Galliano Gold (Franki Amato Mysteries Book 5)

by Traci Andrighetti

  I immediately spotted the mascot for the bar’s trademarked Hand Grenade, a.k.a. “New Orleans’ Most Powerful Drink.” He was a huge green hand grenade with big dopey eyes, a goofy smile, camouflage pants, and black clown shoes. And true to his Dancing Hand Grenade name, he was outside the Tropical Isle shimmying to the Bruno Mars song “Grenade” right in front of the payphone.

  I approached him, out of steam and out of breath. “I need...to make...a call.”

  He stood his ground and shimmied forward and backward, trying to entice me to join in.

  I added out of patience to my list. “If you don’t move, I’m going to show you what hand grenades do.”

  He jolted, held out his arms to steady himself, and looked from side to side. Then he turned it into a dance move.

  If I’d had air in my lungs, I would’ve sighed. The dancing drink was one of many reasons a payphone didn’t belong on the famous party street.

  Lowering my head like a longhorn, I charged past his Humpty-Dumpty girth. Then I scrounged two quarters from the bottom of my bag and fed them into the phone. I glanced around for the grenade, but he’d disappeared.

  I faced the phone and called the police.

  “Orleans Parish 911, Operator 27. Where’s the emergency?”

  “This is an anonymous tip about Nick Pescatore, the guy who went missing on the Galliano steamboat.” I looked from side to side before mentioning his murder. “It’s a code thirty. His body’s in a freezer in the galley pantry.” I hung up and turned to leave.

  The Dancing Hand Grenade was behind me, air-grinding against my bottom.

  My self-preservation instinct kicked in, and I shoved him—hard. I wasn’t proud of myself, but in my defense, he was really padded.

  He went still and assumed the position of a gunslinger at a duel. He yanked the white pin at his temple and went motionless for a few more moments. Then he threw up his arms and flailed them to indicate his explosion.

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re way too aggressive for a mascot, pal. Why don’t you relax and have a drink?”

  He put his puffy white-gloved hands on his hips and spun on his clown heels. Then he mosey-waddled to a guy in a cowboy hat and mimed lassoing him.

  That drink doesn’t know when to quit.

  “Hey, Franki.”

  It was a female voice, but I didn’t see anyone trying to get my attention.

  “I’m on the second floor, so you have to look up to see me.”

  The instruction seemed like overkill, until I saw Bit-O-Honey waving from the balcony of Madame Moiselle’s. She was a chubby, bubbly brunette and not the brightest pastie in the stripper closet. But she’d been a big help to me when I’d worked a homicide case involving one of her former coworkers.

  She hung over the iron railing, and so did her pastied breasts. “What are you doing on Bourbon? Investigating something?”

  I wasn’t, but I was about to because Luigi had said Nick hung out at the strip club. “Yeah, could I talk to you for a second?”

  “Wait there, and I’ll come out.” She threw a strand of Madame Moiselle’s signature penis pendant Mardi Gras beads to a bodybuilder in the street. “Business is slow because of the breastfeeding conference in town.”

  So much irony in that.

  I crossed the street and went to the club entrance. Then I turned and leaned against the wall. I wanted to make sure the Dancing Hand Grenade couldn’t get behind me again.

  Bit-O-Honey stepped out in the stripper equivalent of Minnie Mouse shoes. She’d put on a sheer yellow robe that only accentuated her pink-sequined pasties and G-string. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

  I showed her the picture Luigi had given me. “I need to know whether you’ve seen this guy, Nick Pescatore, in the club.”

  She squinted through two-inch red lashes and held out her hands as though she couldn’t see. Then she removed a lash and took another squint. “He comes in every now and then, but he never talks to anyone. The last time I saw him was a couple of weeks ago, and this lady in a gold tinsel wig rushed in and poured a drink on him.”

  Gold. Was the color a coincidence? “What did she look like?”

  She shrugged. “Women in clothes all look the same.”

  That could’ve explained why I’d never seen Bit-O-Honey in a shirt—she was protecting her individuality.

  “Why do you want to know about this Nick guy? Is he a criminal or something?”

