Murder in the Rue Ursulines

by Greg Herren

  How appealing. “Do you know where he lives?”

  “She shares a shotgun in the Marigny over on Touro Street with some of the other guys.” He shrugged. “They’re about ready to throw her ass out. She owes them money.”

  “He working tonight?”

  “She’s in the dressing room right now.” He made a face. “Joey don’t ever miss a Friday night. She’s won the contest three weeks in a row.” He gave me a nasty smile. “It all goes up her nose, though.”

  “Thanks.” I handed him the twenty. He smiled and put it in his sock, rising in one fluid movement. He moved away to a man about sixty a few stools down from me. I heard him introduce himself, and turned my head away as the older man slid his hands into the front of Adonis’ underwear.

  I wasn’t really sure what my plan was when Joey popped up on the bar. I thought about going to the dressing room, seeing if I could get in there—but that might have the opposite effect from what I wanted.

  I doubted very seriously that this kid had killed Glynis Parrish; it didn’t make any kind of sense. Would anyone commit a high-profile murder like that and then show up for a shift as a dancer at the Brass Rail? But then, it didn’t make any sense that a dancer from the Brass Rail was coming out of Glynis’s house around the time of the murder, either.

  Bizarre scenarios flew through my mind as I nursed the beer and watched two new dancers climb up on the bar. Maybe he was Glynis’s drug connection—although that didn’t make much sense, either. Nobody had ever said anything about her using drugs—but that could have been the ‘errands’ Rosemary had referred to.

  My curiosity was consuming me.

  I ordered another beer and gave faint smiles to dancers as they tried to flirt with me, to coax a dollar bill into their underwear. The bar began to fill up, and Floretta Flynn finally showed up, grabbing a shot of something from the bartender and downing it. She was going for a country western motif with a towering red wig and a green dress that looked as if it would have been the height of fashion at a prom in 1975. She gave me a brittle grin and walked back over to the sound system. Once she was there, she rubbed her hand across the bottom of her nose—the old make-sure-my-nose-is-still-there-because-it’s-numb-from-the-coke-and-make-sure-there’s-no-powder move. The three dancers on the bar jumped down and two more jumped up.

  Bingo.

  Joey looked good in black Calvin Klein underwear with a red waistband. It fit his body like a sheath. He was lean and muscular, his abs rippling as he undulated at the other end of the bar. His skin was completely smooth, no hair on his body anywhere except for a tantalizing glimpse of pubic fuzz. There was a tattoo of a cross on his right arm, which made me smile a little bit. No kid from the Garden District would have that tattoo, I mused to myself. I watched as he knelt down and let a heavy-set older man fondle his butt. He was good at his job. He clenched and tightened the muscles in his buttocks as the man slid his hands over them. Then, having earned his dollar, he got up and began moving his hips to the music. He danced over to another man, knelt down, and slid the front of his underwear down, giving the man a glimpse of his genitals. He was rewarded with a few more dollars, and he obviously was flirting with the man, whose hands reached up to pinch the small nipples on his muscled chest.

  I had to give him credit. Out of all the dancers I’d seen, he was by far the best looking, and the best dancer. I wondered if Adonis’ hatred was jealousy.

  The other dancer, a pretty, young-looking blond, stopped in front of me, and got down on his knees, presenting me his crotch. He gave me a lazy smile, and then bent backwards. He straightened up and smiled at me. “Having fun?”

  “You’re very limber.” I replied.

  “I was a gymnast.” He winked at me, and leaned in closer, whispering in my ear, “You have no idea how flexible I really am. Would you like to find out?”

  “It’s very tempting.” I fished a dollar out of my pocket, and handed it to him.

  “You can put it in my underwear.” He gave me a dazzling smile.

  “It’s okay, really.” I smiled back at him.

  “It’s your money.” He took the dollar and moved away, and I turned my eyes back to Joey. He was making his way to my side of the bar. A remix of Stevie Nicks’ “Stand Back” came on, and then he was in front of me. He knelt down and gave me a puzzled look. “You look familiar.”

