Alice hadn’t come out so he stood whistling idly outside the ladies. “Charley, that you?” He turned to see Alice’s face framed at the door. “C’mere.” She beckoned with her hand.
Charley grinned. Yes, definitely worth taking the afternoon off, he thought, as he walked up to the door to the ladies with a quick backward glance. He was already unzipping his trousers as Alice leaped up and wrapped her legs around him. “More,” she whispered in his ear. Charley would have no trouble complying.
She Gleeked Me
O’Neil De Noux
A woman in a form-fitting blue dress tapped down her sunglasses and peered over the top to gleek me. I tapped my own sunglasses down and gleeked her right back, checking her out. Had to admit, the neighbourhood was looking up, attracting women like that particular long-legged red-head to the Arabesque Café, corner of Barracks and Burgundy Streets, caddie-corner from Cabrini Playground.
We were both seated at outside tables. She had her dress hiked above her knees, a few inches above her knees. She put her coffee cup down, uncrossed her legs and began pulling the stocking on her right leg up, all the way up to her garter belt. I caught a flash of white panty as she refastened the stocking. She spread her right leg and pulled up the stocking on her left leg, giving me a full view of the front of her panties. Things like this didn’t happen often enough for my taste and I was not the kind of fella who would look away. If I had a camera I’d have a permanent image.
Miss Long-legs got up, smoothed her dress down and came straight to my table. She put a hand on her hip, looked down and gleeked me again, showing me green eyes, before saying, “You’re the detective, aren’t you? From down the street?”
I folded my newspaper, stood and extended my right hand. “Lucien Caye, at your service.”
“Of course you are.” Her handshake was delicate and brief. In her heels, she was as tall as me, six feet. I caught a whiff of perfume. My Sin. “Mind if I sit?”
Like I’d mind.
“Not one bit,” I said, pulling out one of the small metal chairs for her. She sat and slipped her sunglasses into her purse. I called to Maria who flipped a white towel over her shoulder as she came out of the café. “I’d like another Turkish,” I told Maria, then asked my guest what she’d like.
“The same.”
“The same for Miss, uh … uh …”
“Grey. Alice Grey.” She leaned forward, conspiratorially. “Grey with an ‘e’, like the English.”
Maria strolled off.
“You know the waitress by her first name?”
“Maria?” I tucked my sunglasses into my shirt pocket. “She’s married to Alfonse the cook. I’ve been coming here a lot lately.”
Alice put her elbow on the small table, resting her chin in her upturned palm. “Didn’t think you were ever going to notice me the way you were reading that newspaper so carefully.”
I’d been reading about the aftermath of last Friday’s hurricane, 19 September 1947, a date we’ll not soon forget. The eye of the storm blew right over the city. It hit neighbouring Jefferson Parish far worse than here. New Orleans International Airport, as they now fancifully called Moisant Field, had wind gusts up to 112 mph and floodwater two feet deep, six feet in other parts of Jefferson. We had no flooding here in the French Quarter, thank God, but there was a call out for the dire need for tidal protection levees along Lake Pontchartrain.
“I spotted you rounding the corner,” I said, “watched you walk up and sit. It took you nine sips to finish your coffee.”
She smiled and those dark green eyes seemed to twinkle at me. She reached over and picked up the paper. “So what’s news?”
“The hurricane.”
“Isn’t that India?” She pointed to the front page.
There was a picture of Lord Mountbatten standing behind a microphone in his white uniform. Caption beneath explained he was declaring India and Pakistan’s independence from Great Britain. That was a month ago, 15 August to be exact. Sometimes the newspaper was more “olds” than “news”.
“So there was a hurricane here last week?” She had a mid-west accent.
Maria came out with our Turkish coffees and I scooped in three sugars. Alice took six. The coffee was hot and strong.
“You just get into town,” I said.
“Two days ago. And I’ve been looking for you.” As so many women are wont to do. Ha.
