Murder in the Rue St. Ann

by Greg Herren

  There was a lot of activity when I walked in—cops coming in and out, talking into their radios. Much as we liked to pretend otherwise, the tourists in the Quarter were easy prey for pickpockets and muggers. They’d drink too much, wander down a dark street, and find themselves at the end of a gun. There was an occasional shooting, and the residents weren’t safe from break-ins, either. That was why the fences around houses down there had broken glass imbedded across the top or razor wire to keep out unwelcomed guests. Every once in a while, a horrific crime would unite the usually contentious Quarter residents into an angry mob marching on City Hall. A few years back, the employees of a restaurant on the edges of the Quarter were massacred before it opened for the day. The killers managed to get a couple thousand dollars out of the safe. Afterwards, residents hung signs from their balconies warning the tourists: THE QUARTER IS A HIGH CRIME ZONE BEWARE. Things had gotten better since then—the crime rate had fallen, and people felt a little safer walking the streets at night.

  But you still had to be careful.

  I climbed the steps and walked into the VCC office. I knew someone who worked at the VCC, and I figured if anyone knew what was going on with Domino’s, it would be her. I asked the receptionist—a pretty young redhead in her early 20s who gave me a big smile when I walked in— if Ruth was in. The redhead asked me to take a seat, picked up her phone, and called back to Ruth’s office. I paged through a copy of New Orleans magazine while I waited. The phone rang, and the young woman said, “Mr. MacLeod, go ahead. It’s the last door on the left.”

  Ruth Buchmaier Solomon was the younger sister of Greg Buchmaier, the scion of the Buchmaier Jewelry empire. The Buchmaiers were a New Orleans institution since before the Civil War. Their original store was still on Canal Street, even though they now had several scattered throughout the city and the suburbs. Greg’s life partner, Alan Gardner, owned Bodytech , my gym in Uptown. I liked Greg and Alan a lot, even though Alan had a tendency to gossip. Greg was more quiet and reserved, always thinking. Even when he was looking at you and his mouth was moving, making conversation, his mind seemed a million miles away. I’d met his sister Ruth at several parties at Greg and Alan’s big mansion in Uptown.

  Ruth was a graduate of Tulane Law, and had passed the bar, but had never practiced law except on behalf of the VCC. She’d worked there as an intern while in law school, and they’d offered her a job when she graduated and passed the bar. “It’s better to work for a cause you believe in,” she’d told me once while she was waiting for the bartender at one of her brother’s parties to refill her vodka martini, “than to just practice law for the hell of it.”

  She didn’t really have to work at all. She came from money, and then had married more. She loved the Quarter, and fought for its historic heritage with the tenacity of a tigress. She was very petite and pretty, with short thick brown hair and a lovely olive skin that didn’t require a lot of makeup. She had a birthmark just above the left side of her mouth and lustrous round brown eyes framed with long lashes. She was what we in New Orleans called a “party friend”— someone you never saw unless it was at a party or a function with a cocktail in her hand. I ‘d always liked seeing her. When I attended a party and saw her there, I always made a beeline for her side. She had a raunchy sense of humor that never failed to take me by surprise because she looked every inch the Uptown aristocrat. She was the perfect person to stand next to in a room full of people you don’t know. She knew everyone and everything about them, and was more than happy to share her wealth of knowledge. What she doesn’t know, she’d make up. Once I accused her of fabricating something. She grinned at me, threw her arms out in a dramatic gesture, and said, “But darling, this is New Orleans! Anything can happen here!” You never could be sure if the gossip she shared was true or not, but that was part of the fun.

  “CHANSE!” She squealed as she came around the desk to present her cheek for me to kiss and then her body to hug. She was maybe five three, so I had to bend down for her to wrap her arms around me. She wore a white silk blouse over a gray skirt that matched the jacket flung over the back of her chair. “I couldn’t believe it when Christy buzzed me to say you were here asking for me.” She sat back down and crossed her legs. “I’m so sick of all this crap—what a pleasant break from all of this.” She gestured to the pile of paperwork on her desk with a dismal frown. “I swear, sometimes I just want to get in a cab, head to the airport and buy a ticket for anywhere.”

