Deep Kill (The Micah Dunn Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  Maybe she had cause. Maybe there’s things a woman shouldn’t have to put up with. If a man’s a little different, if he can’t help it, you can’t hold it against him, can you?

  A little different I thought. Is that all we’re talking about? An idiosyncrasy?

  Four

  I spent the next two hours in the clerk of court’s office, going through the conveyance books. I found a judgment from 1988 giving all the worldly goods of Mrs. Gladys Villiere Dejean to her only surviving relative, her nephew, Herman Patrick Villiere. Her worldly goods were fairly considerable: house in Gentilly, valued at $75,000; an apartment building on Camp near the river, which had a value of $60,000; some property in East New Orleans, which had been swamp twenty years ago but was now part of a subdivision; and the building which she’d rented to Calvin Autry as a garage. There was also a savings account worth a hundred thousand dollars and another $220,000 in CD’s. The property descriptions all bore the same probate number, and when I looked it up I saw that the real estate had come from her late husband, along with most of the other assets. When I ran Herman Villiere through the vendor and vendee files, I discovered that he had not bought real estate in his lifetime, but just a year ago he’d sold off his aunt’s house at a ten-thousand-dollar loss. I wondered if he’d run through the cash, and if so, why he’d want to hold onto a worthless garage.

  I left the clerk’s office at three thirty, with the traffic already building toward rush hour. I made my way through the narrow streets with my window down, enjoying the first hint of fall after a searing summer. From somewhere came a scent of baking bread, blotted out quickly by the odor of bus exhaust. When night came, the streets would change and the predators would be out, high on crack and willing to take a life for a one-dollar bill, but right now it was an autumn day, and people looked grateful for the crisp weather. I thought of Katherine’s son Scott, now a senior at Tulane, and wondered if he’d gotten me a ticket for the next home game.

  I found Cal under an ’83 Caddie, cursing some part that wouldn’t come loose. When he slid back out and saw me, his face showed relief.

  “Damn, I thought you wasn’t never coming.”

  “I told you I was busy,” I said. “I’ve been trying to check out anybody that might have a grudge.”

  He wiped his hands on a rag, his face hopeful. “And?”

  “Nothing for sure. Right now I need you to look in your records and get me the addresses for DeNova and Guidry.”

  Cal hawked and walked into the little glassed-in office. He took a seat in his swivel chair and began to open drawers in his filing cabinet.

  “Let’s see, it was ’eighty-eight. Or maybe ’eighty-nine. Here it is.” He produced a yellow invoice. “Right here. George Guidry. Lives on Canal Boulevard, the son of a bitch.” I copied down the address and phone number.

  “Was he a customer of yours before?” I asked.

  “He was in here a few times. If I’d of known then what he was like, I’d of told him to go somewhere else.”

  “Okay. What about DeNova?”

  “I ain’t seen him since.” He fished in his files. “Here’s the receipt I give him. Lived in Gentilly.” Autry squinted at me. “You reckon maybe it was him? He said he’d get me.”

  “I don’t know,” I told him. “People say a lot of things.” I started up from my chair.

  “Hell, Micah, you don’t have to go already do you?”

  “Pretty soon.” I answered. “You called your customers about this yet?”

  He looked away. “Not just yet. I wanted to wait and see what you came up with.”

  “Right.” I sighed. “Cal, you never told me you were a clown.”

  He blinked and then tried to laugh. “Hell, I guess it just never came up. Why?”

  “Because there are those that would say …” I let the sentence trail off.

  A look of horror twisted Cal’s face. “You mean, that I … Micah, for God’s sake, you don’t think—”

  “I don’t think anything,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. “I’m just trying to tell you what a prosecutor would think.”

