“But he’s a PI.”
“Sure.” Marv ran a hand through his thinning black hair. “Before that, though, he went to the slammer.”
I couldn’t judge Jim Rockford. I’d gone to the slammer too.
He smacked his lips. “That’s the thing about ol’ Jim. You expect him to be the good guy, and he is, just not in the way you’d think.” His eyes took on a wistful look. “They don’t make shows like that no more.”
“Right?” I said, distracted. My mind was still on Tim, who wasn’t a good guy, and his British buddy. He’d said the guy docked, which meant he was arriving by boat, and I wanted to know which one. “While we’re on the subject of ships, does New Orleans get a lot of cruise business from England?”
“Not much, no. Norwegian has a Copenhagen–New Orleans cruise that stops in England, I think. The only other one is the Southampton Spitfire.”
The cruise ship that Wendell saw Tim boarding with a sailor a week or so before. “Know if it comes to town tomorrow?”
“Sure does, Franki Rockford.” He chuckled and rested a hand on his belly. “Why? You going on a cruise? Or are you thinking of setting up a con like ol’ Jim?”
“No, nothing like that.” More like a stakeout. I needed to find out whether Tim’s British buddy was coming for a visit—or delivering a new shipment of gold bars from the U.K.
“It’s Happy Hour,” a young brunette shouted as I walked through the French Quarter. She wore only two items of clothing, a pair of shorts and tennis shoes, but her topless state wasn’t what caught my attention. It was her green plastic Hand Grenade cup.
“I’m not done with that damn Dancing Hand Grenade,” I muttered as I headed up St. Peter.
But I couldn’t fool with the huge green Humpty Dumpty at the moment. It was too late to catch Veronica at the office, but it was the perfect time to stop by the Gold Mine Saloon, where Wendell had worked with Kate. My conversation with Marv about Jim Rockford’s character and the Golden Star ship had convinced me that I needed to figure out what kind of game she was playing on the Galliano. And after the day I’d had in the galley and the evening at home that lay ahead, a drink was definitely on my agenda.
I rounded the corner onto Dauphine Street and stepped inside the dark saloon. The scent of dive bar hit me, as did the sight of a creepy clown trashcan that made me think of the calliope, neither of which made for a good time.
The saloon appeared empty, so I scanned the room while I waited for an employee. There was an old wooden bar that had seen its share of hard times. Arcade games lined the exposed brick walls, and a disco ball hung from the ceiling.
The door to the ladies room opened, and a short, sixty-something woman with a rat’s nest of dyed black hair, badly applied blue eyeshadow, and red lipstick emerged. She stepped behind the bar and began filling a plastic cup with cherries from a garnish tray.
I walked over, but she didn’t look up. “Hi, I—”
“You here for a flaming Dr. Pepper shot? The Gold Mine invented ’em.”
“No, I—”
“What’s your name?”
“Franki. I’m looking for a woman—”
“You a lesbian?”
I recoiled at her directness. “I just need some information—”
“Does this look like a library to you?”
I grimaced and took a deep breath. “Obviously not. I think she used to work—”
“Who is it?”
“Kate Wilson.” I spit out the name before she could interrupt me again.
She moved from the cherries to the orange slices. “What is this, some kind of setup?”
I was starting to wonder whether this woman spoke only in questions. “No, I just need to ask you a few questions about her.”
“You a cop?”
It was looking like I was right about the questions. I reached into my wallet and pulled out a business card. “I’m a PI.”
Her eyes moved from the card, to my eyes, to my wallet, where they stayed.
I sighed and pulled out a twenty.
She snatched the bill from my fingers and stuffed it into her bra. Then she stepped from behind the bar and headed for the door.
“Hey, where are you going?”
She continued walking without even bothering to pick up her pace.
“Listen, lady,” I shouted, “I answered all of your questions. You need to answer mine. Where are you going with my money?”
She spat on the concrete floor, and I leapt backwards to avoid splatter.
“What’s all the yelling about?” a male voice boomed.
