by Chris Wiltz
Lucy, she said, kept very irregular hours, so that Eva wasn't sure whether she'd been in the shop or not during the past week. That, the way she dressed, and her posses-siveness when she talked about Garber or the bookstore had led Eva to assume that they were having a sexual relationship. She said she did not speak to either of them very often and did not know them very well.
The NOPD was on the scene quickly. I was unlocking the door for the lab boys when Roderick Rankin lumbered up.
“I rushed right over when I heard you'd called in a homicide, Neal.” He went past me unhurriedly, straight back to Garber's office, elephantine in his light gray summer suit.
I waited in the carriageway and cursed my luck and a damn town where you can't go anywhere without running into someone you know. If I'd had to find Garber's body, why couldn't I have done it on his day off?
Rankin is no ordinary cop to me. He just happens to be one of the old man's best friends. The old man had been on the force a few years when he and Rankin were assigned to the same car. From then on he was Rankin's mentor, leading the way in rank until they ended up on Homicide together. Rankin had been in on many of our family discussions, and he had notably contributed to the idea that I was ruining my life trying to get the dope on Angelesi. He was the first to suggest that I resign from the police department before I was fired. I wondered if he was in on the old man's latest plan for my improvement.
He joined me in the carriageway. “What a way to start the week, huh, Neal?” His eyelids were heavy, dopey looking. He gazed at me from underneath them.
“You said it, Uncle Roddy.”
“You touch anything?”
“Uncle Roddy!”
He had a silent laugh, but you could tell he was amused because air rushed out of his nose and his jowls shook. “Just checking, just checking on you, Neal.” He waited for me to say something, but I just stood there trying to look like I appreciated his sense of humor. “Who gave you the key?”
I told him. His bushy eyebrows drew together.
“She your client?”
“She isn't paying me, if that's what you mean.”
“Why'd she give you the key, then?”
“She told me her father was missing and gave me the key.”
“He isn't on the missing persons list.”
I shrugged.
“So why'd she call you in?” he demanded.
“She did not call me in, Uncle Roddy.”
His eyelids got so heavy I thought he was going to sleep. “Okay, Neal, let's have the background on this.”
I took a deep breath. “Look, Uncle Roddy, I think I owe it to my client to talk to him first.”
He blew air out of his nose and shook his jowls. “Neal, Neal.” He put his fingertips on his chest. “This is me, your Uncle Roddy, Neal. You can tell me. Everything,” he added. “Now, who is your client?”
I didn't like the way he was trying to manipulate me. “I don't have to tell you that, Uncle Roddy.”
The slits he looked at me through got venomous. “That so? You forget this is murder. I can haul you in for withholding information.”
“Well, I really would like to consult with my client first.”
“Fine. We'll go consult with him together.” I shook my head. “Don't be a stubborn jackass, Neal.” Echoes of the old man. They must have talked already. Since they were calling me one, I decided to be a stubborn jackass.
“You know, Uncle Roddy, if there's one thing I learned from the New Orleans Police Department, it's that certain people in this city are untouchable. It has to do with politics and money. My client just happens to keep a lot of people's pockets heavy, which makes him a powerful man. He might not like it if you go barging in on him with no reason. He might get mad at you.”
His eyes opened as wide as they ever had. “You get this straight, Neal. I don't like no two-bit detective using scare tactics wit’ me. There ain't no one in this city who's above the law as far as I'm concerned.”
“Yeah. Like Angelesi.”
“He got his in the end.”
“Not for my two bits he didn't.”
“Being in love with a dead girl must not be very satisfying, if you get what I mean.”
“I get what you mean,” I said, tight-lipped. “I should have made an anonymous phone call.”
He rocked back on his heels, pleased with the dig. “Maybe you should have if you weren't going to cooperate. What you gotta realize is, even if you are John's son, I gotta treat you like everybody else.”
“That's all I ask, Uncle Roddy, just to be treated like everybody else. Forget you know me. Forget I'm John's son. And I'll forget you asked me to betray my client's confidence just because you're my old man's friend.”
I got a nasty gaze through reptilian slits. “Go easy, Neal. Go real easy. I'll get your license if you're withholding evidence.”
