worse.
She pretended she hadn’t heard. “What’s the wife’s name?”
“Miz Allred, I guess. She never bother to tell me nothin’ else.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Week ago, maybe. Same ol’ thing. She come, she yell, she go.”
“Well, thank you, Verna. You’ve really been a help.”
“Did I say you could call me Verna? I’m Miz Smith to white po-lice.”
“Sorry. I forgot your last name. Thank you, Mrs. Smith.”
Skip couldn’t help chuckling as she descended the steps from the porch. Mrs. Smith hadn’t been all that hostile to white po-lice, fount of information that she was—you never knew what people were going to be touchy about.
She checked out the other neighbors, learning nothing new except that someone had seen a second visitor in the last couple of days—a white man in his thirties or forties, perhaps; maybe medium height. Or maybe older or younger, or taller or shorter. He had knocked, apparently gotten no answer, and then walked to the back. Unfortunately, the informant couldn’t remember a thing about him except his race.
Somebody else thought the wife’s name was Eloise.
Reluctantly, Skip returned to the wrecked shotgun. She could at least play Allred’s messages. Sure enough, there was one from Eloise; also one from Jane Storey, saying that she’d come and waited, and she’d be happy to try again. Eloise just said, “Call me.”
That was it. No clients, no other friends. Evidently, Allred wasn’t too popular a guy.
Since this place was tied to the other crime scene, she couldn’t go through the Rolodex, but she did sneak to the back to see if there was forced entry. It was impossible to tell—there was an open window, but no broken glass.
She radioed Paul Gottschalk to come over when he could, and called for district officers to secure the place. Then she called the station, asked the desk officer to put Eloise Allred through the DMV, and got an address in Metairie.
It was Saturday: Maybe Eloise was home. When the district car came, Skip took off to find out.
Eloise lived in an old apartment complex—maybe thirty years old, late-’60s vintage. It had a pool, but had probably never been luxurious, had probably catered to semitransient semiprofessionals. Now it was pretty run-down.
Skip leaned on Eloise’s doorbell and got no answer. She leaned again. Something told her to try a third time, and sure enough, a cranky voice came through the intercom. “What is it?”
“Skip Langdon, NOPD.”
“What the hell do you want?”
“I need to talk to you about your husband.”
“Gene?” A note of alarm came into her voice. “Has something happened to him?”
“I think you’d better let me in.”
The buzzer sounded, and over it, Skip heard a wailing. “Ohhh, no.”
The woman was standing at the door, wearing a flower-print housecoat that might have been twenty years old. She was overweight, big in the belly, puffy. Her blond hair looked uncombed, and, futhermore, looked as if that was simply the way she wore it. Skip saw what Verna Smith meant about the contrast to Jane.
This woman was older than Jane, by six or seven years maybe. But instead of healthy skin nourished by plenty of vegetables, she had a pasty, bloated-looking hide already crisscrossed with wrinkles. And bags under her eyes that were probably partly genetic and partly due to cigarettes and drinking and long nights. She looked forty-five going on sixty. She stank of vodka.
“He didn’t return my phone call. He didn’t call me. I thought it was just because of that little—uh—thing I said to him.” Her chin was starting to quiver.
Skip said, “Mrs. Allred, can I get you some water or something?”
Allred shook her head, keeping her eyes lowered so she wouldn’t have to see the truth in Skip’s.
Skip pushed past her to the kitchen and got her the water anyway. When she got back, Allred was sitting on a reproduction Victorian sofa covered in rose brocade. Skip held out the glass. “Here. Drink this.”
Allred shook her head, her eyes staring past Skip to the wall.
Skip pulled up a ladder-back rocker with an orange crocheted pillow in it—a piece absolutely incongruous with the sofa—and waited a few moments.
Finally, she said, “Mrs. Allred, why are you so sure your husband is dead?”
Allred buried her head in her hands and started blubbering.
Skip simply waited.
“He knew this was going to happen. He knew it.”
“What was going to happen?”
“He was going to die by violence. He always said it—’I’m gonna smoke as much as I want. Probably be dead before I’m forty anyway.’ “ She looked at Skip. “He is dead, isn’t he?”
“I’m sorry. Yes, he is. At least, we think so. Do you have a picture of him?”
Unspeaking, moving like a robot, Allred got up and fetched a framed photo from the top of the television—herself and the man dead in his office.
Skip nodded again. “Yes. Could you make a positive identification?”
Allred held a tissue to her mouth. “What happened? What the hell happened? He was so—he seemed so jaunty last time I saw him.”
“I thought you said he expected to die.”
“Well, he did.” She shrugged. “That was just his nature. He was depressed, I guess. Like, all the time. But last week, he was almost happy.”
Skip waited, but Allred said only, “What the hell happened?”
“It looks as if someone shot him, Mrs. Allred.”
The woman gasped.
“Who do you think might have done it?”
Slowly, Allred walked the picture back to its accustomed place and sat down again, the tissue once more at her mouth. She seemed to be biting down on her finger, perhaps in an effort to feel something other than pain. She looked alert now, though, as if she were thinking, not simply shocked and numb, staring at the wall.
Finally, she said, “He was into dealing a little.”
“Dealing what?”
Her fat shoulders shrugged. “Cocaine, I guess. Whatever. He gave me some blow now and then—and he always had pot, too.”
Skip hadn’t seen any drugs at his house.
“He was talking about some kind of big score. I didn’t really approve of his dealing drugs—I mean, it wasn’t immoral or a
nything, I just thought it was dangerous and”—she stuck a knuckle between her teeth to get a grip—”I guess it was.”
Knuckle or no, her face fell in once again, and her big shoulders shook.
Then she wagged her head, as if warding off the grief. “No, no, no. I just don’t think it was drugs.”
“Why not?”
“Something. Let me think.” She drank some of the water and stared at the wall again. “I know! I asked him. And he said no. That’s what it was.”
“And then did you ask what it was if it wasn’t drugs?”
“Yes. Yeah, I did. He said, ‘You’re going to be really surprised, Ellie girl. Really, really surprised. Guess what? It’s halfway legitimate. And not only that, it’s right. Right and moral.’ “Allred laughed, a forced-sounding noise coming out of her throat. “Now how’d I forget somethin’ like that?”
Five
SKIP COULDN’T WAIT to get back to her office to interview Talba. She was over an hour late, so the girl would have had time to stew. That was good. She was looking forward to an antsy and worried witness, suffering from so powerful a combination of paranoia and boredom she’d be an easy target.
Instead, she found nothing but a message saying Talba had gone for a walk and would check in from time to time to see if Skip had returned.
Damn. She hated resourcefulness.
In fact, Talba returned in about twenty minutes laden with packages and overcome with enthusiasm. “Whoo—great stuff at the museum store. You ever go over there?”
“Sit down, Ms. Wallis.” Skip spoke sharply.
Instantly, the friendly demeanor turned hard. “Hey. Who do you think you’re ordering around? I come down here to accommodate you, you’re not here, I wait, and now you got nothing but attitude.”
“Sit down, Ms. Wallis.” This time Skip’s voice was slightly kinder, and she thought she might have let a bit of the seriousness of what she had to say creep into her expression.
Wallis looked suddenly frightened. She sat. “Something bad’s happened.”
“You’re damn right something bad’s happened. I want you to tell me every single thing you know about Gene Allred and everything there is to tell about your relationship with him.”
“Relationship! Listen, Detective, I don’t have a relationship with the man. I worked for him some, that’s all. I hardly know him. What’s this all about?”
