Nude in Red

by O'Neil De Noux

  Later – Beau calls Fel again who sounds like he’s asleep.

  He asks Beau, “What is it? Another whore?”

  Beau glances at his notes, says, “She’a curva. A very good one.” He looks up and Maria almost smiles.

  “A what?”

  “She’s Romanian.”

  “She a looker, I hope.”

  “Fuckin’ A.”

  “Meet me at our office in an hour.”

  Sunday

  • New Orleans Marina, 2:14 a.m.

  Fat rain slaps the windshield of the SUV as Beau eases through the gate, parks against the sea wall. Thunder rumbles and a flash of lightning turns the marina white for a moment. The parking lot lights flicker. Beau waits. It takes nearly five minutes for the rain to slack up enough for him to make a run for it, get to the pier and under the overhang without getting the bag with the muffuletta soaked. A movement catches his eye as he reaches the overhang and he has his Glock drawn and locked on target, realizes it’s an animal perched atop a low piling along the pier.

  Showing huge orange teeth, a nutria, has to be twenty-five pounds, over two feet long. The huge rodent hisses at Beau, who lowers his Glock. Fuckin’ South American nutrias, brought to the US by fur traders a long time ago. A genuine nuisance in Louisiana. With no natural enemies except slow-moving alligators, they have spread into cities. Beau’s seen them in City Park, Audubon Park lagoons.

  He looks around, sees a broken fishing pole, a couple feet long, lying next to another piling. Beau picks up the pole, goes over to the low piling. The nutria looks around. Beau taps the piling beneath the nutria and shoos the rodent which scampers down the piling and slips into the water.

  The rain picks up, hammers the tin roof of the pier and Beau focuses as he looks around, unlocks the gate to Sad Lisa and steps aboard. Rain washes in, a fine mist flowing over him as he unlocks the cabin door of his houseboat and steps in. Stella sits up in her usual position in the center of the living room. He locks the door.

  “Hey, Baby,” he whispers.

  Stella answers with a low meow, starts his way. He scoops her and pets her on his way to the refrigerator to put away the muffuletta. He decides to carry his girl upstairs, although she’s getting wiggly, annoyed with being carried. Stella nuzzles when she wants to, allows him to pet her when she wants to, but being picked up, she no longer controls her world. If he doesn’t let her go as soon as he up in the loft, she’ll growl. He puts her on the edge of the bed where Jessie lies on her side.

  He hears her even breaths and knows she’s out.

  He undresses quickly and climbs into bed, pulling most of the sheet off the floor. Jessie stirs, opens one eye, sees him and smiles. As he settles next to her, she rolls over and presses her back against him.

  “Let’s spoon.” Her voice groggy with sleep, deep and husky.

  He curls against her, feels her warm ass against his growing dick. He moves it against her softly, figuring it’ll get her going but no. Nope. Not a bit. Her easy breathing comes long and she’s asleep again.

  Great.

  What do I do with this boner?

  Stella decides sleeping on his feet’s a good idea and a few minutes after climbing into bed, Beau struggles to keep from waking either girl.

  My foot getting numb and my dick’s a diamond cutter. Way to go, Beau.

  • New Orleans Marina, 10:34 a.m.

  Beau rolls on his back, Jessie next to him on her back, the machinery of both bodies slowly returning to normal after a good humping. Jessie rolls on her belly, purrs in his ear and closes her eyes. He looks at her a few minutes later and her face is still, sunlight streaming through the open porthole bathes her in golden light. He lifts strands of her long hair away from her face and just watches her.

  Stella jumps up on the foot of the bed and sits there, licking her paw.

  Jessie’s left eye opens. She smiles, closes her eye, sighs.

  “I’m thinking of getting a tattoo.”

  What? He tries to hide what he’s thinking but that left eye is looking right at him.

  “What do you think?”

  He rolls on his side to face her, draws a finger lightly from her shoulder down her back, over the cheek of her ass.

  “Your body’s so beautiful. Why would you mark it up?”

  “People get tattoos for all sorts of reasons. I want to put something unique on mine.”

  “You body IS unique. Your skin is radiant, creamy, gorgeous. Damn, you want to ink it up?”

