LaStanza had an idea. When there was no response to the first newspaper article on the Batture Again Murder, he asked his partner to grab her briefcase.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
When he didn’t elaborate on the way, Jodie began to tell him how she’d hit a big zero with missing persons. She also told him that Kelly had called earlier and was conducting an intensive daytime canvass of the lower coast while on duty that day.
LaStanza parked the Ford in one of the fifteen minute parking zone in front of The Times-Picayune Building. He asked the receptionist if he could speak to George Lynn and waited with his partner until a short, balding man in a brown suit came down to get them.
He barely recognized Lynn. Since high school, George had lost so much hair and found so much excess weight, he looked like an exaggeration of the boy who sat next to LaStanza in homeroom forty-tree at Archbishop Rummel High.
Lynn’s face revealed he recognized LaStanza with no problem. He extended a friendly hand. “Son-of-a-gun,” the reporter stammered. A familiar, crooked grin crossed the chubby face.
LaStanza introduced his partner, who’s dress was the same shade of brown as Lynn’s tight fitting suit. Then he asked for help.
“Anything I can do,” Lynn said. “Nice partner,” he added as they followed Jodie up the escalator to the second floor.
Once inside the reporter’s cluttered office, LaStanza came right to the point. “Can you draw us something like this?” He took out a rough sketch of a woman. He had drawn in the blouse and skirt of the Batture Again victim on the figure with appropriate notations as to color and style of clothing and the physical features of the victim. Over the face, he had drawn a large question mark.
“I’d like it done up right, asking for help in identifying her. This is the woman we found on the batture – ”
“Sure, we ran something on this case in today’s paper,” Lynn said.
“Yeah, on the back page. I thought maybe you could put this on the front of the Metro Section or something like that.”
The familiar grin crossed Lynn’s face again. “Sure, why not?”
Jodie bumped LaStanza’s shoulder gently and pointed to his diagram. “Her skirt and blouse were mauve, not purple, size five. And they were from D.H. Holmes.” She ran a hand through her hair and looked up at Lynn. “I think we should be as precise as possible.”
“Absolutely,” Dino agreed, moving aside to let his partner get a better look at the drawing. After all, he reminded himself, she was the case officer.
“And make a note out here.” Jodie pointed next to the woman’s hips on the drawing, “that she had a hysterectomy scar.”
Lynn nodded, grabbed a pen to jot the new information on the sketch. Jodie continued, “And her shoes were Bernardo. That’s a brand name. Size six.” Lynn added that to the sketch and then sat behind his cluttered desk. Extending a hand, he motioned for them to sit and then said, “I sure got fat, didn’t I?”
LaStanza had to smile, He didn’t feel like small talk but he sat down anyway and let Lynn lead them back to the days when they were Raiders together, tearing up the Catholic League.
“We were on the track team,” Lynn told Jodie.
That was true. LaStanza was a runner, the four-forty and the mile. Lynn was a jumper and, of all things, a pole-vaulter.”
“I didn’t win too many events like Dino here,” Lynn quickly added. “Remember those cheerleaders from Donaldsonville? The one with the dark hair and the big boobs that flirted with you?”
LaStanza had no idea what Lynn was talking about.
“Dark hair and big breasts, huh?” Jodie asked.
“Oh, yeah.” Obviously Lynn remember something.
“You should see Dino’s wife,” Jodie added.
“Really?” Lynn sat up on the edge of his chair.
LaStanza shot his partner an inquisitive look just as Mark interrupted the conversation by calling them on the radio.
“3122 to 3124.”
Jodie had the radio and answered, “Go ahead.”
“Can you two 10-19?”
“10-4,” Jodie answered.
LaStanza stood up and extended his hand to his old teammate. “We have to go.” He passed one of his business cards to Lynn and asked for one in return. He thanked Lynn once again and left.
As soon as they were back in the Ford, he called Mark. “What’s up?”
“We’re running papers on the Hanged Lady Case.”
“10-4,” LaStanza responded and turned to his partner, “Jesus, Country-Ass must have been working.”
