Death by the Riverside (3 page)

Chapter 5

One Hundred Oaks Plantation wasn’t hard to find. It had a big wrought-iron sign and the kind of bombastic brick gate that said, “Hi, we’re rich. Are you sure you should be entering here?”

Drop the film off and get out of here, I told myself as I drove up to the house.

A servant answered the door and didn’t look too thrilled to see the likes of me. Bravely I forged ahead.

“I need to see Mr. Holloway.”

“Is Mr. Holloway expecting you?”

“I doubt it,” I said. “But I have some film to give him.” The servant didn’t look convinced. “It’s a companion piece to the pictures he got two days ago.” I was guessing Karen had hightailed it over here with Harry’s pictures.

“Follow me,” the servant said and led me to a sitting room, then told me to wait there.

I didn’t wait long, fortunately, because money does not guarantee taste, as this sitting room proved.

The person who entered the room was not Ignatious Holloway.

“What do you want?” she said, even less thrilled than the servant to see me. I just held up the film.

“Harry? We already know,” she said, turning to leave.

“No. Karen.”

She turned back and looked at me. She was about my age and perhaps even taller than me (or perhaps it was just the light). Dark auburn, almost black hair, blue eyes. Not bad, even if she was a Holloway. I assumed that this was the Cordelia Danny had mentioned.

“Doing?” she asked. She didn’t waste words.

“Illicit sexual acts with a woman.”

“You? Never mind. What do you want?”

Karen entered the scene. She looked the least thrilled of anyone to see me. “What are you doing here?” she demanded

I held the film where she could see it.

“I didn’t think you’d be real happy out here all by yourself, eaten up with guilt over how you cheated your only brother out of his inheritance.”

She caught on. I saw it in her eyes and the way she hissed, “You bitch,” at me. “Give me that,” Karen continued. “You’re lying.” She started for me with her hand out for the film. She was used to people following her orders.

I’m used to disobeying orders. I moved away, putting a fake rococo table between us.

“Okay. How much do you want?”

To be honest, I was tempted. Visions of paid bills danced through my head. Stockpiles of cat food, perhaps a new bed…

“I’m not for sale.” My dad always told me that you could live without almost anything but not without self-respect. Since I had very little else, I did need that. “I don’t like you, Karen. I don’t like the things you do, and I don’t like what you stand for. You used me to get your brother. I’m paying you back.” I turned to Cordelia. “I would like to give this to your grandfather. Will you take me to him?”

Karen let out a string of obscenities and came around the table after me. There’s a move in karate that’s like a kick, but all you’re really doing is putting your foot out so that your opponent will run into it. It was easy to stop Karen that way. But it didn’t do much for shutting her up.

“What is going on here?” a voice boomed. Two men entered, one leaning heavily on the arm of the other.

It took me only a moment to figure out which one was Holloway. Partly from the way attention was turned on him when he entered, partly from the attitude of the man whose arm he held for support. But the eyes confirmed it. The same shade of blue confronted me from three sets of eyes. Holloway’s, Cordelia’s, and Karen’s were all the same perfect aristocratic blue, though, I suspected, only by seeing them together would the resemblance be noticeable. Because other than that blue there was very little else alike in their eyes. Karen’s were downcast and ringed with mascara, Holloway’s faded in the surrounding sagging skin and wrinkles. Cordelia’s were cool and direct, as if she didn’t want to be here watching this, but couldn’t help finding some interest in the spectacle.

I vaguely recognized the other man, with his distinguished face and perfectly cut silver hair, from the society pages, but since I never read the columns, I didn’t know his name. Someone in the same league as Holloway. It was he who had spoken. Since Karen’s blue streak could have awakened the dead, they had very little chance of ignoring it. Holloway was a large man, but age and inactivity had made him flabby. He walked with a cane, supported between it and his companion. His entrance didn’t shut up Karen, but it did change her tune.

“This woman’s trying to ruin me, Grandfather Holloway. She’s lying. She’s working for Harry and his perverted friends.”

You can say this for Karen, she doesn’t give up easily.

“What is going on here?” Holloway rasped, looking at Cordelia for an answer. She told him. Now he, too, looked not thrilled to see me. His friend tried to politely ignore the family scene.

“Give me the film,” he said. I did. He turned to Karen. “What am I going to find in these pictures?”

His voice was tired, the sound of an old man whose traps were all sprung and the only thing he had caught was himself. She didn’t answer.

“You disappoint me. You disappoint me deeply. After all I’ve done for you…” He went into the standard litany, punctuated with the coughing of an old man. At the end he turned to me and said, “How much do you want?”

For a moment, I couldn’t answer, because I remembered another voice in another time asking that same question. No, not another voice, the same voice, not yet worn and scratchy. I started to feel a hollowness inside me, I wasn’t sure where. I wanted out of this nest of monsters.

