by Julie Smith
Bet Uncle Dominic is kissing her butt now, I thought. So that’s who tipped her off to my investigation.
“Met your friend Miss Ivonne,” I said, since we were having a family reunion. “Place where Eva Pierce used to strip.”
“How is Ivonne?” Lily asked with a tight smile. “I set her up with that club. I’ve never been in it, of course.” Her frail shoulders shuddered.
Ditto, I thought. Miss Ivonne probably called her, too.
“Look, I won’t beat around the bush,” Lily Lamont said, brushing toast crumbs from her fingertips. “I want you to call off your investigation into Eva Pierce’s death. The killer is probably in Timbuktu by now. Questioning all of these people is silly.”
“But I know who did it. A guy with blue hair and beard.”
“Have you ever seen him?” Her enormous hazel eyes studied me slyly over the gold rim of an ornate teacup.
“No, but he used to come to the open mike at the Dragon’s Den all the time to read his lousy perms.”
Baldie winced. Then a shit-eating grin spread across his face. Why the hell would he care about Blue Beard’s poems?
Unless he wrote them.
“Do you have children, lieutenant?” Lily’s voice was filling with church choirs.
“Three. A boy at De la Salle, a girl at Mount Carmel, and another girl starting out at Loyola University next year.” That was why I moonlighted—to pay all those tuitions. The older girl worked at a pizza parlor after school to save up for Loyola. Her dad, you see, was a New Orleans cop.
“And wouldn’t you do anything to help your children?”
“Anything short of—”
“Eva Pierce was a horrible influence on my son.” Lily swayed like a cobra as she mouthed the words in a slow, woozy monotone. “She turned him against me. You should read the venomous words about me she inspired him to pen. She was just using him.”
“Maybe he liked being used,” I said, locking eyes with Pogo’s mother. “Maybe it’s all he’s ever known.”
“Here, this is for you.” Her long indigo fingernail flicked an ivory envelope across the coffee table. “It’s a check for $25,000. Eva’s mother hired you to investigate. I’m hiring you to stop the investigation.” She arched a penciled eyebrow. “Simple.”
I stood up. “Can I used the john?”
“Lucas will show you the way.”
I studied the rolls of skin on the back of Baldie’s head as I followed him down a long corridor, trying to picture him with blue hair and beard. The smartest thugs know the best disguise is something attention-getting but dispensable. And who would testify against Lily and this hitman? My uncle? Miss Ivonne? Trust-fund Pogo? The whole Quarter owed Lily Lamont a favor.
In the bathroom I tore open the envelope with an Egyptian scarab embossed on the flap: 25,000 smackers, made out to cash. I folded the check into my wallet. It was five times what Mrs. Pierce was paying me. I splashed water on my face and took a long look in the mirror. The jowly, unshaven mug of my daddy stared back at me, the face of three generations of Italian shopkeepers who worked like hell and never managed to get ahead. What, you crazy or something? they screamed at me. You want your daughter to graduate from college? Take the damn dough and run, Vinnie.
I picked up the plush blue bath towel folded next to the mirror. Underneath was a syringe, a packet of white powder, and a silver iced-tea spoon.
I rang Mrs. Pierce as soon as I’d escaped the junkie fog in Pirate’s Alley.
“Look, lady,” I told her, “the investigation is off. Your daughter just got mixed up with the wrong crowd, that’s all. Blue Beard is probably unidentifiable by now. He could be anywhere. I can’t, in good conscience, waste any more of your money.” All true.
Mrs. Pierce started sobbing and then hung up. She’d been right. It wasn’t sex or drugs that got her daughter killed, but poetry. Me, I was never so glad to drive home to Terrytown, to the wife and life that I’ve got.
I didn’t make it back to the Dragon’s Den until one sweltering August night later that year. The air smelled of river sludge and the façade was shimmering in the heat like a mirage made of shadows and memories. The old Chinese guy was still hanging over his tub of vegetables in the patio. He shot me a thumbs-up as I mounted the stairs, mopping my face with a handkerchief.
Every step was an effort.
“Look what the cat drug in,” Miss Ping said, setting me up with my Seven and Seven.
