He sends Chestal to go with the officer out back and check out the slave quarters.
Beau takes out his cell and calls Juanita. She says she has to call him right back.
He peeks around the room. Sees the two windows are locked and the screens outside still in place.
Juanita calls back,
“How’s she doing?”
“The same. She left a small clutch purse in the room. Nurse Ratched called hospital security on me.”
“You ran ‘em out, I hope.”
“Didn’t have to. You pissed off that sergeant in hall so much, he took it out on the security men. Joe talked him into taking the handcuffs off them.”
Joe Guevara. Glad he stayed.
“He cuffed them?”
“Nurse Ratched too. She’s quiet now.”
Beau tells her about the gun and the blood as he steps in the hall and closes the room’s door but doesn’t let it latch. Rothman is back in the hall, sees Beau and waits for him to get off the phone.
Beau to Juanita – “I’ll let you know if we come up with anything else.”
Rothman tells him apron lady found a small purse on the dresser. It’s in the top drawer on the left side now. She has no idea about the man who was shot.
“She also found two bottles of booze. Bourbon and Scotch and two glasses.” Rothman looks up from his notes. “She wiped off the bottles of booze and the glasses are in the last cycle of the dishwasher. Stupid ass is mad because we’re making her late starting breakfast.”
Ling comes back in, says they didn’t see any blood outside and the Slave Quarters is boarded up. He moves past them, heading into the front room, most likely to check out negligee woman. Beau follows with Rothman.
The other two occupants of the bread and breakfast sit on opposite ends of a pale green sofa, heavy-set man in his fifties wearing a green T-shirt and blue sweat pants and negligee woman. She’s about thirty, with short blond hair, a little on the hippy side as she stands. She’s in a shortie, see-through negligee and white panties. Not a pretty face, but there is something magnetic about a pair of C-cup breasts with nipples pointed. Beau tries not to look too closely as he tells her, “You can get dressed now, ma’am.”
“Y’all got me outta bed.” She pokes out her breasts. “So this is what you get.”
“OK.”
She waves a hand below her chin. “My face is up here.”
Jesus, Lady. Beau forces himself from saying – I’ve seen your face. I’d rather look at your boobs. Instead he turns to a smiling Chestal and tells him, “She’s all yours.”
Ling takes a quick statement from the man in sweat pants while Beau goes to find out what the mad-vacuumer Delores Amlo know about Mandelina Moore.
When the crime lab tech arrives, Beau makes sure he takes the vacuum bag, along with the gun, casings, purse and gets every drop of blood.
• Jefferson Highway, 5:02 p.m.
Beau hands Mandelina Moore’s Louisiana driver’s license to Juanita as he moves around the bed in the private room where their Ida B&B victim lies in a much larger bed than the one in ICU. She still won’t meet his eyes.
“Are we going to have to fingerprint you to find out your real name?”
Mandelina’s eyes go wide, with the same look a guilty four year would give when caught with a hand in a cookie jar. She looks at Juanita who tells Beau, “She’s not talking to men. Even her male doctor.”
“What’d she give you so far?”
Juanita gives Beau the description of the perpetrator. “Big in height and weight, didn’t see face but he was white, pale white, wore dark clothes and gloves. She’s sure about the gloves. She shot him and he cursed – ‘Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.’ He rolled off the bed and stumbled out.
“It was her first night there and four Johns had come. She was asleep but she’s a light sleeper.”
“How’d she choose the place?”
“She won’t tell me.”
“Who’s she working for? She doesn’t do this alone.”
“She won’t tell me that either and she doesn’t know any other girls working like this.”
Juanita pulls Beau out of earshot. “She says she’s Puerto Rican but that’s the wrong dialect. Not Central or South American. Maybe Cuba but not Havana where my folks are from. More likely the Dominican Republic.”
Beau steps up to the bed.
“They just tried to kill you, young lady. You think they won’t try again? We’re the ones keeping you alive. We walk outta here, how long you think you’ll last?”
He walks to the door, motions for Juanita to follow.
