Go ahead, ruin my fuckin’ weekend!
Goddamn FBI Seminar starts this afternoon, 14 hours after I caught my latest murder case, a girl of 17 found strangled on the second floor stairwell of a Philip Street tenement, just off Tchoupitoulas Street.
Her name was Priscilla Lewis. Sprawled on her back on the stairs, her light brown hair tangled around her face, there was a thin rope twisted around her neck. The rope had cut into her throat which bulged obscenely around the particularly crude murder weapon of rough hemp.
As she lay pretzeled on the stairs, I studied her, noticing how her flowered dress had been repositioned neatly around her legs. Her torn panties lay 20 feet below on the first floor landing, next to three bent-up soft drink cans and an empty pizza box, residence of two cockroaches and a host of those small in-door roaches. What struck me was the print on her panties. They were Little Mermaid panties. That’s right, from the movie.
Tiny for 17, Priscilla measured an even five feet on the autopsy table.
When I spoke to her mother at three a.m., she said Prissy was “slow in the head”. Not retarded, but slow. Prissy loved going to movies and riding the streetcar to the Audubon Zoo. She liked to walk too. That evening she went out to catch the Jackson Avenue ferry to Gretna to take a bus to Oakwood Shopping Centre. Pocahontas was playing.
It was the third murder on that steamy Thursday New Orleans evening, this one discovered by a gas company crew checking the area for a possible gas leak. One of the men vomited. The other’s eyes were red and vacant. Death’ll do that to you sometimes.
I spent three hours processing the scene with the crime lab, while my overworked partners canvassed the area. I spent an additional hour searching the stairwell and surrounding area for Priscilla’s missing left shoe before heading for her autopsy.
After her post-mortem, in which we discovered she was killed between seven and nine p.m. and wasn’t raped, I managed to get about four hours sleep. Reading the notes from my partners’ canvass over coffee, I found several interesting leads. We lifted a number of decent fingerprints from the scene. We also secured prints from Priscilla’s body using that new DuraPrint system.
Only I can’t follow up the leads. Hell, any good homicide detective knows the first 24 hours after a murder are the most important. No. I have to go to an FBI Seminar.
Ruin my fuckin’ weekend! I have a murder to solve.
“You have to go,” my lieutenant ordered me. “It’s been scheduled for six months. Don’t worry about your case. Your murder will still be there Monday.”
So Friday afternoon, I park my unmarked Chevy Caprice in the 4400 block of Dryades Street, 50 feet from one of the great New Orleans restaurants, Pascal’s Manale. I look across the street at a pink stucco building with rows of tinted windows and recheck the address in my notepad. Apparently this is a bed-and-breakfast known as Dive Inn.
Tucking my notepad into the coat pocket of my navy blue suit, I toss my coat over my shoulder and readjust my black canvas holster, riding high on my belt at the small of my back. In the holster is my new stainless steel 9 mm Beretta.
Crossing the street, I can’t help thinking how only the FBI would be dumb enough to schedule a major crime seminar in New Orleans during Jazz Fest. We’ve had to stash the 200 cops in town for this seminar in every small hotel, bed-and-breakfast and rooming house we could find.
The relentless New Orleans summer sun draws perspiration on my freshly-shaved face. I find the door to the place around the side. It’s ornate, wooden and locked. So I ring the bell. I’m buzzed into a small foyer with four steps. Turning right, through an archway, I hesitate as I take in the view.
To my left is a large swimming pool of turquoise and brown tile. Overhead, a tinted glass skylight bathes the wide room with bright sunlight. A small sitting area to my right is crowded with high-back rocking chairs and a long wooden pew that must have come from a church.
Across the pool, behind a large, U-shaped bar, stands a bald bartender with a reddish-brown goatee. Just this side of the bar, closer to the pool, is the only other occupant, an elderly Japanese man in all white. He stands next to a waist-high exercise bench.
As I round the pool for the bar, a door opens to my right and a naked lady strolls out of a bathroom made from what looks like a gazebo. I freeze as she walks past, giving me a little mischievous grin. About five-five, her shoulder-length brown hair hangs in long curls. For a petite woman, she has nice full breasts and an even nicer, round, voluptuous ass.
She waves at the bartender and walks straight to the exercise table. The Japanese bows to her and she climbs on the table and lies there on her belly. The man pulls a bottle from under the table and pours a thick slurp of oily liquid on the woman’s back.
“What can I do for you?” the bartender calls out to me.
Still watching the naked lady, I move to the bar and ask, “Did I just step into another dimension?”
The bartender laughs and nods to the exercise table. ‘Naw. That’s just Mr Yokura and one of his clients.”
The bartender is about my size, about six-two, but has a good 100 pounds on me, and ten or fifteen years. At 27 I still weigh what I weighed-in as an LSU quarterback – 175. My dark brown hair, in dire need of a haircut, reaches past the collar of my dress shirt.
