by Les Edgerton
He’d almost driven by the place. It didn’t look like much on the outside. One of the countless honky-tonks the cops in Dayton would have referred to as a “bucket o’ blood.” It was the name that drew him in. Sally’s.
When he walked through the door, the worst music he thought he’d ever heard assaulted his ears. The entire band was off-key, limping through a tortured version of “Faded Love.” The bar was directly to his left and every seat seemed to be taken by a cripple. Not a single person sitting there--all men--appeared to have their entire complement of body parts. One was missing an ear, several an eye, as evidenced by eye patches, and at least two were sporting hooks where their hands used to be.
So this is where the cast of M*A*S*H went after the show folded, Grady thought to himself, taking the only remaining seat, a stool with barroom polio--one leg shorter than the other three. It was at the end nearest the door. Even the furniture had infirmities, he noted, wryly. Perfect place for his own self.
Sally’s doors were never closed, he discovered in striking up a conversation with the owner who was also bartending at the time. Not in the last fourteen years. Sally turned out to be a man.
“Hell, I couldn’t close it if I wanted,” said Sally, a short, barrel-chested Italian. “There’s no locks on the doors.” Grady was surprised Sally was a man until he revealed his given name was Salvatore Graziano. No relation to the former middleweight fighter except that Grady’d discovered that all Italians seemed to be
related--at least in their opinion. Sally turned out to be the most helpful of anyone he’d met.
“I know this guy. Know who he is, anyway. Matter of fact, a pal of his comes in, I think. Eddie something. You want, I can ask my wife. She’d know.” He gave Grady a hard look. “You’re a cop, aren’t you?”
Grady was surprised. Not that the bartender made him, but that he volunteered so much upfront. Usually in a place like this, getting information was about as easy as root canal work.
“I’m a cop myself,” explained Sally. “Well, retired. NOPD, twenty and out. Walked the Quarter for my beat most of the time. That’s worth thirty years, compared to out in the parishes. Went in in uniform, went out in uniform. Never made a suit, though there were opportunities. Always figured the real work got done by the hoofers like me. Now? Now, they’re all in cars, wondering why the crime stats keep going up. I got no regrets though. I seen it all, brudda. You want an interesting beat, try the Quarter. More perverts per square block than anywhere else in the world. I include the tourists in that assessment, too. Something happens to people when they come down and I’m not talking just during Mardi Gras. It’s something in the air, maybe in the crab boil. Makes your pecker swell and your brain shrink.”
“So you got this bar,” Grady said. He decided to relax, have another Pearl. Sally kept his beer at the perfect temperature, just above freezing. One degree more and it would turneer slush. He felt he’d run into a kindred soul. He liked the ex-cop right away. There was something about the work, the things they faced, that bonded all cops, no matter how far apart the places where they worked. The scenery might be different, but the human animal was the same everywhere. Missoula, Montana got the same share of excrement as Chicago’s Loop.
“Yeah. So I got this bar. I couldn’t get out of the Quarter fast enough when my time was done. Liked it when I was there, hated it as soon as I walked away and realized what I’d been swimming in. Never go up there anymore. They got the beat cops on motor scooters! Can you imagine! I couldn’t do it. Next thing, they’ll have ‘em wearing those little caps with propellers, handing out gumdrops to the bad guys.”
Grady kept noticing the customers that walked in. If the patrons present represented suburban normality down here, he figured Sally was right about the Quarter being a pervert headquarters.
The bar was cavernous, arranged in two large sections. When you walked in the front door, the bar itself was on the left. There were tables right in front of you and a raised area in the back where the band set up. They were on a break. Must be the regular house band, he figured. The instruments that were on it looked as though they’d been there so long they were a permanent fixture. Around behind the bandstand he could barely make out another area, darkened, that looked like a bunch of tables set up. He guessed that Sally opened that up when the band played on key and the crowds demanded it.
He told Sally why he was in New Orleans, why he was looking for Charles Kincaid.
