The Devil Close Behind

by Janet Dawson

  “Did you overhear any of his end of the phone conversation?”

  Ron thought about it for a moment. “Not much. But I did hear him say something about Kerrville. That’s a town in the Texas hill country.”

  “What about Ms. Mason?” Antoine asked. “Did she say anything about plans to go somewhere?”

  “She said she wanted to get a larger vehicle because they were going on a road trip,” Ron said. “I don’t recall that she said where they were going, just that she would be seeing a part of the country she hadn’t seen before.”

  That could be a big section of the country, I thought. Laurette had spent almost her whole life living in New Orleans. Most of her family was here, except for that cousin in Florida. But the Texas hill country could be a clue, along with Slade’s former address in Austin. Could be, she and Slade were headed west.

  We headed back to Antoine’s RAV4. We drove through New Orleans, into the Treme neighborhood. Then traffic came to a standstill and Antoine pulled over to the curb. “It’s a parade,” he said. “You’ve been in New Orleans a week. Have you seen a second line?”

  “No, I haven’t. I was hoping to.”

  We got out of the RAV4 and walked up the block, just in time to see a brass band playing “I Feel Like Funkin’ It Up.” People danced along the pavement, some of them wearing elaborate and colorful costumes made of satin, decorated with sequins and feathers. They carried banners proclaiming the name of their social club. Following in their wake were other people walking and dancing, some of them twirling parasols. Others waved handkerchiefs and bandannas in time to the music.

  “This is the first line,” Antoine said. “Sometimes they call it the main line. The band, and those people in the club that hold the parade permit. Those people following, that’s the second line.”

  “Cool. And this is different from a jazz funeral, right?”

  “Right. No casket, obviously. Going to the cemetery, the music is usually slow and solemn. Then maybe on the way back after the interment, the band plays something lively.”

  The brass band drew near. Antoine and I joined the second line and I laughed as he showed me the steps. We second-lined with the parade for several blocks, enjoying the music and the festive atmosphere.

  “I think I’m getting the hang of this,” I said. The parade reached an intersection and slowly turned to the right.

  At that moment, Antoine’s phone rang and he took the call. He gave a thumbs-up signal and from his end of the conversation I knew the musician had returned his call. “Be there in fifteen minutes,” he said, then ended the call. He looked up at me. “We’re in luck. The guy just got off work and he’ll talk with us.”

  Luis Ortega worked for a local delivery firm with an office on South Galvez, a block or so off Canal Street. When we caught up with him, he was outside the building, stashing a backpack in the trunk of his blue Subaru hatchback. He was in his early thirties, with wide-set brown eyes and dark hair curling around his face.

  He definitely had the Texas twang. “So you’re Daisy Lasalle’s brother,” he said, when Antoine made the introductions. “I’ve met Daisy a time or two. She’s really a great singer.”

  Antoine smiled. “Yeah, she’s pretty good, even if she is my kid sister.”

  “How can I help you folks?” Ortega asked, looking from Antoine to me.

  “We’re looking for information on a guitar player named Slade,” I said, watching as Ortega frowned. “You know him?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say I know him. Not well, anyway. He’s not a friend, you understand. Just musicians, you know. We both play guitar. I play bass and slide.”

  “That’s cool,” Antoine said with a shrug. “Just tell us what you know.”

  “I know him from back in Texas,” Ortega said. “That’s where I’m from, down around San Antonio. Before I made the move to New Orleans, I was playing gigs in Austin.”

  “When did you meet Slade?” I asked. “And how?”

  Ortega leaned against the rear bumper of his Subaru. “It was last year. My band was playing at Kerrville. That’s about an hour west of Austin. They got a big music festival there, the Kerrville Folk Festival. It runs late May to early June. Slade was in a band that was playing there. He was subbing for a regular band member. That was a stroke of luck, for him to get a gig with a band that was playing there. Because when I was talking with him, I got the impression he hadn’t been in Texas that long. He said he’d been in a band that broke up, so he decided to try his luck in Austin. I figured that gig at the festival made him think getting gigs in Austin would be easy from then on. But the music business is up and down. Every musician knows that, or ought to.” Ortega laughed and pointed at the building where he worked. “Me, I’m here delivering packages. We’ve all got day jobs, just to survive, so we can gig at night.”

