Nude in Red

by O'Neil De Noux

  The teen stops, huffs. She wears a man’s hat, a red blouse, cut off shorts and flip flops.

  Is that a black fedora? No. It’s the one with the narrow brim. A trilby.

  “If this isn’t your sister’s house I’m calling the cops.”

  Beau comes around the SUV and they both spot him, the cabbie taking a step back. He moves under the streetlight to give them a look at his rig – badge on his belt in front of his holster, handcuff case, portable radio in his left hand.

  “You looking for a cop?”

  The cabbie waves at the teenager. “Picked her up at Lee Circle. Says her sister lives here. If she doesn’t, I’m calling my boyfriend at the Second District.”

  Beau eases up, sees the teenager has the trilby low over her left eye, peeks up a him with her hand on her hip, toe tapping the ground.

  He asks the cabbie, “Who’s your boyfriend?”

  “Sergeant Scott Rimock.”

  Oh, you poor thing. She must see it on Beau’s face and almost smiles.

  “I know Rimrock.” Beau pulls his ID folder from a pants pocket, steps up and shows it to the cabbie. He digs out a business card, gives it to her. “Your boyfriend and I don’t actually get along.”

  “He don’t get along with anyone.” The cabbie takes the card. “Chief Inspector? Never heard of that rank. You Internal Affairs?”

  “Nope. CIU.”

  The door opens and Jessie steps out on the gallery in a white T-shirt that doesn’t cover her pink panties. She moves to the steps.

  “Stefi. What are you doing here?”

  The teenager punches in the lock code next to the front gate, goes through, head down, almost stomping now. Beau catches the gate.

  “Y’all pay the cab driver.” Stefi bounds up the stairs.

  Beau asks the cabbie how much, gives her a nice tip, thanks her and goes through the gate. Stefi’s inside already. Jessie shakes her head in her sister’s wake. She turns and kisses Beau and they go in. His stomach rumbles as he smells the Chinese food immediately.

  Stefi steps in front of Beau, looking up at him with the same pale green eyes as Jessie. What a pretty kid. He can see she’s thinking.

  “Are you John Raven Beau?”

  “Is this a trick question?”

  Her face softens and she almost smiles.

  “Yeah, I’m Beau.”

  “I’m Stefi.” She sticks out her right hand from him to shake.

  He does.

  “Don’t tell me my sister hasn’t mentioned me.”

  “I have,” Jessie says. “What are you doing here?”

  “Your mother is freaking out for no reason.” Stefi huffs. “I’m staying here tonight.”

  “What if I say no?”

  “You won’t put your fourteen year old sister on the street where she’ll be ravaged by men lusting for a young body.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I might like it and never go back home.” Stefi takes off the hat and moves around her sister for the dining room. Her hair’s the same color as Jessie’s. “What’s that smell? I’m hungry.”

  They try the dining room table, rather than the kitchen counter where Jessie and Beau usually eat. Jessie sits at the head with Beau and Stefi on either side of the long mahogany table that can sit ten.

  “I thought you two would be out on a Saturday night.” Stefi dips a quarter of egg roll into a small bowl of hot mustard, then a bowl of sweet-and-sour sauce then takes a bite.

  Jessie’s not talking to her sister. Stefi looks at Beau whose chewing a mouthful of crispy Peking Duck.

  He finishes, says, “Someone got murdered.”

  Stefi checks to see if her sister’s going to comment, then looks back at Beau.

  “Doesn’t that happen a lot in New Orleans?”

  Beau nods. “Too much.” He takes a forkful of egg foo young now.

  “So you’re in charge of the case?”

  He shakes his head. “A very good detective named Savary’s in charge. I’m assisting.”

  “Savary?” Jessie asks. “Joseph Savary?”

  “You know him?” Beau asks.

  She shakes her head. “Lizette tells me he is one of the few whose ancestor actually fought with Andrew Jackson at The Battle of New Orleans. Right next to Jackson according to the big novel I gave my little sister here for Christmas. Had it autographed by the writer, who’s from New Orleans.

  Stefi sticks out her tongue at her sister, looks at Beau. “It’s the biggest book in the world and she expects me to read it.”

  “It’s bad?”