  “It’s nice to see you.” I took a seat. “How are you doing?”

  It took her about five minutes to fill me in. Her husband, a psychiatrist, was thinking of going on sabbatical and writing a book. “A novel, can you imagine? Suddenly he thinks he’s a creative genius.” Her youngest daughter was turning into such a terrible flirt—she was going to be trouble as a teenager. “Every morning I have to send her back to her room with turpentine to take the paint off.” Her older daughter had taken to wearing white make-up and black clothes—she was probably going to be a lesbian. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that—at least then I don’t have to worry about her getting pregnant in the backseat of some horny boy’s car.” Their pool was almost finished, though her contractor was a nightmare. “You’ll have to come to the party I’m going to throw when it’s finished—the guest list is going to be limited to people who look good in swim suits—you can be sure of that.” She was thinking about having another baby, but if her husband was going to take a sabbatical, she really couldn’t yet. Still, she was afraid if she waited much longer it would be too late.

  “How polite you are, listening to me run on and on.” She took a deep breath and smiled. “But enough about me. How are you? How’s that new boyfriend thing working out?”

  “Good.” I said. I’d known Ruth for years, but it wasn’t like she was a confidant. Besides, the last thing in the world I wanted was to become part of her cocktail party repertoire for someone else’s entertainment.

  Her eyes narrowed for a second and her smile faltered just a little. When it reappeared, it didn’t quite look real. “So, what brings you to see me?” The friendly gossipy tone was gone from her voice.

  Shit. I needed her in gossip mode. “Why is Dominique DuPre having trouble with her nightclub?” I grinned at her. “I figured if anyone would know, you would. Have you heard anything?”

  She raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow to let me know it wouldn’t be that easy. “I know she’s having some trouble with her liquor license.”

  “Is that pretty standard for a new club?” I asked, sitting back and crossing my legs. “I figured a liquor license wouldn’t be a big deal.”

  She glanced at her shut office door, then back at me. “No, it’s not. It’s not a piece of cake—liquor license applications get turned down all the time, but she had some strange things in—“ She paused, shaking her head. She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. She bit her lower lip and made her decision. “Apparently, Ms. DuPre’s background check turned up some things that concerned the liquor board.”

  “Such as?”

  “They voiced some concerns about her ex-husband.” She leaned forward over her desk and lowered her voice. “You didn’t hear this from me, okay?” I nodded. “Some of his, um, clients, raised some eyebrows.”

  “And why would that be?”

  “He’s been known to defend people the—“ she swallowed and looked over at the door again, “the, um, Feds consider connected.”

  Whoa. “He’s a mob lawyer?” If this had anything to do with organized crime, I was out of it. This was way out of my league. I enjoyed my life, thank you very much, and planned to keep going for a while.

  She shrugged. “It’s possible, and so the Liquor Board was understandably cautious. But the Feds couldn’t give any concrete evidence to the Liquor Board because they just suspected the guys were connected, and Dominique’s husband managed to get them off.” She sighed. “There were also some questions about her backers—I know one was a holding comp
any out of the Caymans that couldn’t be traced anywhere for a while.” She scratched her chin. “But the money trail was finally cleared up, above reproach, and so the lady got her license.”

  “There have been some allegations that possibly other club owners on Bourbon Street are trying to cause trouble for her.” I said as I leaned forward. “Do you think that’s a possibility?”

  `“Oh, please.” She said. “Like they don’t have better things to do?” She laughed, shook her head, and looked me right in the face. “I’ve heard those stories, too, Chanse, and they don’t hold water. I mean, I don’t like some of those guys personally, and I don’t like some of the things they do—but this is too much, even for them. And like I said, like they have the time to create this level of harassment.”