“Where’s that sign-up sheet for the open mike?” I asked her. She pushed a clipboard toward me. With a shaky hand I scrawled Vinnie P., third name on the list. I couldn’t believe what I was about to do. It seemed like jerking off in public. So I sat on the balcony to calm myself down and go over what I’d written.
“Hey, honey, what you doing in the den with the TV off?” my wife had asked me. “You sick?”
“Writing a report.” I’d swatted her away.
What I’d been writing for two weeks wasn’t exactly a report but some buried feelings—poems, I guess you’d call them. I couldn’t sleep or concentrate, and had even thought of going to Saturday confession, but then nixed that dumb-cluck idea. I couldn’t tell the Father who would marry my kids and christen my grandbabies that I, a cop, was the accessory to a murder. Those poets that I’d listen to during the open mike, something like this was eating them up, too. Their girlfriends left them or their parents never loved them or they felt lonely and empty—I don’t know—they just needed to spill their guts and be heard. By anyone. Just heard. They didn’t tell it straight but in a symbolic way, you know, twisting it up enough so that it wouldn’t be only their story but everybody’s. So that’s what I’d been writing: what happened to me investigating Eva Pierce’s murder. And with Janice.
Where it all went wrong and how I wound up feeling the way I did, as old, corrupt, and dirty as this French Quarter.
I had to get it off my chest.
Pogo stuck his face into the balcony, eyes popping out at the sight of me.
“She’s a vile bitch,” he hissed, biting his lip. Then he waved me inside.
Only about ten of the usual suspects were sprawled around the room. The first two poets went on forever. I was so wound up I couldn’t concentrate on a word they said.
Finally, the clown with the leather cowboy hat held up the clipboard.
“And here, ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “is a rising star in the Quarter poetry scene. A man of the law who will grace us with his debut reading. He came to bust us, and now he’s one of us. Put your hands together to welcome Lieutenant Girlfriend.”
Everyone clapped like crazy as I stepped onto the stage feeling like a horse’s ass. Pogo was jumping up and down, waving his arms like a cheerleader. I shuffled through the pages to get them in order. My voice caught as I started to speak.
Miss Ping plinked an ice cube into a glass. The air conditioner coughed.
Then a huge gray rat scurried across the room, stopped in the middle of the floor to take in the audience, and disappeared under the stage I was standing on.
Everyone jumped to their feet.
“Okay, you assholes, sit down,” I said, adjusting the mike. “That rat has to wait its turn just like all us other poets. This is called ‘Janice and Eva Swap Lipsticks in the Changing Room to Hell.’ I bet you lunkheads aren’t going to get it, but here goes.”
ALL I COULD DO WAS CRY
BY KALAMU YA SALAAM
Lower Ninth Ward
Even though her mouth was empty, Rita savored the crunchy flavor of animal cookies, old-time animal cookies made with real vanilla. Her son laid out in a casket and here she was thinking about snacks. But that was because animal cookies were Sammy’s favorite.
When he was small, Rita would gallop the shapes up Sammy’s little round stomach, moving the crisply baked dough in bounding leaps. Usually the miniature animals ended up between Sammy’s laughing lips.
His fat cheeks dimpled with a grin, Sammy would squirm in Rita’s lap, turn and
clap his small hands in glee as he chomped down on the golden tan figures. Sometimes he’d cry out in mock pain when a bear would take a really hard jump and end up bounding over his head into Rita’s mouth. Animal crackers and funerals.
Now little Gloria, twenty-three-and-a-half months old, sat in Rita’s lap. Tyronne sat silently next to her. Gloria squirmed briefly. Without really hearing a word he said, Rita patiently endured Pastor White droning on and on. Out of the corner of her eye, Rita stole a glance at Sammy’s corpse laying in the coffin. Absorbing that awful stillness, Rita’s instinct took over: She protectively hugged Gloria, bowed her dark face into the well-oiled coiffure of her daughter’s carefully cornrowed hair, and planted a silent kiss deep between the black, thick, kinky rows.
Rita was beginning to doubt life was worth living, worth sacrificing and saving … for what, to have children who get shot down? What sense did it make to be a mother and outlive your children?
