Crescent City Connection (12 page)

She wanted him bad. She must have all the time, because she’d gotten her sister to take Shavonne for the night.

She took him home and got into bed with him, and he played with her body like Delavon did, gloried in her copious flesh like she was some kind of goddess.

But he did one thing different from Delavon. He talked to her real nice while he was making love to her. He’d say things like, “Oh, baby—man, you beautiful. You so beautiful, baby. I ain’ never seen nothin’ that pretty in my life. Oh, man, look at those titties. Oh, man.”

Like that. It made Dorise feel shy and strange, and she woke up with her nose out of joint again. She got up and pulled on a robe and went in the kitchen.

She was standing at the sink, drawing water for coffee, when Troy came up behind her and grabbed her round the waist. “Baby. I thought I’d lost you.”

He wore only his jeans, his big, good-looking chest hanging out for anyone to see. He was built like Delavon, sort of—both of them had good big shoulders, handsome torsos. His skin was light, too, much lighter than Delavon’s.

“Whatchew mean?” Her tone sounded harsh, even to her. She didn’t know why.

He put his hand gently on her head and stroked her hair. “Hey. Hey, look at me, baby.”

She didn’t want to.

He dropped into a chair and took her hand, so that she had to look down on him. “Wha’s wrong? Now tell Troy wha’s wrong.”

“Ain’ nothin’ wrong.” Once again, she heard the snap in her voice.

“Baby.” He stared up at her, adoringly, she thought, but that was impossible. He barely knew her. “Baby, you cain’t be this way. You tryin’ to break my heart? Huh?”

He looked so sad she smiled, to see if she could make him smile. “I’m not tryin’ to break your heart.”

“No? Well, then whatcha doin’? Whatcha think ya doin’? Baby, I need you. Don’t do this to me.”

“Don’t do what?”

“One-night-stand me. Love me and leave me. Suck me dry and throw me out.”

She had to laugh. “Suck you dry? I ain’t even started yet.”

He grabbed her around the waist again, and then leaned toward her. He dropped to the floor, to his knees, and slid his hands down over her hips, around to the front of her thighs.

He opened her robe and thrust his face inside, licking her pussy.

She thought she was going to die. This man was on his knees, licking her pussy. Delavon wouldn’t do that in a million years.

Wouldn’t do either thing, she thought.

She wasn’t sure she really liked it.

But they ended up in bed again, and she was damn sure she liked the rest of it.

How did I ever do without this?
she thought.

He said, “Man. I could sure use some eggs and grits.”

“I’ll make you some.” Automatically, she swung her legs over the side of the bed.

“Uh-uh. I’ll make ’em.”

“You know how to cook?” This was too much.

“No. But I can make eggs and grits.”

She took a shower while he made breakfast, and it was a new experience for her.

This a day for firsts
, she thought.
I never see a man go down on his knees, and I never had one cook me breakfast. I sure am gonna enjoy this.

They were having coffee when he said, “What you doing this week, baby?”

“I’m—well, I got Shavonne and—”

He looked impatient, made some kind of quick gesture, like brushing away a mosquito. He said, “We work somethin’ out. I mean, who you workin’ for?”

“You know who I work for. What you mean?” She’d flared again.

“Now don’t get mad. Course, I know who you work for. Uptown Caterers, right? Am I right?”

She nodded, wondering where this was going.

“I meant what ladies are you workin’ for?”

“I don’t know. I never know till I get there.”

“Sometimes they perfect strangers, right?”

“Umm-hmm. Usually they are.”

“And they real rich, right?”

“I don’t know about that. Some of ’em just have stuff they inherited, ain’t made no money their own selves. But they got stuff. They got stuff piled up on top of stuff. They got antiques covered up with real nice linen scarves and they got more antiques sittin’ on top. Like maybe a jewelry box worth as much as the jewelry they got in the box. Then they got a silver candleholder on top of the box. You know what I mean? They got so much stuff they can’t keep track of it.” She went off in one of her dream states. “Wonder what it’d be like to have that much stuff?”

Troy pulled her back. “I could maybe help you.”

“Help me what?”

“Help you get some stuff.”

“Now how you gon’ do that?” Dorise leaned back in her chair, her robe gaping open, showing the tops of her breasts, but she didn’t mind, at the moment didn’t feel the least bit modest. She felt light-headed and a little bit in love. The flaps of her robe could fall where they wanted. She felt like running through a field of flowers with Troy, or maybe down a nice beach.