•
Snowood looked like a cast member from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Leaning back in his chair, dirty boots kicked up on his desk, Country-Ass sported a two-day growth of beard, generously dusted with gray. His tan, Roy Rogers vest was covered with the funk of the streets, as was his green, double-breasted cowboy shirt and corduroy pants. He looked almost as old as Walter Huston.
Fel didn’t look much better. His face, also unshaven, looked weary and beat to the devil. He had thrown his pumpkin-orange suit coat over the back of his chair, along with his ink tie. His equally pink dress shirt was unbuttoned, its sleeves rolled up as he sat typing a warrant at his desk.
“Fuckin’ triple murder yesterday and now this fuckin’ case – ” Fell was talking to himself as he typed.
LaStanza picked up Fel’s coat sleeve and said, “Where’d you get this suit? Dryades Street?”
Fell didn’t look up, but answered, “You just jealous.”
“I like your Sheriff Bart outfit better.”
LaStanza sat on the edge of Snowood’s desk and tapped his old partner’s boot. “Talk to me, Country-Ass.”
Snowood yawned, revealing a mouthful of ka-ka brown saliva. Snapping his mouth shut, he answered, “Once upon a time, an Ass-hole named Tex Waston got released from Angola four days ago. He went straight to Magazine Street and starting hitting on this blond chick who worked in the pet store by Josephine Street.”
LaStanza followed his so far.
“The other night, he asked to walk her home, only she didn’t make it. They stopped by an abandoned car on Felicity where he killed her. Then he went back and carried her two blocks to a certain warehouse on Nuns Street where he found a rope.”
Snowood paused for dramatic effect before continuing, “Then he took her dress to the cleaners. Blood, knife wounds and all. Then he ran his mouth to a couple of his padnas on Magazine.”
“Why’d he take the dress to the cleaners?” Jodie asked.
“Who the fuckin’ knows?” Snowood answered. “Thank God, criminals are stupid.”
“Fuckin’ dope fiend,” Fel added.
Mason came out of his office and crossed the squad room to the new Zenith console television set the Burglary Unit had liberated from some burglars. He always watched the twelve o’clock news.
“Hey!” Mark yelled as he stepped into the squad room from his office. “Your killer’s name is Tex Watson?” He was carrying a daily in his hand.
“That’s right,” Snowood said, “only he’s from Oklahoma.”
“Shit,” Mark snorted. “Tex Watson was the name of one of those Manson Ass-holes that massacred Sharon Tate.”
“Yeah?” Snowood grinned, “sorta like naming yourself after Robert Ford, huh?”
Jodie looked at LaStanza who shrugged and looked at Mark who interpreted, “That’s the guy who shot Jessie James in the back.”
“Hey,” Mason called out, “pipe down and look at this mook.” He was pointing to the TV.
On the tube, there was an unshaven, acne-scarred face the color of pink marble. A pair of vacant, dope fiend eyes, the color of wet sandpaper, stared into the camera lens as an off-screen voice announced, “This man has been accused of murder and says he is innocent.”
The camera moved to the handsome face of an anchorman, who added, “Details after these words.”
“Motha Fuck!” Snowood bellowed. “That’s our killer!”
The squad gathered around the television and waited. After a diarrhea commercial and a word from Jerry Falwell, the anchorman came back on to introduce Alfred ‘Tex’ Watson to the citizens of the Crescent City.
“This man is about to be accused of murder by New Orleans Police and decided to turn himself in on the air,” the anchorman said in a voice dripping with concern.
The camera panned to the acne-faced again who said, “I’m innocent.” Watson’s eyes shifted around like a kid who’s hand was just caught in the cookie jar.
“How do you know about this allegation?” the anchor asked.
“Huh?”
“How do you know the police are looking for you?”
“Oh, I heard it on the street. Some, uh, associates tole me I was gonna be busted for a murder a some broad. In a warehouse. But I uh, didn’t do it.”
“What type of business are you in, Mr. Watson?”
“Huh?”
“What do you do for a living?”
“I never sold drugs in my life – ”
Everyone in the squad room roared and then tried their best to quiet down in order to hear more.