  “No. It’s the biggest book in the world.”

  “No it isn’t.” Jessie takes a bite of food.

  “It’s a half million pages.”

  “It is not.”

  Stefi smiles at Beau. “You’d think a book called Battle Kiss would have a lot of kissing in it. You read much about the Apaches?”

  Beau’s fork stops half way up. “There were Apaches at The Battle of New Orleans?”

  “No. I mean. Your family and all.”

  “My mother’s Sioux.” He eats the forkful of egg foo and fried rice.

  “I know that.” Stefi’s voice rising now. “But have you read about the Apaches? They’re mean! Are the Sioux mean? They’re all Indians. Native Americans, I mean.”

  “We’re all alike.” Beau teases. “Just like Italians and Spanish.”

  “We’re not alike. Italians are much prettier.”

  Beau laughs, turns to Jessie who tells him, “That’s how her tiny mind works. In spurts, then nothing.”

  Later – Jessie walks Beau to the door, pulling his face down for a long, French kiss.

  “I was hoping you’d spend the night.”

  He brushes hair from in front of her eye. “I’ll pick you two up for lunch and then we can go to Kiddie-land in City Park. We’ll get in free if you come in your panties.”

  Jessie laughs. “Yeah. I wanna see Stefi riding in an Alice in Wonderland teacup.”

  “I was thinking of the carousel. Bumper cars.”

  She kisses him again, touches his nose with a finger. “Dancing. Next Saturday night.”

  “Long as someone doesn’t die.”

  Monday

  • Tulane Avenue and Broad, 6:10 a.m.

  Savary’s already in the morgue where three coroner’s assistants prep bodies on the two stainless-steel autopsy tables. The big detective is early to make sure his body is in the first rotation. His black tie is loosened, his white shirt looking a little wrinkled. He’s freshly shaved at least. Beau skipped shaving this early in the morning and his beard looks a couple days old but isn’t. He’s in a khaki dress shirt and olive green RipStops. Juanita wear a dark blue polo shirt and khaki tactical skirt. She’s managed to find khaki sneakers.

  The body on the first table is a black female with a smashed up face and caved-in skull. The rest of her looks pristine. Her toe tag has ‘Signal 20F’ penned beneath the NOPD item number. Auto fatality. Their Roma Realty victim, Maria’s Uncle Eugen Buzau, alias Gene Bailey, lies on the other autopsy table. Beau steps up to the naked body and sees what he suspected – a ten inch scar on its chest below the man’s right nipple.

  “Fifties,” Juanita reads from her notes. “Five-eight. two hundred pounds. Black hair with gray at temples. Brown eyes. Wide face with flat nose.”

  Beau says, “Isus and Dumenzeu.”

  Juanita interprets for Savary, “Romanian for Jesus and God.”

  Beau explains this was the last customer of one of their whores and the uncle of another. They step back as the pathologist comes in, a tall woman with gray hair who says nothing until she starts dictating to the microphones above the table and starts in on the first body. The two bullets taken from Eugen Buzau’s skull are small caliber, one pretty mangled, one in good shape. The crime lab will be able to tell if they’re twenty-twos.

  Less than an hour after arriving, Beau and Juanita step out of the Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office in the baseme
nt of the Criminal Courts Building to drive over to Toulouse Street, where the Intelligence Division will be going through the files from Roma Realty. Hopefully, they’ll come up with something. Anything. Names, at least.

  • Police Headquarters, 4:10 p.m.

  “OK,” Juanita says. “I’ll run the names. We get hits, I’ll send them to the lab to check the fingerprints from DeSaix.”

  “And the prints from Roma Realty.”

  Beau leans back in his desk chair as Juanita turns her computer on. He closes his eyes, listens to his partner tap the computer keys.

  “Details,” he says.

  “What?”

  “Good detective work is in the details. Not in broad strokes.” He yawns. “That’s an old saying.”

  “Who said it?”

  Beau shrugs.

  “That Untouchable guy who got Capone? Eliot Ness? The guy who shot Dillinger? Melvin Purvis?”

  He shakes his head. “I think it was Scooby-Doo.”

  She gives him a long look.

  “What?” Dammit, I’m snapping at her.

  “What’s bothering you?”

