My Juliet: A Novel

by John Ed Bradley

  “Darling,” he says in his beautiful way. “Darling, how splendid. You’ve come home.”

  Her throat is dry from the coke and it takes an effort to speak. “Daddy, this might sound funny but death has been good to you.”

  “Still look like Cary Grant, do I?”

  “Yes, Daddy. You look so young.”

  He’s facing outside, eyes trained on something in the distance. “Juliet, I heard what you said about the couch and me getting caught. I have to ask you: is that anybody’s business?”

  “I didn’t tell him who they caught you with.”

  “That’s private information.”

  “I know it is, that’s why I didn’t say it. Don’t be mad at me, Daddy.”

  “Then don’t give me a reason to be.” He turns away from the window and confronts her at last. Yes, it’s him, all right. His face is shiny and white, illumined by a source she can’t immediately locate. It is a while before she understands that her father looks exactly as he does in the Casselli portrait on the stairway. Same clothes, same hair, same everything. He might’ve stepped right out of the canvas.

  The light shining on him must come from the small lamp fixed to the frame.

  “Daddy, are you real?”

  “Of course I’m real, darling. Now go upstairs and kill your mother.”

  Juliet leaps to her feet, prepared to obey, but in that instant Johnny Beauvais disappears. He’s no longer at the window, anyway. Her father who until a minute ago was entombed in a crypt in a cemetery just up the street, its pale Italian marble now sugary with age, his name crawling with lichen. Her father who by now is a skeleton or, worse, dust.

  A crush of hopelessness drops Juliet back in the seat, and the sound of the chair legs meeting the yellow pine causes Leonard to stir. He props himself up and gives a yawn.

  “Damn, girl, you look like you saw a ghost.”

  Her heart feels as if someone with large hands is squeezing it and trying to make it stop.

  “Juliet?”

  “It was Daddy,” she says, her voice sounding jagged for the pain. “He told me something.”

  Through stop signs and traffic lights Sonny drives without braking, pushing the old truck harder than it seems willing to go. He stops only once: to deposit the gloves and ski mask in a Dumpster behind a Marigny soul food restaurant.

  In front of the Beauvais cars stand bumper to bumper by the curb, and a second line blocks the near lane. People crowd the fence peering past the iron bars and trees.

  Sonny parks about a hundred yards away on the opposite side of the boulevard and runs to the gate. It occurs to him that by running he’s likely to draw attention to himself so he slows to a walk and joins the onlookers at the gate. Past the fence men and women of an official capacity huddle under the trees while others dig around under shrubbery bordering the property. Crime scene tape hugs the columns in front of the house, running from one to another and forming a loose girdle. All together Sonny counts half a dozen patrol officers, one of whom stops him as he tries to squeeze inside. “You’re going to have to wait out here.”

  The cop grips Sonny’s elbow and leads him back to the sidewalk.

  Sonny lingers with the others at the fence until Anna Huey appears on the first-floor gallery, Peroux at her side. This time when Sonny tries to clear the gate the cop plugs the entrance with his body. He lifts a finger and starts to speak, it’s going to be a lecture, but Peroux calls out “Let him in,” and Sonny pushes inside.

  He and Anna Huey embrace on the lawn and she begins to weep and Peroux lumbers off and joins the others under the trees. “It isn’t true,” Sonny says.

  “It is, sugar. It is true. She’s dead. Madam’s dead.” Tears run down her face and her voice is tired and weak. “Five o’clock,” she says, holding up a hand spread open. “Five o’clock and I go to wake her up and I can feel it isn’t right. I pull the curtains open expecting to hear a good morning. Miss Marcelle always gave me a good morning.” Anna Huey shakes her head and squares her arms at her chest. “She wasn’t there. The bed’s been slept in, but empty. So I walk down the hallway and I see Juliet’s door open and madam inside lying real quiet on the floor.”

  “Jesus.”

  “They beat her, sugar. Beat her so hard whatever it was they did it with broke and rained pieces all over the room. Little white plastic pieces and sand and dirt maybe. Madam looked peaceful, though. Take the blood away and she looked fine. Like she was sleeping.”

  Sonny shoots a glance at Peroux and he’s dismayed to discover the detective fixed on him with a stare, his countenance dark and bothered, hair plastered close to his scalp. Like most of the cops on the scene, Peroux is wearing transparent booties over his shoes and latex gloves on his hands, the gloves barely extending past the heels of his palms.

  He lifts one of those hands and gives Sonny a wave.

  “That detective and another one came by my house looking for Juliet,” Sonny says.

  “I knew they were going to, I’m the one who told them she might be there. But the police . . . Lieutenant Peroux, anyway, he just told me they found her in a hotel downtown. She’s on her way now.”

  Sonny sees past the mansion’s open door where dieners from the coroner’s office are carrying a gurney with a black body bag down the stairs. As they near the bottom one of the men bumps the Vaudechamp, exposing a lighter shade of paint underneath than that which covers the rest of the wall. The men place the gurney on the ground floor, lift its bed and wheel the body to the back of the house where, just past another open door, an ambulance is waiting.

