by H Hiller
“Do you still have my e-mail address?”
“Sure thing, if it's still cooter h at Yahoo.”
“That's it.” The girls did their usual snicker.
“You do know what cooter means, don't you?” Christen asked, using her very deepest coon-ass accent. While everyone knows the word for its sexual slang, I knew she was from a part of the state where the word is just another name for a turtle. My sister also compares me to a turtle when I draw into my own hard shell whenever she asks one of her occasional questions about my work after I left the Army.
“It means 'wise old man' ladies. Get your minds out of the gutter.”
FIFTEEN
I gave Tyshika a day to adjust to her new situation before going to interview her. I knew she would have made a half dozen self-incriminating statements had I followed her from the office and spoken to her the day before. I would have been happy to wrap the case up in three days and I was still prepared to see Tyshika convicted of the murder, but I was having a harder and harder time convincing myself of her involvement. Family, friends, and especially lovers are invariably the prime suspects as they usually have the best opportunity and often the most to gain by the death. Tyshika turned out to have everything to lose, but whether she knew that or not at the time of Biggie’s death remained a question.
I spotted the Navigator as it pulled away from the curb nearly a block away as I left the parking garage. I drove out of the Quarter on Orleans Avenue and turned onto Basin Street and then Claiborne Boulevard to get to westbound I-10. My tail remained a full block behind me until I entered the highway. They chose to try to hide in my passenger side blind spot as we headed west during the short drive to Biggie’s condo in Lakefront Towers.
Lakefront Towers had been built with a storm surge in mind and survived Katrina intact. It was built just barely inside the high flood walls adjoining an area known as The West End. This had been a casino and brothel haven ruled by the sheriff in Jefferson Parish not many years before my father joined NOPD. It was a far more family-friendly nightclub and restaurant getaway during my youth. The home where my sister and I grew up was about six blocks away from this condo building. The storm had forced the lake’s storm surge against the Seventeenth Street Canal flood walls until they had toppled and washed away everything but our memories.
My knock on the door surprised Tyshika, as the doorman should have announced my arrival. I had flashed my badge and marched right past him. Tyshika was surprised to see me, but she didn’t act in the least bit concerned that I might have come to arrest her. The look on her face was so sad that being arrested might have improved her day.
“Moving day?” The living room had a stack of open boxes in it but little seemed to have been packed.
“I thought so, but Biggie's lawyer says I can stay until the will gets settled,” she moped and flopped onto the oversized white leather sofa. She was a subdued version of the wildcat I had seen at the office. “If you want a beer or cold drink help yourself.”
“I'm good.” I sat in one of the low chairs opposite the sofa. There was one overstuffed chair between the two of us, which sat higher than the rest of the seating in the room and had to have been Biggie's throne. “What all did Logan tell you?”
“He says the car and this place are in the company’s name. He didn’t have my name on nothing.”
“So, what are your plans?”
Tyshika was especially unprepared for transforming from Biggie’s arm candy to self-sufficiency. Being a kept woman is a transportable skill, but Tyshika was presently a remora without a shark.
“I got none.” She fidgeted with her hands in her lap for a long time as the conversation faded into silence. “Logan says he would help me sue the kennel.”
I said nothing to this, but had to refrain from smiling at Jerry Washington’s apparent clairvoyance.
I broke the silence that had returned to the room. “Okay, I have to ask you something for the record, Tyshika.”
She looked at me, already formulating an answer. “Did you kill Biggie?”
“Hell, no. I would right now if he walked through that door, but I had nothing to do with this.”
“This?”
“You know, him getting killed and all.”
“You still think the dog did it all by itself?” I remembered how adamant she and the bodyguard had been on Friday about the dog needing killed. She looked at me for a long moment. I assumed she replayed the whole day through in her mind.
“No. Biggie was afraid of dogs but he and Taz was good together.”
“Was it your idea to dye the dog blue? Did you think it would be like giving him a real live blue dog?”
“I didn’t know the dog was blue.” The way she said it seemed honest. “I guess somebody might have thought that up, but it weren’t me.”
“Who do you think could have wanted Biggie dead bad enough to go to this much work?” Tyshika was reacting viscerally enough just then to make a pretty good snap judgment of the players she knew.
“Beats me. There’s plenty of people that be glad Biggie’s dead, but most of them would have just capped his ass.”
“This does seem both personal and impersonal. Someone wanted him to suffer, but not at their own hands.”
“I hope he still suffering. Bastard.”
“You mind if I look around a bit?”
She shrugged and waved her arms by way of permission. I wasn't sure what I expected to find. I really just wanted to see how someone like Biggie chose to live when he felt successful. The man had come from next to nothing, so it was interesting to look at what he considered to be the stuff of success. I remembered gawking at the opulence and bad taste of Saddam Hussein’s palaces when Baghdad was secured. The two men may have shared a decorator.
