I flashed the photo here and there to the local transients that panhandled the same spot for months. What I got for my troubles was responses like “Damn, if I ever saw that dish, I’d remember.”
In the middle of flashing the photo to a blotto that was so bent that he could hardly stand on his own two feet, let alone focus on a picture, I heard: “Why, I know that woman.”
I crooked around to see a short, older woman, with white-gold lorgnette folding glasses and a black woven straw hat with a wide dark taffeta ribbon.
“You do?” I asked.
“Why, yes. I only recognized her because I saw photographs of her similar to that one when I was helping box up her belongings.”
“You were a friend of hers?”
“I wouldn’t say we were close. We knew each other from going to the same church and functions. I volunteered to take care of her belongings after she passed away.”
“How long ago did she pass?”
“It was only a few months ago, the poor dear.”
“Did you know her daughter?” I asked.
“I saw her a few times, but I didn’t know her well. Frieda tried to get her to go to church with her. She went a few times in the beginning, but never again. Too bad, it would have done her good. I heard she’s singing at some shameful club on Bourbon Street. They play a lot of that jungle music there.”
“Do you know which club?”
“Not offhand. I only recall this because a few of us from church were leaving flyers around there, to try and talk some sense into the unfortunate girls that work that street, when one of them saw her performing.”
I thanked the woman and made my way to Bourbon.
The street was thirteen blocks I often avoided at night. By day, it was quiet and by all accounts just another street, but at night it was a different story. Soon as the neon lights came on, the street become a congested three-ring circus of criminals, whores, the promiscuous, drunks, and tourists.
The area was sort of the city’s unofficial red-light district. The official one ran along Basin Street near the French Quarter and was known as Storyville. The sixteen blocks of vice got its nickname from a city councilman who wrote the ordinance. It was only when the famous Blue Book that listed more than seven hundred prostitutes got into the hands of the navy boys stationed nearby that the Secretary of the Navy was prompted to demand in 1917 that the area be closed. Yet it never really closed, it just moved elsewhere.
I stopped and tipped the kids that sidewalk tap-danced, and a few other local homeless men that worked the street. Most of them knew me. There was no room to be a lone wolf in my business. The types that went around demanding information out of people never lasted long. The truth of the matter is nobody is in a legal sense obligated to talk to a private detective or provide them with any information at all. Threatening, tricking, or making people think I was part of law enforcement to get information out of them was sure to land me in jail.
In order to make it, I needed to know and have contacts with as many people as possible. Those people ranged from powerful businessmen to barbers and all the way down to the regular homeless. In fact, I found the homeless to be the most helpful, since they knew the area the best, and were very observant about things.
Emanuel Morton was such a contact. Morton had lost his farm in Texas in foreclosure after his land blew away in the Dust Bowl. He came to New Orleans a broken refugee and a drunk. He got a job as a barker for a mixed bar on Bourbon. Unlike other barkers, whose methods bordered on harassment in an attempt to lure patrons into the establishments, Morton was friendly and struck up a conversation with everyone.
I made him sort of my operative with the instructions that he was no good to me drunk all the time. It was enough to get him to cut his drinking down.
I found him standing at his fixed spot on the corner of Conti Street. He was a big man, dwarfing even me. When he saw me coming, a wide, toothless grin came across his face.
“Ay, Will,” he said, giving me a grip that would have crushed someone’s hand if they weren’t prepared for it.
“They seem to be keeping you busy all hours of the day,” I said.
“Sure am. The boss says I can get some extra hours working early. Says people are startin’ their drinkin’ earlier every day.”
“That ain’t surprising, livin’ in as rough times as we are.”
“I’m mighty lucky I got me job and all when most folks don’t. Mighty lucky.”
“How’s your drinking?”
“Fine. Went on the wagon few weeks ago. Haven’t touched the stuff, honest to God.”
“Good to hear.” I handed him the photo. “I’m trying to get a locate on this woman’s daughter. Heard she was workin’ somewhere on this street.”
Morton gave the photo a hard look and mumbled out as he tried to recollect, “Say … there is … uh … a … poster of a woman kinda looks like her just a few blocks up. ’Cept she got clothes on in her picture. Say, can I keep this?”
“No.”
With great reluctance, he gave the photograph back.
“Be seein’ you, Morton,” I said. “Maybe when work picks up for me, I’ll get you a few side jobs.”
“Sure thing, boss,” he said. “I could always use some extra money.”
* * *
I found the place on Bourbon and St. Louis to be a “gentleman’s club” called Le Familier Minou. On the substantial windows was an assortment of posters of the “dancers” and “singers.” One of the placards was an attractive woman that looked unerringly like the photograph of Frieda Rae. She had raven black hair, a stunning figure, and a talent for provocative poses. The name she went by was “Lady Storm!” The sign stated that she would be singing every night until the end of the week.
It was while I was looking this over that a tall, pug-faced doorman stepped out from inside the club.
“What time is Lady Storm performing tonight?” I asked.
“She’ll be on stage a little past nine,” he said. “But don’t be getting the idea that you’ll be seeing her. We don’t allow your kind in here!”
