Women of the Mean Streets

by J. M. Redmann

  “Do you have a spare key hidden anywhere on your property?” I asked.

  He abruptly looked up at me. “Yeah, I mean, yeah, we all do around here. You think someone came out here and somehow found it?”

  “When was the last time you moved it to a different location?”

  “Moved it?” He thought for a moment before admitting, “It’s been a while. Kids were in high school then. Now…they’re both married with kids of their own.”

  “Would people around here know where your key would be?”

  He wasn’t a stupid man. “You think someone from here might have stolen my car? But we’re all nice people, lived here for years. Besides, I’d kind of notice if a car exactly like mine showed up down the block.”

  “True, but someone else might have had their own mid-life crisis and decided that it was time to leave this nice neighborhood and thought taking off in a red Porsche would be a fun way to do it.”

  He just looked at me.

  I asked, “You got the VIN?”

  “Why?” he asked, but it was more curious that suspicious as he was heading into his garage and a stack of paperwork.

  “My aunt Greta lives down there.” I pointed in the direction of her house. “Her oldest son Bayard was checking on it. She hasn’t heard from him in a week. Asked me to look into it.”

  “Yeah, I know him. We call him Mr. Moocher. He always invites himself over if he smells a barbeque. He seemed like a nice enough guy, bit of a loser, if you ask me. He should have married some plain Jane accountant, someone who’d support him, but he seemed to like the blond girls who expected him to buy the drinks. Disappeared a week ago, huh? Any idea where he is?” he asked as he wrote down the all the car numbers—VIN, license, registration—for me.

  “Nope, not yet.”

  He sighed. “Damn, why couldn’t I have at least held on to that car until my college reunion. Not much chance I’ll get it back, right?”

  I owed my cousin no favors. “Can’t say. I don’t know that he took it. Even if he did, if he was smart, he’d have gotten rid of it asap. But he’s never been that smart before, so why should he start now? Plus, he’s an amateur at disappearing. I’m a professional at finding people.”

  As I drove back to my office, I pondered the possibilities. Katrina had changed everything, disrupted all our lives. Some people were desperately trying to get back to what they had before. Others used the chaos to disappear. It was easy, claim that every single piece of paper you ever had was washed away. Find a new identity—you had the perfect alibi for the needed new copies of all those documents—and the perfect sob story to get people to eschew the usual checks and balances. Men running out on child support, women leaving abusive boyfriends. Always dreamed of California? Here I come.

  People opened up their homes and their hearts. It was astonishing and humbling how kind strangers were. Everywhere I’d gone on my refugee road tour, people were generous and helpful. That kindness was a large part of how we got through the days, knowing that the bureaucratic blindness wasn’t who most Americans were. Most of us were grateful, took what we truly needed and could never find the right words to say how thankful we were.

  But there were others who took advantage.

  Bayard?

  Possible? You betcha. His mother had handed him everything, and he could never understand why life didn’t continue to hand him what he wanted. He smiled and made jokes and expected that was enough to get him a good job and then a promotion at that job, and always had an excuse as to why that didn’t work. Last I’d heard he was selling cars at a used car lot. But according to Aunt Greta, that job had disappeared with Katrina. Or at least that was what Bayard said.

  Why not drive away in a nice Porsche and start somewhere new where nobody knew who you were and how many times you’d messed up your life?

  No, this case would not be a quick drive by a house I never wanted to visit again. But the image of my asshole cousin handcuffed for grand theft auto was too good to pass up.

  Time to drive back to my office and do the records search. Even at rush hour, traffic was still light driving back to the city—people were gone or had shifted out to the suburbs or north of the lake as they rebuilt. My late-morning drive back was positively serene, especially given that I was leaving the ’burbs behind. The “sliver by the river,” where I both lived and where my office was, had not flooded. It was to that office and my computer I was headed.

  Let’s see what reasons Bayard might have had for deciding to run away with a red Porsche.