We each took a sip of coffee before she went on. “I want to hire you to investigate my uncle’s murder. The police have come up with nothing.”
She took another sip of coffee and didn’t seem all too flustered about her uncle’s murder, so I suggested, “Why don’t we finish our coffee and go down to my office and you can tell me all about it?”
“Never thought you’d ask.”
As she drank her coffee, I noted the diamond ring on her right ring finger, the ruby ring on her left ring finger and matching earrings. Was that an emerald brooch pinned to her dress? The bracelet on her left wrist was covered with diamonds. Lady was crazy to walk around this neighborhood with all that ice.
My office in Suite 1B, 909 Barracks Street, was right below my apartment, Suite 2B. The landlady only recently started calling them suites instead of apartments in an attempt to dress up the place. The two-storey building at the corner of Barracks and Dauphine Streets was in better shape than most of the buildings in that portion of the lower Quarter, its wrought-iron lacework balcony wrapping around the building’s corner overlooked Cabrini Playground.
The interior walls had been removed from my office, except for the bathroom. A small kitchen occupied the far portion of the wide room. I had an oversized sofa against the wall next to the door and a large desk, which I’d bought at an estate sale. Like me, it was a little beat up, but served its purpose. For some reason most of the people who sat in the two chairs in front of my desk chose the one on the right, as did Alice Grey. I dropped the paper and my sunglasses on my desk and went around to the captain’s chair I’d got at the same estate sale.
“So,” I said after taking out my fountain pen and note pad, “your uncle was murdered?”
“He was a cab driver for Yellow Cab. Four months ago he stopped to pick up two young men on a street called Rampart, according to his log, and was taking them to a street called Gentilly. His cab was found by your park named after John James Audubon. He was slumped on the seat with a bullet in his head.”
She put her elbow up on the desk, chin in palm again. “Is that park near the street called Gentilly?”
“Not even close. I guess the killers just dumped the car there.”
“Is it a bad area?”
“Audubon Park? Just the opposite. It’s uptown, lots of mansions, universities and the zoo.”
She nodded.
“He wrote his fares were ‘young men’ in his log book?”
She got up and went to one of the windows facing the playground and started toying with the Venetian blinds. “The police,” she said over her shoulder, “should have all this information.”
“You talked to the police?”
“No.” She looked over at the sofa then moved to me, circling the desk and climbing into my lap as I turned to her. Now this happened to me a lot. That’s why I’d moved my desk away from the wall to give myself room for this. Yeah. Right. I’d moved my desk from the back wall to cover a gouge in the hardwood floor.
She gave me a long stare, bent forward and brushed her lips across mine, both our eyes open, watching each other. She grinned, closed her eyes and gave me a good, lingering kiss. Her tongue touched mine and my dick throbbed. The weight of her breasts pressed against me and the kiss continued. When she pulled back, we were both breathing heavily. She took my hand and led me to the sofa. I had to interrupt the action to fetch a little rubberized protection from a desk drawer. I went to close the Venetian blinds and Alice called out, “Leave them open.”
She lay on the sofa and said, “Strip for me, baby.” Which is something I would n
ormally ask a woman, but I’m half-French and half-Spanish, with too many male hormones to argue with a pretty woman who wanted me naked. No, I did not dance around, put on a show. But I didn’t rush either. I tried to act cool although I was simmering. My dick was up like a flag-pole and just as hard and she licked her lips when she saw it.
“My turn,” she said, getting up. “Unzip me.”
I unzipped the back of her dress, sat and watched. She put on quite a show, wiggling out of her dress, moving to the windows to undo her bra. She dropped it, just as she’d dropped her dress, turned and came back. Her breasts were C-cup, with small nipples, nice and pointed already, and light pink areolae. She stepped out of her high-heels, put her right foot up on the sofa and undid her right stocking.
“Be a good boy and pull it down for me, honey.”
I was staring at those breasts as I obliged, trailing my fingers down her long, smooth leg. The left leg was next and, with the front of her panties right in my face, I kissed her silky crotch, feeling her pubic hair beneath.
