by Chris Wiltz
“Diana, I thought we decided we'd probably kill each other.”
“I certainly wouldn't call that any sort of decision. That was just talk. Now I'm serious. You can move your clothes tomorrow, then—”
“Hold it. There's lots more to this than moving my clothes.” I said that, and didn't quite know what else to say. I turned my hands palms up on the white tablecloth. “I haven't even started thinking about moving.”
That wasn't exactly true. I hadn't given it much thought, but the warehouse district, down around Julia Street, was most appealing, as if it were a brand-new part of town. Out of uptown, at any rate.
You could call her smile indulgent. “I understand, darling. You'd rather it be your idea.”
“Maybe,” I conceded, “but that's not it. I need my own turf.”
“Of course you do. We'll fix up one of the spare bedrooms into an office—whatever you want.”
“That's not what I meant.”
“Oh. I see. Fine. We'll find another place. I'll start looking.”
I shook my head.
She reached across the table and put her hand on my forearm. She wasn't smiling anymore. “Think about it.” I started to speak, but she cut me off, her dark eyes shiny in the soft light of the restaurant. “Don't say no tonight.”
“Okay,” I agreed, “not tonight.”
***
We pulled up next to a fire hydrant across the street from her parents’ house. It was a corner house fenced with wrought iron. Tiny Chinese stone lanterns flanked the walkway up to wide bannistered wooden steps. Around both sides of the yard, lanterns on poles marked pathways through the trees and shrubbery. The shutters on four French windows were open and we could see people through all of them.
Diana had timed our arrival so we were a bit more than fashionably late. Even so, a lone couple was just then arriving, walking along the sidewalk from their car to the house. I started to open the door.
“Just a minute,” Diana said. She watched the couple's progress. We waited until the couple was inside and we were alone on the street.
Diana wanted to make an entrance and create a sensation. Which she did. Which she would have done without being the daughter of the host, though that added to the hoopla. A small black woman in uniform waited for her jacket.
I admit to hanging back and trying to melt into the crowd, searching for the nearest bartender, but Diana kept taking my hand and introducing me to people faster than I could catch their names.
The nameless people seemed entirely too interested in me. Diana repeated several times that I was a private investigator. I began to feel like a bull in the china shop, conscious for the first time in a while of my scar, and that my power suit didn't seem to be all the occasion called for, and that I didn't talk with the same soft, genteel accent that a lot of these people had. Their accent was slightly Southern, though nothing harsh and twangy, nothing remotely like that flat, rather nasal sound some New Orleanians make. I didn't mean to, but I kept thinking I was sounding too tough. I thought a little Scotch would slick up my tongue.
There must have been a hundred and fifty people there, of all ages, laughing and easy with each other. Certainly it was a concentration of some of the best-looking people in New Orleans, but an average annual income of eighty grand in the ghetto would improve everyone's looks there, too.
Another maid in uniform passed with a tray of champagne, but I'd had enough of that. I tried not to be too obvious about looking over everyone's head for the bar while Diana talked to a woman named Kitsy or Bootsy or one of those uptown girls’ names. Anyway, they were deep into a conversation about faux jewels, specifically Diana's earrings. I thought I could disappear unnoticed, but a very clean-cut, preppy-looking guy—nice-looking if you didn't consider his head too long and narrow—came up to us.
“Hello, Diana.” He had a soft gentle voice.
“Wylie. How are you,” Diana said in a peremptory tone and told her girlfriend she'd talk to her later. Wylie was shrugging slightly, but Diana ignored that and introduced us.
Wylie said Diana had told him I was a private investigator, that I'd once been a homicide detective. I said that was right. Diana for once said nothing but was overseeing the conversation, and was, it appeared, pleased with it.
Wylie frowned slightly. “Do you still investigate murders?” he asked.
“Sometimes.”
Apparently this wasn't forthcoming enough for Diana. “He's investigating one right now,” she told Wylie. “His sister's best friend was murdered a couple of weeks ago.”
“That's shocking,” Wylie said, “so close to your family.”
I could have straightened him out, but after all, we were achieving a conversation here, awkward as it felt. However, I then found I had nothing to add to Wylie's assessment.
Diana did. “It's tragic, but how many people are there at this party, do you think, who don't know someone who's been held at gunpoint or shot?”
She was referring to a rash of incidents uptown, robberies, muggings, a couple of murders of people coming home from parties, the grocery store, jogging in the park. I wondered if she meant it wasn't shocking anymore.
“That's true,” Wylie said. “It disturbs me how many people have begun carrying guns around here.”
“It may disturb you,” Diana remarked rather offhandedly, “but it's a fact of life. Sometimes it's kill or be killed.”
I said to Wylie, “It should disturb you.”
“Have you ever killed anyone?” he asked me.
I was going to tell him about the one time I came close to killing someone, while I was still a patrolman, chasing a guy over fences, through yards, and into a cemetery in Mid-City after he'd stabbed and robbed an old lady who was walking along the street with her sack of groceries. I'd shot him in the hip.
But Diana answered before I started. “He's killed several people.”
Wylie was frowning again. “You shot them?”