  “Someone is causing trouble for her.” I replied. “Someone cut her power line the other night.”

  She didn’t answer and looked out the window for a moment before she turned back to me. “Off the record—well, this whole conversation was off the record, am I clear?—I personally think Ms. DuPre is trusting the wrong people, if you know what I mean.”

  “Come on, Ruth—don’t play with me. What are you talking about?”

  She got out of her chair and walked over to a filing cabinet. She removed a file from the top drawer and sat down. “Someone is trying to cause trouble for her. But I don’t think it’s who she thinks it is.” She opened the file and passed a piece of paper over to me. “What do you think of that?”

  It was a fax. It read:

  Dear Ms. Solomon,

  It’s come to our attention that a new club is opening on the 700 block of Bourbon Street—one that is going to cater to a young clientele, is going to have live entertainment, and is going to draw crowds of people down to that end of the street.

  While this block is zoned commercially, the location of this club has always been occupied by restaurants before…and as this block is very close to a highly residential section of the Quarter, we are very concerned about noise, more trash, and more crowds of drunken people spilling into the quiet of our neighborhood.

  During the Labor Day weekend, there was a considerable amount of noise emanating from this club—is the Vieux Carre Commission satisfied that this club has adequate soundproofing? The Quarter doesn’t need another loud club at this end of Bourbon Street!

  A Concerned Neighbor

  I looked up at Ruth. “Do you often get anonymous complaints faxed to you?” I read it again. “I mean, with all the nuts in the Quarter—“

  She laughed and rolled her eyes. “You’d be amazed at what we get here, and unfortunately, it’s the position of the VCC that every complaint we receive has to be checked out by a city inspector.” She made a disgusted noise and scratched her head. “If I didn’t have to deal with all of that crap, everyone would be amazed at how much I could get done.”

  “And how many of these have you received?” I asked. “About Domino’s?” I placed the fax back on her desk.

  “At least one a day since early July” she replied, “when the renovations started.” She put the folder down. “We received complaints about noise, about signage, about you name it. And every one of these has to be checked out.” She tapped her index fingernail on the file folder before leaning back in her chair. “Chanse, I went down and met with Ms. DuPre personally about the number of these complaints. To say that she was hostile to me would be an understatement. I can certainly understand her hostility; she thinks she is being harassed, and this is costing her money. Why she didn’t get that being a bitch to me wasn’t going to help her cause is beyond me.” She leaned forward. “But what I really didn’t understand was why her public relations agent needed to sit in on our meeting, or why he did most of the talking for her.” She smiled. “Have you met him yet?”

  “Mark Williams.”

  “Ah, yes. Mark Williams. What a jackass.” She rubbed her temples.

  “I didn’t care for him either, frankly.”

  “Domino’s has been quite a headache for me—I would prefer we not get any more complaints. So I did some checking of my own.” She gave me a predatory smile. “He annoyed the hell out of me.”

  I may not have known Ruth well, but I knew better than to be on her bad side. “And?”

  “Williams represents himself as the head of Attitude PR. However, he is not an owner or a partner in the business—it is registered solely in the name of a Zane Rathburn, whom I haven’t met. The company was originally just the magazine, but then it changed hands a few months ago—it used to belong to a Philip Davis of Meridian. I contacted Mr. Davis, who informed me he had merely put up the money for the business, and it had been a steady money loser for him, so he was preparing to shut the company down when Zane Rathburn approached him about buying him out. Then it became Attitude PR. And Mark Williams began hawking himself to merchants in the Quarter as a PR rep.”

  “So, he has no qualifications to do pr?” I asked. I remembered how subservient Zane had been to Mark. He’d acted more like an employee than the owner of the business.

  “And all of these faxes—“ she shoved the file across the desk at me, “came from the same fax number.”

  I hoped my shock didn’t show on my face. “What? Do you know whose fax it is?” I made a mental note of not only the outgoing fax number and Ruth’s too.

