Women of the Mean Streets

by J. M. Redmann

  “Did you ever go anywhere, take a trip?”

  The short answer was that they once went up to Baton Rouge to one of the cheap motels there. The long answer was…oh, never mind.

  A mountain of grease was placed in front of us. Butch waved for another pitcher of beer.

  According to her the only reason Bayard stayed in the area was because his mother needed him. I’d say the nouns were reversed, that he needed his mother, the money doled out from his father’s large life insurance policy, her cooking, cleaning for him, and generally reflecting him at twice his size—no, this was Bayard—ten times his size. She thought he might have mentioned moving to Florida. Or maybe it was California. Some place where the sun was always shining.

  I could confine my search to below the Mason-Dixon Line. That was helpful.

  “Oh, yeah, there was one weird thing,” Melva-Raylene said.

  I waited for the long story.

  “He said somethin’ about having to get to the cemetery ’fore it closed. That last time I saw him. I was asking him when I’d get my money and I told him he could at least buy me somethin’ to eat, but he said that he didn’t have time, that he had to get out to the cemetery ’fore closing.”

  She stopped long enough to eat a hush puppy.

  “Did he say which cemetery?”

  “Don’t remember,” she said, chewing with her mouth open. “Just that he wanted to beat the rush hour and get there…”

  “Before it closed,” I finished for her so she could concentrate on her chewing.

  I graciously offered the rest of my fries—I think I managed to eat two of them—to Butch and Melva-Raylene. I left two twenties on the table, more than enough to pay the bill, but there was at least one child at home and one on the way and maybe some of the change would be used for them.

  I knew why Bayard would go to a cemetery. To find a grave of someone born around the time he was and who had died, so he could take that person’s identity.

  As I drove away from Kenner I considered—I could start a rock rolling—tell Aunt Greta about her grandchild, but couldn’t see where it would end. Would she, could she, be of any help to this child? Or would it be a tug-of-war, with winning more important to both sides then the care of a kid? If they thought Bayard was rich, one look at the nice house of Aunt Greta’s might cause them to leech onto her. Even if they were willing to give the kid up—and I’d bet that Butch would be willing to hand over another man’s child for the right price—it wasn’t likely that Bayard would be more of a father then he was now. That would leave the care of a toddler to Aunt Greta, and she wasn’t young. That could be hell for both of them—her tired and demanding rules to be obeyed and a kid who had the energy to outlast her in the daily battles.

  The taste of revenge wasn’t quite so sweet now, I thought as I walked to my car. I doubted that Butch would be able to live off whatever they were able to squeeze out of Bayard, but he was truly a weasel to slime out of supporting a kid he’d fathered. At least part of my revenge would be to right that wrong. And, then…just let everything else fall whatever way it would.

  A glance at my watch told me that it was likely that the cemetery was, in Melva-Raylene’s immortal words, “not yet closed.” That was one of the reasons her stories were so long, she said the same thing over and over again.

  It was a guess, but he was my cousin and, much as I didn’t like him, I did know him. He was lazy. That meant he went to the closest cemetery, one near the house that I didn’t really want to return to. Long shot, but maybe his laziness was to my advantage, he’d start nearest to where he parked his car and find one or two possible names. It was a nice afternoon and I was willing to try my odds before stopping again at that ugly house.

  Metairie Cemetery was just off I-10 and, for Bayard’s sake and mine, also close to Aunt Greta’s house in Old Metairie. I’d give it about an hour; get some sunshine and vitamin D, so the afternoon wouldn’t be a total waste.

  But the gods of lost / skipped-town cousins were with me.

  “That guy? Yeah, he was acting weird,” the first groundskeeper I showed his picture to said.

  “Weird? How?” It’s important to ask incisive questions in the detective business.

  “Wandering around, looking at grave markers, taking pictures on his cell phone of a few of them. Asked him if I could help him find someone and he got weasely on me, gave some story about being a photographer and wanting to take pictures of the graves before they got washed away. So I asked where his cameras were and he spun a story about them being stolen. He claimed to be from out of town, but with a New Orleans accent so thick, you could use it to make a roux.”

