New Orleans Noir

by Julie Smith

  “Phillip, we really should call the cops. I mean, if this was self-defense—”

  “What do you mean, if it was?” Phillip’s brown eyes narrowed. He pointed to his cheek, which was purple. “He slugged me again, Tony. He threw me against the wall—I can’t believe you didn’t hear him screaming at me.”

  I hadn’t, though—no shouting, no crashing, no struggle. Sure, I had the headphones on, but—no, it was probably self-defense, there was no reason to doubt Phillip. Chad was an egotistical bully with no problem using his fists whenever he decided Phillip had looked at him cross-eyed. I looked down at the pale face, the sticky pool of blood under his curly brown hair. His eyes were open, staring glassily at the ceiling. He was wearing his standard uniform of Abercrombie & Fitch sleeveless T-shirt and low-rise jeans, no socks, and boat shoes.

  “What exactly happened here, anyway?” None of this made any sense. But then, death rarely does.

  “I don’t know, it all happened so fast.” Phillip’s voice shook. “Chad called and wanted to come over. I said okay, even though I was kind of tired. So I started making spaghetti. He came in the back way—” he gestured to the door I’d come through, “and he just started in on me. The same old bullshit, me cheating on him, me not being good enough for him, all of that horrible crap.” He hugged himself and shivered. “Then he got up and shoved me into the wall and punched me—” he touched his cheek again, “and was about to punch me again when I shoved him really hard, and he fell back and hit his head on the edge of the counter … Then he just kind of gurgled and dropped to the floor.” He gagged, took some breaths, and got control of himself again. “Then I called you.”

  Two hours later—what did you do for two hours? “Well, good enough for him,” I finally said, stubbing the cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray on the counter.

  “Are you going to help me?”

  “Give me another cigarette and let me think, okay?”

  The plan was simplicity itself. Once I’d smoked two or three cigarettes, I’d worked it all out in my head. I looked at it from every angle. Sure, we’d need some luck, but every plan relies on luck to a certain degree. The Lower Ninth Ward above Claiborne Avenue was a dead zone. Hurricane Katrina had left her mark there, with houses shifted off foundations, cars planted nose-down in the ground … and bulldozing had recently begun. I’d clipped an article out of the Times-Picayune that very morning on the subject, thinking it might be useful with my next book. Out in the shed behind the house, I still had the remnants of the blue tarp that had been our roof after the one-eyed bitch had wrecked it on her way through. I had Phillip help me get it, and we rolled Chad up in it. We carried the body out into the backyard, and then we cleaned the entire kitchen—every single inch of it—with bleach. I knew from a seemingly endless interview with a forensic investigator with the NOPD for my second book that bleach would destroy any trace of DNA left behind. I made Phillip wash the pots and pans and run them through the dishwasher with bleach. When the kitchen was spotless and reeked of Clorox, I checked to make sure the coast was clear.

  The Lower Garden District, before Katrina, had been a busy little neighborhood. We weren’t as fabulous as the Garden District, of course; when Anne Rice still lived here, I liked to tell people I lived on a street called Annunciation, about “six blocks and six million dollars” away from her. We didn’t have the manicured lawns and huge houses you would see above Jackson Avenue; we were the poorer section between I-90 and Jackson. Around Coliseum Square there were some gigantic historic homes, but most of the houses in our neighborhood were of the double shotgun variety, like mine. Our section of St. Charles Avenue—about four blocks away from my house—was where you’d find the horror of chain stores and fast food that you wouldn’t find further up the street.

  But I liked my neighborhood. There’d always been someone around—kids playing basketball in the park down the street, people out walking dogs, and so forth; the normal day-to-day outside ramblings of any city neighborhood. The floodwaters from the shattered levees hadn’t made it to our part of town—we were part of the so-called sliver by the river. When I’d come back in October, the neighborhood had been a ghost town. And even though more and more people were coming back almost every day, it was still silent and lifeless after dark for the most part.

