by Greg Herren
Synopsis
Former go-go boy turned detective Scotty Bradley is back!
When an old family friend apparently commits suicide from his French Quarter balcony, Scotty’s life accelerates from boring to exciting again in a nanosecond. Why would anyone want the old man dead, and what were they looking for in his ransacked apartment? It’s up to Scotty, Frank, his crazy family, and friends to get to the bottom of this bizarre mystery—and when an old, all-too-familiar face turns up, it’s not just Scotty’s life that’s in danger, but his heart.
Vieux Carré Voodoo
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Praise for the Scotty Bradley Series
“Fast-moving and entertaining, evoking the Quarter and its gay scene in a sweet, funny, action-packed way.”—New Orleans Times- Picayune
“Herren does a fine job of moving the story along, deftly juggling the murder investigation and the intricate relationships while maintaining several running subjects.”—Echo Magazine
“An entertaining read.”—OutSmart Magazine
“A pleasant addition to your beach bag.”—Bay Windows
“Greg Herren gives readers a tantalizing glimpse of New Orleans.” —Midwest Book Review
“Herren’s characters, dialogue and setting make the book seem absolutely real.”—The Houston Voice
“So much fun it should be thrown from Mardi Gras floats!”—New Orleans Times-Picayune
“Greg Herren just keeps getting better.”—Lambda Book Report
By The Author
The Scott Bradley Adventures
Bourbon Street Blues
Jackson Square Jazz
Mardi Gras Mambo
The Chanse MacLeod Mysteries
Murder in the Rue Dauphine
Murder in the Rue St. Ann
Murder in the Rue Chartres
Murder in the Rue Ursulines
Murder in the Garden District
AS EDITOR
Full Body Contact
Shadows of the Night
Upon a Midnight Clear
FRATSEX
Love, Bourbon Street (with Paul J. Willis)
Vieux Carré Voodoo
by
Greg Herren
2010
Vieux Carré Voodoo
© 2010 By Greg Herren. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 10: 1-60282-152-6E
ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-152-1E
This Electronic Book is published by
Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 249
Valley Falls, New York 12185
First Edition: May 2010
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Credits
Editor: Stacia Seaman
Production Design: Stacia Seaman
Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])
Acknowledgements
As hard as it is for me to believe, this is my twelfth novel.
There are a number of people to thank, as always with one of these—so I appreciate your patience.
First of all, I need to thank everyone who works with me at the NO/AIDS Task Force, and most especially Jean Redmann, Allison Vertovec, Diane Murray, and Larry Stillings (who never forgets the jalapenos). I work at a satellite office, the Community Awareness Network in the Marigny—and I need to thank my co-workers for putting up with me: Josh Fegley, Mark Drake, Ked Dixon, Tanner Menard, Martin Strickland, Kyle Morse, Jon Pennycuff, and Michael Robinson. Pity poor Tanner and Martin—they have to share an office with me.
My three graces and their spouses are certainly angels in human guise: Julie Smith and Lee Pryor, Patricia Brady and Michael Ledet, and Bev and Butch Marshall.
I want to especially thank Radclyffe, Stacia Seaman, and everyone at Bold Strokes Books for welcoming me, and my wacky Scotty, with open arms. I just hope you won’t be sorry.
The Compound is a wonderful home away from home, filled with warm loving people and lots of laughter: Becky Cochrane, Tom Wocken, Timothy J. Lambert, and of course the original Ninja Lesbians: Rhonda Rubin and Lindsay Smolensky.
Also worthy of mention are such gracious people as Richard Labonte, Anthony Bidulka, Michael Thomas Ford, William J. Mann, Philip Rafshoon, everyone at Murder by the Book in Houston, Mark Richards, John Messenger, Michael Carruth, John Angelico, Al and Harriet Campbell-Young, Thea Mars, Ellen Hart, Nevada Barr, Stephen Driscoll, Stuart Wamsley, Todd Perley, Famous Author Rob Byrnes, ’nathan Burgoine, Dan Smith, Jeffrey Ricker, Michael Wallenstein, David Puterbaugh, Steve Soucy, and so many others I don’t have enough room to name. But you know who you are.
And of course, my dear, wonderful Paul Willis, who makes every day an adventure and my life worth getting out of bed for.
Dedication
This is for
POPPY Z. BRITE
Thanks for always believing I could write about Scotty again, even when I didn’t.
“Don’t you just love these long rainy afternoons in New Orleans when an hour just isn’t an hour—but a little piece of eternity placed into your hands—and who knows what to do with it?”
—Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
“New Orleans can break your heart and wreck your liver.”
—Julie Smith, The Axeman’s Jazz
Preamble
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even pigeons and palmetto bugs are supposed, by some, to dream. New Orleans, not sane, stood by itself inside its levees, holding darkness within; it had stood there for almost three hundred years and might stand for three hundred more. Within, walls continued to tilt, bricks crumbled sloppily, floors were termite-chewed and doors sometimes shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of New Orleans, and whoever drank there, drank alone.
