It seemed a little out of place in this house of antiques, but the printout stated a small business center was available with a computer, printer and Internet. I hadn’t intended to do a lot with social media, so my phone didn’t have bells and whistles like apps yet.
I went down to the nook under the stairs and stood with my arms folded, sighing a lot. That got me nasty looks from the snotty twenty-something who was using the aging Dell. There’s always someone using the computer when you need it. After a while he got the hint that I didn’t think it was for the casual use he was putting it to, saving himself a headlock he must’ve sensed was coming based on presence and body language. I did everything but crack my knuckles and drive a fist into my palm.
When I was finally seated, I googled Sandra and Finn Alders.
I found mug shots and public record booking reports for minor infractions. I had to interpret the local codes on the fragments of the arrest records, but it looked like burglary on a small scale. The kind perpetrated to support the purchase of recreational substances. These had been six months back in a town called Casselberry, Florida, somewhere outside Orlando. Maybe they’d moved on or maybe they still hovered in that vicinity. I wished for the databases I’d had on the job. That would have made things easier.
I stared at one of Alders’ mug shots, one of a collector’s set of several. He gazed into the camera, eyelids drooping, tired but defiant, stubble on his upper lip, scruff on his chin, a scrape on his neck and a cut above one eye. I’d collard hundreds like him and knew how cuts and scrapes happened. I couldn’t read in his eyes whether it was true he had an unhealthy interest in little girls. I’d have to use a favor to get someone to pull his jacket for that, but Julianna didn’t need to be around him, regardless.
I started turning costs over in my head. A custody battle would mean more dollars, on top of any fees if my case was re-filed.
I don’t know why I tried to sleep after that. I lay under the bed’s canopy in that gray dark world that emerges after your vision has adjusted to the lights being out. As I stared past the thin folds of gathered fabric at the ceiling, demons whispered of horrors that might already be occurring. If I dozed at all, I saw Juli crouching in a dark, dank and grungy space in tattered clothes, weeping and filled with terror, and the worst version of Finn possible loomed in the shadows, a lean and sinister devil-man still possessing those droopy eyelids from the mugshot.
Chapter 7
Just after dawn, street sounds woke me, and I fixed coffee in a little one-cup maker that came with the room and watched the antique clock like you’re not supposed to. The hands refused to move. I waited for business hours.
After the coffee worked on the numbness a while, I showered and shaved and waited more, the gnawing feeling relentless.
I talked to Clinton Laroque’s answering service not because I expected anything, but it gave me something to do, though it came with rejection. When the law office opened, I got a secretary who told me it’d be another hour at least before I heard back from anyone.
It was two, and I was feeling like I couldn’t breathe when Clinton came on the line.
“I need to be in court soon,” he said. He was in a public place. A crowd buzzed around him. So, he’d be in a suit, seersucker if he stayed to form, holding his briefcase, me pressed to his ear, trying to take in as much of what I said as he could with the noise.
I gave him the gist of it.
“It’s gonna come down to what you can prove, and if they’re not in state that’s an issue. Let me lay it out for you beyond that. The judge is going to take child safety into consideration, but for custody they’re looking at employment, food and shelter, emotional support for the child. You have no stability and a possible re-trial hanging over you. You’re likely going to get her taken in and put in foster care. There’s a chance that’s better than where she is if what you’re hearing is right, but not ideal.”
“I need to do something.”
“Try to confirm the danger. That’s got the potential to sound like you stirring up cause for concern, and try to get your feet on the ground and get some money coming in. It’s a step-by-step. Gotta go. Judge. Waiting. Not good.”
And I was in the empty room with silence again. Except for the clock. I could hear it ticking, but the hands still didn’t seem to want to move much.
The afternoon crept like the morning had, but the temperature climbed quicker. I took my jacket off and sat at the bar in a seafood restaurant in the Bywater area not far from the Gulf Outlet Canal, part of the area where Katrina was most unkind. I thought about keeping my shades on. My eyes were tired from the lack of sleep and probably looked like I’d been using something the law didn’t allow.
Lt. Patrick Abshire worked the 5th District out of the newish white and orange station on North Claiborne. I’d passed by it, but he hadn’t wanted me to drop in for a visit. It wasn’t about the bleary eyes. It was my general stench.
We’d compromised on the restaurant. It was a small, dimly lit place with the smell of rich fried oysters. I ordered an appetizer and a local beer with an alligator on the label because I hadn’t eaten all day. I got a fried eggplant. I didn’t want to risk oysters on the half shell in a month with no r. Not with so much to live for.
Pat came in a half hour after he’d promised and raised a hand to decline my drink offer. On the job. He was in the kind of suit he’d always gone for. Crisp, perfect cut, light fabric. His skin was just a shade darker than the pale tan, his eyes gold-tinted and one shade darker than his skin. He carried an envelope he probably shouldn’t have had under one arm, but I was a friend and I’d asked.
“You remember these days they watch the jackets you pull and the records checks you run,” he said, sitting beside me and sliding the envelope along the bar to me, stopping just short of one of the rings a beer had left behind.
