The Great Beau

by O'Neil De Noux

  “It’s Beau. Where the fuck are you?”

  “Working a double thirty. Gentilly. You wanna come help?”

  “You forgot to close you email program at the office.”

  “How the fuck you know that?”

  “Because you just sent me a fuckin’ love letter.”

  “Fuck. Uh, how you know it wasn’t genuine?”

  “Because all the words were spelled correctly.”

  “I have a spell checker.”

  “You don’t use words with that many syllables.”

  “What’s a fuckin’ syllable?”

  Beau hangs up, looks at Juanita tells her Tim Rothman just emailed him a love note.

  “Always knew he was sweet on you.”

  “Goofy bastard.” Beau tosses another binder clip, hitting Jordan’s shoulder this time.

  “Turn it down.”

  Jordan’s iPhone plays ‘Tears of a Clown’.

  Jordan tries to give him an expressionless look. “I told Juannie here your soundtrack should be an opera. Blood and drama. People swooning over each another, kissing, then stabbing one another.” He waves at Juanita. “Juannie should be 60s bubble gum pop like Sugar Sugar and Dizzy. I’m Motown.”

  “Get earbuds.”

  “I never use them.”

  “Start.”

  “You know. You’re really not my boss.”

  “I’m bigger than you. Shut it down.”

  Jordan tries to out-stare Beau, then smiles and shrugs and turns down Marvin Gaye’s I Heard It Through The Grapevine.

  “Wait. Wait,” Beau goes. “I like that song. Shut it down after.”

  Juanita gives Beau a look of disgust, stands, shoves Jordan’s shoulder.

  “Quit calling me Juannie, Hillel.”

  She goes to refill her coffee cup, comes back just as Jordon turns his iPhone down.

  Beau’s going over their notes from their unproductive interviews at the Creole Palm Court and their meeting with the snooty German sub-counsel. He sees in his original notes something the Chief mentioned. She and Albert had the same lawn man. He remembers the lawns looked freshly cut. He sends the Chief an email.

  Jordan turns his iPhone up a little and Juanita goes, “You always this annoying?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No wonder ATF sent you packing.”

  “Yeah. Sent me to New Orleans. A punishment site.”

  She gives him a confused look.

  “Yeah. They had a conference here one August and it was 100+ degrees and 100 percent humidity and the big wigs couldn’t breathe so they think it’s like that all the time. They’re idiots. San Juan, Puerto Rico is also a punishment assignment. People talking Spanish and all. My buddies sent there love it.

  “Idiots. Like with the ert argument.”

  Beau cringes. Don’t ask.

  Juanita asks, “The what?”

  She keeps encouraging him.

  “I wrote a report on a new suspected explosive at a big meeting I said it was dangerous. It was ert. And they got all confused.”

  “I’m confused,” Juanita says.

  “It wasn’t inert. It was ert.”

  “That’s how your mind works?”

  He looks at Juanita. “It annoys me too.”

  Beau waits for them to quiet down before he thinks out loud. “So, she didn’t take a taxi, according to any of the cab companies. She just walked out of the Creole Palm with her luggage and vanished.”

  “She could have caught the streetcar,” Juanita says. “She only had four suitcases and a trunk, according to the bellhops at the hotel.”

  Beau tosses another clip at Jordan.

  “Re-check with Customs. Get a list of all foreigners who came in the same time she did. And check with the airline she flew in on.”

  “All foreigners?”

  “The ones who came to New Orleans, Sherlock.”

  AFTER EDUCATING SA Hillel Jordan about another great New Orleans meal – red beans and rice with breaded pork chop at the Camellia Grill, Juanita drives them back to headquarters, Jordan’s iPhone turned down. Beau relaxes in the back seat and Alizée starts singing.

  It’s Claire.

  “Um, there was a man outside my house this morning.”

  “And you wait until after 1 p.m. to call?”

  “I didn’t want to bother you so early. I left home before 7 a.m.” She goes on to explain a man walked by the house three times and slipped behind an oak when she pulled away. He was about 6 feet tall, heavy set but not fat with light brown hair and wearing dark clothing.

  “We’ll swing by your place right now. Where are you?”