  “Christ, is anything I ever did going to go against me? Micah, I was a clown because I like kids. I always liked kids. But I haven’t done any clown shows for a couple of years, not since Melville was out of the Scouts. Just haven’t felt like it. That’s all there is to it.” He looked away, voice choking. “Micah, I swear to God …”

  “It’s okay. I’m just doing my job,” I said. “I have to prepare you for what they may say. If there’s anything at all …”

  “I told you there wasn’t,” he mumbled, and tugged a bottle out of the lower drawer. “You want a couple of swallows?”

  “I’ll pass today. I’m tired.”

  He nodded, his expression rueful. “Micah, I want you to know that, well hell, it means a lot knowing you’re on this. I laid there all night, thinking about things, wondering why it was happening, half out of my mind, to tell you the truth, and then I thought, Micah’s on it. He’ll take care of things. It made me feel better.”

  I patted his shoulder. “Keep up the spirits,” I said.

  As I walked toward my car I saw a black kid circling in the street outside on his bike. It cast a pall over the drive back to my office.

  There was an angry message on my machine from the football player, who’d expected a call from me about his report. I called him back and got his answering machine. I could hardly complain.

  Then I looked up the names in the phone book again. There was a G. Guidry listed at the address on Canal Boulevard, but no DeNova at the address Cal had given me.

  If DeNova had left the city, he’d probably long forgotten his promise to get Cal. What about Guidry? He might bear Cal hard feelings, but from what Cal said, Guidry had won the court case and so had little reason to take the issue further. I decided to call Guidry and see what happened.

  He wasn’t home, but his wife gave me his business number, an exchange in the downtown area. The woman who answered identified it as a law firm. I gave her my true name and business and said that I wanted to talk to Mr. Guidry about a past case. She put me on hold, and I listened to elevator music for a couple of minutes. Then a male voice came on.

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. Guidry, my name is Micah Dunn. I’m looking into some things for a man named Calvin Autry. I think you know Mr. Autry?”

  “Who?” There was a pause. “Oh, you mean the mechanic. I’d about forgotten him.” His voice was deep, with a hint of humor. “There was a time when I didn’t think I ever would. That man caused me a lot of trouble.”

  “I understand you went to court over a car of yours?”

  “That’s right. But what’s this about? He’s not sueing me now, is he?”

  “No, sir. Some threats have been made against him, and—”

  “And I’m on his enemies list.” Guidry laughed. There was a faint touch of Cajun accent in his pronunciation. “Well, I can’t say I blame him. But he made me so damn mad. I went to him with my car knocking, and he wanted to overhaul the motor. I couldn’t see that, so I told him to try a tune-up first. He claims he warned me I’d damage the engine, but I don’t remember that. Besides, mechanics love to tell you what’ll happen if you don’t buy their estimate lock, stock, and barrel.”

  “But the engine was damaged,” I said quietly.

  “Yeah. But legally he shouldn’t have done the tune-up if, in his professional judgment, that wasn’t the problem. And that’s what the judge held.”

  “Kind of a fine point, wasn’t it?” I asked. “Especially if you asked him to do it.”

  “Maybe so. But the law says a professional is supposed to know what he’s doing and refrain from things that are inappropriate.” He sounded like he was quoting from a lawbook.

  Before I could respond, he chuckled again. “But maybe he did have a point, looking back. I was mad then. The car was fairly new; I thought I was saving by avoiding the dealer. So when that happened a
nd he refused to work on it for nothing, I sued him on principle. But it wasn’t any big deal.”

  “No,” I said, visualizing him in his big padded chair, BMW parked outside, a handful of unpaid parking tickets in the glove compartment.

  “But all he had to do was put in the gasket and he could have avoided the whole thing. After all, how much does a gasket cost? It’s nothing but asbestos. There’s such a thing as customer relations.”

  I would have disliked George Guidry, too. He was a big man who for the sake of a principle had ground a little man under his heel, except that I knew this had never occurred to him, and had I told him he would have been shocked.

  “You haven’t seen him since then?” I asked, keeping my voice level.

  “Not since that day in court. I thought he was going to have a stroke when the judge gave his decision.”