“That shook her.”
“My intention exactly. You play good cop. We got the chief on our side but we can’t guard her forever.” Beau smiles at his partner. “It’s up to you to get her to talk.”
They wait for a new crew of officers, give them their instructions. It’s not hard duty. Just stay in the hall and check everyone who goes in and out. At least they sent a female officer to sit in the room with Mandelina Moore. She brought an Elmore Leonard novel to read. Glitz.
Good thinking.
• New Orleans Marina, 7:11 p.m.
“This is a good burger.”
“Told you.”
Beau and Jessie are at his small table, Stella watching from the sofa.
Jessie dips a long shoe-string French fry into ketchup. “Wonder how they get potatoes this long?”
She’s in a gold LSU T-shirt and faded blue jeans, black cowboy boots, that face made-up like a cover girl. How’d that Lightfoot song go, something about looking fast in her faded jeans, a hard lovin’ woman? Sundance. Beau’s still in his work clothes. No, it’s Sundown.
“I know you can’t tell me everything about your case,” Jessie says. “But what’s up?”
The only real secret is about Judy Allure’s mother. Nosy detectives have already sniffed out the workings of CIU, so he tells her about the body in the lake and the Ida B&B victim. She lets out a low whistle.
“She shot the bastard?
Beau nods. “Juanita says she’s Dominican or Cuban.” Beau chuckles. “Stupid bastard should know better than try to strangle a Mediterranean woman – Spanish, Italian, Sicilian, Corsican.”
Then he tells her the woman won’t talk to men.
“Not even you?” Jessie smiles, licks ketchup off a finger.
“She’s safe for the moment but we can’t guard her forever. I’m gonna have to ask the DA for witness protection funds and they don’t have much, if any.”
“What about the FBI? Interstate prostitution is a federal crime.”
Beau shakes his head. “Last thing I want is the pain-in-the-ass FBI in my case.”
He can’t say it but maybe the Secretary of the Interior doesn’t want the FBI either or she would have called them first.
They pick up their stuff and head for the sofa. Stella jumps off, flops on the carpet in front of Beau and rolls on her back, tummy up and flails her paws at him. He goes down on a knee and rubs her belly up to her chin and tickles it. She lifts her head and purrs and he keeps rubbing for a minute. He leaves her for the other girl, the one sitting on the sofa and taking off her boots.
Jessie curls in his arms and they kiss softly.
“Let’s cuddle,” She purrs and they hug. Stella joins in, jumping up the back of the sofa and head butting the side of Beau’s head and he has to loosen a hand to pet her and she nibbles at it purring even louder.
“You’re good,” Jessie says. “Two gals at a time.” They kiss again a little longer before Jessie settles back. Curled across his lap he knows his dick is poking her back now. She rubs her back against it, giggles.
“I’m trying to cuddle but my penis is such a dick. All it wants to do is fuck.”
She smiles, says, “We’re of the same mind.”
He manages to disengage from Stella and follow Jessie’s fine ass up to the loft, to the bed to let his dick have its way.
Thursday
• J
efferson Highway, 9:10 a.m.
Mandelina Moore whispers to Juanita who tells Beau, “She wants to make a deal.’
This I gotta hear.
He hands the note book back to Juanita who gives it to Mandelina.
“What kind of deal?”
Mandelina whispers again to Juanita.
“She’ll give you what she knows. We keep her alive until she can get on cruise ship to the Caribbean.”
She’s looking at Beau now. She wants to take a cruise? No. She’s Caribbean. What did Juanita say? Dominican Republic. Cuba?
“We’ve been keeping you alive. What’s your real name?”
He nods to the note book and Mandelina writes on it, gives it to him – ‘Consuela Anna Suarez. I have US passport in deposit box’.
The room is cold, the curtains drawn. It smells mediciney. Juanita moves to the other side of the bed.
“Who have you been working for?”
Consuela writes, gives the note book back to Beau – ‘Mr. Butera’.
