by Julia Reed
When I arrived, it was eleven o’clock; the Garden District Security officers were there along with a couple of officers from the Sixth District police station. In my office I noticed that the huge tote bag containing various notebooks and folders was missing, and the contents dumped on the floor. The deep rectangular tote, bearing the lavender logo of my good friend Mish, a Manhattan jeweler, was an ironic carrying case for a pile of earrings and rings and bracelets and pearls, along with my laptop, and two twenty-six-inch flat screens. A bigger flat screen, far too unwieldy for the Mish bag, had been removed from the sunroom and left in front of the French doors the thief had departed through.
When a man named Dufossat, the lead detective on what was now officially a case, arrived, I excitedly pointed at the abandoned TV, which had already been dusted for fingerprints, along with the window the culprit had pried open and the counter he had climbed over to get inside. Fingerprints and a footprint were clearly visible but Dufossat was not nearly so impressed as I: “This ain’t CSI, lady.” Disheartened, I remembered that New Orleans, at this stage of the recovery, was still without a working crime lab. He took down a list of the stolen stuff and left with a promise to be in touch, but not before warning me that the laptop, which has little resale value, was probably already in a Dumpster.
It would have been easy to blame the whole damn thing on Eddie. One of the many, many items on his punch list that had never been punched was the installation of a security system. He had “a guy,” he kept telling me, a wireless genius who would hook up everything from the burglar alarm and the doorbell to our sound system and computer network. This was the January before the storm—I was not yet on to the dangerously consistent inadequacies of Eddie’s “guys” and, anyway, who was I to question a wireless genius? By March, when we moved a host of boxes into the finished parlors and there was still no progress on the security front, I started getting a little jittery. “Don’t worry, he’s coming,” Eddie told me, referring to the wireless genius. “He’s just really busy.” Naturally, I assumed that the delay was due to his superior talent—clearly, he was swamped with huge jobs hooking up vital systems for sensitive clients, and we, understandably, were last on his list. Then Eddie told me his genius was a high school math teacher. “But he’s a really smart guy.”
In April, we had three appointments but they were all cancelled at the last minute. In May, I got worried when Elizabeth told me a math teacher at Lizzy’s school, the same one that employed the genius, had recently been fired over some transgression the school refused to name.
In retrospect, of course, I cannot fathom why I didn’t say, “Eddie, every security system under the sun is wireless. We don’t need a genius”—especially not one who, in my imagination, had morphed into a child molester or worse. But I did not say that or anything remotely like it. We’d been at Elizabeth’s for months, there was still no move-in date in sight, and Eddie was increasingly AWOL. At this point an alarm was the least of my problems.
But all that changed on the morning of January 18. John and Vasser and I were each in a frenzy of activity, making appointments with security companies, color-Xeroxing photos of my jewelry (the thing about serious jewelry is that you usually wear it to the kind of parties where your photograph is taken), making lists of pawnshops to visit.
Three days later we had a brand-new wireless security system complete with every conceivable bell and whistle, the installation of which had been almost as simple as writing the check, and an illustrated list of the missing jewelry along with the serial numbers of the TV and laptop. Vasser and I spent an entire day dropping it off, in the rain, at the dozens of pawnshops on our list, an unproductive and wholly depressing enterprise (there is nothing so grim as watching desperate people try to get a pitiful amount of money for everything from wedding rings to chainsaws), but we did deliver several to the sixth district headquarters, where someone, in turn, sent it to Crime Stoppers. A week later, a photo of my wrist sporting a particularly graphic gold bracelet appeared in the newspaper and was flashed on all four local news stations with information about the break-in. I was in New York, meeting with my editor about our now-delayed manuscript, when Dufossat called to tell me he had a tip. Ecstatic, I asked him what it was, but he said the fax from the Crime Stoppers office was too hard to read, he’d have them resend it and call me right back.