“Well. You’d have to help me help you.” He had a come-hither grin on his face, real flirtatious.

Dorise took his hand and started licking his fingers. “What you want me to help you with, baby?”

“Well, you know. You don’t have to do anything. Not a damn thing. All you do, you look at where everything is, and you tell me. Tell me what you want, specially. Then you tell me about all the doors and windows, when the family comes and goes, how the alarm system works …”

Shocked, Dorise jerked his fingers away from her lips. Still holding his hand, she stared at him, trying to read his face, to figure out if she’d heard him right. Up till the word “alarm,” she hadn’t got his drift at all. She thought he meant he’d buy her something she wanted. The “help me” part was something about getting in the mood, the way she heard it.

It occurred to her now that she was sitting across the table from a burglar. She, Dorise, who’d been married to a big-time drug dealer and hadn’t even known it. She was a Christian now. She’d found a lot of comfort in the church. She couldn’t believe this was happening to her.

“Dear God,” she said. “Dear God, what have you sent me?”

Troy took it the wrong way. He said, “Your salvation, honey,” and chuckled. “Your salvation.”

“I don’t need no salvation and I don’t need no criminal in my life, Troy Chauvin. You better go.”

He grabbed her cheek and a little bit of her hair. “Aww, honey, you didn’t think I meant it, did you?”

Slick as shit
, she thought.
Just slick as shit.

He lit a cigarette and leaned back. “I almost had
me
fooled.”

She gave him her evilest look, mean little eyes like racists have—old guys out in the country who hate everybody they aren’t related to and everybody they are as well.

“Oh, come on, baby, don’t tell me you never think about it. I know different ’cause you already told me you do.” He shrugged. “So I was just doin’ it, too. Just playin’ the same game you already told me you like to play yourself. What if I was lord of the manor? What if all this was mine? What if I could give it all to the sweetest woman on the face of the Earth? With the most beautiful ass I ever saw in my life?”

God, he was good-looking. She thought about it. Troy had a good job and no dependents. Why should he be a burglar, and when would he have time anyway?

“Well, it would be kind of fun to just pretend Cammie’s house was like a supermarket. To just go shoppin’ for anything you want.”

“Tha’s what I mean.”

“She got silver! Whoa. Silver coffee things and silver tea things and—you know what? She keep her hairbrushes in some old silver vase-lookin’ thing.”

“She got jewelry?”

“Yeah, but I don’ like it much—mostly little bitty pearls and shit. Too dainty—you know?—for somebody like me. She got nice earrings though. Rubies that hang down. Think her mother left ’em to her—can’t imagine her wearin’ anything like that.”

“Know what I’d like? A real nice stereo. She got anything like that?”

“Oh, man, a whole room full. They got this great big room on the second floor they call the music room—got a piano in it and everything. But mostly stereo stuff. And a TV. Great big screen.”

“VCR?”

“You kiddin’? They got three kids. They probably got three VCRs.” She giggled. “Adult movies, too. I seen those.”

“Wish she’d sell tickets to her house. You and me could have a bunch of fun in there, just for one afternoon, maybe.”

“Too bad she so little. No fun to try on all her clothes.”

“She got furs? Bet those’d fit.”

“Wooo, I bet they would.” She leaned back and laughed, at peace again. Enjoying the game. He was right, it was her game. She played it all the time, she just didn’t approach it quite the same way he did—like it was halfway real.

SKIP PLANTED HER foot hard and nasty on Nolan Bazemore’s spine as she cuffed him. She put her weight on the foot and almost enjoyed watching him wince, though in the end her own cruelty gave her the creeps.

Internally, she shuddered at herself, but she said calmly, “Okay, stand up.”

Bazemore wasn’t hurt and he wasn’t armed. But there was an MP5 on the floor of the truck that made Boudreaux grin. “That’s it, Nolan babe. Your ticket to Death Row.”

“What are you talking about?” The older woman had her hands on her hips. She had a wash-’n’-wear perm and carried about sixty pounds of extra weight. Eighty, maybe. She looked as if she hadn’t exercised in a couple of decades.

Bazemore said, “Mama. Go inside.”

Nobody’s all bad
, Skip thought.
Everyone’s got a mama somewhere.

