Devil Dead

by Linda Ladd

  Claire absolutely loathed him at first sight, and that pretty much included every single thing about him. After several seconds of trying not to show her unparalleled disdain for the dirt bag, she actually was able to despise him even more as he looked her up and down and nodded his head approvingly. She felt like a piece of prime steak he had picked out for the barbecue grill. She felt her blood pressure rising, up, up, up, until it bumped its head on the stratosphere. Her face began to feel flushed and hot and pre-stroke.

  Okay, she had been known to show signs of a mighty foul temper at times. She also had feminine sensibilities that usually lay dormant but were wide awake now and howling like a monkey holding a live wire. But she was also a well-trained law enforcement professional, yes sir, she was, so she smiled ingratiatingly, meaning she gritted her teeth in a caricature of a so-eager-to-please expression as his degrading perusal continued. What was the guy doing? Trying to memorize her body so he could sketch it later?

  “Well, well, what do we have here, sweet cakes?”

  Okay, buck it up, Claire, be strong, she thought. She went for a sweet cakes kinda smile, one she had never tried out before or even thought of trying out before. She wanted to come off a little uncertain and shy. Now that was a trick to pull off, as what she really wanted to do was hit the guy with her doubled fist and call for all the degraded females in the place to join her in taking him apart. “I’d like to fill out an application. If you’re hiring. You know, to be a waitress here at Tit Tats.”

  “You’re hired, baby. All the girls here call me Daddy. What’s your name?”

  Oh, God, Claire was gonna have to really exert some self-control around this creep. How she’d love to slap him for, say, twenty minutes. She really hated being called honey, or sweetie, or darlin’, or sweet cakes, and especially baby. Black called her that once in a while, and babe, too, but she liked him and gave him that special privilege. And he didn’t mean it degradingly. On the other hand, she had a God-given name, so for Pete’s sake, use it. Unfortunately, Claire was beginning to feel like a pathetic little sex object expressly hired to highly titillate all males within a three-mile radius. So she dug deep into her get-a-grip, and said sweetly, “My name’s Tammy Jones.”

  “Well, now, Tammy Jones, aren’t you the hottest little tamale who’s ever walked through that front door?”

  He did not just call her a hot tamale. But oh, yes, he sure did. That was the most stupid and worst sexist moniker yet. She had never been called a hot tamale in her entire life. She didn’t even know what that meant. Now a couple of the waitresses were watching, the looks on their faces telling Claire: Turn around, walk out that door, do not sign on the dotted line, do not call that guy Daddy. Agreeing to sign up for this job was definitely a mistake. She was gonna strangle Will Novak as soon as she saw him, just for suggesting it, if she didn’t haul off and kill this obnoxious sucker first. The idea of shooting the little jerk in both kneecaps cheered her for a moment, but alas, she couldn’t do it. Sometimes life just sucked.

  “I really need the work,” she groveled as best she could, forcing what she hoped was a needy, desperate kind of look. She’d never come close to groveling in her life, so she hoped it was credible, and it hurt a little around the edges of her self-respect. Gotta find Andrea, gotta find Andrea, she kept telling herself.

  “Like I said, you’re hired. No need for an interview. One of the girls didn’t show up this morning, the little twit. That happens a lot in here. But as you see, we don’t hire girls for their brains. We sell pure sex with our burgers in here, sweetheart, so you’ll fit right in.” He stopped long enough to examine her recent dye job. “Is that your natural color?”

  “Yes, sir,” she lied. Lying came easier to her than groveling did. But she must’ve gotten the dye too black if he could tell already.

  “You look like Katy Perry when she did that Super Bowl half-time show, especially with those big blue bedroom eyes. Okay, c’mon, one of the Tit Tats’ll get you a uniform and show you how to walk the best way to show off your ass.”

  Speaking of asses, oh, yeah, he was one. “Thank you so much. And your name is?” She wanted it solely for the sexual harassment statement she intended to file with her NOPD detective friend, Gabe LeFevres, as soon as she kissed this place and aforementioned moron good-bye.

  “Like I said, call me Daddy ’cause I’m gonna take good care of all my little girls.”