  “True that,” Antoine said, using a New Orleans expression I’d heard many times since I’d been here.

  “Later,” Ortega continued, “I’d see Slade in Austin from time to time. It’s like that. You see the same people over and over. Sometimes Slade would be subbing in the band I was playing with. Same here in New Orleans. I moved here last fall. The band I was in back in Austin split up and I decided to try my luck in the Big Easy. There’s a great music scene here. It’s different from Austin, though.”

  “So you get to New Orleans and run into Slade again,” Antoine prompted.

  Ortega nodded. “Yeah. January, after Christmas, it was. I was playing with a band at a Bourbon Street club. Slade was with the group that was the opening act. We got together after the show, had a beer and talked. He wasn’t in a regular band, he was just subbing that particular gig. We talked about gigs and music and New Orleans.” Ortega shrugged. “I got the impression he was not feeling the NOLA love like I am.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “I think he was expecting to do better here. Like he thought New Orleans is the Holy Grail for the music scene. Of course, when he was in Texas, he was talking like Austin was the place to be. Anyway, when I saw him on Bourbon Street, he talked like he was having a hard time getting gigs in New Orleans. As far as I could tell, he had only been here a few months. I said, Look, man, you need to give it more time. But he was talking about going back to Austin. Said he’d been working steady there. I don’t know if that’s true or not. Maybe it was just him talking.”

  I considered this. It was possible, given what I was hearing, that Slade decided that New Orleans wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. If he wasn’t working as much as he had back in Texas, that would make sense. And he could have persuaded Laurette, who by some accounts was ready for a change, to go with him. But still… There was something that didn’t sit right with me. One look at Antoine told me he was thinking the same thing. It was the fires, at the apartment, at the warehouse.

  “I guess it would make sense to go back to Austin,” Antoine said. “If he figured he’d get more gigs.”

  “Maybe that was it. Me, ever since I got to New Orleans, I’m playing steady all the time.” Ortega laughed. “Of course, I’m easier to get along with than Slade is.”

  I nodded. “Give me an example.”

  He thought about it for a moment. “He gets touchy, you know. If things aren’t going his way.”

  Antoine and I traded looks. “I heard that. Can you give me an example? Did he ever get into a disagreement or argument with someone here in New Orleans? Or in Austin?”

  Ortega took his time answering. “Well, I heard something, but I don’t know if it’s true. It’s like thirdhand news. Don’t they call that hearsay?”

  “They do,” I said. “But tell me what you heard. We might check it out.”

  “Well, I heard he got into some sort of a pissing contest with a guy, back in Austin. They played a few gigs together and they were best buddies. And then they weren’t. I remember it because this other guy had a new car, he’d just bought it, and one night somebody torched it.”

  Fire a
nd brimstone, I thought again. It looked like Slade’s favored method of getting even was to strike a match. I didn’t like it, not at all.

  “The guy whose car was torched, do you recall his name?” I asked.

  Ortega rubbed his chin, as he thought about it, then he shook his head. “Sorry. I don’t.”

  “Do you know a guy named Ray Brixton?” Antoine asked.

  Ortega looked perplexed, then his face cleared. “The name’s familiar. Like maybe I met him once or twice. Plays guitar. Pretty good, as a matter of fact. Yeah, I did meet him. At a club on Frenchmen Street. He and Slade were playing in the same band at that particular gig. I heard later there was some bad blood between the two of them.”

  “Any idea why?”

  He shook his head. “Not really. It’s just something I heard.” He paused, then looked thoughtful. “Seems to me it could have been about money. But I’m not sure. You could ask Brixton, but you know, I haven’t seen him in a while. I’m wondering if he left town.”