  “It was just a thought.”

  He kisses her neck, says, “Babe. I’m not going to tell you what to do. You asked and that’s what I think.”

  “It was going to be a small one. A picture of you.”

  Beau laughs, rolls on his back, laughs even louder.

  “Or maybe a feather. Why kind of feather does a Sioux wear?”

  It takes a few moments to catch his breath. “Ostrich. Huge fuckin’ feather. Slowed us down when he rode into battle.”

  “OK. Maybe a knife. Your Ob-whatever knife that is.”

  Beau rolls back over, nibbles her shoulder.

  “Ready for seconds?”

  “Make it quick, Crazy Horse. I’m hungry.”

  His eyebrows go up and down and he tells her there’s a muffuletta in the fridge.

  They eat naked, sitting across the small table from each other.

  “I was going to ask if you’d have supper with me at my parents’ house only Alaina is still in from New York. I can’t spring you on them with her there. She’ll think I’m upstaging her.”

  “Why not? I wouldn’t even have to dress. I could come like this, show Alaina your hunk of a man.”

  Jessie laughs. “My little sister Stefi would fall in love with you right away and I can’t compete with Alaina and Stefi. Being the middle child isn’t easy.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Not now. It’ll take too long.”

  “Did LaStanza meet Lizette like in that Grim Reaper book?”

  “Yep.” She shudders. “Can you imagine. Your twin murdered like that?”

  He’ll have to tell Juanita.

  Stella races across the room and goes behind the sofa.

  “Another mouse?” Jessie asks.

  “You should have seen the nutria out on the pier last night. Four times as big as Stella. Huge orange beaver-teeth.”

  “They’re vermin. Too bad you can’t just shoot it in the city. You could have used your knife on him. Don’t Cajuns eat nutria?”

  “I’m not much of a cook and the only animals I kill these days are poisonous snakes.”

  “You told me all those hunting stories when you were a boy.”

  “That was then. You read much Hemingway?”

  Jessie takes another bite of muffuletta, nods, chews. He takes a bite.

  Eventually she says, “I loved A Farewell to Arms. Wasn’t until I read his short stories, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and “The Short Happy Life of Francis …” whatever his last name was. Ole Ernest didn’t like women much did he, except as sex objects.”

  Beau shrugs. “There’s a quote from him that goes like – ‘There’s no hunting like the hunting of men, and those who’ve hunted armed men long enough and like it, never care for anything else’.”

  Beau takes a drink of ice water, watching those pale green eyes.

  “I hunt humans now. Usually armed humans.”

  What did she say? Women as sex objects? As Jessie raises her sandwich to her mouth, Beau can’t help look at her breasts rise, those light areoles, the soft pink nipples. He looks up at her eyes and she smiles.

  “When I’m old, I hope you still look at me like that.”

  He narrows his left eye. “You think we’ll still be together when we’re old?”

  She narrows her eye back at him. “You think either of us can do better than this?”

  • Constance Street, 5:50 p.m.

  Beau parks the SUV at the end of the block across from Apostol Andrei Or
thodox Church. Narrow Constance Street is crowded with parishioners heading into the church and the St. Alphonsus Catholic Church at the far end of the block. It was Jodie who had explained this Irish Channel neighborhood to Beau when he first went to Homicide.

  Settled by Irish immigrants in the early Nineteenth Century. Starving Irish Catholics were brought in as expendable labor. They dug ditches, especially the New Basin Canal, until Yellow Fever ravaged them. These penniless families were misled to believe New Orleans was close to other Irish enclaves, New York and Boston. The Irish soon joined the stevedores, dock workers, saloon keepers and the New Orleans Police Department they dominated well into the Twentieth Century. AK – After Katrina the neighborhood is only part Irish, part African American with a large Latino population and apparently a number of Eastern Europeans – Serbs, Bulgarians and Romanians.

  Beau watches the people going into Apostol Andrei, doesn’t spot Maria’s uncle or Marta, the waitress from the Constantin Café. He waits until ten after six to go in and stand at the back of church. Few seem to notice him, but he knows many do. No one approaches and before the mass ends, he leaves to go to stand directly across the street. He leans in the doorway of a closed hair salon and watches the people leave. Only a few glance his way but no one approaches. A couple small black boys walk by twice to check him out. An older black man sits on a stoop at a corner house and watches him.