  “Back at the vault with Freemantle going over the things not taken to the Smithsonian.”

  THEY PARK IN front of Claire’s and Beau leads the way through the gate and to the front door, which is locked. The windows out front look unmolested. The back door is cracked open and Beau withdraws his Glock, signals for Juanita to follow him in, tells Jordan to wait on the back porch in case someone tries to exit. Jordan pulls out his weapon, drops it, picks it right up.

  Beau hesitates at the door, listens and slowly pushes the door open, keeping his body behind the wall. He smells blood before he sees it streaked on the hardwood floor. He whispers to Juanita and goes in high and she goes in low and the hall is clear. It takes a second to realize the reddish clump at the end of the hall is the deerhound, or what’s left of her.

  He looks up the back stairs, sees its clear and leads the way pass the dead dog and they check the downstairs rooms. Ransacked. Drawers on the floor, books tossed about, pictures and paintings taken down and dropped. They go back through the dining room to the kitchen, walking over silverware and broken dishes. Back around to the rear stairs, he waves Jordan in, tells him to cover the back stairs and the back door as he and Juanita go up the front staircase.

  The upstairs bedrooms are also ransacked, mattresses and box springs tossed around, more pictures and paintings off the walls, chifforobes stripped of contents, the drawer of every dresser and cabinet emptied. In the main bedroom, Beau spots an open safe that had been hidden behind a large painting, now lying on the bed. Necklaces drip from the safe’s door, rings and bracelets dot the floor. They check every closet before Beau goes up in the attic, which has pretty good lighting. No one lurking there. He re-holsters his weapon and climbs down the attic stairs.

  He asks Juanita to call for a beat unit to take the report and the crime lab. The lab beats the marked unit and Beau asks the tech to handle the dog first.

  “Didja call the coroner?”

  Cute.

  “Take pictures and check the teeth. See if it got a bite in. Maybe took some flesh. I’ll get a couple garbage bags.”

  The deerhound is gutted and lies in a pool of blood and intestines. Beau can see stab wounds along its right side. Close enough to stab means close enough for Cat to get a bite in.

  “Yeah,” the technician says when Beau comes back with a box of large garbage bags and two sets of thick rubber gloves he found beneath the kitchen sink. “Dog took a chunk out of the attacker.” The man takes off his glasses. “Got skin and blood.”

  Beau goes down on his haunches next to the dog. Pets her flank where there’s no blood.

  “Good girl.”

  He looks up at Jordan, “Claire’s at the Vault. Go get her. You know what to say about the dog, right?”

  “Yeah. I’ll say, ‘Remember that dog you used to have’.”

  Beau stands, stares at him.

  “How do you do that? Your eyes going dead like that, face like stone.”

  “Tell her there was a break-in. She’ll ask about her dog. Take her hand and say you have bad news about Cat. Let your eyes go all mushy and whatever she says, tell her you’re sorry but Cat is dead. Don’t say ‘gone’ or ‘passed away’ or ‘she didn’t make it’ and no ‘rainbow bridge’ crap. She’s dead.”

  Jordan raises a hand. “Her dog was named Cat?”

  “Long fuckin’ stor
y. You can ask her and she’ll tell you. When she stops crying.”

  “OK.”

  “I’m sending you because she’s gonna need someone to hug.”

  “Oh, yeah. I could hug her.”

  “Don’t grab her ass.”

  “Damn. You always know what I’m thinking.”

  Jordan heads out.

  Beau’s about to ask Juanita to canvass when he realizes something and leads her out front as a marked unit pulls up, a one-man unit.

  “Have him drive you to the antique shop.”

  “Good thinking.”

  Juanita hasn’t been to Valence Antiques but she’s read the reports and knows the address and heads to the unit. Beau goes back in to help the crime lab with Cat. After they get the dog sealed in two huge garbage bags and the tech is finished collecting blood samples, some hopefully human, Beau covers the pool of blood with other bags before he takes off the gloves, calls the Second District Commander.

  “Billy? It’s Beau. Can you send a unit to this address?” He gives his old captain Albert D’Loup’s address. “Have them check it for a 62 and check the blue house next door. “Chief Féroce lives there.”

