It was called ‘Hammer City’ when you nailed them and LaStanza hammered the Almonaster Killers – big time.
On the evening after the triple arrest, instead of keeping his date with an expectant Lizette, he found himself still hammering away, arriving on South Salcedo Street with a less than enthusiastic Paul Snowood. Dino was on a high. Firearms examination confirmed that Smith & Wesson .38, found in the Hotel Nenos room was the gun used to murder Hector Diaz. A partial latent of Angel Nunez’s right thumb was lifted from it. The nails were almost all the way in and he was still hammering.
When he stopped their Chevy in the 1100 block of South Salcedo, Paul started shaking his head, “Where do you find these neighborhoods?”
Paul had never worked the Sixth District. To LaStanza – this was his home field. He answered with a smirk, “I love this place.” Pointing across the street at a cinder block building with a tin roof and a long white cross on its front, he added, “That’s the Second King Solomon Tabernacle and Celestial Congregation. I arrested a twelve year old once for padlocking the celestial congregation inside on the hottest day of the year and pulling the circuit breaker. It must have been two hundred degrees inside by the time we got the lock off.”
“Why didn’t they break a window?”
“Don’t have any windows.”
Dino climbed out, stretched and yawned.
“What ever happened to the First King Solomon?” Paul asked.
“He fuckin’ died.”
“You like these neighborhoods don’t you?” Paul was looking around cautiously. They were only a few blocks from the Calliope Housing Project.
“Man, this is as New Orleans as you can get.”
“You just like pretending you don’t get scared in the middle of all this shit.”
Stepping across the small ditch that used to be a sidewalk, Dino climbed up the front stoop of house who’s entire front wall was covered with large time signs that read: Barber Shop – Ask For Wildroot.
He knocked on the dilapidated front door and told Paul, “This here’s the Wildroot House. They ran outta shingles.”
Before his partner could respond, a bleary eyes, elderly black woman in a lavender house coat peeked out from behind the ratty door.
“Police,” LaStanza placed his credentials against the woman’s nos. When he pulled it away, he smiled, “It’s me, Granny. Dino. Stan’s partner.”
The old woman took a step back and leaned her head toward him, “Where your uniform?”
“I don’t wear a uniform anymore, Granny. I’m a detective now.” He pulled a mug shot from his coat pocket, “I’m looking for somebody who stays here.” He put it in front of the woman’s nose, “Carlotta. You know Carlotta?”
The old woman nodded and said, “She in back.”
“Thanks.”
The woman disappeared inside, leaving the door open. Dino turned back to Paul and nodded across the street, “Those are the brightest street lights in the Sixth.”
“I know. I feel naked.”
“See the chicken wire around them. Can’t even break ‘em.”
Just then a gnarled arm reached out to them with a key, “Y’all don’t break up the place, ya hear?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Dino called back on his way around the side of the hose.
“Mind telling me what the fuck we’re doing?” Paul was right behind.
“She lives in the back apartment.”
“You mean these are apartments?”
The house was a long shotgun shack with gaping holes in its walls and air conditioners dangling precariously at forty-five degree angles from its side.
“How do you find these places?” Paul moaned.
Dino stopped in front of a door half hidden behind a rusty water heater, placed a finger over his lips and shushed his partner before inserting the key. Paul already had his weapon out.
The room was lit by a small lamp in the far corner. It was a combination living room and dining room. There was a kitchen on one side and a bedroom on the other. They found Carlotta Louisa Ignascio lying on a bed in the back room. She was wearing a white bra and black panties and managed a groggy “Quien?” before Dino flicked on the overhead light.
“Jesus!” Paul took a step back. The place was a sty. They couldn’t see the floor for all the clothes and garbage piled up. There was graffiti on every wall, in Spanish, pantyhose hanging from the overhead light and enough take-out pizza boxes to fill a garbage dumpster.
The woman on the bed lifted her head wearily and repeated, “Quien?”, before her chin crashed back on the pillow.
“What does ‘Quien’ means?”
“It means ‘you have permission to search my place’,” Dino answered as he began rooting through the end table next to the bed.
He found an address book that had Hector’s phone number and address, along with Angel’s and the rest of his confederates but no Lugo, as well as a lid of marijuana, a vial of white crystals that had to be coke and a sack full of pills of every color and size imaginable. He also found an eight by ten picture of Carlotta and Hector, standing arm in arm, both smiling broadly at the camera. She wasn’t a bad looking woman, made up and dressed up, a little on the chunky side but Carlotta had – a pretty face.
He looked at the mass of long black hair that concealed her head as she lay doped up in her bra and panties in a slum room in the lowest of lower class new Orleans and thought of Donna – and her one brassiere.
“She’s got a Sony Trinatron in there,” Paul said when he returned from searching the living room, “and a nice stereo and a Japanese VCR. And she lives here.”
“Typical fuckin’ junkie.”
“Angel too,” Paul shook his head, “living in that dive.”
“Hector didn’t live in no palace either.”
“They gotta make a shitload of money and they live like this,” Paul nudged a half filled pizza box with the toe of his boot, scattering roaches.
“They don’t call it dope for nothing.”
It took a while to wake her and even longer to get her dressed.
“Let’s just slap a robe around her,” Paul argued. Dino insisted on a blouse and pants and even shoes. “She might be at the Bureau for a while. I don’t wanna be interviewing no half naked whore.”
•
They gave her coffee but she was still groggy so LaStanza locked her in a holding cell. A half hour later she was yelling and banging on the bars with her shoe.
When Dino went to let her out, she started screaming as him in Spanish.
“Speak English,” he snapped back.
“Where am I?”
“Jail. And I got the key.” He opened the cell and led her to an interview room and let her wait there for another half hour before going in with a legal pad and a tape recorder.
If Dino had closed his eyes and pictured what a Carlotta was supposed to look like, it would be this woman’s face, broad and olive skinned with large brown eyes, a wide nose and thick lips, long straight black hair. She was a big busted woman who, at twenty-two, looked like a forty year old prostitute in a border town whore house. a magician must have put on her makeup for that picture in her room.
Carlotta said she was born in Honduras. She married a U.S. service man when she was seventeen, moved to El Paso where she had twins. The twins were still in Texas with their father. “You can’t deport me. I’m a U.S. citizen.”
“This ain’t Immigration,” Dino snarled. “We’re the real police and we’re talking about murder – bloody, premeditated, first degree fuckin’ murder. My name’s LaStanza. And you’re not leaving here until I get the truth about Hector Diaz. And I don’t care how fuckin’ long it takes. Comprende?”
She nodded slowly and the edge was gone from her voice when she spoke again. It took a while. It took another long night, dragging out the statement. But Dino finally walked out with confirmation of the daughter’s story. It was seven in the morning.
Paul was sleeping at his desk.
Mason was sitting at Dino’s desk, smiling. Dino had to do a double take. Mason – smiling? “What is tit?” he asked.
“Sit down.”
“Come on. Don’t fuck with me.”
“Sit down,” the lieutenant insisted, rising and pulling Dino by the arm, sitting him across from his partner who was beginning to stir. Mason’s smile was hideous now. from ear to ear. He started slowly, “Not only did we find pellets from the .38 Smith imbedded in the walls at the hotel – we found pellets that matched the .45 used by the Common Street Killer.”
“What?”
Even Paul sat up in his chair.
Mason was holding his hand out like a cop directing traffic, “That’s right. The gun used on Common was in the room with Angel and the boys – ”
Dino’s overworked mind was reeling. He had to talk to Donna right away. “I gotta get a picture of the Common Killer and – ”
“That isn’t even the best of it,” Mason was downright gloating.
Dino held his breath.
Mason let the word roll off his tongue, “A b u d a n c e.”
“No!” Paul shouted and fell out of his chair.
“Yes! The Ruger – was the Abundance Street murder weapon.”
Dino had never seen a homicide detective do a square dance in the squad room until that morning.
“EEEEoooww!” Paul hopped around in a wide circle, “I solved it! I solved it! I mother-fuckin’ solved it!”
Dino had too much to think about to react to his partner’s act. He now needed a picture of the Abundance victim too and he’d show both pictures to Carlota before bringing her home and then he had to talk to Donna. These victims and killers were all linked. And he remembered he had to call Miami about that killing Donna mentioned in her statement and –
Mason waited until Paul slowed down to conclude with the obvious, “We got ourselves a Latin killing circle here. boys.”
“You mean a spick circle jerk,” Paul was riding h high chaparral. “greaseballs fucked up bad this time. Guess they never heard of throwing guns in the river.”
•
When he showed Carlotta a mug shot of the Common Street Killer she said nothing but he knew she recognized him. Then Dino pulled out a picture of the Abundance victim and she crossed herself.
“Guess we’ve got more talking to do,” he signed, placing the photos in front of her on the table and sitting across from her. Her eyes never left the photos.
Dino softened his voice, “I told you before, I’m all Hector has now. I’m the only one who can do something about it. But if you don’t help me – ”
Carlotta looked up with eyes narrowed in anger – or was it fear?
“Don’t you have to advise me of my rights?” Her voice became deep and nasty.
“You about to confess to something?”
“No.”
“Then I can’t violate your rights. So what about the pictures?” he nodded toward the photos.
The fear in her eyes was obvious now, “Look, I already told you about Angel and Jesus and the – murder. I don’t wanna talk not more.”
He wanted to reach over and shove her face down and rub it against the pictures and hold it there until –
Carlotta had her own question, “And who dressed me anyway?”
He wanted to tell her if she didn’t want anybody seeing her in her drawers, she shouldn’t be a junkie, but instead he said “I thought you loved Hector.”
“I did. I do love him.” She started blinking as her eyes became wet.
“Then help me.”
But LaStanza should have know better. Fear of the living was much stronger than the love of a dead man.
•
A black police woman let LaStanza into the room but only after Lt. Mason cleared him on the scrabbled police radio. She made him show his ID anyway before stepping out of his way.
Donna was munching popcorn and watching TV on one of the double beds. She almost spilled the popcorn climbing off the bed to greet him. He thought she was going to throw her arms around him, but stopped short, just in front of him. She was smiling wider than Mason had earlier.
He looked away from her anxious eyes and examined the room, “You like it here?”
“I liked the Monteleone better but this ain’t bad – for a Holiday Inn.”
“They switching you every day?”
“Every day your lieutenant comes with a new police woman and I move to a new room.”
Compared to Magazine Street she was living high now. But Dino wouldn’t allow himself to think about where she would be living when all this was over. Not now.
“I gotta talk to you about Carlotta.”
“OK.” her face was still beaming.
They sat on the edge of one of the beds and he told he how Angel and Jesus and Billy Boy bragged to Carlotta about the killing and how they went to her apartment after and disposed of the evidence.
“They burned your father’s red address book in the sink and his green ledger book.”
“I told you,” she bounce on the springy bed.
“She told me about Angel’s gun smelling like gunpowder and how it had two bullets missing.
“I told you that too.” Donna looked especially young, sitting crossed legged in her blue jeans and pull over sweater.
“Yeah, you did, but now we have it confirmed.”
She stopped bouncing and her lower lip began to protrude slightly. “You didn’t believe me?”
“I believed you.” He finally took a long look into her eyes. “But we gotta convince a jury.”
“Oh.” She was giving him that look, that unmistakable caring look that bothered him because he was looking for it. Her hair was freshly cleansed and willowy. Her face looked self luminous.
When he yawned, she reached over to rub his neck. He pulled away, which caused the lower lip to push out again.
“Carlotta refused protection,” he told her, “like your step-mama. They’re not too smart.”
Donna did not react at all.
He sat back down and pulled out the pictures.
He had to asked her to look at them before she would take her eyes from his. She had never seen the Abundance victim before but she knew the Common Street Killer by name. “He used to work for Angel and my daddy. He dealed. They were talking about killing him a couple weeks ago.”
“Killing him?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“The usual. Rip off. I think he owed my daddy’s boss, Senior Lugo, some money.” She said it so matter-of-factly she almost made it sound – innocent.
She made it difficult to leave when he got up. She didn’t say anything but her silence was loud enough to cause him to stop and rub his shoe against the carpet’s grain, back and forth.
He finally broke the quiet with, “I got a lot to do. I gotta talk to your girlfriend Wendy and the Miami police about the other murder.”
“Oh,” she looked away and asked in almost a whisper, “but can’t you stay a little while?”
“If I don’t keep moving,” he forced back another yawn, “I’ll fall asleep.”
“That’s OK, I’ve got an extra bed.”
But when he looked back at her he could see that wasn’t what she meant at all.
•
Before he could get his keys out, Lizette opened the door from inside. She gave him a long look up and down, put a hand on her hip and said, “Don’t I know you?”
Then she stepped forward and hugged him.
“Are you all right?” she whispered in his ear.
He nodded. Her deep perfume almost made him feel – awake.
“Then,” she was still whispering, “we’re going to have a long, hot shower and then we’re going to sleep – for a week.” She squeezed him and suddenly he didn’t give a shit about badges and guns and homicides.
He pulled back and looked into her eyes at the flecks of gold in her irises. Sometimes, she was almost too good to be true. Especially when she smiled that wicked, warm smile at him.
“First thing,” she pulled him into the dungeon and closed the door, “I’m going to disconnect the phone.”
“I gotta make a call first.” He held out his hand in surrender. “Just one call.”
“OK, just one.”
He turned away and then turned right back, “Where did you find that?” He pointed to his old Rummel varsity letter jacket which she had on over he jumpsuit.
“In the back of your closet. It was chilly in here.” She did a slow turn to model it for him, “I didn’t know you lettered in track.”
“Three years.” He turned back to the phone and picked up the receiver.
“Win any races?”
“One.”
He punched out Millie’s home number.
“It was a marathon. I was the only one who finished, so I won.”
He made it a quick call, asking Millie to call Parish Prison right away to make sure they kept his killers away from her killer. Then he told her why, adding sarcastically, “Some goddamn job we got, making sure my killers don’t kill your killer.”
The phone rang as soon as he hung up. It was Mason.
“You’re not gonna believe this.”
“Then don’t tell me,” he was about to hang up when Mason said, “Carlotta’s attorney just hand delivered an affidavit refuting her statement.”
“What!?”
“She claims it was given under duress. He hand-carried a copy to the D.A. too.”
“Well fuck!”
“That ain’t all,” Mason paused a moment. “You got a preliminary hearing on this shit day after tomorrow.”
He slammed down the receiver and screamed, “Fuck this shit!” Then he threw the phone across the room.