My Juliet (33 page)

They stop her as she's clearing the hospital's automatic sliding glass doors. “Miss Beauvais,” the usual one says. “Can we give you a lift home?”

“Sorry, Detective. But the Beauvais isn't officially mine yet.”

She means to be clever, and they allow her this. “To your hotel, then?”

“Okay,” she says. “The Lé Dale on Saint Charles. Scene of the crime.”

Lentini drives. Peroux rests his arm on top of the seat and tries to engage her with a smile. “We understand he used a pipe. What do you remember about him?”

“Mainly that his shoes didn't match. His heels, his shoe heels, were really worn, but one looked to be more worn than the other.”

Neither cop says anything. Maybe they knew this.

“I asked him why he was beating on me, and he said I killed his Frank. Just like that, he says, ‘You killed my Frank.' ”

Lentini and Peroux look at each other. She feels like saying “Bingo.” Then Peroux again: “He didn't happen to mention who this Frank was?”

“I don't know any Franks that I know of.”

“No Franks? What about pets? You know any pets named Frank?”

“I haven't known a pet named Frank in my whole, entire life—not when I was a child, and not now. Where I live, in my little orbit, people aren't much into pets. You know why that is?” She looks at the scenery passing by: a used car lot, a carpet remnant store, an abandoned hotel decorated with for-sale signs and sheets of warped plywood peeling off the plate glass windows. “It's because people in California can't take care of their own selves. How do you expect them to take care of a pet?”

“No Franks, then. What else do you remember?”

She thinks about it. Shakes her head. “He limps.” And now of course it comes to her. The man with the club was Louis. Who else but Louis?

“Maybe you should've hired somebody to whack you with a pipe a long time ago,” Peroux says. “Get the heat off that way. I got to give you credit.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You get him to beat you with a pipe the way he beat your mother and that automatically eliminates you as a suspect.”

“I'm sorry, Lieutenant, but I have better things to do with my time than rearrange my own face. Now why are you talking to me this way? I've been very nice to you.”

They pull up in front of the Lé Dale and Juliet gets out. Peroux rolls down his window. “Tell your boyfriend who's a boy we didn't mean to hurt his feelings.”

It takes her a second to understand. “You talked to Leonard?”

“Sergeant Lentini didn't appreciate his attitude. He thought he was hiding something.”

Juliet glances at the other one. “What can I tell you?” he says. “I'm a terrible person.”

“I don't know what it is about him and the fruits,” Peroux says with a resigned attitude. “But Sergeant Lentini can smell a fruit. He claims they put out an odor.” Lentini is quiet, and Peroux laughs without apparent feeling. “Hey, podna, one more thing. Do you remember a little hourglass Sonny LaMott gave you back in school?”

“Did Sonny give me an hourglass? When was that?”

“Long time ago.”

“I don't remember, no . . . oh, okay, hold on a sec. Yes. Yes, Sonny did give me an hourglass. It was a birthday gift, as I remember. He gave it to me before I left for California. It was about yay big.” She demonstrates with her thumb and finger held apart.

“Hard to remember that far back, is it?”

“I guess fifteen years is a long time when you're busy beating yourself with a pipe.”

“When's the last time you saw it?”

“Last time I saw it? Well, the last time I saw it also happens to be the last time I thought about it.” She backs away from the window. “The day he gave it to me and I put it on a shelf.”

They roar off without so much as a wave and Juliet climbs the stairs to the lobby, where Leroy strays from his TV long enough to check and make sure she's still alive. “When you left it wasn't looking too good,” he says.

“I don't like being victimized. I don't like a hotel with no security.”

“And I don't like cops asking me questions. And I don't like whores. And I don't like worrying whether I caught something after screwing one.”

“You mean a whore or a cop?”

He gets out of his chair and walks around from behind the desk. She's wondering if maybe she'll be making another trip to the hospital, but then he hands her a letter without a postmark or return address. “Colored woman brought it,” he says.

Juliet tears it open and reads particulars about a meeting Friday in the law office of Nathan Harvey, Esquire.
“I called maybe ten times and you're never there,”
the note ends.
“I'm starting to wonder if you even want what your mother left you . . .”

“It isn't Mama that left it,” Juliet says.

“Huh?”

“You must have me confused with somebody else.”

“No. That letter is for you.”

“It's always been mine. It's just she took it for a while.”

“Well,” says Leroy, “she brought it back. Now get out of here.”

Up in the room Juliet takes her clothes off and curls up in bed, thinking she'll have to write the gimp a thank-you note for inadvertently removing her from suspicion. She'd beat him with a pipe of her own but that would do for him what he just did for her and she isn't feeling at all charitable at the moment.

Juliet takes her medicine then lies on her back smoking. She remembers back to pets she's known and she speaks their names into the darkness.

There was a toy Chihuahua of her father's, small enough as a puppy to fit in the palm of your hand. Juliet can see the precious thing snoozing in the sun of the upper gallery and yapping whenever the mailman came. It had bug eyes and sharp toenails that clicked against the wood floors.

From outside comes the
thwumpthwump
of rubber tires on train rails, then the loud electric whoosh and squeal of the streetcar itself. That sound seems never far from her consciousness, background music of her very own. Even when she lived in California Juliet could summon the sound of the streetcars, and it kept her company the way a good friend would, without any expectation but for occasional acknowledgment. If you live forever hearing streetcars then how can you ever truly be free of New Orleans?

Juliet lights a second cigarette and uses a plastic cup for an ashtray, holding it steady in one of her armpits. Mystified as to how someone who cleans house for a living can write such clear, declarative sentences and with such a practiced hand, Juliet reads yet again Anna Huey's letter about the meeting Friday at Nathan Harvey's office.