  “I saw you at Café Envie the other day. With Rosemary Shannon.”

  “Oh.” He nodded, smiling. “And you came here to see me dance?

  “You’re very good.”

  He shrugged his shoulders and smiled at me. “Thanks.” He traced his fingers down the side of my face. “You’re very sexy. I love big men.”

  “Thank you.” I put my hand on his boot. “You’re very sexy, too.”

  “You know, I’d do you for free.” He lowered his head shyly. “You are so my type. You want to go back for a lap dance? We don’t have to do anything, if you’d rather not.”

  “I’d rather just talk, if that’s okay with you.” I stood up when he nodded. “Let’s go.”

  He gave a delighted laugh and jumped down from the bar. He grabbed my hand and led me through the crowd. As we passed Adonis, who had some man’s hands down the front of his underwear, he gave me a hateful look and turned his head away. Oddly, I felt bad, as though I should apologize to him. Joey pulled me into the back room, pushing me to a secluded booth in the very back. I sat down, and he sat next to me. He put his head on my shoulder. He placed his legs across mine. I stiffened at first, then relaxed. “Put your arm around me,” he whispered. “If the boss sees us just sitting, he’ll have my ass.” After a slight hesitation, I put my arm around his shoulders. His skin was taut and cool. His entire body relaxed into mine. “I hate working here,” He mumbled against my neck.

  “Then why do it?” I asked. I was curious. With no offense intended to the other dancers, they weren’t in the same league as Joey. With his looks and muscled body, he could as easily be dancing at the Pub—where he wouldn’t have to do lap dances, where he wouldn’t have to be groped by old men, where I would think he could make a lot more money. Maybe it had never occurred to him. “Can’t you dance somewhere else?”

  “I’m not as big as they want in the other, classier bars.” He shifted, pulling a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his boot. He lit one and blew the smoke out. “What else am I going to do?” he shrugged. “I need money. I could be a waiter or a bartender, I guess, but I only have to come to work here two nights a week and I make enough money to live.” He sighed. “This isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I moved to New Orleans, but—“ his voice trailed off. “What else can I do? Deal drugs? No thank you. At least this kind of work—“ he hesitated. “You make people happy, you know? These guys who come in here—they’re lonely mostly, and they just want to touch someone else. When they pay me to—you know—most of the time they just want to hold me and talk. A hundred bucks to let someone hold me for an hour and talk at me is pretty damned good money. Can’t make that working at McDonalds.”

  “You know, I think I saw you the other night. Wednesday night.” I said, trying to keep my voice casual and conversational. “The night it was so foggy. I could swear it was you. You were wearing jeans and an LSU sweatshirt. Was that you?”

  “Where did you see me?” He asked, delighted. He sat up straighter, which drove his crotch harder into mine.

  “Just talk,” I said, pushing him gently away.

  “You’re really sexy, you know. Just the kind of guy I like, big and strong and all muscle.” He brushed his lips against my ear. “I’d let you fuck me,” he breathed into my ear. “I don’t let most guys, you know. I let the clients blow me sometimes, but I don’t do penetration with anyone except men I am attracted to. Like you. Do you want to fuck me?”

  “I saw you over on Ursulines Street. You were coming out of a house between Dauphine and Burgundy. Is that where you live?”

  “Hardly. That’s Rosemary’s house.”
He barked out a laugh. “I wish. That place is gorgeous. Someday I’m going to have a house like that, though. I’m going to be somebody.” He sighed. “But for now, no, I live with three other guys in this dump in the Marigny.” He started blowing smoke rings. “Half the time we don’t even have hot water, and the roaches—“ he shuddered. “They’re everywhere. It’s disgusting. It’s living like an animals.”

  “How did you meet Rosemary?”

  “I sat down on her stoop one day to have a smoke.” He picked his head up and frowned. “She came out and started talking to me. She said I reminded her of someone she used to know. I was hungry, and didn’t have any money. I asked for a couple of bucks. She said she was going to go run some errands, but if I carried some stuff for her, she’d buy me something to eat. I mean, it was a free meal, so why not, right?”

