Death of a dying man, p.13
Death of a Dying Man, page 13
“He did. Once, when he was somewhat drunk. It was his hard-edged kidding, what I came to recognize as his behavior when he was dealing with something he didn’t want to deal with.”
“What did he say? Do you remember?”
Jud gave a rueful half-smile. “Remember hard-edged. Something along the lines that his dick could take on anything, including a woman, and he had a kid somewhere to prove it.”
“That was all?”
“Well, we hadn’t been together long then and…I don’t think we talked much more after that. But he brought it up later, just a few months ago.”
“Really? In what way?”
“Asking my advice, or at least just running it up the flagpole. If I thought it was a bad idea then everyone would think it was a bad idea.”
“And did you think it was a bad idea?”
“Oddly, no, I didn’t. I could see how it might disrupt life for both the child and the mother. But…Damon would be a good father. He hasn’t been a perfect person, by any means, but fooling around and fathering a kid, only to walk away, was low. He needed to say he was wrong and that he was sorry, for himself, if not for them.”
“So you encouraged him?”
“I guess I did, although I gather I was a minority.”
“Who was opposed?”
“Perry screeched about it. I think for him it was both the money and the thought that a penis he touched had also touched a vagina. His uncle thought it was a ‘damn fool thing to do,’ according to what Damon told me. Ambrose listed every legal reason to be ‘cautious’ about it. That’s all I heard directly.”
“What did you hear indirectly?”
“The usual gossip. Some titillated at the idea of Damon having a kid, which turned into a wife and kids somewhere along the line. Others enjoying the comeuppance of those expecting money and how that would change it.”
“So was it common knowledge among Damon’s circle?” I asked.
“That’s an interesting thing. Damon said he didn’t really tell anyone, save for some close friends, but about three weeks ago, I was in town for a birthday party and it was the topic of conversation. I think someone in the inner circle leaked.”
“Why? Any ideas?”
“Anything from the usual, having a story to tell that will get you attention, to trying to make a mess. Bruce Payne was really agitated at hearing it, and of course Perry had to smear it in his face. ‘There goes your bar, little Brucie boy.’ Royce, his head of security for the bars, wasn’t happy either. Perry started his shit with him, and Royce slammed him against the wall and told him to shut the fuck up.”
“Do you know Royce’s last name?”
“No. It might be Royce, but that’s the only name I have for him.”
I nodded. It would be easy enough to find out. And another person to question. “Any other likely suspects?” I asked.
“The shifty-eyed guy in the raincoat?” he said with a crooked smile. Men would swoon for it. Even I found him attractive.
“No credible evidence he was in the area,” I replied, straight-faced.
Jud was silent for a moment, then said, “I don’t want it to be someone I know. Even someone I don’t like. It’s one thing to be greedy or self-serving…but murder…”
“Being greedy and self-serving can be the hallmarks of murder. Remember the banality of evil.” Jud was a smart man, he would understand my reference—Hannah Arendt’s famous remark on the Nazi bureaucrats, the ones who made sure the trains taking the Jews to the concentration camps ran on time.
“Yeah, it’s not convenient when they’re not monsters, when they resemble the guy next door.” He took another sip of tea, then said, “Damon is special, and everyone wants a piece of that special.”
“Including you?” I asked quietly.
“At first, yes, oh, yes. I fell really hard for him…and stayed around long enough to see a real, flawed man behind his Mardi Gras mask of a life. I still loved him, even now I still do. He’s funny and charming and generous. He makes me laugh more than just about anyone.”
“Was he in love with you?”
Jud took a long time before finally answering. “I think so…but I’ll never know for sure. Damon called love, those first few heady months, the electric touch. So he said love, but love doesn’t just disappear. At least that’s the way I see it.”
“Was that how it was for you? Just disappeared?”
“Guess Damon got to know me as a real person, too. Why settle for a flawed human when you can move on to the next fantasy man?”
“Who did he move on to?” I asked.
But Jud didn’t directly answer. “The party was fun until I got that test result. Then I realized life can be short and I wanted to do other things than stay up all night drinking. I suddenly felt like all the beer tasted flat and the conversations were just the same thing over and over again. But Damon lived for the attention, all the pretty young boys vying to get a piece of what was special about him.”
“So who broke you up?” I prompted him.
“We didn’t really break up, just drifted apart. I bought this place, started spending more time out here working with the wood and less time driving over the bridge to party. Found out that I preferred the trees and the breeze to the boys and the bars. But you asked for suspects, not my happy ending.” He gave me his crooked smile again, one I couldn’t help returning. “Damon shined oh, so bright a light on people when he gave them his attention. Then he left them in the dark. Some people…might do anything not to be left in the dark.”
“Murder?”
“Yes. I can only name the people I knew when I knew Damon. There might be others.”
“In the darkness?”
“You mentioned love earlier. Maybe the reason is money, but don’t overlook love.”
I finished my tea and thanked Jud for his time. He shook my hand, then was back to his unfinished table, whistling and sanding by the time I started my car.
I thought about the darkness as I drove across the lake. Money was the obvious motive, but being given love—or what you think is love—then having it taken away is painful. It seemed that Damon had caused a lot of that pain for others.
