Death by the Riverside Read online

  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.

  Chapter 7

  I awoke bright and early Monday morning. Bright and early is my least favorite part of the day. Madame Troussard’s Temps had gotten me placed at Jambalaya Import and Export, as arranged by Ranson. I was to be there this morning. Hence bright and early. Whenever I plan to put on stockings I have to feed Hepplewhite first. Otherwise she will, due to severe malnutrition, use my leg as a scratching post. Fortunately, I have a cousin who was a buyer for D.H. Holmes. He passed bargains on to me. So I have a wardrobe suitable for jobs like this.

  Jambalaya was on the ninth floor of one of those buildings that was designed by someone with a fetish for mirrored sunglasses. Every facet stares back at and distorts you.

  It was a fairly large company, about one hundred people. At least it was large to me, but then I’m used to a company of one. Temp work had, I’m sorry to say, supported me through several lean times. Sorry for me, that is. I hate any job that forces you to buy expensive clothes and pays you very little.

  I spent my first week word processing lists and invoices, then making copies of them. Boring. By Friday I knew every crack and corner of the copy room. I could enlarge, shrink, and collate in four colors.

  The only interesting information I discovered was that behind the reception area there were two doors, one on either side. A lot of people went through the right one, very few people entered or exited the left one. What was behind door number two? More to the point, of the few people who went behind door number two, only one, Barbara Selby, the office manager, was a woman. The rest were men. Men of power, a little heavy, a little too complacent. They appeared when they wanted to, never before ten, sometimes after lunch, or even late in the afternoon. They seemed out of place here, like rich men in the poor part of town. I noticed one exception. A young man who showed up three or four days that week. He arrived at nine and stayed until five and always went straight to the back room. He was, at most, in his mid-twenties, pale and skinny, with nervous hands and a shy hello for anyone who greeted him. I wondered what his story was.

  Other than that the only joy from this week was in my bank account. Ranson let me keep my Jambalaya paycheck. But she did remind me not to forget any of it at tax time. Me cheat the IRS? Never.

  I knew I needed to call Danny, but I kept putting it off, hoping that she would call me. I finally opted for the chicken-hearted approach and called her at her office, figuring that she couldn’t yell too much if she was at work. But she wasn’t there, out of town for the week, they said.

  The second Monday arrived even earlier and brighter than the first one. Some things should not be allowed. Heppy was fed, pantyhose et cetera were on, and I was back in that ugly building, staring at a mean green screen.

  But I got lucky. Joy of joys. In the afternoon I got sent to cover the phones while the regular receptionist went to the dentist.

  There was a combination lock on the left door that everyone who entered had to use. This is why I carry a compact. By powdering my nose whenever anyone used the door, I was able to get the first three numbers. Then five o’clock arrived and it was time to go. I was working on schemes to prevent the regular receptionist from showing up tomorrow, when I heard some unla
dylike language from the copy room.

  Barbara Selby was there by herself with a very big load of papers and a copy machine that had every malfunction light known to man blinking.

  “Can I help?” I said, trying to make a few brownie points. Most of the rest of the staff were scuttling by trying to ignore this after-five-o’clock crisis.

  “Sure, how long can you imitate a collating machine? This baby’s gone home for the day,” she said, kicking the big copy machine. There was a smaller one, but it didn’t have a collator.

  So I stayed late helping collate forty copies of a fifty-page document. And getting to know Barbara Selby.

  She was in her early forties, divorced with two kids. She was a little overweight, her hair a sedate, but not real blond, and she wore tortoise-shell glasses that spent a lot of time slipping down her nose. But once I got a good look at her eyes, I knew I liked her. They were lively brown eyes that radiated both good nature and intelligence. I hoped she wasn’t mixed up in this. I knew she was a good office manager because the office was managed well, but that was no guarantee that she was a nice person. She kept up a lively conversation, making jokes about modern technology, how she rued the birth of Xerox, etc. She also made it clear that I didn’t have to do this and could leave at any time. It took us about forty-five minutes to finish up.

  “I owe you a beer,” she said as she turned out the light in the copy room, “but not tonight. I’ve got to pick up my kids.”

  “I do understand the priority of kids, but I never forget offered beers,” I answered as we walked down the corridor.

  “How about Friday?” she asked.

  “Sounds great.” We passed out the main door to the elevator banks. I ignored the security guard, who was obviously stationed there to prevent anyone entering after working hours. Something very useful to know.

  We parted. She to her kids, me to my cat.

  I heard Heppy’s meows on the second-floor landing. She had blissfully slept through my leaving food for her in the morning and not having seen me do it, probably never bothered to check her dish. I had started to mutter catty obscenities under my breath when I noticed that my floor mate, Miss Clavish, who ran a mail-order Cajun cookbook company, was locking her office. I didn’t think she would appreciate any blue language, since she was of an age that still occasionally wore white gloves.