Darker Than Noir

by Riley, R. Thomas; Zoot, Campbell; Chandler, Randy; Kauwe, Faith

  She eyeballed me from underneath long, sooty lashes. “You know where to find me, Detective. But tonight’s going to be crazy, being Halloween.”

  Stella sashayed down the steps toward her new Packard Coupe, the same vehicle that picked up Charity the night before. She was a knockout who could not only stop traffic but could make it go backward. Her smart-mouth hadn’t done much for me, but the way she walked sure as hell did.

  The earthy tones from a distant saxophone floated on a chilly zephyr. In contrast, I listened to the staccato of Stella’s high heels attacking the sidewalk and grow faint with each deliberate step, mocking me. A plume of smoke curled from her Coupe’s exhaust and I watched the vehicle disappear into the haze of twilight through the bloom of its tailpipe.

  Night had fallen as quick as the closure of Venetian blinds into thick shadows. The moon was a golden glob of honey camouflaged just slightly in a cradle of cirrus. The breeze off the river caressed my face like a woman’s hands. I breathed deep and tasted the fragrance of the city. It was a night made for, maybe not romance, but for contact of some kind.

  The distant whine of a police siren brought me back to earth. Damned fool asking her for a date, I thought and decided to have a little blast from a flask in the back of a desk drawer before I did the paperwork on Stella’s interview. She might run the girls through their paces at the High Hat, but she was no tramp that would do a guy for postage stamps, or take her clothes off when she was down on her luck and then keep taking them off to pay for drugs, or booze, or support some yo-yo like Charity had apparently done. Stella was a sliver under my skin, like something stuck to my shoe, something I couldn’t shake off, but I brought my attention back to the homicide case. If you let your mind drift too far, somebody will steal your wallet.

  I loosened my tie. My mother once told me people who were uncomfortable with anything tight around the neck must have been hanged in a previous incarnation. She’d had a sack full of proverbs picked up from a voodoo nanny back in her youth, and some especially enticing tales surrounding Halloween. I credited my discomfort not to legends, but to the image of Stella strutting down the street wearing nothing but her high heels.

  With the help of the Irish penicillin inside my flask, I muddled through the bureaucratic paperwork. Then I slung my jacket over my arm, put on my snap-brimmed fedora and left the station. Although my stomach was getting sore at me, there was an uncomfortable undertow to my thoughts.

  I drove by the High Hat wondering if I really wanted to see Stella’s metamorphosis from her sweetheart street-wear into some Halloween getup which surely included tasseled pasties and a slip of material over her garden of delight. The backbeat of a drum and laughter emanated from the place—two earthy, fundamental sounds of New Orleans. Across the street, a cone of sallow light from a streetlamp illuminated two figures standing in a doorway. I could almost smell the scent of warm bodies and cheap cologne.

  I hung a Camel from my lip and reached for my lighter. I held the shiny object, turning it over in my hand, rubbing my thumb against its smooth surfaces and thought how Stella’s skin might feel. I lit up. The tip flared red in the gloom as I inhaled deeply, letting the nicotine wander soothingly through my lungs. Red—the color of danger, I absently considered. I exhaled slowly, wishing the escaping smoke would expunge a few of my demons along with it.

  My thoughts leapfrogged from Stella to Charity, to the corpse lying in the morgue with the new mouth carved into his neck like a homemade Halloween mask, to the violent nature of the human species.

  I looked at the couple in the doorway one last time. I was overwhelmed with emptiness, tortured by loneliness and an urgent hunger, realizing the laws of lust are as immutable as the laws of nature. Then I flipped the cigarette out the window, dropped the clutch and drove away, letting life move on for everyone else.

  On the river, a lone horn wailed a single note, deep and mournful. And the tug of my third vice was stronger than ever.

  ***

  The phone rang at 6AM cutting through the cottony layers of sleep like a cat’s claw. I bolted upright in bed, rocked into wakefulness, tripping over a bad dream. My eyelids snapped open like a runaway shade. Their sandpapery feel told me I could have used more beddy-bye.

  A call this early meant only one thing—somebody else had bought the farm. “What?” I said into the phone after the seventh ring with the voice of a mean-tempered zombie.

