20. OVSANNA
I never made it out of the lobby. Sam Koh and Matty came barreling at me, with the news crews and cameras right behind them. Sam Koh’s skin tone was a pasty shade of grey.
“Ms. Moore, we have to shut down the convention!” he demanded. “Do you know what this kind of publicity will do to the hotel’s reputation? We’ll lose our clientele! We’ll have to change our name!”
“Get real,” Matty barked from behind him, “Belushi’s death put the Chateau Marmont on the books. Just tell the press Connors was killed in his suite and you’ll have fans clamoring to check in. Like room 100 in The Chelsea where Sid Vicious knifed Nancy. And room 8 at the Joshua Tree Inn where Gram Parsons OD’d. They’ve even got a shrine to him outside the room. With a cement guitar and everything. Shit, put up a plaque and let ’em make a movie about you.”
He was right. I visited Oscar Wilde in his hotel a few days before he died. It’s still one of the most popular boutique hotels in the world and Oscar’s death there is what put it on the map. His mementos are displayed throughout, including a letter from the establishment asking him to settle his unpaid tab of 26,000 francs. Tourists don’t check into L’Hotel; they check into “the place where Oscar Wilde died”. And no one cares if he died of syphilis or meningitis, they just remember his last words, “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.”
I doubted Derek left any mementos in his room besides a razor or a sharpie, but that doesn’t mean fans won’t want to stay there. Sam Koh can frame the used condom wrappers he finds in the trash.
Matty wasn’t finished with Sam. “And are you stupid? The Rising is a great name for a hotel where a celebrity gets offed. You couldn’t have picked a better name if you were psychic. I mean, even better would be the Boss buyin’ the farm here, but Derek’s death is money in the bank. You can’t shut down this convention. You saw what kind of business we did after that loony-tunes attacked Ovsanna. This publicity is priceless!”
I was just about to enter the fray— agreeing with Matty, but for other reasons— when I saw Sgt. Cyphers walking Annie out of Sam Koh’s office. I concentrated in time to hear him tell her she couldn’t leave town without his agreement. He said he’d probably want to interview her again tomorrow. I caught her eye and motioned for her to go back into Sam Koh’s office.
“Excuse me, Sam,” I said, quietly. “I need to get Annie out of the limelight. Is there a back door to your office? Just nod, if there is. I don’t want the press to hear us.”
He nodded to the right. I grabbed a Saints baseball cap off his desk, shoved it on Annie’s head amidst her protests that no one would recognize her, and hustled her out the fire door.
* * *
The Quarter on a Saturday night is not my favorite place to be— not with my heightened sense of sound and smell. Hundreds of tourists crowd Bourbon Street, most of them so drunk they’re barely standing. They drift slowly from sidewalk to sidewalk, changing directions when they can’t negotiate the step up to the curb, like a lazy ball grazing the cushions on a billiard table. Every once in awhile someone leans over to vomit on top of the urine pooling in the gutter. That really plays havoc with my olfactory organs.
You don’t find many native New Orleanians in the tourist parts of the Quarter on a Saturday night.
Every bar had music blaring out its opened doors, and as much as I love music, the cacophony of dueling Irish funk, EDM, dubstep, rock, and jazz had me hustling Annie down Chartres to hide in the Napoleon House, where the music of choice is always classical. Beethoven’s Eroica was playing in the background, being the piece Ludwig composed for Napoleon while Buonaparte was First Consul.
I guided her through the inner room with its crumbling plaster walls and myriad framed documents and drawings, out to the fern-lined patio where we wouldn’t be seen from the street. Only two tables were occupied; the humidity was keeping everyone inside.
As soon as we sat down, I texted Peter to tell him I needed to stay with Annie. I asked him to join us when he could.
Annie threw her hat on the table and picked up a menu. “What’s a Pimm’s Cup, Ovsanna? It says, like, that’s the specialty of the house.”
A part of me wished Cyphers had taken her to the precinct. “You’re not having another drink. Order a coffee and a warm muffuletta— that’s their other specialty. You need to be sober, and I need to know what you told the police. And put the hat back on. You do not want to be recognized right now, believe me.”