  Sonny is listening only halfway when Anna Huey says, “I blame myself. Why’d I have to call and tell that girl to come back home?” She pivots away from the house, unable to finish. “Sonny, what I told you yesterday . . . listen, sugar, I meant it, I meant every word. And I want you to know I told the detectives the same thing.”

  “Yeah?” He’s distracted, still watching the attendants with the body bag. Still wondering why the cop keeps watching him. “You told them what, Mrs. Huey?”

  “The truth.”

  She has his attention now. “And what is that?”

  “That she’s dangerous, to start. I also told them she’s not right in the head and hasn’t been for years. She’s even worse off now than Mr. Johnny was at the end.”

  “Mrs. Huey, with all due respect, it’s hardly your place to be talking to the police about Juliet like that.”

  “No? Well, with all due respect to you, Sonny, you’re ignorant. And I can tell them whatever I want. Somebody’s got to say it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Sonny, a few months ago Miss Marcelle and I hired an agency to locate Juliet and file a report about her whereabouts and activities. This agency was able to get Juliet’s medical papers, don’t ask me how. Would you like to know what we learned?”

  Sonny shakes his head. “No, ma’am, I don’t.”

  “Good. Because I’d have to go get my dictionary. Paranoia, narcissism, delusions, histrionics. They’re hard enough to say let alone to understand.”

  Sonny doesn’t speak and Anna Huey says, “Want to guess where I reached her to tell her that story about her mama being sick?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Now if this isn’t sad, now if this won’t break your heart. Juliet was at work, sugar. It was eleven o’clock in the morning, California time, and she had to come off the stage at a club called the Bend Over out by the airport.”

  “Doesn’t make her a killer,” Sonny says, his voice barely audible.

  “Oh, Sonny, I hate to hurt you, sugar, but your Juliet is gone forever.”

  Sonny needs a moment to think, to absorb it all. Too stunned to cry, he offers a quiet laugh to convey his disbelief.

  “Sonny, you need to get smart, baby. You’ve been in a trance, sugar. It’s like you’re hypnotized. It’s like some magician put you in a spell half your life ago and he never snapped his fingers to wake you back up.”


  “Mrs. Huey, Juliet was at home with me in the Bywater until early this morning. There’s no way she was involved in this.”

  She studies his face with a leery half-smile, and it’s clear she’d laugh if not for a lack of energy. “Sonny, sometimes, sugar, I think you’re more lost than she is.”

  “Mrs. Huey, Juliet was with me.”

  She doesn’t respond and Sonny can feel her pulling away.

  “She was with me,” he says again.

  But Anna Huey is walking toward the cops under the trees.

  Leonard parks around the corner and together they enter the Hummingbird and take the lone table by a window. She likes the view of the street with the train rails lying in parallel ribbons in the bricks and asphalt, and overhead the silver-black power line that fires the streetcars running the length of the avenue. The Hummingbird isn’t fancy enough for individual menus; a menu board, decorated with drawings of dancing steaks and pork chops, covers a wall in the room. “Crawfish étouffée,” Juliet says, without bothering to consult the board.

  The waiter points a stubby pencil at the wall. “I can give you fried shrimp. We serve étouffée only as a special.”

  Juliet gives her head a weary shake. “Ham and eggs, then. Coffee and toast and ice water and mixed-fruit jelly.”

  “The same,” Leonard tells the man. “But instead of the ham and eggs and coffee and toast and mixed-fruit jelly, let me have grits and bacon and biscuits and pineapple juice.”

  “You want the ice water?”

  “Yeah, give me the ice water.”

  “You ain’t even funny,” and Juliet draws on a cigarette. “Tell him he ain’t even funny,” she says to the waiter.

  But the waiter, writing on his pad, seems to like it well enough.

  They’re almost finished with the meal when Juliet says, “I figure I owe you for tonight. You can come up to the room and sleep with me if you want.”

  “I’m more in my man mood these days,” Leonard says, rubbing a piece of biscuit in the shallow pool of bacon grease on his plate. “But I do appreciate the invite.”

  “I said sleep, Leonard. I’m having my period.”

  “You just want me to sleep?”

  “I like a warm body in the bed with me.”

  Leonard pays with a credit card. He has one of those old-man wallets with rows of slits on both folds. His slits are full of cards.

  “Some people collect stamps,” she says. “Leonard Barbier? Leonard likes plastic.”

  He starts counting the cards, touching each one, eighteen altogether. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, it’s been fifteen years since my last confession.”

  “Speak to me, my son.”

  “My cards, Father? They belong to Big Leonard.”

  He didn’t finish his pineapple juice, so she reaches for it. “You stole your father’s wallet?”

  “It’s complicated.” He takes the glass out of her hand and drains the juice, then he chews on some ice. “Can I stop calling you Father now?”

  She nods and with a hand makes the sign of the cross in the air between them.