  Brixton was gone, all right. He was dead.

  I had another question for Ortega. “When Slade was talking about that band he was in that broke up, did he say anything about where he was from? Or the name of the band?”

  “Not really,” he said. “He mentioned California, but nothing specific about where in California. Big state, you know. As for the name of the band—” He shook his head again. “If he said the name, I don’t remember.” Then he stopped and cocked his head to one side. “Wait a minute. He said the band broke up because one of the players decided to come to Austin. And Slade decided to do that, too. It was—” He snapped his fingers, once, twice, then he grinned. “The Flames. That’s what he said. The Flames.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Slade is from California,” I said. “Or at least he lived in California before he moved to Austin. The rental application says he worked for a flooring company in Concord, in Contra Costa County. And the person he listed as his emergency contact has an area code from the Bay Area, which could be either Contra Costa or Alameda County.”

  “Let’s see what the reverse directory has to say.” Antoine’s fingers moved across his computer keyboard.

  After talking with Ortega, we’d gone back to Antoine’s shotgun house in the Treme. He was in his office chair and I’d brought a chair in from the kitchen. We were looking at his computer monitor, where he’d opened an Internet browser. Now he typed in the ten-digit phone number for Millicent Patchett, the emergency contact on Slade’s apartment rental application. We got an address in Lafayette, California.

  I made a guess as I jotted down the address. “His mother. I’d bet money on it. Let’s see what we can find out about that band he was in, the Flames.”

  We didn’t find much on the band, or its gigs. These days, with the Internet, bands make videos and post them on YouTube or a website, but we couldn’t find either for the Flames. Antoine kept searching, typing in keywords and clicking links. Finally he said, “Here’s something.”

  I looked at the screen. It was a small article, no more than two paragraphs, listing the lineup for a concert at a festival in Brentwood, in the eastern part of Contra Costa County. And it listed the Flames, saying the group featured Eric Slade on lead guitar, Cam Gardner on bass and slide guitars, and Marsh Spencer on drums. The accompanying photograph was black-and-white and grainy. Antoine enlarged it. Slade and Spencer looked about the same age, while Gardner appeared to be a few years older.

  Antoine typed in Marsh Spencer’s name. “Nothing else on Spencer, at least nothing relating to music. Maybe he’s given it up. Let’s see if we have better luck with Cam Gardner.”

  We did. Gardner looked like a serious musician, one determined to build his career. He had his own website, with links to a calendar and a Facebook page. He was based in Austin now and it looked as though he was working steadily, playing gigs all over town, and farther afield in Texas. According to the Facebook page, he was working as a studio musician on several recordings.

  His website led us to a list of links for videos, mostly of Gardner playing with various bands. But at the bottom of the list, we found two early videos of the Flames. In the first, the group was performing at a club in Concord. The second was from a club in Oakland.

  Antoine and I watched both of them. At the Concord gig, the Flames were performing “Light My Fire,” which had been a huge hit for the Doors back in the 1960s. Slade was singing, attempting to channel Jim Morrison, but not quite succeeding. I was no judge of his guitar playing, or that of Gardner. The drummer, Spencer, was high-energy, bouncing on his stool and flailing away at the drums and cymbals. It seemed like he couldn’t sit still. Between numbers he moved restlessly, tugging at his earlobe.

  In the second video, the one from the Oakland club, the group sounded more polished as they worked their way through a fairly decent cover of the Subdudes’ “All the Time in the World.”

  When the video ended, I said, “They’re not bad. Just not that good either. Of course, I don’t know anything about guitar playing or drumming. Slade’s voice isn’t that remarkable.”

  “Sometimes you don’t have to be that good,” Antoine said. “There are a lot of singers out there with voices that don’t have much polish, but they make it work. They hustle and they stick with it.”