  She nodded. “Vieux Carre Mail Service.” Ruth opened her purse and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Hell, come down and have a smoke with me. There’s some things I’d rather not talk about in the office.”

  I followed her back down the staircase. Several of the men who passed us going up gave her a second look. Her tight black skirt hugged her hips, and her black heels gave her body the sway that always gets men to look back. She pushed her way out the front doors and leaned up against the gate by the sidewalk.

  “Listen, Chanse, you didn’t get any of this information from me, okay?” She lit the cigarette and smiled at a couple of uniforms walking past us. Her smile faded and she turned back to me, gesturing with her cigarette. “I casually asked Dominique once how she came to find Mark Williams and Attitude PR. He showed up at her place the day we got our first complaint and offered to help her out with it. He said he knew how to ‘deal with the VCC.’” She flicked ash. “Chanse, you know as well as I do how hard it is for an outsider to adapt to New Orleans. Put yourself in her place. You’ve got millions riding on this club, investors to answer to, and you’re in a strange city trying to navigate through the murky waters of permits and zoning and so forth. Every day your club is closed you’re losing a lot of money. A local shows up and offers to help take care of things for you—and he proves himself by coming up with a solution so you can get open for Southern Decadence—why wouldn’t you hire him?”

  “Seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through to get a client, though.” I said. I watched her inhale. I’d quit smoking a few months earlier, but still hadn’t gotten past the need. I still snuck one every once in a while. Everyone told me it gets easier, but it hadn’t yet. I swallowed and resisted the urge to bum one from her.

  “Well, from what I’ve heard, attitude is in serious financial trouble—lots of debt and not enough money coming in. Williams spends an awful lot of money.” She shook her head. “For example, this concert they put on at Domino’s last week? Well, they paid for the hotel rooms and airfare for the band, did all this advertising, and attitude’s total payout? Dominique lets them keep the cover charge, she gets the bar. They charged ten dollars—and had maybe a hundred people. That’s a thousand dollars gross—and I can tell you that didn’t cover the airfare.” She laughed. “Not exactly good business, you think?”

  “No. It doesn’t make any sense at all.” I replied and thought about it for a minute. Why make a deal where you are constantly losing money?

  “I have to tell you, I don’t like that guy.” She crushed the cigarette out with her foot. “The first time I met him, I didn’t like him. I can’t explain it. He jus
t rubs me the wrong way. I like her—she’s great, if a little misguided, but I think she’s smart enough to figure it all out for herself.” She smoothed her skirt as another cop went past us. “And if not, oh well. Businesses come and go in the Quarter all the time.”

  “Thanks, Ruth.” I said. I leaned down and hugged her.

  “Good seeing you.” She kissed my cheek. “You and your boyfriend must come over for dinner soon. I’m dying to meet him.”

  “Call me.” I said as she walked back, knowing she wouldn’t.

  Vieux Carre Mail Service was just a few blocks up Royal Street from the Eighth District building, so I figured I might as well scope it out while I was in the Quarter. I walked down Royal. The sun was getting low in the sky, and long cold shadows crept across the street. The temperature had dropped into the high 60s, and I was cold. I stopped and got a cup of coffee to warm me up, and headed toward the little shop.

  Vieux Carre Mail Service was one of those spots where someone can rent a box and have mail delivered there. They also accepted packages from the overnight carriers, sold stamps and postcards, did box packaging and shipping, and so on. I’ve never understood how a place like that can make money, but there were several different ones scattered all over town. One service they offered, I noticed when I walked in, was to fax things for people for fifty cents.

  I waited until the woman at the counter was through with an impatient balding man who kept looking at his watch until the woman was finished with him. “Yes?” she asked me with a tired smile. She was in her late 50s and her hair hung to her shoulders. It was dyed an unnatural shade of black. A pack of Camels was tucked into her smock pocket.

  I pulled out my little notebook. “Is this your fax number?” I read the number off to her.

  “Uh huh. Why?”