I look back at the woman as Mr Yokura rubs the liquid on the woman’s shoulders.
“Want something to drink?”
“A Coke would be nice.” I pull a buck out of my pocket.
“No charge, officer,” the bartender says as he fixes me a fountain Coke. Even in civvies, I act too much like the police, I guess.
“I’m ex-police myself.” He puts the glass in front of me and reaches his hand out. As we shake, he tells me his name is Bruce Wayne – no relation to Batman – and how he once worked the Second and Sixth Districts. A car wreck ended his career. “I’m on partial disability.”
I leave the dollar on the counter and take a sip of the icy Coke.
“You here to pick up Detectives Norling and Palmer?”
I nod as I watch the naked lady. Yokura’s hands massage the small of her back, just above her ass.
“They’re kinda peculiar,” Bruce Wayne says.
“Huh?”
“Norling and Palmer. Where are they from?”
“Union Parish.”
“Well, they’ll be out in a minute.” Bruce Wayne leans forward and lowers his voice. “That’s Mrs Sucio. Husband’s a neurosurgeon.”
Yokura pours liquid on the beautiful ass. I have to readjust myself as I sit. The blue-veiner between my legs is a full hard-on now. The spindly hands began rubbing the ass, working the liquid into her creamy skin.
I hear footsteps behind me, turn in time to see a tall man in a tan suit and a white cowboy hat come through the door that must lead to the rooms. He rounds the bar and I watch carefully as he spots what’s on the exercise table. He stops and grabs the bar for support. Leaning forwards with mouth open, he leers at the naked lady getting her ass rubbed.
I have to ask, “Feel like you just walked into The Twilight Zone?”
He nods slowly.
“It’s real,” I tell him as I turn back to Yokura who moves the lady’s feet apart to massage her thighs.
“Jesus H. Christ!” The man in the cowboy hat has a north Louisiana drawl, which sounds like a rural Texan. He stumbles to the stool next to me. He’s breathing so heavily, I have to turn to make sure he hasn’t whipped it out.
“Norm Norling,” he says, extending an empty hand which I shake. “You Detective Ravenboo?”
“John Raven Beau.” I pull my hand away.
“Raven? You some kinda Injun or somethin’? Choctaw or somethin’?”
I wait for him to look at me so he can see the anger in my eyes, only there’s no way he’s looking away from Mrs Sucio.
“I’m half Sioux,” I tell him flatly. “Call me ‘Injun’ again you can walk to the fuckin’ seminar.” No need to tell the idiot I’m half Cajun.
Norm slaps my shoulder and chuckles. “Don’t mind me, padna. I’m an asshole. That’s why I went into law enforcement in the first place.”
How’d Bruce Wayne describe him? Peculiar? I finish my Coke and Bruce refills it immediately, asking Norm if he wants something to drink.
“Got any Calhoun beer?”
“No.”
“Budweiser, then.” Norm taps my shoulder and points a thumb at Mrs Sucio. “Does shit like this go on a lot ’round here?”
“All the time,” I lie. “It’s New Orleans.”
Mrs Sucio rolls over on her back. Norm lets out a high-pitched whistle. A smile crawls on the lady’s face as she lies with her eyes closed.
Yokura pours oil on her belly and proceeds to rub it in neat circles. He pours more between her breasts, which rise with her breathing. Slowly, he works the oil across her breasts, kneading them softly, rubbing her pink areolae, twinking her pointy nipples.
“Motha-fuck!” Norm says. “What kinda show is this?”
“Nude body massage,” Bruce Wayne answers.
I egg him on. “Y’ all don’t have this up in Union Parish?”
Norm points his Bud at the woman. “Who is she?”
Bruce explains as we watch Yokura’s hands work their way down to the top of her pubic hair. He pours oil on her bush. Mrs Sucio opens her feet as Yokura rubs the oil in, his fingers slipping around the sides of her pussy. I finally catch my breath and take another hit of Coke.
Norm climbs off his stool to get a better look at her pink slit.
Mrs Sucio raises her knees, then lets them fall open as Yokura’s fingers slip inside her pussy. When she starts rocking her hips, it’s time for me to readjust my diamond-cutter dick.
Jesus!
Mrs Sucio moans and gasps a breathless, “Yes. Yes. Yes!”
I turn to Bruce Wayne whose elbows are propped on the bar as he watches the show. I have to laugh at the way we’re leering, like schoolboys, until I hear another pair of footsteps approaching. Looking at the doorway to the rooms, I spot a young woman enter.
In a grey business suit, her shoulder-holster rig obvious beneath her jacket, she must be Detective Palmer. I’m surprised she isn’t wearing a Dale Evans outfit. I tap Norm on the elbow.
“This oughta be fun,” he says as he looks over his shoulder. “Here comes Ms Prude.”