  I laughed as he expected me to; that was obviously a line he’d used before.

  “I kept a good eye on him, let me tell you,” he continued. “But he just wandered for a little while more, took a few more pictures and then left.”

  “Do you remember where he was looking?” I asked.

  He pointed out the area. As I suspected, it was as close to the parking lot as it could be for him to find anything useful.

  “You got any idea what he was doing?”

  I told him.

  “Damn. Some people got the nerve. Don’t like him disturbing folks resting here. He a criminal or something?”

  I didn’t see any point in lying to the groundskeeper. “He owes some money, child support, and seems to have skipped out on it. I’ve been hired to find him.”

  “Damn. Thought there was something hinky about him. Guess I was right,” he said as he walked with me to where he’d seen Bayard.

  He helped me look once I told him what to search for.

  We searched for about half an hour. The groundskeeper was pretty sure we’d covered the area where he’d seen Bayard. We came up with five possible names:

  Leslie Gruberston

  Melvin Weinberger

  Frankton V. Alzimer III

  Dirk Westen

  Alvin deLeaux

  I thanked the groundskeeper for his help and headed back to my car. Before I started it, I looked over the list of names. Leslie could be used as a woman’s name, so he wasn’t likely to use that one. My cousin had many prejudices, one of them against the Jews taking over the world, so he probably wouldn’t take the second name. The third was distinctive, probably too much so. Ah, number four. I’d bet Bayard wouldn’t mind being a Dirk. Plus it was the shortest name and therefore the easiest to spell and remember. It’s not a good thing to be unable to spell your own name.

  The days were getting longer, so it was still light when I again arrived at that repulsive house. Still no lights on. No one home.

  By now I was pretty sure that with Aunt Greta still up in Shreveport and Bayard in either California or Florida—or maybe Texas or Arizona, some sunny state—there would be no one around to ask what I was doing here. Even though Aunt Greta had hired me—to do her a favor—I suspected that she wouldn’t be happy at my snooping in her house. Which is why I wasn’t going to ask her permission or tell her I did it.

  I was hoping that Bayard was lazy and sloppy enough to have searched on the computer here for new places to live.

  It was almost too easy. I was beginning to suspect that he was deliberately laying down a false trail to mislead me.

  Except that he wouldn’t have guessed that Aunt Greta might be desperate enough to find her oldest son to ask me to look for him. And he’d always made it clear that he thought I was stupid, that he was the clever one. He wasn’t likely to think I would be smart enough to find him.

  And if it had been anyone outside the family, it would have been much harder to trace him. Aunt Greta wouldn’t have cooperated on letting someone into her house—like I was now.

  Plus who would have guessed that his password was “freesafety” for his one moment of football glory, when as a second-string defensive player, a pass was tipped right into his hands and he managed to run it back for a touchdown.

  That was my third attempt at his
password; the first was his name, the second “password” and the third the charm.

  So I was now sitting staring at his Internet searches in the days before he left.

  South Florida. Fort Lauderdale, Miami.

  I was ruthless. I went through his e-mails. He was corresponding with a twenty-something in Fort Lauderdale, spinning a tale of woe, destruction from Katrina, how he had pulled people off their roofs, seen bodies eaten by alligators (all this while driving Aunt Greta up to Shreveport two days before the storm hit). He’d lost his family, his sainted mother, and was all alone in the world. He wanted to go someplace safe—like the south Florida coast wasn’t just waiting for a storm to sucker punch it.

  He had researched short-term rentals in the Fort Lauderdale area, plus had listing for several apartments there as well. I printed out all the pages with the addresses on them. Once I was done, I turned off the computer and printer, wiped away my fingerprints—not likely that anyone would look, but better a suspiciously clean keyboard than evidence that I had technically broken and entered.