  At 8AM, I was at the crime scene. A street cop started a rambling dialogue of the situation.

  “Do me a favor, Sarge. Pretend I’m your wife and skip the foreplay,” I told him.

  “Here it is. Another slug was opened up at the throat last night, cut from ear to ear, just like the last one.”

  I nodded and entered the room where the fresh kill rested, but not peacefully. The body lay splayed on the kitchen floor with a gaping, funhouse grin under his chin. His dead skin was the color of rain-soaked newspaper, his life blood spilled like oil through a blown gasket. “Trick or treat,” I said to no one in particular. I decided to revisit those which had a connection to former homicides, providing my next opportunity to pursue Stella Barton.

  At 10AM, I parked my jalopy in front of a marble statue of a Confederate soldier covered with pigeon drippings and black and orange party streamers. The remnants of All Hallows Eve didn’t lighten my mood nor put a melody in my heart.

  A group of kids strolled in my direction with Halloween masks still perched on their heads. When they saw me, they quieted and parted to go around me like a stream around a boulder. It was more than subservience to an adult. I felt sure they sensed something better left undisturbed about me.

  I reflected on the thin line between life and death, between these innocents and the scene I’d witnessed only hours before. It’s a flimsy mask that divides beauty and ugliness, between innocence and a bloodbath. But this wasn’t the time to dwell on how quickly the barrier could be penetrated. I had other fish to fry. I was on my way to find Stella.

  A wisp of steam rose from wet pavement reminding me of things that wouldn’t stay buried in a city with its portentous quality of something otherworldly, something carried on the breeze from its nooks and crannies, and the above-ground cemeteries. But there was something passionate too. Consider the woman I hadn’t been able to get out of my mind—a woman who ran bimbos through their paces at night, but by day, resided behind a protective wall covered in creeping vines.

  Beyond a wrought-iron gate nestled a courtyard draped with wisteria vines, dappled with shadows from an ancient live oak which dripped tattered banners of dusty Spanish moss. A wind-chime hung on a branch. It tinkled in a faint breeze. Ghost music. “A serenade for the dead,” the superstitious contingent of the city would have said.

  New Orleans was a strange and intoxicating place like the exotic mix of humanity which inhabited it. The elegant decadence of Halloween and Mardi Gras hung in the air like overripe fruit to accompany those feelings of otherworldliness and passion—all of it reminders of why I stayed in this mosquito-laden Parrish.

  I climbed the balcony to Stella’s bungalow. Her door was painted China red. I knocked. The metal peephole opened. A deep-set, greenish-gray eye the color of fine Burmese jade studied my face. I listened to locks disengage and a chain slide free.

  When the door opened, Stella looked at me with a lazy smile. My subconscious could smell the nicotine on her lips which called to me like a naked woman riding a wild stallion.

  “It is Sunday, Detective Peters, but couldn’t you have called first?”

  She wore an elegant, silver-blue silk robe which sculpted her body into an amazing thing. She might as well have been wrapped in a package that read, Danger: Handle with Care. Her business, after all, was to elicit the very response I was having.

  I tried not to stare. “Are you alone?”

  “Isn’t everyone?”

  “You look like a million bucks,” I told her.

  Small upturns lit the corners of her mouth. “In Confe
derate money maybe, this time of day.”

  A sense of humor. I took her place in. A mahogany encased radio sat in a corner of the bungalow’s living room. Big band music for lovers was playing. It wasn’t the Blues, but it wasn’t bad.

  Stella turned the radio down, then said, “You know, detective, you could see more of me than this for a buck a drink at the club.”

  Her long dark hair was pulled back from her face with a soft silver ribbon which complimented her silk robe. She looked more beautiful than the photo of the dead movie star that graced the cover of Silver Screen laying on an end table. “Don’t get me wrong, doll. I’m not looking to see you that way. I mean . . .”

  “Relax. I guess I’d rather have you show up than a couple of thugs with bent noses and eyes like bloodhounds jamming through my doorway,” Stella said. “Sit down and I’ll pour you a cup of coffee, unless you would prefer bourbon and branch water to soothe whatever ails you.”

