“Fire and brimstone,” I said. “It can’t be a coincidence. Slade gets fired from his job at Melancon Supply in January. Two days later, there’s a fire in the warehouse. Slade gets evicted from Pat Doucette’s apartment building in February. Two weeks later, that particular unit goes up in smoke.”
“With Ray Brixton inside,” Antoine said.
We were at his kitchen table and he was eating an oyster po’ boy, the ubiquitous New Orleans sandwich served on French bread. After my burger and fries at Shorty’s, I wasn’t even tempted to snatch a bite, although the sandwich was bursting with fried oysters.
“It’s looking more and more like Slade set those fires, first at the warehouse, then at the apartment, to get back at Pat for evicting him. But why was Brixton there?” I was thinking out loud. “Was he an accomplice? Did he come along to help Slade set the fire? Or is something else going on? Something we’re not seeing yet? We have to talk with Cindy Brixton.”
Antoine nodded in agreement. He set his sandwich on the array of paper towels that served as a plate, then wiped his mouth with another towel. “She’s not returning my calls. My contact at the fire department says she travels for work, so I’m thinking she’s out of town. I say we go over to where she lives. I’ve got her address. In the meantime, we’ve got two leads to check out, the car dealership and the other musician.”
Between bites of his po’ boy, he had told me that his sister, Daisy, had called him earlier in the day. She’d been asking around and had come up with the name and phone number of another guitar player who knew Slade. The guy had a day job, like many of the local musicians. We’d called and left a message, hoping that he’d return the call.
“What about Laurette’s car?” I asked. “You found out something?”
Antoine got up from the table, wrapped up the rest of his sandwich and stashed it in the refrigerator. As he washed his hands at the sink, he said, “Yeah. My buddy at the Office of Motor Vehicles came through. We help each other out now and then.”
“A little quid pro quo never hurts. What did you find out?”
“Laurette went back to the same dealership where she bought the Civic. Which makes sense. That’s what I’d do if I was going to trade in my car.”
“Great. Let’s take a ride over there.”
He jingled his key ring. “I’ll drive.”
The Honda dealership was in Metairie, in Jefferson Parish, on the other side of the Seventeenth Street Canal. We located the salesman who’d handled the deal. He was a round-faced man in his forties, wearing a lightweight gray suit and a name tag that said his name was Ron. At first, he didn’t want to give us any information, citing privacy concerns. We told him why we were there and offered to give him the Tedescos’ phone numbers, so he could verify our story.
He shook his head and pointed us toward his office, a glass-enclosed space looking out on the showroom. “I’m sorry to hear that Ms. Mason is missing. I can’t show you the paperwork or anything like that. But ask your questions and I’ll answer them if I can.”
“I just want to make sure we’re talking about the same person,” Antoine said. “She traded in a green Honda Civic.” He consulted a slip of paper and rattled off the license plate number.
Ron took a seat at the desk and his fingers played over the keyboard. He squinted at the computer screen, then nodded. “That’s right. That’s the plate number on the Honda she traded in. She and the young man with her picked out a Ford Escape, red, with a gray interior.”
“What’s the plate number on that Ford?” Antoine asked.
Ron grabbed a slip of paper and a pen, jotting down the number. He handed it to Antoine, who showed it to me. Bert, the manager at Laurette’s apartment, had been right about the double fours in the license number.
“What can you tell us about the man she was with?” I asked.
“I didn’t talk with him,” Ron said. “I did the transaction with her. She had the trade-in and the cash. The Civic was in her name. I assumed he was a friend of hers, along for the ride, so to speak, to help her pick out another vehicle. He went on the test drive with her and it came down to a choice between the Ford and another Honda. They talked it over. I heard a bit of that conversation. He was pushing for the Ford, because it was bigger.” The salesman leaned back in his chair. “The guy was talking on a cell phone most of the time. In fact, at one point he got so loud one of the other dealers asked him to step outside. He acted as though he was going to get belligerent about that, but Ms. Mason talked with him. Eventually he did go outside.”
“Did you overhear any of his end of the phone conversation?”
Ron thought about it for a moment. “Not much. But I did hear him say something about Kerrville. That’s a town in the Texas hill country.”