She dropped the garter belt, put her hands behind her head, arching her back. I reached up and lightly traced my fingers up to her breasts, caressing them, rolling my index fingers around her nipples. I drew my hands to her panties and pushed them down slowly, kissing her stomach, belly button. Her bush was soft and a darker shade of red.
She shoved me back, stepped out of her panties and went down on her knees. She kissed my thighs on her way to my dick. Her tongue flicked its tip and it throbbed in response. She kissed her way down to my balls, kissed each and licked her way back up to the tip.
Miss Alice Grey pulled the hair away from her face with one hand, grabbed my dick with the other and sank her mouth on it. I felt her tongue moving back and forth as her head worked up and down.
Jesus Christ! I pumped back, fucked her mouth for a full minute, before she got up, sat on the sofa, turned and wrapped those incredibly long legs around me. I stared at her open pussy, moist already. I kissed her inner thighs, kissed her silky bush, kissed her thighs again as she writhed, slowly grinding her hips in anticipation.
My tongue brushed her pussy lips and she gasped. I licked and her grinding turned to gyrating. I worked at it and she responded, bucking me, gasping, making mewing sounds, then crying louder.
“What … are … you … humming?”
I pulled away, said, “The French national anthem. Makes my tongue vibrate better.” I kissed her pussy. “You know we Frenchmen invented this manoeuvre.”
Between gasps, she manage to giggle. “You … may have … invented … the French kiss. But the Indians … discovered eating pussy.” Her hips gyrated in anticipation.
I pulled back. “Indians? Which tribe? Cherokee? Sioux? Was it the Mohicans, before they got wiped out?”
She laughed. “India – Indians.”
“Really?” I pretended to be thinking about it.
She yanked my hair, bringing my face back to her crotch, grumbling, “Put your tongue to better use.”
I did and continued until she bucked wildly, her legs squeezing my head, actually hurting my ears. She came and continued bucking.
“Rubber!” She panted.
I donned one and she reached down, pulled my dick to her pussy and I sank into her. She cried louder, let me pump her three times before she got into the rhythm and we moved in unison, her pussy milking me. I stopped, pressing my dick as far in as possible, then began the plunging again.
This woman knew how to fuck, knew how to squeeze the pleasure and held nothing back.
“More,” she cried. “More. More!”
“That’s all there is.”
She gasped, raised me high. Like riding a bucking bronco. I came in long spurts, jamming my dick into her until we both collapsed. I took the rubber to the bathroom, came back and climbed next to her. She was a hugger and it was nice. Very nice.
So I got to know Alice Grey in a biblical sense. Lying next to her after, the ceiling fans cooling our sweaty bodies, I wondered what that phrase meant exactly – “in a biblical sense”. I supposed it’s in the Bible. The nuns in grammar school never mentioned it, neither did the brothers at Holy Cross High School. I made a mental note to check out the King James version I had somewhere around the office. I remembered there was a lot of “begots” in the Bible, like Abraham begot Joshua and Socrates begot Hercules. Maybe, when they did it and there was no baby, since they didn’t beget anything, they simply knew each other “in a biblical sense”. Anyway, that’s how my mind works after sex. An old girlfriend used to get up and start cleaning the place, dusting, running the vacuum, a ball of energy after sex.
After freshening up in the bathroom, Alice took her hair brush across the room to the windows facing Barracks Street. I was still on the sofa. She stood there, brushing her hair, her fine ass facing me.
She waved at someone outside. “I’ve interrupted a sporting event,” she said.
“Baseball or football?” The boys were out in Cabrini Playground, as usual.
“Football. Kid just made a home run. The other boys are watching me.”
“Not much of a sports fan are you?”
“What?”
“A home run in football?”
She turned and brought that fine body back. “Only sport I know much about is the sport of screwing.”
I watched her dress. Not as much fun. I pulled on my jockeys and pants before heading back to my desk. I didn’t want to mention money at that precise moment, but I needed to know how to get a hold of my new client.