  The traffic isn’t too heavy. A dog races across the street, causing a horn to blow. Beau sees two men come out of the church after everyone seems to be gone. Both are middle-aged, heavy set, both with gray hair and wearing dark suits. They climb into a dark brown Buick. It starts up and pulls into traffic coming Beau’s way. A block away a gray Pontiac pulls out.

  Beau pulls out his iPhone and hits the voice memo program and reads out the license number of the Buick as it passes. It’s a Louisiana dealer’s plate and the men in the car don’t look at him as they pass and the car proceeds up Constance Street. As the Pontiac passes, he sees the driver’s wearing dark sunglasses. The passenger also has dark sunglasses and looks at Beau as the car passes, moving slowly, keeping back from the Buick. Beau catches the Pontiac’s license number. A Louisiana commercial plate.

  Monday

  • Tulane and Broad, 10:04 a.m.

  Patricia Petersen gets to go first, paint the picture of the horrendous murder of Judy Martha Davenport by the highly-intelligent, calculating killer Carl Darryl Lawrence. Defense attorney Robert Crane goes next, dragging out his words for the jury. He can’t say his client is insane but he points to the manikins and the frenzy of the murder. The state gets the last word, so Petersen can sink her knife into Lawrence.

  “This man was in control. He hunted down his victim and plunged a knife into her. By his own words, he only panicked after she bled too much. He spilled her life’s blood and felt what most of us would feel, repulsion.”

  She focuses on the short life of Judy Davenport, leaves the jury with that image.

  The judge recesses before beginning his instructions to the jury and Beau and Juanita step out. Judy Davenport’s family moves out before them, gathers in the hall. There are two brothers, both looking stiff and angry. Judy’s mother seems hunched, her brown hair hanging limply. She wears a dark gray dress that looks too large. Beau’s not sure but she probably lost weight since the night the police chaplain and Jodie Kintyre arrived at the house to tell her the worst thing a parent can be told. Judy’s father is an older man, or maybe he’s aged that much. Hard for Beau to remember. He’d only seen them once, at Judy’s wake.

  Dino LaStanza, in a black T-shirt and jeans, black jogging shoes with a light gray button-collar shirt open worn as a short-sleeved jacket to cover his weapon most likely, stands against the far wall outside the courtroom. He pulls off his black, reflective sunglasses – gangster glasses – and nods to them.

  “What time is your appointment with Esposito?”

  Beau smiles. “How do you know about that?”

  “He called me.”

  “One o’clock,” Juanita says.

  LaStanza starts to move away. “Come on. Lunch is on me. You’ll have to drive. Fel dropped me off. I know an excellent Romanian restaurant.”

  Juanita’s head snaps to Beau who just laughs. And yes, they take the SUV to Gaienne Street and Constantin Café where Marta serves them again. Red pepper salad, chiftele, rice pilaf and the hot round bread called lipie. Beau is hoping, of course, but Maria’s uncle is not there. He’s not sure if any of the men he’d seen at church are there, but those who are check them out.

  As they eat, Beau keeps his voice down, tells LaStanza, “I have something you might not know.”

  “I doubt it.” LaStanza winks at Juanita who’s trying to figure these two A-list whatevers.

  “I caught the six o’clock mass yesterday at Apostol Andrei Church. Constance Street. Lots of Romanians go there. Spotted a dealer’s plate on a car for Very Good Autos on Claiborne Avenue. It was followed by a Pontiac with a commercial plate registered to,” Beau leans closer. “The Pomodoro Corporation.”

  LaStanza stops his fork mid-way to his mouth, nods slowly.

  “They know.”

  “Fuckin A.”

  Juanita waits for it. The men each take a bite of food.

  She leans in. “I’m right here, you know.”

  Beau chews quicker. “Sorry.”

  “LCN,” LaStanza says. “Pomodoro is a Mafia holding company.”

