Freddie’s already staring between her legs as he slips off the black high heel.
“I’m sorry,” I say as I look up at the woman’s blue eyes. “Do I know you?”
“We met last week.” She smiles as Freddie slips a red high heel on her left foot. Dropping her left leg, she raises her right knee, exposing even more of her panties as her dress rises.
I look at her face again and it hits me. She’s the woman who just moved into my apartment building. She has a husband, little guy, looks like a jockey.
She must see the recognition in my eyes and extends her right hand and says, “Evelyn Bates.”
“Lucien Caye.” I shake her soft hand and she holds mine for an extra second before letting go. I wonder if she knows I’m already sporting a helluva hard-on.
She stands and walks back to the front of the store in the red heels, her hips moving nice and languidly. Returning, she’s shaking her head. She moves around Freddie and I have to step back out of the way. I catch a whiff of Chanel.
She sits with her hands on her knees, which are pressed together, nice and proper now. Leaning forward, she reaches down for the shoes and the top of her plunging neckline falls open to give us a nice long look at her round breasts inside her lacy, low-cut bra.
She says she can’t decide. Freddie tells her he doesn’t get off until five. Evelyn says she might come back. He helps her out of the red high heels and into her own heels.
Rising, she extends her hand to me and we shake again.
“See ’ya around, Sport.” With that, she pivots in her toes and walks away.
As she reaches the door, a burly man in a rumpled brown suit enters and glares at her on his way in. Freddie introduces the man as his boss.
“Come on,” Freddie says. “Let’s get a bite.” He grabs his hat on our way out.
“No extended lunch break,” his boss calls out as we reach the door.
Stepping out on narrow Royal Street, I look up and down but don’t spot Evelyn.
“She’ll be back around five,” Freddie tells me as he leads the way down Royal toward Canal Street. He puts on his hat. The bright sun is hot on my head, but I never wear hats. Don’t like to mess up my hair.
Freddie is exactly my age and height. Thirty. Six feet. Only he’s balding already and soft, with a little pot belly. He’s grown a pencil-thin moustache since we got out of the army. I’m clean-shaven, as always. My half-Spanish, half-Mediterranean French complexion is a couple shades darker than freckle-faced Freddie with his Irish red hair.
“Who was that? Etienne?” I ask.
“His name’s Ernie Zumiga. He figured Etienne sounds like a shop you’d find in the French Quarter.”
As we approach Iberville Street, I feel a slight breeze from the river and smell crawfish boiling. One of the little restaurants along here has its crawfish boiler directly beneath its exhaust fan. My stomach grumbles.
“Zumiga doesn’t like women.”
“You mean he’s . . .”
“Naw. He’s no fruit. Just doesn’t like waiting on women, who can be picky as hell with shoes.” Freddie chuckles. “In the wrong business. Now that last woman. She’ll come back around five. Probably without panties.”
We turn on Iberville and make for the rear entrance of D. H. Holmes Department Store.
“No panties?” I ask as we cross the street in front of a yellow cab who punches his horn because we made him take his lazy foot off the accelerator.
“No panties,” Freddie repeats. “Happens all the time.”
We enter the store and head for the Holmes Café. It’s much cooler inside. Typically, Freddie doesn’t bother lowering his voice as he explains how he’s got it down to an art, looking up skirts. Even the longer skirts. The women don’t think he can see, so they throw their legs all over the place and his face is right there at knee level.
“If you noticed, I push my stool up close so they have to lift their knees extra high.”
We sit at a table next to the windows and I can’t help wonder why I’m having lunch with this lunatic. OK, so he saved my life. That was four years ago, May ’44, on that dusty hill outside Monte Cassino. Freddie kept me from bleeding to death after a goddamn Nazi with a Mauser slammed a round into my left arm, knocking me on my ass.
I order a chicken salad sandwich and coffee. So does Freddie. He doesn’t have to tell me how good the chicken salad with the poppy seed dressing is here, but he does anyway.
“The Babe died today,” I tell Freddie when he finally pauses to catch his breath.
“Babe Ruth?”