“What about Ms. Mason?” Antoine asked. “Did she say anything about plans to go somewhere?”
“She said she wanted to get a larger vehicle because they were going on a road trip,” Ron said. “I don’t recall that she said where they were going, just that she would be seeing a part of the country she hadn’t seen before.”
That could be a big section of the country, I thought. Laurette had spent almost her whole life living in New Orleans. Most of her family was here, except for that cousin in Florida. But the Texas hill country could be a clue, along with Slade’s former address in Austin. Could be, she and Slade were headed west.
We headed back to Antoine’s RAV4. We drove through New Orleans, into the Treme neighborhood. Then traffic came to a standstill and Antoine pulled over to the curb. “It’s a parade,” he said. “You’ve been in New Orleans a week. Have you seen a second line?”
“No, I haven’t. I was hoping to.”
We got out of the RAV4 and walked up the block, just in time to see a brass band playing “I Feel Like Funkin’ It Up.” People danced along the pavement, some of them wearing elaborate and colorful costumes made of satin, decorated with sequins and feathers. They carried banners proclaiming the name of their social club. Following in their wake were other people walking and dancing, some of them twirling parasols. Others waved handkerchiefs and bandannas in time to the music.
“This is the first line,” Antoine said. “Sometimes they call it the main line. The band, and those people in the club that hold the parade permit. Those people following, that’s the second line.”
“Cool. And this is different from a jazz funeral, right?”
“Right. No casket, obviously. Going to the cemetery, the music is usually slow and solemn. Then maybe on the way back after the interment, the band plays something lively.”
The brass band drew near. Antoine and I joined the second line and I laughed as he showed me the steps. We second-lined with the parade for several blocks, enjoying the music and the festive atmosphere.
“I think I’m getting the hang of this,” I said. The parade reached an intersection and slowly turned to the right.
At that moment, Antoine’s phone rang and he took the call. He gave a thumbs-up signal and from his end of the conversation I knew the musician had returned his call. “Be there in fifteen minutes,” he said, then ended the call. He looked up at me. “We’re in luck. The guy just got off work and he’ll talk with us.”
Luis Ortega worked for a local delivery firm with an office on South Galvez, a block or so off Canal Street. When we caught up with him, he was outside the building, stashing a backpack in the trunk of his blue Subaru hatchback. He was in his early thirties, with wide-set brown eyes and dark hair curling around his face.
He definitely had the Texas twang. “So you’re Daisy Lasalle’s brother,” he said, when Antoine made the introductions. “I’ve met Daisy a time or two. She’s really a great singer.”
Antoine smiled. “Yeah, she’s pretty good, even if she is my kid sister.”
“How can I help you folks?” Ortega asked, looking from Antoine to me.
“We’re looking for information on a guitar player named Slade,” I said, watching as Ortega frowned. “You know him?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say I know him. Not well, anyway. He’s not a friend, you understand. Just musicians, you know. We both play guitar. I play bass and slide.”
“That’s cool,” Antoine said with a shrug. “Just tell us what you know.”
“I know him from back in Texas,” Ortega said. “That’s where I’m from, down around San Antonio. Before I made the move to New Orleans, I was playing gigs in Austin.”
“When did you meet Slade?” I asked. “And how?”
Ortega leaned against the rear bumper of his Subaru. “It was last year. My band was playing at Kerrville. That’s about an hour west of Austin. They got a big music festival there, the Kerrville Folk Festival. It runs late May to early June. Slade was in a band that was playing there. He was subbing for a regular band member. That was a stroke of luck, for him to get a gig with a band that was playing there. Because when I was talking with him, I got the impression he hadn’t been in Texas that long. He said he’d been in a band that broke up, so he decided to try his luck in Austin. I figured that gig at the festival made him think getting gigs in Austin would be easy from then on. But the music business is up and down. Every musician knows that, or ought to.” Ortega laughed and pointed at the building where he worked. “Me, I’m here delivering packages. We’ve all got day jobs, just to survive, so we can gig at night.”
“True that,” Antoine said, using a New Orleans expression I’d heard many times since I’d been here.