I liked Jud and, as did he, wanted the monsters obvious, not someone I enjoyed drinking tea with on a comfortable porch.
Chapter Thirteen
I made a quick stop by my office. Shannon still wasn’t there, which was still fine with me. Joanne had left a message asking if I could stop by in what was now a half hour from now. I told my grumbling stomach that it would eat soon, but duty called. I didn’t think this would be a long meeting.
I was right. The detective Joanne introduced me to was polite, and she listened carefully to my story and speculation. She seemed to think some form of foul play was more than possible, but added, as I almost knew she would, “We have to have more evidence than a dying man seeming to die a little sooner. Get me a gun, it doesn’t even have to be smoking, and we’ll look harder at it.”
Then I was back out in the heat, asphalt heat, no shade, no breeze, and not a glass of iced tea in sight. I called in an order for a fried-crawfish wrap at one of my favorite little bistros in the lower end of the Quarter, turned the AC in my car on high, and headed back downtown. The parking gods were cruel, and my quick stop to grab lunch required me to park two blocks away. Someday this steam-bath summer has to end, I told myself. Even the windows rolled down and the AC on full blast got only the worst of the heat out of my car before I got to my office.
My car, my old one that Shannon was driving, was parked out front. I hope she’s had lunch, I thought as I mounted the stairs, because I’m not sharing mine.
She was sitting at my desk, drinking my water and eating a messy-looking oyster po-boy. She glanced up when I entered, but wasn’t going to be interrupted mid-chew to acknowledge me.
“Gosh,” I said, “and here I thought that a smart Yankee girl like you would know that the desk is for working and this table,” I said as I moved a stack of paper as if it had no business being there, “is for eating.” I put my food in the now-cleared space, sliding it a little so as to rub away the dust outline left from the paper.
“Was making phone calls,” Shannon mumbled as she swallowed.
“Your cell phone doesn’t work over here?” I crossed to the refrigerator to get some water, knowing there was only one there when I left. I was coming up with the perfect stinging rebuke as I opened the door. Shannon had bought more water and stocked it.
“A couple in the freezer, they should be good and cold.”
They were there and they were cold.
“What did you do today?”
Shannon finished chewing, then had the good sense to pick up her food and join me at the table. I pushed aside another stack of paper to make room for her. She even picked up a plump oyster that fell out of her sandwich and put it on my takeout container. Crawfish and oysters can go a long way to making a frustrating day bearable.
“What did you find out?” I asked, taking a bite from my wrap. I didn’t want to hastily gobble the oyster, no matter how much my stomach suggested otherwise.
“More than I want to know and not much to help this case.”
“What’s the more-than?”
She put her po-boy down to answer. I kept eating.
“Kent Richards is a smarmy slimebag. Even had the nerve to ask me to ‘skirt’ for him at some uptown party. I replied with surprise that anyone would think he was straight. So he explained that the idea wasn’t to fool anyone really, just to obey the social rules and make nice.”
“Are you going with him?”
“Hell, no,” she answered. “I asked some questions about drugs and where to get them, and he offered to introduce me to his dealer.”
“That was pretty blatant,” I said, finally succumbing to the oyster.
“He didn’t quite say the words, but his intent was clear. He could introduce me to someone who would ‘take care of anything I wanted,’ and he put in a long pause before adding ‘to know.’ The whole time I was there, I didn’t see anyone who looked like a client of the agency. I did see a fair number of friends, most young, good-looking men, drop by. He acted more like it was a bar at happy hour than a workplace.”
“Were you able to work it around to Damon and the money?”
“You betcha. Kent acted like he’s used to journalists on a daily basis, but he didn’t have a clue how an interview of this sort would really go. And he never once asked me anything, like where I got my information, that kind of stuff. So, I asked questions about funding, all that sort of thing. He bitched about grants, said they didn’t add enough for expenses like copy machines, all the admin stuff—like his salary. From there I moved to fund-raising, then sucker punched him with a question about Damon’s money and the rumor that it was all being left to a child.”
Shannon took a sip of water, enjoying the attention I was giving her. I looked away from her to my crawfish wrap and took another bite.
“He tried to cover, but turned a little white and started blustering that it had to be just some stupid rumor. He knew Damon well enough to be sure there was never a child, that Damon was a great supporter of CCCC and was confident his money would be used for the right things.”
“Better or worse acting job than Perry?” I asked.
“Worse, if you can believe that. Of course, Kent was the star in this little drama. Perry was just a bit sidewalk player.” Shannon took another sip of water, barely suppressing a big grin. “So I told him I had it on good sources that Damon’d hired a top-notch private investigator who was now looking for an actual child.” She was no longer suppressing her smile. “He sputtered that it couldn’t be true and then said he’d heard who that top-notch PI was.” Shannon put her hand on my arm for emphasis. “I quote, ‘that bull dyke, Micky Knight, who couldn’t detect her way out of her Bywater office,’ end quote.”
I threw my wrap down. “That does it. He has to be the murderer,” I fumed. “I am not a bull dyke.” I do get shit like this more often than I’d like. Some comes from being a woman, some from being lesbian, and then being a lesbian woman in a man’s job. It might not really prove Kent Richards a killer, but it did prove that he was a grade-A jerk.