  Oh, God help her. But enough was enough. “Well, actually, sir, I’m a little uncomfortable about calling you Daddy.” Asshole, yes. Moron, freak, jerk, and psycho, all yes, yes, yes, and yes. Daddy? No way would she ever call this guy Daddy.

  “You better get comfortable with it if you wanna work here.”

  Claire clamped her teeth. “Yes, sir.”

  “And what’s my name?” he asked pointedly, rubbing her nose in it.

  Claire almost had to choke it out. “Daddy.”

  Inside her head, Claire was beginning to count off all the sexual harassment infractions the cops could charge him with. Adding up nicely, already. The guy turned and yelled rudely to a tall redhead wiping down a nearby table. The departing patrons shuffled past Claire but took time to stop and look Claire over pretty good. She pretended not to notice, but it was harder than she had expected it to be. Now Daddikins was saying, “Okay, now, hop to it, baby doll. Lydie, this is Tammy. Take her in back, find her a pair of shorts and one of those white tops. Make ’em both a coupla sizes too small. You know real tight and sexy. And don’t take forever. The twelve-o’clock crowd is startin’ to come in.”

  Lydie hurried over and smiled at Claire. Her hair was thick and curly, a rich natural coppery color, now pulled back in a long ponytail that swished around every time she turned her head. She was thin, even taller than Claire, probably almost six feet, and actually quite a good-looking girl, somewhere under all that required Tit Tats makeup. A little older than Claire had expected. Maybe in her late thirties, something like that. Lydie leaned close and lowered her voice. “Don’t mind him. He’s a colossal jerk. But he knows he can only go so far. He likes to talk and look but he doesn’t usually touch unless a girl wants him to.”

  “Who would want him to?”

  The girl laughed. “What’s your name again?”

  “Tammy Jones.”

  “I’m Lydie Creedy.”

  Lydie was quite chatty and gave Claire some good tips on the waitressing trade, those being: if you smiled and flirted a tad, nothing too awfully humiliating you understand, just be friendly, helpful, act like you find the customers fascinating, you’ll make super good tips. Yada, yada, yada, and even more sickening yadas.

  I am not so sure that I can do this, Claire thought. Not without clocking somebody hard enough to smash their nose all the way to the back of their skull.

  At least when she was playing hooker and catching horny johns at truck stops in Missouri, she had a whole bevy of police officers hiding in the back room and treating her with respect. Here in the environs of Tit Tats, she wasn’t so sure respect was on the menu at all. If she got through the first day without putting out Daddy’s lights, it would be a true miracle of self-control.

  “Hey, Lydie, what’s Daddy’s real name?”

  “Jerry Hernandez. He’s harmless. You’ll see.”

  “Okay.”

  “Come on out when you’re dressed and I’ll show you around. It’s real easy work, I promise. Super tiring, though. Your legs and feet are gonna ache all night long after you get off. Especially this first day.”

  Then Lydie was gone, and Claire stood in the small employee bathroom holding a skimpy pair of blue short shorts and a tight white spandex tank top that looked like it would barely cover her breasts and a package of pantyhose that she hardly knew what to do with. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen a pair of pantyhose, not up close. Lydie said she could keep her Nikes on. Jeez, this was gonna suck big time, to high heaven, even. But Claire quickly donned the skimpy little stupid outfit and tried not to think a
bout it.

  When she came out, Lydie nodded approvingly and showed her how to wait tables and show off her cleavage when she bent over to serve the guys, at least what there was of it without a push-up Wonder Bra to accentuate her womanly attributes. She also was instructed on how to punch in orders and smile flirtatiously at every Tom, Dick, and Harry who leered at her. Claire decided to pretend she was performing in an extremely bad X-rated movie and did the job as instructed and actually took to the game fairly well.

  Throughout the day, she met quite a few of the girls, talked to some of them on short breaks at a picnic table in a fenced patio out back, probably designed to keep customers from physically accosting the employees. But she was waiting, and yes impatiently, for somebody to bring up Andrea Quinn’s name. She didn’t want to do it herself, but then around three thirty, Claire and three other girls were standing near the kitchen door waiting for the cook to get out their orders. A girl named Manuela Ortiz said, “Have any of you guys heard anything from Andi? What happened to her, anyways?”