“Nothing,” I said and I walked out of the room, out of the house. When I got outside, I stood for a moment just breathing, trying to fill that hollow space with air. I felt a hand on my shoulder and a voice saying, “Are you all right?” Cordelia.

I nodded yes, embarrassed to be caught. I just wanted to get out of here.

“I gather you don’t do this sort of thing very often. Don’t go into blackmailing as a career.”

“I’m not a blackmailer,” I answered. I was beginning to feel better.

“Good thing. Here, take this.” She put an envelope in my jacket pocket. I took the envelope out.

“No, I don’t want anything…from you.” I stumbled over the last few words.

She put the envelope back in my pocket. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

I took it back out. “Allergies. I’m allergic to magnolias.”

“There aren’t any magnolia trees here.”

“Also oaks.” There had to be oak trees at One Hundred Oaks Plantation.

“Right. Why don’t I believe you? Why do I keep wondering, what’s in this for you?” Danny’s precious Cordelia obviously thought I was one of Karen’s unctuous friends.

“Never to see any of you again.” I was tired of this and I resented her assumption that I had to have some ulterior motive for being here.

“No one asked you to get involved in the first place,” she shot back.

“Wrong. Your sister Karen did. I just had to finish what I started. I wasn’t going to let her fuck me in the front seat of her BMW and then cheat Harry out of his inheritance for being queer. Listen, I’ve got to go…”

“Cousins,” she broke in. “Harry and Karen are my cousins.”

“Whatever. Enjoy your mansion. I’ve handed it to you on a silver platter, haven’t I?”

She stuffed the envelope back into my pocket. “Now you’re wrong. I don’t want the place. I never did. When Grandpa wrote his ridiculous will, one of the first things I did was tell him that I’m a lesbian. Of course, I’m not.”

“Of course not,” I broke in.

“To guarantee that I wouldn’t get this old place and that I wouldn’t be caught in any of the squabbles about it.”

“How noble,” I interjected.

“Aren’t we both? You altruistically sleeping with Karen and taking pictures of it and me passing up the chance to co-own a fake antebellum mansion with a pack of barracudas.”

There didn’t seem much else to say. We stood facing each other in the moonlight. With any other woman, in any other place, it might have been romantic.

“Well…” she finally broke the silence, “you’d better get out of here before Grandpa finishes with Karen. A barracuda with a bite out of its tail is not a pretty sight.”

“Cordelia,” the other man called as he came out onto the porch, “I think we need to get Ignatious settled down again. I don’t like the way he’s coughing.”

“All right, I’m on my way,” she answered. Cordelia turned to follow him into the house.

I got into my car. “Good luck with your distinguished relatives,” I muttered, not really intending for her to hear.

She paused and glanced back at me to let me know she had, then disappeared into the house.

As I turned out of the driveway, one thought was in my head—this is over and I will never have to see any of these people again.

Chapter 6

I pushed the speed limit all the way back to the city. I wasn’t worried about Karen. I wanted to get back to my favorite liquor store before it closed. I had a lot of things I didn’t want to think about. There had been an ugly familiarity to Ignatious Holloway’s voice. It didn’t produce feelings in me that I liked. I keep hoping that if I kill enough brain cells with cheap Scotch, that someday I’ll kill the right ones.

I pulled in front of Antoine’s Spirit Store and looked in my wallet. Three dollars. Small and cheap Scotch. Then I remembered the envelope. I hadn’t managed to give it back to Cordelia. One hundred dollars. Lots of expensive Scotch. In fact, two bottles of Johnny Walker and one Chivas, with plenty left over for cat food and breakfast.

I remember going back to my apartment. (Only during the day is it my office, at night it becomes my apartment.) I had a couple of shots of Scotch. I must have gone out, because sometime much later that night, I woke up in a strange bed with a strange woman sucking on my nipple. I seemed to be having a good time and so did she, so I didn’t stop and ask her what she was doing with my nipple. I have blurred memories of sex, my face next to a reddish-brown bush, my nose and chin wet as she came. But I don’t remember what happened after that.

I do remember walking along the levee with the sun rising, watching the ships, and crying for no good reason.

I woke late that afternoon to the cat meowing and the phone ringing. My head felt like the night of one thousand anvils and the rest of my body was still numb. I had the distinct feeling that when it did wake up, I did not want to be around.

It was Danny on the phone, of course. I let her talk to my machine.

I stumbled to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. No effect. Then I opted for the butch approach. I splashed cold water across my tits. I was right. I didn’t want to be there when my body woke up. I tried to leave it at the sink, but it insisted on following me. I turned on the shower and slowly finished undressing, hoping that the water would be at least lukewarm by the time I got in. It was. Miracle of miracles. I let the warm water flow over my body. Wash away my sins. Where did that come from? Aunt Greta’s catechism classes. That was a time in my life that I wanted to forget. I concentrated on the hot water hitting my back, splashing over my shoulders. I stood in the shower, letting the water pour over me, until it turned cold.