I forced myself to say that was fair enough.
He went over to Royal Theatrical Supplies. “Stay available,” he said and pushed the door open. I hoped he would have a long and satisfying conversation with Eva. Her assumptions about Lucy McDermott's sex life with the dead man would keep his mind off me for a while.
6
* * *
Hands Off
The stench of Garber's body had stayed with me. I needed to get rid of it so I headed in the direction of St. Charles Avenue to the Euclid Apartments which I now call home although for me home will always be the Irish Channel. Shortly after Myra's death I had left my parents’ house for good. The situation with the old man had become intolerable. He kept saying there was no good reason for Angelesi to kill the likes of Myra.
I took time to shave and hurried back out to the lake. I didn't expect my bad news to make me an immediate favorite of Catherine's, but somehow the fact that I had kissed her made me the man to tell her.
I parked in the same place in front of the lane and started for the house. There were lights on in the houses and among the trees. Nighttime made the place look more real.
I knocked softly and hoped Catherine would answer. She did. She had on the same dress, a close-fitting cream-colored dress with short sleeves. The soft material made a tight circle around her upper arms. The flesh under the circle was full and firm and a rich golden color. She had let her hair down. It brushed her shoulders. I wished there was nothing else to do that night but decide if she looked better with it off her face or down.
The icy blue had melted away and left a gray mistiness about her eyes, creating a strange and shadowy look that was hard to read.
“Did you find Fleming's books?” she asked, and stepped aside to let me in. Her voice was tired and bland.
I took her arm and guided her into the living room. “No, I didn't, but that doesn't matter. I'd like to ask you a few more questions.”
“Sure,” she said with a brief gesture of indifference that neatly disengaged her arm.
“How long has your father known Lucy McDermott?”
The mist vanished. “Look. If you're going to start with that again, you can leave.”
“Stop that,” I said softly. “That's not what I meant at all. She's worked for your father about a year?”
She nodded.
“Do you know where she's from?”
She thought a moment. “Maybe Florida.”
“Where in Florida?”
“I don't know,” she said irritably. “I'm not even sure she's from Florida. All I know is she had an aunt there who died and she took care of everything. I can't even remember when it happened. March, April; sometime after the first of the year.”
Maybe that was something and maybe it wasn't. I turned and walked across the room. “Did your father know her before he hired her?” I asked with my back to her.
There was a lot of silence. I turned to see her staring at me like she thought I'd lost my mind.
“Should he have? Is it written somewhere that you have to have a long-standing friendship with a woman before you employ her?”
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I went back to where she stood and put my hand on her arm. “No, Catherine. Of course not. Hey, are you always so angry?”
She moved away from me and sat down heavily on the sofa. “No. No, I'm not.” Again, she drew her arms in close to her body, one folded across her middle, but she held up a hand like she wanted to keep me away from her. “It's just that you—you're making me angry. I don't even know why I'm talking to you—you work for Fleming.” The hand gestured at me. “What is it about you? What is the point of all this?”
“I'm sorry, Catherine. I don't want to make you angry. I want to—look, just tell me—” I thought about Lucy's salary and Eva saying she didn't keep regular hours. “I'm puzzled, that's all. He was paying her three hundred dollars a week. He must have thought a lot of her.”
She jumped up. “Damn you! You won't leave it alone, will you? You want to believe that he ran off with that woman. That makes it simple, doesn't it? I tell you, he didn't!” She was flushed, her fists clenched.
“I know, I know.” I took both of her full, firm arms. She was taut against me. “I know he didn't, Catherine.” And I told her how I knew. She just stared with the stare of a somnambulist, dreamy but trancelike. Then her eyes started to dilate. Very slowly the pupils enlarged until the gray-blue became almost all black. She was in shock, but there was an incredible depth in those eyes. The black was so deep that it was hard to tell if the light in the room was being reflected or if it had fallen in. I gripped her and moved her to the sofa. Her body was stiff and seemed to be trying to reject the movement. Once she was sitting, I rubbed her hands and then her face and tried her name out on her, but she was gone. I was getting worried. The only thing I could think of was a bottle of brandy I could see in the next room. I poured one, drank it and poured another, and brought it back to the sofa with me.