  “Yeah.” The statement was so incredibly sad, I didn’t know what else to say.

  “So we went to the Clover Grill after we did the errands, and she told me she’d pay me to do some errands for her from time to time...mostly it was picking up her dry-cleaning every Wednesday.” He laughed. “She sure went through some clothes every week! I’d pick up the clean stuff at the Quarter Laundrette, bring it by and pick up the next week’s load.” He shrugged. “Sometimes she had other stuff for me to do.”

  “What about this last Wednesday night?”

  “I went by there like usual.” He shrugged. “It was really weird, but hey, you know, money’s money, you know? And I was broke. So I showed up, like usual, and she let me in for just a second. She took the cleaning from me, but said she didn’t have anything to go back out this time. That was a first. And usually she would make me a sandwich or something to eat, and we’d hang in the kitchen for a while. This time, though, she didn’t want to hang around. She looked out the curtains one time, and told me I had to go. She really rushed me out, you know. I was kind of pissed, to tell you the truth. I saw someone across the street when I came out—and I slammed the door to let her know I was pissed.” He shrugged. “And that was you, right? And now you’ve found me.” He sounded delighted.

  “Don’t you watch the news?” I asked. It was getting uncomfortably warm.

  “Nah, I don’t watch that shit. It’s depressing.” He shrugged.

  “Did you hear about the actress who got killed?”

  “Do I look like I’m deaf?” He dropped his cigarette on the floor. “Everybody’s heard about that.”

  “She was killed in that house.” I replied. “It wasn’t Rosemary’s house, it was hers. Rosemary worked for her. That’s whose drycleaning you were picking up. And you were there, inside the house, the night Glynis Parrish was murdered.”

  “Dude.” He whispered. “No way.”

  “You have to talk to the police, Joey. You have to tell them you were there.”

  “No, I am not talking to the police.” He started to get up, but I grabbed his arm and pulled him back down. “Man, that hurt.” He rubbed his arm. “I can’t talk to the police. I got a warrant.” His voice got whiny. “They’ll put me in jail.”

  “I have friends in the department, Joey. I won’t let that happen.” I didn’t know how much pull I had, but I’d do what I could. “You have to. If they find you on their own—and if I found you, the police can—it’ll be much harder on you. With a warrant and all.”

  “Jesus.” He got up. “I have to get back to work.” He adjusted his underwear. He leaned down and brushed his lips against my cheek again. “I really do like you,” he said softly. “That’s not a part of my act, either. I really really like you. And you’ll help me out? You aren’t just saying that?””

  I dug a twenty out of my wallet and handed it to him. “I’d like to spend some more time with you. Can I get your number? I’ll take you out to lunch tomorrow if you’d like.”

  “You got your cell handy?”

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket and programmed the number in as he gave it to me. “My last name’s Rutledge. You didn’t tell me yours.”

  “Chanse. Chanse MacLeod.”

  “Take a chance?” He giggled, and kissed my cheek again. “You better call me, man. Don’t make me come looking for you.”

  “You won’t blow me off?”

  “I never turn down a free meal. And I want to get to know you better, too, big man. You’re exactly what I look for in a man.” He walked out of the back room and into the dressing room. The door shut behind him.

  I slowly got up and pushed through the crowd. Three different boys were dancing on the bar. A Kylie Minogue song was playing. Adonis was one of the boys up on the bar, and when I passed him he stuck his tongue out at me. I had to get out of the bar.

  I took a deep breath when I got outside, and leaned against the wall.

  I felt sorry for him. His life was about to explode, but he wanted to be famous. He was about to get his chance. Maybe he could use the notoriety to improve his lot. The guy whose wife cut his dick off—Bobbitt? He’d made a couple of porn movies. Joey had the body for it. Maybe that would be his way out. Maybe he could make some money, get to make a fresh start somewhere.

  I felt almost paternal towards him, and that was weird. He wasn’t all that much younger than me. I started walking to my car.

  I never pass up a free meal.

  I shook my head and started walking faster until I reached my car. I got in and sat there for a moment, waiting for my heart to stop beating so fast.

