"Uh, no."
When he reached the bedroom, the sight of the duvet stopped him cold. He walked over to it and took out his nightstick, poking it. “Maid got the night off?” He grinned. Just then, the terrier came out of the closet and walked up to the stranger, grinning, tail wagging, and with a hundred dollar bill stuck to his foot.
"Well, lookie here.” He chuckled. “Is this a donation to the department?” He put his nightstick back in his holster, and my cigarette revved like a steamboat engine. The man held the bill up to the light and studied it carefully. I was forming a confession when a windbreaker-and-snake-wrapped elbow made my brain bounce against the inside of my coconut. Through the critical mass of pain radiating from my mouth, I remembered: Louisiana hadn't had highway patrolmen since the ‘fifties. Today they're called the Louisiana State Police, and they don't wear hats like that. I tasted salt and was surprised to find the floor where it was, pressing my cheek into my nose. With my ear to the hardwood, the round he popped off with his .45 was that much louder.
The bullet lodged in the floor next to me as my cigarette landed squarely on the duvet and I smelled the unmistakable scent of burning feathers. I squinted so hard I could've cracked two pecans. With the gun pointed my way, the non-cop started trying to get a good bead on me, simultaneously unwrapping the duvet to pat out the flames. I was sort of rolling around, trying to make aiming that much harder, when I noticed the smoking corners of the duvet spreading out all over Bob's makeshift bookcases. Then I remembered where I was. And what the bookcases really were. Without thinking and before he could react, I sprinted out of the room, hearing a shot and feeling the air near my left ear pulse. Once outside, I dove into the ditch in front of Bob's house and did my best impersonation of a nesting crawfish.
Before I saw the explosion, I felt it—like a warm front jumping on my chest. The yard's sprinkler system had been on earlier and the cold water in the ditch soaked my Hawaiian shirt, turning its cheery red into a dark burgundy. The cops were coming now, that was for sure. I figured it was just as well they find me in a ditch. And then I felt a wetness in my ear that was neither ditchwater nor the goodbye kiss of a killer. It was Bob's silky terrier—a little singed around the edges but basically okay—dragging a singed orange jacket piled with hundred-dollar bills.
It wasn't $775,000, but it was enough to pay off Big Winkie and get him to make me a fake passport to boot. With any luck, crime-scene investigators, coroners, creditors, editors, and antiques dealers wouldn't know that I wasn't Volvo Man for weeks—and by then it would be too late. I had a thirst for Sovobra, and the raw humanity of a good night's sleep under the stars.
Copyright © 2006 William Dylan Powell
* * * *
THE ARTISTS
JENNY KAHN (cover) was born and raised in New Orleans and left to study painting at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. She has exhibited in NYC, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and elsewhere. When Katrina struck she was again living in NOLA: She lost her home, her studio, and much of her work, and plans to relocate to San Francisco. (See jennykahn.com or contact the Cole Pratt Gallery in New Orleans.)
HERBERT KEARNEY was born in Ireland. He lived in NYC and San Francisco before settling in NOLA three years ago. A poet, painter, and sculptor, his work with the almost-forgotten art of bone carving has been exhibited in the U. S., Europe, and Australia. He's currently at work on a sculpture dedicated to New Orleans, entitled “Why I Go On.” (Contact through Contemporary Arts Center, NOLA.)
DAVID SULLIVAN was raised in NOLA. His home in the lower Garden District was spared serious flooding but Katrina cost him one of his university jobs teaching digital art. He illustrates for companies such as RC Cola and UPS, and featured in the shows “Katrina, You Bitch” (Barrister's Gallery, NOLA) and “Watermark” (Oculus Gallery, Baton Rouge). (See www.swampmonster.org.)
SNEAKY PETE FROM BOURBON STREET by John Edward Ames
Michigan-born John Edward Ames has lived in New Orleans since 1986. Under his own name and several pen names he has written 61 novels, the latest of which (writing as USA Today bestseller Ralph Compton) is Deadwood Gulch, a frontier mystery from Signet (11/06). He returned to NOLA only seven weeks after Katrina to find that his apartment in the heart of town was mercifully spared most of the storm's wrath.