“I’ll get a hold of you,” she said and waltzed out.
On my way to police headquarters later, I thought about that oversized sofa, which sure came in handy. It was a Monlezun, an extra-wide davenport, special made in Sioux City, Iowa. Best of the best, or so I’ve been told. I’d gotten it a few months back when a tenant from one of the rear apartments beat feet and the landlady asked if I could help move some of his stuff out for a new tenant. She said I could have any of the furniture. That’s also where I got the two chairs in front of my desk.
I really didn’t expect Detective-Lieutenant Frenchy Capdeville to be in, but he was and waved me into his office as I entered the Detective Bureau.
“What’s up, pretty baby?” he said as he fired up a cigarette. There was already one simmering in the ashtray atop his grey metal, government-issue desk. I remained in the doorway of his small office. He held up the evening paper and said, “I’m reading about a black widow.”
“Spider?” He knew I hated spiders.
“No, not like your black widow.” He chuckled and started a coughing fit. “I’m talkin’ … about a … woman.” The coughing took over and I waited for him to recover.
“My” black widow crawled across my office floor one afternoon while Frenchy was visiting. Black witch was just strolling along, big as life. I grabbed my revolver but Frenchy beat me to it, stepping on it and telling me. “You can’t shoot a spider with a .357 magnum.”
“Wanna bet?” I’d meant it.
He laughed then and now, holding up the paper. “This black widow’s a redhead. Killed her husband, a bank president husband up in Canada and absconded with a million dollars.” He started coughing again.
Redhead? Naw. What were the chances?
Frenchy was a sergeant when I first met him, my rookie year at the Third Precinct, what they teasingly call the French Quarter police. That was a good eight years and one world war ago. By the time I got back from Europe, he was a lieutenant and I had a purple heart, a silver star and a scar from the German sniper who almost took me out at Monte Cassino.
“A redhead sent me,” I said when he’d finished coughing. “About her uncle, a Yellow Cab driver found in Audubon Park four months ago. Signal thirty.” NOPD lingo for a homicide.
Frenchy, who looked too much like Zorro, with his curly black hair, pencil-thin moustache and flat Cajun nose, bobbed his thick eyebrows at me and said, “Cab driver?”
I gave him the l
ow-down on Alice Grey’s story. He listened patiently, sucking on his cig.
“First,” he said when I stuck my head outside for a breath of semi-fresh air, “there’s no dead cab driver. It’s not something we’d miss around here. And second, how many times I gotta tell you? You’re a private investigator, not a detective. You handle adultery cases, we solve murders.” He gave me that smart-ass grin.
“Sam Spade solved murders, Marlowe and Mike Hammer too.”
“Fiction. This is real life, my boy.”
“Yeah.” Like I forgot.
“Then again,” he said, “methinks your new client’s been weaving a little fiction your way.”
Weaving, like a spider, right?
The evening paper had more about the hurricane, how we should build levees along the lakefront and the outfall canals, like the Mississippi River levee. Hell, why not? Give people something to do around here. They’d need more drainage pumps, that’s for sure. Most of Metairie in Jefferson Parish was still under water.
The headline was actually about India, describing it as a killing ground. Apparently vicious fighting had broken out between Hindus and Moslems over the last week, particularly in the Punjab borderland between India and Pakistan. Over 100,000 dead. Religious strife. I remember reading about the Thirty Years War, Catholics versus Protestants in Europe. Don’t remember how many, but a lotta Christians died there. Maybe I should get a set of encyclopedias.
I checked out the black widow story. The Canadian woman was believed to be in the US now, Las Vegas or Reno, according to the paper. It described her as a redhead, thirty-nine years old, who went by several names – Elizabeth Evans, Edie Evans, Ellie Evans. Alice Grey might be my client’s real name, but she wasn’t pushing forty. Then again, you never knew.
I looked at the Monlezun and had to grin.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 10 Page 39