Another week of hanging around the Sixth produced one good result. People talked to LaStanza. Not just some people, but almost everyone. Sitting in the Maserati with the windows down, with Motown rocking on the tape player, LaStanza easily collected kids, like a pied piper. And when the kids accepted you, the teenagers weren’t far behind. Before long, LaStanza was leaning against his fender and having nice chats with passersby.
“You the man, ain’t ya’?” he would be asked. “You the one workin’ on the murder of them girls, huh?” Which was followed by, “Man, you sure don’t give up do ya’?”
“Never,” he would answer. “I always get my man.” That usually produced a laugh, but a friendly one.
Two days into the second week of soaking in the warm sunshine of summer in a terminally urban environment, LaStanza found a witness, or rather, she found him.
Jodie had court that morning, so he was alone, sitting on the left front fender of his Biturbo 425I, the heels of his penny loafers resting on the bumper. A thin white girl with long stringy hair came out of a Laundromat three doors down from George’s Love-In. She carried a full laundry basket under one arm and pushed a baby carriage with her other hand. Smiling at LaStanza as she passed, she said, “I guess it’s about time we talked.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, I saw Slow on the night she died. Sooner or later I knew you’d find me.”
LaStanza recognized her right away. She was one of those faceless witnesses with valuable information who waited until the police came and asked them, personally. He climbed off the Maserati and stretched. Reaching over for the basket, he said, Let me help you.”
“OK.”
She smiled shyly at him and passed the basket. He could see that her teeth were bad. He gave her a good look-over, while trying not to appear he was doing so. She was more than thin. She was emaciated. Her bones protruded from her pale skin at hideous angles. Her small eyes, khaki colored, were clear but bulged from their sockets. She had the figure of an adolescent basketball player. She appeared to be in her late twenties.
Her child looked healthy enough. He was a plump boy, about a year old, with dark brown eyes and kinky hair. His mulatto skin was darker than LaStanza’s.
“His name is Martin,” she said.
“How old is he?”
“Thirteen months.”
“My name’s LaStanza.”
“I’m Abby Marshall,” she said, turning the corner of Euterpe as he followed. “I was a friend of Slow. I knew you’d come to talk to me sooner or later.”
She lived in a two room efficiency above George’s Love-In, on the Euterpe side of the building. LaStanza passed the basket back to her and carried the baby buggy up the two and a half flights.
“Thanks. It usually take a couple trips.” She said when they arrived.
Her living room held a well worn sofa and a bent recliner covered with a soiled sheet. There was also a small end table next to the recliner which supported a black and white television set. The windows, which looked down on Euterpe, had no curtains.
The second room was a combination bedroom and kitchen with a tiny stove, an even smaller refrigerator, a single bed and two particle-board chest-of-drawers. At least there was a bathroom too, on the other side of the kitchen area.
Abby Marshall sat in the recliner, pulled out a bottle and fed her child as she rocked and told LaStanza the story in one long monologue. He listened and jotted some sparse notes, but did not interrupt her until she finished.
“I’m from Los Angeles. I moved here two years ago with my old man. He’s from Bogalusa. We used to live there but a black guy with a white chick don’t go over well in Bogalusa.”
No kidding, LaStanza thought, Bogalusa had more Klan Ass-holes than Pulaski, Tennessee.
“We moved here and, well, to make a long story short, we busted up.” She shrugged and looked down at her child and then kissed the baby. “But my baby sure is a darling.”
Looking back at the detective, she added, “So, I’m on the check, now.”
Welfare, LaStanza jotted won.
“I don’t go out much, except downstairs on the weekend sometimes. On the Friday night that Slow and Fawn disappeared, I met Slow downstairs. She wore a white tee-shirt and her new black boots.
“Fawn wore a red jersey, blue jeans and her new black boots, the same kind. I remember because that’s what the paper said she wore when you found her. We had a drink and Fawn said she was gonna shoot up. She went outside a little while and came back in all excited.