  Tonight was no different. Other than the occasional light in a window up and down the street, it was as still as a cemetery. We carried Chad out to his car and started putting him in the trunk. The way things were going, it would be just our luck to have a patrol car come along as we were forcing the body in the blue tarp burial shroud into the vehicle, and I didn’t stop holding my breath until the trunk latch caught.

  No one came along. The street remained silent.

  Then Phillip got behind the wheel of Chad’s Toyota to follow me through the city. “Make sure you use your turn signals and don’t speed,” I cautioned him before getting into my own car. “Don’t give any cop a reason to pull you over, okay?”

  He nodded.

  I watched him in my rearview mirror as we drove through the quiet city. There were a few cars out, and every once in a while I spotted an NOPD car. The twenty-minute drive seemed to take forever, but we finally made it past the bridge over the Industrial Canal. I turned left onto Caffin Avenue and headed into the dead zone past the deserted, boarded-up remnants of a Walgreen’s and a KFC. It was spooky, like the set of some apocalyptic movie. We cruised around in the blighted area, my palms sweating, until I found the perfect house. There was no front door, and there were the telltale spray-paint markings on the front, fresh. It had been checked again for bodies, and the three houses to its right had already been bulldozed; piles of smashed wood and debris were scattered throughout the dead yards. Several dozers were also parked in the emptied yards, ready for more demolition.

  I pulled over in front of the house and turned off my lights. I got out of the car and lit another cigarette. We wrestled the body out, and lugged it into the dark house, which stank of decay and mold, rotting furniture scattered about as we made our way through it. We found the curving stairway to the second story, and carried him up. The first bedroom at the top of the stairs had a closet full of moldy clothing.

  “Okay, let’s just put him here in the closet,” I said, panting and trying to catch my breath. Chad weighed a fucking ton. “But put him down for a minute.”

  Phillip let go and the body fell to the floor with a thud. I had the body by the shoulders, and I staggered with the sudden weight. The tarp pulled down, exposing Chad’s head, and then I couldn’t hold him anymore, and he fell, dragging me down on top of him.

  “FUCK!” I screamed, looking right into Chad’s open eyes. His mouth had come open as well, and in the moonlight I noticed something I hadn’t seen before.

  There are bruises on his neck. Bruises that look like they came from fingers around his neck, choking the life out of him. A chill went down my spine. What the fuck— I looked back up at Phillip. I could almost hear him saying again, You’ve said a million times that anyone can get away with murder …

  No wonder he hadn’t wanted to call the cops.

  It hadn’t been an accident. It hadn’t been self-defense.

  It was murder.

  And I’d helped him cover it up. I was an accessory after the fact.

  And even if I cooperated, testified against him, I might have to serve time myself. At the very least, author Anthony Andrews would get some very nasty publicity.

  Does he know? I thought, my heart racing. Can he tell that I’ve seen? It was awful dark, and I only saw because my face was right there by Chad’s.

  “Are you okay? Jesus, I’m sorry!”

  He doesn’t know I know. Thank you, God.

  Phillip grabbed me under the arms and lifted me up to my feet without effort. He started dusting me off. “Are you okay?”

  “Didn’t know you were so strong,” I said. I forced a smile on my face. “I’m okay.”

  “Don’t
you want to put him in the closet?” he asked. “Or can we just leave him here?”

  “No, he needs to go in the closet, just in case. Let’s do this and get out of here,” I said, managing to keep my voice steady. I can’t let him do this, I can’t let him get away with this, but I’ve got to get out of here. Think, Tony, think, there must be something I can do …

  We shoved him in, standing up, and wedged the door shut.

  “All right, now we have to get rid of his car, right?” He gave me a smile. “This means so much to me, Tony, you have no idea.” He gave me a hug, almost squeezing the breath out of me.

  How come I never noticed how strong he is before now? Aloud, I said, “Well, maybe we could just leave it here after all.” I shrugged. “I mean, they probably wouldn’t think anything about it, really.”