Two deacons moved forward and flanked the coffin. Like passing through a room where the television is on but no one is watching and the sound is off, Rita was aware the men were there to lower the coffin lid, but she really paid no attention to the dark-suited sentinels. Rita had long ago said goodbye and there was no need to drag this out. The elder of the church-appointed guardians efficiently closed the blue velvet–trimmed coffin lid. Someone two rows to the rear of Rita uttered a soft but audible, “Oh, my Lord.” The lamentation cut clearly through the reverent silence that had settled on the small congregation. This was the end of the wake but only the beginning of a very long and sleepless night.
Friends and acquaintances shuffled slowly, very slowly, out of the sanctuary into the small vestibule where people lined up to script their condolences in one of Sammy’s school notebooks that had been set out on a podium. There was a pencil sitting in the middle of the book. A few people had signed in ballpoint pen, but most signatures (some were written in large block letters, others in an indecipherable cursive) were scripted with the pencil’s soft lead and seemed to fade immediately upon writing.
Rita looked up. No, that couldn’t be, she thought to herself. That couldn’t be Paul “Snowflake” Moore darkening the sanctity of her sorrow. Rita instantly shifted the sleeping weight of Gloria from her shoulder. Wordlessly, she handed Gloria to Tyronne. Tyronne had already seen Snowflake and knew a confrontation was in the making. In one seamless motion, as soon as Tyronne received Gloria into his large hands, he spun on his heels and handed Gloria to the first older woman he saw. By the time he turned back to Rita, she was already in Snowflake’s face.
“Get out of here!” Rita hissed between tightly clenched teeth. “You the—”
“I just come to pay my respects. I ain’t come to cause no trouble.”
“You don’t respect nobody.”
By now the packed anteroom crackled with dread. The woman who had taken Gloria scurried back into the sanctuary; just a few months ago she had witnessed a fight break out at a funeral.
Tyronne rushed behind Rita, who was oblivious to her backup towering above her. With the arrogance of power, Snowflake stoically stood his ground and impassively peered at Rita and Tyronne. The tension increased.
“Get out!” Rita screamed, and pushed Snowflake hard in his chest. Snowflake glowered. She was fortunate that this was a wake, that Sammy was her son and might even be related to him, fortunate that a lot of people were standing there watching, but most of all, fortunate that none of Snowflake’s usual retinue was surrounding him, because then Snowflake would have been bound, at the very least, to slap her down. As it was, Snowflake’s hand instinctively went to his .38 derringer, snug but ready in the waist-pocket of his vest.
The confrontation escalated so fast the onlookers barely had time to breathe in and out; a few of the younger men were in fact holding their breath. Surely Snowflake wasn’t going to accept being pushed around without doing something in retaliation.
Tyronne quickly stepped between the antagonists. “She’s upset, you understand. Please, leave her be. We appreciate your concern but it would be better, man, if you would leave.” Tyronne stared unflinchingly into the depths of Snowflake’s emotionless eyes. Snowflake stared back and pulled an empty hand out of his vest pocket.
Everybody except Tyronne, Snowflake, and Rita prematurely relaxed and let out a relieved breath.
“I said get out!” Rita screamed a second time. The deacon who had closed the coffin lid ran to the phone to dial 911. Half the people who had been standing around now quickly moved out, some exiting the front door, others retreating back into the sanctuary. Rita reached around Tyronne in another attempt to shove Snowflake toward the door.
The rest happened so quickly only Tyronne and Snowflake saw it all. Tyronne took a swift half-step to his right to cut off Rita, who was charging around him. He leaned backward briefly, pushing against her with his shoulders.
Snowflake’s left hand leapt with lizard rapidity to knock away Rita’s outstretched right arm, and in the process was detained by Tyronne’s right hand that gripped with a viselike strength and was surprisingly unyielding.
An onlooker moaned, “Oh, Lordy, no!”
“Get out!” Rita’s vehement command overpowered the onlooker’s exclamation.