“The band was playing and Fawn said something in Slow’s ear but Slow didn’t look scared. Fawn was scared. When the band stopped, this dude came in and told Fawn she had to go with him. He grabbed her arm and she stood up.
“That’s when Slow got up and said if Fawn was going, she was going too and they left.”
Abby paused a moment as she readjusted her baby. “I followed them out in time to see them get in a Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight. It was brown with a tan top and it had a Louisiana plate but I didn’t get the number.
“That’s the last time I saw them.”
“What time was it?”
“A little after midnight. I was worried but not that worried. You see plenty shit like that around here. Then the barmaid downstairs told me what happened and showed me the newspaper. Then I got scared. I ain’t been back in George’s since.”
Abby lifted her child, which was now asleep, and placed his little head against her shoulder as she continued to rock. The baby burped right away but didn’t wake up.
“Do you know the man with the Oldsmobile?”
“No. I’ve seen him around but I don’t know his name.”
“Have you seen him since?”
“No, thank God.”
“Can you identify him if you see him again?”
“Sure.”
“Describe him.”
“He was a mulatto, but definite black features, high forehead, kinda bald in front, and tall, about six-four, and muscular. He had a moustache and a goatee and I think he had a gold tooth in front.”
“What’s the barmaid’s name, the one who told you about the murders?
“Judy. She’s black and short. Got both front teeth missing.”
Abby seemed to relax. “Well, at lest one good thing came of this. When I told my mother, she wired me enough money to get us to Los Angeles. It should be down at the Western Union office today. When Martin wakes up, we’ll walk over.”
She was talking about a couple miles. No way, LaStanza was already planning.
“I’ll pack tonight,” she said, “and we’ll be off with Greyhound in the morning.”
“How would you like to fly,” he asked, “first class?”
“You joking?”
“I never joke about murder.” Then he put his proposition to her and helped her pack.
•
He drove his witness and her baby to the Western Union office on Carondelet Street before bringing them to the Bureau where he called a pizza delivery place and ordered enough for them, his partner and his sergeant.
It was a bribe for Mark, who loved pizza and was the best composite man in the Bureau. While waiting for the pizza, Mark took Abby into his office with the composite kit and constructed the face of the man who took the Pams out of George’s.
LaStanza tried to amuse little Martin. The baby wasn’t crying, but looked terrified until Jodie scooped him away. That left LaStanza free to call Delta Airlines and charge two first class tickets on one of his credit cards. Having all that money sure was convenient, he thought as he hung up.
By the time the pizza arrived, Mark and Abby were finished the composite. “It looks like him,” the girl from California declared as she munched on a piece of sausage and pepperoni.
LaStanza logged in the numbers from the composite sheets in his notes and then helped himself to some pizza before Mark scoffed it all down.
“Can he have some?” LaStanza asked, pointing to Martin, who looked like he wanted some. The question brought howls from Jodie and Mark. Abby seemed to think all of them were funny. Martin soon gave up on the pizza and began playing with Jodie’s handcuffs.
After lunch, LaStanza drove the entourage to the Quarter to the police artist whose art gallery was on St. Peter street, a half block from Jackson Square.
Johnny Dee called himself the starving artist. He looked the part. Always in jeans and an old shirt, his face was perpetually in need of a shave. But he was an excellent artist. Once, when LaStanza was a rookie dick, Dee had drawn a face from a witness that looked so much like the perpetrator that they received five calls the day the face hit the paper. Four of the calls came up with the killer’s name. the killer turned himself into Central Lockup that very evening, figuring it was no use.
Using the composite as an outline, Dee composed a likeness of the man that had Abby shaking her head. He embellished the drawing with Abby’s help until she declared, “That’s him, without a doubt. Looks like he sat for the portrait.”
Back at the Bureau, Jodie took Abby back up to the Homicide Office to look through the volumes of mug books of black males, in case the man had been arrested recently. LaStanza took Dee’s drawing to the crime lab for a quick set of eight-by-tens and a “shit load” of four-by fives.
Abby was still at the mug books, ably assisted by Martin who was examining the faces almost as intently as his mother, when LaStanza walked back into the Bureau.