  Reason number one was easy to find—child support. Bayard was the kind of pig who would expect that birth control was something for the woman to handle. The problem is if you like really young and stupid women, they’re not always as conscientious about these things as they should be.

  One Melva-Raylene Gautier seemed to fit in that category. She listed Bayard as the father of her three-year-old bouncing baby boy, and he was about two and a half years behind in his child support payments. A few phone calls and some flirting (with another woman) got me the info that Melva-Raylene had gotten tired of waiting and was taking Bayard to court. Her good fortune was that she lived out by the airport in the suburb of Kenner, so that meant all her court records were on the un-flooded side of the Seventeenth Street Canal and the trial date was coming up.

  Reason number two appeared by midafternoon. I had used the court records to get places on employment. It was a long list. I went down it—phone disconnected; never heard of him; would only confirm he has worked there, no other information; records lost in the flooding; never heard of him; thought he’d been let go, but wasn’t really sure, couldn’t remember that far back; never heard of him (I was beginning to detect a scam—claim to work at a place you don’t work so they can’t garnish your wages) phone disconnected.

  Then finally, “Yeah, him. You find him; I’ll pay you if you let me know.”

  Alpha A Used Cars on Airline Highway. I was talking to Alpha Al himself. “He worked for you?” I confirmed.

  “Yeah, slimy dog. If I could prove anything, I’d have a warrant for his arrest.”

  “What did he do? Allegedly?” I added, with enough sarcasm in the latter that Al couldn’t miss it.

  “We got through the storm real good, one sign come down and part of the roof over the employee bathroom leaked. A month ago, get a big shipment of cars—flooded cars meant people needed new cars—and come in on Monday morning to find out the place was looted. Not a break-down-the-gate type thing, but a someone who knew his way around kind of thing. Ten of the most expensive cars gone. Yeah, a window was broken, but most of the glass was on the outside, like someone broke it from inside to make it look like a break-in. The cabinet with the keys has crowbar marks, but it was unlocked, not busted open. All the money was gone, even the change pile on my desk. All my other guys arrive. Bayard shows up for two seconds, says he’s gotta go take care of his mom up north and wouldn’t be back. When I mention the thievery, first thing out of his mouth is an alibi, that he just got back in town, this was the first place he stopped. After he’s hightailed it out, one of the other guys says that they’d met for beers the night before in a bar where they usually hang out.

  “So either he did it or one of my current employees is a great liar and hasn’t spent a dime of what he stole,” Alpha Al finished.

  “I’m assuming that you tried to contact him?”

  “Oh, yeah, one day I told my girl to call him every half hour, use any and every phone she could get a hold of. He answered once, hung up when he realized it was us. Never answered again. Went by his listed address, they claim they never heard of him.”

  “How much did he hit you up for?”

  “The cars alone were well over two hundred grand.”

  At retail used car price, I was betting.

  He continued, “Plus the rest of the stuff he took, throw in another hundred grand.”

  “You kept around one hundred thousand dollars on the premises?�
�� I asked. Maybe I should talk to Alpha Al about security.

  He hesitated. “Uh, no, it was maybe ten K in cash.”

  I didn’t say it, but even that was a lot of cash to keep around a business that usually operated on loans and credit. To prompt him, I said, “I’m not the cops. My only job here is to find this guy.”

  “I didn’t know about it and it’s stopped, but it seems that one of the guys was dealing a little weed on the side. He stashed it in a dead car out back. That disappeared.”

  Again, I didn’t say it, but ninety thousand in drugs and money wasn’t “dealing a little weed,” it was big-time drug operation. However, I wasn’t the cops, and this sounded like it could be reason number three why Bayard headed for the hills.

  “So basically someone cleaned you out—and some of your sidelining employees pretty good?”

  “Yeah, like I said, you find this guy, you let me know. I’ll make it worth your while.”

