Nude in Red

by O'Neil De Noux

  It’s Juanita’s plan.

  Felicity Jones’s silver Buick pulls into the Ochsner Hospital garage and the burly black man in a white polo shirt and jeans is accompanied by Juanita in a bright green jumpsuit, orange bandana around her head. They go into the hospital. An hour later Beau’s SUV pulls in and he gets out, goes in.

  Two hours later, Beau leaves with Juanita, now in a long black dress, a matching hat with a wide bill. They get into the SUV and Beau takes a circuitous route through the city, as if he’s checking if he’s being followed.

  A few minutes after he leaves the hospital, Fel Jones gets into his car with Consuela in the bright green jumpsuit, orange bandana around her head. He takes his time driving back through the city, shadowed by LaStanza in a black BMW who watches to see if they’re followed until the Buick turns down Mystery Street while LaStanza sets up in front of Holy Rosary Church over a block away.

  Fel turns the Buick into the garage of LaStanza’s Office Building. Instead of going upstairs, as he usually does, they slip out into the dark back yard and through to the back yard of a two story wooden building house on Maurepas Street, around the corner from the office. He leads Consuela into a two bedroom apartment, locks the door and calls LaStanza first.

  “You’re clear,” LaStanza says.

  Beau is the next call and Fel tells him, “All clear. We’re 10-97.” Arrived on scene.

  • Maurepas Street, 11:53 p.m.

  The SUV pulls into the garage and Beau waits for the all-clear call from LaStanza up the street. The plan is for LaStanza to wait another half hour and leave. Juanita and Beau go through the yards and up to the lone occupied apartment in the newly-renovated four-plex stucco building. Fel lets them in. Consuela is still in her bedroom going through the stuff they’d rescued from her apartment. Three new suitcases sit on the bed.

  She looks at Fel standing in the doorway. “Thank Mr. LaStanza again for me.”

  “He’ll come by with me before you leave and you can thank him yourself.”

  Beau goes to check out the place. LaStanza said he had a better idea than using the DA’s office to stash Consuela and he and Juanita put this together quickly. A two bedroom apartment in a four-plex owned by Lizette’s family. The refrigerator is well stocked, a flat-screen TV in the living room, a white Macbook Pro laptop sits atop the small dining room table.

  Fel steps out of the bedroom, moves over to the table with Beau.

  Felicity Jones had been LaStanza’s partner when they worked the mean streets of the Bloody Sixth District. They worked again in Homicide. Fel’s now retired from NOPD, the Intelligence Division at the end of his career there, working street gangs, home-grown terrorists, a little with the Mafia. Standing five-ten, he’s stocky now at forty. A hulking, muscular man with blue-black skin, Fel’s smile is disarming – so wide it lights up his face.

  “Jessie’s a handful, ain’t she?”

  Beau wants to tell him she’s captivating, a darling, but men don’t talk like that.

  “She’s cool.”

  Fel steps closer, looks into Beau’s eyes and laughs.

  “You’re gone. She has you hooked like a trout.”

  Fuck. So much for the expressionless stare of the plains warrior.

  Juanita joins them, nods to the computer.

  “She’s gonna use it to book her reservation. Royal Caribbean cruise ship. Voyager of the Seas, fifteen decks. Goes to Jamaica, Grand Cayman and Cozumel. This coming Saturday. One of the last cruises of the year. She’ll get lost on a big ship.”

  No need to explain. Cruise ships don’t sail the Caribbean during hurricane season.

  Juanita brushes her hair back. She’s in jeans and a black T-shirt now. “We’re going to work on a disguise. She hasn’t decided if she’s gonna be a blond or redhead.” She looks over her shoulder. “I got a new friend.”

  “Excellent.”

  She nods toward Fel. “Tomorrow we’re taking her to empty her bank deposit box, grab her passport.”

  “Boxes,” Consuela says as she joins them. “In three banks.”

  Beau fights off a yawn, says this place seems secure.

  “Mafia won’t come around Mystery Street.”

  “Why not?”

  “Take my word for it. They just won’t.”

  Hell, maybe LaStanza is the most dangerous man in the city.

  Fel – “This is like the DMZ in Vietnam. A Demilitarize Zone. Neutral Ground.”