This thrilling news was followed by eleven days of radio silence. I called Dufossat ten times a day and emailed him at least as many times. I could not fathom how we’d gone from “I’ll call you in a few minutes” to no communication whatsoever—until I got an email from him explaining he’d had to take time off to rest up for the busy Mardi Gras week ahead. When I called him back I actually managed to contain myself. “What,” I asked, “happened to the tip from Crime Stoppers?” Oh that, he said, and explained that they had never re-faxed it. “GODDAMN IT, DUFOSSAT,” I screamed, silently, to myself, “GO GET THE GODDAMN THING.” Out loud, I asked him to please go get it. He did, but after almost two weeks, the hot tip—a girl in a bar had heard a guy she knew talking about a Garden District “jewelry heist,” she even knew his address—was stone cold. Dusfossat told me when he went to check on the house it had been vacated. “NO KIDDING, YOU EFFING LUNATIC,” I screamed silently again, but at this point I was just entertaining myself. Clearly there was no point in saying anything to Dufossat, out loud or otherwise. My only solace was the note I’d received from the house’s former owner, Phinizy Percy: “I just wanted to let you know of my deep compassion for you. Let us pray that these despicable criminals are apprehended, and soon!”
By this time, I had resigned myself to rewriting the whole book, but now I wanted my jewelry back. We hired a private detective who was very big but mostly bluster. I went to Houston for a family friend’s birthday and spent a day perusing the seemingly endless number of pawnshops there. Nothing, anywhere, turned up, and my perfunctory emails to Dufossat were met with feeble responses or none at all. In late spring the city’s body count was back up, and the loss of my computer and the jewelry I could never afford to replace was hardly of paramount importance.
Then, six months later, I got an email from my friend Mish with a link to an eBay page featuring the earrings he’d made for me as a wedding present. He wouldn’t be offended if I were selling them, he said politely, but he’d heard I’d been robbed and he thought perhaps someone else might have put them up for sale. I was amazed at the kismet: his boyfriend had been browsing the site and happened to see them almost the second they were offered by a dealer in Metairie, ten minutes away on the interstate. The dealer’s name was Anton Feine, from Anton’s Fine Jewelry, an establishment that had not come up in Vasser’s and my pawnshop search, but when I pulled up outside the building it was clear what kind of operation Anton was running—there were more bars on the windows and doors than in most jails and two doors to be buzzed through before being allowed inside. Stupidly, I had called first. When I walked in, the prissy Anton, heavily bedecked in gold with a head of very badly dyed brown hair, was nervously flitting around while his sister, who looked like a gangster’s moll, did all the talking. I couldn’t see the earrings unless I paid for them, she said; further I’d have to leave the store until the police, whom I had called, arrived. I had no intention of doing any such thing and noted several conspicuous gaps in Anton’s many display cases where items had been sold—or hidden—recently enough that they hadn’t yet been replaced. When the Jefferson Parish deputy arrived, he took the earrings as “evidence” and gave me the number of a detective, Sergeant Martin Dunn, in the “pawnshop department.” When I called Dunn from the car, he explained that the law required all pawnshop owners to take down the driver’s license information of everybody they purchased items from and to provide a complete inventory of the stuff. Anton had reported the earrings, along with: a platinum and diamond circle pin that had been my mother’s; a platinum and sapphire straight line bracelet that had been my grandmother’s—and my thirtieth birthd
ay present; the antique gold cuff bracelet, the one circulated on the news that had been a gift from John after a particularly festive Rib Room lunch together; a sapphire, diamond, and ruby brooch in the shape of a butterfly; two pairs of gold hoops, and, finally, the diamond engagement earrings. It wasn’t everything but it was a lot, and I was thrilled at the prospect of getting it back. But then Detective Dunn gave me the bad news: the law also states that pawnshop owners are not required to report who they sell their wares to or even keep track—they were only required to return the stuff they still possessed. Anton, of course, was already claiming that he’d sold every other piece and had no idea to whom. Further, even if I managed to find some of the pieces myself, the new owners were not required to give them back, unlike what happens when you buy, say, a stolen car. All I could figure was that there must be one hell of a pawnshop lobby in Baton Rouge.
Compared to Orleans Parish, Jefferson Parish, which for years was run by the iron hand of the late Sheriff Harry Lee, a Chinese-American country music singer with a penchant for straight talk and a merciless attitude toward the criminal element, was a model of efficiency. Within the week, Detective Dunn had called me to say the earrings had been photographed and logged and that I could come pick them up. He was on Anton’s case, he said, but there was nothing he could really force him to do. Then he showed me the black-and-white Xeroxed copy of the driver’s license belonging to Anton’s seller, a twenty-year-old black male with dreadlocks, a tattoo of a cross on the bridge of his nose, and indecipherable words tattooed on each cheek. The likelihood of his having legal access to almost a hundred thousand dollars worth of estate jewelry was nil and Anton surely would have known that the second he laid eyes on him. Even more disturbingly, I came to find out he has a handful of steady clients, including some “nice” Garden District ladies I know—and who also have to know perfectly well that they’re buying hot goods.
