Nude in Red

by O'Neil De Noux

  “It is stipulated that Chief Inspector Beau can be intimidating but there is no evidence he intimidated anyone on this case.”

  And so it goes for the next hour. Pick and pick, jab and jab but no blows land and eventually Crane finishes with this witness.

  ADA Petersen stands, asks Beau in re-direct, “Did you threaten, coerce or promise Carl Darryl Lawrence anything to give his statement?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Can anyone make a phone call from that phone in the interview room?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Beau is dismissed but is told to wait in the hall as witnesses are sequestered during testimony. Juanita hands him his small briefcase but doesn’t follow him. She remains to see if there’s anything Beau needs to know from testimony of others. Besides, she looks like she’s really into this.

  It’s well after three o’clock so Beau finds an empty bench just down the wide hall outside the courtroom, sits and reaches into his briefcase to take his cell phone off ‘vibrate only’. No missed calls, no texts. All right. He slips his phone into an interior pocket of his suit coat, reaches back into the briefcase and pulls out a paperback with an vintage cover – black with a huge, shiny butcher knife slicing through clothes. There’s blood trail leading from the knife in the outline of a woman’s body. A reflection in the knife’s blade has a woman’s face, eyes wide, mouth open as she screams. Over the title is written, “Each was young, beautiful – and the innocent victim of a brutal killer …”

  Beau turns the book over, reads from the rear cover, “The burden falls on Detective Dino LaStanza to stem the hideous tide of death sweeping through the terrorized southern metropolis.”

  This I gotta read.

  He opens the book and starts reading.

  By the time court adjourns for the day, LaStanza and his partner, Detective Mark Land, are well into the homicide pressure cooker in pursuit of a heinous killer who slashed a young woman to death on a dark French Quarter street.

  Friday

  • Tulane Avenue and Broad, 3:45 p.m.

  It’s the next afternoon and Juanita steps into the hall to tell Beau testimony is concluded. The defendant did not take the stand.

  “Judge is talking to the jury. Closing arguments will start Monday morning.”

  Beau closes the book. She nods at it, “Whaddya think?”

  “It’s fuckin’ good. LaStanza’s working the murder of Lizette’s sister now.”

  “I wonder if they really met like that? In the library with the portrait above the fireplace.”

  “I’ll ask Jessie.”

  Beau stands and stretches and Alizée starts singing so he pulls out his cell, recognizes the number, rolls his eyes at Juanita, tells her, “Marshal Percy.”

  He answers and the marshal starts with, “Howdy pardner. Got somethin’ for ya.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Got two calls yesterday from a man with a funny accent askin’ about that dead fella’. Wouldn’t give a name.”

  “He say how he heard about the death?”

  “No, chief inspector. But the state police got connections with AT+T and got the numbers where the calls came from. Both are pay phones in Minneapolis. Didn’t know they still have pay phones in big cities.”

  “Well thanks for the update. Keep me in the loop, OK? Especially if you get any calls from this area code.”

  “You got it, chief inspector. How’s the weather down there.”

  Beau shakes his head. “Nippy. It’s forty degrees and raining.”

  “Forty – what?” Marshal Percy laughs. “You got a sense ‘a humor there, don’t ‘ya.”

  “Yeah. I’ll talk to you later, marshal.”

  “Shore nuff.”

  Beau thanks him again, hangs up.

  Saturday

  • Mystery Street, 10:02 a.m.

  LaStanza sits in the captain’s chair behind his desk, morning sunlight through the picture window behind him fills the room with a bright, yellow glow. Fel sits in one of the chairs in front of the desk as Juanita and Beau step in.

  “Coffee?” LaStanza points to the kitchen off to his right.

  “Just had some.”

  Beau pats Fel’s shoulder. “Talk to her this morning?”

  “Introduced her to Dino here. She didn’t know how to thank him.”

  LaStanza lifts his coffee mug. “Hard for her to understand we don’t want anything from her.”

  Juanita tells them its time and she and Beau head downstairs and out the back of the building. They are both in jeans, Juanita’s polo shirt is white while his is black. Both wear Sketchers running shoes. His Glock’s on his hip while hers is in an oversized purse.