21. PETER
I’d seen Derek Connors alive yesterday, signing for his fans at his table in the second ballroom. And I’d seen him dead a half hour ago, bleeding out on the floor in the photo op room on the second floor. So imagine my surprise to see him alive again, sitting on a barstool.
I was walking through the bar to avoid the crowd of ghouls milling in the lobby, and there he was at the far end of the room. Dressed in a tee shirt and jeans, wearing cowboy boots he hadn’t been wearing when last I saw him. He was surrounded by three guys who made my Ferengi buddies look like Peter Dinklage. A fourth guy really looked like Peter Dinklage. After twenty-four hours at the convention, the line for me between fantasy and reality was starting to blur. Derek was laughing and high-fiving. He obviously hadn’t just taken a 4" wide crystal obelisk between the shoulder blades.
When he stood up to get his wallet out of his pocket, I realized I was seeing Kurt Wentworth, Derek’s stunt double. Connie’s ex-boyfriend. And maybe Derek’s killer.
I’d half walked, half carried Constance back to her room. She could barely keep her eyes open, let alone stand up. Those goldfish must have been potent.
She wanted to be alone to make a few phone calls, she said, and cry herself to sleep. She was finished with the con. In the morning she’d change her flight and get back to L.A. as soon as possible. She asked me to ask the promoter to box up the merchandise left on her table. She’d text him her FedEx account number and he could ship it to her care of the studio. I told her I’d let Matty know, but I don’t think she heard me. She’d passed out on the bed with the phone in her hand. She never did get to her tears.
Ovsanna texted while I was pulling the bed covers from under Connie’s dead-to-the-world form. She was at the Napoleon House, trying to get some food into Annie to sober her up so she could grill her about her alibi. She wanted me to join them. I put Connie’s phone on the nightstand, covered her with the bedspread, and made sure the door locked behind me.
The lobby was packed with paparazzi hoping for a shot of a celebrity mourner. Christiano Ronaldo would have had a hard time getting through. Fans were building an impromptu shrine out of Flaming Hot Cheetos bags, in honor of the commercial Derek made as a dancing Cheeto. No way to know for sure, but I had a strong suspicion that’s not how he would have wanted to be remembered.
I made a detour into the bar and that’s when I saw Derek’s doppelganger, Kurt Wentworth. The little person with him had to be a stunt double for Peter Dinklage.
“Hey, man, maybe this means you’ll work again.” The beefy, florid-faced guy standing behind him pounded Wentworth on the back. He was wearing a Stuntmen’s Association sweatshirt stretched so tight across his belly that the letters “…men’s Ass…” were all I could read on the front. He continued, “I mean, I’m sorry the guy’s dead, but I’m really not, ya know?”
I interrupted. “You guys heard about Derek Connors?”
Men’s Ass answered, “Who hasn’t, man? Did you try to get through the lobby? Hey, yer that cop friend of Ovsanna Moore’s, right? I’m JD. Did some stunts for her on a couple of her flics. Classy lady.” He put his hand out to shake.
“That she is. Peter King, BHPD.” Like shaking hands with a catcher’s mitt. “And you’re Kurt Wentworth, right? Derek Connors’ stunt double?” I turned to Wentworth, who raised his shot glass in acknowledgment.
“Former stunt double,” he said. “Thanks to lover boy, I’ve been out of a job for a while.”
“Well, that must have pissed you off. That, and hearing he was filing for divorce so he and your ex-girlfriend could get together.”
He bristled. “What the fuck business is it of yours? You investigating for Ovsanna? You’re a little out of your jurisdiction, aren’t you?”
I didn’t want him belligerent. Especially not with the three WWF rejects surrounding him. “Yep, you’re right. Don’t mean to get you riled up. But Ovsanna would appreciate it, and it would speed the process along, if you could tell me where you were today, oh, say between 11:00 this morning and 7:00 tonight.”
“Look, man, I didn’t kill that fucker. I’m glad he’s dead— makes my life a lot easier and I owe someone a big thanks for doin’ it, but it wasn’t me. I was signing autographs all day today.”
