Gilt Trip (12 page)

“You must keep digging!” Margo pleaded. “I know you can figure this out! I know you can help me!”

Carmela stood there. This wasn't the time or place to bring up the alleged Jerry Earl–Beetsie affair. Besides maybe it was only a rumor. Or maybe . . . Well, she and Ava planned to drive down to Venice tonight. Maybe they'd turn up something there.

“If there's anything you need from me,” Margo said.

“Tell me more about Conrad Falcon,” said Carmela.

Margo's face turned red and her brows pinched together. “That scoundrel! You know Conrad Falcon and Jerry Earl were archenemies as far back as I can remember.”

“Because they both owned construction companies?” said Carmela. “And were fierce rivals?”

Margo nodded. “Exactly. And that's why we weren't surprised when Falcon framed Jerry Earl and had him sent to prison.”

Framed? But Jerry Earl really was found guilty. By a court of law. By an impartial jury of his peers.

“When Jerry Earl went to prison,” said Carmela, “what happened to all the construction contracts that he had?”

“Are you kidding?” said Margo, her voice rising in near hysteria. “They all went to Falcon. He went around to all of Jerry Earl's clients and bad-mouthed him. Got them to hire him instead. It was awful!”

“What was Jerry Earl planning to do about this?” asked Carmela. “When he got out?”

Margo stared at Carmela. “Why, get even with Falcon, of course.”

“And how was he going to do that?”

Margo's smile was almost a snarl. “Jerry Earl was going to ruin him!”

A
GAINST
Carmela's better judgment, she and Ava were cruising down Highway 23, headed for Venice. She knew she probably shouldn't, since an impromptu little trip like this probably wasn't going to reveal any deep, dark secrets. And Babcock would surely freak out if he found out. But she needed to make this trip anyway, if for no other reason than thoroughness.

Leave no stone unturned.

She glanced at Ava in the passenger seat, who was scrunched up and scrolling her phone for tunes. When she finally found something she liked, she smiled and plugged her phone into the car stereo. When she pressed play, Rihanna's voice filled the car.

Ava warbled happily along, but Carmela gripped the steering wheel a little tighter.

Suddenly sensing her friend's unease, Ava stopped her combination serenade and seat dance and said, “What?”

Carmela kept her eyes on the road ahead. “Something inside me is telling me to turn around right now and head back home.”

“You mean like some kind of creepy warning? That something really bad is going to happen? Like an accident or a carjacking?”

“No, more like this is going to be a huge waste of time.”

Ava turned the music down a little. “You know what,
cher?
I don't think so. You've got good instincts. Heck, you've got
great
instincts, honed like a doggone jungle predator! And if they tell you to check out these guys in Venice, then that's what you should do.”

Carmela wasn't convinced. “I have no idea how we'll even find them.”

Ava waved a hand airily. “That's no big deal. When we get there, we'll just pop into the first beer and gumbo joint that we see and start asking questions.”

“Sounds a little dangerous to me.”

“Then
I'll
do the asking,” said Ava. She inhaled deeply and fluffed her hair. “I don't know if you realize this or not, but men often find me highly irresistible. They just looooove to help.”

“Like that guy, Mickey, who's always helping you with deliveries and stuff?” Carmela chuckled.

“He's a man with a van,” said Ava, practically striking a pose.

“And how about poor Stanley?” said Carmela. Stanley was an aging trust fund baby from the Garden District who trekked after Ava like a lovesick puppy.

“If Stanley likes to take me out for three-hundred-dollar dinners at Galatoire's, who am I to complain?”

“You like to game the system, don't you?” said Carmela.

“Only when it comes to men,” said Ava. “And hey, girlfriend, isn't it about time women started taking the upper hand?”

“I suppose turnabout is fair play,” Carmela agreed. Ava had perked up her spirits and succeeded in making her laugh. And now as they raced down the thin ribbon of highway, the bayou stretched out low and sparkling on both sides of the road. The sun, which was just about poised to slip over the horizon, cast a warm pink and orange glow that made everything feel peaceful and beautiful and right with the world.

• • •

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, THEY COASTED ACROSS
an old one-lane bridge as wooden boards buckled and thumped beneath their tires. They had arrived in the heart of Venice, but the place hadn't exactly rolled out the welcome mat.

“Oh my,” said Ava, crinkling her brow.

What they could see of the town was more than a little depressing. Many homes looked practically unoccupied; others seemed to have been knocked off-kilter from their foundations. A few homes were just plain flattened.

