Murder in the Rue St. Ann (9 page)

Sitting next to T. J. at the lunch table was almost too much for me.

And we did become friends. I still don’t know if I was a pet project or something for him, but he took me under his wing. I went to dinner at his house. He drove me around in his car, a convertible Mustang. We hung out together, and for once, T.J. didn’t have a steady girlfriend.

Every once in a while we’d double date. T.J. always arranged these, telling me about it later. I wasn’t about to complain. I didn’t have to ask anyone out and it was a perfect shield for me. T. J. never asked if I liked my date, and we didn’t pay much attention to them anyway. Observing other couples on dates, it began to seem to me as though T. J. was using the girls to cover up us being together all the time.

Hope springs eternal in a young heart.

“Are you ready to order, sir?”

I looked up at my waitress. She was maybe 21, about five-nine with a long, sturdy body. She was wearing hip-hugging brown polyester pants under a black clingy cropped top that revealed the compass tattooed around her pierced navel. She wore little round black plastic glasses and no make-up. “No, someone is meeting me. I’m early.” When I looked at my watch, I was startled to see it was already quarter after seven.

Paul was
always
late. That was something else I knew about him. It drove me crazy. I fucking HATE being late.

“Something to drink, then?”

I started to order a Coke, then stopped myself. Sugar. “Iced tea, with lemon.”

She nodded and walked away.

I fought my irritation. It was just Paul. You’d think someone who had worked for an airline for seven years would always be on time. Paul even joked about it. “I single handedly keep Transco from being the most on-time airline,” he would laugh. “If they want to improve their ranking, they should fire me.” It never seemed to matter what time he started getting ready—he always managed to be late. He could start getting ready three hours before we had to be somewhere and we’d still wind up arriving half an hour late.

I was always on time—even when I was a kid. Having to be someplace meant getting out of the trailer and away from my parents, so I always left early. When I started getting invitations to parties in high school, I was without fail the first guest to arrive, sampling the food and making awkward conversation with whoever was throwing the party as they put last minute touches on things. T. J. always teased me about it. “You always do as your told, Chanse? Someone tells you ‘be there at seven’ and you obey?” He’d flash me that grin.

Any command you want to give me, T. J.
, flashed through my mind every time he’d say it.

I was on time the night I went over to T. J.’s to study History my junior year. He picked me up in the convertible outside the entrance to the trailer park, where I always had him meet me. He’d met my parents at football games, and was always extremely polite while I burned with embarrassment. His parents never reeked of liquor. His mom always smelled of some nice perfume, and was always made up perfectly and dressed nice. Even when she was just wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, she seemed to radiate class. His father wasn’t as friendly as his mom, but he was always nice. He would ask me about the team and school— things like that—even though I could tell he wasn’t interested.

On the way over to T.J.’s  house the stereo was blaring Def Leppard  and he was  singing along over the roar of the wind. In the passenger seat I obliged by playing air guitar to go with his vocal, chiming in on the chorus. We both had big stupid grins on our faces. I always liked spending the night at his house. We’d both sleep in his big king-sixe bed.  I got to get long looks at him in his underwear. While he slept I would lie there, unable to sleep, listening to the even rhythm of his breathing and wishing I had the nerve to do something—anything— but was always too afraid.

He wore a white mesh Texas Longhorns tank-top and tapped his hand on the car door in time with the drum.  Ray-Bans hid his eyes.  His curls danced as he bopped his head as he sang.

The house was dark as we pulled up the long driveway. “Where’s your folks?” I asked as we got out of the car. He had an older sister, Karen, who was at school in Austin.

“Dad had a thing in Dallas, and Mom went with him.” He flashed that grin at me again. “We got the whole place to ourselves.” He laughed. “Party time, ole buddy.”

The Ziebell place didn’t intimidate me any more by then. The house was huge, something out of a movie— two stories with a wide verandah and big round stone columns. A fountain bubbled in the front yard, and the verandah was lined with Mrs. Ziebell’s huge rose bushes. The living room was as big as our entire trailer.