“He’s tellin’ the truth.” The crew-cut blond sitting next to him spoke up. “All four of us hung around that table all day. And we were eatin’ smoked tongue po-boys at SoBou at 7 o’clock. He hasn’t been out of our sight, has he, Jinx?”
Jinx was the Peter Dinklage clone. “Well, he may have been out of my sight, but that doesn’t mean much. Although I don’t remember losing track of him from the waist down at any time. So yeah, he’s been with us all day.”
“Not even a trip to the toilet by yourself?” I asked.
“What can I tell you, detective? I’m a stunt man. There are days when it takes an hour to get me into a rig that I’m not gonna get out of until we wrap ten hours later. I got the bladder of a whale.”
22. MARAL
I knew there wasn’t a spell on me that needed lifting, but maybe something the traiteur did would help. I sat in the chair trying not to stare out the window at the dueling angels while Miz Foret gathered the things she needed to make the treatment.
“I’ll tell you what I’m doin’, sha. Some of it, at least.” She opened her freezer and took out a parchment-wrapped package. “Dis here’s a crab. Caught a mess of dem in Lake Boudreaux. Didn’t think I’d be usin’ dem for dis. Don’t think I’ve ever used one for a treatment, but I know how dey work. You sit here a spell while I start a fire in de pit.” She unwrapped the crab and carried it outside with her.
I watched her through the screen door. She put some leaves and twigs under the half-charred logs lying cold in the bricks, put the frozen crab on a metal sheet, set that down in the logs, and lit a match to the leaves. By the time she came inside, I could smell the crab smoking.
“We’ll have to wait ’til de fire burns down and I can get de crab ash outta dere. Dat’s gonna take some time. So now I’m gonna do somethin’ else while we’re waitin’.” She reached up to the shelf over her kitchen window and took down five brown glass jars with silver lids. One of them had pale green stones in it. She shook two of those out into a marble mortar and began smashing them with a pestle. “Dese are tears of frankincense,” she said, as she ground them to a fine powder. “And dese,” she opened another jar, “are de seeds of herb-of-grace.” They were tiny, golden dried buds with little black seeds inside. “And this is de holy herb, hyssop.” She ground them all together. “And now I’m addin’ salt and sage.” Then she lit a match and the powder started to burn. She set the mortar on the floor in front of me.
“Stand here, sha, where de incense surrounds you,” she said. I stood facing her, the smoke from the mortar swirling up between us. She put her left hand on my heart. She had a cameo hanging from a chain around her neck— a picture of Jesus carved into the ivory. She held it in her right hand, closed her eyes, and began to pray in French. She never took her left hand from my heart, but with her right, with the cameo still in her hand, she made the sign of the cross in front of my body. She made a cross in front of my face, in front of my chest, in front of my lower body. Then she moved around me, never taking her left hand from my heart, and crossed up and down my back. She was praying softly the whole time.
Then she stepped away, and with some sort of fan that looked like it was made of chicken feathers, she wafted the incense smoke all around me. She kept on doing that until the smoke died away.
She stopped praying. Stopped talking. She motioned me to the chair while she took a potholder off a hook in the kitchen and went outside. A few minutes later she was back with the metal sheet. It had a pile of crab ash smoking in its center.
“Take your shoes and socks off, sha, and you just stay in dat chair.” She tipped the ash into a large mixing bowl and added sugar and a handful of cayenne pepper. Then she ran her fingers under the tap, waiting for the water to get hot enough to dissolve the sugar. When it was, she filled the bowl with water and stirred with her hands until the crab ash and pepper were just grey and red specks floating on top.
And then she bathed my feet. And once again, she was praying quietly. I understood some of her French this time. She was repeating some of the Psalms. Psalms 139 and 140, for true.
So I sat there and let her pray on me and let her wash my feet. When she was done, I put my socks and boots back on. I made sure I didn’t thank her. Like Maw-Maw said, you’re not supposed to thank a traiteur. A traiteur doesn’t take credit for healing— they’re doing God’s work and God’s the one to be thanked. So I didn’t thank Miz Foret. I gave her the basket of eggs instead.
But I didn’t thank God either.