  Monday

  • Police Headquarters, 9:12 a.m.

  Beau snatches his office phone after the first ring, answers, “CIU.”

  “This here’s a call for Chief Inspector Ravenboo.” A long, slow, southern drawl. “Is this the right number?”

  “This is John Raven Beau. Who’s calling?”

  “This here is Town Marshal Wardell Percy, Jr., calling from Miss-ssippi County, Arkansas. John Raven Beau? What are you, some kinda Shoshone Injin or maybe Choctaw?”

  “Sioux.” There’s a county in Arkansas called Mississippi?

  “Really? Shit. I was kiddin’. Didn’t mean to insult you.”

  “You only insulted half of me. What can I do for you, marshal?”

  “I hear tell you lookin’ for an hombre with a bullet in him. Got me a dead Mexican-lookin’ fella up here. Doctor took a small caliber bullet from his belly. Sumbitch bled to dead. Our doc says he’d been shot a few days ago.”

  “Is the bullet a .22 short?”

  “Looks like it to me but we ain’t got no firearms ‘zaminer here in DeLAWdeer.”

  “Where?”

  “DeLAWdeer.” Percy spells it. “D A L A D I E R. Our town’s named for some French politician from World War I or II. One of ‘em.”

  Daladier. Beau’s not sure but he’s heard the name before. History class at LSU, maybe.

  “What about your sheriff’s department. They have a firearms examiner?”

  “Shore do but the sheriff’s a motengator and I don’t deal wit’ him.”

  “What’s a motengator?”

  “Couple hundred mother-fuckers rolled into one.”

  Yeah, that explains it.

  “Where is this body and more importantly, the bullet right now?”

  “Got the bullet in a paper bag right here on my desk. Body has no ID. It’s at our only funeral home. Willie’s.

  Willie’s Funeral Home. Come on.

  “Marshal, may I call you right back?”

  “I suppose so.”

  This has to be a gag. It smells of Rothman. Beau gets the number from the marshal, goes online and sure enough it’s the Daladier City Hall. He calls it and a woman with a deeper drawl than Marshal Percy puts Beau on hold.

  “Marshal Percy here.”

  “Beau here, Marshal. When you said he was a Mexican-looking fellow, what did you mean?”

  “Dark skin. Black hair. Got scars on his chest and back.”

  “Scars?”

  “Look old, one’s three inches, one’s five inches.”

  “When and where was this man found?”

  “Saturday mornin’. He was sittin’ on a bench outside our urgent care center.”

  “How long had he been dead?”

  “Only a couple hours then.”

  “No car?”

  “That’s right. It were Mary Lou who saw your alert on the internets. She’s my right hand man. Runs the office and pert near ‘ereting ‘round here.”

  “Are your state police officers motengators?”

  “Naw. They just iggernent.”

  Ignorant.

  “Do me a favor, marshal. Hold on to the bullet and body and I’ll call you in a bit.”

  The marshal gives Beau his cell number because the lunch hour is fast approaching.

  Beau thanks him again, hangs up, turns to the computer to get the Arkansas State Police number but has a better idea. He calls his crime lab, gets the commander on the line. Lieutenant Les Joshua says he knows the major in charge of the Arkansas State Police Crime Lab in Little
Rock.

  “Daladier, right? Been there. Ain’t much of a place. Off I-55. Just east of Tennessee and another lovely berg called Tomato, Arkansas, on the west bank of the Mississippi River. Hope we get some help on this. Otherwise you got a seven hour drive.”

  It isn’t until Juanita comes in a little after three p.m. that Joshua calls back.

  “The bullet came from the gun y’all recovered at Ida Bed and Breakfast.”

  “How’d you do that?”

  “I’m good.” Joshua chuckles. “Computers. We test-fired your gun immediately so I sent images which they matched with the bullet they took out of the body up there. Same gun.”

  “That’s great work.”

  “I ain’t done. Arkansas State Police are gonna call you, probably tomorrow. They fingerprinted the body and got an ID. Fella from Saint Paul, Minnesota.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “They’re kinda busy. Some ass-hole ran over one of their troopers. Hit and run. They got pieces of the car.”

  Beau had found a Wikipedia article on Edouard Daladier, prime minister of France at the start of WWII, a man who opposed Hitler as much as any French politician could, before the blitzkrieg rolled over them all.