I finished drying just as the phone rang. Danny again, I was sure. It wasn’t. It was Sergeant Ranson of the New Orleans Police Department. I didn’t pick up the phone because I couldn’t think of any reason for her wanting to talk to me that I would like. She only left her name and a number to call. Later. I was hungry. There were a couple of eggs, two tomatoes, and half a cantaloupe in my refrigerator. Unfortunately, the tomatoes and melon could have produced enough penicillin from the mold they were sporting to supply all of Plaquemines Parish. And I couldn’t remember buying eggs since my twenty-seventh birthday. (I’m twenty-nine now.) Hepplewhite meowed and rubbed my leg. She started her litany of I’m-hungry meows. In the interest of self-protection, I scraped up what money I had and headed to the grocery store.

Hepplewhite even liked the first thing that I fed her. Another miracle. Two in one day. How could I stand it?

The phone rang. This time it was Danny. “Mick, where the hell are you? I’ve left five messages in the last twenty-four hours. If you don’t answer this phone soon, I’m going to start dragging the river…”

As an assistant D.A., she could. It was time to answer the phone. I picked it up.

“…and an APB nationwide. I’m tired of worrying about you.”

“If you want to be a mother, Danny, why don’t you have a few kids? I don’t need you worrying about me.” I didn’t need anyone to check up on me, and I was tired of her doing it.

“Right. Thanks for calling me like you said you would. Maybe if you’d stop daring the world to kick you in the teeth, I wouldn’t worry so much about you.”

“They’re my teeth,” I answered back.

“Okay. Fine. Just in the future” (I knew Danny was pissed by the way she carefully enunciated each word), “don’t announce any of your Quixotic schemes to me. If I don’t know what you’re going to do, I won’t have to worry about you while you’re doing it. For example, next time you want to get unfucked from some spoiled blond, call someone else to break in on you.”

“Oh, right. Sorry to have wasted your time. Don’t ever ask me to coach you in philosophy again.”

“Micky, that was years ago. And yes, you saved my ass and I would probably be a bum in the Bowery now if it weren’t for you. But, damn, you’re leaning awfully heavy on something that happened a long time ago.”

I realized, in some small part of me, that I was being a pain.

“But you’ve got to stop sounding like my Aunt Greta,” I said.

“So you’ve got a problem. Have you ever considered seeing a therapist?”

“No! Now you’re sounding exactly like my Aunt Greta. Just leave me alone. I’m a big girl and I can take care of myself without having my head sized to fit society.”

“I’m only trying to help you.”

It was the wrong thing to say, because more than any other cliché, that one was my Aunt Greta’s favorite.

“Don’t,” I exploded. “I don’t need your help. If I wanted to be some career-climbing lawyer, I would be. Leave me out of your damn respectability. Right now it’s fashionable to be tolerant of blacks and women, but wait until they find out what you like to do in bed. Then they’ll kick you out. I’d rather already be on the outside. It’ll save on moving expenses.”

“Don’t give me that bullshit…”

I hung up on her. I’d never done that to Danny before. My hands were shaking. I poured a shot of Scotch and downed it. Danny had a lover at home. Why didn’t she worry about her and leave me alone? Of course, my small voice did remind me that I had said I’d call her. It also reminded me that Danny had been a very good friend for a very long time. Don’t bite hands that feed you or shoulders you can cry on, my dad always said. I would have to call Danny and apologize…at some point. I was still in a mood. Maybe with another couple of shots of Scotch I would be calmed down enough to call her. I reached for the bottle. The phone rang. I picked it up, sure it was Danny. But there were no more miracles today. It was Sergeant Ranson and I was stuck talking to her.

“Good, you can answer a phone if you set your mind to it,” was what she greeted me with.

“Has my car been towed or what?”

“No, but it can be arranged.” Joanne Ranson was not a traffic cop and did not think it amusing to be asked about parking tickets. “Coffee and beignets in the Quarter. Can you be there in half an hour?” she continued. It wasn’t really a question.

“Only if you’re buying.”

“You know the place.”

“Yeah.” I did.

“I’ll be waiting.” She hung up.

This is what every hangover needs, a meeting with Sergeant Joanne Ranson. I put away my bottle of Scotch in favor of a glass of water, and taking two extra-strength aspirin.

I decided the walk would do me good. Besides, I didn’t think I had the exact change for a bus or the patience for Quarter parking.