  “No thanks. I’m a Scotch guy.”

  I sat on one end of the living room sofa. Stella returned from the kitchen with two steaming cups of java and sat on the opposite end, a fresh cig lodged between her first and second fingers. The sight made me hunger for a Camel, but I merely took a sip from the cup and watched the languid smoke rise alongside her face in a long gray-white ribbon forming a hypnotic sway that pleaded for company.

  “Can you tell me where Charity has been since you picked her up at the station?”

  “Yes. She stayed with me that night, and then with a friend of mine last night. I told her not to come back to work for a few days and I called her several times to make sure she was all right. Why?”

  “There was another homicide last night, not far from where Charity and her chum, Lasky, were shacked up. This guy’s throat was slashed from ear to ear with a straight razor, same MO as Lasky. If your friend can confirm Charity’s whereabouts, she might be in the clear.”

  Stella appeared encouraged by this turn of events. “I’m sure Janie will say Charity and she were together the entire time. So this clears her?”

  “Let’s just say whoever did the deed last night got their cutting lessons at the same school.”

  She took a deep drag on her cigarette and exhaled slowly, seductively. “That is very good news. Not about another stiff, I mean the fact that it had nothing to do with Charity.”

  My eyes traced their way up Stella’s long neck to her deep icy pools that sparkled through a landscape of greenish-gray Lifesavers. “There is another connection. The type of character this stiff happened to be.”

  “What, you mean another loser, working over his old lady, someone who deserved what he got?”

  “That’s pretty close.”

  “The fewer like them, the better.” She placed her smoke in an ashtray and scooted back on the sofa, raised her arms, liberated the ribbon and ran her hands through her hair as if to comb out whatever thoughts lodged in her pretty head.

  “Let me tell you a story,” Stella said. “I had a cute little trick working for me a couple of years back. She was taken in by this sweet-talking customer. I told her he was no good. Told her she could do better, but she was headstrong, up from the bayous. Hadn’t been around much. Can you guess what happened to her?”

  “I have a pretty good idea.”

  “He ended up torturing and killing her. Left her battered body in the river.” Stella was a volcano ready to blow. And still, she was beautiful. “Thanks to a magnificent job by your cronies at NOPD, they never caught him.”

  “Take it easy, Stella. I sympathize.”

  Stella observed me closely. “Sorry, flat fo . . . Bill. I guess that’s a little harsh. Your job isn’t easy, scraping victims off the walls and trying to find their killers, but what has your case got to do with Charity now?”

  “Nothing. It has to do with you.”

  My final word hung in the air between us. Stella’s hands dropped from her black mane. “Look. I don’t know what your angle is, but I’m just a hardworking gal looking out for my girls,” she said with an edge that could have cut a diamond. “Whatever you’re trying to buy, Peters, I’m not selling. I’m not looking to cause problems or to get cozy with a cop. Get the picture?”

  “In Technicolor, but I’ve been looking for you, Stella, in the worst way. In fact, you’re exactly the person I’ve been looking for.”

  “What makes me so special?”

  I looked at the stubborn set of her jaw and dove straight to the heart of the matter. “Now get this news flash and hang on to it. I found something at the crime scene this morning. A tube of lipstick. I believe I could make a strong case about who it belongs to.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “There have been several murders around town in recent months. Some cut, some shot. There’s been a similarity to all of them—men who abuse or otherwise take advantage of those weaker than themselves. Pretty, isn’t it? Just the kind of man you profess to despise, guys who you’d as soon cut up as look at, bottom-feeders who deserve what they get.”

  Stella jumped to her feet nearly upending the coffee table. “Now wait a minute, buster, you can’t play me for a sucker and hang this rap on me. I can find alibis a mile long and two miles wide concerning my whereabouts on almost any night you pick.”

  “Maybe, but I’m guessing your fingerprints are all over that little gold tube, and there’s the cigarette butt with your brand of war paint.”

  Stella’s glorious cream complexion had turned ashen. “You really think I would kill because I have a low opinion of men who use women? If I wanted to do some joker in, I’d poison the son of a bitch. You can’t mean you’d let me take the fall…wait a minute.” She dashed to the far side of the room and picked up her purse.