The next series of notes shows them how it works. All done via text messages and emails. All money sent direct-deposit to off-shore banks in the Cayman Islands. Tips are cash, of course. Emails rotate among yahoo, g-mail, hotmail, bing, even AOL accounts, all fake names that go away quickly.
“How did you meet this Mr. Butera?”
‘Craigslist’. Consuela explains Butera does not advertise on Craigslist. She did and he answered, asked her to email a naked picture. They met at Morning Call Coffee Stand. He liked what he saw and invited her to go with him to the Marie Antoinette Hotel where she auditioned for him.
“What does that mean exactly?” Juanita asks.
Mandelina explains to her, “Video taking off my clothes and standing and sitting. Butera turned off the camera, put it in his camera bag and asked for a blowjob tryout. In the middle, he picked me up, laid me on the bed and fucked me.”
Her first run came two days later with three clients. Their approval went far and her clientele grew. Always in New Orleans.
“How many times did you use the Marie Antoinette?” Beau says.
‘That once. It’s a small place. Iberville Street’.
Beau knows that particular hotel only its on Bienville Street, one block over but people get those streets confused all the time.
Butera would gather clients, email her and she would pick a place for a 72-hour stay and the clients would show up one at a time, unless it was a threesome. Working for Butera for seven months now, she had two gangbangs, one at a hotel, one in an old house. She’d been blindfolded by one of the clients for that one, all old men over sixty, and driven there. It was somewhere uptown.
Consuela describes Butera as short, maybe five-seven, heavy but not obese, with light brown hair, receding hairline. He talked like ‘those guys in the DeNiro movie Goodfellows’ and looked a lot like the one with the ‘name means fish in Italian’.
“Who?”
‘The cousin Vinny guy’.
Juanita and Beau say it at the same time, “Joe Pesci.”
“Movie is Goodfellas,” Juanita says.
Beau knows the film. Every cop knows that one. Good gangster movie.
“I think it set some sort of record for the use of ‘fuck’ in a movie,” Juanita adds.
Consuela tells them she always picked the hotel, checked in alone under a phony name and paid cash.
‘It was not Butera who came to strangle me. Too short. He finds out I gave him up, he’ll kill me.’
“Let us worry about him,” Beau says.
She doesn’t look convinced but starts up a list of places for them and they step away.
“Your friend LaStanza,” Juanita says. “There’s a book written by an ex-cop about LaStanza that has more ‘fucks’ in it than it has pages.”
“That’s good to know. Is that another tactical skirt?”
The skirt is olive green which she wears with a white polo shirt.
“Yes. RipStop. Wish they came in better colors. I ordered one in navy blue and one called tundra, brown-green.”
Beau has both those colors in tactical pants.
“Pants come in camo too,” He says as he steps away, calls the Intelligence Division, gets Lieutenant William Ashton on the phone.
“Only Butera we know is Carlo Butera. He’s LCN, about fifty. I’ll pull his file.”
LCN – La Cosa Nostra.
“You have a picture of him?”
“I sure do.”
“I’ll come get it in a little while.”
• New Orleans Marina, 9:12 p.m.
Beau closes the thin file on Carlo Frank Butera. It’s a copy of everything the Intelligence Division has on a man they label a soldati, a soldier or button-man and it isn’t much of a file. Stella jumps up on the table to take a swat at the file. Beau grabs a cat toy, a plastic stick with an elastic line with a fuzzy ball at the end. A small bell and multi-color strips of Mylar decorate the ball and Beau flicks it and Stella leaps for it, snags it but can’t keep it in her paws as her weight takes her to the floor and the elastic line pulls back. Its like a small fishing pole with a lure on the end and Beau moves it around and Stella chases it.
The sofa is more comfortable and gives Stella something to jump up and down from as she chases that damn fuzzy ball that won’t stay still. With his other hand, he punches in Jessie’s number and she answers after the third ring.
“Hey, Babe,” she says. “Just got off the phone with an old boyfriend who doesn’t understand the word ‘no’. I’m blocking his number.” She lets out a breath. “You have many ex’s calling you?”