Yeah, right. People only drink alone in New Orleans by choice.
My name is Scotty Bradley, and I’m a private dick who works the mean streets of New Orleans. I right wrongs. I help the downtrodden find justice. I punish the guilty. I ferret out crime, and protect the innocent while punishing the guilty. Criminals tremble when they hear my name, and get out of town if they know what’s good for them. Dame Justice may be blind, but I see all too clearly. The helpless come to me when everyone else has failed, when hope is gone, and the night seems darkest. I’ve got a mean right hook and never back down from a fight. I drink my martinis shaken, not stirred—because I like my gin like miscreants who cross my path, bruised and a little battered. I am on a never-ending quest for truth, justice, and preserving the American way of life. I rescue dreams and bring nightmares to an end. Don’t call me a hero, because any one of you would do the same if given the chance. There is no case too small for me to handle, and there is no case so large that it is intimidating. I’ve taken down a corrupt political machine, and would gladly do it again tomorrow. I’ve found lost treasures and stared down the Russian mob. I’ve stared evil in the face until evil blinked and backed away in mortal terror. I have—
Yeah, right. And I have a bridge across the Mississippi for sale, if you’re interested.
My name is really Milton Bradley, like the board game company—my parents have a slightly twisted sense of humor. Scotty is my middle name, but i
t’s what everyone calls me. I really am a private eye—bonded, and licensed by the state of Louisiana. I was born and raised in New Orleans and have lived here my entire life except for two misspent years at Vanderbilt University up in Nashville. I live on Decatur Street with my partner, Frank Sobieski. We’re business partners, and life partners. We met on a case a couple of years back, and it was pretty much love at first sight. Frank is one of the most gorgeous men I’ve ever seen outside of a porn movie. He’s in his early forties, about six foot two, and when he had hair, it was blond. Now that he’s balding, he shaves it down to a little buzz. He has the most hypnotic blue eyes, a strong chin, and a scar on the right side of his face. He also started lifting weights in his twenties—and there’s not an ounce of fat on his hugely muscled, amazingly defined body.
He also has one of the most amazing butts I’ve ever laid eyes on. Woof!
Well, okay—it was lust at first sight. Love came later.
Back in the day, I was just a personal trainer who moonlighted as a go-go dancer. That’s what I was doing when I first met Frank—but after I foiled an evil right-wing conspiracy to commit mass murder, Frank convinced me I had the makings of a first-class private eye. I was a good personal trainer, but I was getting bored with it—and I liked the sound of Scotty Bradley, dick for hire. Frank took early retirement from the Feds, moved to New Orleans, and we hung out our shingle. My older brother Storm (I told you my parents have a twisted sense of humor—my sister’s name is Rain) is a lawyer, and he threw us some work every now and then.
That one-eyed bitch Katrina swamped our business like she did ninety percent of the city. After the city dried out and people slowly started trickling back home, private detectives weren’t in much demand. Oh, sure, there was some insurance work—fraud by policyholders, fraud by the soulless suits in the corporate office—but frankly, insurance work sucks. But it pays the bills and keeps the lights on, so we took the cases even though the work left us feeling slimed.
I think that was part of the reason Frank decided to chase a lifelong dream and go to pro wrestling training school.
“Seriously?” I said, staring at him in shock when he brought it up.
He blushed. He’s awful cute when he blushes. “Seriously, Scotty. I know it might sound silly, but it’s something I’ve always wanted to do.” He shrugged his big shoulders. “And you know, if we learned anything from Katrina…”
“Grab every brass ring that comes along because there might not be another.” I finished the thought for him. We’d talked about that a lot since the water receded. “You really want to do this?” I pondered it for a moment.
“Yes,” he replied, turning an even deeper shade of red. Before he’d gone bald, his hair had been blond. He was one of those lucky blonds who turn that gorgeous shade of golden brown when tanned—and he was always tanned. But when embarrassed, that skin tone also turns a deep red that’s almost purple. Frank doesn’t blush often, but it’s really cute when he does. Even his neck turns red.
It makes me want to kiss him.
“When I was a kid, pro wrestling was my porn,” he went on with a sheepish smile. “I used to love watching them wrestling around in those little trunks, sweating, rolling around.” He winked at me. “So, yeah, that’s part of it. But it’s also pretty amazing, you know, the things those guys can do.”
“So, it was pro wrestling or the FBI?” I teased him. We were sitting on the couch in our apartment in our underwear, watching some stupid reality TV show about a bunch of incredibly spoiled and selfish women who’d been to the plastic surgeon a few times too many—one of those awful so-called “real housewives” shows, or as we liked to call them, Trailer Trash with Cash—and I couldn’t resist adding, “It was the WWE’s loss. You’re going to look amazing in one of those outfits.”