The first thing I noticed was that every wall seemed to have an original painting or signed lithograph of George Rodrique’s blue dog. There was a lithograph of an Absolut ad from years ago hanging over the bar. The art collection was worth more than the combined value of everything else here. The lithographs were commemorative or fund-raising pieces done in the last few years or, put another way, since Biggie had the money to buy them.
Every room also had a plasma screen television; the smallest was a twenty two inch one in the guest bathroom. Two rooms had been joined to form an adult play room, with a large pool table and a projection television with theater seating for a dozen people. The master bedroom had a king sized bed and way too many mirrored surfaces, but also a great view of the lake from its balcony. Everything was either painted white or upholstered in white, so only the varying textures and colors of flooring changed from one room to the next. What color there was in each room came from the artwork on the walls. It had a faintly dizzying effect as I made my way from room to room.
I checked out the master bathroom, with its oversized steam shower and twin vanities. I opened the drawer to one of the night stands by the king sized bed and was not in the least surprised to find an unmarked bottle of Cialis and enough lubes and condoms to last a lifetime, which it turns out they had. I picked up a nearly empty bottle of cologne in a cut glass bottle from among the half dozen identical bottles on a shelf in his walk-in closet. I smelled it, and was not impressed enough to buy a bottle. There was also the fear that wearing it would attract women like Tyshika. I did, though, keep hold of the cologne bottle as I walked back into the living room. Tyshika had not moved an inch. She was still trying to absorb all of this expensive view of the lake so she could carry it with her to her new life.
“Do you mind if I take this with me?” She looked at the bottle and then at me.
“Why? You gonna wear it?” She was able to laugh at the idea.
“I just want to try something with it.” I didn’t elaborate. If the dog responded to the cologne then the dog was not meant to attack anyone other than the guy wearing it. Also, whoever trained it had to know this particular cologne was the victim's favorite. All of this was making me understand
just how brutal of a death someone wanted Biggie to suffer, the absolute realization by Biggie at some point that he was doomed, and what a painful process of being chewed open and allowed to bleed to death had been. The dog attack was as cruel and efficient of a means of killing someone as I could imagine, short of using a chain saw.
“Knock yourself out. Anything else?”
“What can you tell me about your son being adopted by Amanda Rhodes?” It had been intended as a fairly routine question but Tyshika’s head snapped towards me in shock.
“Who told you about that?”
“You were there when Logan said Biggie had left the business to his son. I just followed up on where his son is now. So, what can you tell me?”
“Biggie and me agreed to keep it a secret when we signed the papers. Mister Logan and Mister Rhodes had it all worked out. They had a judge in Monroe handle it and Miss Amanda used her real name, not her made up one, so nobody knew it was her.”
“Why did you let them adopt your child?”
“Biggie and me was having a hard time making it after he got out of prison, and a kid was more than we could handle just then. I didn’t want to do it but I met with Miss Amanda and knew he’d be brought up with more chances and stuff if they had him. Besides that, it weren’t like Biggie was giving me no choice.”
No, I had to agree, her boyfriend had probably not opened the door to much in the way of a discussion once he made his mind up to let a rich white couple adopt his son. I just had to wonder how they had crossed paths and what Biggie’s real motive was.
“How did you meet the Rhodes couple?” I did not want to let her know I had already spoken with her son’s new mother.
“Biggie was looking for someone who could help get him into the record business. I guess Mister Rhodes was a big time music lawyer and offered to help him. Next thing I knew Biggie said we was letting them adopt our son and everything was going to be better from now on. I met Miss Amanda at that dog park on Melpomene with Parker and she was so nice to him and me, and she told me all the things she wanted to do for him.”
“And did things improve after the adoption?”
“Biggie was able to buy his studio a few months later so I guess it all worked out.”
“How do you feel about it all now?”
“How do you think I feel? My man’s dead because of some dog I bought him and a rich white woman’s got my son. I got nothing anymore,” she nearly hissed, but then lost steam and started to cry. I found some tissues in the bedroom and set the box on the coffee table beside her. I waited silently while she composed herself. I had not meant to peel the scab off any wounds but needed to try to figure out the connection between Biggie and Amanda as best I could.
“Have you had any contact with their family since the adoption?”
“None. Biggie dropped that lawyer guy as quick as he could after he got what he wanted and he’s used Logan for his legal stuff ever since. Have you seen my boy yet?”
I told her no, and tried to imply I might never do so, even though it was just a matter of time before I did spend time with him if Amanda and I actually started dating. Tyshika was in no condition for that sort of news. I thanked her and started for the door, but she gave me another strange look and I stopped with my hand on the door handle.
“You didn’t ask me about Biggie’s guns,” Tyshika said, with a faintly reproachful tone. I had the feeling that she had been saving this knowledge as some sort of bargaining chip and nobody was offering her any other deals in which to cash it.
“Okay, you have my attention. What about Biggie’s guns?” I had an image of maybe another couple of handguns and a rifle or two in his closet, all something I fully expected someone like Biggie to have in his possession. Tyshika likely knew where he had them stashed.
“They’re stored in a locker out by the Huey P,” she told me. “He makes everyone he signs a contract with to give him all their guns. He told them they had to give up being gangsters for real if they was going to work for him.”