He chuckles. “When a woman and I are finished she’s so relieved, I’m the last person she’ll talk to.”
“You’re lucky.”
“LaStanza tells me you’ve been known to drive grown men to tears.”
“When did he tell you that?”
“When he realized I was going to ask you out. I told you.”
“Yeah, that’s right. I’m a maneater.”
Stella decides it’s head-butting time, comes along the top of the sofa to ram her head against his free ear. He gives her his jaw and she butts it so he drops the toy and pets her and she starts purring.
“I see you have your other girl there.”
“Saturday night. Dinner and dancing, right?”
“Yes, sir. I’m putting my outfit together with the right shoes.”
Stella reaches a paw out, snags Beau’s nose and pulls it around so she can rub noses, the little flirt.
“So, how’s the decision coming along?”
“They sweetened the pot. Signing bonus includes the house I’m living in.”
“Signing bonus. Like a pro athlete. Wow.”
“John, the house is worth a half-a-million.”
He lets out a whistle and Stella dives on the fuzzy ball lying on the sofa, tumbles with it to the deck and rolls with it, rear paws flailing at the toy.
“You think you’ll miss the action? Being a private eye?”
“Yeah, action. Research and surveillance. That’s it. What’s going on with your case?”
He tells her about the set-up and mentions Butera. “Intelligence doesn’t have much. His CH includes two pops for extortion, two for theft, one burglary. One conviction. Burglary and he served four years. Lives behind a Bourbon Street strip-joint. Drives a Cadillac Seville. He’s part owner of Gumbo’s Shop.
“The Gumbo Shop on Saint Philip?”
“No. Gumbo’s Shop. On Bourbon. Tourist trap.”
The Gumbo Shop on Saint Philip is where locals eat.
He tells her his legs are stiff. He needs to jog more.
“Just got finished canvassing the Carrollton-Orleans area in case someone saw a bleeding man running around and didn’t think to call us.” He tells her how Butera looks a lot like Joe Pesci.
“Goodfellas Joe?”
“Juanita says she read a book some ex-cop wrote about your cousin that has more ‘fucks’ in it than pages. She als
o told me LaStanza’s first case was Lizette’s twin sister.”
“Grim Reaper. I got a copy. You can read it. Should read it. Shows how LaStanza became the most dangerous cop in the city.”
I thought that was me.
“You always call him LaStanza?”
“No. He’s my cousin. I call him Dino but you cops call him by his last name, just like they call you Beau. But you’re my John, aren’t you?”
Her voice dips into sexy mode and all he can do is say, “Yep.”
The listen to each other breathing a few moments before he says, “Your cousin will be at work in the morning?”
“We’re meeting a new client at nine.”
“Think I can come by around eleven?”
Friday
• New Orleans Marina, 2:15 a.m.
Alizée wakes him with a little Moi Lolita. Beau looks at the number on his cell, doesn’t recognize it.
What the fuck now?
He answers.
“Beau, Baby.” It’s Cherry. “I called to warn you.”
“About what?”
“Them high-priced white girls. They mobbed up. Mafia.”
“Got anything more specific for me?”
“Ah, Baby. I’m working on it. Slowly. Carefully. Like you needa do.”
“Thanks. Keep me informed.”
“You know it.” She hangs up.
Yeah. Right. Fuckin’ Guineas. I took out the Brown Ravens single-handed, didn’t I?
Beau knows better. A fucked-up gang of street thugs is nothing compared to the minions of Luciano, Genovese and Gambino.
• Jefferson Highway, 8:22 a.m.
Beau turns on the digital video camera on the tripod, moves into the frame and looks at the camera’s lens.
“This is Chief Inspector John Raven Beau of the New Orleans Police Critical Investigations Unit. The woman in the bed next to me is Consuela Anna Suarez, Hispanic female.” He gives her date of birth and address of her apartment in Metairie.
“Also present and you see her in the right portion of the screen is NOPD Inspector Juanita Cruz of CIU. We are in Room 404, Ochsner Foundation Hospital.”
Nude in Red Page 9