A Diamond Before You Die

by Chris Wiltz

  Meanwhile, my mother was bustling around the kitchen cleaning up and telling me to help myself to what was left over from breakfast. She was in a hurry because she was going to the doctor with my sister, who was seven months’ pregnant. Reenie was having pains and bleeding a little, and Ma was afraid that the baby would be premature or that Reenie would miscarry. While she was telling me this, the old man was telling me what it was he wanted me to read on the front page of the newspaper. They were both talking to me like the other one wasn’t there. It was when Ma started going on about how Reenie had waited too long to have another child and that she was getting too old to be having babies that the old man got aggravated.

  “Maureen’s gonna be just fine, Mama,” he said. “The baby is gonna be fine. Stop worryin’ and hurry up and get over there.”

  “But there’s always so much to do,” Ma said, and put more dirty dishes down in the suds.

  “Go on, go on.” He was close to yelling now. Then he said, more calmly, “Go on. I’ll finish cleanin’ up.”

  It was a first, and it almost bowled me over. Ma turned around so he could see the look of disbelief on her face, but he had gotten up to get himself another cup. She gave me one of her “Blessed Mother” looks, eyes heavenward, and said, “Okay, John.” She dried her hands, and began gathering up her things.

  “Bye, darlin’,” she said to me and kissed me on the forehead, then dashed through the house to the front door.

  After the door closed, he said, “I think Maureen has babies so your mother will take over next door as well as here. Women.” But he wasn’t really that disgusted. He put his finger on the article he was so interested in.

  The whole time I was reading he talked. He said that between the project killings and this latest episode, Chance Callahan had himself between a rock and a hard place with the blacks, that he’d better do something to appease them since this was election year, that the media was really getting on Callahan now and asking some pretty tough questions. The old man is not a Callahan fan, but, then, he never likes any politician. What he likes is the political dirt. He and Uncle Roddy can sit around for hours laughing about it all, making fun of the politicos. They act like they have the inside track, but it’s all just talk. Neither one of them would ever try to buck a powerful New Orleans politician. That’s why they thought I was so crazy when I accused Angelesi of murdering Myra.

  I read the article rather sketchily because of the distraction. I got the basics, which were that the previous evening, a white policeman had gunned down a black youth who was out riding a motorcycle with a friend. The friend, who wasn’t hurt, claimed that the two of them were on their way to another friend’s house, and that they were not speeding or breaking any laws, when the police car was suddenly behind them, signaling for them to pull over. They were getting off the motorcycle, the friend said, and the next thing he knew there was a gunshot, and his buddy was on the ground, dead. The street was empty, so there were no witnesses, but the unhurt youth claimed his friend hadn’t done anything. The policeman alleged that the youth had made a movement like he was going for something inside his jacket. The dead kid had a clean record, and Callahan was handling this the same way he’d handled the project killings: He was conducting an investigation while the policeman remained on desk duty. Even though this was normal procedure, the black community was in an uproar again, picketing outside Callahan’s office, and wanted the cop suspended from the force. Callahan refused to be interviewed. He was in the right, but that didn’t mean you had to like it if your skin was black.

  “You’d think Callahan would do somethin’ so it at least looks like he’s got some sympathy,” the old man said. “He’s bein’ just as hard-nosed as ever.”

  “Something’s going on,” I said for the sake of conversation.

  “Well, sure, there’s always somethin’,” he said impatiently. “But that project mess is still hanging over him. Look, Neal, I’m a cop"—he always says this like I never was and like he isn’t retired—"and I believe they had somethin’ when they went into the project that night, but what they did left a lot more questions unanswered than answered, so it looks fishy. Right?” He didn’t wait for me to agree. “Now wit’ this hap’nin’,” he gestured toward the newspaper, “Callahan’s gonna come under fire again, and not just for this, but for what happened at that project, too. It’s not that I underestimate Callahan, but if he has a black opponent who can get the blacks out to vote, and he splits any of the white vote, he could be in trouble.”

  That’s because fifty-one percent of the registered voters in Orleans Parish are black. I’d heard it all before—every time there was an election.