I've gone to school on you, Mr. Sloan,” Justin Breaux assured his visitor, extending a welcoming hand across the bar. “I'm told you rate aces high."
Reno Sloan gripped the bartender's hand. It felt moist and gummy, and seemed to peel away when he let go of it. And no wonder—the August day was still, hot, and humid, the trees motionless as paintings, and only the dark half of the Ragin’ Cajun Club appeared to be properly air-conditioned.
"Spot of the giant killer?” Breaux added. “It's on the house."
"Vodka martini,” Reno decid-ed. “I'd prefer beer, but once I hit forty it started going right to the waistline."
He cast his eye around the French Quarter barroom while Breaux mixed the cocktail. The bon ton of New Orleans didn't hang around here, mostly tourists and French Quarter habitués. The décor consisted mainly of regal purple and gold hangings, the official colors of Mardi Gras, and photos of local musicians who'd gone national.
Breaux set the drink in front of Reno on a napkin. “What I called you about, Mr. Sloan, is a homicide."
Reno hesitated for the space of a few heartbeats. “Homicide? That can get tricky for a private investigator. If it's still an open case, the D.A. can have my license pulled for obstruction."
Breaux shook his head. “This one's in the books, far as the police are concerned. My brother's a cop in the Sixth District, he poked into it pretty good."
"Who was killed?"
"Fellow named Peter D'Antoni."
"I can't place the name."
Breaux crossed his arms over his chest. “No reason why you should. The first impression he gave was—well, have you ever known one of these whining sad sacks who's been stood up by life? Poor guy had some mental problems, and he was antisocial in a big way. He earned a nickname on Bourbon Street—everybody called him Sneaky Pete."
Sloan raised inquisitive brows. “Not exactly a flattering handle."
"He always kept to himself,” Breaux explained, “and he hardly ever went out of his place until everyone else was off the street. He didn't know about life on the treadmill—nobody was even sure how he made his living except me. See, he lived in the apartment over this bar, and his mail was delivered down here. Pete got a disability check every month from Social Security."
"When and where was he killed?"
Breaux pointed overhead. “Little over a month ago, right upstairs in that four-room walk-up. Same place he lived in for the last twenty years."
"Have you known him all that time?"
"Only ten years of it."
Reno asked the bartender, “You're sure the death was ruled a homicide?"
"According to my brother, that was never in doubt. Pete was shot once through the heart, probably as he answered his door. And there was no gun found in the apartment, so it wasn't suicide."
"All right, so NOPD nosed it and couldn't find the killer. No offense, Justin, but what's the percentage for you? It's not usual for anyone except family to hire a P.I. and nose into a murder cops have closed out."
Breaux's mouth quirked, not quite a grin. “I sense more than I can explain, okay? Actually, I tried to investigate it myself—you know, on the Internet with those P.I. services? I found no family or known associates. Pete never owned a car, never had a driver's license or criminal record, never even had a phone—the only paper trail he left was his utility bills. As for my interest in the matter..."
Breaux shrugged a shoulder. “I got a wife and three kids, and without them I'd go nuts. Pete had nobody, and I was the best—probably the only—friend he had. We're open all night here, and he'd come down sometimes toward sunrise when it was slow. We'd talk. He wasn't snea
ky, just shy and messed up."
Breaux moved down the bar to make change for a customer who disappeared into one of the video poker booths.
"I'm also thinking,” he resumed when he returned, “how Pete could have been rich if he'd had an ounce of business sense. I think he was one of those ... idiot ... you know..."
"Idiot savants?” Reno suggested.
"Yeah, that's it. Just a second."
Breaux did a deep kneebend and rummaged on a shelf beneath the register. When he turned around he laid a cheap composition book in front of Reno. “If you decide to take this case,” he said, “you'll want to read a good chunk of this. Read a couple of pages now."
While the bartender filled a few more orders, Reno did. It was all neatly printed in purple ink. The work was fiction, and the heavy emphasis on looks, clothing, and turbulent emotions soon identified it as romance.