  I couldn’t tell her I’d found him dead in a freezer. “He’s missing.”

  Her eyes narrowed, and she pulled off the other lash. “It might be because of Gigi Scalino. He’s a mob boss.”

  I pulled back, surprised. I hadn’t expected her to connect the two men.

  “You know I mean the Mafia and not a flash mob, right?”

  “I got that. Thanks. But why do you think Gigi Scalino had something to do with Nick’s disappearance?”

  “Because he was sitting with Gigi when the lady dumped that drink on him. And that made Gigi real mad because it got all over the tiny white dress shirts he wears on his shoes.”

  I had to think about that one for a minute, and then I remembered the Edward G. Robinson gangster movies I used to watch with my dad. “Are you talking about spats, the old-fashioned shoe covers men used to wear?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Wow, not even Michael Jackson was able to bring that style back.”

  She reattached a lash. “Is he a client of Madame Moiselle’s too?”

  I stared at her for a second, wondering what kind of world she inhabited. “Um, no. Have you ever interacted with Gigi?”

  “Sure. I danced for him in the VIP Room, and so have a lot of the other girls. But Mr. Scalino doesn’t talk much. Just stares, mostly.”

  My upper lip crawled to my nostrils. I’d heard plenty of Glenda’s stories about what went on in the private stripping rooms, and I never wanted to hear another.

  “He’s super generous, though. He gives out C-notes as tips. You know I mean a hundred-dollar bill and not like a Post-it Note, right?”

  “Right.”

  “We get another C-note if we give him a little something extra.” She winked her lashed eye. “If you know what I’m saying.”

  I did, and it was disgusting.

  She attached her other lash. “You do, right? I mean, get what I’m trying to say?”

  “Yeah. He wants more than a striptease.”

  She nodded. “A shoeshine.”

  My mouth fell open. “Wait. What?”

  “I’ll show you.” She knelt and pretended to buff my boot, causing her breasts to buff too. “We only get the tip if we unbutton his spats real slow, like a shoe striptease.”

  My head recoiled. What a sicko.

  She rose and adjusted her G-string. “And you know what else we get?”

  I was afraid to find out.

  “Bit-O-Honey.” She squealed and shook her money makers. “My name is his favorite candy. Can you believe that?”

  I didn’t reply. My attention was focused on the Tropical Isle bar. The Dancing Hand Grenade was in the doorway, pointing me out to a young woman in a bright green wig.

  Was she the same woman who’d poured the drink on Nick?

  We made eye contact, and she shoved a couple of men out of her way and sped down Bourbon on roller skates.

  There was no way I could catch her, so I looked back at the bar. The Dancing Hand Grenade had split too. I didn’t know what was going on, but I was certain it had to do with Nick Pescatore.

  My heart was so heavy it practically weighed me down as I climbed the stairs to Private Chicks. Or maybe it was my thighs, which, other than being large, had been ravaged by all the running. Regardless of the culprit, each weighty, painful step brought me closer to having to call Luigi to inform him that his late cousin’s son, Nick, was dead.

  Frozen like a piece of meat.

  Of course, I wasn’t going to say it like that. The problem was that I didn’t know how to sa
y it.

  I passed through the empty lobby bound for my office and the dreaded phone call. And I stopped cold in the doorway.

  David’s back was to me, and he was rifling through my day planner.

  To startle him, I dropped my hobo bag on the floor.

  He shot so high that he reminded me of Washington Artillery Park’s Civil War cannon. Then he turned, red-faced, and his long, spindly fingers went to his chest. “Dude. You scared me.”

  “I’m just getting started.” I blocked the door and assumed the gunslinger stance à la the Dancing Hand Grenade.

  “Help.” His cry was feeble, but it elicited Veronica’s heels in the hallway.

  “Franki.” She tapped my shoulder. “Let David out.”

  “He’s investigating me.”

  “That’s what your nonna is paying him to do. If you want him to stop, you’ll have to take that up with her.”

  I would as soon as I’d told Luigi about Nick. I moved to let him pass but imprisoned him with my gaze. As he scurried to the lobby, I saw his LEGO Star Wars pen on my desk and shouted, “You can kiss Chewbacca goodbye, buddy.”