We tossed our back packs on a chair by the front door and headed back to the kitchen, where T. J. snagged a six-pack of Coors Lite out of the refrigerator and led me out back to the pool. He kicked off his shoes and socks, cracked a beer, and tossed me one. I pulled off my own shoes and sat down, my feet dangling into the warm pool water. He flicked a switch and the pool flooded with lights. He went back inside and turned on the stereo:“Appetite for Destruction” by Guns ‘n’ Roses. He came back and sat down next to me, his feet plopping into the pool. He grinned at me as he pulled a joint out of his pants pocket. He lit it and handed it to me. We sat there, our feet dangling in the water, smoking the joint and drinking the beer as the sun faded in the west.

T. J. had introduced me to pot. I’d never smoked it before I started hanging out with him. I liked it—a lot. Being stoned made everything easier.  I could even deal with my parents when I was stoned. We’d smoke a joint in the morning before school, which made the whole school thing easier to deal with. If it wasn’t football season, we worked out with weights every day after school and would get stoned after. During season, we only smoked on weekends.

I opened my third beer as T. J. stood up and took off his shirt. “Let’s go swimming. I feel sticky.”

“I didn’t bring anything to swim in.”

He grinned at me. “I ain’t wearing nothing.”

I stood up and took a swig out of my beer. It took my addled brain a few seconds to comprehend what was happening.
T. J. is suggesting we skinny dip
, I thought as my shirt came up over my head. The moment I’d prayed for was finally here. This would be it, the first step—getting naked together alone. I’d never been naked in front of just one other person in my life at that point. At least not since I’d started bathing myself. This was it.

I glanced over at T. J. as I slid my jeans down. He was standing there, hands on hips, with just that bright tight white underwear on.  Once I folded my jeans and set them down, he slid the underwear down and off.

I was just starting to take mine down when I realized I had an erection.

I stopped, stricken. I looked up at T. J. and he was grinning at me. “Damn, Chanse, you got a hard-on?” He laughed. “No big deal, I get ‘em all the time. You wanna go into the house and take care of it in the bathroom?”

I slid my underwear down. It was now or never. My voice shook. “Do—do you wanna come with me?”

His grin faded. His eyebrows went up then back down as his face relaxed. He half-closed his eyes and looked out over the pool. “No, I don’t think I do.”

Mortified, I turned to retrieve my jeans and slipped, falling over the edge into the pool. I clipped my lower left back on the side on the way. It bled pretty bad. T. J. helped me clean it up and bandage it.

It never came up again, and T. J. didn’t treat me any different. We both acted like I’d never said anything.

But he never invited me over when his parents weren’t home again.

“What time are you expecting your friend?”

My waitress was still smiling, but she didn’t seem sincere this time. I looked at my watch. 7:39. Damn him, he was almost forty minutes late!

He just refused to understand how rude it was to keep someone waiting, but even this was bad for Paul. He tried to be punctual when it was me he was meeting—he rarely was later than 15 minutes, maybe 20. I longed for a cigarette. Back when I smoked, I’d chain smoke while I waited for someone—even lighting a new cigarette off the butt of the one I’d just finished.

He must really be pissed at me.

I shrugged. “I guess he isn’t coming.” I told the waitress. I stood up and slipped a five on the table. “Sorry to tie up the table for so long.” I’d go home and order a pizza, I figured, and wait for him to call. I’d be damned if I’d call him when he’d just stood me up.

She patted me on the arm, a sympathetic smile on her face. I got the sense she’d been stood up before. “Something must have come up.” She said, giving me a half-hearted smile.

“Yeah, sure, thanks.” Nothing like having a total stranger feel sorry for you.

I walked out the front door onto Magazine Street and stepped into the little grocery store on the corner at St. Andrew. I bought a pack of cigarettes and a lighter and lit up one up as I headed up Sophie Wright Place. If Paul showed up and I was gone, good enough for him.  How fucking insensitive.