  Maybe I should wait for him to get off work, take him back to my place, make him something to eat…

  ..and what? Turn him over to Venus? I’d call her after I talked to him, have her meet us wherever we decided on for lunch.

  Yeah. It was best to just drive home and call it a night. Go to bed by myself, and call him in the morning. It wasn’t an act—there was no need for him to put on an act for me. He just thought I was some hot guy who was into him, who just happened to see him the night he’d made a hundred bucks for doing Rosemary a favor.

  She was setting Freddy up.

  The trick was going to be finding out why she was doing it.

  I started the car, and pulled out onto Burgundy Street.

  Paige was going to just fucking love this.

  Chapter Fourteen

  When I got home, I couldn’t get Joey Rutledge out of my head.

  While sitting on my couch, listening to Amy Winehouse, I couldn’t help but think, there but for the grace of football, go I. Had I not found football and used that to escape from Cottonwood Wells, I could have just as easily wound up a lost boy in the Quarter, dancing at the Brass Rail and whoring myself out to older men for dollar bills. How different would my life be had football not paid my way through LSU? It was the kind of thing I generally preferred not to think about—how one small thing can change the rest of your life. Had one of my coaches not been roommates in college with an assistant coach at LSU, it stands to reason I would never have been offered a scholarship there. LSU wasn’t the only place that offered me one—SMU, Rice and Ole Miss had also come knocking on my door—but I wanted out of Texas, and the proximity to New Orleans had been the true deciding factor in making my decision to go to school in Baton Rouge.

  I didn’t even want to think about what might have happened to me had football not provided me a way out of Cottonwood Wells. Would I have wound up stuck in that dreary little town, a gay man longing for the bright lights of the big city? Working in the oil fields with my father and hating every minute of every day of my life—or would I have managed to somehow escape? Joey had struck a chord in me. When I managed to go to bed finally, I wondered how much money he’d made tonight.

  I never pass up a free meal.

  He would be easy enough to find again.

  I slept relatively well, which surprised me. I made coffee and while it brewed, checked through the blinds on the front door to see if the hyenas were back. I groaned. Apparently, there was no getting rid of them during the daylight hours. I turned the computer on and while it
warmed up, got myself a cup of coffee. It was too early to call Joey. I called Paige instead, but got her voicemail. I asked her to call me with an update on Glynis’s housekeeper and massage therapist.

  I signed into my e-mail account and sighed with irritation. The mailbox was full again. A lot of people have way too much free time, apparently, and choose to fill it by sending nasty e-mails to people they don’t know. I started cleaning it out, hoping that Mrs. Zorn hadn’t tried to send Karen’s picture and had it bounce back to her. I glanced over at my fax machine, but there was nothing there. I finished emptying the mailbox and leaned back in my chair.

  I’d been pretty sure Freddy had killed Glynis. But now that I wasn’t sure he was the one I’d seen coming out of her house, I wasn’t so sure anymore.

  I went to the Times-Picayune’s Website. When it loaded, a headline screamed at me: Another murder in the French Quarter!

  I clicked on the link.

  “Police responded to a report of gunfire in the 600 block of Esplanade Avenue at three in the morning. The responding officers found a gunshot victim in the neutral ground. He was identified as Joseph Rutledge, 23, originally of Lake Charles. Rutledge was pronounced dead at the scene. He had been shot twice in the chest. His discarded wallet was found next to the body.

  “Rutledge was a dancer at the Brass Rail, a bar in the French Quarter that caters to a gay clientele. Police theorize he was on his way home from work when he was mugged. A backpack he was wearing when he left the Brass Rail that contained his tips for the evening—estimated by coworkers to be around several hundred dollars—was missing, as well as his cell phone.

  “This is the thirty-fifth murder of the year—“

  I stopped reading. I felt numb.

  Joey was dead.

  There was no fucking way this was a random mugging.

  I cursed myself for a fool. By talking to him last night, I’d put him in danger. I hadn’t warned him, hadn’t done a goddamned thing except promise to buy him lunch.