  “You know who’s thinking of running against him?” I asked. “Richard Cotton, the Colonel’s son, Cotton National Bank.”

  “Oh, yeah? He’s pretty young, isn’t he?”

  “He’s smart, and he was a damned good prosecutor.”

  “Yeah, but it’ll take someone older ‘n stronger, wit’ more political experience to win against Callahan, I think. Unless he’s black.”

  We talked about it some more, and about what had happened at Richard Cotton’s house. I didn’t need to tell the old man much about that because Uncle Roddy had already filled him in. “Rod’rick,” as the old man calls him, acts like my father is still with the department and consults him regularly. I was interested in how the cops were treating the Cotton business, and what the current theories were. The old man doesn’t particularly like to confide in me about what the cops are doing since I’m not one anymore, but after a little circular talk, I gathered there was some thinking that it could have been an interrupted burglary, and that Cotton thought it was possible his key had been duplicated.

  Well, I knew where that theory came from, so I knew Richard had been downtown talking to Uncle Roddy. Since the old man wasn’t going to confide in me, I didn’t think it would do any good to bring up the question of what burglar Uncle Roddy had ever heard of who’d interrupted himself to jump someone who was out in the front yard of the house he was burglarizing. But I also knew that neither my father nor Uncle Roddy were stupid cops who weren’t thinking about that, or about the fire, either.

  The old man sat back and lit a cigarette. “I noticed we ain’t seen mucha you around here lately. Whereya been?” He asked in that way he has when he wants to know what’s up with my love life. Well, more specifically, my sex life. He’s given up on me ever doing anything normal like falling in love with someone I could marry. That’s because of Myra. Therefore, it’s my sex life he’s referring to. I know how he thinks.

  “I been hangin’ around Audubon Park,” I said, lighting up, too.

  “What? It’s freezin’!” He cocked one eyebrow. “You’re not turnin’ into one of them perverts, are you?”

  I played the straight guy and told him I was seeing a woman who lived by the park. Then I mentioned that she was an investigator.

  “What?” he demanded again. “The one at Cotton’s house? Yeah, Rod’rick told me about her. Says she ain’t built the way we used to like ‘em"—he meant like Jane Russell or Betty Grable—"but she’s got a way about her.”

  That last he said with his eyes squinted and his mouth pulled over to one side, which was probably supposed to look like Clark Gable and meant she was sexy even if she wasn’t built like a 1940’s movie queen.

  “But, Jesus, Neal, doncha know better than to get in bed wit’ a woman cop, of any kind? Listen.” He was ready for some confidential talk now. He sat forward, and shuffled his feet around to get them square on the floor, his moosehide slippers sounding like brooms on the linoleum. “They’re bad enough when you gotta work wit’ ‘em.”

  “Aw, come on, Dad. Half the cops I knew who got married when I was on the force married women cops.”

  “Ya heard about shotgun weddings, huh? Well, that’s called a .357 Magnum wedding.”

  “Who gives the bride away—Dirty Harry?”

  He cracked a smile. “Lemme tell y
a ‘bout women cops.” He fueled up on a drag from his cigarette. “They’re tough, you know, but verrry sensitive.” He put his hand over his heart. “Know everything there is to know about human nature. And you? You ain’t sensitive at all. But lemme tell ya what. I seen many a man throw up at the sight of a corpse, but very few women—in all those years. They’re real sensitive, about as sensitive as a block of ice. And just as cold.”

  Yeah, well, Lee hadn’t talked about it much, but she’d been pretty upset over Raven’s death. I think she thought she shouldn’t have been so disoriented even though she’d been hit in the head.

  “Maybe they like to keep their feelings to themselves,” I suggested. “They don’t like being called hysterical.”

  “Haw! Well, they don’ mind gettin’ hysterical if you say anything about ‘em bein’ a woman!” He was getting excited. He stood up. I could tell he was going into one of his acts. “They can do whatever it is a man can do just as good as he can, and,” he put one hand on his hip and pointed at me with his cigarette, “don’t you forget it.”