  Veronica gave me the side-eye and took a seat. “You’re acting like a child.”

  “I’m not the one playing with LEGOs.”

  “Go easy on David. All he wanted to do was find out whether you have a date with Bradley on your birthday. He thought that would placate your nonna for a while.”

  “Well, my planner is as clueless as I am.” I flopped into my desk chair to underscore my frustration. “Apparently, Bradley’s mind is on Mardi Gras, his so-called favorite day of the year.”

  “He always spoils you on your birthday. I’m sure he’s got something planned.”

  It felt wrong to discuss my petty personal problems after the gruesome discovery I’d made on the Galliano. I rubbed my eyes trying to clear the mental visual. “I have some rough news about Nick Pescatore. I found him dead in a chest freezer on the steamboat.”

  Veronica looked as frozen as he had, which made the awful memory more vivid. “I went to a payphone and reported it as an anonymous tip.”

  Her horrified eyes widened. “You left him in the freezer?”

  “What was I supposed to do? Contaminate the crime scene by pulling him out?”

  “No, it’s just that—”

  “It seems so cold and callous to leave him there?” I waved my hand in an eraser motion. “Forget I said cold.” I massaged my temples, which were starting to ache. “Look, Marv said he could get me one of the open jobs on the boat, so I did what I had to do to be able to carry out the investigation undercover.”

  She reached across the desk and squeezed my hand. “I’m sorry. It’s just such a shock.”

  “Tell me about it.” I sat back in my chair, wishing its arms could hug me. “And now I have to call Luigi.”

  We sat in silence for at least a minute.

  The Vassal appeared in the doorway. His mouth was open, so I waited for him to speak. But he began scaling the room with his back pressed to the wall. Veronica and I watched him slide about ten feet in, where he stopped, darted to my desk, snatched Chewbacca, and ran out.

  “So, before I make the call,” I said leaning forward, “Nick was in a seated position with a queen of spades card in his right hand—smiling.”

  She went still again. “Do you think he…froze that way?”

  “It’s possible that he knew he was trapped and waited to die holding the card, but I sincerely hope the killer positioned him like that after he was dead. As for the smile, I don’t know how that happened. Maybe a muscle reflex in death?”

  Veronica gripped her mouth as though she wanted to prevent it from moving. “So the card was either a message from Nick or a message from the killer.”

  “Two things come to mind—Captain Vandergrift’s poker playing and the horse-head-in-the-bed scene from The Godfather.”

  “You mean, he’s implicating the captain, or it was a Mafia calling card, so to speak, for not paying his gambling debts.”

  I shrugged. “Or the captain put the card in Nick’s hand to expose him as a card cheat. The only other thing I can figure is that the card itself is symbolic. I read once that every card in a playing deck symbolizes something.”

  “You could ask Chandra Toccato.”

  I leapt from my seat as though it were one of the flaming toilets that Chandra’s husband Lou sold at their plumbing and psychic services company. “Don’t even utter her name. You could psychically summon her.”

  “Well, she does do Cartomancy, so she could tell you what the queen of spades means.”

  “So can the internet, which is faster and doesn’t channel psycho spirits who come back to haunt me.”

  “Valid point.” She rose from her seat. “You’d better call Luigi before the police notify him. He left you his contact information.” She pulled a business card from her pocket and slid it across my desk. “I’ll leave you alone to talk to him.”

  Veronica left, and I added Luigi to my Contacts list to procrastinate for a few seconds. Then I tapped the number and took a seat as the phone rang.

  “Hello? Who is this?”

  I half-smiled at his aggressive answer. “Luigi, it’s Franki. Listen, I don’t know how to tell you this—”

  “You don’t have to, kid. I knew Nicky was gone.”

  I fell silent. He’d put up a brave front, but his voice trembled, so the last thing I wanted to do was mention the freezer. “You were right. He was on the steamboat, so you should be hearing from the police soon.”

  “You okay, kid?”