“Man-oh-man! So you think Reader Kincaid tried to kill your brother! Man, I’m sorry. Makes you crazy, don’t it? Listen, Fogarty, if I hear anything, I’ll let you know. I’ll ask Veronica when I go home. Leave me your number, someplace I can reach you. I’ll tell you this--you come to the right place. Most of the local outlaws come in some time or other. They know I run a clean bar, something that’s hard to get on this end of town. They figure it’s a safe place to be, won’t be no trouble at Sally’s. I keep things in line. Make a few bucks now and again, too. I keep in touch with the boys downtown. A lot of information comes my way so I make a little both ways. Know what I mean?”
When Grady hit the sheets that night at the Day’s Inn he did so with a mild buzz, but he felt he’d made some progress and counted the headache worthwhile. At least he’d made a valuable contact, someone connected to the criminal pipeline. Someone who knew Kincaid. What was better, Sally was one of the good guys. He’d been dying to ask the bartender to call his wife, wake her up and ask her right away what she knew about this friend of Kincaid’s, but he figured he better not. He didn’t think the man would do it anyway and he didn’t want to lose the only contact he’d made. He trusted Sally to call him as soon as he talked to his wife in the morning. Sometimes, you have to let things play out naturally, he thought.
He tossed and turned for an hour before sleep came and dozed fitfully for the rest of the night.
The next morning, Grady showered, shaved, got dressed and drove down to a coffee shop named Morning Call in Fat City that the clerk recommended. There, he got his second break. He was scanning the morning Times-Picayune while stuffing down a beignet and some of the best coffee in his life and was about to turn the page when a small item caught his eye.
It was an article quoting an Animal Control official who was outraged over an incident out at the lake near Covington. A German shepherd was blown up back in the swamps. Probably by a remote control device, the investigating sergeant had theorized.He didn’t have a theory why someone would go to all this trouble just to kill a dog unless it was some kind of satanic cult. The report went on to say that the Animal Control officer, a woman named Farver, was beside herself that anyone would do something like that to an innocent animal.
He’d dealt with cults before. There were kooks everywhere. Mostly kids who read too many comic books and not enough Mark Twain. That’s what piqued his curiosity as he read and made him think there might be something there. Grady’d never heard of an animal being sacrificed by explosion. They usually cut the poor creature’s throat. Occasionally they hanged them. Something wasn’t right about this. What really caught his eye was the speculation that a remote control device had been used.
Maybe if there was something else to go on he’d let it go, but any lead was precious. He decided to pay the Animal Control office a visit and see what information he could dig up. Maybe blowing up dogs was common in these parts. This was for sure a much more violent society than the Midwest. He’d soon figured that out as if he didn’t already know from years of hearing stories about the Big Easy.
***
“Are you with the New Orleans police? You aren’t a native, are you?”
Grady looked at the animals, mostly dogs but some cats and a monkey housed in the cages they were walking by.
“Who lost their monkey? Are those legal to keep? No, ma’am, I’m a cop...well, retired. I’m from Dayton. Ohio. I’m checking into an attempted murder.” He hesitated. “My brother’s.”
Whitney Farver was not what Grady ex
pected. He didn’t know what he thought she would look like, but this wasn’t it. Twenty-five, twenty-six, long blonde hair and perfect white teeth which she flashed in frequent and thoroughly charming smiles. A beautiful woman. He thought she looked more like a model than somebody who chased stray dogs.
“I’m sorry,” she said, after a silent moment that stretched too long for comfort. “But I don’t understand. What’s a mutilated dog in New Orleans got to do with somebody’s attempted murder in Ohio? And, yes, monkeys are legal if you purchase them from a licensed dealer and if you apply for a permit and get them shots. Only there’re a lot around that aren’t legal. They’re a big headache. This is a seaport, if you haven’t noticed. A lot of sailors come through from off the tankers and other ships. This is one of the biggest ports in the country. Maybe the biggest. Most of the grain from the Midwest leaves for overseas from New Orleans. Drive out on River Road sometime. There’s an elevator out there you won’t believe. Not to mention gas and oil. We’re hurting--the oil business isn’t what it used to be, but it’s still got a pulse.”