  I didn’t want to stay any longer than I had to. There were still too many memories in these walls. There would always be too many here. I hastily left, almost taking the spare key instead of hiding it back under the very fake rock.

  Once I was in my car and heading for the sanctity of Orleans Parish, I contemplated my options. I had followed the data, not really thinking about where it would lead me. Aunt Greta hadn’t asked me to uncover evidence that her son was a crook and could go to jail.

  I could drop it and tell her I hadn’t been able to find anything. Let him disappear. To a place where once he fell—and he would, the money wouldn’t last forever—there would be no one there to catch him. Let Aunt Greta live with a hole in her life like she’d left me—telling my mother I had died because my mother wasn’t what she considered a proper person.

  Or I could turn what I knew over to the police—and Mr. Stolen Porsche, Alpha Al, and Butch the baby maker, let them become the furies of my revenge.

  I could dump everything on Aunt Greta’s lap; let her know her son had jettisoned her without a backward glance when he concluded he didn’t need her anymore.

  What I would do was go home, sleep on it, and hope that somehow an answer arrived in the night.

  The answer arrived about midmorning the next day.

  A client needed some majorly important documents delivered to Naples. Florida, not Italy. A quick look at a map told me that Naples was about a two-hour drive across the Everglades from Fort Lauderdale. I would leave tomorrow, and it was okay with them if I took an extra day or two once I had delivered the documents.

  The phone rang and I didn’t answer it. It was Aunt Greta. She left a message asking if I’d found Bayard yet. I waited until I was pretty sure she’d be out—she always did her errands after two in the afternoon—and called back. I was right, or lucky, and only had to leave a message, telling her that I hadn’t located him just yet but had some very promising leads and I’d call her in a couple of days.

  The rest of the day was spent getting ready to travel. I made arrangements to rent a car for a few days. My client was okay covering a night in Fort Lauderdale instead of Naples. I couldn’t fly back the same day even if I wanted to, so that cost was built into his job. Far fewer planes came into New Orleans now, and if it wasn’t a trip to Atlanta or Houston, the options were limited.

  I made copies of everything I had on Bayard; I’d need the VIN should I stumble over a shiny red Porsche. Plus a couple more copies of his picture in case the police wanted several.

  My plan was to fly into Naples, drop off the documents, then head east to Fort Lauderdale. If planes and traffic were kind, I’d be there by late afternoon. A quick check into my hotel, then prowl some of the addresses Bayard had left on his computer, just to see if I got lucky. In the morning, I’d find a wireless hotspot and do a run on the names he might be using; see if that netted me anything. If I had some leads I might stay an extra day and run them down; if not, I’d get a flight out the next day.

  “Vengeance is mine,” I murmured as I headed up the stairs at home.

  “What did you say?” Cordelia, my partner, was home. Early for her.

  As I came into the bedroom, I amended, “I was just musing on the ways karma comes around. You’re home early.”

  She made a face. “I’m taking a quick nap. I agreed to cover for Lynn this evening.”

  “You’re too kind,” I said as I rummaged for the small duffel bag in the closet.

  “She’s taking next weekend for me.” Many doctors hadn’t come back after Katrina, so it was easy—sometimes too easy—for Cordelia to find work. “Are you going somewhere?” she asked.

  “Courier. To Naples. Leaving tomorrow.”

  She glanced at the four pairs of underwear I was stuffing into the duffel.

  “And…a little side trip.” I told her about Aunt Greta’s request.

  “You’re going to find your cousin?” she asked, her voice neutral, but her eyes showing worry.

  I explained, “He’s fled town, probably stole a nice new Porsche from a neighbor, skipped out on child support, and looted his last gainful employer. Plus abandoned his poor widowed mother. He doesn’t want to be found. I’m going to find him.” Then I added, “Or else he’s dead and I need to find him so I can spit on his grave.”

  “I thought I heard you saying something about vengeance as you came up the stairs.”

  “Finally. I have power over him. This dish of revenge will be served well chilled.”