  Consuela Suarez wears a white polo shirt and jeans as well and running shoes. She’s fluffed out her red hair and has a pair of dark sunglasses in hand when she lets them in. She’s reduced her worldly belongings to three suitcases, an overnight bag and a big purse.

  “I want to thank you both,” she says, as she roots through her purse. “You and Mr. L and Fel saved my life.” She looks at Beau, then Juanita. “This is true.”

  Beaus waits for her eyes to move back to his to ask, “Did you have any foreign clients when you worked for Butera?”

  “Foreign?”

  “With an accent.”

  It’s there in her eyes but she looks at Juanita and says, “No.”

  “If you can hide my business card on you,” Beau reaches a card out. “I put my cell and Juanita’s cell numbers on the back.”

  She looks at the card but doesn’t take it.

  “I have the numbers memorized.” She taps her temple with a finger and rattles off both numbers. “Not much to do this last week.”

  She extends her hand to Juanita who shakes it. She does the same to Beau who holds it and looks into her eyes. Consuela lets out a long breath.

  “A Romanian,” she says. “He come to me three times. He was the last client I see before the man tried to kill me.”

  She takes in a deep breath.

  “I don’t know his name or anything about him.”

  “How do you know he’s Romanian?” Juanita says.

  “Just before he come in me he say, ‘Isus. Isus. And Dumenzeu’.” She looks at Beau now. “I looked up the words on the net. Dumenzeu means God in Romanian and Isus is Jesus.”

  Juanita pulls a pen and note pad from her purse. “What did he look like?”

  She writes it down. Fifties. five-eight. Two hundred pounds. Black hair with gray at temples. Brown eyes. Wide face with flat nose. Ten inch scar on chest below right nipple. Wore a dress shirt and black pants. Cheap black shoes. Cheap watch. Strong cologne. Smelled lemony.

  “Any other Romanians?” Beau says.

  Consuela’s eyes are damp. Beau resists reaching over, maybe taking her hand, putting a brotherly hand on her shoulder, but he knows he cannot touch this woman. In any way. Yet, it’s time to leave and Beau nods toward the door and maybe those big eyes are touching his. Maybe. Maybe not.

  He crosses back to the rear of LaStanza’s office building and nods to them as they head for the garage. He follows them and they wait quietly for the first taxi to arrive. Yellow cab. Pulls around the corner for the building on Maurepas where Juanita hurries out in a blue raincoat and wide-brimmed hat. She gets in and the taxi leaves.

  Beau goes out, gets in the SUV and follows the cab but only a short way, pulling over along Esplanade Avenue, turning off the engine and waiting. Nothing follows the cab. So far so good. Juanita will take the cab straight to police headquarters.

  LaStanza’s BMW comes off Mystery Street, turns up Esplanade and sets up a block past Beau’s SUV. Fel’s silver Buick turns off Mystery Street the other way on Esplanade and pulls over. A half hour after the first cab, a second one comes for Consuela. It turns down Esplanade and rolls past Fel’s car. No one follows. LaStanza tools around to trail, picking up Fel along the way and they will leapfrog the cab as it takes a long way down to the river and the do
ck where three huge cruise ships await their Saturday departure. A Carnival ship. One from Norwegian Caribbean lines and Royal Caribbean’s Voyager of the Seas, which Consuela will board and make a clean getaway. Hopefully.

  • New Orleans Marina, 5:27 p.m.

  Alizée starts singing again and Stella jumps up on the dresser and goes, “Rowl.” She sniffs the iPhone.

  “I hear it.” Beau buttons the last button on his white dress shirt, peeks over at his cell, sees it’s headquarters calling.

  Aw fuck.

  “Hello.”

  “Inspector Beau. This is Operator 3212.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I have an emergency call from a Donald Taylor for you. He’s most insistent. Shall I patch him through to your phone?”

  Donald Taylor? It takes Beau a second. The hotel night clerk.

  “Yes. Patch him through.” A moment later Beau goes, “Hello?”

  “Is this Beau?”

  “Yes. Go ahead Donald.”