She went on, explaining about the monkeys. It was evident she loved animals and loved her work. He guessed she was right where she should be. No matter how beautiful she was, somebody that dedicated would be wasted prancing down a runway in a Dior.
“Sometimes seamen bring them home. Monkeys. Not only monkeys. Lots of things. Endangered species, too. Parrots mostly. They think they’ll make great pets. Or maybe they try to sell them. They hear about all this big money people pay for parrots. Only they get them home and don’t know how to locate a buyer. You can’t run an ad like you’re selling your car. Then they either get tired of them, the animal gets sick, or maybe the jerk gets bitten or scratched. They dump them out on the road someplace, the ones they don’t outright kill. We get three or four a year like Chipper. If this little guy had a legitimate owner, he’d be in to claim him. We’ll give him to Audubon Zoo if nobody shows up in the nex day or two. You think monkeys are weird? You should have been here last week. There was an ostrich back in that last cage. That was a new one for me. You know what I did?”
He didn’t have a clue and said so.
“I checked the paper to see if Michael Jackson was in town!”
They both laughed.
He liked the way she gave a name to the monkey. He bet she named all the other ones too. A job like this must be hard on her when it came time to destroy an animal. He decided not to say anything about that.
“This thing probably hasn’t got anything at all to do with the guy I’m looking for,” he said, watching her begin to feed the dogs, ladling out scoops of dried dog food from a pail.
Grady paused, and—Whitney, as she’d asked him to call her--said, “But--”
“The article said the police said the dog was hooked up with a pipe bomb. And probably blown up by remote control. That’s what got my interest. My brother has an electronic store and whoever attacked him stole stuff like that, remote control equipment. You know, those gizmos that you use to control airplanes, cars, things like that.”
She stopped feeding the dogs and straightened up, giving him a quizzical look.
“Look, Miss...Whitney, I don’t know if there’s any connection or not, but I don’t have much to go on. And I’ve had something to do with satanic cults--I could tell you a story or two if you had time--but I never heard of any of ‘em blowing up their sacrifices. They usually--”
“I know,” she interrupted. “They usually use a knife, cut their throats. God! I wish--” The fury in her eyes was unmistakable. I wouldn’t want this woman mad at me, Grady thought, waiting for her to continue.
“Look, Mr. Fogarty, I’d like to help you, but I don’t know that I can. And I doubt if you can get much from the police who investigated it. They don’t put a lot of priority on dog mutilations.” Her tone was bitter.
Grady got up, prepared to leave.
“Wait!” she said, suddenly, going over to a desk and rifling through the mass of papers on top of it. “There’s something....here it is.”
She fished out a scrap of paper and handed it to Grady.
“This guy called in, thought it might be his dog that got blown up. Would this--”
“Help? I hope to smile,” Grady said, turning the paper around to read it. “What’s a ‘Chef Menteur’?”
Whitney smiled. “Not a ‘what,’ a ‘where.’ It’s a street. I’m going with you.”
She grabbed her purse.
“I was planning on talking to Mr. Pelkerson myself. Come on. You’ll never find it.”
***
She was right Grady would have had a hell of a time finding the house. It was in one of those subdivisions where all the homes look alike. A ranch, next to a two-story colonial, next to a ranch, next to a... The contractor had only used three colors for maybe a hundred or so houses. White, yellow and a salmon shade of pink. He saw a blue one that must have been repainted. The neighborhood rebel. The house he was looking for turned out to be one of the standard pink ones.
“I knew I shouldn’t have sold Fritz to that asshole.”
The man--Pelkerson he’d introduced himself as--no “Mister,” no first name, coughed horribly. The Camels he kept chain smoking couldn’t be helping, Grady thought, and he remembered the pack of Marlboros in his own pocket. He saw Whitneyr*s glance at Pelkerson and guessed she was a nonsmoker by the look on her face.