Seeing us, she comes around the bar and stops immediately. Her face blushes and she looks at Norm, then at me with an accusing look.
“Whatsa’ matter?” Norm says. “This is New Orleans!” He laughs and goes back to leering at Mrs Sucio.
Standing between her legs, Yokura’s face is only inches from her pussy as he stays his course, fingering Mrs Sucio through spasmodic gyrations.
“She’s gettin’ close,” Norm announces.
I turn back to Detective Palmer who stands there as if quick-frozen. Stepping off my stool, I move next to her.
“I’m here to pick y’all up for the seminar.”
“What?” Palmer’s blue eyes flash at me.
I take a step back, hold my hands up and introduce myself.
She pulls her large purse up to her chest and wraps her hands around it.
“Jane Palmer,” she says.
Kinda pretty up close, she has a plain, natural beauty. She’s lanky, thin with a nice figure and thick, blonde hair streaked with brown and red highlights. She appears to be in her mid-20s, maybe younger.
Behind me, Mrs Sucio hits a high note. Detective Palmer looks around me, so I look too as the woman on the exercise table goes through a loud climax, her ass bouncing on the cushion.
“Damn!” Norm says.
“She sure likes an audience,” Bruce Wayne adds as he asks Detective Palmer if she’d like something to drink.
“Think I’ll go over and introduce myself,” Norm says, climbing gingerly from his stool, heading for Mrs Sucio.
Glancing at my watch, I tell him we don’t have time. “We have to go.”
He waves me away. “One minute, Detective.” Removing his stetson, he approaches Mrs Sucio.
Jane Palmer is already backing away, looking at the pool now. I start to follow, turn and tell Norm we’re leaving. He can catch a cab.
He waves me forwards with his stetson. “This here is Detective John Raven Beau of your own New Orleans Police Department.”
Norm steps aside to give me a clear view of Mrs Sucio, who’s leaning up on her elbows, her legs wide open. I try not to stare at her wet pussy.
She smiles at me and lies back as Yokura pours oil on her feet and begins working her toes.
I walk away with Norm following slowly.
He calls out to Bruce Wayne, “You better let me know when the next woman comes for a finger wave.”
Jane Palmer, sunglasses on now, waits for us outside. I point to the Caprice and lead them across the street. Norm insists on the back seat where he can recline because he can’t bend properly, not with the “stinger” in his pants.
Donning my own dark sunglasses, I drive off. No one talks. When we reach downtown, I ask Jane where is Union Parish, exactly?
She crosses her legs, tugging at her skirt which is only a few inches above her knees.
“It’s up against the Arkansas border,” she says without looking at me. She still looks zoned out. “South of El Dorado. Huttig more precisely.”
Jesus! Huttig? That explains it nicely. I have no fuckin’ clue.
“Any cities in Union Parish?”
“Farmerville. It’s the parish seat.”
Farmerville? Where the fuck is Barney Fife when you need him?
I look in the back seat to see if Rod Serling has hitched a ride.
Norm grins at me. “Hope this stinger wears off ’afore I gotta climb out.”
As I turn on to Poydras, heading towards the river and the Convention Centre, where our seminar is to be held, Jane surprises me.
“Thanks for picking us up,” she says.
“No problem. We take care of the police here.”
No longer blushing, her complexion is peach coloured. She doesn’t seem to wear much make-up and doesn’t need to. She bats those big blue eyes at me.
“Y’all caught a plane down here, I hope.”
She shakes her head and tells me they drove.
Poor thing. All that way with the wonderful Norm Norling.
“Y’all ain’t gonna believe what we saw,” a detective with a Claiborne Parish Sheriff’s Office badge clipped to his suit coat shouts as we crowd into the large auditorium. “Women up on balconies showing their titties for carnival beads.”
Norm Norling, finding a soul-brother, stops to tell everyone about Mrs Sucio and the finger wave at Dive Inn.
I move past them to sit in the last seat, in the last row. Jane Palmer follows and sits two seats from me. Wish I’d have brought a pillow. I put my dark sunglasses back on.
A dozen neatly dressed FBI special agents pass out folders for everyone. When they reach our row, they pass two to Jane and suggest we move up closer.
“I can’t,” I tell them. “Nose-bleed.”
“My nose bleeds too,” Jane says.
I gleek her, peeking at her over the top of my sunglasses. She doesn’t look back.
Across the outside of my folder, emblazoned in blue is: Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Below, in red, is: Seminar on Sex Crimes. It’s the same class I took in Homicide School last year at the Southern Police Institute. I told my lieutenant. But what the fuck do I know? I’m just a worker.
I recognize the lead lecturer. Interesting guy, for a fed. He starts out with the standard “murder among friends and associates” spiel, how 80 per cent of murders are committed by people who know the victim.