So, I’d never told him about T. J. and how I got the scar. Big deal. That was an embarrassing story. I was ashamed of it. Yet his attitude toward posing bare-ass didn’t suggest he was ashamed—it seemed more like he was proud of it. So, if there wasn’t a reason to be ashamed of it, why not tell me?

My cell phone rang as I crossed against the light on Felicity. I flipped it open. The caller ID read N O P D. I turned it on. “MacLeod.”

“Chanse, it’s Blaine.” Blaine Tujague was an old friend of mine. We’d gone through police training together, and he’d just gotten promoted to detective. His voice was lowered. “Do you know any good lawyers?”

“Well, yeah.” I’d done some work for a gay lawyer named Loren McKeithen. “Why? What’s going on?”

“Good, You better call one.” I could hear the hubbub of the police station behind him. “They’ve brought Paul in for questioning.”

“What?” The Camp Street bus roared by, spewing toxic black fumes. “I could have sworn you said Paul was brought in for questioning.” I couldn’t have heard that right. That didn’t make any sense.

“He has been, Chanse! That’s why I’m telling you to call a lawyer.” His voice remained hushed but became more urgent. “He’s going to need one.”

“Why have they brought him in?”

“Suspicion of murder.”

I almost dropped my phone. “Blaine, this isn’t funny.” Blaine had a weird sense of humor and loved to play jokes on people—and sometimes he went a little too far.

“No joke, Chanse.”

“Just who is he supposed to have killed?” I felt the knot in my stomach tightening, as I waited for Blaine to start laughing and say “Gotcha!”

 “Some guy who lived over on St. Ann.” He replied instead.  “Name of Mark Williams. You know him?” He sighed. “Anyway, get a lawyer down to the 8
^th
District station. Pronto.”

I don’t remember walking the rest of the way back to my apartment. My mind was in another place completely. I just felt nauseated, worried, sick. I think I almost stepped out in front of a Kenwood water delivery truck, but I wouldn’t swear to it.  Somehow I managed to get my keys in the door and go in. I vaguely remember calling Loren McKeithen and interrupting his dinner. Loren switched immediately into lawyer mode and promised to get down to the station immediately. “I’ll call you later,” he said and hung up.  I toyed with the idea of going down there, but there was no way in hell they were going to let me in to see Paul.  Blaine might be able to swing it, but he just got promoted and I didn’t want to get him in trouble. The only person who could get in to see him was his lawyer—to get more than that Loren would have to threaten to go to a judge. I hung up the phone and just sat in the dark for a little while.

Paul couldn’t kill anyone. That was just ridiculous.

How well do you really know Paul
? An insidious voice asked from the back of my brain.
You didn’t know he was a nude model, did you?
You don’t know anything about him— he could be a fucking serial killer for all you know. There could be all kinds of things in his past you know nothing about it, you fucking idiot.

I turned on the computer and the desk lamp. “I can’t do this,” I said to myself. I couldn’t invade his privacy like this.

Don’t you want to know?
That insidious voice was back.
Don’t you have a right to know? He’ll never know you checked him out. He probably thinks you did already. And why didn’t you do this before? What kind of detective are you?

The kind who wants to trust his boyfriend…

Hating myself a little bit, I logged onto the Internet.

I went to a search engine and typed in Paul’s name and social security number.

I paused before I clicked ‘send.’

The nature of my job is to be suspicious. People lie pretty easily, and the ones who claim never to lie are the worst. Every word out of their mouths is a lie. I never take anyone I meet during an investigation at their word. That’s just asking for trouble. Stories
always
have to be checked out and independently verified before I take it as gospel.  And New Orleans is a city where people frequently take liberties with the truth. Some folks could be quite entertaining, even though their lies were so outlandish and over the top there was no way they could be true. New Orleans seemed to attract people who come here to escape from their pasts and begin fresh, Their histories become what they wish they’d been. After a while, they’ve told the lies so long they begin to believe them.