  “That blond from your case at the DeSaix. She checked in here at the Monteleone using the name Marie Jones. Half hour ago with one suitcase. She’s in Room 229.”

  “You sure it’s her?”

  “Positive. Didn’t remember she had an accent until she checked in.”

  “Accent? What kind of accent?”

  “Foreign accent. What other kind is there?”

  New England. Southern. Jesus.

  “You on the desk?”

  “Yep.”

  “Keep an eye out for her. I’m on my way.”

  “I wouldn’t rush. She should be here a good 72 hours.”

  Beau calls Juanita right away, tells her to call a unit over to take her to the Monteleone. “I’m heading straight there,” he says, hangs up and climbs out of his dress pants, pulls on a pair of black tactical pants and calls Jessie as he’s putting on his belt with its attachments.

  “You’re not going to believe this.” He tells her what’s up.

  She sighs, says she was just climbing into proper dancing shoes for tonight, then says, “It’s OK, Babe. If you come by when you’re finished I’ll forgive you. No, I’ve a better idea. I’m going to go keep Stella company, watch Netflix on your TV and we’ll be there whenever you get home.”

  “I’m sorry, Babe.”

  “You should be.” She laughs and he tells her goodbye, hurries to slip his handcuffs and extra magazines in their carbon graphic holders on his canvas belt, slides his Glock 37 into its holster and his obsidian knife into its sheath. He straps the scabbard of the knife LaStanza gave him, the Inconel 625, to his left leg and slides the knife inside.

  Stella watches from the bed. She heads downstairs before him, taking the side boards running from the loft to the living room at a forty-five degree angle. She’d discovered these as a kitten and always beat him up and down the steps.

  “Jessie’s coming,” he tells Stella as she sits in her usual spot on the carpet in the center of the cabin. She watches to make sure he gets out all right.

  • Royal Street, 5:58 p.m.

  Beau parks the SUV behind a marked police car in the other ‘police only’ spot near the front entrance of The Monteleone Hotel, puts a blue light up on the dash. He pulls on a light-weight gray jacket to cover his weapon and glances at the ornate façade of the fifteen story building, the only high-rise inside the French Quarter. The cop on paid detail, a kid, stands just left of the front desk. Beau nods him over and introduces himself. He’s discovering more unfamiliar faces in uniform since the department started to repopulate since the great loss of manpower from Katrina.

  Donald Taylor, in a dark blue suit with a red tie against a white shirt, stands with two women behind the desk. He gives Beau a slight nod of the head and turns away. Beau takes it she’s still there. He steps around a column and calls Juanita on the radio.

  “ETA two minutes,” she says so Beau leads the rookie cop to the elevators to wait. The rookie’s name is Wormer, the poor sap. Same last name as the douche-bag dean in Animal House.

  Juanita rushes in and the three go up to the second floor, locate Room 229 at a bend in the hall and set up on either side of the room, Wormer back between the door and the elevator, Beau and Juanita around the corner.

  A few minutes later voices draw Beau around the corner where a prim, middle-aged man in the same dark blue suit as the desk clerks talks with Wormer who spots Beau and points toward the inspectors. The man comes over and Beau draws him around the corner.

  “I am night manager Josephus Adams. What is the meaning of this?” The man is balding with narrow eyes and a prominent jaw, which he points at them and attempts to look down at Beau only he’s a good four inches shorter. Juanita introduces them as Beau moves around to the corner to peek out at Wormer standing closer to the elevators now.

  “I repeat. What is the meaning of this?”

  “Keep your voice down,” Beau says. “You have a pass key?”

  “I do and I will use whatever tone of voice I desire.”

  “Well, desire a lower tone, Josephus. Before I put a sock in your mouth.” Beau looks down at the man. “How long have you had prostitutes plying their trade here?”

  The man bounces. “I … uh … uh.”

  “Exactly.” Beau looks back around the corner. “Take out your pass key. We might need it.”

  “I … uh … uh.”

  The door of Room 229 opens and a tall man with thick, salt-and-pepper hair and wearing a dark brown suit comes out, heads for Wormer. Beau nods for the patrolman to stop the man. He does as Juanita slips past Beau and heads for them.