Jane writes furiously. I peek over and see she’s taking shorthand. Nice. Wish I could take notes that fast at a crime scene, or during an interview. She sure is conscientious.
Leaning my head against the wall, I close my eyes and drift back to Philip Street. I envision Priscilla walking, walking everywhere. I can see her approach the ferry on her way to see Pocahontas. Wonder how she was led up those stairs? She wasn’t dragged. There were no drag marks on the dirty stairs.
My steady breathing lulls me and I see Mrs Sucio lying there with her legs open and those soft, silky pubic hairs around her pussy lips.
Ah!
I hear Jane Palmer’s voice. “Wake up.”
My eyes snap open.
She’s leaning over me. “We’re adjourned.”
Everyone’s moving toward the exit.
“Are you the only one from NOPD here?” Jane asks as I stand and stretch.
I point to a motley group of ill-dressed detectives across the aisle and tell her they’re from the Sex Crimes Unit. “We also have a couple Juvenile Detectives here, but I’m the only one from Homicide. I have all the luck.”
On our way out, she tells me how I missed three good lectures. I tell her I took the same classes last year. She’s confused. So am I.
It’s still daylight outside. I look around for Norm and Jane tells me not to.
“You can just bring me back to Dive Inn.” I can see her mind’s made up. I was thinking of maybe a nice supper, but who am I to argue?
As I pull up alongside Dive Inn, she turns to me and says, “Just what the hell was that by the pool, with that woman?”
I try to explain as nicely as I can about Mr Yokura and his client, Mrs Sucio and what Bruce Wayne calls nude body massage. “I’ve never seen anything like it, either.”
“You didn’t set it up as entertainment for the out of towners?” She glares at me.
“Nope.” I climb out and go around to open her door.
She’s out before I get there, slamming the door as she walks away. Watching her, I have to admit she has a nice figure. I start to follow, in case Mr Yokura has another client, but I have a better idea. I head straight for Philip Street. I’ve got work to do.
Bruce Wayne is behind the bar Saturday morning when I walk in. The place smells of cooking – bacon and eggs. Yokura is nowhere to be seen. I almost miss Norm Norling as he lies draped across the church pew. Wearing the same tan suit, his stetson covers his face.
Bruce smiles at me and calls out, “Breakfast?”
I don’t realize I’m hungry until I get close enough to see the bacon sizzling on the gas stove along the backside of the bar.
“This is a bed-and-breakfast,” Bruce says. He nods toward Norm. “He isn’t eating.”
I sit on a stool and watch Bruce flip the eggs in the second skillet.
“Last night that fool brought a shitload of country-ass cops back with him. They got drunk and tried to get me to call Mr Yokura, as if he can get a client over here for a nude massage any time.”
I laugh.
“Yeah. Well, good ole Norm isn’t going anywhere today.”
Jane Palmer, smart looking in a navy blue suit, comes out. Looking cautiously at the exercise table, she seems relieved when she sees it’s empty.
“No suit?” she asks me as she sits in the next stool.
Today I wear a black T-shirt and faded jeans, my gold star-and-crescent badge clipped to the front of my belt, my Beretta in its usual position at the small of my back. I have a dark grey dress shirt in the car that I’ll wear unbuttoned like a coat, to cover my weapon in public.
Bruce puts our plates in front of us, along with icy glasses of orange juice. He serves himself up as I start in on the first breakfast I’ve had in months. Usually coffee’s it for me in the morning.
Saturday at the conference is a re-run of yesterday. I grab the seat next to the wall, Jane sits one seat over and takes notes in shorthand.
Her skirt is higher on her thigh and she doesn’t pull it down. The audience is at least a quarter smaller than yesterday. Friday night’ll do that in New Orleans. Even fewer will be here tomorrow.
I start to doze off before the first lecture is over.
I’d spent a good deal of the night talking with the people along Philip Street between Tchoupitoulas, Annunciation and Jackson Avenue. Of course, I came up with nothing. Two of the men I was looking for couldn’t be found.
As I slip into slumber, a Homicide cliché comes to mind, “Good detective work is in the details, not in broad strokes.”
The dream comes to me in snap-shots at first, as if I’m taking pictures of Mrs Sucio walking out of the gazebo-bathroom. Her full breasts move slowly up and down. I focus on her pink areolae and nipples that grow hard as she moves to the table. My fingers rub the oil into her skin, fondling her ass, rubbing it, sliding into the crack.
She rolls over and I knead her breasts. I’m not massaging, I’m feeling her up, fondling her boobs as she breathes heavier. My hands glide down the sides of her body to her hips. She opens her legs and my fingers move through her soft, silky pubic hair.
She gasps as I lightly brush my fingertips across her clit.
The sound of shuffling feet wakes me.
Jesus! I’m at the seminar!
I stretch and look at my watch. It’s almost one. Jane comes in the back door and sits next to me.