  I left it as vague as I could, no promises to Alpha Al that I’d hand him Bayard’s head on a stick. But I didn’t rule it out either. Al’s business seemed to be used cars and new drugs, using the former to launder money for the latter. It also explained why he hadn’t reported it to the police. If he had Bayard arrested, Bayard could turn over the drug operation to the cops and he’d be the chopped liver to Alpha Al’s sirloin as far as law enforcement was concerned.

  I certainly wouldn’t buy a car from him—hell, I wouldn’t buy a car from anyone who’d hire Bayard—and even if it meant making some money on this, it didn’t seem to be the kind of money I wanted to earn. But it was power, more leverage than I’d ever had over my asshole cousin. If he ever bothered me again, I could just mouth “Alpha Al” and get rid of him. Oh, yes, the colder the revenge, the sweeter the taste.

  Just to cover all bases, I called Melva-Raylene, but she wasn’t home or wasn’t answering the phone. I didn’t leave a message.

  Then, because I’m a professional, I did the usual routine, called places like hospitals and police stations in all the parishes surrounding New Orleans—the ones that had functioning hospitals and police stations. No one with his name. I briefly considered that he might be using an alias, but if he was hurt—or dead—there was no reason to use a fake name. The fake name would be for the Bayard who had purloined a Porsche and pissed off a presumed drug dealer.

  It seemed more than likely that Bayard had scrammed. I had the why, I didn’t have the where. I sighed. Aunt Greta had bought a computer, more for him to use than her. I could go back to the ugly house—twice in one day—and see if he left any clues there.

  My phone rang. Maybe it would be an excuse to avoid going out to the hideous house.

  “Someone from this number called here,” the voice said. It was a deep, cigarette and cheap whisky male voice.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, not recognizing the voice or the number.

  “I hit redial, so I think so. Who is this?” he demanded.

  “This is a business,” I answered. “Who am I speaking to?” I scrambled on my desk, looking over my notes to see if the number matched anything I’d scribbled down.

  “What kind of business?”

  Aha. Melva-Raylene. “We track missing people. We’ve been hired to look for a man by the name of Bayard Robedeaux…”

  “That fucking rat-wad! How the fuck did you get this number while looking for that shit bag?”

  “I looked up the court filings.”

  “You can’t do that, they’re private!”

  “Legally not, unless it’s sealed by a judge. Court records are public records.”

  “Oh.” He seemed to be thinking this over. It was a slow process.

  “I take it you do know who this is?”

  “Not me, my girlfriend. Bastard knocked her up a while back and now he’s not paying what he should. Wait, who did you say you were?”

  “We didn’t get that far. I’m a private detective and I was hired” (well, arm-twisted by a cadging relative) “to locate him. Any idea where he is?”

  “Shit, if I knew that, he’d be rotting in a swamp by now.”

  Which wouldn’t do much to get the back payments, but I didn’t point that out.

  “Any clue where he might have gone?”

  “Shit, no, I never met the man. It was poor Melva-Raylene that got messed up with him.”

  “Could I talk to her?”

  “Yeah, you can, but she’s not here right now.” A sly tone crept into his voice. “I could arrange for that to happen.”

  Lucky for me, his price was that we meet at a greasy grill out near where they lived and that it would be my treat. Lucky for him, that was about as high a price as I was willing to pay. I didn’t think that I’d get much information about where Bayard might be, but I could get some more leverage and power. I would be able to rat out not only my obnoxious cousin to Alpha Al, but also Bubba Butch—probably not his real name, but close enough.

  I glanced at my watch. Given how bad traffic was out in the suburbs, I had about enough time for a bathroom break and to leave a message at home that I might be a little late tonight.

  And then I was on my way out to the land beyond the Orleans Parish line. The map should read, “here be dragons”—of the fast food, box store, commercial strip variety.

  There were at least five motorcycles parked outside the place that Bubba Butch—I needed to stop thinking of him that way, lest I forget and actually call him that—had suggested. I drove a good block past it, turned around, and parked far enough away so that no one would easily match my car with my face at that bar. I could now watch the joint and make sure that all Bubba and Melva-Raylene wanted was a burger and some fries on someone else’s dime.

