Louisiana Lament

by Julie Smith

  Sighing, he said, “Audrey, what do you think of a girl who says ‘blow job’ to her father?”

  “Ya dreamin’, Eddie,” she answered. “She probably said ‘blow dry’ or somethin’.”

  Shaking his head, he decided to call Theresa Salvatore while he still had the phone in his hand, and a crumb of ambition. Theresa had been the bartender at Pete’s last time he’d been in there, and many years before that—and he’d be pretty surprised if she wasn’t still. He didn’t have her home number, but he did have Pete’s unlisted one—which was its only number. If you had it, you could call there and tell your old man to come home, but you couldn’t get it unless Theresa liked you. You also had to ring the doorbell to get in. The place was like a private club for the neighborhood—as well as for every fireman who lived or worked Uptown. It was in the Irish Channel, coincidentally on Chippewa, Rashad’s old street, but far upriver from his old neighborhood. Not that it wasn’t in a dicey area—hence the locked door—but it was quite a few steps up from the part of Chippewa near the old project.

  Being a neighborhood bar and a firemen’s bar, it was exactly the kind of place a phony-baloney like Hunt Montjoy would go to avoid Yuppie scum—and to convince himself of his own authenticity. How he’d found out about it, Eddie had no idea. He’d have had to be taken there, as Eddie had been himself, by some buddies who lived in the Irish Channel. Eddie still went there now and then for Monday night football, or just to have a drink with his old buddies. If it wasn’t so far from home, he’d probably have brought Audrey so they could hang with Theresa, who was like the Mother Superior of the neighborhood. Probably half the clientele came in just to pass the time of day with her.

  Theresa was what Montjoy would probably call a character—but the truth was, she was like all the women Eddie’d grown up with in the Ninth Ward, and she was a lot like Audrey, and half the other women in New Orleans, including plenty who’d been born Uptown and never crossed the Industrial Canal. She was bright as a bauble—though in a street-smart kind of way—sexy at sixty-three, observant as Sherlock Holmes, and about as quiet and ladylike as Joan Rivers on speed. And a lot funnier, in Eddie’s opinion. There were other similarities as well—she probably spent as much time and money on grooming and jewelry. Her nails were perfectly painted lethal weapons, the better to show off her many rings, and her ink-black hair was always piled into the kind of up-do invented in the ’50s and kept alive in the salons of New Orleans. She was the only woman he knew who could swear all day and all night and it wouldn’t even faze him.

  She had one kid at Harvard med school, and another at the University of North Carolina.

  An unfamiliar male voice answered the phone, probably a customer. “Theresa there?” he asked, not even wasting a “hello.”

  In turn, the guy didn’t waste a “Sure, just a minute.” The next voice he heard was Theresa’s. “Hey, dawlin’,” he said. “Eddie Valentino.”

  “Eddie Eight-Inch.” It was what they called him in Pete’s, and it had nothing to do with anyone there having seen him naked, and everything to do with his job. They went in for nicknames there, arrived at after four or more Buds, but unfortunately never forgotten. “Hey, dawlin’ ” she repeated. “How’s the dick business?”

  “Can’t complain,” he lied. He could probably complain three weeks straight about the last week alone. “Might bring me to your place one night this week.”

  “Oh, yeah? Frank Martzell’s wife cheating on him again? Don’t bother. If she is, she’s not doin’ it here.”

  “Naah, so far as I know, she’s behavin’ herself. Ya know a guy named Hunt Montjoy?”

  “Oh, that guy. Whatcha think of some jerkoff grabs the good-sized behind of a sixty-three-year-old married woman?”

  “A real gentleman, is he? Well, don’t take it too personally—his reputation precedes him.”

  “I’m not s’posed to take my own butt personally? Listen, if that asshole and his prissy little Tulane friend never darkened my door again, it’d be about three weeks too soon. He makes Heather look good. You know Heather, that skinny little bitch from down the street? Comes in here, wiggles her itty-bitty ass, points at my firemen, who I love like Godiva chocolate, which, by the way, is always welcome here, dawlin’, and says, ‘Can’t ya make those guys shut up? I come in for a quiet drink, I want quiet.’ I say, ‘Heather, this ain’t no funeral parlor, and it ain’t no Sunday school—this is a bar room, in case you didn’t happen to notice,’ and then I go tell my firemen what she said. This one big guy, Jimmy O’Connor, you know him? Well, Jimmy hollers out, ‘What bitch said that?’ And Heather turns every color in the Crayon box. Didn’t keep her from comin’ in again, though.” Theresa sighed.