“This is worse than I expected,” said Carmela as they continued on another block.

Here, many houses sported boarded-up windows, chipped paint, and sagging front porches. Others looked slightly more habitable but had often been jury-rigged in places. Obviously, the last two mighty hurricanes hadn't been kind to Venice.

Ava put a hand over her heart. “Honey, you're not going to go knocking on any of these doors, are you?”

“I don't think most of these doors would hold up to a knock,” said Carmela. She felt terrible that people were living this way. That many of the people down here were forgotten victims, left to fend for themselves.

“Now what?” asked Ava as they continued to creep down the main street. “Oh man, if New Orleans is supposed to be the city that care forgot, then Venice is the city that
time
forgot!”

“It's looking a little better up ahead,” said Carmela. They cruised past what served as the heart of the business section—Boudreau's Rod and Gun Shop, Palermo Pizza, Stritch's Realty, and Sonny Turk's Used Cars (
No Offer Too Ridiculous!
, according to Sonny's hand-painted sign).

“Do you see a bar?” asked Ava.

“Yup. Just up ahead. With lots of cars parked around it, too.”

“Finally,” said Ava. “Some real vital signs!”

Carmela drove toward the throng of cars and found a parking spot between a beat-up Ford F-16 pickup truck and a rusted Chevy Impala. She heard faint strains of zydeco music as she switched off her engine. “Sounds like something's going on.”

But Ava had already scrambled out of the car. “Looks to me like a crawfish boil!” she said excitedly.

And she was right. The vacant lot next to Sparky's Saloon was in full festivity mode. Strings of colored lights had been wound from pole to pole, a zydeco band was thumping out tunes from a makeshift stage, and an outdoor bar in the corner was jammed with happy patrons. But the crown jewels of the party were the steaming pots of crawfish!

“Food!” exclaimed Ava. “Thank goodness they're serving up mudbugs, because I'm starving!”

They bought tickets at the gate from a guy wearing a
Born on the Bayou
T-shirt and pushed their way in. Two long trestle tables were covered with newspapers and piled high with bright red crawfish, red potatoes, and cobs of sweet corn.

Ava looked around at the men. “Not exactly Chippendales material, are they?”

“No,” said Carmela. “But the food looks good.”

“Then let's do it!”

Grabbing paper plates and a handful of paper napkins, they helped themselves to what was a veritable bayou feast.

“Perhaps a refreshing beverage as well?” said Carmela. You had to drink beer with crawfish. It was tradition, after all.

So they grabbed longneck Abitas from the bar, found two seats at one of the picnic tables, and settled in.

“Mmn,” said Ava. She twisted the head off a crawfish and sucked the body meat out greedily. “This is delicious.”

A man with more facial hair than a billy goat passed Ava a bottle of Pleasure & Pain hot sauce. The red and yellow label featured a naughty little dominatrix cracking a whip. “You might want to try this, ma'am. It'll really spice things up!”

“Merci!”
said Ava.

“This is quite a
fais do do
,” Carmela said to him, using the Cajun word for
dance party
.

“Sparky's has a boil goin' most every Wednesday night,” said the billy goat. Then he tucked back into his own pile of crawfish again.

Carmela and Ava ate happily, washing down their food with the cold beer, and watching the dancers whirl madly about. A burly biker in leather swung his partner, a nimble woman in a pink and yellow dress, around the dance floor like they'd taken lessons at Arthur Murray. Other couples did the two-step, and a young, sort of Goth-Cajun couple did a Cajun jitterbug with lots of intricate spins and turns.

As Carmela ate, she watched. Kept an eye on the dancers, noted the people who sat at the surrounding picnic tables, and scanned all the newcomers who seemed to constantly stream into what was becoming a very crowded event.

“I'm going to grab us a couple more beers,” Carmela told Ava.

“Sure,” said Ava. “Great.”

Carmela pushed her way through the throng, grabbed the beers, and started back toward their table. Halfway there, providence dropped its little gift directly in front of her—a tough-looking man, probably in his midthirties, and wearing tight-fitting blue jeans and a black leather vest. No shirt, just the vest. But what really stood out for Carmela was the blue-inked tattoo on his shoulder.

Is it?
Carmela wondered.
Could it be?

But the man had wandered away. So Carmela had a quick decision to make. Go back and join Ava, or make like a stalker and follow this guy.

It was an easy decision.

Darting through the crowd, Carmela tried to catch sight of him again. She dodged and bobbed, hanging on to her bottles of beer, but wasn't having any luck.

Please don't tell me he just up and left.