  “Well, and I hate this, I just hate it, but Big Leonard’s my sponsor. Or that’s how I’ve heard him refer to our arrangement. He’s my sponsor so long as I, quote unquote, stay out of the paper. Big Leonard, basically, is afraid he’ll pick up the Picayune one morning and read how Leonard Barbier III was arrested in the French Quarter and charged with crimes against nature or whatnot. That would put a serious dent in his lifestyle. He could lose a seat on one of his boards—the LSU board of supervisors, the board at the New Orleans Museum of Art. And what about his Carnival krewe? Oh, no, that just can’t happen. The world would end.”

  “I like that name, Big Leonard. It sounds like what somebody would call their penis. ‘Hi, there. Have you met Big Leonard?’”

  “Yes, well, the man’s a dick. You got that right.”

  Leonard didn’t finish the bacon either. She takes it and eats it all before he can think to protest. “I could forgive Mother a lot of things if she’d given me a wallet full of credit cards,” she says.

  “Believe me, it’s not something to be getting jealous about.”

  “Sure, it is. Your father’s sponsoring your experience as a degenerate white Negro playing jazz and living in a weekly/monthly and taking drugs and having out-of-wedlock relations with both men and women. It isn’t fair. Why won’t anyone sponsor me?” She’s talking with her mouth full. “The only thing Mama ever gave me was a giant case of the red ass. Just for that,” and it’s so much she’s afraid to swallow, “from here on out I’m going to call you Little Leonard.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Little Leonard.”

  “Say it again and everyone gets to hear what you did tonight.”

  “Little Leonard . . .”

  He starts to stand on his chair but she scrambles around the table and yanks him back down.

  In the room they strip to their underwear and dive under the covers and Juliet spoons with her chest pressed against his thin, unmuscled back. Although he smells of cooled sweat and grease and cigarette smoke she wouldn’t call the odor offensive. She closes her eyes and tries to sleep but sleep won’t come. As a girl her mother taught her to say the “Hail Mary” prayer over and over until the repetition lulled her to sleep but that doesn’t work now either. The window unit rumbles and from the avenue she hears horns blowing and trucks with wailing brakes and winos arguing over a bottle. The bottle breaks and the winos fall silent. Then a couple of car doors slam. But parking on the street below is for emergency vehicles only.

  Juliet knows it’s the police even before she hears voices and footsteps on the stairs and a busy knocking outside.

  “Five-O,” she whispers to Leonard.

  “Five who?” He lies on his belly and cocks his head her way.

  “Fuzz, baby. They’ve come to get us.”

  Leonard scrambles out of bed. He fishes around in his pant pockets and withdraws an empty vial and what’s left of a joint, then he stumbles into the bathroom and flushes them down the toilet.

  Juliet answers the door in her underwear.

  “Miss Beauvais?” It’s a male black who in the right light could pass for a male white. “Are you Miss Juliet Beauvais?”

  Juliet nods.

  “Miss Beauvais, I’m NOPD, Lieutenant Peroux? This here is Sergeant Lentini.” Juliet glances at the silent one and he removes his golf hat and looks at the floor. “I’m afraid we’ve come with bad news,” says the talker. “Miss Beauvais, somebody broke into your mother’s house last night and attacked her.” He waits for the long beat of a heart then says, “She’s dead.”

  “Mama?” Juliet throws a hand up to her mouth and stifles a scream. A spasm cuts through her, then a second more powerful one. “Oh, God. Mama.”

  Leonard, standing at the bathroom door, lets out a yelp.

  “Mother’s dead, sweetie,” she tells him.

  “Mother’s dead?” Struggling to get his pants on, Leonard nearly falls to the floor as he hurries out to join her. “I mean, your mother’s dead, Juliet? My God, what happened?”

  “She was murdered,” says Peroux. “Mrs. Huey found her early this morning.”

  “Who found her?” But then, oh yeah, it comes to her. “I’m just not accustomed to a cleaning woman being called like that,” Juliet explains.

  Peroux is staring at Leonard. “Who are you?”

  “He’s my boyfriend, Detective,” Juliet says.

  “This one’s your boyfriend? I thought Sonny LaMott was your boyfriend.”

  Leonard stutters when he says, “I’m her friend who’s a boy.”

  Lentini, looking up finally, seems to decide it’s okay now to put his hat back on.

  “You got a name, friend-who’s-a-boy?” asks Peroux.

  “Leonard Barbier,” Leonard says.

  “Who?”

  “His name is Leonard Barbier. Now if you don’t mind, Lieutenant, I’d like to get dre
ssed.”

  “You ain’t Leonard Barbier,” Peroux says. “Leonard Barbier, I know Leonard Barbier. Leonard Barbier’s a lawyer here in town. Got a big office in the CBD.”

  “I’m Leonard the Third,” Leonard says.

  Peroux is still glaring at him when he says, “Miss Beauvais, would it put you out terribly to have Sergeant Lentini and myself look around your room?”

  “Why do you want to look around my room?”