  Eddie said, “What little Tulane friend?”

  “I don’t know, some twerp of a professor wears pin stripes meets him here for story conferences. They’re s’posed to be writin’ a screenplay together. You beat that? A screenplay. Like this is the bar at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and they gotta come here to show off their Armani jeans and talk loud on their cell phones and sip Perrier.” She snorted. “Not that they do.”

  “Not that they do what?”

  “Any of the above. No Armani, no cell phones, definitely no Perrier. Uh-uh. We’re talkin’ Jack Daniel’s, and vodka and cranberry juice. Pink drink! My gay boys, who I loooove like fine champagne, which, by the way, dawlin’, is always welcome here, order pink drink. This little twerp ain’t gay, though. So tight-assed, if he was, he couldn’t even get laid.”

  Even from Theresa, this was too much for Eddie. “Nice talk, kid.”

  “Whaddaya want, Eddie? Did I mention this ain’t no Sunday school I’m runnin’?”

  “The twerp named Wayne, by any chance?”

  “Eddie Eight-Inch! Dick of my dreams. Now how the hell did you know that?”

  “Trick of the trade, dawlin’. And it’s not Tulane, it’s UNO.”

  “Ah, hell, I know it’s UNO. He just seems like he oughta be from Tulane.”

  “So when do the tinsel twins come in?”

  “Tuesday nights, usually. Sometimes they do Monday night football and then ‘work’ afterward—more like, play with themselves. I mean anybody can say they’re a writer, right? Why the hell would you work in a bar?”

  “Probably isn’t Wayne’s choice. It’d be Montjoy’s thing, though.”

  “You got that right. Man’s a lush. Now, he’s here just about every night. Days, too, sometimes.”

  “Do me a favor, Theresa. If I come in to see him, you don’t know me, okay? And you never heard of that Eight-Inch thing.”

  “Two little words, babe.”

  Eddie sighed. “Chocolate and champagne.”

  “Not just any chocolate, dawlin’.”

  “Right. Godiva.” He’d have to have the stuff sent. How was he supposed to be a stranger if he came in with an armload of gifts?

  He’d get Eileen Fisher to figure it out.

  He got to the office at eight a.m. on Monday, an hour early, and already Ms. Wallis had a bug up her butt. He hadn’t even had his coffee when she exploded into his office like one of those Fourth of July starburst things, all shiny and everywhere at once, and a little scary. The good part was, she carried two cups. “Guess who I just saw?”

  He wasn’t up to caring yet. “One of those for me?”

  She set a cup on his desk. “Rashad’s who I saw. And let me tell you something—he doesn’t want to be found. He made me chase him.”

  Eddie took a hot, sweet sip. Ahh. Better. “Ya tellin’ me ya let him get away?”

  “Forgot my Nikes. Also—” She bent down and rubbed her leg. “I twisted my ankle. Otherwise, it would never have happened.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it. Where was he?”

  “Did I mention I saw his grandfather Thursday? Come to think of it, we’ve got quite a bit of catching up to do. Grandpa’s pretty far gone, but he said, go look for Rashad at the hiring halls, so I did. And bingo, there he was.”

/>   “Which one? That one on Saint Charles?”

  “Yeah. He doesn’t have a car, so I thought—”

  “Uh-huh. That’s why ya got a PI license. He was there, huh?”

  “ ‘Was’ is the operative word. He recognized me and hauled glutes. Another thing—according to Grandpa, he killed his mother.”

  Eddie set his cup down hard enough to splash coffee—and he needed every drop of it. “That’s it. The case is closed, Ms. Wallis. We take Austin in to corroborate Janessa’s story, and that’s the last move we make. That little pissant doesn’t want to hold still for us, let the white po-lice have him.”

  “I was kind of thinking that, too. I mean, we never did know what the juvenile record was about. History of violence… I don’t know…”

  “Ya tell Crockett about Celeste Street?”

  “I thought you were going to.”

  “Forgot. I’ll tell him both things when we take Austin in—about that and the hiring hall.”