A few minutes later she startled me when she said, “My father did not run off with Lucy McDermott.”
“I know,” I managed, jolted. I picked up the glass of brandy. “Here, drink some of this.” She took a sip and asked for a cigarette. I gave her one which she puffed once, put in an ashtray, and forgot about.
We sat for a while in silence. I finally had to say it. “Catherine, do you remember what I told you?”
She looked pained. “I can't cry,” she said. I told her it was okay. She said she wished she could and wondered if everything would ever be alright again. I said it would. I stroked her hair and tried to give her some assurance. She closed her eyes and seemed to relax, but only briefly. Her eyes snapped open and she withdrew in panic.
“Mother.” Her voice was hoarse. “How am I going to tell Mother?”
We talked it over and decided that it would be best if Mrs. Garber's doctor were present with a sedative. Catherine accepted my offer to call him and told me that his number was written on the back of the telephone book by the hall phone.
When I returned her grief was evident and she seemed anxious for me to go. I thought she would have her cry once she was alone. I told her to expect a visit from the cops and she said that she could handle it. She saw me out with hardly a good-bye.
7
* * *
A Liar Will Steal, a Thief Will Murder
To a cop on the beat, the French Quarter at night is like a lunatic asylum. The streets are filled with mad drivers who think they have found either the local dragstrip or the scenic route through town. The first type are too busy chattering to their cohorts to look where they are going and the second group use their side windows as windshields. The sounds are yelling horns, shrieking tires, and general clatter. Those few who are using the narrow streets to get somewhere experience serious frustration and the fright of a driving instructor who finds out his student is blind. The side streets are dark and safe only for junkies and pimps. Bourbon Street is an impasse of pedestrians who are either drunk rabble-rousers or sightseers or both. From Burgundy to Decatur there are panhandlers looking for a handout for their next high, for condoms, or for their religious organizations. The latter are the worst. They want your money and your soul.
The afternoons are not much better. The scum come out of their subterranean dwellings to crowd in doorways making deals and talking lingo. The tourist busses block traffic and the horse-drawn carriages leave sights and smells enough to jolt the sensibilities of a sewer worker: In the summer the streets get hot enough to fry an oyster
But in the morning just after dawn has tipped the rooftops with translucent color and the dampness smells like freshly ground parsley, there is no better place to be. Cool ruffles your eyelashes and your skin breathes the dew. The streets are empty but not forsaken. The pastel colors of the buildings emerge and wink in the sun. The quiet is backed by distant city rumblings making your isolation apparent. The early morning used to make my chest tight with a quiet, thoughtful kind of pleasure.
That night as I drove into the Quarter I got the same chest-tightening surge. It surprised me. I thought it meant I was finally losing my cop's view of everything and becoming an ordinary person. But then I realized that the presence of Catherine Garber in my consciousness was making me feel isolated from the rest of the world the same way that being the only one around to see dawn coming over those rooftops did.
The wooden door to Lucy McDermott's Madison Street apartment just off Decatur was locked. I started ringing all the doorbells until someone buzzed the lock open. A frizzy-haired, white-faced young man came stumbling out of his courtyard apartment. I told him I was looking for Lucy McDermott. He pointed up the stairs and went back inside. A whining guitar sound floated around the courtyard for a few seconds. I went up to the top floor and knocked on the door to Lucy's place. I got an answer from the floor below.
“Mister.” I took it to be a throaty woman's voice. “You, up there.” The voice had a coughing spasm.
I leaned over the banister. A slightly bent old lady craned up at me. I walked down to the landing she was standing on. She had on a dirty white blouse, washed-out red pedal pushers, and red rubber sandals that grabbed between the toes. Her dull gray hair was pulled into a ponytail that trailed thinly to the middle of her back. Her almost perfectly round head seemed to bob on its neck as her myopic eyes found my face. Her small pert nose was only a fraction above a turned-down mouth which the network of facial wrinkles emptied into.