“Probably looking for his old man,” Mark whispered to LaStanza who ignored the remark.
“I was just kiddin’,” Mark added as LaStanza walked over to his desk to call the newspaper. He punched the number and got Lynn on the phone. He’d been trying to thank his old classmate for over a week.
“Hey, we helped each other,” Lynn declared. “We got a good follow up and scooped the TV stations.”
“Well, I got a couple more things for you. We got a drawing of the killer’s face now. Maybe you can run it.”
“We damn well can!”
“Good, I’ll drop it by with a little write up.”
“Good, put my name on the envelope if I’m not here, OK?”
“Fine,” LaStanza agreed and then told him the other thing. He told him about Cherry and a sleepy village called Hot Coffee, Mississippi. Lynn enjoyed the story, adding that the reporter who wrote the Cherry article wasn’t know for following anything up.
“Good,” Lynn went on, “I’ll get to rub it in.”
After, LaStanza called Lizette to ask if she wanted to join the entourage for dinner.
Aunt Brulie answered the way she usually answered the phone, “Yeah, what is it?”
“Hello Brulie, is Lizette there?”
“No, who’s this?”
She was playing with him again so he played along, “It’s that little guy with the moustache, streak of Sicilian a mile long – ”
“Oh, yeah. What you want? I’m busy.”
He asked for his wife again.
“She gone. Left you a note. What me to read it?”
Oh, she was asking for it. But he wanted to know what the note said, so he remained polite. “Please,” he said.
Brulie dropped the receiver, which clanged across the kitchen counter. She came back a few seconds later and started reading, “Darlin’, I have to drop by the estate this evening. I’ll probably be late. Call me when you get home. Love, Liz.”
Brulie cleared her throat and said, “She always call you Darlin’?”
“Sometimes,” he couldn’t resist, “she calls me God. Oh, God!”
Brulie hung up.
So he took his partner, Abby and Martin to dinner at the northern Italian restaurant in Metairie on the way to New Orleans International Airport. The place was a little on the fancy side and they weren’t dressed up enough, especially Abby in her jeans, but LaStanza started rattling off Italian phrases and slipped the maître d’ a twenty and a spot was found for them in a corner.
“Wow,” Abby said when the vino arrived, “this is so nice. I always thought New Orleans was a cheap town. Don’t pay police much,” she was quick to sound apologetic. “I thought the city was broke.”
“It is,” LaStanza assured her. “But we don’t pay for this.”
“We don’t’?”
“Naw, I got a gun and she’s got a gun,” he pointed to Jodie who didn’t’ react. She seemed to be far away. So he left her there.
Abby answered with, “I don’t know what to believe with you.”
They had an enormous meal and followed it with spumoni and canola. LaStanza passed on the ice cream but had two cups of cappuccino.
They made it to the airport with time enough to spare. He made sure he had Abby’s mother’s address and phone number and elicited a genuine promise from Abby to keep in touch, close touch.
They had a quiet moment, just before loading began.
“You think you’ll get him?” Abby asked.
He nodded his head and said, without reservation, “I always get them.”
•
Jodie was still a pickle puss, so he left her alone on the way home. Pulling off the expressway on Carrollton, she finally broke the silence.
“That was nice, um, putting her on the plane and all. But – ” She let out a sigh and said, “would you quit paying for everything. I mean for me.”
“Sure.” He hadn’t thought.
“I’d like to pay once in a while, or at least pay for myself.”
“Fine. Really,” he meant it.
“Good. Tomorrow, lunch is on me.”
“Good.”
He decelerated in order not to ram a public service bus and put a tape on.
A few minutes later the scowl was back on his partner’s face. He turned down the music and asked what it was.
“What the hell kinda music is that?”
Iron Butterfly was in the middle of the drum solo from In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. He wasn’t surprised she didn’t’ recognize it.
“Put on something quiet!” His father would bellow.
“OK, Pop. I’ll put on something smooth.” Then he’d put on Cream.