  The other girls shrugged and shook their heads. Then Lydie Creedy said, “I think maybe Daddy and her got into it about something. You know how he liked to screw with her.”

  “Screw with her?” Claire said, certainly not liking the sound of that.

  “Not that. You know what I mean, just pick on her. He thinks she’s uppity and needs somebody to put her in her place.”

  “Yeah, but he’s better than he used to be, though.” That was Manuela again. “Used to, he’d make us all put our hands behind our back and eat a plate of nachos to see who won and that’s who’d get the week’s tip bonus.”

  “You cannot be serious,” Claire said, dropping the meek act for a moment. When the other girls nodded all around, she decided, then and there, that she was gonna make sure he was put behind bars, and the sooner the better. Gabe LeFevres, a real gentleman, was gonna love to slap this guy in cuffs.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Dolly Sanders, a flaming fake redhead. “But the front office got a complaint on him, and he almost got canned. Actually, it might have been Andi who put in that call, now that I think about it. It happened right after she was hired. They put him out on unpaid leave but now he’s back, but he’s still on probation so he ain’t gonna do nothing much to bother us, not anymore.”

  “Why would they hire a male chauvinist to run a place like this?”

  The other girls only laughed at Claire. Ooookay, Claire, she told herself, you gotta look at it like a terrible, horrible, excruciating, but necessary ordeal needed to find an innocent gone girl. But next time, oh, yeah, next time, Novak was gonna wear these stupid little shorts and skin-tight top. Luckily, the most polite people in the restaurant were the ogling customers. So go figure.

  At exactly four thirty-six, Will Novak finally showed his face around the joint. He was dressed up a bit more than usual, in neatly pressed khakis and a red-and-white-striped polo shirt, but he still looked like a great big tough guy who was trying to look regular and harmless, but still someone not to be trifled with. She had a feeling that Daddy Warbucks and all other young and leering male customers would provide him a wide berth. Novak sat down by himself at a window table at the front, one in her designated wait area. She walked over to him, embarrassed to death to let him see her wearing the tiny little outfit and looking like the happiest hooker who ever walked the mean streets. She tried to hide her chagrin as his eyes moved over her from her head to her toes, just like all her other male customers had seen fit to do. Then he said, “Nick’s gonna die when he sees you wearin’ that getup.”

  “No kidding, Sherlock. But I’ll tell him it was your idea and you can explain why you suggested it to me.”

  Novak gave her his teeny tiny mouth quirk, the one that meant he was dying laughing inside. “Went overboard a bit on the hair, didn’t you? Looks the color of wet tar. That’s not a wig, either, is it?”

  “Wigs look too fake.”

  “And that color doesn’t? Black’s gonna hate that, too.”

  “Shut up, Novak.”

  “Found out anything?”

  “Found out the manager’s a real loser creep who likes to insult the girls, me included.”

  “Want me to take him out back and beat the crap out of him?”

  “I prefer to do it myself, after I quit this lousy job.”

  “He’s looking at us right now.”

  “What can I do for you, sir?”

  “I wouldn’t ask the customers for their order that way, Morgan. Not in shorts that tight.”

  “Just tell me what you want, jerk.”

  “Bacon cheeseburger, fries, sweet tea, pie.”

  “What kind of pie?”

  “Cherry.”

  “Don’t have it.”

  “Pecan.”

  “Don’t have it.”

  “Skip the pie.”

  “We’ve got peach and apple, sir.”

  “I’ll take apple. You aren’t so good at this waitress thing, are you?”

  “Yeah, and that makes me proud.” Claire glanced around and lowered her voice. “I’m goin’ out with a girl named Lydie Creedy after work. She wants to party down in the Quarter. She even mentioned that bar, Devil Dead. Why don’t you tail us? You know, make yourself useful. Since I’m payin’ you to sit around and eat cheeseburgers and apple pie.”

  “Hope you have something else to wear down there. I don’t want to have to fight off a bunch of guys tryin’ to pick you up.”

  “Gee, Novak, I’m really touched. Not to worry, I will definitely change outta this crappy little outfit. I thought what I wore down here was bad, but next to this getup, my own stuff looks like Camilla Parker Bowles at a royal wedding.”