"You sure Pete wrote this?” he asked Breaux. “I don't read the bodice-ripper stuff, but my ex did and I used to look at it to get her idea of a real man. Ask me, this reads more like it was copied from a published book."
Breaux's grin of expectation upgraded itself to a victory smile. “You think so too, huh? Hell yes, Pete wrote it—in the wee hours he used to fill dozens of notebooks like this sitting right here at the bar. This is one he asked me to keep. Romance novels were the only books he read—three or four a week, he claimed. His apartment's stacked full of them."
"How ‘bout the notebooks—they still up there?"
Breaux's smile melted like a snowflake on a river. “The cops thought I was the landlord and let me go up there. The only notebooks were blank. But this is why I'm suspicious—I watched Pete fill up those notebooks and then, as regular as the equinox, take them with him to the post office. Where was he sending them?"
Reno read a few more paragraphs. One sentence especially impressed him and he read it aloud: “'Hers was a more subtle, sloe-eyed beauty that left glowing retinal afterimages when he closed his eyes.’”
He looked at Breaux. “Has the apartment been cleaned out yet?"
Breaux shook his head. “Landlord lives in Lafayette. Hasn't got around to it yet."
Reno said, “There's no proof that Pete's notebooks are linked to his murder, but I'll shake a few bushes and see what falls out."
* * * *
The first indigo traces of evening colored the sky in feathery fingers by the time Reno retrieved his Jeep Commander from the U-Park-It on Decatur. He did his best thinking while behind the wheel, so he spent the next half-hour cruising St. Charles Avenue, just dogging the streetcars and trying to let some daylight in on the life and death of one Peter “Sneaky Pete” D'Antoni. Unlike police detectives, who were steeped in the inductive method and gathered a ton of information to obtain a pound of conclusions, Reno applied Occam's razor to crime detection—keep the theories as simple as possible. Genius, he reminded himself, is the ability to see what's been there all along.
I sense more than I can explain. Despite understanding what Breaux meant, Reno still had too little information. He swept right, onto Broadway, and bisected the Tulane fraternity ghetto, picking up Freret Street and heading downtown again. Lights blazed a halo over the French Quarter by the time Reno started up the rubber-runnered stairs behind the Ragin’ Cajun. All he had to sweat, he realized at a glance, was a conventional lock at least twenty years old. He dug the key ring full of copper shims out of his hip pocket and went to work on the mechanism. In thirty seconds the tumbler surrendered with a metallic snick.
Night heat was more suffocating, especially in New Orleans, and someone had closed and fastened the wooden shutters, turning the small apartment into a sweatbox. For a moment he stood just inside the door, listening. Only the wheezy rattle of a dying fridge and the distant sissing of water in pipes. He moved farther inside and detected the musty smell of old dust and lingering food odors.
He slapped at a light switch and sent a quick glance around to acclimate himself. The dingy little walkup cried out for painting, plastering, and paper-hanging, but was at least orderly. Even the waist-high stacks of romance novels that overflowed several large bookcases and lined every wall were neatly aligned.
Reno moved through a doorless archway into what was intended as a small dining room. However, D'Antoni had evidently used it as a reading room—a blue chintz easy chair was surrounded by more stacks of books, all romance paperbacks. The minimalist kitchen contained a ‘fifties-era refrigerator, a four-burner stove, and an ancient soapstone sink.
He popped open cabinets and pulled out drawers but found nothing that seemed useful. Reno rolled a seven, however, when he poked through the small bedroom that opened off the front room. He found a USPS Express Mail receipt tucked into a ceramic vase. The writing on the customer's copy had faded, but he could make out the date: June 19, 2002. It was the address, however, that instantly focused his mind:
Romance Writing Contest c/o Lydia Collins
28 Audubon Lane
New Orleans LA 70118
Reno read Gambit and other local media aimed at the culture vultures, and he recognized the name of Social Registerite Lydia Collins, a lawyer turned literary agent who was said to be the éminence grise behind some successful local writers. His reaction to the name was less a clear idea than a premonitory tingle. By the time he'd locked up and headed back to his car, however, the tingle had become a hunch.