•
He finally had something to work with. He had a face. He took copies to the newspaper and to each TV station in town. He made up wanted posters and sent them to each police district. Then he took the posters to the Sixth District with a staple gun and posted one on every telephone pole within a five block radius of Coliseum Square.
He carried the face with him everywhere, even out to dinner with his wife, to ask the waiters at the Camellia Grill if they’d ever seen the face before.
He studied the face carefully. He memorized it, seared it into his mind. If the cocksucker came within six blocks of LaStanza, he would recognize him. Only the man didn’t come within six blocks, not during the day, not at night. And no one, absolutely no one recognized the face.
The barmaid, Judy, at George’s Love-In never saw the two Pams before. Freddie didn’t recognize the face, neither did Shelby, nor Marid the French-Algerian, nor anyone in the Camp family, nor anyone at the House of the Lamb nor any of the people milling around Coliseum Square day after day.
•
LaStanza’s concentration was interrupted near the end of the week when he had to attend the retrial of an armed robber he had caught while a patrolman in the Sixth. It was the third trial for the Ass-hole. Each time they convicted him, some court found a technicality to overturn the conviction. At least no judge had let the douche-bag out of jail on some sort of bullshit bond.
Dressed in the same three-piece blue suit he had worn in his first two trials, the underwear robber sat defiantly in Section H of Criminal District Court, an extra hard look on his face. Three years in Angola State Penitentiary did that to some, turned pantywaists into tough guys. Get tough or get gang banged.
When LaStanza took the stand, the robber glared at him with a look he must have practiced in one of the stainless steel mirrors in the Pen. LaStanza ignored the hard stare. He faced the jury and told his story.
LaStanza was alone that night, sitting in his marked unit, parked along Dryades Street when he saw the underwear robber walk out of a convenience store across the street. He couldn’t help noticing a silly-ass white boy with a pair of drawers over his head.
Peeking out of one of the leg openings of the jockey shorts, the robber had strolled into the store, pulled out a Saturday-night-special and demanded money, netting thirty-one dollars and three Snickers bars.
LaStanza watched the idiot exit the store and stroll off down the street. He never lost sight of the dumb shit as he made a quick U-turn through the neutral ground on Dryades and crept up behind as the man pulled the drawers off his head and tucked them into his pocket.
Easing the unit closer, LaStanza turned on the public address system and said, “All right, put your hand against the wall.”
The fool started looking up at the sky.
“Hey, this isn’t God. There’s a police car behind you, stupid.”
The white boy wheeled and stopped and stared with his mouth open.
“Now,” LaStanza said, “put your hands up against the wall before I blow your fuckin’ brains all over the sidewalk.”
The man professed his innocence as LaStanza frisked him, coming up with the gun, the money, the tree Snickers bars and the jockeys.
“Shut up,” LaStanza moaned. “I don’t even wanna talk to you. You’re going to jail.”
Shoving the dipshit into the back of his unit, LaStanza heard Headquarters put out a beep tone and the armed robbery call. LaStanza grabbed his mike and announced he had the culprit.
At Central Lockup, the underwear robber asked to talk to the cop who’d caught him. So LaStanza Mirandized him and took his confession. The man said he held up the convenience store because he was out of money. He also liked Snickers.
When it was the defense lawyer’s turn to cross examine LaStanza, he tried to rattle the dick. When the detective would not rattle, the lawyer decided the jury had heard enough and got LaStanza off the stand as quickly as possible.
On his way out, LaStanza winked at the robber, who jumped up and shouted, “I should have shot your ass!” Realizing he had the rapt attention of the jury, the underwear robber quickly added, “If I was the one who did it.”
Half the jury laughed aloud. The exasperated defense lawyer fell back in his chair. Even the judge could be heard snickering.
The underwear robber was convicted a third time. The judge decided that the original fifty-seven year sentence wasn’t good enough and sent the man back to Angola for ninety-nine years, without benefit of parole, probation or suspension of sentence.
Well, LaStanza thought as he left the courtroom, chalk up one for the good guys.