  But it was a quiet late afternoon, no sudden arrival of ten large men. At about five minutes past our appointed meeting time, a big guy and a little woman arrived. I gave them a minute or two, then followed them in.

  A waft of artery-clogging grease greeted me as I entered the place. One table in back had the motorcycle gang gathered around it, but they seemed more intent on pouring the pitcher of beer than scoping out any new arrivals.

  I approached the table with the man and woman.

  “Melva-Raylene Gautier?” I asked.

  She looked confused.

  “You the person I talked to?” the man asked.

  Melva-Raylene jumped in. “Oh, sorry, I’m not Gautier anymore. Now I’m Boudreaux. Mrs. Butch Boudreaux.” She smiled shyly and put a hand on Butch’s hand. I hate it when I’m this right about people. I didn’t think my usual line would work here: “Butch? Isn’t that a girl’s name?” That seemed to only go over well in gay bars.

  “Hi, thanks for meeting me,” I said as I slid into a chair. I had to steel myself not to look down at the seat to check if anything was living there. Didn’t want to insult their favorite eatery.

  Butch was tall, wide, and deep, some of it muscle, some of it years of fried chicken. He still had a mullet haircut and one of those mustaches that wandered down his cheeks to meet up with his chin. The outdated hairstyle wasn’t helped by the rapid surrender of everything on top. Either he never looked in the mirror or he liked what he saw.

  Mevla Raylene was a good fifteen years his junior. If Bayard hadn’t committed statutory rape when he’d gotten her pregnant, it was close. I hoped she and Butch didn’t like doing it missionary style because she might have gotten lost underneath him. Her youth was accentuated by her petite stature and small-boned figure. She would probably look young at forty. And haggard at fifty when living with men like Butch finally caught up with her.

  The waitress came by to take our order.

  Butch got a pitcher of beer, with a quick look at me, to indicate that I was paying for it. Given the pitchers were three bucks here, I felt I could spring for it. He ordered for both of them, burger, fries, onion rings, and hush puppies. A lot of canola oil trees died for his sins.

  I settled for some fries and a soda.

  “Got
ta eat for two now,” he said, patting her belly. Then he poured her a beer.

  It is not my job to discuss fetal alcohol syndrome, I told myself, suspecting that a lecture from me might not be the route to getting them to talk. But I didn’t listen to that voice. “Is it a good idea to drink when you’re pregnant? I think I read something about alcohol not being so hot for a developing baby.”

  “It’s just beer,” Bubba answered for her. “Besides, my mama drank like a fish every day of her life and it didn’t hurt me none.”

  Sad to say, I wished that Bayard had done the right thing, been a daddy to his child, at least enough of a daddy to have taken the kid and dumped it on Aunt Greta to raise. As bad as she was, she wasn’t this bad. But I was a private eye, not a social worker.

  “When was the last time you saw Bayard?” I asked her.

  “Just ’fore I got up with Butch here,” she said, then hastily added, “Only about the money, honey. Nothin’ else.”

  “How long have you been together?” I asked him. This was going to take a while if I had to ask his and hers questions.

  “’Bout three or four months,” he answered. “We’re not really married yet, but we’re gonna be just as soon as I can scrape together some dough to have a wedding good enough for my wife. That’s why it’d be real nice to get all that money that rich asshole owes us.”

  Nope, wasn’t going to touch that one with the longest pole I’d ever seen in my life. Ignoring his wedding plans based on her ex’s money, I asked, “Where did you meet him?”

  She scowled. I realized that was her thinking face. However, it seemed that her face muscles were working more than her brain. “Oh, that nice place on…what’s the road that runs by the mall?”

  “At a restaurant?”

  “Yes.”

  I was hoping for a home address, but I couldn’t be that lucky.

  “When you were together, where did you meet?”

  The short answer was cheap motels, the long answer was, “Romantic places like that hotel where that famous preacher man got caught with a prostitute. He liked to drive around until he found a place with vibrating beds, kinky stuff like that.”