Nude in Red

by O'Neil De Noux

  On his way downstairs, Juanita calls him on his cell.

  “I got his car in the garage next door.” She’s at Gumbo’s Shop. “There’s an office here and it’s a mess.”

  “I’m looking for the one here. He’s 10-15 in route to jail.”

  Beau finds an office behind the dressing room downstairs, turns on the light. Two wooden desks, three metal filing cabinets. Everything’s locked. It takes him three minutes to find the keys in a plastic pouch under the center desk drawer.

  Blond-haired, stocky Lieutenant William Ashton, Intelligence Division, steps into the room, yawns. “Thought y’all set this for seven?”

  Ashton wears a blue suit, carries a camera case and a back pack, yawns again, says, “OK. Let’s see what we come up with.”

  Two hours later, Mark steps in with Tim Rothman. Ashton’s sitting behind Butera’s desk and going through files from one of the filing cabinets. Beau sits on a sofa that looks new, thankfully, and thumbs through an address book.

  “Nothing in his apartment. I expected a gun or dope, but he’s clean. No address book. No cell phone. Tim here talked with the bartender and bouncers.”

  “They grunted back at me,” says Rothman. “I cut ‘em loose. Got the names for you.”

  Ashton waves, catches their attention. “There’s a shitload of intelligence here.” He waves his hand over a stack to his left. “These dumb Guineas have information from the 1940s here. Lotta names I gotta research. Fuckin’ notes like ‘JKW 10+’, ‘DFD 5+’, ‘Break arm BOG’, ‘Sammy strong FWI’. I know ‘strong’ means strong-arm, extortion. Even have the year atop each page, 1945, 1946, 1947 all the way to 1997.

  “Some of this shit reads like a bad movie script.” Ashton holds up a yellowed newspaper clipping. “From 1947. Salvatore ‘Fat Sal’ Cardona was murdered in this very office. I think that was the year the Badalamentes took over the family. I knew Carlo Badalamente owned this place. But Nick Cataldo’s the boss now.”

  Mark looks at Beau. “Anything on your girls?”

  “Nope. But I got a lot to go through.”

  Mark – “How about I go book the ass-hole for you?”

  Beau stands, stretches and leads them out to the SUV for copies of all the arrest warrants and a jail card already filled out. Outside, the patrol officer at the door is talking with two skinny women and Beau slips past them, realizes they are strippers coming to work.

  Mark waits until they are at the SUV to go, “Fuck. They couldn’t pay me enough to watch them strip.”

  Beau goes back in.

  It’s afternoon by the time Juanita shows up with roast beef po-boys and to tell Beau what she came up with at Gumbo’s Shop, which is nothing. Ashton makes room on the desk and the three unwrap their sandwiches, open cans of Barq’s root beer.

  “What?” Beau says, seeing Juanita’s face all light up, grinning. “You found something in the car?”

  “Glove compartment. A 9mm Beretta with the serial numbers filed off.”

  “Convicted felon in possession of a firearm.”

  Ashton wipes gravy from his mouth. “I’ll call ATF in a minute. Filing off a serial number. That’s a federal offense too.”

  Later, they lock up the desk and filing cabinets, Beau taking the keys he’ll accidentally lose sometime later. They carry the last of the files Ashton wants to take, as well as Butera’s address book and what appears to be a coded appointment book.

  A heavy-set man stands on the banquette outside the door with Sgt. McDonald, who’s finishing off a hamburger.

  “Which one of you is Lt. Ashton?” The heavy-set man wears a rumpled blue suit, blue and white striped tie undone. Two men with hard-hats stand behind him.

  Ashton identifies himself.

  “I’m Jake Carvas from the Liquor Licensing Board. We spoke on the phone.”

  “Yeah.”

  Carvas looks at the front door of the place and there is no door. He tells the hard hats to go ahead and they head for a pick-up parked on the banquette behind Beau’s SUV.

  Ashton laughs as he goes around to put the files into the trunk of his unmarked Ford. He steps back and tells Beau, “Didn’t think they’d do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “They’re gonna board up the place. Revoke the liquor license. Owner arrested for over two hundred felonies. My God. What’s the world coming to?”