  “We should have asked Maria if her uncle had a scar on his chest.”

  • Tulane Avenue, 5:12 p.m.

  “You need cooler sunglasses,” Beau tells Juanita as he slips on his extra dark, vintage Ray Ban Baloramas. Juanita puts on her sunglasses.

  “I like pink frames.”

  The light turns from yellow to red at Broad and Tulane and Beau stops the SUV, a car behind brakes hard, tires squealing and he waits for the collision. Thankfully the ass-hole manages to stop. He glances at Juanita and neither has to say it. The idiot anticipated the SUV running the light since it just turned red and he or she would run it as well. Fuckin’ New Orleans drivers.

  Juanita looks at the car behind and a beep tone comes over the police radio, followed by – “Shots fired. Canal and Broad.”

  That’s four blocks straight ahead. Beau flips on the blue lights half-hidden in the grill of the SUV, taps the siren and heads through the intersection. Only one car has to brake and it wouldn’t have hit them anyway. He swings into the left lane of the six-lane avenue, taps the siren again to get cars out of the way and for some reason everyone’s paying attention and he has a straight shot up to Canal.

  With the windows cracked down a couple inches, they hear gunfire ahead as they approach the wide intersection. A black Chevy jumps the neutral ground from the other side, heading right for them, then goes back on the neutral ground and rams into a tree. The Chevy careens off the tree, spins around on the neutral ground and hits the tree from the other side. A yellow Honda rams a red SUV and they slide to a grinding stop.

  The Chevy’s is a nineties model with a mis-matched gray door on the passenger side and Beau stops the SUV twenty yards from the Chevy, unfastens his seatbelt and withdraws his Glock. The Chevy’s radiator hisses steam in a cloud, its windshield dotted with bullet holes. Beau opens the door of the SUV, aims his Glock at the Chevy, hears Juanita opening the other door.

  “Police! Show me your hands!”

  Nothing from the Chevy.

  A large man in a suit comes from the Honda. He shouts something at the Chevy as he approaches. Juanita calls out for him to stay away. The large man doesn’t hear or doesn’t care what she says.

  Let’s see if the fool draws fire.

  The man arrives at the Chevy and pounds on its side and calls the driver a motherfucker.

  Beau takes his car keys, glances back at Juanita and tells her to bring a radio. The large man screams and falls on his ass, crawling backward now, pointing at the Chevy.

  “Blood! Blood!”

  We fucking know, you moron.

  There’s only one occupant of the Chevy – the driver whose right hand still holds the steering wheel as he’s crumbled against the door, an AK-47 lies on the passenger seat. The top of the man’s head is blown off, bloody brains drip from his cranium. Beau pops open the front passenger’s door, reaches in, turns off the car’s engine and presses his fingers near the man’s carotid. No heartbeat. He manages to do this without picking up any blood.

  An NOPD marked police car skids up, almost running into the large man heading back to his Honda. A half block away, at Canal Street, people are running with guns in hands. Beau tells the young officer climbing out of the police car to guard the Chevy.

  “There’s a dead guy driving.”

  Juanita follows Beau back to their SUV and he wheels it around the scene, heading for Canal Street. He slows as he approaches with his blue lights still flickering, takes in the scene –

  A gray SUV if off to their left, sitting in the middle lane of Canal Street, river-bound lanes, both doors on the passenger side open, windows blown away, holes in the windshield. A dark blue van sits in the center of the intersection, its doors open, its windshield holed by bullets and a body lies on either side, what looks like an Uzi lies next to one of the bodies. On the right side of the intersection sits a white SUV with a man sitting up next to the rear passenger tire. His right arm is bloody and a woman in a black pantsuit is helping him while a man in a white shirt, tie limps over. He’s bleeding from a leg wound.

  A man with an M-4 comes around another gray SUV sitting at a forty-five degree angle in the far right lane of Canal Street. There’s a badge dangling from a chain around the man’s neck. Another man follows him around the van. SA Ocheski has a Glock in his left hand.

  Two NOPD units fly up from either direction, both using the neutral ground as cars have jammed both sides of the street. A red streetcar lumbering down the streetcar tracks along the center of the neutral ground has to stop as one of the units blocks it. Beau gets out, holds his Glock at his side waves to the nearest NOPD unit. Cops jump out of both cars as Beau heads to the woman in the pantsuit. She looks up at him.