  Phillip raised an eyebrow. “But you said—”

  “No, no, I know, we can’t leave it here.” I gave him a ghost of a smile and tried to keep my voice steady, even as I thought, I am alone in an abandoned house in an empty neighborhood with a killer. “I’m just a little—you know …” I tried to make a joke. “This isn’t exactly my normal Tuesday night routine.” I gave a hollow laugh. “No, we can’t leave the car parked out in front.”

  “Okay.”

  “We’ll leave the car in the Bywater,” I went on, my mind racing, trying to think of something, some clue, to leave behind. If they didn’t find the body, he’d get away with it, but how to tip them off and leave myself out of it …? “With any luck, the tires and everything will be stripped in a few days. If and when the cops finally find it, the body will be gone, and Chad will have just disappeared from the face of the earth.”

  “Won’t they check the house for bodies before they bulldoze?”

  “They already checked this house—they marked it as clear.” I’d picked the house for that very reason. I felt sick to my stomach. Oh, yes, the plan was clever. I’d outsmarted myself, that’s for damned sure. Tomorrow morning the bulldozers would level the place into a pile of rubble, and when the backhoe cleared it into a dumpster, if no telltale body parts fell out, that would be the end of it. Nope, Chad would be off to the dump, hopefully to be incinerated, and all Phillip would have to do was pretend he’d never seen or spoken to Chad again. Sure, they’d check his phone records and see that Chad had called, but all Phillip had to do was say they’d argued and Chad said he was going out in the Quarter. Besides, it would probably be days before anyone even noticed Chad was missing—and it wasn’t like the post-Katrina police force wasn’t already spread thin. Even before the storm, they weren’t exactly a ball of fire.

  And Phillip was obviously a lot smarter than I’d given him credit for.

  We left the car on Spain Street on a dark block on the lake side of St. Claude. I’d told Phillip to leave the windows down and the keys in the ignition. Someone would surely take that invitation to a free car. The police wouldn’t be looking for the vehicle for days, maybe even weeks—if ever. Maybe I could report the car stolen?

  But that wouldn’t lead them back to Phillip.

  Phillip got into my car and we pulled away from the curb. “Some adventure, huh?” he said, rolling down his window and lighting another cigarette. “Thanks, man.” He put his free hand on my inner thigh and stroked it, giving me the smile I’d seen him use a million times in bars. I knew exactly what that smile meant, and my blood ran cold. “Do you really think we’ll get away with it?”

  “As long as you stick to your story and don’t freak when the police come by to interview you—if they ever do,” I replied, knowing that he wouldn’t freak. Oh no, he was much too clever for that. How could I have missed that before? If the body disposal went as planned, it could be days, even weeks, before anyone even notified the police. Chad worked as a waiter in a Quarter restaurant, and from all appearances, never seemed to have any friends. Who would miss him? He wouldn’t show up for work, they’d write him off—people tend to come and go quickly in New Orleans, especially now—and that would be the end of it. Unless a family member missed him, filed a missing-persons report, and really pressed the cops—which wouldn’t do much good, unless his family was wealthy and powerful.

  You have to hate New Orleans sometimes.

  As we drove down Claiborne, the one thing I couldn’t stop thinking about was those bruises on Chad’s throat, and the two hours Phillip had waited before he called me. His story was a lie. No one freaks out and stays alone with a dead body for two hours. And I hadn’t heard anything. Sure, I’d had the iPod on pretty loud, but I’d heard their fights before. As for the bruise on his cheek, the cut lips—maybe he’d done that to himself somehow, as he tried to figure out a way to get me to help him. There was no way I would ever know what had finally pushed Phillip over the edge, why he’d decided that Chad had to die rather than just breaking things off with him. Or maybe the story he’d told me was partially true—maybe Chad had hit him, he’d fought back, knocked him down, and Chad had hit his head on the table on the way down. But Phillip had definitely finished him off by choking him.

  I fell for his story like an idiot, worried as always about poor dumb Phillip in a jam, and now I am an accessory after the fact.

  Just get home, get away from him, and make an anonymous call to the police, tip them off. As long as they find the body before it’s too late …

  I glanced at Phillip. That was a good idea. Just get away from him and make the call.

  Thank God I’d never followed up on the attraction I’d felt for him when he first moved in.