“I was going to wake you for lunch, but you were sleeping so soundly.” She has something wrapped in a paper towel. “I brought a chicken salad croissant for you.”
“Thanks.” I take the croissant on my way past her.
“‘Lecture’s about to start,” she tells me.
“I’ll be back.”
My hard-on slowly fades as I cross the street toward Poydras Street. On my way to Mother’s Restaurant, I give the croissant to a homeless man carrying a black garbage bag. He doesn’t bother to thank me, but eats it on the move.
After a nice, sloppy roast beef po-boy, I finish off my second icy Barq’s root beer then slowly make my way back to the seminar. Jane’s taking furious notes as I plop next to her.
Thankfully, the afternoon goes by quickly. I force myself not to think of naked women on exercise benches. I actually listen to a forensic lecture on toothmarks. It’s interesting, only I’ve read a shitload of books on the Ted Bundy case, not to mention watching investigative specials on cable TV that replay every few months. Famous cases, like Bundy and Richard Speck and The Boston Strangler seem to be favourites of investigative reporters.
Jane is ready to leave as soon as the seminar adjourns. Walking next to me, she thanks me again for driving her around. She’s quiet in the car, her legs and arms crossed.
I take her straight up St Charles Avenue, pointing out the fine mansions of the Garden District to her. She looks but isn’t paying attention, not even as a streetcar rattles by along the neutral ground.
“Damn,” she says, uncrossing her legs. She pulls her skirt up. There’s a run in her hose, from her knee up her thigh. To my surprise, she pulls her skirt up as far as the run goes, almost to her crotch. I get a good view of her pink panties beneath her pantyhose.
My hard-on’s back that fast.
She pushes her skirt down, but not too far. Looking up with those large blue eyes she says, “I’m not a prude, no matter what that asshole says.”
I guess the fuck not.
She uncrosses her arms and looks out at a passing mansion, a Victorian painted sky blue.
“I’ve been thinking about that naked woman,” she says.
I glance in the rear view mirror. Nope, Rod Serling’s not in the back seat.
“Can’t get over a married woman getting finger-fucked like that.”
I try not to run into the car in front of me. Guess I stare too long at Jane, because she squints her eyes at me.
“What?” she snaps.
“You didn’t see Bruce Wayne carrying any big seed pods around Dive Inn last night?”
“Seed pods?” She crinkles her nose.
Looking back at the traffic, I tell her, “I don’t know who the fuck you are, but you’re not Detective Jane Palmer. You’ve been body-snatched.”
Her face reddens and she looks away. “Why, because I said the ‘f’ word?”
“Yeah. And you showed me your panties.”
She folds her arms again. “You didn’t see my panties.”
“They’re pink.”
She clams up, but doesn’t pull her skirt down.
Climbing out quickly when we pull up at Dive Inn, she thanks me once again as she hurries inside. I’m about to call out, ask her if she’d like some real New Orleans food for supper, but she’s through the door.
Time for me to head back to Philip Street.
Sunday, the last day of the conference, and I’m wide awake and bored to hell. Two seats away, Jane Palmer sits with her legs crossed. Her black wrap skirt, opened nicely in front, shows almost as much of her sleek legs as I saw yesterday. She wears a white blouse today and barrettes in her hair, pulled up on the sides, giving her a more sophisticated appearance.
I’m all out of leads on Priscilla’s murder. Often, promising clues lead to other clues, not solutions, but these led to nothing. I still hope it’s a neighbourhood thing, someone seeing her, pulling her into that tenement. If it was some douche-bag, cruising around in his car, then it could be anybody. Fuck!
I don’t realize I’m listening to the lecture when my mind reminds me of the homicide cliché again, “Good detective work is in the details, not in broad strokes.”
The lecture’s about “organized” and “disorganized” serial killers. The lecturer, a balding man with black glasses, is discussing the link between victim and murderer.
“Their interaction can be a lone encounter. Or they could know each other, well or slightly. You see, the victim is a complementary partner to the killer . . . the good side of a coin while the killer is the bad side.”
What? I look at Jane and she’s jotting away.
Complementary partner?
As if I’d asked a question the lecturer goes on to explain how the killer selects and interprets communication clues from the victim that the victim may be unaware he or she is giving.
“If a victim is passive, this may provoke the attack. If the victim resists, that may provoke the attack. Certainly, for the brief period it takes for the murder to occur, there is communication between victim and killer. They are partners in death.”
The lecture goes on to explain the two basic behavioural patterns of murders. The first is premeditated, intentional, planned and rational killings. The second is killings in heat of passion or slaying as a result of intent to do harm, without specific intent to kill.
Communication. The word rattles around in my head and I remember something from one of the interviews the night Priscilla died. Someone living nearby. Something about the way Priscilla walked.