“No—”
“He killed them with his bare hands.”
“There's my little girl!” A tall man with graying hair and Diana's dark brown eyes came into our circle and kissed her. “How's my baby?”
“Fine, Daddy. This is Neal.”
He put out his hand. Wylie looked on, his face possibly registering some concern that I might crush Mr. DiCarlo's fingers. “I was about to say, this must be Neal, since I know Wylie.” We shook. “What? No drinks yet? Follow me. Mother's waiting for you in the back,” he said to Diana. “Join us, Wylie.”
“Thanks, Peter,” but after we began heading toward the rear of the house, Wylie moved in the other direction.
We passed one bar on our way to a room stretched across the rear width of the house. It had probably been another porch once, but was now closed in with three sets of French doors leading outside. One set was open. The yard was completely covered by a huge yellow and white striped tent and lit by more lanterns. There were tables around the patio-dance floor, yellow flowers on the tables, and ficus trees in large pots. At the far end a band was setting up.
Mr. DiCarlo led Diana and me down some steps into the tent where a couple of long tables were strung together and draped with white to form a bar and serving area. Not very many people had filtered out here yet. A woman, obviously Mrs. DiCarlo, was giving some instructions to one of the bartenders. She was elegant, with skin still as smooth as Diana's, and short shiny brown hair waved and pretty around her face. But her face had a slightly stern set about it, the face of a person who is in charge, competent and efficient, and expects the same from others.
Diana and her mother buffed each other on the cheek so as not to disturb their makeup while Mr. DiCarlo got the bartender working on our drinks.
“Everything looks wonderful, Mother.”
“Thank you, dear.”
I wasn't certain, but their tones seemed chilly.
Mrs. DiCarlo turned her full attention on me. “This is Neal Rafferty?” she asked, her eyebrows arched.
“
Of course,” Diana said.
“If you don't mind my saying so, Neal, you show evidence of being in a dangerous line of work.” She looked at my drooping eye and the scar falling from it. Notice I was in a “line of work.” Only doctor, lawyer, and CPA are professions in this set.
“Oh for God's sake, Mother.”
“Diana thinks I'm too outspoken.”
“Then I know where she gets it from,” I said.
Mrs. DiCarlo liked that. When she smiled her face softened considerably. “An attribute she appreciates only in herself,” she informed me.
“You might remember that I am here and a participant in this conversation, Mother.”
“Of course, dear.”
Mr. DiCarlo came up with drinks. As he handed me one, Mrs. DiCarlo said, “I believe you had something to tell your father.”
Diana was clearly not ready for this. A moment of surprise, then narrowed eyes at her mother, a rather defiant look at me, she recovered, turned to her father and said, “Daddy, Neal and I are going to live together.”
Her father clearly was not ready for that, but he recovered, laughed, and said to me, “Diana likes to shock us. You'll have to forgive me if I tend to react slowly.”
“I suppose it would be more shocking if she told us she was getting married,” Mrs. DiCarlo said.
“One life to live, Mother. One is all you get.” The emphasis was on you.
Mr. DiCarlo was irritated now, but determined to keep his savoir faire. “I don't believe this is the appropriate time or place. Could we discuss this later?” He looked at all of us in turn, me last.
“I don't believe that will be necessary,” I said. I took the drink from Diana's hand and put both hers and mine on the bar. “Excuse us.”
I took her by the arm, tightly, and propelled her through an opening in the tent out to the side yard. No one was there. The weather had warmed since the night before, but it was still cold. I walked until we were out of any lantern's light, under a huge magnolia tree.
“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded. My hot breath fogged in the air.
She rubbed at her arm where I let it go. “I'm not doing anything,” she said petulantly.
“The hell you're not. If you were twenty years old I'd say you were trying to prove your independence, but you're too old for that. What you are doing is trying to prove how bad you can be. Flaunting it? No, worse, using me to flaunt it.” I could feel a lot of anger boiling away inside. “Fact is, you think you can use a man any way you want to, hunt him down, use him, discard him. Tell me, how long do you think we'd last under the same roof? Until Mommy and Daddy stop being upset about it? How long?”
“Stop it. Please.”
“No.” I was furious now. “Another thing I want to know—when did it become trendy and glamorous to go around killing people? I've never killed anyone, and if I had it isn't something I'd go around bragging about. Have you lost your mind?”
“It was just Wylie,” she said. She was rubbing at her arms again, cold.
“Just Wylie. Another poor sucker, another reject. How does it go—the more they love you, the more you despise them?”
“I won't listen to this!” She took off across the yard to the garage at the end of it. Since the house was on the corner, the garage emptied out on the side street.
I heard a car start and the automatic door of the garage lifting, sliding up on rollers. She backed out, rubber squealing, squealing again when she took off down the street. The garage door rolled down and clunked into place.
My hands were shaking as I lit a cigarette. I walked through the yard to the front of the house. I could hear laughter and talking through the closed windows. Behind me the drummer swished his brushes across the skins and gave the cymbals a couple of muted claps.
I was approaching the veranda when someone spoke.
“Where did she go?”
I stopped and looked up. Wylie leaned over the veranda railing toward me.