She was waiting. There were not too many people sitting outside. Even New Orleans can get chilly in January. Ranson was my idea of a typical New York woman. For New Orleans that meant she was very serious and very effective. She wore aviator-style glasses, and her hair, in defiance of all Southern custom, had a lot of untouched gray in it. I occasionally thought that if we weren’t on different sides of the same business, we might have an affair. Joanne Ranson was more than gray suits, graying hair, and gray eyes hidden behind black wire glasses. We had gone out a few times, courtesy of Danny, the matchmaker. But the sparks that flew always went in the wrong direction. We had drifted into an I’ll-call-you-sometime situation and she had once or twice, but I never got around to calling her back. We take karate together, so we still run into each other on occasion. Ranson was a good sparring partner, fast and light. After class, we’d chat idly of professional matters or the weather or whatever, but that was all. I wondered why I hadn’t slept with her when I had the chance.

But this was all idle speculation. I didn’t think she had invited me to sit outside in the January gloaming for purposes of seduction. I was right. She appeared not to notice me until I sat down. I wasn’t sure what she was watching for, but it didn’t help my hangover.

“Good evening, Michele.” It was business if she was calling me Michele. There were two cups of coffee on the table. That meant that no waiter was going to interrupt us while we talked. She took a sip of her coffee. I did the same. “Can you type?” she asked. Not at all a question I had expected.

“What’s the matter, your secretary quit?”

“Any word processing?” She was serious. About what, I wasn’t sure.

“Well, I’m not God’s gift to Katherine Gibbs, but I can manage.”

“Good. Word is that you’re not scared shitless at the idea of tangling with the drug powers in the city.”

“I am scared,” I said.

“But not shitless. Re: Karen Holloway and One Hundred Oaks Plantation.”

“What do you know about that?”

“Enough,” was all she said. She was looking around again.

“So I’m going to type a letter to all the heroin kingpins and ask them not to allow any nasty narcotics into our fair city?”

She motioned me to keep my voice down. I hadn’t been very loud. Then with a continuation of that movement she covered my left hand with hers.

“It’s dangerous, but it pays well.” She leaned in close to me and lowered her voice even more. “There may be people watching us. Hopefully this will look like a cop fooling around on the wrong side of the tracks.”

“Thanks.”

“Nothing personal. I meant sleeping with a woman. Are you interested?”

Sleeping with her, yes, about the rest of it I wasn’t so sure.

She continued, “We’ll meet off hours, in off places. It’ll just look like you and I are having an affair. If you don’t want to do this, we’ll have a fight and you can walk off. If you do, I’ll take you back to my apartment and show you some pictures and give you the details.”

I nodded yes. So it was dangerous, but with my landlord, not paying rent was also dangerous. She gave my hand a squeeze, whether it was part of the act or if she was really happy that I said yes, I wasn’t sure.

Some tourist caught sight of us and decided to pull his wife and kids in the opposite direction. At least we’d fooled someone.

I followed Ranson to her car. For the most part, we drove in silence. She did mention that a maroon car had followed us through two turns. We parked half a block from her apartment. She quickly looked around, discreetly using her side and rearview mirrors. Then she turned to me.

“Sorry, Micky, this is business.” She kissed me, just long enough and hard enough for it to be convincing from ten yards away. We got out and went into her apartment.

The job went like this. There was reason to suspect that Jambalaya Import and Export owned by one John Brown was really a front for running drugs. The idea was that I would get a job there and snoop around (legally, of course). None of the regular undercover female cops had been able to get work there. It was as if someone knew who all of them were. Possibly there was an informant somewhere. Ranson ignored my suggestion that perhaps they couldn’t type very well. Also, since I was outside the department, whatever I did wouldn’t reflect back on it too much. Legal, huh? John Brown was probably nonexistent. The police would like to know who Mr. Big was and catch him, but they would settle for some of his henchmen. I was playing someone’s hunch. I had to try and get something that would give them an excuse to go after the drug gang. Probable cause.

“Two people are going to know who you really are, me and Alexandra Sayers,” Ranson continued, handing me phone numbers for both of them. “Memorize these,” she added. That I knew.

“But doesn’t Sayers have something to do with the arts…” I started.

“Right. She’s also far enough outside the department to be safe. Call her only if it’s important and you can’t reach me.” This didn’t make great sense to me, but I let it pass. Bureaucracy never made a lot of sense to me. “No one knows about this until it’s old history. Got that?” I did. “Good. Can you climb out a window?” she asked. “No sense letting anyone see you leave.”

“Sure, I’m good at using the servants’ entrance.” She led me to the kitchen window, which overlooked a back court. A hop, skip, and jump over a fence and through a yard or two and I’d be at the trolley stop.

“Well, gosh, Joanne, thanks for a wonderfully romantic evening. How did you know that I find mug shots so exciting?” I said with one foot in the sink and the other edging over the sill.

“I know your type,” she answered.

“No good-night kiss?” She swatted me on the rear for an answer. I dropped lightly to the ground.

“Micky?” I turned to her silhouette. “Be careful out there.” Then she shut the window and I was off to find the St. Charles streetcar.