I turned to a manager type, around forty, in a Gold Mine Saloon shirt and jeans. “Your employee just took off with my money.”
“What employee?”
I looked back at the door, but the woman was gone. “The one with all the blue eyeshadow and red lipstick.”
“Oh, you mean Marlene.” He grinned. “She’s a crazy bag lady who comes in and eats our garnish.”
I stared at him, stunned. I’d been conned by one of my own kind, like Jim Rockford.
“Did you need a drink?”
Did I ever. But after getting conned out of my twenty dollars, I couldn’t afford one. “Actually,” I flashed my business card, “I’m a PI, and I’m here about Kate Wilson.”
His brown eyes crinkled. “She’s not missing, is she?”
That wasn’t the reaction I’d expected. “Why would you ask?”
“I told her she’d either end up dead or in jail thanks to her loser boyfriend. She hooked up with him and got herself fired for drug possession and possible dealing.”
Drugs? “And this is Kate? Kate Wilson?”
“We called her Goldie.”
Goldie. My head began to spin like the disco ball. That was the name the woman on roller skates had given to Jefferson Davis at the Civil War Museum. But she and Kate couldn’t be the same person, could they? “Just so I know we’re talking about the same woman, can you describe her?”
“I can do better than that. We’ve got a picture of her over there.” He led me to a wall covered with pictures and pointed to one close to the floor. “That’s her.”
I crouched and stared at a picture of Kate balancing a tray of drinks—in a yellow wig and roller skates.
Kate, a.k.a. Goldie, was the Roulergirl, the woman in sunglasses who’d been anticipating my every move like a PI and running from me with the help of the Dancing Hand Grenade.
The manager shoved his hands into his pockets. “She skates in the roller derby and with a group during Mardi Gras. She came up with the name Goldie Brawn, like Goldie Hawn, while she was working here at the Gold Mine. She was always real clever like that.”
So clever that I hadn’t even recognized her. I rose slowly, because my head was in a disco-ball spin.
“You never said why you were looking for her. Is she in trouble?”
“It’s about a case I’m working. So no, she’s not in trouble.” But I wasn’t so sure about that.
Because if Kate had a history of dealing drugs, then it was possible that she had something to do with the gold bars.
Glenda flagged me down from her second-floor balcony—literally. She waved her cigarette holder while draped in a Sicilian flag, just like the Mardi Gras decorations.
I leaned back in the front seat of my Mustang and regretted not springing for that drink at the saloon—if not the flaming Dr. Pepper shot, then at least a Goldmine Lager beer. I sighed and opened my car door.
“I need you to come up, Miss Franki,” she whisper-shouted. “We’ve got two big situations.”
Yeah. Each of those giant boobs hanging from the house. I slammed the car door, climbed the stairs, and followed Glenda into her living room, where I promptly stopped and shifted my weight onto one hip.
My mother was sprawled in the giant champagne glass, humming a honky-tonk tune in between swigs from a Chianti bottle. And the worst part was that she was still wearing her black Miss Havisham dress.
&
nbsp; I knew I should have done something, but with Bradley in jail and Luigi missing, it didn’t seem like a big deal that my mom was in a glass bottom. “What’s she humming?”
“An old country song by Bobby Bare.” Glenda’s eyes narrowed behind a cloud of smoke. “It’s called ‘Marie Laveau.’”
My head snapped back. My mother was taking the voodoo thing seriously. I couldn’t believe it, but I kind of missed the Christmas carols.
“I don’t mind her using the glass, sugar, but red wine doesn’t belong in a champagne flute.”
My teeth tightened, and I longed for a swig of my mom’s Chianti. “Maybe you could look the other way under the circumstances?”
She widened her eyes and flung one end of the flag over her shoulder. “I’ve already been looking the other way on my visitor policy, what with all these Lilliputians running around. And that’s the other big situation, Miss Franki. I don’t mind them using my spare apartment for an emergency, but I draw the line at my acsexsories.”
“Say what?” I not only copied Wendell’s line but also his lip drop.
“Go see for yourself. I’m not going into that den of non-heathens.”