Pelkerson was telling them what had happened with his dog.
“It’s just...I...well, I don’t have long to go and I wanted Fritz to have a good home. I didn’t want him to end up in the pound.”
It would have been better if you had, thought Grady, but didn’t say so to the man. He looked at Whitney and could tell she was thinking the same thing.
“Is there anything you can tell me about the guy who bought your dog?”
“Naw. Wish I could. You on the case?”
Grady didn’t say anything, only nodded. Let Pelkerson assume what he wanted.
“Yeah, well, like I said, he never introduced himself. I don’t think. I don’t remember him saying his name. I can describe him though. Imagine a creep.”
Grady and Whitney both laughed at that. Grady said, “I could use a bit more than that.”
Pelkerson went into a coughing fit that lasted more than a minute and brought tears to his eyes. At the end of it he was bending over. When the coughing ended he stood up, took out another cigarette and lighted it.
“Fucking lungs,” he said, inhaling deeply. “Probably look like a couple of wharf rats got run over by a semi. I’m an organ donor, but I don’t think those’re the organs they’re gonna want.”
He took another drag and waved his cigarette, indicating they should follow him into the living room where he sank down into an easy chair. Grady noticed overflowing ashtrays everywhere, as well as a nearly empty vodka bottle on the coffee table. Pelkerson waved his hand with the cigarette in it at the couch and Grady and Whitney sat down.
“He was about medium build, skinny little asshole--brown hair, long, like a hippie.” Grady wondered how old the man was and wondered if he knew hippies were long gone from the contemporary scene. Like about twenty, thirty years maybe. He was writing on a notepad as Pelkerson talked.
“Oh. One thing might help. I knew this guy wasn’t a dog lover...I tried to catch him...drove off before...anyway...he wore these fancy shoes. Alligator. You don’t see those much. That’s when I went after him, only he drove off before...when I think about those shoes! Guy likes animals don’t wear shoes like that. He kicked him.”
“Kicked who?” Whitney asked the question, leaning forward.
Pelkerson went into another coughing spasm and predictably, when the spasm was over, lighted another cigarette off the one that was going. Grady felt an overwhelming urge himself and shook out a Marlboro medium, almost asking permission before he caught himself. When he saw the look on Whitney’s face, he wished he had.
“Kicked my baby. Kicked Fritz.
That bastard!”
There wasn’t much else. He couldn’t remember the color of the man’s eyes or the make or year of the man’s car. Only that it was brown.
Out in Whitney’s car, she said, “Did you get much out of that?”
A few minutes later, they were back at the animal shelter and shaking hands goodbye.
“I’d like to see you again,” Grady said, self-consciously. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wanted them back. Damn! He felt like a friggin’ schoolboy, asking for a date to the junior prom. Somehow, this woman intimidated him and he couldn’t figure out why. All he knew was that he wanted to see more of her.
She surprised him.
“Okay,” she said. “I think I’d like that. Tonight? I get off at six. Eight would be perfect. Actually, it’d be nice to go out with someone who didn’t have a New Orleans accent for a change.”
At his surprised look, she told him she was a Yankee herself. Born and bred in New Hampshire.
When she said that, Grady almost said something about his and Jack’s dream to have a fishing camp in next-door neighbor Vermont, but didn’t. That was something he could save for later. Damn! He was a schoolboy! Already he was looking for nuggets of information to impress her with.
He decided to leave before he put his foot in his mouth and ruined what must not have been too bad a first impression.
***
Driving back to the motel, Grady decided he’d had enough of smelling his own sour perspiration. He wanted a shower and clean clothes. He quickly made a U-turn and headed over to Jefferson Highway, nearly sideswiping a beat-up pickup truck that looked like it had been in its share of accidents. That was the ticket. He was getting into the New Orleans driving rhythm. The guy in the pickup didn’t even blink. What was odder, when he considered it, was that he didn’t either.