  My stomach churned like the Galliano’s paddlewheel. His concern for my well-being only made the situation harder. “I will be, but I’m devastated that this happened.”

  “Don’t take it so hard. Nicky knew the crowd he was running with. I appreciate you sticking your neck out to find him.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. “I’m going to find out who did this, I promise.”

  “I’m counting on that. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  He closed the call, and I put my head on my desk and wrapped my arms around it. I wanted to be in darkness to match my mood. Initially, I’d agreed to look for Nick for my nonna’s sake, but after hearing Luigi’s reaction, I wanted to find Nick’s killer for him.

  I heard someone enter my office and take a seat. I knew Veronica had come to comfort me, but I wasn’t ready to face anyone.

  “I’ve heard of laying down on the job, but this takes the layer cake.”

  The dry tone and wry comment were unmistakable.

  Alarmed, I raised my head.

  Bradley’s ex-assistant Ruth Walker tightened her graying bun and popped the pull-tab on a can of Pepsi. The laugh lines on her face weren’t laughing, and the chains on either side of her black horn-rimmed glasses wagged like fingers reprimanding me. “Speaking of jobs, I lost mine when Bradley resigned from the bank to spend time with you.”

  I sat up and considered calling for help as David had done. Ruth was obsessed with watching people get justice on court TV shows, so I feared she’d come to seek some of her own—outside the TV courtroom. “I’m sorry. I thought the bank had kept you on. What have you been doing?”

  “Buying lottery tickets and rewatching every episode of The People’s Court.” She unzipped a fanny pack and pulled out a small bottle. “But I’m all out of episodes and unemployment benefits, so I’m here for that job.”

  “We’re not hiring.”

  She unscrewed the cap from the bottle, and I tensed. There could’ve been poison in that thing. Or acid.

  “Fair’s fair. You cost me the job, you get me another.” She poured the liquid into her Pepsi.

  I relaxed, but not too much. “I’m the one who got you the assistant job to begin with, so I shouldn’t have to replace it.”

  Her head swooped into my personal space. “So you’re God now, is that it? The Franki giveth, and the Franki taketh away?”

  “I would never think of
myself as God.”

  “Darn straight you wouldn’t.” She slurped from the can. “He’s the epitome of charity.”

  I resented the implication that I wasn’t charitable, especially after I’d just reminded her about getting her the job with Bradley.

  Veronica entered. “Ruth, we haven’t seen you in a while. What have you been up to?”

  “Trying to get by after this one”—she jerked a thumb at me—“cost me a job. Now I’m looking for one. You hiring?”

  “I already told her we’re not.”

  Veronica smiled and looked at me. “Maybe Marv could get her one of those steamboat positions you mentioned.”

  Ruth turned with her lips puckered so tightly that her laugh lines threatened to crack her cheeks.

  I sunk low in my chair. I had to defuse her anger before she tried to sue me on television. “I didn’t think you’d be interested. It’s a drinking and gambling boat, and there could be overnight cruises.”

  “There are casinos and bars on Carnival cruise ships, and I’ve been on every one that sails from New Orleans.” She pulled a plastic card from her fanny pack. “I’m one of their VIFPs.”

  Veronica eyed the card. “What does that stand for?”

  “A Very Important Fun Person.”

  If Ruth was one of their fun guests, that wasn’t good advertising for the company. “Look, I was just hired to investigate a crime on the boat. So why don’t I talk to Marv and see if he has something for you at the Where Dat Tours office?”

  “And stick me on the admin tasks while you play bingo and eat at the buffet? No sir, I want to cruise.”

  “Don’t insist, Ruth.” My tone was testy after that sir. “I’m not sure the Galliano’s safe.”

  “You mean Captain Vandergrift’s boat? All this time I thought you were talking about the Steamboat Natchez.”

  I glanced at Veronica. “You know the captain?”

  “Not personally. He’s a regular at Harrah’s.”

  Glenda had said as much, but I couldn’t wait to hear how Ruth would explain her presence at the casino. “How do you know that?”

  “I see him there every time I play the penny slots.”

  Veronica rested her hand on Ruth’s chair. “I never realized you were such a gambler.”