  “I doubt Rashad’ll go back to either place.”

  “Hell with it. That’s Crockett’s problem.”

  “Look,” Talba said. “One other thing, just for the record. What if Cassie and Allyson were both involved with Hunt Montjoy?”

  “I’d say they had a pretty dysfunctional family going.”

  “Well, there’s a new insight.”

  “Don’t get smart, Ms. Wallis.”

  “Sorry, I was just agreeing with you. It kind of sheds a different light on murder-suicide, though.”

  “Not our problem, Ms. Wallis. Somethin’ wrong with ya hearing?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Eddie arrived at Allyson’s early, about half-worried he’d have to tell Austin he couldn’t go to the cop shop wearing an aloha shirt and shorts. But he was pleasantly surprised to find the biker attired in jeans and a polo shirt—not exactly suitable for the White House, but fine for the Second District on a random Monday. Angela, Eddie thought. She’d want him looking like a credible witness and wouldn’t have been shy about telling him so.

  Speaking of which, the first words out of Austin’s mouth were, “Where’s Angie?” He actually looked in the backseat, as if he expected to find her bound and gagged on the floor.

  “She’s meeting us there. She’ll go in and talk to Crockett with you—I’m just along to make sure this damn thing gets done.”

  “You don’t have to worry. Miss Valentino says ‘pogo stick,’ I make like a wallaby.”

  “Don’t we all, Mr. Edwards.” Eddie couldn’t help heaving a deep sigh. “Don’t we all.”

  “Hey, call me Austin, Eddie. We’re all family here.”

  God help us, Eddie thought, wondering if Austin was twitting him, or if it had just slipped out. The latter, he decided—surely you wouldn’t deliberately anger the man who was currently driving you to the police station.

  Angie was waiting outside the Second in her accustomed all-black lawyer drag, prompting Austin to break into a great big boyish grin. “Ah, the dominatrix look.” Apparently, he liked it.

  “Hey, Austin. Hey, Dad,” she said. “Crockett’s waiting for us.”

  Austin said, “You know I’m doing this for you.”

  “Ya better do it for yaself,” Eddie snapped.

  Crockett greeted him with a handshake. “EdDEE! How’s the lovely Audrey? Listen, we’ll get your statement, too. Boudreaux’s gonna interview ya.” He cocked his head at the others. “You two come with me.”

  So Eddie spent an hour telling about his two trips to Port Sulphur, and their subsequent sumptuous brunch with a murder suspect, while Crockett grilled Austin—to whatever extent Angie permitted.

  Afterward, Angela came and got him. “Dad, come with me. Austin, you wait for us.”

  “What’s up?”

  “I’m going to let Crockett tell you. He wants Janessa to plead out.”

  She led him to the room she and Austin had recently vacated, where Crockett sat complacently, hands folded on a table. “Tell him, Reuben.”

  Crockett said, “Y’all have a seat.”

  They had a seat. Crockett said, “Eddie, it looks pretty bad for your client.”

  “Yeah, yeah. That’s what you guys always say. Whatcha got, Reuben?”

  “Look, we’ve got two witnesses saying the same thing, but that doesn’t prove anything—you know as well as I do that your client could have been killing Cassie while Rashad and Allyson were still smoochin’ on the patio.”

  “Objection, Reuben,” Angie said. “Nobody was smooching.”

  “This ain’t court, Miss Valentino.” Crockett unclasped his hands and leaned forward. “Look, ya know about the glass over at Cassie’s with Allyson’s prints on it?”

  “So?”

  “So it came from Allyson’s house. That is, it’s the same design as her other glasses, and Cassie didn’t have any others like it.”

  “Whatcha gettin’ at, Reuben?”

  “Wouldn’t you infer from that that the glass was planted?”

  “Not necessarily, but so what if it was?”

  “Well, Allyson’s prints weren’t the only ones on it—we’ve got two good ones belong to your client.”

  “Janessa?”

  “Ya got two clients here, Eddie?”

  Eddie was trying to assimilate it. What the hell did this mean? He remembered LaBauve saying Crockett had something else, something he was waiting to spring on him. He must have decided now was as good a time as any to squeeze Janessa’s side.

  “Suppose,” Crockett said, “somebody was trying to make this thing look like murder-suicide? And that somebody left her prints on the evidence she was trying to plant?”