I didn’t feel any different, me. I thought about my momma being gone; I thought about Jamie needing me; I thought about what I used to feel when I was with Ovsanna.
I still didn’t feel shit about any of it. I didn’t feel anything at all.
Except hungry to kill.
23. OVSANNA
Annie was halfway through her coffee and muffuletta when Peter joined us. She was nowhere near being sober.
“Order a Pimm’s Cup, Peter,” she said, Italian olive salad smeared on her chin. “Ovsanna won’t let me have one and, like, I at least want to taste some of yours. ’Sides, it’s rude to sit here like ’sanna and not order anything at all. Didn’t your mother tell you that, ’sanna?”
“Keep your voice down, Annie,” I said, “it’s ruder to be drunk in public.”
“Well, I’ve got a good reason, don’t you think? I mean, my husband just got killed. And I’ll bet you anything that cop thinks I did it. Well, fuck him. Askin’ me all those questions. Doesn’t he know who I am? Like, who the fuck does he think he is?” She got louder with each sentence. The couple behind her were too busy pawing each other to notice.
Peter interceded, his voice gentle. “Sergeant Cyphers definitely knows who you are, Annie. And he knows you and Derek weren’t getting along. And if I were him? I’d be asking all the same questions. What did you tell him, do you remember?”
She’d told Cyphers she’d been at her table signing autographs most of the day. She’d taken a couple of breaks, but didn’t have any idea who’d escorted her to the green room or the bathroom. “Some fan-boy with a CREW lanyard hangin’ around his neck— I never looked at his face.” She’d left the ballroom around five, got a drink at the bar from the cute bartender who looked like a Chippendale’s dancer, and waited around for awhile thinking he might want to get together. When he didn’t come on to her she decided he was gay. She left the bar around six-thirty and went up to her room to change clothes for the Q & A. “I mean, like, there were gonna be more paparazzi there, and I needed to be wearing a different outfit, you know? I mean, like, did you see last week’s issue of In Touch? They had all these pics of celebs wearin’ the same clothes on two different days and like, thinking they could confuse people if they changed their shoes or coats or something. Like, how lame is that? Haven’t they heard of the fashion police?”
“What I know,” I said, “is that it’s not the fashion police you need to worry about. If no one can vouch for your whereabouts during those breaks and if no one was with you from six-thirty on, it’s not going to matter what you were wearing, you’re going to need a lawyer. Do you know how many times in public you threatened to kill Derek? I lost count.”
“Well, I was pissed off, Ovsanna. Like, he was screwing Connie and he didn’t even try to hide it. But what about her boyfriend? Kurt was as pissed off as I was. Even more, ’cause Derek got him fired.”
“He’s got an alibi,” Peter said. “I just came from talking to him. He’s got four buddies who’ll swear he was with them the whole day. Anybody else you can think of who had reason to want Derek out of the picture?”
Annie wiped her chin. “Well, yeah. Literally out of the picture.”
I stared at her. I didn’t think she was smart enough to use the term ‘literally’ correctly. Of course, these days no one seems to be. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“Derek’s up for a film… he was up for a film. The lead in David Lynch’s new movie. The first full-length feature David Lynch has made in years. I don’t know what it’s called or what it’s about, but it’s all Derek thought about, like, from the day he got the audition. He must have had two call-backs, at least, before they told him it was down to him and Justin Passenger— who’s here signing, don’t forget, when he’s not hookin’ up with SuzieQ— and Ash Rowley— you know, the guy that starred in Ergomaniacs. He’s got that band, The Violet Tendencies. So, like, if Derek’s out of the picture ’cause he’s dead, then, like, literally he’s, like, out of the picture, right? David Lynch has to choose one of the other two guys.” She waved her hand at the white shirted, black bow-tied waiter and yelled, “Could you bring him a Pimm’s Cup, please!” She pointed at Peter. “And if you ask me, gettin’ a part in a David Lynch movie is plenty of reason to kill the competition.”
That was all Cyphers needed to hear. Bad enough she didn’t have an alibi and she threatened Derek on numerous occasions; she’d just announced that she believed an acting career justifies murder.
Make Me Dead: A Vampyres of Hollywood Mystery Page 9