Looking at my watch, I see it’s only ten minutes to our lunch break, but I can’t wait. I get up and step past Jane who looks up in confusion. Digging my briefcase from the trunk of the Caprice, I locate the statements taken the night of the murder.
It’s in a statement by a neighbour, one Henry Hyde, white male, 28. Hyde lives around the corner from Philip St on Jackson Avenue. He claimed he didn’t know the victim, however, he’d seen her strolling around. Strolling. It’s not much, but he didn’t say walking. He said strolling, which means a leisurely walk, as if he’d watched her. It’s a subtle thing, but sometimes that’s all we have to go on. Did she communicate that to him, that it was a leisurely walk?
Jesus, am I reaching or what?
I crank up the Caprice and spot Jane rushing across the street. The wind catches her skirt and it opens, showing her sleek legs and shapely thighs. I roll my window down.
“Where are you going?”
“Work on my case.”
She pulls her hair away from her face. “You’ll miss getting your diploma.”
“They can mail it to me.”
She looks over her shoulder at the mass of cops streaming out for lunch. Turning back, she says, “Mind if I come along?”
I unlock the front passenger door. She climbs in, fastening her seatbelt, but leaves her skirt open.
“You’ll miss your diploma,” I tell her.
“Stuff it. Let’s go.”
No one answers the yellowed door of Henry Hyde’s apartment. Nestled on the side of a three-storey home long ago converted into apartments, Hyde lives a block up from Tchoupitoulas.
A warm breeze filters up from the river as Jane and I walk slowly from Hyde’s house down to Tchoupitoulas. Checking garbage cans and alleys, we look for Priscilla’s missing black shoe.
Passing a particularly smelly lot between two dilapidated buildings, I tell Jane, “Welcome to the inner city.”
“Smells like a cow pasture,” she says, “after a long rain.”
As we turn right on Tchoupitoulas, we almost walk past a blue dumpster in an alley. Half hidden behind an abandoned green Ford with no wheels, the dumpster has no lid.
I climb up on the Ford’s trunk and spot the shoe immediately. My heart races as I lean closer. It’s a left shoe all right. I pull my radio out of the back pocket of my jeans and call headquarters for the crime lab.
“You serious?” Jane says as I climb down.
I rub her arm. “You’re good luck.”
She smiles and bounces on her toes.
It takes the crime lab an hour to arrive and another 40 minutes to photograph, secure the shoe, dust it for prints and lift one print. Turning to leave, I spot a man standing on the sidewalk across Tchoupitoulas. There’s nothing but the grey seawall behind him as he stands leering at us, hands in his pants pockets.
As I approach the man, he presses his back against his seawall and stands stiffly. I pull out my credentials and show them to him.
“What’s your name, mister?”
“Henry Hyde.”
I feel the hair standing on my arms. “We have to talk,” I tell him.
He’s about six feet tall with prematurely greying hair that hasn’t been brushed in God knows how long. His smooth, pinkish face is almost adolescent looking. His grey T-shirt is two sizes too small and his pants cuffs end a good inch above his black, high-top tennis shoes.
Jane is definitely good luck.
While Henry Hyde festers in a tiny, windowless interview room, I locate an old buddy from the academy, now one of our ace fingerprint technicians and call in a favour – on a Sunday. Thankfully, Hyde has a criminal record, arrests for shoplifting and cruelty to animals.
Sitting at my desk in the wide Detective Bureau squad room, Jane and I sip the fresh coffee I made.
“How long do you think it’ll take?”
“With this new computer equipment, not long I hope.”
Just as we start on our second cup, my phone rings.
One of the prints lifted from Priscilla’s body and the print lifted from the missing left shoe are positively Henry Hyde’s right index fingerprint. Two of the others look promising too.
I lead Jane into the interview room, turn on the video camera in the corner and sit next to Hyde at the small table. He bats his eyes at me like a myopic goldfish.
I tell the videotape the date and time, then, “I’m Detective John Raven Beau, New Orleans Police Homicide Division. Also present is Detective Jane Palmer of the Union Parish Sheriff’s Office and Mr Henry Hyde.” I read his date of birth and address aloud, then read him his Miranda Rights. After each right, I ask if he understands. He answers yes in a high, shaky voice.
Henry stares into my eyes, but won’t look at Jane.
“Well?”
He shrugs.
“You might feel better if you tell us how it happened.”
His chin sinks and he closes his eyes.
Over the next two hours, I become Henry Hyde’s friend. He doesn’t admit it, not at first, but describes how Priscilla strolled around a lot. He’d seen her several times.
He gets choked up and I press in closer, talking in a low, controlled voice. Priscilla did communicate with Henry Hyde. She ignored him. I press on, eventually explaining to Henry about his fingerprints.
Tears form in his eyes and, like a good plains warrior, I pounce.
“You were ashamed, weren’t you?”
He starts crying.
“That’s why you straightened her dress, isn’t it?”