  “Give me a break, man. That doesn’t fly and you know it. There could be a million other explanations for that.” But at the moment he could only think of one: Janessa had been dumb enough to leave prints on the glass.

  “Tell ya the truth, I like it,” Crockett said. “We’ve gotten convictions on less.”

  Eddie stood up. “The hell you have. Why don’t you go arrest her if you’re so sure?”

  “Eddie, I’m giving you and ya lovely daughter a chance here—you can still get the kid a good deal.”

  Eddie looked at his daughter. “Angie? Your call.”

  She nodded, as if she needed his approval like she needed another ten pounds. “Thanks, Dad.” She stood and offered Crockett her hand. “With all due respect, Reuben, you can go to hell.”

  “Angie, for Christ’s sake,” Eddie said.

  “Ah, relax, Eddie,” the cop replied. “Angie and I are old sparring partners. I know she means no offense.” He turned toward Angie. “And none taken, good-lookin’.” He winked at her.

  Eddie knew she wouldn’t have permitted either the compliment or the wink if she hadn’t been out of line.

  “I was just giving y’all a chance,” Crockett said again. He walked them to the stairway. “Y’all have a good day now.”

  At the last minute, Eddie remembered about Rashad. “Oh, Reuben, by the way, I’ve got something for you. You know my associate, Ms. Wallis? She’s spotted Rashad twice—he’s been camping out at the Celeste Street Wharf. And he’s looking for work at that hiring hall near Lee Circle. Don’t say I never gave you anything.”

  Not giving Crockett a chance to answer, he turned and joined the others.

  He and Angie made Austin sit in the car while they hashed it out. “Whaddaya think?” Eddie said.

  “I think we’d better get Talba and go see the little bitch.”

  Eddie winced. “For once, I gotta agree with ya nomenclature. Meet ya at the office? I gotta drop Austin.”

  Angie looked at her watch and sighed. “The things I do for free.”

  “Ya got nothin’ on me—I’m the resident expert on that one.”

  ***

  Talba was feeling a huge sense of accomplishment, having spent the morning putting ice on her ankle and catching up on routine employment checks and sweetie snoops. She’d taken Eddie seriously abo
ut dropping the case; it was good to devote a few moments to clients with the odd coin in their jeans. And her ankle was a whole lot better.

  Whatever she expected of Eddie when he came back from the cop shop, it wasn’t what she got—which was more or less a fire-spewing dragon. Expletive-spewing, at any rate, and that just wasn’t like Eddie. Angie was with him and she wasn’t much calmer. Instead of spewing, she withdrew into some tight, grim space like its own little low-pressure area, a storm just waiting to blow.

  Talba stood when she saw them, thinking Austin had split on them again. “What’s the matter?”

  “Get that sister of yours on the phone. Now!”

  “Okay. And then what?”

  “Tell her ya got somethin’ real exciting to tell her and ya’ll be right over.”

  “And will I?”

  “Oh, yeah. We all will. Might take all three of us, but we’re definitely gon’ wring her lyin’ little neck.”

  Talba looked from one Valentino to the other and decided whatever was going down was real—neither of these people was stupid, and they so often disagreed that if they agreed for once, Talba figured she probably did, too. And when all was said and done, she owed Eddie a lot more loyalty than she did her sister, who might indeed be a lying little bitch. In fact, there was very little evidence to the contrary.

  Janessa picked up on the first ring.

  Talba said, “Hey, I’ve got news. I’m coming over right away.”

  “Wait a minute. I’m not home.”

  “Oh. Then where are you?”

  “I’m paintin’—workin’ a job with Marlon, Uptown.”

  “Where Uptown?”

  “Jefferson and Magazine. Real nice house we paintin’. Whyn’cha come on over? Maybe you could take me to lunch. I’m gettin’ pretty hungry.”

  “Good idea. Give me the address.” Talba felt like a traitor.

  “We’ll go in my car,” Eddie said.

  “Uh-uh,” Angie replied. “I might need to leave sometime between the flaying and the drawing and quartering.”

  “Ms. Wallis, you go with her,” Eddie said. “I don’t trust myself to talk right now.”

  When they were barreling down Magazine Street, trying to keep up with a furious Eddie, Talba said, “Angie, what’s up?”