  Juanita points her fork at her partner. “Don’t say you’re sorry when you’re not.”

  That’s what the judge told me. “You’re right. I was being a smart ass.”

  “You didn’t pick me for my looks,” she says.

  “What’s wrong with your looks?” LaStanza asks.

  “Put a sock in it.”

  Beau gets no sympathy from LaStanza.

  On their way to the FBI building on the lakefront, Beau glances at his partner, who’s flipping through her notes.

  “I been meaning to ask how your date went with the banker.”

  She gives him a long look, shakes her head, goes back to her notes.

  “It was supposed to be Saturday but someone called me to the Monteleone.”

  Fuck.

  “You’re going out with a banker?” LaStanza says from the back seat.

  “You really wanna hear about it?”

  “Not really. I was just being polite. I hear enough about lover boy Beau and Jessie already.”

  Beau looks over his shoulder. “What?”

  “Apparently, my wife has a new hobby. The Jessie and Beau affair.”

  Beau looks at him again.

  “They talk three, four times a day.” LaStanza laughs, slaps the headrest behind Beau’s head. “You have no idea how much trouble you’re in.”

  • Leon C. Simon Boulevard, 12:52 p.m.

  The SUV is stopped at the gate of the FBI compound and all three show their IDs to Justice Department Police. Beau’s not surprised to see LaStanza has a state police commission. They are allowed to park against the twenty foot steel-and-brick fence, leave their weapons in the car. They go into the brick building where they are held in a windowless waiting room since the only one of them with official US government ‘secret’ clearance is the private eye.

  Eventually a stocky black agent in a Men-in-Black suit comes down, tells them he’s SA Bishop and takes them to the elevator and through a maze of offices to a corner office where ASAC Esposito sits behind a huge dark mahogany desk. The man rises and comes around the desk to shakes their hands, LaStanza’s first.

  “How is Lizette?” There’s a gleam to the ASAC’s eyes.

  “She sends an open invitation. We’re free the next three weekends. Pick a Saturday or Sunday and Aunt Brulie will make grillades and grits.”

  “I’ll check my busy social calendar.”

  The three settle in padded chairs in front of the desk and Esposito goes behind the desk as a prim, blond clerical worker comes in and as
ks if they’d like coffee. No takers. She closes the door on her way out.

  “As I said on the phone,” Beau begins. “We need to put someone in the witness protection program.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  Her? He knows already.

  Beau looks at Juanita and she does what she does best. Explains it succinctly in less than twenty minutes.

  When she finishes, Esposito says, “We’re talking interstate prostitution, racketeering, classic Rico. I’ll put our three best Organized Crime agents on it.”

  Beau says, “She’s safe now but she’ll need long range witness protection.”

  “Where is she?”

  LaStanza raises his hand.

  Esposito pushes a button on the telephone console to his right. “I need Supervisor Aiden, SA Biondolillo and SA Ocheski.”

  The noise repeats itself and Beau realizes it’s a cell phone message alert. Esposito pulls his out, so does LaStanza. Beau looks at Juanita who’s giving him that look. It’s his phone.

  “Who else has songs in French?”

  Oh, yeah. He’s using Alizée’s Contre-courant for texts. Beau pulls out his cell, sees a message from Mark Land – Guilty. 1st degree.

  He looks at Juanita. “Guilty. First degree. They’ll start in on the penalty phase.”

  “Which case?” LaStanza asks.

  “Manikin Killer.”

  Esposito takes out a cigar, puts it in his mouth but doesn’t light it. “Somebody killed a manikin?”

  Beau explains the curious case of newly convicted murderer Carl Darryl Lawrence. Three agents come in as he’s wrapping up and Esposito introduces tall, graying SA Supervisor Carl Aiden, Special Agent Donna Biondolillo, a petite woman with short brown hair and wearing glasses with dark blue frames, and SA Nathan Ocheski, who matches LaStanza’s height, dark wavy hair and thick moustache.

  “Ocheski,” Beaus says as he shakes the agent’s hand. “Hope that’s Romanian.”

  “Polish. Why Romanian?”

  “Welcome to our case.”

  “Actually,” Esposito says. “It’s our case now.”