  Maybe, I thought, there was more to Cal’s claim that the judge was crooked than I’d originally credited: how do you insure an impartial hearing when one of the parties attends all the same social functions as the judge, maybe even contributed to his campaign?

  “Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Guidry.”

  “No problem. Hey, is old Autry in trouble, then? I hope not. I don’t wish him any bad. I’m not one to hold a grudge.”

  “Nice of you, Mr. Guidry.”

  I hung up and made a mental note to ask O’Rourke to find out what kind of law Guidry practiced, and how successful he was, but in my heart I knew he wasn’t the man I was looking for, just as I’d known I didn’t need to look further with Frazier.

  It kept coming back to the middleman, Herman Villiere. All I knew about him was that he’d inherited money he seemed on the way to squandering, drove a fancy car, and didn’t want to consider dumping the kind of property that was a glut on today’s New Orleans market. I called Mancuso and asked if he’d ever heard of Herman Villiere, knowing it was an off chance.

  “I’ll run the name, if you want. You want to tell me what this is about? Not the child molesting?”

  “No, I don’t suspect him of that,” I said ambiguously, and heard the policeman sigh. “But I’d like to have a home address for this license plate,” I said, and read him the number of the Ferrari. He put me on hold and came back a minute later with a location on Crystal Street, in Lakeview. I wrote it down.

  “By the way, anything new on the case since the last time we talked?”

  “Don’t know. It ain’t my case, Hoss. I’ve got all I can handle with the last homicide in the French Quarter.”

  “What about my man Calvin Autry? Turn up any criminal record?”

  “Oh, yeah, I meant to call about that. Answer is no, not here, anyway. I guess that’s good.”

  “I’d say so. Thanks, Sal.” I hesitated. “Oh, a couple more names, if you wouldn’t mind.” I gave him Frazier, Guidry and Sam DeNova.

  “I thought you said a couple. That’s three.”

  “Please.”

  “Okay, if you put it that way. I’ll call back when I find out anything.”

  I thanked him and hung up.

  I went out to the porch overlooking the patio fountain. I’d done all I could, hadn’t I? Checked the names Calvin had given me, started a background check with an agency in his home state, had Mancuso run everybody remotely connected through the police computer. I’d even sent Sandy after the complainant. So why didn’t I feel better?

  Because experience told me that in cases like this, there was often no resolution. Accusations were made and left to fester unproven, and action was sometimes deferred indefinitely. In the end, almost nobody knew the truth except the accused person, and sometimes after all the mind games and psychological stress, even he didn’t remember what had occurred.

  In Nam I’d know men who’d blanked on the entire six months before they’d stepped on the mines that blew off their limbs. And one of the best NCOs I’d ever worked with called in artillery on a peasant hamlet, and afterward he swore he’d seen a reinforced NVA platoon take cover there. I hadn’t found a sign of one anywhere, and neither had anybody else, including him, but the mind reacts oddly under stress, and he was able to describe in detail their weapons and positions. It was necessary for his sanity, because some errors are too terrible to admit.

  I thought about going inside for a beer but decided not to. I’d been drinking too many of them lately, and exercising them off was even harder for me than most people, because running with one arm strapped to your body throws you a little off balance, just as one-armed push ups are more difficult than the regular kind. Maybe, I told myself, I’d call the Captain. Then I decided against it: I loved my father, but I wasn’t in the mood to hear about people from years ago in Charleston. He’d reconciled himself to my going into the marines rather than the navy a long time ago, and more recently, even to my profession, but there was always a wistful element in his conversation, an unspoken hope that someday I might give it up here in New Orleans and come back to live near him during his remaining years. We both knew it wouldn’t work, because the Captain was accustomed to command, and I wasn’t eight years old anymore and awed by gold braid. But there was still the silent if. I was still thinking about it when the phone inside shook me out of my reverie. I picked it up to hear Sandy’s voice.