It takes a while to get him to stop crying and even longer to tell the story in narrative form. He’d followed Priscilla several times but never too closely, until this time, until she turned suddenly and almost ran into him.
“I didn’t mean to hurt her!”
“I know,” I say unemotionally.
Eventually he explains that she didn’t resist. That made him madder.
I control my natural inclination to strangle this bastard. I keep remembering Priscilla’s twisted body and her Little Mermaid underwear, torn and lying on that filthy landing.
At 7 p.m., Jane and I walk out of Central Lock-up after Henry Hyde. She grabs my arm and says, “That was exhilarating!”
I feel it too, the natural high from solving the case, from putting it all together.
“You are definitely a good luck charm,” I tell her. “How about a nice New Orleans supper?”
“Absolutely!”
I drive straight to Pascal’s Manale where we feast on alligator soup, barbecue shrimp, spicy crawfish etouffée and a bottle of Burgundy. She tells me what it was like growing up on a farm with a hard-working father and a stern, Bible-preaching mother. She’s very curious when I tell her how I grew up on the swamp next to Vermilion Bay with a Cajun father and a Sioux mother.
Walking across the street to Dive Inn, Jane tucks her arms around mine. Probably the wine. She drank most of it. She thanks me again for dinner and especially for letting her work on the case.
We spot Mr Yokura immediately as he works his magic fingers along the backside of a long, lean blonde woman on the exercise table. Bruce Wayne, elbows up on the bar, watches Yokura work. Norm Norling, still in the same tan suit, sits on the stool next to Bruce, his stetson up on the bar.
“Join us,” Bruce calls out.
I hesitate, but Jane, staring intently at Yokura and the blonde woman, pulls me to the bar.
Norm turns to us and almost falls off the stool. Giving me a bleary-eyed stare, he says, “Shit. Why ain’t you the Jap?” He picks up his latest Budweiser and finishes it off.
“You mean him?” I point to Yokura.
Norm looks over his shoulder and blinks as if he’s noticed the show for the first time. He lets out a loud moan, stumbles away from the bar, does a little spin and crashes flat on his back, spread eagle.
Bruce puts an icy Coke in front of me.
“You live here, or something?” I ask Bruce.
“I own the place.”
Still watching the Yokura show, Jane asks for a glass of Burgundy.
Bruce obliges as I turn and watch. The woman rolls on her back, Yokura pouring oil between her round breasts. She arches her back when he starts rubbing the oil in.
We watch in silence as the hands work the woman to a heavy-breathing high. Yokura’s right hand moves from breast to breast as his left hand slips between her legs, rubbing through her slightly-darker-than-blonde pubic hair.
“That’s Mrs Panemy,” Bruce tells us. “A widow.”
Jane takes a drink of her wine.
Yokura moves between Mrs Panemy’s open legs and uses both hands, one fingering her clit, two fingers from the other hand slipping inside. He takes his time, but she’s bouncing already and crying out.
“He’s good,” I hear myself stating the obvious.
Jane lets out a long breath. “Very good, I’d say.”
Just as Mrs Panemy’s groaning and gyrating seems to reach its peak, Yokura backs away and bows to her open pussy. It takes her a few seconds to catch her breath. She leans up on her elbows and looks our way.
“Excuse me,” Bruce says as he passes us. He extends a hand for Mrs Panemy and pulls her up off the table. She wraps an arm around his waist and they walk back past us on their way to the rooms.
“Well,” Jane says as she finishes her wine. “Can’t say I blame him.” She reaches over the bar for the bottle of Burgundy.
I notice Yokura moving our way. Jane doesn’t see him until he’s next to her. When she’s finished pouring herself another drink, she turns to face him.
“Would you like to be next?” he asks her with only a hint of accent in his voice.
The blue eyes widen. She softly bites her lower lip and turns to me. And I can see it in her eyes. She’s thinking about it.
In life there are pivotal moments where we can go one way or the other.
Yokura steps aside and opens his hand towards the exercise table.
Jane’s chest rises as she stares at the white, cushioned table. She takes another drink of wine, hands me the glass and climbs off the stool. She takes a hesitant step forwards, her back to me now. I feel a surge of excitement as she unbuttons her blouse and hands it to me. I lay it on the bar away from the wine glass.
She wears a lacy white bra. Unfastening the lone button at the front of her skirt, she pulls it away and hands it to me. She steps out of her heels and works her pantyhose down. Her panties are also lacy white.
Turning to me, Jane smiles and reaches back to unhook her bra. She hands it to me, her eyes staring into mine, daring me to look at her breasts. I smile back and look down at a pair of beautifully formed breasts, not too big, not too small. Her pink areolae look so soft and kissable, her small nipples hard and ready.
Jane climbs out of her panties, steps around me and drops them on the bar. Scooping up the stetson, she walks over to Norm-the-unconscious. Standing naked over him, she sneers, “Prude, huh?” Bending over, she covers his face with the stetson.