  “Oh, Micky,” she said, “be careful what you ask for.” She hugged me as if she could see a ghost that I couldn’t, then said, “I do need to take a nap or I’ll be useless tonight.”

  “I’ll be quiet,” I promised. Then added, “The weekend off…is for us to be together?”

  “Yes,” she said as she got in bed. “For us.” Now she smiled at me.

  “Good, I’d like that,” I answered as I turned off the light to let her sleep.

  The plane was on time, the rental car ready, the office to drop the documents easy to find, then I was leaving the palm trees of Naples to the ribbon of road through the Everglades.

  It took me a little over two hours to get to Fort Lauderdale. I’d grown up in the old South, clapboard houses with shady overhanging trees. This was the new South, tall buildings all promising beach views or lagoon views, or some water somewhere views—“you can see your bathtub from the living room.” It struck me as all plastic and concrete, and I felt older than every building in the city. Palm trees were planted evenly, clearly hauled in and put in their place rather than growing because nature dropped a random seed there.

  I know I’m biased, but give me my old beat-up city with its history written in the old walls, cobblestoned streets, and oak tree roots winning against the sidewalks trying to contain them.

  The hotel was easy to find. It had a view of one of the canals. After unpacking, I took the time to find the addresses Bayard had left on a map and plotted a route from the hotel past them all.

  It’s sad that I know my cousin so well, I thought as I cruised by the first address. He wouldn’t live here. There was a store across the street with a name in Spanish and more than a smattering of people whose dark skin tones didn’t come from the beach.

  The second place was more promising, but I noticed a security cop out front. Big, black, and mean looking. His color might not stop Bayard—security was menial in his mind—but the scrutiny might. He wouldn’t want someone observing his comings and goings.

  The third place seemed a little downscale for his vanity. It was painted a festive pink but that didn’t hide its cinder block construction. A small two-story row, with outside steps that led to a walkway that would be called a balcony in the real estate ads. If he was smart this was the kind of place he would stay. But an expensive red sports car would stick out. The parking ringed the outside, so I drove by both sides, but saw only beige or silver cars.<
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  The next place was probably where he wanted to live, an expensive location right on the beach. The parking was hidden so I couldn’t look for the telltale car, but I bet that it wasn’t the kind of place that allowed just anyone to move in, especially someone with no job, no recommendations from previous landlords, and an oily manner.

  The next two were also on the beach, also in the expensive category. An unctuous smile and a few months’ rent weren’t going to be enough to get him a place in either of those.

  I had four more to go, but it was getting late; I hadn’t eaten lunch and this driving around seemed pointless. He knew what he wanted, but he didn’t seem to understand that he couldn’t get there on the route he was traveling. These kinds of places were for doctors or lawyers or MBAs, people who spent time in school and worked hard so they could eventually get the place on the beach. His list was probably what he wanted, not what he could have. I’d do better going back to the hotel, firing up the computer and searching his bogus names. And eating lunch. He wasn’t worth being hungry over.

  The next to last one on the list was on the way back to the hotel, so I left the main artery to give it a pass. It was a new construction, but well landscaped so it didn’t look like all the trees had been mowed down to make way for a building. There was a fairly large swimming pool. No red car. But in the balcony of the end apartment there were several empty beer bottles left sitting on the small table. Abita beer, a local New Orleans brand. Bayard liked his beer and was too lazy to pick up after himself.

  But I was hungry and it was time to return to my old friend the computer and cease traveling for one day. And appease my grumbling stomach.

  Lunch was good, a grilled grouper sandwich, but the computer was not friendly. It had been barely a week at most since he’d left town, of course he hadn’t legally registered his car—I wondered if he even had insurance—or appeared on the voting roles or any other public record. Nothing for Dirk Westen or any of the other names he stole from graves. Bayard Robedeaux only appeared where it was likely to appear, back in New Orleans. The fruitless computer search took up the remainder of the waning afternoon.