“I uh,” Tex was saying, “yeah, I do drugs, little crack, Tees and Blues, PCP, you know, and I give it to my friends, make a little money, but I don’t push.”
Felicity Jones was in hysterics. Jodie was trying her best to quiet him.
The anchorman’s face filled the screen. “The details of the alleged murder are sketchy at the moment but we believe this involves a body that was found recently, somewhere in the city.”
That got an even bigger laugh. Talk about journalistic accuracy.
“Now,” the anchor had one more question, “Where were you at the time of this murder?”
“Cleveland.”
•
LaStanza and Jodie left Tex to Snowood and company and headed for the lower coast. LaStanza was feeling good for a change, after such a good laugh. They found Kelly at a horse stable in the twelve-thousand block of River Road, about a half mile from the murder scene. Kelly was interviewing the large, bury owner of the stable. They were talking about stallions and fillies and all that rot.
Jodie pitched right in and demonstrated, to her partner’s surprise, that she knew a great deal about horses. LaStanza stepped away when they started talking about geldings. He waited by the Ford for twenty minutes. When it didn’t look like the conversation was near ending, he put a note on Kelly’s windshield and left in the Ford. The note read: “I’ll be on the batture”.
On that particular early summer afternoon, the river was crowded with traffic. A large container ship, riding high in the water was making its way north, while two larger ships, riding low in the water, lumbered south. Behind the container ship, there was a line of barges snaking its sway up river like a long worm.
It was hotter near the water. The air, as usual, was heavy with humidity and there was no wind. LaStanza stood at the base of the levee and examined the scene before him. It was quiet along the lower coast, even during the day. The smell of greenery filled the moist air, along with the smell of mud from the river’s edge.
He began to walk around. There was no particular reason for him to be there. But he felt a need to be there, to be where the women had been left to rot next to the brown water. Somewhere, probably across the river, in the concrete mass of a city built on a wide crescent in the river, was a man, his man, his killer.
In the movies and novels, the cop sometimes tries to think like the killer, to get into the killer’s mind and find a clue. But in real life, LaStanza knew that getting into the mind of a man who would do such a thing could not be done. A good homicide man went with the facts. Speculation was for amateurs.
He would find the killer, but not through the concentration of a good idea, not by the spark of a light bulb illuminating in his mind. He would find the killer through the victims. That was the only way.
He looked back at the river and said aloud, “I’m gonna get you mother-fucker. Period.”
•
LaStanza grabbed the morning paper, stopped by Café DuMonde for a thermos of café-au-lait and beat everyone, including Mason, to the office the next morning. He poured a steamy cup full in the FUCK THIS SHIT mug, kicked up his feet and opened the paper.
It was on the front page. The drawing was at least five inches tall. Above it was written, “Who Is She?” The newspaper artist did a great job on the sketch. She looked like a real woman, instead of the scarecrow that LaStanza had drawn. In the center of her blank face was a large question mark.
“Who Was This Woman?” was the title of the accompanying article. LaStanza started reading–
She was middle aged. Found on the Algiers river batture last Wednesday morning, her identity still unknown she lies unclaimed in the Orleans Parish Morgue–
The article went on to describe the clothing and the fact that the victim was beaten to death. Then it asked anyone with information to call NOPD Homicide.
LaStanza reached for the phone and called the newspaper. Lynn wasn’t in, so he left a message of thanks with the senior editor. As soon as he hung up, the phone rang. It was Ft Frank Hammond from the Crime Lab.
“That father’s neutron activation test came back negative,” Frank said.
“Uh?” It took a half second to realize what Frank meant. “OK,” LaStanza acknowledged.
“The little boy’s came back positive.”
“Fine. Thanks.”
“I just thought you were in a hurry for it.”
“Yeah, I was. Thanks a lot.”
Well, there would be no rebooking of the Ass-hole father with murder. LaStanza and the state would have to be satisfied with negligent homicide. It was not satisfying at all.
The phone rang again and LaStanza took their first lead on the Batture Again victim. A lady who worked in a bakery called to report her friend who hadn’t showed up for work for three days. After a couple minutes, the lady asked, “Did she have a bridge. In her mouth?”