  Marshal Percy answers his cell with, “Yeah?”

  Beau thanks him for his help and asks if anyone in Daladier saw anything. Like maybe how the body got there.

  “Naw. I checked. He just popped up overnight. I hear he ain’t Mexican after all.”

  “No, sir.”

  “The state police didn’t tell me much. I think he’s EYEtalian. Y’all got a lot o’ ‘dem in New Orleens, don’t ya’?”

  “That we do. Even a couple former mayors.”

  “Well, you gonna come and pick up this stiff, or what?”

  “No, marshal. He’s all yours.”

  “I better call Willie. You ever get up this way, look me up. I ain’t never seen a half Sioux chief inspector before.”

  “I’ll do that, marshal.” Beau doesn’t extend the same invitation. Unless you really want a stranger on your doorstep you never casually invite anyone to New Orleans. They’ll show up and all Beau needs is a plow-jockey tooling around New Orleens pointing out dark skinned people.

  Juanita waits to tell him, “Three deposit boxes. Whitney Bank, Orleans Bank and the Gulf Shrimp and Petroleum Bank. She’s decided on red hair. Short now. She’s hard to recognize. Went to the Goodwill on Magazine Street and bought dull colored clothes. Got her boarding pass printed out online for the cruise. She’s tucked away for the moment.”

  Beau tells Juanita they have to go tell Consuela. Fucker she shot is dead. He picks up the phone. “After I update the chief.”

  As soon as he hangs up, Captain Mark Land is in the doorway and grinning at him.

  “You got a visitor.” He steps aside and Jessie comes in wearing a dark blue skirt suit that’s not too short but she’s a sight with that long hair and that those glossy red lips smiling at Beau.

  “Hi, Juanita.” Jessie moves around the desks as Beau rises. She moves up to him, puts her hands on his chest and brushes his lips with hers. She pulls back, looks around, says it’s about time she saw the place.

  “Oh, and we have to cancel dinner tonight,” she says.

  “We do?”

  “I’m having a sit down with my parents about that thing.” Her eyes bulge.

  The new job offer.

  “Oh, that thing.” Beau looks past her shoulder and Juanita’s eyes are riveted on them. Mark’s still in the door along with the faces of five, maybe six detectives.

  Jessie leans against his ear. “I can come by after.”

  “That’s sounds nice.”

  Beau looks at the faces. “Y’all remember LaStanza. This is his cousin.”

  Someone lets out a wolf whistle behind Mark. Another gives a bad imitation of a tiger growl.

  Tim Rothman pushes his way in, “I thought she only came out a night. Lean and hungry type.” He starts singing, “Uh, uh. Here she comes. She’ll chew you up. She’s a maneater.”

  “Wrong song, little boy.” Jessie puts a hand on her hip. “I’m a Teenage Dream.”

  Rothman shrugs.

  Juanita interprets, “Katy Perry.” She nods at the couple. “They’ll be young forever.”

  Tuesday

  • New Orleans Marina, 3:02 a.m.

  Not again.

  Stella jumps off the bed. Beau doesn’t recognize the number on the screen, thinks about rejecting the call but you never know.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s Consuela. Someone’s in the house.”

  That gets him to sit up.

  “Where in the house?”

  “The hall. Outside the apartment door. I’m in the bathroom but I don’t have my gun anymore.”

  “Did you call 911? They’re closer.”

  “I called Fel and he’s on his way.”

  “OK. I’m putting you on hold and calling 911.”

  “No. No police.”

  “I’m police remember? Just don’t give them your real name. Stay on the line and I’ll put you on hold and call 911.” Beau manages to say this while climbing into a pair of black tactical shorts. You guessed it – RipStops with plenty pockets.

  He calls 911 but cannot give them the exact dress on Maurepas Street so he describes the building. He has to put the cell down to pull on a black T-shirt. His baby Glock already in his murse, he tucks his Glock G37 into his waist band and carefully locks the door, leaving Stella sitting in the center of the room, green eyes narrowed at him.

  He tells her, “I’ll be right back, darling.”

  “What?”

  “I’m talking to my cat.”