I would have rather spent the night alone on the Galliano with the ghosts and the drug-dealing killer, but I didn’t have a choice in the matter. Besides, the scene in Glenda’s costume apartment couldn’t have been any worse than the one in her living room.
Without so much as a glance at my mom, I went outside to the balcony and pressed my ear to the door.
It was quiet, which was odd given that there were at least ten busy-body Sicilian nonne in the place.
I turned the handle and peered inside.
The costume racks had been pushed to the sides of the room, and Nonna stood at the far wall studying a map of New Orleans on the wall. The other nonne sat with their backs to me, observing Nonna from a table they’d made with a surfboard that said Stripping Safari and a huge hoop skirt that Glenda had once loaned me for a plantation investigation.
I couldn’t understand what Glenda had been so upset about until I realized that the nonne had stuck her pasties on various points on the map and that Nonna was using her whip as a pointer.
Except for the stripper acsexsories, the scene was eerily reminiscent of the wax museum in Rome’s infamous recreation of a meeting of Mussolini’s cabinet.
Nonna turned and smacked the tip of the whip against her hand. “Franki. Where you been-a?”
I took a step back. The woman shared a lot of Il Duce’s qualities. “On the Galliano. Those places you’ve got pastied on that map aren’t Scalino properties, are they? Because I’ve got David looking into that,”—I paused and narrowed my eyes as a warning—“and he doesn’t need any help.”
She opened her arms wide. “Relax-a. They are the chapel and Gigi’s-a mansion. We’re re-enacting Luigi’s abduction.”
“Have you come up with anything?”
“The man you saw in-a the limo was-a not-a Gigi Scalino.”
I was skeptical. “And the map told you that?”
“No. His-a maid. We went-a to his-a mansion.”
I imagined the Black Skirts marching on his home like the Black Shirts had marched on Rome in 1922, when they’d helped Mussolini rise to power. “You shouldn’t have done that, Nonna. Gigi Scalino is dangerous, and don’t forget that we have his father’s winepress.”
She paced, tapping her whip. “He’s-a not-a going to touch-a the nonne.”
Mary leaned forward. “It goes against the code.”
They had a point. No self-respecting Mafia don would dare go after a bunch of grandmas. That would be bad publicity, and they liked to appear to be good, generous men in their communities—John Gotti being a prime example. “So what did the maid tell you, exactly?”
Mary clutched her cross necklace. “She said Gigi was having an emergency appendectomy yesterday morning when Nick’s memorial was supposed to start.”
I took a seat at the surfboard. “And you believed her?”
Nonna nodded. “We went-a to the hospital. It’s-a true.”
Then Gigi couldn’t have kidnapped Luigi. “I guess we need to get the names of everyone who rented limos on Sunday.”
“Gigi has his own-a limo. It was in-a the garage.”
I flashed back to the shoes and spats I’d seen on the floor of the backseat. “That means Alfredo was probably the guy I saw. He’s the only person who could’ve gotten Gigi’s men to help him abduct Luigi.”
Santina Messina curled her mustached lip. “C’è un’altra possiblità.”
I couldn’t wait to hear who this other “possibilità” was.
Nonna’s eyelids lowered to you’re-not-a-going-to-believe-a-this mode. “His consigliera.”
The term referred to a mob boss advisor, like Robert Duval’s character in The Godfather, but I’d never heard it with the feminine a ending. “You mean, consigliere?”
She raised the whip and waved it left to right. Tch.
The sound was a hard no in Italian, which meant that whatever she was about to tell me was serious.
“Word on-a the street is-a,” she bowed her head and then raised her chin, “Gigi take-a the advice of a woman.”
A tall nonna spat on the wood floor.
Far too much spit had been raining down around me, but I didn’t say anything. In the old Sicilian culture, the notion of a man, and especially a Mafia boss, taking the advice of a woman was equivalent to blasphemy—unless she was his mother. “Who is she?”
“We don’t have-a no idea.”
Realistically, the consigliera could have been anyone. But I had a definite idea of the woman I wanted to investigate first.