“No.”
“Oh, well. Then it wasn’t my friend.”
LaStanza thanked her anyway and prepared himself for a long day of answering the phone. Mason came in after LaStanza eliminated two more leads. Mason wore his navy blue blazer that morning and sported a fresh, Marine Corps haircut. He was happy to lend a hand. Not two minutes later, LaStanza hit pay-dirt.
“I think it’s my tenant,” said the voice of an elderly woman. “She’s been missing for three days and when she left, she wore a mauve outfit.” The voice began to quiver as the woman added, “He name’s Margaret Leake, with an “e” on the end. She wore Bernardo shoes just like that. And she had a hysterectomy four years ago.”
“And what is your name and address, ma’am?”
“I’m Mary Roberts.”
LaStanza jotted quickly, adding the woman’s address and phone number next to her name in his notes. Then he told her they’d be right over.
“I’ve got a good lead,” he told Mason. “Landlady on Constance Street.” Nodding, he added, “Sixth District again.”
“Good,” Mason let out a long drag of smoke, “I’ll keep logging calls until you get a positive.”
Jodie came bouncing into the squad room with a paper tucked under her arm. She wore a full pink skirt and a light weight, pale yellow sweater. She stopped as soon as she saw him packing up his briefcase.
“Let’s take the Maserati,” he said. “I wanna piss off the Chief.”
“Where are we going?” She was always asking that.
“To talk to your victim’s landlady.”
Her wide spaced eyes shot open.
•
Margaret Leake had lived ten years in a apartment on the uptown side of a one story, wooden double in the fourteen hundred block of Constance Street between Euterpe and Terpsichore. Her landlady occupied the other side of the narrow shotgun house with the small front porch, gingerbread overhand and tiny front yard. The place looked very much like the double where Jodie lived.
Mary Roberts had once been a handsome woman. Her eyes were still clear and blue even though her face had wrinkled like a raisin and her hair had turned cotton-candy white. She was eighty-seven, born and raised in new Orleans, attended Sacred heart Academy before going to Sophie Newcomb College where she met her future husband. He was an engineering student at Tulane at the time. They married and lived fifty-five years of childless but happy marriage until he died of lung cancer eleven years earlier. Mary Roberts told LaStanza and his partner her life’s story in the first few minutes of their conversation.
Mrs. Roberts wore an old fashioned, seersucker dress with a high collar and long sleeves, even though it was close to a hundred degrees outside. She wore black oxford shoes, a pearl necklace and matching earrings, a silver and gold wedding set on a finger that was speckled with age and stocking rolled up just below her knee, which was visible when she sat on he high back sofa in her neat home. She served them hot tea and pralines. LaStanza passed on the pralines but nursed a cup o tea through the interview. When Jodie showed photos of the victim’s clothing, the landlady nodded her head and let out a small sigh. “Yes. I believe that was Margaret’s.” She turned to LaStanza and asked, “Would you like to see her apartment now?”
“Tell us a little about her.”
“Margaret was from Tennessee. Had a son there who died four years ago in a car wreck. That was the only family she had.”
“What about her son’s father?” Jodie asked solemnly.
“He died in the Korean War.”
The landlady waited a moment before continuing, “She was forty-nine but didn’t look a day over thirty five. Such a petite girl.” The old woman almost lost it for a moment but went right on. “She was a barmaid, by profession, but not a wild girl at all. She worked up and down Magazine Street but was on unemployment for the last year. Monday night, she went out in that outfit,” the woman nodded to the photos lying on her coffee table. “She walked up to Magazine Street. She didn’t have a car. She was going drinking. She did that sometimes and sometimes didn’t come home for a day or even two if she found a man. But she never brought anyone here.”
When the woman stopped, Jodie asked about boyfriends and enemies and locations where Margaret had worked and anything else she could think of. There were no steady boyfriends. Then the landlady led them next door.