* * * *
"I confess I'm somewhat intrigued, Mr. Sloan,” Lydia Collins said as she led Reno into a salon featuring Regency furnishings and an Italian marble fireplace. “Why would a private investigator be interested in our writing group's annual romance-fiction contest? I don't normally associate it with hugger-mugger and derring-do."
Reno got a good look at her in the afternoon sunlight. She was an attractive mid-forties, with honey-blond hair and lovely arching eyebrows. She wore a cool sleeveless dress of crème de menthe silk.
"It's probably just a fishing trip,” he admitted. “I've been hired to look into the death—murder, I should say—of Peter D'Antoni, a longtime French Quarter resident."
"Murder? And am I a suspect?” There was a teasing lilt in her voice. “That's delicious."
Reno ignored her lame remark. “You've heard of Mr. D'Antoni?” he essayed again.
"Not that I recall. Has someone suggested otherwise?"
"I understand that, a few years ago, he submitted some romance fiction to you as an entry for a writing contest."
"Perhaps he did,” Lydia replied. “These contests are sponsored by local chapters of our national group, and open to anyone. The number of submissions is staggering."
"Just curious: What happens to them after they're read?"
"If a stamped envelope is enclosed, we send them back. If not, I shred them."
"I suppose that not many men submit."
"Of course not. Bear in mind it's not a genre most men can master—or would want to."
Reno kept his voice carefully neutral. “But if that atypical man had strong talent, and a woman were to submit his work, she could hold the keys to the mint, right?"
"I do believe you're fencing with me, Mr. Sloan. I was hoping we might get along—you make an exciting first impression. Now you're spoiling it."
"I can't help my manners. My father taught me that politeness is a form of weakness."
Her laugh was pleasantly musical. “See why most men can't master the romance genre? But you can't be seriously suggesting that I—what? Stole this deceased gentleman's writing and sold it as my own?"
"I'm not even hinting at it,” he assured her. “Just fishing. You wouldn't need to sell it as your own. You were an attorney; you could easily create a persona to cash checks and so forth."
She gave him a pitying look. “What about the inevitable phone calls from New York editors, many of whom know me and my voice? What about the jacket photo and local interviews? You're out of your element, Mr. Sloan."
Reno wasn't sure if that odd contortion of her m
outh was meant as a smile. If so, it wilted at his next remark. “All of those problems you just mentioned would evaporate, right, if one of your published authors submitted the work as her own?"
Until that moment Lydia Collins had treated his visit as the cocktails-and-gossip hour. Now, however, her face closed like a vault door. When she replied, her nuance of tone was colder than the words. “I trust you can find your own way out?"
* * * *
Reno headed down St. Charles toward the Quarter, braking for the noontime gaggle streaming into Audubon Park. He wasn't at all confident he was on the right track—like a sloppy scientific theory, his suspicion of Lydia Collins raised more questions than it answered.
He ate lunch in an oyster house on Bienville, reading more from D'Antoni's composition book and contrasting it to a bestselling romance novel he'd picked up at a drugstore. The unpublished fragment, in his uninformed opinion, left the bestseller in the dust.
He retraced his route along St. Charles, again wondering if going with his first lead was hampering this case. The lack of any other leads seemed like a mountain in his path. Justin Breaux was still in the mix—a Bourbon Street bartender could clear five hundred a night in tips, but why spend more than half that on a gumshoe's fee to possibly solve the murder of a mere acquaintance?
Since his divorce three years earlier Reno had rented the left half of a clinker-built shotgun duplex on Cherokee Street, half hidden in a lush riot of banana plants. A few moments on the Internet turned up a Web site for the Collins Literary Agency. Several of her more prominent local writers were named, and Reno took special interest in a Garden District resident named Samantha Maitland. Based on the amount of copy devoted to her, she was one of Lydia's divas.
Not only was Samantha Maitland listed in the Uptown Directory, she readily agreed to speak with Reno that evening. That sparked his curiosity—he expected Lydia would have called her local clients by now and declared him toxic waste to be avoided.
EQMM, November 2006 Page 15