When the house is officially hers, the first thing she'll do is hand that woman her walking papers. “You're dismissed,” Juliet says out loud now, smoke issuing from her mouth along with the words. “Get your belongings and beat it.”

Once she's gone Juliet will throw the doors and windows open and let some air in.

Then she'll call Salvation Army and have them send a truck for her mother's clothes and personal effects. Then she'll trip some bug bombs and fumigate the place.

Juliet is still lying in bed when her father opens the door and enters the room. He strides with that same old Cary Grant confidence and who is he holding today but the little Chihuahua whose name Juliet couldn't recall. It squirms in his arms and drives its nose against his neck and face. “I was just thinking about you,” Juliet says to the dog.
“Tu aussi,”
she says to her father.

Johnny Beauvais puts his free hand on top of Juliet's head and runs it through her hair. For a ghost his hand has a powerful weight and she feels pinned to her place. “Was it Tiny?” she asks.

The dog whimpers and shoots her an unhappy look.

“Tinker?” she tries again.

“What are you talking about?” her father asks in a peculiar voice. “Come on, Juliet. Snap out of it, snap out of it!” He takes her by the shoulders and shakes her until her head snaps back. “Juliet? Juliet, what's wrong with you?”

“Tina,” she says. “It was Tina. Was it Tina?”

The cup has tipped over and ashes stain the sheets. The butt of her cigarette lies cold on her neck. She looks at her father and understands that he's really Leonard Barbier. He's Leonard with his face so disfigured that it possesses a Picassoesque aspect.

Juliet shoves up to the head of the bed and leans against the wall, her naked breasts stamped with the pattern of the sheet she was lying on. She can smell the rot of her own breath. She knows now that she was sleeping. “Did you tell them anything?”

He shakes his head.

“Don't lie to me, Leonard. They told me they hurt your feelings.”

“Well, they were rude, all right. They kept threatening to rat me out to Big Leonard. Like I'm afraid of Big Leonard. Then they pushed me around, but let them push me around. I'm not going to jail, Juliet. In jail . . . can you imagine what they would do to a freak like me in jail?”

She touches the contusion below his left eye, which seems fitted deeper in his skull than the right one, and inches lower. She sees where they hit his mouth, giving it a lump. And the scratch mark on his neck. And the bloody redness at his nostrils.

“Sonny LaMott is going to fry,” he says. “They've got all they need now.”

Juliet is trying to remember how Tina died, whether it had worms or got hit out in the road. What Leonard said takes maybe half a minute to reach her.

They come at dawn and park across the street in the weedy strip of ground at the foot of the levee. Sonny watches from the living room window where he's spent most of the night drinking coffee and listening to Juliet's tape.

Peroux and Lentini emerge from one car and a patrolman and a woman materialize from another. The woman is wearing a dress suit and her copper-colored hair hangs to her shoulders in a busy profusion of flips and whorls. She's carrying an accordion folder file and she walks well ahead of the others. She doesn't bother to look for traffic as she crosses the street.

Outfitted in the same clothes he had on yesterday, Sonny opens the door and waits inside as they climb the stairs grousing about the heat and wondering out loud who would live in such a dump. Sonny inhales a breath of air then strides out on the landing and stands with his arms casually hanging by his side. The woman seems startled to come upon him so suddenly. She pauses on the steps before deciding to proceed.

“Mr. LaMott? Mr. LaMott, my name is Patricia Kimball. I'm an assistant district attorney for Orleans Parish. And this is a warrant to search your premises.”

She hands Sonny a couple of pieces of paper and nods for the others to enter the house. “When we finish here we'll also be searching your automobile. Please let me have your keys now.”

Sonny removes the keys from his pocket and gives them to the woman, who then passes them along to the patrolman.

“What are you looking for?” Sonny says. “Maybe I can help.”

The question seems to disarm the young prosecutor, or perhaps it's Sonny's attempt at being civil that makes her hesitate. “It's listed there in the warrant,” she says, pointing. “A ski mask or a skullcap and a pair of gloves, to start with.”

“I don't think you'll find any of that here.”

She steps closer and holds her face level with his. Her breath smells of toothpaste and mixes badly with the fruity scent of her perfume. “There's something else we're here for,” she says. “It might interest you, considering its provenance.”

“Its provenance?”

For some reason she doesn't seem to appreciate the question. She stares at him. “Its history, Mr. LaMott. Where it originated and where it's been.”

She waits as if in anticipation of Sonny venturing a guess but all he does is shake his head. “There was one object that Mrs. Huey was curious to discover missing, as it held little value but the sentimental kind.” Her mouth turns up in a grin. “An hourglass, Mr. LaMott.”

“Forever is a long time,” Peroux announces from the other side of the room. It seems he wants to unload with another of his obnoxious laughs, but instead he says, “Especially when the woman has other plans.”

“Maybe Juliet has it,” Sonny says. “What would I want with it?”

“Miss Beauvais could barely remember the hourglass,” Patricia Kimball says, obviously enjoying the opportunity to impart this information. “It didn't seem to mean anything to her.”

“Actually, she couldn't have cared less,” Peroux says in a loud voice.

“Mrs. Huey remembered it because Mrs. Beauvais insisted she clean the room at least once a week. Mrs. Huey said that every time she stood at the bookshelf to dust, she felt embarrassed for your sake.”

“Embarrassed?”

The woman hesitates, plainly relishing the chance to share more. “To think how much you loved her,” she says, “and how little she cared about you.”