  “Good thinking,” Beau says. “They’ll lose some money this weekend at least.”

  McDonald steps out of their way, adding, “I been running employees off all day.”

  • Central Lockup, 7:19 p.m.

  Carlo Frank Butera is in prison orange now and someone’s found him flip-flops. His hands are cuffed in front, a chain linking them to his manacled ankles. He’s led into a small prison interview room that smells of Pine Oil. Beau and Juanita sit behind a metal table that’s bolted to the floor. Benches on either side of the table are also bolted to the floor.

  A huge Orleans Parish Prison guard guides Butera to the bench across the table and leaves him.

  “Thanks,” Beau says, waits for Butera to look at him. The man’s wide face has no expression.

  “Carlo, how you been?”

  Butera stares without blinking.

  “I hear you’re missing a couple girls.”

  No response.

  Beau leans back. “I know all about omerta. All that conspiracy of silence shit. I know you’re not going to say anything. I just have to give you to opportunity to give me a statement with so many counts against you. We’re talking serious jail time.”

  When Butera blinks, it’s slow. He keeps looking at Beau who puts his hands on the table and leans forward.

  “If you have anything you wanna tell me. Now, or through your lawyer later. You need to know one thing. We ain’t regular police. We’re CIU. We’re interested in one thing. Murder. If it’s you or your crew doing it, we’ll find out. You know who I am. I always get who I’m looking for.” Beau drops his voice. “If, on the other hand, it’s another crew in your wonderful family, or maybe someone from out of town. We have Consuela.”

  No reaction.

  Beau pulls a small leather pouch from his pants pocket, digs out a new business card, reaches over and tucks it into the front pocket of Butera’s prison shirt.

  “You know me by reputation.” Beau sits up straight. “I kill people all the time and I always get away with it.”

  Butera closes his eyes, leans back and just sits there.

  Beau shrugs and they stand up.

  Butera waits for them to move around the table before he says, “What the fuck’s this no bond until arraignment? Fuckin’ Monday morning.”

  “You’re a major felon.” Beau stretches the kinks in his back. “Let’s see 234 counts where you can get five years per count. That’s 1,170 years. You could also be fined 5K per count. That’s one million, one hundred and seventy thousand dollars.” Beau pats Butera’s shoulder. “You know the drill. You’re gonna have to come up with some serious cash to make bail and the city will sit on it, make interest off it for a long time, pisano.”

  Juanita leads the way out.

  “Nice ass,” Butera calls out.

  “Thanks,” Beau answers. “You fuckin’ dipshit.” He looks back. “Oh, yeah. Your joint is boarded up by the city.

  “What?”

  “Your liquor license has been revoked.”

  A deputy goes in as they go out. Juanita says, “What’s now?”

  “Go home. Relax. We’ll compare notes Monday.”

  • Frenchmen Street, 8:52 p.m.

  It isn’t exactly a tropical storm but you wouldn’t know by the sheets of rain slamming against the picture window of Scamp’s Café. Jessie and Beau sit next to a picture window again in the small place, a Creole cottage in Marigny, a few blocks from the French Quarter. There are only a dozen tables, all occupied, and the oyster bar in back is crowded. Strong scents of spicy food permeates the place.

  “How do you find these places?”
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  “Cops always know where to eat. Especially the places open late. Scamp’s doesn’t close until two a.m. on a Saturday.”

  Their waitress, a young, full-figured woman with short blond hair, brings their plates and hurries away.

  “Smells wonderful,” Jessie says as they both take spoonfuls of shrimp gumbo.

  “Good, huh?”

  Jessie nods as she chews.

  “How do you stay skinny?”

  Beau waits to swallow. “I run along the levee. How do you stay thin?”

  “I’ve never been able to put on weight. My doctor says I have a high metabolism. I can eat, eat, eat and stay thin.” She dips her spoon to scoop more gumbo. “Drives my big sister crazy.”

  “Alaina, right? Miss Louisiana.”

  Jessie nods. “My little sister Stefi’s like me, only thinner. Her real name’s Stefani. She’s fourteen.”

  Beau realizes he doesn’t know much about her family, so he asks.