  He pushed his chair back. “After they been in the profession awhile, they get this kind of swagger.” He stuck his cigarette in his mouth, and did this tough-guy swagger around the kitchen. I tried to imagine Lee Diamond swaggering.

  “They’re just one of the boys, right? But don’t tell no dirty jokes in front of ‘em. That offends their precious, sensitive souls. All of a sudden, they ain’t swaggerin’ no more. They’re walkin’ like this.” He prissed all around the table. In his thermal undershirt, pajama bottoms and moosehide slippers, it was just too much. I started laughing.

  “Wait a minute! Wait a minute!” he yelled. He put his cigarette out in the dishwater. “You can’t give ‘em no advice. You do somethin’ one way, they gotta better way. Somethin’ don’t go down right, you either, one"—he held up a finger—"weren’t tough enough or, two"—another finger—"not compassionate enough. They always gotta be one up on you. It’s like you been entered in some goddamn competition.”

  He was really getting wound up now. “So you finally decide that the best thing to do is to leave ‘em alone. Then what happens?” He leaned on the table so he was closer to my face, which I was trying to keep straight, but not having much luck with. “They start makin’ these funny eyes at you.” He batted his eyelids up and down. “All of a sudden everything you say is just so funny. You’re the most sensitive man they ever knew. They’re askin’ your advice when your advice wasn’t worth two cents before. Before, you were a slob. There was gravy on your shirt. You needed a shave or a haircut. Now you’re sexy as hell. The next thing you know, they got you in bed, but it’s just for fun, no big deal. If it interferes wit’ work, that’s it. Everybody’s happy for a while. Then you begin to notice they’re psychic. They sense this, they sense that. You say one thing, they know you meant somethin’ else.”

  I thought about Lee sensing that what Richard Cotton had said to me hadn’t gone down quite right, but the comparison with what the old man was saying was so ridiculous that I couldn’t hold the laughter in one more second. He liked my reaction. It egged him on.

  “That’s right! They not only know exactly what you think, they know exactly how you feel. They know it all!” he shrieked.

  Yeah, I thought, just like you. But he didn’t know Lee. He hadn’t stood at Lee’s front door with her that first night, and seen the way her eyes burned when she wanted me to kiss her. He also didn’t know how mutual and immediate our attraction had been, how much we both wanted each other. He hadn’t seen the look on her face after we made love. He hadn’t run his hands down her long, smooth back. He hadn’t heard her soft noises. I laughed even more at his foolishness.

  He ran on. “Before you know it, though, you’re not thinkin’ what you oughta be thinkin’ and you’re not feelin’ what you oughta be feelin’. There’s somethin’ wrong wit’ your attitude. What’s wrong wit’ it is you ain’t hot-footin’ it off to the altar. You tell ‘em they’re rushin’ it, and everything you ever said gets thrown in your face. Nex’ thing, you’re fightin’ like cats and dogs, and it’s all your fault. It’s like you were the only one ready to hop in bed. Then when you try to call the whole thing off, what do they do? They start cryin’, for God’s sake!” He pitched his voice way up high and started boo-hooing. “’But, Neal, you said this was different. But, Neal, this, but Neal, that.’” He threw himself up against the refrigerator and sobbed into the crook of his arm.

  At this point I was just about on the floor. I was begging him to stop.

  It was quite a performance.

  The old man. You know, he really is something.

  8

  * * *

  The Murder of Marty Solarno

  I lived in a dream world during the next few weeks. Everything was easy. Witnesses were where they were supposed to be when I looked for them, and they were cooperative. A case I’d been working on with a lawyer finally went to court, and I handled the other side like Erle Stanley Gardner had written the lines for me. Another lawyer asked me to subpoena someone no one else had been able to find. I found him in two hours. No one asked me to do anything too sleazy. I was getting along with the old man as well as I ever had in my life.