  “Point taken. It looks like Austin was a good move for Gardner. Maybe that’s why Slade relocated to Texas, following in Gardner’s footsteps. But he didn’t stay long. He showed up in New Orleans in October. That’s when he got the job at Melancon Supply and the apartment on Marais Street. So he spent barely six months in Austin.”

  Antoine nodded. “Impatience. That’s what my sister says. A lot of musicians show up in New Orleans, or Austin, thinking they’re God’s gift to the music world. Then reality bites them in the butt. There are a lot of musicians in this town, as thick as flies on honey. The competition for gigs is fierce. That’s why so many of them are playing on street corners, like the kids we saw on Frenchmen Street, for whatever cash people toss into the hat. It’s not a matter of catching breaks. Like I said, you have to hustle to get those gigs and stay working. Got to keep with it, no matter how many times you get turned down. That’s why Daisy’s doing gigs at the Spotted Cat and Slade isn’t. Daisy’s been singing since she was in middle school and hustling for gigs about that long, too.”

  “What about luck? That must be a factor, too. Being in the right place at the right time.”

  “Daisy would say that behind every lucky break is someone who’s been working at it for years,” Antoine said.

  “I would imagine that where you live is also important.” I was thinking out loud here. “It would be hard to be a working musician in some small town at the back of beyond, though I’m sure some people are. It seems that every kid who has a guitar winds up with a band, even if it’s playing gigs at the local high school. But if Slade does come from the Bay Area, the business about small towns and limited opportunity doesn’t really apply here.”

  “Unless it’s limited talent,” Antoine said. “And that impatience I’m talking about.”

  “So Slade’s impatient,” I said. “He’s not willing to do the hard work. He wasn’t an instantaneous success in Austin, so he moved to New Orleans. Same story here. He’s getting gigs, but it’s hard to pay the bills, so he has to get the job at the warehouse. He gets fired from that. He gets evicted from his apartment and uses that as an excuse to move in with Laurette, so he’s not paying rent. Now what? It looks like he’s impatient with New Orleans, too. So he’s leaving town, with Laurette. Somehow I don’t think it’s because he’s madly in love with her.”

  “He’s driving an old, beat-up car,” Antoine said.

  “But not anymore. He sells that car for whatever cash he can get. Then he persuades Laurette to trade in her Honda and buy a newer Ford. So now, in addition to Laurette, he’s got the keys to a much better car. But where are they going? Where is there a better music scene than the two places he’s a
lready been—Austin and New Orleans?”

  Antoine looked speculative. “New York City? Too expensive, is my guess. We got Memphis and Nashville. Maybe Chicago. Going west, Los Angeles. Or maybe up to Seattle.”

  “I think he’s headed back to the Bay Area. Millicent Patchett must be his mother. So he’s got family there.” I paused. “We’ve got to follow up on what Ortega said about the car fire in Austin. A case of Slade getting even again?”

  Antoine rubbed his chin. “I know a guy in Austin. I’ll call him. In the meantime, we ought to contact Cam Gardner and see what he has to say about his former guitar-playing buddy.”

  The only contact information we could find for Cam Gardner was a “Contact Me” form on his website. Antoine filled out the form and sent it on its way. With luck, Gardner would get back to us.

  Antoine called his friend in Austin, got voice mail and left a message. No sooner had he hung up the phone than it rang again. “That number,” he said. “It’s Cindy Brixton.”

  He answered the phone and put it on speaker. “Ms. Brixton? This is Antoine Lasalle. Thank you for returning my call.”

  The woman on the other end had a sharp, suspicious voice. “You keep calling me and leaving messages saying you want to talk about my brother. What is this about? You say you’re an investigator. For who? Are you working for some insurance company? I’ve talked with the cops and the fire department people. What’s your angle?”

  I leaned toward the speaker. “This is Jeri Howard, Ms. Brixton. I’m working with Mr. Lasalle. We’re private investigators, looking for information on a man named Eric Slade.”

  “That’s right,” Antoine added. “My contact at the fire department tells me you might have some things to say about him.”