Yokura already has his bottle of oil in hand as he stands next to the table. Jane gives me a sexy look as she moves over and climbs on, face down. I step off my stool and straighten my swollen dick.
Her skin looks extra pale under the fluorescent lights, Yokura’s hands darker and gnarled like magnolia branches. He works the oil across her back and up to her shoulders. Moving down to her hips, I watch as he rubs her ass and then works the oil into her thighs.
I finish my Coke, walk over and ask Yokura how much. In New Orleans, we pay as we go. He tells me 20 and I drop a 20 dollar bill into his open case.
Jane turns over. I’m breathing heavy now.
“Come here,” she tells me as Yokura pours a thick slurp of oil between her breasts. She cranes her neck up, her lips pursed for me. I bend over and kiss her lips lightly as Yokura starts rubbing the oil on her breasts.
She lets out a deep breath and presses her lips against mine, her tongue in my mouth. We French kiss while Yokura rubs her breasts. When he moves down her body, pouring oil on her belly, Jane takes my hands and moves them to her chest.
I come up for breath, Jane gasping as I start feeling-up her breasts, rubbing them softly. My fingers rolls over her nipples, tweak them and rub them.
Yokura moves between her open legs. Kneading her breasts, I continue feeling her up as I watch Yokura’s fingers work the oil through her thick mat of pubic hair.
Breathing heavily Jane lets out a series of tiny squeals. Yokura’s fingers slide into her.
She cries out and tells me not to stop. I’ve slowed down my squeezing. I knead her breasts a little harder.
“Kiss me!”
I kiss her – a maddening, tongue-probing, hot kiss. Her body rises, then falls. Her hips gyrate in long, smooth strokes to Yokura’s fingering. She has to pull her mouth away to breathe.
Yokura leans forwards and blows on her pussy as his fingers continue working in her. She cries out. I reach down and run my finger through her pubic hair. I reach her clit and rub it softly. She presses it against my hand, bouncing now.
Yokura motions to me with his free hand, then suddenly steps away.
I move around quickly and stick my tongue into the folds of her wet pussy.
She shudders and grinds against my tongue. I lick her clit and work my tongue in and out and up and down. I taste her juice and feel the heat from her pussy as I continue Frenching it.
When I stick a finger deep inside, my tongue not missing a stroke, Jane screeches and pulls at my ears. I don’t stop, moving my finger in a tight circle inside her, moving my tongue in quick licks across her pussy lips.
Jane’s back arches, her hips rising high. Gasping, she holds it there for a second, then goes through a withering climax, an ass-bouncer, a legs-squeezing-my-ears, loud orgasm.
I think she calls me God, or maybe just calls his name.
She tries to pull away, but I won’t stop, which sends her hips bouncing high. I don’t stop until she finally collapses in a heap on the table.
It takes me a minute to catch my breath.
Jane sits up and pulls me forwards, wrapping her arms around my chest, her legs around my waist.
“That was soooo delicious,” she gasps. “Take me to my room, Mister, and I’ll get rid of those blue balls for you.”
Scooping her in my arms, I wink as I pass Yokura on our way to the hall. She points to the third room on the left. The door’s unlocked. I place her on the bed. Jane grabs my belt as I pull off my over shirt, pull out my Beretta and place it on the end table.
She yanks at my T-shirt and has me naked in two minutes, holding on to my diamond-cutter dick as she pulls me atop her. She guides it to her pussy and I work it in slowly, feeling the hot, wet walls of her tight pussy. Sinking it all the way in, I stop for a second as Jane gasps and pulls my mouth down to hers.
I fuck this girl, riding her, grinding my dick in her, pumping hard and then not so hard and then hard again. She pumps her hips in rhythm to my humping. When I get close, I stop. She won’t and keeps pumping against me. As soon as I’ve got it under control, I start again and she increases the pace until I can hold back no longer. I come in her in long, deep spurts, my legs shuddering. I jam her and continue until I collapse atop her.
The air-conditioned air feels good on our sweaty bodies. We lay in the scent of our sex, arms and legs around each other.
“I don’t believe this,” Jane finally says. Her voice doesn’t indicate regret, but incredulity.
I tell her she’s hot, an incredibly hot woman.
“I don’t mean that. I don’t believe how I’ve felt ever since I got here.” She snuggles her face against my chest. “This place got to me.”
“Dive Inn?”
“The city. I’ve been turned on since I got here.”
“I’ve been that way since I was fifteen.”
She pinches my side.
“OK. I know what you mean. There’s something about New Orleans. Maybe it’s the air or the humidity or . . . I don’t know.”
Jane runs her fingers across my chest.
“When you’re ready for seconds, let me know,” she says softly.
And it occurs to me, this didn’t turn out to be a bad weekend after all.