  “I didn’t feel like driving all the way over there,” she said. “But I knew you wanted to hear what I had to say.”

  “You’re right, and I’m all ears.”

  “Well, I went down to talk to the boy, but he was at school. Just his auntie and his mama and his uncle.”

  “What cover did you use?”

  “None. I thought about it, but Micah, these folks know jive when they hear it. Better to come straight out.”

  “Your call,” I said. “So what happened?”

  “Well, the boy’s a little wild, cuts school, runs with some older kids that’ll end up in Angola, but he hasn’t done anything yet.”

  “No father,” I hazarded.

  “No.” There was a brief silence, and I knew she was thinking of her own childhood on these streets, a subject to which she seldom alluded. “Anyway, I asked what they understood about all this. The uncle, the mother’s brother, is a man named Taylor Augustine. He did the talking, for the most part. He’s an ex–equipment operator for the city, retired on disability. I trust him.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, the boy skipped school last Thursday, and his uncle gave him a hiding when he got home. Boy said he’d been working, but they didn’t believe him.”

  “That was the afternoon he was supposed to be sweeping up for Cal Autry,” I said.

  “Right. Well, he cut school the next day, Friday, probably because he was mad at them for the beating,” Sandy said. “He came back at about six-thirty, almost dark, but this time he said he’d been trying to get work from the same white man as the day before, but this time the white man tried to molest him. He was pretty shook up.”

  “That was when they called the police?”

  “They talked to their minister, first. He recommended it.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yeah; matter of fact, there is.”

  “Well?”

  “Micah, the boy knew Autry before. He told his family he and some other boys were hired by Autry to work in his garden once. He said Autry tried something then.”

  I took a deep breath. “Is there any chance he’s lying?”

  “Well, he told them Autry had a house in Metairie.”

  “Oh, Jesus.”

  “Amen.”

  I tried to think of something else to say, but there wasn’t a whole lot. When I spoke again it was hard to push the words out.

  “Thanks, Sandy. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  “Night, Micah.” There was a pause. “I’m sorry.”

  I replaced the receiver in the cradle and stared at the wall for a few minutes. It was rush hour, and traffic was lined up outside like beads on a rosary. Logic said I should call it a day, throw on my sh
orts and jogging shoes, and work it all off with a run. But I wasn’t feeling very logical, so I went downstairs to where my car was parked next to the patio fountain. Five minutes later I was headed west on Esplanade, on my way to Wisner, which would lead me north, through City Park toward the lake.

  It took me half an hour, with the traffic bumper to bumper, horns blaring and tempers raw. By the time I got to Robert E. Lee the rush had thinned somewhat. I turned right, toward the lake, and into the exclusive Lakeview subdivision. The homes here were expensive and tasteful, and the cars were BMWs, Volvos and Audis. I found the address I’d written down for Herman Villiere and cruised past slowly. It was a two-story neo-Spanish with a tile roof and palm trees out front. The lawn looked like Astroturf, though a sprinkler kept it wet. There was a Porsche in the drive, but the red Ferrari was nowhere to be seen.

  I made the block, then parked two houses down and settled in to watch, turning over possibilities in my mind. Villiere didn’t own the house, or I would have found a record of the sale in the conveyance files. Nor did he seem like the kind to rent; that was for ordinary people. Even as I watched and considered the possibilities, the door of the house opened and a blonde came out. She was wearing shorts and no shoes, and as she sauntered through the spray to collect the newspaper from the front lawn she seemed a little spaced out.

  The answer hit me then: she was the owner, of course, and Villiere was living with her. And if her place was listed as his domicile with the Department of Motor Vehicles, the arrangement was of some duration. But I wasn’t surprised; what would have surprised me more would have been to learn that Villiere was paying the mortgage.

  The blonde wandered back inside with the paper and the door closed behind her. A few seconds later the red Ferrari zoomed into the driveway and Villiere got out, blazer slung over his shoulder, and headed inside.