But in the next few hours, during which she got to know Nolan Bazemore a great deal better than she wanted, she concluded he came close.

While they waited for backup, Mrs. Bazemore cried and tore at a Kleenex. “My boy’s never done nothin’. It’s that trashy girl’s fault—that damn Joelle. I rue the day he ever met her.”

Skip didn’t know that she’d ever heard the word “rue” spoken aloud. She said, “Why is that, Mrs. Bazemore?”

“That whole stupid thing was her idea. She didn’t have the faintest idea what these Bazemores are like—Nolan and Edwin, both of ’em.”

“What was her idea?”

Bazemore said, “Mama, don’t you say a word. I don’t want you in trouble, now.”

“Neither you or your daddy ever had a lick of sense.” She turned on her heel and went inside, leaving her son to fend for himself.

Eventually they pried the story out of her.

Nolan and his no-good girlfriend, Joelle, had come over for dinner the night Albert Goodlett’s appointment was announced. One of them—Mrs. Bazemore couldn’t remember which—said it was “time to give this town back to the white people.”

She said, “Since niggers are responsible for the crime, it’s pretty stupid to go and give a nigger the job of stopping it, innit? Now, how hard is that to figure out? I mean, it don’t make no sense. Time after time, too. I think we’re all just damn tired of this, don’t you?”

Skip said, “Go on.”

“So Nolan said somebody ought to stop it. And that dumb Joelle said, ‘You think you’re man enough to do it?’ And his daddy said, ‘You better watch Nolan. You don’t know how crazy he is.’”

The rest of it came out in the interrogation room, and it appeared everything his mother had said about Bazemore was true, and more:
You couldn’t imagine how crazy he was, or how reckless, or how twisted and dim-witted. He was more like a stray bullet than a loose cannon, faster and surer and scarier and a lot more deadly.

First he waived his rights, saying the Miranda decision was a liberal tool for coddling criminals, and a white man couldn’t get a fair trial in this country nohow. Then he lit the cigarette Skip gave him and grinned. “I done it,” he said. “I done it and I’d do it again. I’d mow down every goddamn jungle-bunny cop and judge and politician in the country if I had time, and when I got done with that I’d start on the Jews. Anything else you want to know?”

“Oh, my God.” Skip had spoken involuntarily. He sounded so nuts, she worried he’d get off on an insanity defense.

Still, she and Jerry Boudreaux led him through the details, trying to pick holes in his story, making him fill in every gap. They ran his rap sheet and found he had a history of assault and one attempted rape.

Then they brought Joelle in and questioned her. If anybody was ruing the day, it was she. Nolan beat her routinely, and also beat her four-year-old son; she wanted to leave, but didn’t have the money.

Cappello called Skip into her office. “You’re not going to believe what they’ve been running on TV—his dad’s been giving interviews saying he supports his son no matter what he did because somebody has to stand up for white people.”

Skip plopped down in Cappello’s extra chair. “Nobody’s that stupid. Everybody knows how that sounds—even the worst racist knows in his heart of hearts it won’t fly in public.”

“Ed Bazemore says it’s time to blow the lid off all that.”

“Hold it. His son gunned down an innocent man in front of his house. Surely he knows the kid’s gonna fry for it.”

Cappello shrugged. “These are not normal people. Have you noticed that? Abasolo went to execute the search warrant on Bazemore’s apartment—said it was filthy, by the way—and found it full of white supremacist tracts and newspapers. Quite a few weapons, too.”

“Great. I’m thrilled. Or I’m going to be thrilled as soon as I’m through throwing up.”

“The brass want a Hollywood walk.”

Skip made a face. “Oh, no.”

“Buck up, Langdon, it’s your big moment. The media’s all notified. When do you want to do it?”

Skip shrugged. “Oh, well. What can it hurt? Give me fifteen minutes to put on lipstick.”

She was kidding about the lipstick, though she figured Cappello probably took her seriously. In her shoes, the sergeant—ever image-conscious—would have meant it.

A Hollywood walk was basically a photo op. The prisoner had to be taken from Headquarters to what was now grandly called the Intake and Processing Center (“central lockup” in simpler days). This could easily be done without going outside, but that wasn’t sexy. When the superintendent of police got shot, the department damn well wanted everyone to know it got its man. Hence, a short walk from the garage door at the rear of Headquarters, about half a block up White Street, and over to the booking facility on Perdido.