  I pulled up in front of the house and turned the car off. I gave him a brittle smile. “Here we are.”

  Phillip gave me that look again. “Thanks, Tony. You really are a good friend.” He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “Whew. Some night, huh?”

  “Um, yeah.”

  He got out of the car and stretched, his muscles flexing and rippling in the light from the streetlamp. Before, I would have admired their thickness and beauty. Now, all I could see was their strength, and it terrified me. “Man, I’m beat.” He gave me that smile again, and this time it curdled my blood. “Mind if I come in for a while? You have any pot? I could use some.”

  Fuck!

  “Phillip, I’m really wiped and just want to go to bed.” I faked a smile. “Wait here and I’ll roll you a joint.” I climbed the steps to my side of the house as quickly as I could. I unlocked the door and walked into my living room. The lights were still on; I hadn’t turned them off when I’d rushed over there. My computer screen glowed, my bag of weed still sitting there on my writing table where I’d left it. My hands shook as I reached into a drawer and pulled out my rolling papers. Just roll the damned thing and give it to him and then call the cops.

  I jumped as the front door opened.

  “Thanks, man,” Phillip said, as he shut the door behind him. “I know you’re tired, buddy, but I just need some company for a little while.”

  I barked out a little laugh as I fumbled with the paper. “Yeah, it’s been kind of a weird night, huh?” Hurry, hurry, roll it and get him out of here.

  “I’m really sorry, Tony,” Phillip said as I finished rolling the joint, licked it, and handed it over to him. “You’re such a good friend. I don’t know what I ever did to deserve you.”

  That makes two of us, I thought. Just take your joint and get the fuck out of my house.

  He sat down on the couch and stretched out, giving me that smile yet again. He patted the couch. “Why don’t you sit next to me, Tony?” He twirled the joint in his fingers. “Got a light?”

  The easier to choke me? I swallowed and handed him the lighter. My heart was racing and I sat down, trying to keep my legs from touching his.

  He took a long hit, held it in for a while, then blew it out in a plume. He offered me the joint, which I declined. He took another hit, pinched it out with his fingers, and put it on the coffee table. “You know what?”

  “What?”

  “I’v
e always wondered about something but I never felt right asking.” He smiled at me.

  Stay calm, keep cool, don’t alarm him in any way. “What’s that?”

  “How come we’ve never hooked up?” I felt his arm slide around my shoulders, and out of the corner of my eye I saw his big hand on my shoulder.

  I swallowed. “I—I don’t know.”

  “I mean, I’ve seen how you look at me sometimes.” He leaned into me, his face close to mine. “Don’t you think I’m hot, Tony? Don’t you want to fuck me?”

  Oh God, no, this isn’t happening. Get him out of here!

  He kissed me on the cheek, his left hand moving to my chest.

  “Phillip, no.” I tried to pull away from him, but he had a firm grip on my shoulder.

  “You know you want it,” he whispered.

  “No.” I pushed his hands off me and stood up. “I think you should leave.” I was shaking, my stomach churning.

  He stood up as well, his face unreadable. “Come on, Tony.” He reached for me and put his arms around me, pulling me close.

  “Let me go!” I tried pushing him away, but he just laughed and gripped me tighter, and as he pulled me in I knew he was stronger than me, and I wondered if this was the last thing Chad had seen before the hands went around his throat and started choking the life out of him, Phillip’s face moving in closer and closer as everything went dark and he slid to the floor … and my heart started pounding, this was it, I was going to die, he was going to kill me, too …

  “Phillip, don’t!” Adrenaline coursed through my body as I planted my hands on his chest and shoved with every ounce of strength in my body.

  He stumbled backwards, opened his mouth, his face shocked, and gasped, “Hey!” just as the back of his legs hit the coffee table.

  I watched. It seemed as though time had slowed down, as though the entire world had somehow moved into slow motion.

  He fell, his arms pinwheeling as he tried to catch himself.

  The back of his head hit the edge of the mantelpiece with a sickening crunch.

  And then he was sprawled on my floor, his head leaking.