“I don't know,” I said.
“She's a difficult woman.” I nodded. He hesitated, then asked. “Are you going to marry her?” God only knows what she'd told him.
“No. I'm not going to be seeing her anymore.”
“She was supposed to be here with me tonight.” He said it sympathetically, and I realized he assumed she'd left me, too.
The band struck up a soft instrumental version of “Mack the Knife.”
Wylie said, “Maybe she can't be with anyone. I worry about her. I'd be happy just to take care of her.”
I took one more drag and flicked the cigarette out over the wrought iron fence into the street. “You seem like a nice man, Wylie, but let me tell you something, Diana doesn't like nice men.”
33
What If . . .
It was dusk the following Tuesday and I was still in my office. I wasn't staying late because of any work, but because I saw no good reason to be anywhere else. You might say I was brooding. The bottom drawer bottle was out and I had poured myself yet another two fingers.
There was no dearth of things to brood about, that's for sure. Maurice and I were okay with each other, but not quite the same as we usually were. I wasn't sure we ever would be the same again, not because we couldn't get over a few words, but because his marrying Nita would naturally change things.
Then there was the scene with Diana at the party. We hadn't seen each other or spoken since. It wasn't that I wanted to see her; I didn't. But the whole scene, with her parents and Wylie and what I'd said to her standing out in the cold under the magnolia tree, had left me feeling pretty low. And it wasn't that anything I'd said wasn't true or that I wanted to take any of it back either.
There was also Larry Silva. The poor bastard was still in the Gretna jail, still without a dime to his name to make bail, and condemned no matter how you looked at it. True, he was going to get the best defense money could buy, and true, all of us are going to die, but I hadn't uncovered a thing to make his defense any easier, and most of us don't have to go around thinking this very moment could be our last.
All that, and still the problem of where I was going to live. As I said, it wouldn't be much trouble to find a place, but I couldn't decide where in town to look. The afternoon before I'd gone down to the warehouse district with the full intention of looking at a place, but once I got there, I'd kept on driving, heading right back to St. Charles Avenue to have a drink at the Pontchartrain Hotel. All of a sudden I didn't like the idea of an old building with a brand-new interior. I didn't want old; I didn't want new. I wanted to stay at the Euclid.
Anyway, I was sitting there, feet up on the desk, glass to my lips, when the door to the waiting room opened. I wasn't expecting anyone so I didn't jump to attention. Through the pebbled glass of my office door I thought I could make out the form of a woman.
A light knock, I called out to enter, and Diana walked in. The overhead lights were off, so it wasn't until she got closer to the light thrown by the desk lamp that I could see the black smudges under her eyes, how tired and unhappy she looked. She tried to say hi but her voice failed, her mouth trembled, and her eyes filled up. She stood on the other side of the desk blinking hard so tears wouldn't spill.
I got up and went around the desk and she clung to me for a while, until the tension in her body seeped away along with her tears.
I asked her if she wanted a drink, but she shook her head, still not trusting her voice. I had no idea I'd made her so miserable, no idea, to tell you the truth, I could. I told her I'd take her home.
The bottle put away, the Scotch drained, and the glass rinsed, I took my jacket from the coat rack and switched off the lamp. I closed the office door behind us and the phone began to ring. I almost went back for it, but Diana had the door to the hallway opened and was going through it without even looking over her shoulder. I decided to let the answering service get it and followed her.
I'll never know whether going back would have changed anything or if what was going to happen was
irrevocably set in motion and it was already too late. If it would have changed anything, I'd rather not know.
34
Gone Fishing
I left my car in the Père Marquette garage and drove Diana home in hers. When we got there and she realized we weren't going to make things up and carry on where we'd left off, all those tears she'd tried so hard to hold back broke. She wept a great deal. Part of me felt guilty for hurting her so badly while another part thought she was devastated mostly because she couldn't have what she wanted, couldn't exert her usual control over everything and everyone around her. I also had to come to terms with blaming her unfairly for the trouble between Maurice and me.
So I stayed with her for a while, out of guilt and also because I was trying to sort out my own feelings, all of which could have been dealt with later, and none of which served any other purpose than to cause more delay before I hopped a streetcar back to the Euclid and got the message that Pinkie Dean had called and said it was an emergency.
***
The answering service also had two other messages. The first was from Mave Scoggins at the Gemini, the second from Maurice. So when I heard the third was from Pinkie saying it was an emergency, it put fear into my soul because the number she left was the same as the Gemini's.
I called it immediately. The woman's voice that answered was definitely not Mave Scoggins’.
“Pinkie?” I could hear country music playing in the background.
“Oh Neal, thank goodness . . .”
“What the hell are you doing there? What's going on?”
“Stop yelling. I'm not sure what's going on. I'm not even sure it's an emergency. The bartender here at the Gemini—Mave Scoggins?”
“I know her,” I snapped.
“She called Maurice and told him she didn't know where Nita was but the girl Nita was with got beat up and then Nita was gone and then Maurice tried to call you—”
“Christ, Pinkie, slow down. Where's Maurice?”
“I don't know, but he cranked up that old car of his and drove it across the river.”