“Later,” Ortega continued, “I’d see Slade in Austin from time to time. It’s like that. You see the same people over and over. Sometimes Slade would be subbing in the band I was playing with. Same here in New Orleans. I moved here last fall. The band I was in back in Austin split up and I decided to try my luck in the Big Easy. There’s a great music scene here. It’s different from Austin, though.”
“So you get to New Orleans and run into Slade again,” Antoine prompted.
Ortega nodded. “Yeah. January, after Christmas, it was. I was playing with a band at a Bourbon Street club. Slade was with the group that was the opening act. We got together after the show, had a beer and talked. He wasn’t in a regular band, he was just subbing that particular gig. We talked about gigs and music and New Orleans.” Ortega shrugged. “I got the impression he was not feeling the NOLA love like I am.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“I think he was expecting to do better here. Like he thought New Orleans is the Holy Grail for the music scene. Of course, when he was in Texas, he was talking like Austin was the place to be. Anyway, when I saw him on Bourbon Street, he talked like he was having a hard time getting gigs in New Orleans. As far as I could tell, he had only been here a few months. I said, Look, man, you need to give it more time. But he was talking about going back to Austin. Said he’d been working steady there. I don’t know if that’s true or not. Maybe it was just him talking.”
I considered this. It was possible, given what I was hearing, that Slade decided that New Orleans wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. If he wasn’t working as much as he had back in Texas, that would make sense. And he could have persuaded Laurette, who by some accounts was ready for a change, to go with him. But still… There was something that didn’t sit right with me. One look at Antoine told me he was thinking the same thing. It was the fires, at the apartment, at the warehouse.
“I guess it would make sense to go back to Austin,” Antoine said. “If he figured he’d get more gigs.”
“Maybe that was it. Me, ever since I got to New Orleans, I’m playing steady all the time.” Ortega laughed. “Of course, I’m easier to get along with than Slade is.”
I nodded. “Give me an example.”
He thought about it for a moment. “He gets touchy, you know. If things aren’t going his way.”
Antoine and I traded looks. “I heard that. Can you give me an example? Did he ever get into a disagreement or argument with someone here in New Orleans? Or in Austin?”
Ortega took his time answering. “Well, I heard something, but I don’t know if it’s true. It’s like thirdhand news. Don’t they call that hearsay?”
“They do,” I said. “But tell me what you heard. We might check it out.”
“Well, I heard he got into some sort of a pissing contest with a guy, back in Austin. They played a few gigs together and they were best buddies. And then they weren’t. I remember it because this other guy had a new car, he’d just bought it, and one night somebody torched it.”
Fire and brimstone, I thought again. It looked like Slade’s favored method of getting even was to strike a match. I didn’t like it, not at all.
“The guy whose car was torched, do you recall his name?” I asked.
Ortega rubbed his chin, as he thought about it, then he shook his head. “Sorry. I don’t.”
“Do you know a guy named Ray Brixton?” Antoine asked.
Ortega looked perplexed, then his face cleared. “The name’s familiar. Like maybe I met him once or twice. Plays guitar. Pretty good, as a matter of fact. Yeah, I did meet him. At a club on Frenchmen Street. He and Slade were playing in the same band at that particular gig. I heard later there was some bad blood between the two of them.”
“Any idea why?”
He shook his head. “Not really. It’s just something I heard.” He paused, then looked thoughtful. “Seems to me it could have been about money. But I’m not sure. You could ask Brixton, but you know, I haven’t seen him in a while. I’m wondering if he left town.”
Brixton was gone, all right. He was dead.
I had another question for Ortega. “When Slade was talking about that band he was in that broke up, did he say anything about where he was from? Or the name of the band?”
“Not really,” he said. “He mentioned California, but nothing specific about where in California. Big state, you know. As for the name of the band—” He shook his head again. “If he said the name, I don’t remember.” Then he stopped and cocked his head to one side. “Wait a minute. He said the band broke up because one of the players decided to come to Austin. And Slade decided to do that, too. It was—” He snapped his fingers, once, twice, then he grinned. “The Flames. That’s what he said. The Flames.”