And so one chilly morning in mid-March, I put Frank on a plane to Ohio. The training school that had accepted him was one of the best in the country. I kissed him good-bye and watched him go through security. He turned and looked back just before he went through the metal detector—and I forced a smile on my face and waved.
The drive back home sucked. I don’t think you ever realize how much space someone takes up in your life until they aren’t around anymore. The apartment seemed so vast and empty with Frank gone. I spent the first few days finishing up paperwork on cases we’d finished, doing billing and other busywork that I had a bad habit of putting off.
Then the days until Frank would be back stretched before me like an endless boring nightmare.
“When did I get to be so boring?” I asked my best friend David at the gym one afternoon. We’d been working out together for almost eight years. He is about my height, but has one of those metabolisms that make it hard for him to gain weight of any kind. He has fair skin and a massive tattoo of a dragon curling around his left shoulder. He’s a great guy, and you couldn’t ask for a better friend.
“You need to come out,” he replied as he put another twenty-five-pound plate on each side of the bar we were using for shoulder presses. “Your fans miss you in the bars.”
I laughed and started my next set. But as I lifted the weights and my shoulder muscles screamed in protest, I began to think he might be right. It was dumb to just mope around the apartment feeling lonely and sorry for myself.
I finished my set and put the bar down. I stood up, and David took my place. I stepped behind the apparatus to spot him. As the bar moved up and down, I starting thinking about everything that had happened the year I turned thirty. That was the year everything had changed.
Frank and I had met just after I’d turned twenty-nine. It was during Southern Decadence—one of the great gay party weekends here in town, every Labor Day weekend—and he was here on a case that I wound up accidentally getting involved in. I wanted him the first time I laid eyes on him—but we didn’t have the usual courtship. Instead of dating, our “getting to know you” period was spent stumbling over bodies and racing against the clock to foil a madman’s destructive schemes. I also got kidnapped.
Nothing like a wild adventure for bonding, right?
After Decadence, he put in for early retirement and decided to move to New Orleans.
Unfortunately, I also met someone else during that same Southern Decadence. He told me his name was Colin Cioni, and he worked for an international detective corporation known as the Blackledge Agency. Frank and Colin fell for each other as well, so the three of us worked it all out. We had a nice three-way relationship (the sex was mind-blowing), and all three of us went to work for the Blackledge Agency. We even opened up our own little office on Frenchmen Street in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood, just a short walk from where we lived on Decatur Street between Barracks and Esplanade in the French Quarter.
Alas, our happily ever after was rather short-lived. Over Mardi Gras, another case dropped into our lives involving the Russian mob, Chechnyan terrorists with ties to al-Qaeda, and my family. I discovered that my maternal grandfather had had an affair with a Russian ballerina who’d given birth to triplets. As my half-uncles were being murdered, one after the other, it turned out that Colin wasn’t who he said he was—he was actually an international assassin who’d been after my uncles all along. He didn’t get all three of them—we managed to keep Uncle Misha alive, and he was now an integral part of my family.
In the wake of finding out someone we’d welcomed into the family was a sociopathic murderer, probably wanted in most civilized countries for crimes too numerous to even begin to list, it would have been easy for all of us to be bitter, hurt, and angry. But even though it was hard, we all stayed positive. We may have lost two of our Russian uncles, but the one who was left was truly a gift from the Universe. I know that whenever I started going down that dark path to anger and bitterness, all I have to do is pick up the phone and call Uncle Misha—once I hear “Hello?” in that thick accent I am cheered immeasurably.
And even if everything Colin had ever said to us was a lie, we did have
good times together.
The only thing he took with him when he fled the country was a photograph of the three of us in our Halloween costumes. That had to mean something, right? He wouldn’t have taken it if he hadn’t cared on some level.
Every once in a while, I’d miss him—and wonder where he was, if he was even still alive. I never really doubted he was alive—the man had more lives than a herd of cats—but I couldn’t help but wonder if sometimes when he was lonely, if that picture of the three of us in our harem boy costumes made him feel better.
What can I say? I’m sentimental by nature.
So we survived, and got through it all with our spirits intact. Our little detective agency wasn’t doing so great—turned out the Blackledge Agency was another one of Colin’s little lies, and I didn’t want to know where the funding he provided came from—but we picked up little jobs here and there, and there was Frank’s pension from the FBI.
But I kind of missed the old excitement of murder investigations. At the time, I didn’t think they were all that fun or exciting—you never get used to stumbling over a dead body, having a gun pointed at you, or being kidnapped—but now that those times seemed to be past, I was getting a little, well, bored.
I also used to have a bit of a psychic gift. I could usually channel it through a deck of tarot cards—and sometimes the Goddess Herself actually spoke to me. I’d go into a trance (which usually scared the shit out of people who saw it happen) and go to a place between dimensions where She would give me hints and clues as to what was going to happen in the immediate future. There was even a time, during a murder investigation, when I communicated with a dead man.