As if there’s another fuckin’ Babe.
“Heard it on the radio.”
Our waiter drops off our iced teas.
“Man-o-man. The Sultan of Swat.” Freddie shakes his head. “Seven hundred, fourteen home runs. Nobody’ll ever break that record.”
I don’t remind him records are made to be broken. I just look at his comical face and smile. Son-of-a-bitch saved my ass with bullets ricocheting around us, when no one else, including the medics, would come forward to help me. Buying an occasional lunch for this man, who decided New Orleans was warmer than his home town of Moose River, Maine, is the least I could do.
“What’s so funny?” Freddie asks.
“You.”
“What? Lookin’ up skirts. You didn’t look at Evelyn’s lily-white panties? You didn’t see her pubic hair right through the fabric?”
Thankfully our waiter arrives with our sandwiches.
Freddie takes a quick bite and talks with his mouth full. “Maybe I’ll get lucky. Screw her in the back room.”
The chicken salad is nice and cool, the poppy seed dressing sweet and tangy.
“I screwed a woman in the back room last week. We got a couch back there.”
“Did Porky watch?”
“Naw. Zumiga leaves at four. On the dot.”
I wait until I finish what’s in my mouth before telling Freddie, in a low voice, “Evelyn’s got a husband.”
“Good. I don’t wanna marry her.” Freddie’s voice echoes. “Just screw her.”
A blue-haired woman with a black hat that looks like a tarantula, gives us a haughty look as she throws down her money and leaves the table next to us.
“Freddie,” I say as I pick up my sandwich.
“Yeah?” He wipes his mouth with his shirt sleeve.
“Glad you asked me to lunch.” I grin at him. “I can always use a laugh.” “Well,” Freddie says. “You wanna come by the store ’round five to see what happens?”
I shake my head. Hell, my hard-on is just going away now.
Sitting in my high-back chair, behind the beat-up mahogany desk I bought at a used furniture store on Magazine Street (it would be an antique if I’d bought it in the Quarter), I look through the open Venetian blinds of my office windows at the commotion going on outside.
Two mockingbirds are dive-bombing a hapless alley cat across the street in Cabrini Playground. The cat races to this side of the street to hide under my prewar, gray DeSoto, parked against the curb. A mockingbird lands on my car’s roof and squawks so loud I hear it through the windows.
I flip the switch to “high” on the small, black revolving fan, perched on the edge of my desk and turn back to my typewriter to continue pecking out my report on the Choppel Case. The sooner it’s done, the sooner I get paid. My old Corona is one of those big models and works well, except the “e” gets stuck once in a while.
Living in the low-rent, lower end of the French Quarter has its advantages, besides being in the center of town. Clients can easily find Barracks Street and the parking’s no problem. So what if most of the buildings are decaying.
I hear footsteps in the hall outside my smoky-glass door. My electric clock reads four-thirty. Is it a pantyless Evelyn on her way back to Etienne’s? The outer door of my building opens and I see the old Englishman who lives across the hall from my upstairs apartment. He walks leisurely up the sidewalk next to my windows. Turning
my way, he waves.
It’s hard to concentrate on typing my report while I’m thinking of Evelyn Bates and her round, kissable cleavage. I adjust my dick and continue typing. No, I’m not going to knock on Evelyn’s door, casual-like. Just passing, I could say and wondering how your breasts are hanging, if they need adjusting or re-alignment. I used to be a bra fitter, I’d tell her. She’d invite me in, of course and I’d slip my arm around her waist, pull her close and start nibbling her neck . . .
Damn! Now I’m getting another hard-on.
I’ll never get this fuckin’ report done!
As I’m shaving the next morning, my phone rings. It’s Freddie.
“Can you meet me for a cup o’ Joe?” he asks.
“What’s up?”
“I’ll tell you over coffee.” There’s a catch in his voice.
“She came back?”
“You want details, meet me at Morning Call. Half hour.”
I climb into my light blue seersucker suit and new brown-and-white Florsheims, matching brown belt of course. Stepping into the bright, morning, I’m taken aback. Something’s wrong. The humidity is gone. It isn’t cool, but the insufferable combination of heat and steamy air is gone. Guess some sort of autumn front has breezed through the city.
I walk down to Decatur Street, past Creole brick cottages with their upstairs dormers and pastel colored houses with louvered shutters covering their windows and doorways. I turn right on Decatur before reaching the French Market where I smell the fresh fruit and vegetables – bell peppers, garlic, onions, apples and oranges.
Freddie is unshaven, in a wrinkled white shirt and equally wrinkled black pants. Seated at the long, marble counter of the coffee stand, he’s looking at his reflection in the mirror that runs the length of the counter. There’s a bruise on his jaw and his left eye is swollen and will be a regular black eye by this afternoon.
A waiter, clad in all white, including a ridiculous white, paper hat similar to the cunt caps we wore in the army, asks my pleasure before I sit.
“Two coffees.”
“Beignets?”
I tap Freddie on the shoulder. “You want beignets?”
Freddie shakes his head so we pass on the French pastries – donuts actually with no holes, generously sprinkled with powdered sugar. The place reeks of sugar as several customers pound on tin shakers, inundating their beignets with even more sugar.
As I sit on the stool next to Freddie, our waiter returns with our coffees in thick, off-white cups and matching saucers. I pour a teaspoon of sugar into the strong café-au-lait mixture and take a sip.
“So, what’s up?” I ask.
Freddie starts laughing and can’t stop. Pointing at himself in the mirror, he laughs so hard he almost falls off his stool. I drink most of my coffee before he recovers and tells me, between chuckles how Evelyn Bates came back, but still had on her panties. It didn’t take Freddie long to get her out of them and into the back room where they went at it, “like rabbits.”
An elderly couple at the closest table are listening, the man grinning, the woman’s eyes glaring at Freddie as if he just pinched her ass.
Taking my friend’s shoulder I tell him to lower his voice.
He leans close and says, “Just before I get a nut, her goddamn husband comes in.” Freddie rolls his eyes. “He musta been following her.”
Freddie notices his coffee, dumps two spoons of sugar in it and takes a hit. I finished mine and wave to the waiter for another.
“Short bastard’s like a bantam rooster,” Freddie goes on. “He tore into me with those little, pointy fists and there we are, shoe boxes falling all over the fuckin’ place, me with my pants around my ankles. I finally shoved him into the store room to get away. Only I ran into my damn boss, who was supposed be gone, and he fired me on the spot.”
The old couple gets up and the woman pulls her husband out the door.
Freddie rubs his jaw and speculates that Mr Bates might have been a boxer once.
“So what are you doing today?” Freddie asks as he picks up his cup.
“Have to see a lawyer. Get paid for a case.”
The waiter brings my second cup.
“He didn’t hit Evelyn, did he?”
“Nope. Just me.”
I wonder if she’s all right.
“Well, I’ll let you know when I get another job.” Freddie finishes his coffee and reaches into his pocket. I tell him it’s on me. He thanks me and says he’s on his way to pick up his last check from good ole generous Ernie Zumiga.
“Before you go looking for another job,” I tell him. “Take a shower and change.”
He laughs and walks out, rubbing his jaw.
Back on Barracks Street, I spot Evelyn and her husband standing in Cabrini Playground. She’s in a white dress, one of those loose-fitting cotton dresses New Orleans women wear to fend off the heat. Her husband, in a black tee-shirt and black pants, is a head shorter. His black hair is slicked back and he has a two day growth of beard on his face. He’s got his hands in his pockets as he digs the toe of his shoe into the grass. They’re talking.
They don’t notice me as I pass along the brick and wrought iron fence alongside the playground. I cross the street to our building, glancing over my shoulder to see they’re still talking.
I go over my report one last time, proofreading my typing. It’s only nine a.m., so I have plenty time before my one o’clock appointment with the attorney who hired me.
A good twenty minutes later a movement outside catches my eye. Evelyn and her husband come out of the playground and cross the street. With the sun behind her, I can see the outline of her body, the curves and the dark spot between her legs. When they reach my side of the street, I can almost see her nipples through the dress.