“Do they charge for the copies?”
He gave me a glance and an annoyed smirk.
“Just reminding you. I can square this, anyone asks. Just doesn’t need to become frequent behavior, your ex starts to date around or anything. I can’t be looking up all her boyfriends.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
I opened the envelope and looked at the pages he’d compiled. A different mug shot of Finn graced a sheet on top. Same sleepy eyes. Different haircut. Lots of asterisks served as dividing lines and brief narratives summed up his offenses. He’d been picked up for a Metairie burglary, just like Florida. He had some drunk and disorderly charges as well and he went through a phase of breaking into cars.
“He’s been popular with our kind for a while, flip a little deeper,” Patrick said.
I found a younger shot of him. His hair was longer, head tilted back, chin jutting out a little more. The arrogance didn’t show quite as much in the next. He looked resigned and a little tired, still feeling the effects of the controlled substance he was charged with possessing.
The stack went on with a few more infractions over a few more years.
“He had some juvie stuff. I couldn’t get at all of that. It’s not guaranteed to be a lewd and lascivious. He’s not registered as an offender or predator.”
I almost felt better for a second, but then he pulled out a sheet he’d dog-eared.
“No prosecution. Went nowhere,” Patrick said. “But there was a call related to a younger female cousin staying in his family’s house.”
The appetizer and beer I’d consumed threatened to come back up in an instant, because I knew how many incidents went unreported. I knew what got covered up in families, and I knew what patterns of behavior indicated.
“Maybe he’s just got designs on Sandra,” Patrick said.
“She’s a catch,” I said.
He was a cop. He didn’t have a bedside manner. He wasn’t very good at making me feel better.
“You still good with mental snapshots?” he asked. “You know you can’t keep this.”
“There’s no name? O
n the cousin?”
“No. That’s sealed. She’s in her twenties now.” He put a sticky note in front of me with a phone number. “We’ve moved into you-owe-me-now territory.”
“If I’m gonna owe you, can you get a line on this guy? At Disneyworld or wherever he is?”
“We’ll see. Don’t look for too much help on anything within the department.”
“I was helping my partner.” That case had been made before. I just felt the need to repeat the point.
Pat lifted his hands.
“Every police agency has public perception to deal with these days. We’ve got a commitment to commitment to `transparency, accountability, collaboration and integrity.’ The world hasn’t forgotten Danziger Bridge, and it’s a rough city, tough one to police. A guy like you….”
I tilted my head and raised my eyebrows.
“It’s not a good time to have cops making it look like the wild west, going after people with guns blazing.”
I started to speak but he raised his hand. He knew the story and he didn’t care. “We got guys out there and they’re gonna have to defend themselves from time to time. Rep needs to be pristine. Let me reiterate. Don’t expect any more off the books help from the department. And good luck to you.”
He collected the folder, gave me a pat on the shoulder and left me sitting there over my beer and eggplant.
I called the number on the sticky note a while later, when I felt strong enough.
Finn’s cousin lived in Monroe. I could have visited her easier from N-5. If they’d let me out.
“How’d you…?”
“I was a cop.”
“Sealed records only mean so much.”
“Something like that.”
Her voice was measured and a bit deep, not letting out much emotion.
“I try not to look back on the past,” she said. “It’s all behind me.”
It wasn’t the kind of case I’d worked, but I could read that that wasn’t really true. Nothing’s ever fully in the rearview mirror.
She wouldn’t talk long on the phone, even when I managed to wedge in my concerns between her protests, though she finally heard “daughter.”
That made her go silent for a while.
“How old?”
I told her.
There was more silence, maybe indicating a personal debate, but it seemed to have been enough to give her a nudge.
“Maybe you have reason to worry,” she said.
There was no more she was willing to say.
She hung up.
I needed that damned bottle I’d left with Rose.
Chapter 8
I had the fresh bottle in a brown paper bag and my tie in my pocket when I spotted the brunette who looked like a college girl. She was hanging out in a shady spot near some street vendors on Decatur across from Jackson Square and not far from the old Jax brewery that was now a mall.
Short navy skirt, dark blouse, handbag over a shoulder. The eyelashes were exaggerated, the hair a butt-cut, but she was subdued for the Quarter. That let her linger in spots a lot of hookers might have been spotted and shooed.
I sat on the metal railing near a historic marker and said hello.
“I’m meeting someone,” she said. “A date.” Emphatic.
“I’m not a cop.”
“I didn’t think you were on the job.” Her dark eyes were stone when she looked my way. “But I’m busy.”
I opened my jacket where the tops of bills showed in the wallet pocket. I had fanned them before slipping them in after the bourbon purchase.
With a glance, she turned her gaze across the street, away from me but not really focusing on anything.
“I work by appointment.”
That explained it. Casual encounters enhanced the pre-arranged experience. No wonder she didn’t look like a real streetwalker. To the untrained eye.
“In college?”
“Didn’t like the course load.”