Under prodding from the good Detective Dunn, Anton finally coughed up the butterfly brooch to keep me at bay, and because there is no recourse against him in the criminal courts, John filed a civil suit against him, though he was so cagy it took weeks to serve the papers. The seller (who may or not be the actual thief) is currently in jail for another crime and 1 am trying to figure out how to get to him to ask him where he might have sold the remaining stuff. I still haven’t gotten around to replacing the TV in the kitchen, but as you can see, I did buy a new computer—on which I rewrote the manuscript—along with a backup hard drive, which I now use daily. Henry, who has grown into a fine, fine dog, continues to lick the face of everyone who comes in the door, though happily no one else has arrived through the kitchen window.
Acknowledgments
EVEN THOUGH I have lived off and (mostly) on in New Orleans for seventeen years, there were plenty of gaps in my knowledge about the place, and the following books provided invaluable background material; New Orleans Yesterday and Today, A Guide to the City, by John C. Chase, Walter G. Cowan, Charles L. Dufour, O.K. LeBlanc, and John Wilds; New Orleans, a Compass American Guide by Bethany Bultman; The Romantic New Orleanians, by Robert Tallant; and The Booklover’s Guide to New Orleans, by Susan Larson. Other books that provided background information and/or inspiration were: The Most Southern Place on Earth, by James C. Cobb, an excellent—and exhaustive—history of the Mississippi Delta where I grew up; John James Audubon, The Makings of an American, the wonderful biography by Richard Rhodes; and Library of America’s Writings and Drawings of John James Audubon.
My assistant, Vasser Howorth, answered countless irritating research queries, transcribed all my interviews, and generally tried to keep the chaos in my office—and my head—from getting the best of me. She came to work for me three months after the storm with a wide-ranging portfolio, and has fulfilled all her duties, from running a fundraiser to looking after Henry, with good humor and aplomb. In ways too numerous to list, she made finishing this book possible.
As always, I am deeply grateful for the unwavering support and expert guidance of Jon Meacham, Michael Boodro, and Jason Epstein. Dr. Kenneth Holditch is a bottomless well of knowledge pertaining to all things literary and Southern, and is always gracious with his help. Keith Meacham was insightful and generous with her feedback, and is an even more insightful and generous friend. Peter Patout was instrumental in nurturing my love for New Orleans in the first place and offered up a constant stream of helpful tidbits during the writing of this book. Charles Modica supplied me with endless amounts of caffeine and just enough conversation (to keep me from going crazy) during my long weeks alone in Seaside. For kindnesses large and small I also want to thank Ken Smith, Ken Wells, and Egan Seward.
I owe a huge debt to my agent, Amanda Urban, whose consummate good judgment and wise counsel cannot be overstated. I couldn’t ask for a better champion than my editor, Lee Boudreaux, who is as smart and funny as she is patient and kind. She was an utter joy to work with, and I appreciate her spot-on advice as well as her compassion and friendship more than I can express. I also owe a great deal to her assistant, the astute Abigail Holstein, who (sweetly) whipped me into shape when I needed it most.
My parents are extraordinary people who have given me far more than sustenance and support, though in that they have been unstinting.
Finally, my husband, John, to whom this book is dedicated, not only served as a painstaking copy editor and fact checker, he is the reason the House on First Street is home.
About the Author
Julia Reed grew up in Greenville, Mississippi. She is a contributing editor at Vogue and Newsweek, and the author of the essay collection Queen of the Turtle Derby. She lives in New Orleans.
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ALSO BY JULIA REED
Queen of the Turtle Derby and
Other Southern Phenomena
Ham Biscuits, Hostess Gowns,
and Other Southern Specialties:
An Entertaining Life (with Recipes)
Credits
Jacket design by Allison Saltzman
Jacket Art © Ruth Marten
Copyright
THE HOUSE ON FIRST STREET. Copyright © 2008 by Julia Reed. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Mobipocket Reader May 2008 ISBN 978-0-06-169307-6
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Table of Contents
Epigraph
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4
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6
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10
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Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books by Julia Reed
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher