It was the first time Dino was given free rein in front of the Grand Jury. The A.D.A. in charge, a lanky man wearing thick eyeglasses and a blue striped vest with his tan suit, let the detective tell the story as in, “Once upon a time there was a man named Hector Fuentes Diaz – ”
With all of his notes laid out in front of him and no pain-in-the-ass cross examination, it was easy. He told it all – the Almonaster ditch – the bullets in the brain – the frightened daughter – the red headed wife with the brown roots – the moon face of Angel Nunez – Jesus’ nervous lips – the way Billy Boy Robbins could not ‘comprende’ – the guns from Hotel Nenos linking the Common Street Killer – Carlotta – the anti-social Godwins – even the defiant crawfish.
The jury was attentive during his entire presentation. After, he was asked to wait outside. He passed Carlotta on her way in. She had toned down her appearance that afternoon, wearing an off-white, baggy dress and no make-up at all. She looked like a retired whore. If there was such an animal.
Mixing coffee in the waiting room, Dino ignored Harry Barnett as the counselor waited for Carlotta. The room remained silent, except for the clinking of LaStanza’s spoon against the side of the cup, until one of the D.A.’s secretaries came in and sat across from Barnett. Then the counselor turned on the charm he’d learned at Tulane.
The secretary was about nineteen with frosted brown hair that curled past her shoulders. She had naïve gray eyes, a pretty face and a petite body beneath a thick maroon dress. Barnett complimented her dress and then her hair and then started complimenting LaStanza. It was friendly, respectful and charming. After all, they were just two professionals ‘doing their jobs’. It was nothing personal.
“He has his job to do and I have mine,” said the drug lawyer. It was all part of the judicial game. The naïve eyes blinked with understanding.
LaStanza was sure his own eyes spelled out exactly what he was thinking. He shot a look at Barnett that snapped away all small talk like a twig from a dying tree. He was thinking – Fuck you, you slimy bastard!
This was no game. This was First-degree-fuckin-murder. Yet he could see, in the chilly eyes of the prim secretary that she agreed with the counsel for the defense. Then again – she wasn’t on the jury – so fuck her too.
Dino went to wait in the hall. Leaning against the wall, he reminded himself – that when it was time for a jury – he’d have to leave his hatred at home and play the judicial game. When Carlotta finished, the A.D.A. called Dino back in for rebuttal. He could see that the grand jury believed him when he retold how Carlotta gave her statement, no matter what she had said.
Then he pulled his coup de grace when the A.D.A. asked if there was anything he wished to add to his testimony. From his briefcase he pulled out a large manila envelope he’d received that very morning from the Public Safety Department, Dade County, Florida.
He opened the envelope and showed the eager eyes of the grand jury the “Death Scene Investigation Report” and the “Crime Scene Report” and the “Offense Report” and a host of “Supplementary Reports” concerning the investigation into the untimely death of one, Antonio Ortiz, who died a year ago when someone put two bullets into his brain – exactly the same way hector Fuentes Diaz was murdered.
“And, as you can see,” Dino said, pulling out mug shots from the envelope, “the two suspects arrested for the Ortiz Murder were Angel and Jesus Nunez.” As the mugs circulated, he added, “We’re sending comparison pellets to Dade County from the Diaz murder weapon to compare to their bullets.”
He let it sink in a moment then concluded, “the charges were dropped against the Nunez brothers after the state’s lone witness – disappeared.”
•
Back aT the Bureau, LaStanza walked into the middle of another story about the Common Killer. Millie was sitting at her desk, explaining to her partner, “ – because the boss was a megalomaniac.”
“A what?” asked the sing song voice of Maurice Ferdinand.
Dino could not stop him self from looking over at the drooped shoulders, the short dirty blond hair, as the glazed eyes of the man known as M.F.
“A megalomaniac,” Millie repeated.
M.F.’s eyes looked more glazed than usual when he looked back at Millie with a, “Huh?”
“That’s a person who thinks he’s great when he isn’t. you know with delusions of grandeur.”
“Uh huh,” M.F. was wearing an orange shirt, a yellow tie, and even brighter yellow pair of bell bottom pants and a multicolored sport coat of iridescent squares.
Millie explained, “The boss was an insufferable perfectionist with a superiority complex who refused to take fault for anything. He always blamed someone else.”
Maurice looked like Icabod Crane draped in a dizzy mosaic rug. Dino began to rub his eyes. Millie started giggling.
Across the room, Mark approached, his voice rising over the chatter, “The DA’s office just called. The Grand Jury returned true bills against all three for first degree murder.”
“Already?” Millie said.
“That’s right,” Mark grinned as he patted LaStanza on the shoulder.
Dino pointed to the iridescent coat and asked M.F., “Before you left home, did you look in the mirror?”
“Huh?”
Millie laughed so hard she forgot the rest of her story.
Settling at his desk, Dino heard Paul enter the squad room, whistling “Suicide Is Painless”.
“Hey lover boy,” Paul yelled, “you got a visitor out front.”
“What?”
Noticing M.F., Paul stopped, “What the fuck?”
“What visitor?” Dino asked.
“I don’t know, but she’s almost as pretty as the Princess.” Pointing back at the outer office, Paul continued staring at the mosaic like man in a trance.
•
She was sitting on the bench, her legs crossed, her hands cupped in her lap. When Dino approached, she turned her green eyes to him, stood up and let her face smile a controlled smile. She was wearing something new, a fitted black dress that showed off her best asset, her legs. Her hair, as black as the dress, had grown longer in the months since he’s last seen her. She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, her right hand gently touching his waist, reminding him of the intimacy they once shared.
When she leaned back, she was still standing too close, Her eyes peered deep into his, as they always had. There was no place to hide, no place to escape from those eyes. She knew him too well.
“I thought maybe we could go for a drink.”
“I um, can’t right now.”
She looked down, “I didn’t think so.”
Dino shifted his weight from one leg to the other, “You want some coffee?”
“OK.”
He felt every eye in the squad room follow them to the coffee table. He poured two cups.
“Let me,” she said as she mixed their coffees. He turned back toward the curious eyes. Mark waved at him and pointed to his office.
Dino led her into his sergeant’s office and closed the door. She placed her coffee on the desk and sat back, crossing her legs.
“So how have you been?” she asked.
“Fine. A little busy.”
“I know. I can never get you at home.” She looked down again and added, “I came to tell you – I’m getting married.”
He tried to keep his face from revealing anything. I wasn’t difficult. He felt nothing.
She looked at him, hard. “I wanted to be the one to tell you. I didn’t want you to hear about it like I heard about you.” her voice had a familiar edge to it.
“Oh.”
“My father told me you were engaged. I thought you would have been the one to tell me.” At that moment he realized why he broke up with her in the first place. It was that voice, that careless, critical voice. She was always at him with it, always correcting him, trying to make him a better man.
“I un – ” He hadn’t talked to this girl in almost a year, “ – I didn’t think.” He found his voice was apologetic.
He could not read anything in her eyes. He never could. They just stared right through him. So he tried his coffee. She’d mixed it perfectly but it still tasted like shit. Burned coffee sucked.
She rose and put a piece of paper on Mark’s desk, “That’s my new phone number.” Her face became softer when she smiled, “maybe we can talk sometime.”
He nodded.
She turned to leave and he had to hurry around to follow her out. The curious eyes chased them across the squad room. Back in the outer office, she turned and kissed him on the cheek again, her hand back on his waist.
“He isn’t a cop, is he?”
She shook her head.
“Good for you,” he said.
Then she leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth – softly – her tongue gently stroking his for an instant before she pulled away.
“Call me,” she said, running a hand through her hair before she turned and left.
On his way back to the squad room, he dropped her number into the first waste basket.
•
Paul had an evil grin on his face when Dino returned to his desk, asked, “Who was that?”
Mark answered for him, “That was Jack Blanc’s daughter.”
Paul whistled loudly and then said, “Boy, you got more good lookin’ women chasing after you.”
“What’s her name?” Millie asked.
“Jessica,” Dino answered for himself this time.
“Oh,” Paul cut in, “I remember now. She was your squeeze before you started squeezing the Princess.”
Dino started toward the coffee pot.
“What did she want?” Paul had to ask.
“You,” Dino snapped, “she wanted you. She heard you got the smallest dick this side of Tombstone.”
For a moment he thought his partner wasn’t going to respond until Paul sighed, “No need to get personal.”
“Don’t you have anything better to do?” Mark asked Paul.
“Nope. I’m just sitting around waitin’ for someone to die.”
Dino fixed a fresh pot of coffee. It was time again for the FUCK THIS SHIT mug.
•
Dino drove, which was a mistake. No sooner had he pulled away from his parents’ house on North Bernadotte Street when his mother told him to slow down. He had to force himself to keep from correcting her – from telling her it was just the worn out engine of his VW racing in a struggle to keep from stalling. So he just nodded to her. His father remained silent until Dino made his first turn, then started in, “Why are you going this way? Why didn’t you go down Bienville to Carrollton to – ”
By the time Dino turned on Garfield Street he was hotter than the overheated engine of his Beetle. He wondered, as the car eased up to the dead end of Garfield along Exposition Boulevard, how many full grown, thirty year old Homicide detectives still had parents. In the lingo it was called matricide and patricide.
Mrs. LaStanza readjusted her long dress after climbing out of the tiny back seat, glanced around at the narrow street and said, “I thought they lived on a boulevard.”
“You see that,” Dino’s father pointed at the wide sidewalk at the end of Garfield along the edge of Audubon Park, “that’s Exposition Boulevard. Ain’t much of a damn boulevard is it?”
“It looks like a sidewalk.”
“It is. These people live on a sidewalk,” Anthony LaStanza added as he struggled with the button beneath his clip-on tie.
Dino’s mother, who figured she was the butt of another joke, replied, “I don’t get it.” Dino was going to explain but his father was already on the sidewalk so they had to hurry to catch up.
Facing the sidewalk-boulevard, the three story southern veranda home loomed like a large white ghost that night, all lit up. On his way up to the cut-glass front door of the Louvier Mansion, Dino noticed some thing that changed his mood completely. It was his father’s shoes. Mr. LaStanza was wearing black uniform shoes, patrolman’s shoes, the same shoes he had worn for as long as Dino could remember. There was something comforting about those shoes, something solid and familiar.
When he was a little boy, his earliest memories of his father were of those shoes walking across their living room rug on their way out to work. As a five year old, Dino joined his brother in watching their father dress for work. With big brother Joe perched atop the dirty clothes hamper and Dino seated on the closed lid of the commode, the LaStanza boys watched their father shave and then don a light blue uniform shirt, climb into dark blue pants, strap on a gun belt and finally those black shoes. Dino’s father was a patrolman back then but wore those shoes all the way up the ranks to captain. Now retired, he still wore them.
Dino looked at the side of his father’s face, at the deep lines along the cheek and the thick moustache that was completely white now, matching the full mane of hair that crowned the old man’s head – and there was no way he could feel hot anymore. He glanced over at his mother as she rang the bell, at her steel gray hair that was in a neat bun and the solid line of her thin nose and pursed lips – and there was no way he could feel hot anymore.
When Lizette answered her front door, Dino was smiling the same smile from that picture back when he was six years old. As soon as she could, she leaned close and whispered, “What’s so funny?”
Glancing back at his parents, Dino saw that all his fears about that evening were justified. They looked like they were standing in line for the electric chair.
Lizette’s parents entered the foyer at that moment to greet the LaStanza. Mr. Louvier and Captain LaStanza shook hands as Lizette introduced everyone including Alex who had sneaked in from the library. With both sets of parents assembled, Dino realized how much older his parents looked. The Louviers were barely in their forties, their hair still dark and full, their bodies still lean and youthful. The LaStanza looked like grandparents.
Mrs. Louvier was a thin woman, athletic, with jogger’s legs and a figure thinner than her twenty-one year old daughter’s. She was mistress of the Louvier Mansion, taking subtle control of the conversation and guiding everyone into the dining room. She wore her hair short and her skirt long and always spoke softly.
“Call me Donna,” she told Dino’s mother.
Lizette’s father was the ideal image of a modern, high tech man, the latest model in the most successful banking family of New Orleans. Alexandre Louvier II had deep set eyes and an easy going smile. In a casual shirt and khaki dress pants he looked more dressed up than Captain LaStanza in his coat and tie.
On their way into the dining room, Dino’s father glared back at his wife and tugged again at the button beneath his clip-on tie. Jennie LaStanza ignored her husband’s expression as she followed him around to the back of the long dining room table.
Dino smiled to himself because his father had done it again – without thinking. He had caught himself doing the same thing many times. It was a subconscious movement, easing to the back of the table, sitting with his back to a corner even thought it was obvious Mrs. Louvier had other seating plans. In the police academy it was taught that a cop never sits with his back to the door. You never knew when a dope fiend would stroll in with a shotgun and blow away the first uniform he sees and your brains end up in the bread pudding before you got to eat it.
It was an important lesson, although not needed on anyone named LaStanza. Sicilians instinctively knew better than to sit with their backs to the door. In restaurants, at home or even in the home of a gracious host, you faced the door. “You don’t want your brains in the spaghetti – ” it was innate.
Alex sat next to Dino, who was busy watching Alex’s sister walk in and out of the kitchen. Lizette had fixed her hair differently that evening. It was in ringlets, the wet look, long and curly. She wore a white dress shirt with its cuffs rolled up and baggy jeans. Her make-up looked a little on the light side that evening except for her bright red lips, which looked even more kissable than usual. In light make-up, her topaz eyes stood out even more.
As soon as Mrs. Louvier saw Alex sitting next to Dino she made him go up to the “lavatory” to wash up before dinner. Dino watched the boy shuffle away and head up the large spiral staircase in the foyer. He remembered how many times his mother had sent him and his brother to wash up. Except in the LaStanza house – you washed up in the kitchen sink.
When Lizette and her mother began serving dinner, Dino was certain they had given the maid the night off. He was also sure it would not take long before his father said something stupid. And he was right.
“What is that?” Mrs. LaStanza asked, glaring at the tray Lizette held in front of him. The captain’s voice was a little too sharp, a little too loud, causing a silence in the room until Lizette responded, “It’s frog meat. We’re French.”
Captain LaStanza looked at her with his best caveman expression, extending his normally protruding eyebrows into a Neanderthal look. Without changing expression, he scooped a small portion from the tray, poked at tit with his for, and took a hesitant bite. “It tastes like veal.”
“Oh, then this isn’t the frog,” Lizette corrected herself as she moved to Mrs. LaStanza. “It’s the nutria.”
Even Dino’s mother smiled as the laughter relieved the tension. Only Alex did not laugh. He yanked at Dino’s sleeve and whispered, “I’m not eating any rat meat!”
Mrs. Louvier let her voice rise slightly in correcting her son, “You know what it is. Now behave.”
When everyone was settled at the long table, Mrs. Louvier raised his wine glass and announced, “A toast to Lizette and Dino. May they have a long and happy marriage.” Mr. Louvier flashed a broad smile at his daughter.
Alex raised his wine glass filled with water and said, “Yeah!”
Captain LaStanza winked at Lizette who was squeezing Dino’s hand under the table. Curiously, the expression on Donna Louvier’s face was identical to the expression on Jennie LaStanza’s. It was an expression that expressed nothing. Dino had seen it before – many times – on faces in the autopsy room.
•
The ‘nutria’ was actually grillades, veal rounds cut into medallions and cooked in a roux with thick, spicy brown gravy, served over grits. Lizette had fixed it before for Dino. It was delicious. She had learned it from her father’s mother before the old lady passed away. It was an authentic French Creole dish.
Captain LaStanza ate a double helping. Dino watched his father gobble his meat with his knife in one hand and his fork in the other. Just like the old country, except the Captain wolfed down his food in a hurry, so fast Mrs. Louvier thought he was very hungry and eagerly offered him more. He declined.
Dino knew it was just a lifetime of half hour lunches, eating in uniform at fast food places, never knowing if you were going to finish before someone shoots someone else or runs a stop sign and rams a station wagon and somebody calls a cop.
It was a hard habit to break. Dino made a conscious effort and still always finished before Lizette every time they ate together. But she never seemed to notice, or more likely, never mentioned it.
•
Lizette noticed – but thought it was an inherited trait. She had only seen Dino’s parents a couple of times and tried to watch them without their noticing. She like to pick up the traits Dino inherited from his father, which were far less than those his got from his mother. Dino’s parents were so opposite. The Captain was large and brash with wide hands and a broad face. Mrs. LaStanza, like her son, had light green eyes and a even temperament. There was a delicacy about Dino that mirrored his mother’s ways. He had eyelashes any girl would envy.
Dino was a gentle man and yet she had seen his eyes harden when his work moved in on him and he had to strike back. She had seen his Sicilian temper flare and how he used it in his pursuit of a killer. It excited her to see him like that as much as it frightened her. She wondered if hidden deep within Dino’s mother was the same strength.
Lizette’s mother was speaking to Mrs. LaStanza now and there was a connection between the two women that Lizette never expected to see.
“One thing’s for certain,” Donna Louvier said, “they will have beautiful children.”
Mrs. LaStanza agreed, “Maybe a little on the short side.”
Lizette felt a weight lift from her when both women smiled. It was a beginning. Now all she had to worry about was talking her mother out of the big wedding or, more likely, talking Dino into one. She looked at her boyfriend and wondered if he even noticed their motherx smiling.
Dino was thinking – between mouthfuls of stuffed mirliton – about what Donna Maria Diaz was eating that night.