  Beau keeps the phone against his ear. He’s impatient but slips into the darkest area on deck to let his eyes adjust. He saw The Godfather, Sonny rushing off to an ambush. Instead of moving up the pier to the parking lot, he turns right and goes to the huge warehouse, unlocks it, goes in, making sure the big metal door locks automatically and moves through to the far door and out to the third pier. He points the remote ignition control at the SUV when he gets to the parking lot and it starts up, purring nicely. He slows as he walks and unless there’s a delayed-timer bomb, hell.

  As Beau swings around to Lakeshore Drive his phone beeps and he sees it’s a call from Fel Jones. He tells Consuela he’s putting her on hold again.

  “Yeah,” he tells Fel.

  “You don’t have to come. I’m 10-97 and it scrambled down the hall.”

  “It?”

  “Fuckin’ raccoon. Wait, the uniforms are here. I’ll call back.”

  Beau pulls over, tells Consuela to go and let Fel in.

  “He caught him?”

  “Not yet. It’s a coon.”

  “A what?”

  “Raccoon.”

  • Police Headquarters, 11:12 a.m.

  Lt. Ashton waves Beau and Juanita into his office at the rear of the Intelligence Division. He’s behind his desk, a pile of files in front of him. Beau recognizes some from Hotsy Jazz.

  Beau gets right to the point. “Do we have any Romanian Organized Crime here?”

  “What, like Romans? We got a shitload of Sicilians.”

  “Romanians like from Romania. The country, you goof ball.” Beau sits in one of the two chairs in front of Ashton’s desk.

  “At Abramson we called it Rumania.”

  “That’s a public school for you.”

  Juanita sits in the other chair. They are both in white dress shirts and khakis, Beau in RipStop pants and Juanita in RipStop skirt. She thought it was cute when he walked into their office to find her in a white dress shirt for the first time. No wonder she’d asked him what color pants he was going to wear that day. Next time, he’s lying.

  She reads from the papers in her hand now, “Arkansas State Police CID Agents printed our dead man up in Daladier and his name is George Galadrescu.”

  Beau says, “He’s Romanian from Saint Paul, Minnesota. Apparently they have no
Cosa Nostra up there but they have an Albanian Gang and a Romanian Gang who don’t get along. Galadrescu, AKA: George Drew, AKA: George the Thumb. Strong arm enforcer with elevens arrests, three convictions. Spent twelve years in prison for hijacking. Just got off the phone with the commander of SPPD Intelligence, Lieutenant Lars Sfornsen who thought my name was pretty funny. My accent as well.”

  “What accent?” Ashton says.

  Beau turns to Juanita. “See!”

  “We had him on speaker phone,” says Juanita. “Did you see the movie Fargo?”

  “Snow and ice.” Ashton smiles. “Wood chipper.”

  “Remember how they all talked with ja and sounded Svedish.”

  Ashton shrugs.

  “Well Lars Sfornsen sounds like a Swede with a head cold.”

  “So do we have Romanian gang members here?” Beau says.

  “Not that I’m aware.”

  Beau looks at the ceiling, closes his eyes. “I was hoping for a different answer.”

  Juanita asks the next obvious question, “Would the Mafia hire a Romanian hit-man from Minnesota?”

  “Not a chance. No fuckin’ way. LCN is too insular. Hell, they can bring in talent from the East Coast, the Mid West, Florida, straight from Sicily. No way they’re relying on someone who’s not a made man, someone not Italian.”

  Juanita waits for Beau to open his eyes and sit up.

  “Well,” Beau says. “It could be worse. It could be raining.” He stands, “While the sun is shining so the devil’s beating his wife and now we have to go speak with his minions.”

  Juanita gives him a puzzled look.

  “The FBI.”

  • Police Headquarters, 4:47 p.m.

  Curtis Edwards lets them in and points to the chairs in front of Superintendent Féroce’s desk as she’s in her captain’s chair behind it, a cell phone pressed to her ear. Féroce talks fast and turns to them to roll her eyes. She’s in a white blouse and Beau hopes she’s not wearing a khaki skirt or slacks. The inspectors sit across from Féroce, Edwards settles at his small desk off to the right of the chief.

  Edwards clears his throat, says, “She’s up to date about the girl at Ochsner and the body found in Arkansas.”

  Let them think she’s still at Ochsner.