“How many guns are we talking about?” I still couldn’t imagine it was very many.
“Biggie could’a started a war,” she assured me. “It’s a big locker and it was full the last time I saw it. That was over a year ago.”
That would be a lot of guns. My mandate with Chief Avery, however, was to avoid letting any of my investigations balloon out of control. Taking a murder that nobody cared about and turning it into the seizure of a massive arms cache, which would draw not only media attention but the involvement of Federal authorities, was exactly what I was not to do.
“I’ll tell you what, Tyshika,” I said and wrote down a telephone number on the back of one of my State Patrol business cards. “Call my boss at this number and tell him what you just told me. There may be a reward you can collect, and I know you could use the money.”
“You ain’t going to look at them?” she was perplexed at my apparent ambivalence.
“That’s somebody else’s circus and monkeys,” I shrugged, confusing her even more.
SIXTEEN
I had decided to interview Biggie’s bodyguard next and called to confirm he would be at the recording studio trying to get a grip on his new duties. I pulled out of the condo’s garage and headed to interview Bumper in Mid-City by way of the lakefront. I had to accept that the Navigator was going to be following in my wake for the time being. I didn’t think the occupants meant me any immediate harm, but I decided to test their driving skills.
The route I chose, taking Robert E. Lee Boulevard to Elysian Fields and then down Broad Street to BC Studios was all area I had patrolled as the flood waters had given way to people trying to come home. The route passed through the prosperous neighborhoods near the lake as well as the poorer parts of Mid-City which had yet to begin any substantial recovery. The floodwaters had been a great equalizer in what they damaged, but the rebuilding was a glaring example of the city’s long history of privilege and denial. The insurance companies had shamed themselves badly in Katrina’s aftermath, but in the end had managed to categorize almost the entirety of the city’s damage as being from floods they didn’t have to cover. Flood insurance was required on mortgaged properties; such as those at the lakefront, but many of the poorer people who had inherited houses with no mortgages didn’t have the money for insurance against something they never thought would happen. The front-running mayoral candidate's campaign pledge to demolish unrepaired homes would finish what the storm had begun. The city had not yet begun to realize that this policy threatened to permanently change its face and character.
Tony was the only person who truly understood how the utter devastation of my home town had actually made my transition from Iraq to New Orleans easier. He too felt that we had traded one place full of military checkpoints, dangerous neighborhoods, murders in the dead of night, and no apparent plan for dealing with any of it for yet another city dotted with barely habitable neighborhoods, military patrols, a crippling murder rate, and a massive rebuilding effort hamstrung by conflicting local interests and Federal bureaucracy. The cities also shared a similarity in the violence being perpetuated by angry young men who felt a gun was the best way to express their sense of disaffection. The continuing failure of the local and United States governments to create a coordinated recovery had created a pervasive feeling of distrust and betrayal among the weary residents of both Baghdad and New Orleans. The recovery was proving to be more devastating than the destruction itself. The PTSD I fully expected to suffer when I was released from the hospital had manifested itself as a depression and anger which was little different than the average Katrina survivor’s. These were the sentiments I voiced during my psychological exam that had raised red flags with the Commander of the State Patrol.
I expected to find Bumper Jackson behind the desk of the man who hired him to protect him with his life. I recognized Bumper from the crime scene, but also from the occasional photograph I had seen of Biggie in the paper and local magazine artic
les. He was always just out of focus a step or two in the background or off to the side. His shaved head made him look all the more like a human bullet. His mouth was framed with a neatly trimmed moustache and goatee. He would have made a human shield between Biggie and anyone approaching, and if ordered, he was probably able to twist the limbs clean off of anyone Biggie wanted him to hurt.
“Bumper?” I asked as I poked my head into the big office. The desks out front were occupied once again and the place looked like something close to business as usual.
“You’re that cop.” He barely glanced up from his desk.
“Which cop is that?”
“The one I talked to at Hard Rock. So, now you think Biggie was murdered.”
“That's me.” I entered the office and extended my right hand. “Detective Holland.”
Bumper stood up, ignored the hand, and motioned for me to follow him. He led the way to the VIP lounge located beyond the offices and the studio. He opened a massive three-door stainless beer cooler and handed me a bottle of Heineken. We moved to the sofas and sat across the room from each other, both with our feet on the glass coffee table between us. I guessed the beer was his way of testing my adherence to the State Patrol’s work rules.
“What was the chronology on the day Biggie died?”
“Chronology, huh? You’re testing my vocabulary?”
“Just trying not to insult your obvious intelligence.” Part of my mind was still working on his name. It was familiar to me from somewhere unrelated to what he was doing now. I intentionally took a large swig from the bottle of cold beer.
“Biggie and I were in the studio from about seven until we left for Hard Rock. Tyshika stormed in about two o’clock and wanted us leave for the kennel. Biggie was pissed and told her to just bring the damn dog from the kennel by herself. She got back around five o’clock.”