  Beau turns to the night manager. “May we use your office, sir?”

  The suddenly polite tone seems to surprise Josephus Adams, who nods. As the night manager goes to pass, Beau sticks out his hand. “Pass key, please.”

  The man digs a card out of his suit pocket, hands it to Beau who assures him he’ll get it right back. Wormer handcuffs the man in the brown suit behind his back and guides the man into the elevator with Adams as Juanita heads back to Beau.

  “They’ll keep him incommunicado ‘till we get down,” she says.

  Beau steps up to the door of Room 229 as an elderly couple gets off the elevator and heads their way. He slides the card through the lock and the door pops open. He has his hand on his Glock as he goes in, Juanita right behind. The room smells of perfume. Nice, actually.

  Juanita calls out, “Are you decent?”

  “Police,” Beau says.

  A blond woman leans into the door between the sitting room and bedroom. She’s in a red negligee, her mouth falling open as the cops approach. She backs into the room and she’s not decent. The sheer negligee does little to hide a pair of large breasts, nipples pointed and tiny white panties.

  “You have a robe?” Juanita says as she steps up to the woman, blocking Beau’s view. He checks out the bathroom. Empty. Then checks the closet. There’s no rear door.

  The woman is topless when Beau steps back in, her back to him, her thong panties show off the round cheeks of her ass. She pulls on a black T-shirt then climbs into a pair of jeans, turns and looks at Beau. Her blue eyes seem oversized and her lips quiver.

  “How old are you?”

  “I am twenty.” Her voice is deep, heavy accented. Up close she looks like a teenager. Her eyes fill as she keeps looking at Beau.

  Juanita identifies herself and Beau. The woman sits on the bed and watches Juanita take the dresses hanging in the closet and lay them on the bed. The sheet’s twisted, half tossed on the floor.

  Beau tells her, “You’re in a lot of trouble.”

  “You do not know how much trouble, officer.”

  “I don’t?”

  “You will not believe me. This I know. But if I do not come here tonight, Tito kill me. And I come here and I may still die.”

  Juanita brings a large suitcase to the bed and starts packing up the woman’s things.

  Beau says, “You’re not going to die tonight. But
we’re going to have a nice, long talk. Understand?”

  She nods, tears falling from her eyes. She wipes them again.

  Juanita finds an iPhone, shows it to Beau, slips it into one of the pockets of her tactical skirt and Beau joins her packing. The woman finally stops crying by the time they have everything packed up. They call headquarters for a transport unit to meet them downstairs.

  “May I go to the bathroom?”

  Juanita takes her as Beau steps into the sitting room. He’s surprised to hear the transport unit’s pulling up outside and Juanita nods at him as she comes out with the woman, who’s looking paler by the moment.

  “We’re not going to handcuff you,” Beau says, figuring she couldn’t run fast in spiked high-heels.

  Juanita takes her arm. “Don’t do anything foolish.” She nods to Beau. “He might not slap you, but if I have to chase you I’ll put some pain on you. Understand?”

  The woman nods, shivers so violently Beau asks if she wants her jacket he’d stuffed into her suitcase.

  “No.”

  Juanita keeps her in the hall as Beau steps into the night manager’s office on the first floor, to the right of the main desk. Adams stands stiffly just inside the door. Wormer stands next to their prisoner who gives Beau a hangdog look, his lower lip quivering now.

  “What? No blood?” Beau shakes his head as he hands his cuffs to Wormer to put on the prisoner and takes his off.

  Beau looks at Adams. “It appears you have a good man working the detail here. Officer Wormer didn’t slap the prisoner around like I usually do.”

  Adams blanches.

  Wormer passes the prisoner to Beau who says, “There’s a nice police car outside that’ll take you to the Detective Bureau. What’s your name?”

  The man opens his mouth but nothing comes out.

  “John Worthington,” Wormer says as Beau pats down the prisoner. Wormer hands Beau the man’s wallet, says, “He’s a minister.”

  Beau laughs. “A John named John and a minister to boot.” He leans close to the man’s face. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”