  “You got what, a 62 on Prytania and a unit heading to Magazine? What you got going?”

  STELLA IS UP on the teakwood table in the foyer. She stretches, curls her back, tail rising and chirps at Beau, that same bird-watching chatter. He pets her, looks at the wall clock. It’s 11:45 at night. Long day.

  Jessie’s reading in bed, sheet covering her legs. She’s in a long T-shirt. He likes it better when they sleep naked, when Stefi’s not camping out here. He goes around the bed and kisses her. She wears no makeup, her hair tasseled and looks so damn gorgeous.

  “Wanna talk about it?”

  He glances at her Nude in Red as he goes to his dresser to take off his gear, then to the window seat to take off his boots. Stella jumps up on the bed to watch.

  “All three places ransacked. So much for alarms.”

  “Where’d you stash Claire?”

  “Palmetto House. Small B&B on Esplanade up by City Park. Run by a retired cop and his wife and two sons. One a state trooper, the other a JP detective.”

  He comes to the bed in his boxer briefs.

  “Getting your old private eye crew to bodyguard her in the morning. She can afford them.” He stretches out his back before climbing in next to her.

  Jessie closes her book and presses herself against him.

  “She’s too stunned to tell us what’s missing, but whoever rifled her safe and the antique shop wasn’t looking for jewelry. Her mother’s emerald necklace was right there. Diamond rings on the floor.”

  He’d called Jessie earlier, told her about the deerhound.

  “Anything here on the home front with the drama queens? Stella’s chattering instead of going ‘Arowl’.”

  “Scamp discovered the toilet paper roll.”

  “Already? I guess he isn’t too short to reach it.” Then Beau explains how he caught Stella in the act. She’d pulled down nearly half a roll and was playing with it.

  “I scooped her up and wrapped her in it and left her there on the floor. It took her a while to get out and she never did it again.”

  Jessie pulls away. Too hot, even with the AC and ceiling fans. They lie next to one another on their backs.

  “My father came by. We’re negotiating getting Stefi back where she belongs. My mother sent conditions. I’d rather negotiate a hostile corporate take-over.”

  BUILT IN 1921, the pale blue stucco building on Mystery Street just off Esplanade Avenue, Mid-City, used to have a Japanese laundry on the first floor. The laundry is replaced by offices and four garage doors and new brick staircases on either side up to the second floor. Chiseled in the building’s concrete façade are the words Genusa Tombstones. A business from a bygone era. St. Louis Cemetery #3 lies just up Esplanade.

  Juanita parks the black SUV just this side of the garage doors while Beau parks the navy blue SUV across Mystery Street. He gets out with Claire as Juanita and Jordan climb out of the other SUV. Papa was a Rolling Stone blares on Jordan’s iPhone and Beau points to it. Jordan quickly plugs in white ear-buds and puts an earpiece in his right ear, the other bud dangling.

  Beau leads the way up the stairs to a wide landing and as they approach the black metal door it buzzes and he pulls it open to let them in. He looks up to see a camera watching them.

  The new Director of Mystery, Inc. meets them in the narrow hall. Jodie Kintyre, NOPD retired, shakes Claire’s hand as Juanita introduces Claire and Jordan. Jodie moves them across the hall, waits for Beau. She gives him a smirk. They fist bump and she leads him toward a to conference room with a long wooden table and thick-cushioned black leather chairs.

  Jodie Katherine Kintyre stands 5’9”, taller in the heels she wears with her black skirt-suit. Her yellow-blond hair is in its typical page boy cut. She is still a striking, slim woman at forty, with those wide set hazel eyes. Cat eyes. Jodie had been a detective in the Juvenile Division when she took the step up to the Big Show – the Homicide Division – and was paired with a hot-shot Sicilian-American detective with a perfect record, the man who caught the infamous Slasher and gunned down an out-of-control Mafia hit-man before he took on a Latin American killing circle. Dino LaStanza and Jodie Kintyre became partners. Not just riding together, not just catching murderers, they bonded like brother and sister. Solid. When LaStanza left the department and started up Mystery, Inc., and Beau came to Homicide, Jodie took Beau under-wing and they bonded like brother and sister.

  Before stepping into the room, Jodie looks back at Beau.