15
Waves lapped against the dock at the Julia Street Cruise Terminal. I couldn’t see them from inside the empty shipping container, but I could hear them. And the sounds of frogs. Or birds. No, it was dark out. Crickets? Actually, just whatever insects and animals lived on the river and made noise before dawn.
Unlike the water and those damn river creatures, time stood still—and silent. I’d turned off my phone when I’d arrived at five a.m. to avoid the display signaling my location like a beacon. And even though the container was at least nine feet high and eight feet wide, I had to sit quietly in the stuffy space, slightly nauseated from the stink of tar and fish, listening and waiting for the Southampton Spitfire.
And Tim.
What was his role in the Galliano crimes? He was such a stickler for steamboat rules that I wouldn’t have been surprised if he were simply an overzealous sailor. But given the British origin of the gold bars, his meeting with the buddy on the Spitfire was a red flag, as was Kate’s interest in him.
Kate was even more of an enigma. I didn’t know whether she was a gold digger after Captain Vandergrift’s money, a treasure hunter after Captain Galliano’s Civil War gold, a PI after justice, or a civilian after drug money. But could she be a consigliera for the Scalino clan? Somehow I had a hard time envisioning the likes of Gigi and Alfredo taking advice from a twenty-something woman, even if she was tough enough to be in the roller derby.
Alfredo was another question mark. He was definitely behind the gold bars. But had he killed Nick and kidnapped Luigi? The cards taped beneath his desk weren’t necessarily proof that he was the killer. Someone could have put them there to frame him.
Like the captain. Because of the queen of spades card in Nick’s hand, he was the most obvious suspect. But I didn’t believe he would risk his dream of sailing the Mississippi like Mark Twain—at least not intentionally. And there was always the possibility that the card was related to voodoo.
That left Pat, Marian, or Wendell. But I had no reason to suspect them of Nick’s murder. They weren’t onboard for the managers’ meeting the night he was killed, and there wasn’t any evidence to incriminate them. Plus, Wendell didn’t have the stuff of a killer. He would’ve been too afraid that his victim’s ghost would come back to haunt him.
In term
s of the evidence, Nick had either been killed by the captain, Alfredo, or a mystery woman who’d invoked voodoo loa Erzulie D’en Tort for revenge.
But why kidnap Luigi? And where was he?
I rubbed my face. It was all so frustrating.
And exhausting.
I yawned and leaned the back of my head against the container wall. It figured that the one night I could’ve gotten some sleep, thanks to my mom spending the night in Glenda’s glass, I had to do a stakeout. And I needed sleep to be able to piece together the details of the case.
My thoughts drifted to Bradley.
Was he sleeping?
Would he make bail today?
And would he ever speak to me again?
I certainly planned to talk to him, to explain. But if he didn’t want to listen, what then? Were we really through?
A tear rolled down my cheek.
I didn’t want to imagine a future without Bradley. Or a future with my nonna post-failed lemon tradition. The former foretold a cold, harsh winter, but the latter foretold fire and the apocalypse.
Light entered the end of shipping container, snapping me out of my-life-is-over mode. I crawled to the opening and peeked at the river. A cruise ship lit up the sky.
The Southampton Spitfire.
The sound of an engine sent me ducking inside the container. A car had pulled onto the dock.
Tim?
My breathing increased, which was unfortunate given that fish smell.
Minutes passed, five, maybe ten.
The engine cut off, and a car door slammed.
Slowly, I peered out again.
The Spitfire had pulled lengthwise along the dock, and Tim strode toward the middle of the ship, looking over his shoulder every so often.
I needed a better vantage point.
Empty shipping containers lined the dock, so I waited until his head was turned and crept to the next container. And then another.
Two loud clicks caught my attention.
I flattened against the container and peered around the corner.
A sailor had opened a mid-ship door for boarding passengers. He looked from side to side and disappeared inside. Seconds later he emerged with two dark suitcases and handed them to Tim. He took one last look around and closed the ship door.
Galliano Gold (Franki Amato Mysteries Book 5) Page 17