“Don’t touch anything.” LaStanza said politely after Mrs. Roberts unlocked the door. He led the way into an apartment that was even cleaner than the old woman’s place. After slipping on surgical gloves, the detectives spent the next hour searching the apartment. LaStanza found a photograph of Margaret Leake atop her bedroom dresser. It was an old fashioned black and white picture of a young woman in her twenties, sitting with a boy of about ten with a cowlick at the back of his head. They were both smiling at the camera lens. The date on back of the picture read 1962.
LaStanza called Mason on his radio and told his lieutenant it was looking good. Then he asked Mason to run Margaret on the police computer and then call Baton Rouge to get a driver’s license photo of her, if she had a D.L. Then he called the crime lab over to dust for prints and to secure Margaret’s hairbrushes and comb, containing samples of her hair which could be compared to that of the victim.
After two hours, the crime lab technician was unable to locate, much less lift, a fingerprint. “The place is too clean. Even the telephone receiver is clean. All the dishes are clean. The ash trays are spick and span.”
LaStanza had been standing near the front window of the apartment, peering out of the venetian blinds at the passersby on Constance Street.
“Come here,” he told the technician. Pointing to the venetian blinds, she said, “Dust the blinds.”
“You kiddin’?”
“No. Dust them right here.” LaStanza pointed to the blinds at eye-level.
The technician found four neat, clean prints on the blinds right were LaStanza had pointed. Shaking his head the man lifted the prints carefully.
“How’d you know?”
“I’m a detective,” LaStanza answered and winked. He had see his mother separate their venetians blinds a thousand time to peek out their front window. He’d just used his ball-point pen to do the same thing.
“I’ll check them out with the victim’s prints ASAP,” The technician said on his way out. LaStanza joined his partner in searching the rest of the place. He wet through the kitchen, but left the clothes to his partner. An hour later he sat in the living room when Mrs. Roberts came in with more tea. Jodie soon joined them.
LaStanza could have really used a strong coffee-and-chicory but didn’t mention it. He listened to his partner and the old woman exchange stories. The conversation stated with the tea and then moved to where the old woman shopped for her groceries to shopping for clothes on Can Street. By the time the phone rang a half hour later, they were talking about, of all things, Tulane Stadium and the Superdome.
LaStanza answered the phone. It was Fat Frank from the crime lab. “Bingo,” Frank said. “You got your victim. It’s a positive ID on your prints.”
“Thanks, Frank.”
“Anytime, my man. It’s what I live for.” Frank hung up laughing.
LaStanza hung up, removed his surgical gloves and nodded to Jodie.
“The lab?” she asked.
“Yep.”
The old woman looked into his eyes and nodded herself. She finished her tea and stood up.
“Would you be so kind as to tell me who I should contact about the body.”
“It’s at the coroner’s office,” Jodie said.
LaStanza took out a business card and jotted the number for the old woman on a the back. He handed it to her.
Mrs. Roberts looked at him with eyes that were now read. “I’ll take care of the burial,” she said.
“Are you sure?” Jodie asked.
“Yes.” The old woman continued looking into LaStanza’s eyes. “No need to worry about me. My husband left me, comfortable.” Her eyes began to mist as she stepped forward and put her forehead against his shoulder. “I just don’t know where I’ll find another good tenant like Margaret.”
Mrs. Roberts began to cry softly. He didn’t move for a moment, then raised his hands and placed them on her back. He closed his eyes and waited for the woman to finish.
•
Margaret Leake’s trail was easy to follow. On the last night of her life, she walked up Constance to Euterpe where she turned right and walked up one block to Magazine. The first bar she visited was a half block from Euterpe on the river side of Magazine Street.
Two witnesses, both who knew Margaret slightly, said she was alone. She had two drinks before she took off her shoes, placed them on the jukebox and began dancing alone to a couple slow songs. Apparently she did this often.
Margaret caught two more bars before Jackson Avenue. She used to work at both. The owner of the first remembered she was there but didn’t remember much else, except she was alone. The bartender at the second one said she stayed for two drinks and danced alone again to a slow song before leaving.
The owner of a bar on Jackson Avenue didn’t know Margaret by name but had seen her in there often enough to know her routine. “She looked depressed,” he said. She left alone.