  “How’s our girl doing?”

  “She’s got ‘em all buffaloed. Over the internet they think Jessie’s a man until she walks into the boardroom in a minidress. All long hair and legs.”

  Mystery, Inc. is where Jessie worked before the Louvier family asked the only member of their extended family with a degree in Business Management to oversee the family business. Louvier Holdings, LLC. Not hard to figure why. Dino LaStanza, married to Lizette Louvier, is Jessie’s first cousin. Blood will out, especially with Sicilians and original New World Creole French. Long before the wedding, Jessie and Lizette bonded, like sisters.

  They settle into chairs, Juanita waiting for Jordan to sit before she sits across from him. Beau sits next to her, lets Juanita explain it all to Jodie. Claire’s red-rimmed eyes meet Beau’s. She’s taking this badly.

  It takes Juanita a half hour to get it all out. Half way through, a big man eases into the room, sits at the far end of the table, winks at Beau.

  Felicity Jones is thick bodied, mostly muscle, standing 5’10”, with short-cropped black hair, brown eyes, blue-black skin and a ready smile. Also retired from NOPD, he’s a former homicide detective who spent many years in the Intelligence Division. This is the company’s field supervisor. Fel wears a dark green suit. No tie.

  Jodie explains they will provide 24-hour bodyguards, tells Claire she can go back home and clean up. She introduces Fel. He’ll go home with her and a man will relieve him later. She gives her background, Fel’s and explains the other bodyguards are all former NOPD. “Very effective.”

  Claire seems to come out of her funk.

  “I looked you up on the net when the chief inspector recommended you. The only name mentioned was Mr. LaStanza. Is he going to be one of my bodyguards?”

  Jodie suppresses a smile, most likely from Beau’s chief inspector title, explains LaStanza’s semi-retired. “He and his wife are cruising the Mediterranean at the moment.”

  The contract is signed and Jodie explains Fel will stay with her until 6 p.m. and James Leopold will relieve him and Ferdie Loeb will relieve him in the morning. “He’ll be relieved by a man named Stan Smith who will put a move on you. We’d tried to break him of the habit but you’re his M.O. Female. But he’s harmless. Seriously.”

  Claire blinks a few times, narrows her eyes.

  “Leopold and Loeb?”<
br />
  Jodie waves to Beau to explain NOPD has unceasing paired officers like Frost and Snow, Lemon and Macarte, Funck and Ball, Fitz and Gerald, Leopold and Loeb.

  Fel adds, “Back in the 1880s, the first pair of detectives to tangle with the Mafia were Rowling and Stone. You’d think they knew the future of rock and roll back then.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Fel flashes his wide smile. “Very little in life does.”

  Beau adds, “It’s best not to talk to these guys. Especially Stan Smith. Just let them guard you.”

  BEFORE THEY GET back to the office, Claire calls Beau on his cell. He sighs, answers.

  “I knew something was missing from my safe.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Bank envelope with $1,000 in 20s and 10s. Hurricane money. In case of a hurricane.”

  “You didn’t happen to write down the serial numbers on the bills?”

  “They have serial numbers?”

  “Never mind. You find anything else missing, call me.”

  “I was kidding about the serial numbers.”

  Good. She might be coming out of it.

  “These guys we hired, they’re good, right?”

  “Jessie worked with these men. I’ve known them for years. They’re as solid as it gets. These are the guys I’d hire to protect Jessie. OK?”

  He manages to get her off the phone before he parks in the police garage. In the slow elevator up to the top floor, he thinks the obvious –

  Whoever burgled these places was looking for something specific.

  Certainly not jewels. Probably not the cash but what burglar would pass up 20s and 10s?

  He’s not surprised to see Juanita and Jordan beat him back to the office. Aileen has six message for him. He passes all except one to Juanita, asks her to see what these people want. The sixth message is from Percy Freemantle and marked urgent. Area code 212 – New York City.

  A woman answers, “Smithsonian.”

  Beau gives her the extension Freemantle left and the Ving Rhames lookalike answers after the third ring.

  “Bad news. I just told Claire. The painting by Secundiga, the Chagall and Joan Miro lithographs, three of the rings and two necklaces are stolen items.”