  “You seem to fit right in around here.”

  “Yeah? Thanks for the insult. I will get you back for this. You do know that, right?”

  “You’re doin’ fine. Lookin’ real sexy in a frowny sort of way. Tips are gonna be good.”

  “Just shut up, Novak.”

  After Novak’s appearance and departure, the day crawled along in an uneventful chain of forever. Lydie had been right on about the aching feet, with one godawful headache added on for good measure. The last thing Claire wanted to do was go partying, especially in the crowds of the French Quarter, but Lydie liked to talk and Claire liked to listen for clues to Andrea’s disappearance, so it was a match made in heaven. They ended up at the Devil Dead by one o’clock in the morning, sitting at the bar and drinking a couple of weak Bloody Marys. Claire only pretended to drink. She hated the taste of all alcohol except for an occasional beer. She wished she had some water in a bottle. She wished she was home in bed with Black. Or back in Tahiti in bed with Black. Yeah, that was it.

  After a while, Claire quit watching the wannabe vampires and werewolves, and remarked as casually as she could make it, “What’s the deal on this Andrea girl? I heard the other girls whispering about her today.”

  Lydie swept her red hair back behind her ear and looked closely at Claire. The ruby stud in her ear sparkled in the dim light. “Really? What did they say?”

  “Just that she was working down there and then she was gone and nobody could get hold of her. That kinda thing doesn’t happen very often, does it?”

  “You’d be surprised. Girls who work at Tit Tats get tired of the guff and grind all the time and then just up and quit on the spot. I’ve seen more than one just walk out the front door, uniform and all, without a word to anybody. Makes Daddy crazy. There’s a big turnover.”

  “What was that Andi girl like?”

  “I liked her. I didn’t think she was haughty at all, like Daddy always said. I think she’s a real sweetheart.”

  “Maybe she ran off and got married. Maybe she has a boyfriend?”

  Lydie hesitated a long moment, seemed to think about it, and then she said, “There was a guy. Pierre. Real tall guy, big. He talked with a French accent. He used to come in all the time and bitch at her for wearing those shorts we gotta wear.”


  “I know a guy named Pierre. Last name of Clark?”

  “No, it was Dubois, I think. Pierre Dubois, yeah, that sounds right. He was from Paris, and they used to fight all the time. He was always on her back about something. They’d sit in a booth in the back and whisper but it got kinda heated at times, if you know what I mean.”

  Claire filed that away. Seemed their little Andrea had a guy for every day of the week: drug dealer, some frat jock, and now French hothead. Andrea might need some tips in her boyfriend selection skills. “Yeah? Maybe she ran away with him and got married.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me. I think he might’ve been into drugs. He looked zonked out of his head sometimes and got mad easy. They whispered and talked real fast in French so none of us could ever understand them.”

  Hmmm. Very interesting. This Pierre guy? That was the guy that Jonas had said was Andrea’s friend and sometimes more than that. Claire was gonna hunt him down and ask him some serious questions. “So Andrea was fluent in French, huh? Wish I spoke it but I never got a chance to learn. Is that what your accent is? It’s faint but I can hear it a little bit.”

  Lydie looked startled for a second but then she smiled. “Yeah, I spent some time in Quebec when I was little. I think Andrea said that she lived in Paris for a while, but she liked it a lot better here.”

  “So Pierre’s French? He work somewhere here in New Orleans?”

  “Yeah, he followed her to the States, I think she said. I heard her say that he came over on a work visa. Could be he might work out on those oil derricks in the Gulf, you know how they do? Two weeks on, two weeks off, that kinda job. Maybe she signed on with him out there. Maybe she got hired on as a cook or something. She’s pretty strong for a woman, you know, worked out on weights and jogged, all that kinda stuff. They make good money working out on those rigs. Or could be, he just finally persuaded her to go back home to Europe with him. I think that’s what he wanted her to do. Go back to Paris. I overheard that much of their conversation one night. She had a little bit of an accent but not as thick as his. He didn’t like her workin’ at Tit Tats, wanted her to quit, just like all the husbands do. Hey, why all the interest in Andi, anyway?”