In my younger, hotheaded days, those words would’ve been enough to start some trouble over. With age came enough smarts to know that it’d just get me nowhere but a night or more in the stir. At the very least, it would give the downtown boys the chance to run me out of town.
“I’ll be here at nine,” I said.
I left, but not before I heard, “I’ll be waiting for you, sweetheart.”
CHAPTER 4
With time to kill, I went back to my apartment on St. Ann and Royal Street in the French Quarter. D’Armes was a courtyard of bungalows and rooms. The French landlord of the establishment was generous enough to allow me to rent there, when most would not have. In return, I offered my services to him whenever he needed them, which he did now and then. The last time involved me tracking an ex-tenant who upon eviction destroyed his room, right down to the plumbing. I’d tracked him to a dive he cooped up at out in Baton Rouge. Through the use of blunt force more than diplomacy, I rolled him for the cost of the damages.
Things were shaky when I first moved in. Several longtime tenants packed up their belongings and left, and one went as far as threatening the landlord with murder if he didn’t have me evicted. The landlord evicted him instead, and took advantage of the city’s notoriously lax adherence to segregation laws and started renting the rooms out to well-off colored Creoles as well. It turned out to be more profitable for him, since many Creoles were willing to pay good money to live above what Jim Crow would allow.
There were a lot of wealthy coloreds in New Orleans. In slave times, the city was one of the few that had slaves doing skilled jobs, and was also home of the most free blacks in the country. After the Emancipation, many of the skilled coloreds prospered doing jobs ranging from carpenters to newspaper editors. It continued now because of the city’s more lax view on segregation.
Inside my flat, I showered and ate an early dinner
of leftover steak and potatoes that I had fixed up the previous evening.
I cleared the slop off my plate fast, and checked my watch. It was past six. I decided to call Brawley at his home. Brawley was a detective sergeant who had first worked in commercial crimes before being bumped up to the vice unit after success in lending his aid during the ’29 streetcar strike that had resulted in a series of dynamite bombings, shootings, and assaults. In that division, he took part in the grandstanding campaign to rid the city of illegal gambling, prostitution, and drugs.
I had worked hard to get Brawley on my side. We weren’t exactly friends, but we both knew we could help each other out. He granted me support, which was fundamental to the work I did. I never would have lasted this long without it. In return, I provided him with information from the colored community that most cops would be hard pressed to get. Doing pro bono jobs for fellow coloreds who didn’t have a lot of money but had a lot of information had given me a lot of contacts through the years. Contacts in my work were as valuable as gold.
What sealed the deal with Brawley was me giving him information on a shipment of drugs coming into port, and what man was carrying them. This got him a big break, and headlines, busting a cripple coming off the boat that had stuffed pounds of heroin into his prosthetic leg.
But Brawley’s true acceptance of me arose more from his heritage than anything. He was Jewish and the descendant of people that had fled the anti-Jewish violence in Eastern Europe to Ireland. Ireland was somewhat neutral in those days, but priests started holding sermons denouncing the Jewish community and depicting them as being a threat to their young. The successful boycott of Jewish tradesmen caused Brawley’s family to uproot itself again, this time to New Orleans for work.
The phone rang several times before a husky woman’s voice with a thick monotone Russian accent answered. Brawley’s wife, Tamara.
“Da?”
“Is your husband there?”
“Vait moment, please,” she said, and set the phone down. I could hear her over the line yelling for him. The phone fumbled around before a “Yeah” came over the line.
“It’s Fletcher. What’s going on?”
“Nothing outside of gettin’ yelled out by my crazy wife.”
He wasn’t kidding; his wife was crazy, even more so when she drank and went into jealous rages that ended with her throwing things at him.
“You want to go out,” I said.
“And go where?”
“I heard Le Familier Minou had some nice stuff to look at.”
I heard him laugh over the line. “What time?”
“Nine.”
“Fine, see you there at nine,” he said, and hung up.
* * *
The same pug-faced doorman was standing outside the club when I got there. Brawley’s bullish figure followed suit soon after. Brawley was a husk of muscle and extra weight. At five ten, he topped the scales out at around two-fifty. Because work had been slow, I had not seen Brawley in several months. He had lost a considerable amount of weight since I last saw him. No doubt, the missus had something to do with it.
We were about to step inside when the doorman blocked the entrance. “Like I told you earlier, we ain’t taking your kind!”
Brawley grinned, realizing now why I had him come. He flashed his golden star and crescent-shaped badge to the doorman and said, “He’s tagging along with me.”
The doorman looked at the badge and said, “You can go, but your friend can’t.”
Brawley’s friendly blue eyes switched to a cold mirthless scold as he cuffed the doorman’s face with the back of his right hand. “That’s some slow reflexes you got there, sonny,” he said. “Reckon it wouldn’t take much for my friend to knock you apart, and I got enough mind to let him do it if you don’t get to stepping aside.”
The doorman rubbed his reddish cheek, pouted, and shifted out of the way.
“Damn,” Brawley said to me, “and here I was hoping he’d be stupid. Would’ve been more entertaining than what we’re goin’ to see in this dump.”