Snowflake’s right hand had already come up with his gun at the ready. Tyronne stepped in so close to Snowflake that if he pulled the trigger there was no telling what direction the slug would travel: upward into the ceiling, upward into Tyronne’s chest, or upward into Snowflake’s jaw.
“He got a gun,” some young male voice blurted at the same time Rita was reaching to get around Tyronne so she could sink her nails into Snowflake’s smoothly groomed face. Snowflake pushed his right forearm against Tyronne’s chest, attempting to back him up and simultaneously free his left arm, which Tyronne held secure at the wrist. As is often the case in impromptu street fights, the peacemaker in the middle was the person in the most danger.
“Young man, please. Has there not been enough shooting and death?” the pastor asked in a calm but insistent voice, as he rushed through trying to get to where Rita, Tyronne, and Snowflake were locked in a tug-of-war.
Rita spit at Snowflake. She missed his face but a glob stuck to the top of his left shoulder. Some older lady fainted but no one paid her any mind because she was too far away from the focal point of the fight. The minister smothered Rita in his protective arms.
“Can’t you see this woman is grieving over her son?”
When Reverend White grabbed Rita, Tyronne bear-hugged Snowflake and spoke slowly and carefully into Snowflake’s ear: “I’m begging you, man. Please don’t shoot my wife. She’s so upset she ain’t got no idea what she’s doing. You can understand her only son is dead and she thinks you had something to do with it. You got the gun. If you got to shoot somebody, shoot me. But please don’t shoot my wife.”
Snowflake’s gun was pinned between the two men.
“Will everyone please either leave out the front door or join me in the sanctuary where we will pray for sister Rita?” Reverend White picked Rita up and dragged her out of immediate danger. Supporting her with firm grips under her arms, two ushers grabbed the woman who had briefly fainted and spirited her out into the welcome chill of the night air.
The whole scene had been acted out so quickly, it seemed like a blur of simultaneous motion. Within ninety- five seconds, Snowflake and Tyronne were alone in the forlorn vestibule.
“Thank you,” Tyronne said as he stepped back half a step, reached into his lapel pocket, pulled out a white handkerchief, and gently dabbed Rita’s spittle off Snowflake’s cashmere jacket. “Thank you.”
It sounded so, so insane, but that was all Tyronne could think to say to the man standing in the receiving area of the church holding a loaded gun gleaming beneath the chandelier lights. From inside the sanctuary, the Twenty-third Psalm seeped through the swinging doors. Reverend White led and the assembled congregation responded with a tremulous sincerity.
; “… Yeh, though I walk through …”
“Yeah, what up?”
Rita almost dropped the phone. It was Snowflake. She quietly hung up. So it was just like she thought. Snowflake was behind it all.
Here it was, two weeks after the funeral, and only now had Rita finally been able to summon the strength to clean out Sammy’s closet.
When she pulled the closet door open, Sammy’s scent assaulted her. She buckled at the knees and had to grab the door frame with one hand and push hard against the knob with the other just to keep from falling. It was like Sammy was hiding in the closet and had come charging out when she opened it.
Rita started to close the closet door. She couldn’t stand any more. Her intruding into Sammy’s life had already gotten him killed. She blacked out momentarily.
When she recovered consciousness, she was stooped on one knee inside the closet door. This was as close to a breakdown as she had allowed herself to come.
Fueling her weakness was the indescribable mantle of guilt that refused to lift. She had taken the money out of Sammy’s backpack because she wanted to talk him into stopping. He did. His death stopped everything. And the money, well, four thousand dollars barely paid for the funeral.
Rita heard some sound behind her, turned to look over her shoulder, and saw Tyronne standing in the doorway, his brow deeply furrowed.
“I’m all right. I was just going to clean out his closet and …” How do you explain to a man that a mother knows how her child smells, that you could identify his clothes blindfolded, that opening this closet door was like finding the secret place your child’s death had not yet visited, the place where the child was still overpoweringly present? How does a mother tell a stepfather that the smell of dirty clothes piled on a closet floor knocked you to your knees?
“If you want me to help, I’ll be in the front room,” Tyronne said softly. Then, after waiting a few moments and hearing no response to his offer, he turned and left the room even more quietly than he had entered.