  Most evenings I left the office and went over to Dumaine Street to pick up Lee. We found so many new places to go that I started thinking of New Orleans as an exciting place to be instead of a place where nothing changes. I wasn’t drinking so much anymore, and I wasn’t missing it either. Lee had me working out with weights. What I liked best about it was watching her do it, but it gave me a lot of extra stamina for when stamina counts the most, and I liked that, too. We were always at her place at the beginning, but when the heat got fixed and stayed fixed at the Euclid, we started spending some of our time there. I wanted equal time on my territory even if the territory was shabby. But Lee said it was convenient to be so much closer to downtown and our offices. So even the Euclid was okay.

  The trouble with dream worlds is that you wake up.

  It started one morning that was just like any other morning. I parked in the garage at the Père Marquette, and exchanged a few words with Gabe, the garage attendant. As usual, we complained about the weather, and Gabe gave me the forecast past a toothpick that miraculously stays put on his lower lip no matter how wide he opens his mouth. Then I went into the sandwich shop on the ground floor of the building to get a cup of coffee from Leone, who can be very abusive during the early morning rush hour. She demanded to know what right I had to be so happy lately. When I grinned and winked at her, she accused me of being secretive, then snarled that she’d get it out of me, which she would if I ever went in there when she wasn’t flying around behind the counter. I grabbed the coffee, got a copy of the Picayune, and went up to the office.

  I read the opening paragraphs on the top half of the front page, and when I flipped the paper over, there was Marty Solarno’s mug smiling at me. I realized right then that one of the reasons I was so happy lately was that I was managing to get through whole days without seeing Myra Ledet’s slashed throat, her blood all over the bed I’d spent a lot of time in with her, her mouth wide open in death, the terrified scream I knew must have come from her stopped by somebody’s knife. Possibly Solarno’s.

  Solarno was dead. He’d been murdered, most grotesquely: His body was full of stab wounds and his face had been carved like a Halloween pumpkin’s. As far as I was concerned, it was a fitting death if he’d had anything to do with Myra’s murder.

  One reason Solarno’s picture made the front page of the paper was because he was notorious around town, the way a bad bed of oysters is notorious. For years Solarno could be found at the center of any smut that was going on in New Orleans. If it took too long to get from one kind of smut to the next, Solarno invented his own. Or maybe he didn’t. Sometimes it was hard to tell. If there was a hot trial about to happen, you could start placing your bets that Solamo would be a witness for the prosecution, if not the star w
itness. Marty Solarno was a media hound, and he didn’t like it if too much time passed without his getting enough attention from the press. None of this, of course, guarantees that you’ll get a front-page story just because you’re murdered, not unless you happened to be both Angelesi’s and Callahan’s chief investigator.

  I knew Myra had been sleeping with Angelesi, and I didn’t like it. Myra’s profession and the fact that she wouldn’t give it up came close to unhinging me several times because I was in love with her and wanted to marry her. But I didn’t have enough money for Myra, and even though I moved back home to save for the big, fine house I was going to buy her, the truth of it was I probably never would have had enough money for Myra’s tastes. Okay, so Myra was mercenary, but she was also beautiful and smart, and no one had a better time than the two of us together. No one could laugh like Myra could laugh; no one could make me laugh like she did. But Myra got a little too mercenary for her own good.

  She told me that at the beginning Angelesi couldn’t get off unless he talked about power first, what a powerful district attorney he was. She thought it was funny. Gradually, he began to tell her exactly how powerful he was and what it meant to him in terms of cash. He was taking payoffs from the pinball people, from bookmakers, some large call-girl operations, a few drug dealers. He had even stooped to blackmailing a couple of judges who wanted their sexual preferences to remain closeted away from the public.

  But it was Marty Solarno who had the nose. Wherever there was a vice operation, he sniffed it out, collected the bribes, and got part of the take for his trouble. He even conducted a raid every once in a while. Maybe one of the reasons Solarno liked to keep a high profile was to keep from getting bumped off, because the amazing thing was that he hadn’t been taken out by someone before now. He did the dirty work so that Angelesi could keep his hands clean. Anyway, Myra decided that there was enough money being passed around that she deserved a few extra bucks for lending an ear.