“She's not up there anymore. Been gone over a week,” she said and winked at me. “Are you one of her friends?” The eye winked again and she drew one side of her mouth down even further to control it.
“No, I don't know her.”
“No. You're young enough to be one of her friends, but you don't look the type.” For some reason she left the “p” sound off the end of type and her mouth stayed open midword.
“When did she leave?” I asked, controlling my impulse to flick her mouth shut.
“I'll ask the questions, mister,” she snapped with more energy than I had credited her with. One foot slid along the floor, moving her to the side and into better focus. She blinked. “You a cop?”
“Sort of,” I replied, peeved at her astuteness.
“You mean you're a private eye?” I nodded. “You could have said so in the first place, mister. She in some kind of trouble?”
“Not that I know of. I'd like to ask her some questions. I could ask you some instead.”
“And I could tell you a lot, if I wanted to. What else I got to do but snoop?” I couldn't tell if she was being sarcastic or not.
“I wouldn't want to push you into anything.”
She thought about that for a moment while we stared each other down. “You got a cigarette?” she asked. I said I did and got invited in.
She led me into a front room that had too much furniture in it. There were chairs of every assortment and period lining the walls and little tables with broken legs and marred tops scattered among them. It was like a showroom in a Magazine Street “junque” shop. A rocker was pulled almost to the glass of an old-time box television set. Religious
pictures ran in a row along the wall. Slung across the corner of one was a rosary. Over the middle one a crucifix leaned precariously into the room. On the opposite wall was a yellowed picture of a beautiful young woman. She saw me looking at it and flapped over to take it off the wall. She handed it to me.
“That's me—a long time ago. Longer than I care to admit.” The comment was unemotional.
“A real knockout,” I said and meant it.
“Yeah. Sit down so I can see you.” She moved the rocker around to face me and wrapped wire-rimmed glasses around her ears. “I didn't have to wear a bit of makeup, not even rouge. She wears too much. Looks like an act for Ringling Brothers.”
“Miss McDermott?”
“Who else? That's who you're here to talk about, ain't it? What about that cigarette, mister?”
I offered her the pack. She took one out and folded her legs under her. I lit us both and she closed her eyes, taking three puffs in succession as if she were smoking a peace pipe. A fit of coughing followed the third inhale. “I don't smoke too often,” she muttered. “What's your name, mister?” I told her. “Okay, Rafferty, what is it you want to know?”
“Could you tell me what day it was Miss McDermott left?”
“Sunday. A week ago. In the afternoon.”
“Do you know where she was going?”
“No. Miss McDermott and me weren't too sociable. Look, Rafferty, don't you want to know any of the good stuff?”
“Absolutely, Mrs. Parry.”
“How do you know my name?” she demanded.
“It's on the mailbox downstairs.”
“Oh. Right. Now, let me tell you about Lucy McDermott. She's no spring chicken anymore, though you couldn't tell by the way she acts. In the,” she screwed up her eyes, “I guess year or so she's been up there, she's had all types and descriptions of men up there with her, but they're all younger than she is and they all look like losers. There's one that goes up there regularly—his name is Louie—and when he ain't around she has plenty of others. I usually don't see them more than once or twice. You should of seen some of them, Rafferty. One kid, and I mean a kid, had hair all the way down his back—as long as mine.” She twisted an arm around to feel the point at which her ponytail hit. “He was skinny and dirty. He was disgusting, but I kind of felt sorry for him. You know? One day when I came home he was waiting for her out by the front door. I had seen him go up there with her before. I try to be neighborly, even when it ain't returned, so I asked him if he wanted to come inside and wait. He gets in here and sees all my pictures around and he starts talking religion with me. I don't trust no stranger that talks religion with me, Rafferty. I could look at him and tell he was a weirdo, but then he starts telling me all about his hocus-pocus religion, that Satan and God are one and the same in his religion. I told him I never heard of a religion like that and that the only true religion is the Catholic religion. I told him talk like that would get him damned to eternal hell. He said that if it wasn't so about God and Satan being the same, then why did God let people practice human sacrifice on Jesus? I took that crucifix there right off the wall and ran him down the stairs and clear out of the building with it.”