Evelyn looks in and waves at me.
I wave back, hesitantly.
The outer door opens and I see their shadows through my smoky-glass door. The husband continues toward the stairs. Evelyn taps on my door and opens it, leaning in to smile at me.
“Are you busy?”
“Nope.” I stand.
“I’ll only be a second,” she says as she steps in. She’s unbuttoned the top two buttons of her dress. Her cleavage, like a deep, inviting chasm seems to dare me to stare, to leer, to want to kiss . . .
I look up at Evelyn’s face. At least she isn’t beat up.
“How’s your friend?” she asks.
“He’ll live.”
She sighs and asks me to tell Freddie she’s sorry. Those penetrating, blue eyes stare at me for a long moment before she turns and leaves.
Three minutes later, I see her husband out on the sidewalk. A tool box in hand, he raises the hood of their black, ’47 Buick sedan, which is parked behind my DeSoto. Although only a two-door, the Buick’s much bigger and swankier with its wide, chrome grill. He starts working under the hood.
I finish my proofreading, deciding I need to re-type only three pages.
Putting a pot of coffee on the small stove in the tiny kitchen at the rear of my office, I go to work. It takes me nearly an hour and three cups of coffee before the report’s acceptable to me. I carefully file away the carbon copy and slip the original into a manila folder. Rechecking the invoice, I have to smile. Haven’t made this kind of money in a long time.
Finally, I get to sit back with the morning paper to check what’s new with the world. Today the big news is Truman calling the House Un-American Activities Committee more Un-American than anyone they’re investigating. Man’s got a point. I turn to the sport section to read about the Babe.
At eleven-thirty, I put away the paper, wash up and head out for lunch.
Just as I step out of my building, a black prowl car pulls up, along with a black and white marked police car, both stopping in the middle of Barracks Street. A squat man with stubby arms and a regretfully familiar face, jumps out of the passenger side of the prowl car and heads for Mr Bates.
Flashing his silver star-and-crescent
NOPD badge, Detective Jimmy Hays snarls, “You Billy Bates?”
“Yeah.” Billy pulls his head from under the hood.
Hays grabs Billy’s right arm as two uniformed officers I don’t know chip in to cuff my startled neighbor. Hays shoves Billy toward the prowl car. I hear someone behind me and Evelyn steps out.
“What’s happening?”
Hays notices me for the first time and freezes. I lift my left hand and wave slowly, my face remaining expressionless.
“You Mrs Bates?” Hays snaps.
Evelyn rushes forward, “What are you doing with my husband?”
The two uniforms move around Evelyn and take her by the elbows. She stiffens and asks again what’s going on.
“We’ll tell you at the precinct,” Hays says. Taking two steps toward me, he points a finger at my face and growls, “What the fuck are you doing here?”
I stick my tongue out at him. His partner, still sitting in the prowl car, starts laughing. He’s an old timer named Frank Lemon.
Hays takes another menacing step toward me, narrowing his dull gray eyes, as if that’ll scare me. “What were you just doing with the man’s wife?”
“Fuck you!”
Hays doesn’t take the bait. I’m braced and ready to drop him, as I did before when we were both in uniform, rookies right out of the academy, back before the war. He shot a dog that had knocked over the garbage can outside the Third Precinct Station. I decked him with one punch. Glass jaw.
A jack-o-lantern smile comes to the face as Hays says, “Your pal Freddie O’Hara should be over at the coroner’s office ’bout now.”
I feel a hollowness deep in my belly.
“And I’m the one who caught his killer.” Hays pulls on the lapels of his ill-fitting brown suit, backs into the prowl car and continues eye-fucking me as the cars pull away.
I drop off the Choppel report with my client’s secretary on my way to the morgue. Parking on South White Street, next to the gray, cement Criminal Courts Building, I walk up the steps of the building’s side entrance to the Coroner’s Office.
Immediately, I smell the putrid scents from the morgue downstairs – formaldehyde, ammonia, human waste. A large black man behind the counter looks up as I ask if any of the coroner’s investigators are in.
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