“Double to break your date and have a drink with me.”
I crinkled the paper bag.
“My boss wouldn’t like that.”
“A regular today?”
“Tourist.”
“They can send someone else, and you can pick up a nice tip.”
“He liked my picture.”
“She can say she got a new hair style.”
“I don’t know you.”
“You know me better than a tourist you haven’t even met yet, and if you have an appointment, I bet you have a spot ready.”
I took out a couple of bills and worked them between my fingers so the denominations showed. She eyed them a while then nodded slowly. She had rent to pay even if the textbooks had gone back to the store.
“Give me a second.”
She told someone on the other end of a call she was Crystal and needed a sub, that she was taking a walk-in or something like that, jargon. She assured her contact she’d be safe and gave my name after I mouthed it. That didn’t make me feel proud either, but when she was off the call, she took my arm, and we walked along Decatur like a couple.
The motel was tucked into a little pocket on a side street just a few blocks away, the room she unlocked functional but clean enough. When I returned from the ice machine, she’d slipped off the blouse. Stood in the nook outside the bathroom running water in the washbasin. A lacy black bra lifted her small, firm breasts, and the skirt shimmered around her as she turned toward me. Seventies porn music should have been cued.
The onyx eyes rolled toward the water.
“You’re serious? That’s what you’re worried about?”
“It’s one thing we can take care of. I’m sure you know the drill from that house trailer bordello where you lost your virginity.”
“You study the history of the trade or something?”
“I just know Louisiana.”
I kicked off my shoes and walked into the hard, white light of the fluorescent bulbs. While I peeled paper off a couple of the plastic tumblers in front of the mirror, her fingers moved to my belt buckle. I dropped ice cubes into the glasses and tossed back a shot. Then I rattled melting cubes and refreshed and poured a drink for her.
She gave it a light sip and sat it down. Then she unzipped the skirt, letting it drop around her ankles. Stepping out of the fabric circle, she picked up her drink again and walked in her black thong, bra and heels to the bed, her alabaster skin and slender form making her look like the most ethereal of demons.
I followed and sat beside her in my now open shirt and boxers and touched plastic to plastic then sipped again, letting enough bourbon down my throat to produce a burn. It wasn’t hot enough to sear the bitterness and remorse.
She sipped a little more, working for seductive, then she reached over and touched my cheek. When I didn’t move, she leaned in for a soft kiss. That might have been off the table for some. She was used to playing a girlfriend, and she sought to make it a familiar greeting that would move things along.
I took another swallow. She looked far different from Sandra, who had sandy hair, but I couldn’t stop thinking about my wife. Thoughts of her brought thoughts of Juli. That didn’t make want me want to snap a selfie in this setting, even if I could figure out the fucking phone.
“I’m glad we could be alone,” Crystal said.
She slipped her arms around me, holding her glass at the nape of my neck as she gave me a deeper kiss and pressed into me.
She wore a delicate perfume, and her flesh was warm, soft, not flawed by track mark nor decorated with tattoos. Her employers probably mentioned that in her promos. I slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her close, trying to think more of where her tongue was going than where it had been.
I had enough cash to keep her around a while and to keep the numbing drinks coming from what passed for room service, a skinny African American kid whose retro ’fro almost touched the top of the door frame.
Crystal offered to get meth. Heroine, when I said no to the chemical compo
sition of the meth. Some lingering fragment of self-preservation wanted me to keep my teeth white.
I said no to the smack too and just kept to the whiskey. I wondered if it somehow signified a change in my luck, that I’d found the best call girl in the View Carre.
Flashes of her hair and body drifted through my consciousness, the comfort of her touch inevitably giving way to more thoughts of my family.
They sailed somewhere in the Atlantic while I watched from shore, wishing I could get to them. Juli waved, her arm pivoting from the shoulder in her fervor. Sandra refused to look my way, focused on steering the boat away from me.
They disappeared into a fog so gray and thick it enveloped all and gave me a feeling of disorientation as well as despair, and I knew Finn, the demon with drooping eyes, was somewhere near. Snippets of high school excerpts from Dante hit me. Did I mention I went to a really good high school? I thought of the opening part where he talks of being lost in a dark wood in a place “scarcely less bitter than death.”
In one of my forays into Facebook, someone posted one of those little quote images that stuck with me, a bromide, I suppose, from Norman Cousins, that Anatomy of an Illness guy. “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”
I suddenly understood it better in the midst of my stupor than at a desk scrolling past recipes and cat pictures. Death would have had no feeling, but in my gut, the damaged spots were raw and toxic.
I’m not sure how long it lasted. At some point the girl went away, probably when the cash I had with me ran out. So much for the hooker with the heart of gold.
I lay staring at the grimy ceiling, tangled in sweaty sheets, drifting until a new face floated into the void.
“How are things here at the bottom of the ocean?” Rose Cantor asked.
Chapter 9
Rose gave me water then a sports drink so green it glowed. I felt hot as hell, and I must have kept babbling because then some guy came in with an IV and a plastic bag.
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