Shannon was still grinning. “So I gave Mr. Kent Richards a lesson in doing interviews with reporters. I told him I was on my way down to your office to talk to you next, and as he hadn’t gone off the record, I’d see how you responded to his comment.”
I briefly covered her hand with mine, then remembered I wasn’t supposed to like Shannon Wild this much and instead picked up my wrap again. “No digital pictures?” I asked between chews.
“Alas, no, but he was pretty close to beet red. By that point, I didn’t like him very much, so I twisted the knife a little bit more and told him I’d also be talking to all the city officials he’d trashed, as well as looking at the financial records. Which I had to remind him were public.”
“I’m glad you’re on my side,” I said. Then added, “I think.”
“So, Madame-Not-a-Bull-Dyke, what did you do today?”
I ignored the title and told her about Jud, giving her a chance to eat.
“Left in the darkness,” she mused after I’d finished. She bunched up her sandwich paper into a small ball that she crushed in her hand. “I wouldn’t have murdered to get Lauren back after that first time, but I wasn’t the most honorable person either. I wonder if he could be right.”
“About someone trying to kill Damon for love instead of money? Could be. But it makes sense to me to look at those who had dual motives—they were involved with Damon and expecting money.”
Shannon, as if letting go of something, threw the paper across the room into the trash can. “I’ve got an update on Beatrice.”
“Where she is?”
“Where she was. She went back to college, got a PhD in English from the University of Connecticut. Tomorrow I’ll try and track her down through the alumni office. That’s as far as I got with her today. Also got through at least some of the ex-boyfriend list. Boring, boring, then bingo. One of them just got out of jail.”
“Local?”
“Angola.”
“That’s local enough.” Angola was a couple hours’ drive north of New Orleans, in the middle of cotton fields. “How long has he been out?”
“About two months. Nothing beyond that. Just out of jail and into the air. I couldn’t get an address or any idea where he ended up.”
“Not a bad day’s work,” I allowed. I balled up my trash and threw it toward the can. Mine hit the edge and bounced back to the floor. I picked it up and put it where it belonged. Then I brushed off my desk, as if I had found crumbs there. “If we keep up this pace, we might be done before Southern Decadence.”
“Before what? You mean there’s a specific time for it?”
“You probably call it by the more prosaic Labor Day weekend, but down here in New Orleans it’s a party centered around the quaint tradition of men dressing up in drag, parading around the Quarter, and doing their best to scare the tourists. The weekend after next.”
“I don’t suppose it will be any cooler by then.”
“No, cher, it probably won’t break below eighty until early October.”
“And here I packed some sweaters, thinking it might be cool at night.”
“Only in the air-conditioning.”
“Did you call me ‘cher’?”
“Sorry, the Cajun coming out.”
“It was kind of cute, sounded almost natural.”
I knew I had to bring up what happened last night, and I would have preferred to avoid it.
“Ah, you silent butch types,” Shannon said, filling the stillness. “You just need to dust the table a bit more if you want me to believe it’s where you always eat your lunch.” With that, she got up and started gathering her things. “I presume that having done a decent day’s work, I can now go home for the two-hour shower it will take to get the sweat off me.”
Just say it and get it out, I told myself. “Shannon, I like you and you do good work, but I’d really prefer not to be caught up in whatever games you’re playing with Lauren.”
Shannon hefted her bag over her shoulder, then turned to look directly at me. “What do you mean?”
“Last night? Remember kissing me?”
“That’s what you think? That I’m playing games?”
“What other reason could there be?”
Shannon looked away, then her gaze was again on me. “Maybe I wanted to kiss you.” She turned and walked out the door. I heard her steps hastening down the stairs.
Oh, fuck, I thought. I should have listened to my instincts and avoided all this emotional stuff. Shannon playing games was one thing. Shannon actually attracted to me was another.
The phone rang. I picked it up. Cordelia. Of course.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m guessing you’ve already made the dinner reservation.”
Well, no, I hadn’t. But I wasn’t about to let her think I’d forgotten to do that. “Yes, I have, what’s up?”
“What time?”
“Uh…seven.”
“Can we do it earlier? Say around six?”
“Uh, yeah. I can call and change it.”
“I may have to go to the hospital, there are a…lot of things up in the air.”
“Okay. Should I meet you at the clinic?”
“No, I’ll be home a little before six. See you there.”
I put the phone down for a second, then picked it up again. “Torbin,” I said as his answering machine picked up. “Romantic dinner. Tonight. At six. Suggestions?”
He picked up. “The Lavender Cross to the rescue. Dare I ask just whom this romantic dinner is for?”
“Cordelia, of course,” I quickly answered.
“I didn’t think it was you and anyone else. I just thought it might be another romantic couple altogether.” Torbin knew me far too well. “Patching up a little altercation, are we?”
“No. Well, not really. Just we’ve been busy and I wanted some quality time.”
“Ah. So it is true that she’s been spending the days with the famous Dr. Lauren Calder. Is she as attractive as she looks in her pictures?”