She circled around one of the boiling pots, glanced toward the bar, and saw him again. He was stationary now, leaning against a wooden post with his arms folded across his chest. His expression was glum, and he seemed immune to the toe-tapping, upbeat music.

Carmela decided that asking him to dance was pretty much out of the question. So then what?

She knew she had to come up with something quick. She was ten feet away from him, walking straight at him, and closing fast. When she stopped directly in front of the man, she flashed what she hoped was her most dazzling smile and thrust one of the beers toward him. “Would you like a beer?”

The man reached out and swept it from her hand. Like a bear paw coming out of a cage to snatch a hunk of meat.

“Thanks,” was all he said.

Carmela smiled again and decided he was actually a decent-looking guy. Aside from the bayou-biker look, he had a tangle of blond hair like a surfer or beach bum, piercing blue eyes, strong cheekbones, and kind of a cute nose. But there was no smile, no hint of encouragement to her at all.

“I bet a smile would light up that handsome face,” she said to him.

The man continued to stare at her.

Okay, maybe I should try another angle
, Carmela thought. And decided to take a direct route. A very direct route.

“I like your tattoo.”

“Who're you?” asked the guy. His tone was suddenly wary.

Carmela's trusty
compadre
in crime suddenly materialized at her side.

“We're just a couple of friendly gals from up New Orleans way,” Ava said breezily. “And we're sure enjoying the hospitality around here.”

As the man studied Ava, Carmela studied his tattoos. They were faded and his skin was very tan and leathered, but she could definitely see the outline of a sailboat. The other tattoo looked like a complex algebra equation, but Carmela guessed it was really the stars and map.

This could be a guy who served time with Jerry Earl Leland!

Before Carmela could ask him anything, a man with a receding hairline and toothy smile reached in and grabbed Ava's hand.

“Excuse me, Moony,” he said, “but if you ain't gonna dance with one of these fine beauties, then I will.” And with that, he pulled Ava into the fray of dancers.

Which left Carmela facing her quarry once again.

“Your name is Moony?” she asked.

The man nodded.

“That's your God-given name?” asked Carmela.

“You ask a lot of questions, don't you?” said Moony.

And I'm about to ask a lot more
, Carmela thought to herself.

“Look,” said Carmela, “I bought you a beer; the least you can do is tell me your name.”

“Ah . . .” said Mooney, then his shoulders seemed to relax and his face lost some of its earlier tension. “It's Eddy Moon, but everybody around here calls me Moony.”

“Is that where you're from? Around here?”

“That's right,” said Moony. He took another sip of beer and gazed toward the dancers. “Your friend is having some fun out there.”

Carmela followed his gaze and saw Ava shimmying and shaking like she was the second coming of Beyoncé. “Girls just like to have fun,” she quipped to him. And then, as the music ended, Ava's partner dropped to one knee. He said something to her that made her throw her head back with laughter. Then she scampered back to join Carmela and Moony.

“What was that all about?” Carmela asked her.

Ava blinked. “What?”

“He was down on one knee,” said Carmela.

“Oh that.” Ava casually brushed her hair off her shoulder. “He professed his undying love for me and asked for my hand in marriage.”

Next to them, Moony snorted loudly.

Carmela raised an eyebrow at him.

“Knowing old Dusty,” said Moony, “that's not all he asked for.”

Ava dimpled prettily. “No. But I'm a lady and that's all I'm going to divulge in mixed company.”

This time Moony laughed out loud, his shoulders shaking.

Carmela took full advantage of his guard being down. “Moony, we were wondering if you were acquainted with a gentleman by the name of Jerry Earl Leland.”

Moony's disposition changed in a heartbeat, and his shoulders suddenly hitched up to around his ears. “Why would you ask me that?”

Carmela pointed at his tattoo. “Your tats are showing.”

“So what?” said Moony.

“Jerry Earl Leland had the same tattoo,” said Carmela.

Moony's eyes flashed an angry green, then turned hard as sea glass. “How would you know that?”

“It was in the
coroner's
report,” said Carmela. She and Ava both held their breath as they waited for Moony's reaction.

Finally, Moony said, “Yeah, I heard that old Leland kicked the bucket.” Now he had his eyes focused on the ground. “Sounded like a tough way to go.”

“That's what his widow thought, too,” said Carmela. “That's why we're trying to help her.”

Moony's eyes finally rose to meet Carmela's. “You're trying to help his old lady?”

“That's right,” said Ava. “She's pretty broken up.”

“That's too bad,” said Moony.