  “My father’s a photographer. My mother’s a wedding planner. Stefi is at Ursuline Academy and Alaina is fashion modeling in New York. She’s by far the prettiest in the Carini family, the LaStanza family, the Rosatas, Cordorolas. All our cousins.”

  “Prettier than you?”

  She nods.

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “Thank you, monsieur but I grew up with everyone saying how pretty Alaina is. It’s frustrating for her too because she’s smarter than she’s pretty but nobody notices except my mom, Stefi and me. You won’t believe how insecure she is.”

  “Yeah?”

  “The prettier the woman, the more insecure we are because we believe we’re only eye-candy and beauty doesn’t last forever.”

  “I don’t know about that. I’ve seen older women who are downright gorgeous.”

  “Yeah, who?”

  “Sofia Loren.”

  He gets no argument there. Should have figured she’d ask about his family. He tries to keep it short but talks through the rest of the meal and through two cups of café noir, the rush inside the restaurant slowing quickly when the rain stops all at once, typical in New Orleans.

  “It was a mud house?”

  He sips the extra-strong, sweet black Cajun coffee. “A daubed house. Wooden walls filled with swamp mud that eventually dries so it’s like concrete. Keeps the house cool in summer and warm in winter. My grandfather built it by hand.”

  “And you really didn’t have a date to your senior prom.”

  He tells her how he grew up in a little boy’s paradise next to the deep swamp just off Vermilion Bay and how he fished and hunted with his father in an endless summer, even when he started school. It didn’t take too long to realize he was ‘dirt poor’. Kids were quick to tell him. The Beaus lived off the land, subsistence living, eating well when the hunting and fishing were good, hungry at times when it wasn’t.

  “You see the kids found out my tuition was paid by the Catholic Charities and we had no car and well, they called me names. It happens.”

  “Through high school.”

  “Especially high school.” He tells her he was the star quarterback of the Holy Ghost Riders, but when he asked his favorite cheerleader to the prom, she told him she liked him, all the girls liked him but they couldn’t go on a date with him, no more than they could go on a date with the star running back.

  “Rufus is black,” Beau says. “So he and I went to a movie the night of the prom. Just a couple dudes hanging out until we could escape to college. We both got scholarships to LSU only I tore up my knee and left the team. He was all SEC. He’s went to the Cincinnati Bengals in the second round of the draft, played there for seven years. He’s now coaching at Grambling.”

  “This Long Cold Case your cousin mentioned. He had a run in with the Mafia over it?”

  Jessie looks out the window. “A thirty-year old murder. Dino solved it. It was the first case he let me work with him but he won’t tell me everything that happened.”

  Her face tightens.

  “He shoots people and gets away with it.” Those pale green eyes turn to him, look sharper. “Sound familiar?”

  Beau slowly puts his coffee down. Keeps from blinking.

  “Only he does it to Mafiosi. Men with long cold memories.”

  Her eyes keep his locked in place as he thinks this out – doesn’t know how to tell her.

  The Sioux never feared the white man. There is peace now because this is 21st Century America and the white man outnumbers the Sioux. The Sioux fear few things. Drowning, because the soul of a warrior who drowns will forever remain in the water and never travel to the land of their ancestors. They also fear Coyote-man, a ghostly villain that steals children from their parents, sneaks up on sleeping warriors to drag them into hell. There is no way a man like Beau could fear gangsters. Even Mafiosi. No way.

  He wonders about a man like LaStanza, whose family was driven from the sandy hills of Sicily to America by the Mafia, as he once told Beau. And he realizes he knows something that Jessie doesn’t seem to. LaStanza will never back down from gangsters either.

  Beau smiles now.

  “What’s so funny?”

  He doesn’t tell her. The Mafiosi know this about LaStanza. What they don’t know is what hit them this morning is just as formidable. Maybe more. The blood of the great plains warriors surges through Beau’s veins. He is of the Oglala Clan. Lakota. The blood of Crazy Horse flows through Beau’s veins, the blood of a hard, brilliant fighter, a man who outfoxed the US Cavalry’s best Indian fighters.

  Only this time, the warrior wears blue.

  “Funny?” he says. “Nothing. I don’t know about you, Miss. But I love being with you.”