  SA Donna Biondolillo’s face is pale, blood drips along her right cheek. The wounded man with her has a US Marshal badge clipped to his belt. The other man, with a marshal’s badge clipped to his belt, sits and presses a hand against his wounded leg. The loud siren of an ambulance turns Beau to see Juanita at his side and the ambulance pulling up.

  He waves to the EMTees, steps away with Juanita and slips his Glock back into its holster. His ears start picking up sounds now, a woman screaming to the left, car horns blowing, the goddamn streetcar’s bell ringing. Police cars block the tracks. We fucking know that.

  A brown dog lopes up, stops a few feet away, growls at Juanita. A big dog. Mastiff. It lowers its head, growls louder and Juanita reaches for her Glock. Beau steps around and the dog sees him, creeps forward, growling again, the hair standing on its back. Beau lowers his head, focuses on the dog’s head, not its eyes. The dog inches backward. Beau stands and spreads his arms.

  “Get!”

  The dog jumps back, barks and runs off.

  “What was that? Some sorta Sioux magic?”

  “Haven’t a clue,” Beau says. “But it worked.”

  He feels a tingling on his neck and shots slam the ground behind Juanita as the loud report of an automatic reverberates. Ack! Ack! Ack! Ack! Ack!

  Juanita dives to the concrete and Beau pulls Biondolillo down. She seems to recognize him for the first time, grabs his shirt.

  “Have you seen Maria?”

  “Maria?”

  “She was in the backseat. Pointing out places to us.”

  Beau slides over to the back door of the white SUV, looks in. Empty. No blood, thankfully.

  There’s more shooting from the marshal and Ocheski by the gray SUV. Beau’s up in a second, running flat out. He reaches them as SUV’s windows explode, glass hitting Beau. He shakes his head and slivers of glass cascade on his shirt. He pulls off his Ray Bans, shakes them and glass tumbles from the plastic safety lenses.

  He realizes his ears had felt a flush, his neck had tingled just as they had when the Brown Ravens attacked, just before the bullets slammed into the concrete around Juanita. What was it?

  Th
e marshal with the M-4 reloads. Ocheski stands and fires toward the parking lot of the Family Dollar store. He quickly ducks and reloads.

  “You see the shooter?”

  “No. Shots came from the parking lot.”

  Beau puts his Ray Bans back on, Glock back in hand now, moves to peek around the SUV, The marshal rises, takes Ocheski around the other side of the SUV and they start running toward the parking lot. Beau eases away from the SUV, covers the parking lot, looking for someone to shoot, holds his breath as Juanita arrives behind him.

  The marshal fires again and Beau runs for the parking lot. He can’t see what they are firing at but Ocheski and the marshal stop about ten feet apart and concentrate their fire at a green car. They empty their magazines and calmly reload as Beau and Juanita arrive at the iron fence alongside the parking lot.

  A body lies beyond the green car with an AK-47 next to it. Another NOPD unit slides to a screeching stop behind them and Beau looks over his shoulder, waves for the cops. They come running.

  Ocheski and the marshal step into the parking lot, swinging their muzzles back and forth. There’s a gate to Beau’s right. He calls out to Ocheski and heads for the gate with Juanita and the two new cops. One is Boyd. Used to work the Second. The other looks like a rookie.

  The feds reach the green car. It’s an Oldsmobile and Ocheski checks the man on the pavement.

  “Dead.”

  Beau says he’ll check the area as two more NOPD officers rush through the gates with their Berettas in hand.

  “Keep in pairs,” he tells them. He points to the rookie whose name is Chase. “Come with me.” Tells Boyd to go with Juanita and the three pairs spread out to check the parking lot.

  “You got glass all over you,” Chase says.

  “I know.”

  People peek out the glass windows of the Dollar Family store. A little boy bounces up and down as he points at them. Beau’s not sure but wasn’t this building a bank BK.

  Fifteen futile minutes of searching brings them all back to the green Olds. Ocheski leans against a red Toyota next to it. The marshal’s tinkering with his M-4.

  “You’re covered with glass.”