A dive was the best word to describe what was inside. The place had everything you’d expect from such an establishment. It was furnished with a long, narrow bar complemented by tables that were aligned in front of a wooden stage, with the added touch of mood lighting. Men in all shapes and sizes and professions, from businessmen to street thugs, handed out money to the bevy of girls. The girls came in all varieties and all forms of undress. Some were in kinky lingerie, while others were as nude as the day they were born. Most of them were flour lovers, with so much face powder that it wore off on the men they were balling the jack with on the dance floor.
When we first stepped in, most of the men were distracted enough by the ladies and their carnal senses to notice my presence. We sat at a faraway unlit table to draw as little attention as possible. Before long, even the ones that had noticed me had all but forgotten about it with the presence of hot flesh pressed against them.
I sized up up the joint and found a few of the city’s most prominent in the herd. One such person was Ruben Cristofani, who controlled a chunk of the illegal slot machine racket. I heard the bribe money he was throwing out to run the racket undisturbed was a fortune. Evidently he knocked over enough jack to shove it around, like in the cleavage of the vixen that was leaning over him.
Another jasper was Charlie Gains, a hophead who ran and sold every kind of drug that existed. His pal was Jerome Larson, a flesh peddler who had a side racket of blackmailing whites who slept with his stock of colored yes-girls.
The headwaiter kept avoiding our table, until Brawley got up and pulled him back by one of his ears.
“If this is what it takes to get some service around here, so be it.”
Brawley let go of the man’s ear. Shocked, the waiter said, “Sorry, mister, I didn’t see you.”
“The hell you didn’t,” Brawley said. “Just get us two coffees!”
Brawley, like me, rarely ever drank. Most smart cops didn’t. “But ain’t ya Irish?” was the response Brawley often got upon refusing a drink, which only made him more annoyed than he usually was.
When the headwaiter left, Brawley said, “Okay, I did my part and got you in here. Now it’s your turn to put me in the picture. What’s this all about?”
“I’m just here to see Storm sing.”
Brawley grunted. “You think that’s what she’s goin’ to be doin’? I been here enough times to know singing ain’t all she’ll be doin’.”
No sooner had our drinks arrived than all the lights except the one on the stage went out. The piano player stepped on and started in on a generic jazzy number as Storm took the stage. She was wearing a stunning black beaded-lace evening dress that complemented her ebony hair. It was not hard to notice she looked faithfully like her mother, except for the cold, angry gray eyes she inherited from her old man.
She kicked off with some song that was breathy and seductive, but she was neither breathy nor seductive. Her singing was mediocre and her accompaniment lacked any sort of spontaneity. The piano player played the ivories as mechanized as an engine piston.
The crowd seemed to get as restless and bored as I was, and soon were yelling out, “Come on, take it off already!” Storm paid no attention to them. Her eyes were closed and she by all appearances was in a trance as she sung.
The yelling grew to be more frequent, until someone jumped onstage. He was a balding man that looked like he bathed himself daily in raw Crisco. He reached for the straps of Storm’s dress while saying “Here, let daddy help you take it off.”
The second he touched her, Storm snapped out of her spell, and looked at the man with the venomous eyes that were all too familiar to me. In a swift, catlike motion, she took a hold of the man’s nether region with elongated claws, clamped onto it, twisted, and pulled straight out. The man screamed in atrocious agony and fell to the ground, weeping.
The crowd roared with a mix of laughter and rage. With haste, Storm rippe
d one of her spiked heels off and threw it into the mob, nearly impaling a man sitting close by.
Crisco was still blubbering on the stage when she stomped off backstage, all but ripping the stage curtain down in the process. The lights came on as the assembly vibrated with hubbub at what had occurred.
“Damn, I think I’m in love,” Brawley said. He signaled the maître d’ and flashed him his buzzer. “Tell the owner that I want to talk to him.”
The maître d’ left with a worried look. Within a few moments the manager, a short Frenchman with a sharp nose, small mouth, and a pencil mustache showed up.
“Officer. I can promise you that this is a respectable place. We do not tolerate what just transpired, and she will be terminated immediately, you have my promise on that.”
“Easy there,” Brawley said. “I like the kid. I want you to go fetch her for me, see? So I can kindly tell the lady that coming damn close to rippin’ a man’s balls off may not be the most civil or legal thing to do. And you might want to get that pervert onstage to a hospital.”
“Yes, sir, I will see to it at once.”
A moment after the Frenchman left, two men carried Crisco, still holding his groin and screaming, out. My thought was that they were not taking him to a doctor, but out the back door to be tossed.
Storm’s daughter arrived at our table looking even more stunning up close. Her long hair was like the pelage of a panther that was in stark contrast to her pale complexion and lips as red as her father’s sins. Her face was still flushed with rage, but her voice was calm.
“Okay, mister. I suppose you want to throw me in the can over what I did. Can’t say I blame you, but a girl gets tired of apes pawing her all the time, and I had my fill.”
“You should think about changing crowds then, toots,” Brawley said.
“I work better crowds, but I happen to be in a jam right now, and this place offered me a quick fix if I played canary. But I ain’t goin’ to strip.”
The Red Storm Page 3