•
“Well,” Lizette said, late one night in the darkness of their bedroom, “I thought I would be downhill after you came up with the face.”
He turned over and put his arm around her. He thought she was sleeping. “Tell you the truth,” he answered, “so did I.”
She rolled her leg over his and put her head on his chest. Her steady breathing almost put him to sleep, until she said something that woke him up right away.
She said, “Are you happy?”
“What?”
“I don’t mean with me,” she said. “I know we’re happy together. I mean, sometimes, when you’re all wound up, like tonight, are you happy? Know what I mean?”
“Uh huh.” He hadn’t noticed he was particularly wound that night.
“I just wonder about all the autopsies and deaths. It’s got to get to you. Like that little boy.” She paused a second before adding, “At night, when you sleep, sometimes you toss and turn so much you almost knock me out of bed.”
“I do?”
“And sometimes, you shake. Really bad.”
He had no idea.
She began to rub his stomach. “Does it still knot up?”
“Not as much.” He was having a hard time about the shaking and tossing. He stared at the ceiling, although it was so dark he could see nothing but blackness.
A minute later he heard himself ask, “Are you happy?”
“Can’t you tell?”
“I mean,” he cleared his throat and added, “is marriage what you thought it would be?”
“It’s exactly what I thought it would be.”
He could feel her yawn before she added, “It’s just a little hectic now with my school and teaching and your job.”
“When you get your M.A., it should get better, huh?”
“Nope. Not until I get the Ph.D.”
He adjusted his leg a little and said, “Maybe we should just run away.
“We could, you know.”
He nodded and said, “As soon as I catch my killer.”
She began to giggle. “Signore LaStanza. Sometimes, you are so romantic.”
He rubbed his hand across her back. A minute later, he asked another question.
“Is there anything that would make you happier?”
“Yes.” She lifted her chin and said, “A baby.”
It took a while, but he managed to catch his breath.
“I don’t mean now,” she added, laying her face back on his chest. “I want a few years alone with you.”
That, he could manage.
Lizette became quiet and fell right to sleep. He would have fallen asleep as quickly if he wasn’t thinking about a baby.
•
She wasn’t saying “Oldie – oldie.” She was saying, “Hold me. Hold me.”
He knew it was a dream because the girl in the tight red skirt was dead when he found her. Slumped over her typewriter, her white blouse was streaked in blood. When he brushed her long, sandy hair from her face, he found a pair of dull eyes, milky with the unmistakable look of death. Carefully, he replaced her hair, covering the lifeless eyes. Then he turned off her typewriter.
Dreams that run in sequence give no indication that time had passed. His next vision was of the electric daughter. She stood in a open-air cabana bar at the edge of a lush, tropical jungle. On the other side of the bar was a beach and a sea the color of the lapis lazuli from the death mask of King Tut.
It was very late at night. They were the only two in the place, except for a faceless band and a equally faceless bartender. She turned to him and smiled. She was still seventeen. Her dark, Hispanic face never looked more lovely. Her eyes were still chocolate brown, her lower lip still a little larger than her upper lip.
She wore a strapless, black evening gown and her lips were the color of hot lava. She held out her hand and he took it, pulling her to him to dance when the music started.
He thought it was raining, but it wasn’t raining. It w as the song. They were dancing to The Doors. Riders On The Storm, dancing a slow, sensuous dance that went on and on. After the song ended, they continued dancing. She was pressed against him. T was as if they were in a trance.
Then she moved. In slow motion, she leaned her head back. He opened his eyes. Her head tilted toward him. She closed her eyes and parted her lips. And then she kissed him.
When the bartender began to applaud, Dino looked back at the man and saw it was his brother. Joe gave him a smart-assed smile and said, “That’s it?”
There was a girl standing next to Joe. It was the girl in the tight red skirt. Her white blouse was pristine, without a hint of blood. She had her arm up on Joe’s shoulder. Her longhair was flowing in the breeze that rolled in from the sea. Pursing her lips, she kissed his brother on the cheek leaving a dark red mark.