The tail turned cold after she turned up Prytania Street. The only bar they could place her in there was a dive that was usually frequented by sailors from the nearby Scandinavian Seamen’s Home. The owner of Thor’s Bar remembered she came in, sat at the bar, had one bourbon and then left alone. “She looked down in the mouth,” he said.
“Which way did she go when she left?” Jodie asked.
The man pointed downtown. LaStanza grabbed Jodie’s arm when they got outside and pointed down Prytania. “Those are all black bars,” he told her. “Let’s go back to the other bars. I got an idea.”
They retraced their steps all the way back to the first bar and learned that Margaret Leake’s usual routine was to drink and dance and get picked up, mostly by strangers. She shied away from regulars. And yes, as LaStanza thought, she like black men, especially. When ever a black would stray into the bar, she would immediately hit on him. On more than one occasion, she left with the back man.
It was near midnight when they finished. LaStanza started up the Maserati and told his partner he’d pick her up early the next morning.
“How early?”
“Seven. We’re gonna call on Cherry again, if you’re up to it.”
“Of course I am,” Jodie answered indignantly.
He popped in a Johnny Mathis tape and cruised back to headquarters. When Jodie climbed out, she looked back and said, “Led Zeppelin and Johnny Mathis? You are strange.”
“Tomorrow’s program includes Pink Floyd and la Boheme. That’s an opera.”
“You’re very strange.”
He drove home thinking about the black bars on Prytania they were gonna have to hit next.
•
Lizette was at the computer. Hair in a ponytail, she wore jeans and a baby blue crocodile shirt and no shoes. She had a pencil behind her left ear and six books laid out on the wide desk next to her.
He lifted her pony tail and kissed the nape of her neck. She made a yummy sound and quickly followed it with, “I’ll be finished in a minute.” She completed a sentence on the screen and looked u at him. “Did you eat?”
He shook his head.
“Good. Aunt Brulie left supper for both of us.”
“Good.” He put his briefcase and radio aside and headed for the kitchen.
Brulie had fixed two large plates of red beans and rice and breaded pork chops. She put a large note on the refrigerator which read, “Put them in the microwave. One at a time. Heat it for four minutes. Don’t overheat. Fresh ice tea in the picture.” He smiled and took a setting out and place them on the counter.
Lizette came in just as he was pouring the tea. She threw her arms around his shoulders and French kissed him softly. He kissed her back and ran his fingers across her large breasts.
“I’m hungry,” she said, pulling away to sit across from him. She picked up her fork and said, “So, how are your batture girls coming along?”
“We identified the third victim.”
“Ou, tell me about it.”
Lizette was a good listener. She always was. He told her everything they’d discovered about Margaret Leake and when he finished, she said, “Sad, isn’t it?”
“I think she picked up the wrong guy. Now, all we gotta do is find out who.”
“Then you’re close?”
“Maybe. Those bars on Prytania aren’t too friendly.”
“Oh.”
After supper, they went up and took a long shower together. When she asked him to lather her back, he took his time, moving his hands around front as often as he could. Lizette started laughing after a while and said, “You wanna wash me or screw me?”
“I love it when you talk dirty.”
She splashed him and pushed him aside to rinse off. When they got out of the shower their finger were wrinkled. He dried her off and she returned the favor. He pulled on a tee-shirt and pajamas pants. She climbed into a pair of white bikini panties and a hot-pink, satin pajama top.
He had wanted to go to bed early that night but wound up downstairs on the sofa with Lizette, watching a late movie on HBO. She fell asleep half way through Evil Under The Sun but he stayed away to watch Peter Ustinov’s Hercule Poirot solve the murder. It must be nice, he thought as he carried Lizette up to bed, having a limited number of suspects sequestered on an island with you like Poirot. It was also nice having a script.
He dreamed that night of the batture, of muddy water and swirling currents of blood. The French Acadian girls were back. They were beating their wash on the rocks at the base of the levee. They didn’t seem to be bothered with the blood.
One of the girls stood up and began removing her dress. The others, at first shocked, soon joined in. Dark haired girls with svelte, young bodies bathed in the river that was now bright and turquoise blue like the Caribbean. He could see the girls clearly in the clean water. They were beautiful.