  I stood and walked up behind her. I was pretty sure she didn’t carry a heater inside her bag, but you can never be absolutely sure of anything when dealing with a cornered female on the defensive.

  “When did you take it?” she asked angrily. “When I used the powder room at the station or when you escorted me out? I wasn’t carved out of a wet mouse turd yesterday, ya know.”

  I took her by the shoulders and turned her toward me. “Simmer down, doll face. Don’t pop your cork.”

  “You were nice yesterday. Why the tough-guy act now?” She held her wrists out toward me. “Are you going to cuff me? I bet you like to play with handcuffs?”

  “Don’t worry, sister. I won’t tell if you won’t.” I took her hands in mine. “I’m not planning to give the evidence to the lab boys.”

  “Did you pull that little stunt because you believe I’m a murderess?” Her tear ducts were on the verge of springing a leak.

  “If I pulled a stunt, it’s because I like the way you think. And even more, I like the way you look. We’re not on opposite sides here.” I moved closer. The front of her robe brushed against my jacket. “I admire your swagger, your shape, the cut of your jib, let’s say.”

  “I don’t understand. What about the murders?”

  “That’s where I come in. I think you will appreciate me all the more when I tell you last night’s murder was necessary to give Charity an alibi.”

  Now Stella looked at me with curiosity.

  “Here’s how it goes. I’ve established an alibi for one of your little chickens. Last night’s execution should keep the NOPD from dropping on the High Hat like a bunch of dive-bombing pelicans. And I’m not going to implicate you.”

  “I still don’t get your angle. Why the phony evidence?”

  “I know you’re the woman who can replace one of my three vices with something more wholesome. I’m not someone who smacks women around. I hate those little punks as much as you do. I don’t want the city infested by any more cockroaches than I can help so I do something about them when I can. I have more names of morgue material on a list I keep in my noggin. I have a photographic memory, Stell. That’s an important thing to remember. Never keep anything that will tie you to a crime. Protecting you and your girls
from further accusations isn’t too high a price to pay, is it? Nobody knows I’m following up with you and nobody needs to. We’re on the same team, you and me.”

  “So you swat away the bad guys like they were mosquitoes?”

  “Like the scum they are.”

  “A rogue cop just looking out for my best interests as long as I play ball, huh? Use me like a puppet to achieve your own ends?”

  “Looking out for our best interests. The only justice in this world is what you create yourself, chere.”

  “Maybe you expect me to take a knee and kiss your ring or something.”

  “Not exactly what I had in mind.”

  Stella looked at me in a new light. “You’re a very strange man.”

  “One of a kind. Aren’t you the lucky one?”

  “They say there’s something in a man’s eyes that always gives away his vices. I think I can see it now.”

  “My vices have rather large appetites.”

  She now knew the power I could wield. The truth is something I would share only with a woman worth having and holding on to. What we knew could land both of our asses in water hot enough to boil crawfish.

  She looked trapped, but I wanted her to feel the thrill of a new relationship enriched with an enticing secret. The pad of my thumb brushed the corner of her mouth. “Relax. It’ll be good, you’ll see. We will be a rhapsody. Moonlight and magnolias.”

  Stella’s face reflected resignation as if suddenly realizing she’d struck a deal with the devil. Her gray-green, unreadable eyes returned to me. Her voice deepened and took on the quality of a caress. “I get it.”

  I reached around and gave her bottom a squeeze. Then I lit two Camels with my trusty Zippo. I was glad I had her, but she had me also, not that anyone would believe her. She was quite a prize, but others would see no more than an uptown stripper who fell for a flat foot investigating a homicide.

  Stella’s radio was playing Bennie Goodman’s rendition of Begin the Beguine. It seemed like the right song for the two of us to start a relationship on. I thought of women as various kinds of jam, each unique and flavorful. But Stella was like rich honey spread on toast over creamy peanut butter. While her mind would always be a work in progress, I could possess her body which might help on nights when a little scotch, and Billie Holliday seemed too little to replace my urge to play a different kind of rhapsody, to make the city a safer place for women.