  The hardness fades from her eyes and those full lips curl into a smile.

  “My thoughts exactly, Mister.”

  And Beau smiles again because there’s a Frenchmen in him as well.

  Jessie finishes her coffee says, “Take me home, big guy.”

  She wraps an arm around his waist as they walk to his SUV but he’s not thinking about what he’s about to do with this hot woman. That’ll come naturally. He’s thinking about tomorrow morning where he’ll meet a Mafia Boss at mass.

  Sunday

  • Baronne Street, 7:41 a.m.

  A black Humvee with extra dark window pulls up in front of Immaculate Conception Church, a man in a black suit with black reflective sunglasses, gangster glasses, gets out of the front passenger side and goes around to open the back door where a man in a dark gray suit steps out. Looks about six feet tall, olive skinned, with silvering hair. Looks more like an CEO than a Mafia Boss but the thin face is the same from the pictures Ashton gave Beau. He passes his sunglasses to the other man and they both go into the church.

  Beau’s been sitting in his SUV in a small parking lot down Baronne Street for forty minutes admiring the façade of the old church. When he first came to town, he thought it was Eastern Orthodox with its twin domed steeples, looking a little like the domes atop the Kremlin or a mosque without the crescent moon atop. But this is a Roman Catholic Jesuit Church of red-brown brick and arched windows and doorways.

  He has a hard time spotting Cataldo when he steps into the church, Beau taken aback at the stunning interior – radiant, multicolored light streaming through massive stain glass windows, tall columns on either side support two long balconies, mahogany pews of intricate and ornate design, a massive, golden altar up front with three domed turrets atop.

  The place is almost half filled. Cataldo is mid-way up, kneeling behind a pew, his bodyguard sitting in a pew behind. Beau catches the bodyguard’s attention, shows him his badge as he slides into the pew next to Cataldo, waits for the Don to look at him.

  Beau holds out a business card for the man who doesn’t look at it, focusing cold, deep set, dark green eyes at Beau. The man looks a lot like Boris Karloff. Too much like the man. Beau puts the card on the seat between them.

  “In case your idiot Butera loses my card.” Beau s
tares into the cold eyes. “Want you to know who’s on the case and how to contact me.”

  An old woman in a yellow chiffon dress and a white hat starts to sit next to Beau, changes her mind. The bodyguard leans forward, hands up on the pew. Cataldo sits, looks at the altar.

  “We know where to find your houseboat.”

  “Now Nicky, don’t get all dramatic on me. Try my office. Around my houseboat I tend to shoot first and,” he looks at the bodyguard, smiles. “And my landlady’s tired of cleaning up all the blood.”

  Cataldo glances at the card. “I heard about what you did after the storm.”

  What you heard is only a fraction. Beau’s smile fades.

  “I been meaning to thank you. Eliminating the Brown Ravens.” Cataldo tries a cold smile. Doesn’t really work for him. It’s more a grimace. He raises a fist, opens it, goes, “Poof.” The grimace broadens. “You made my competition go poof.”

  Fuckin’ great. I get in a shoot-em-up with encroaching gangsters which only cements the long-standing power of the oldest crime organization in New Orleans – La Cosa Nostra.

  Beau gives him the emotionless stare of the plains warrior. “Eliminating is what I do best. But this isn’t about gunfights. It’s about dead women.”

  Beau leans close to Nick. “And one live one.”

  Nick looks at him again. “We know how to take care of our own business.”

  “CIU,” Beau says. “Critical Investigations Unit and murder is our business.”

  Beau stands. “If this is your business, get it over with. I’ve just started down a warpath that won’t end well for any of us.” Beau waits for Nick to look at him again. “You’re a business man. If I can work with you, if it ain’t your people doing this, well, I’m offering.”

  He feels their eyes follow him out into bright morning, the air still with a hint of coolness. Spring in New Orleans rarely lasts, but this one hasn’t morphed into steamy summer. Yet.

  Come near my houseboat and I’ll shoot everyone of your Wop asses, bloody up the dock again. Can’t have anything happen to Stella, can I?

  • Jefferson Highway, 7:12 p.m.