Out of the Easy (5 page)

“So, what do you have?” she asked.

I picked up the pail. “Well, first, this huge thing.” I pulled an enormous red shoe out of the bucket.

Willie nodded. “From Kansas City. He paid two bills to dress up in stockings and dance with the girls.”

“And he left a shoe?” I asked.

“No, the other one’s under the settee in the parlor. I keep them up in the attic for guys like him. Wipe them off and put them back up there. What else?”

I pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of the pail. “In Dora’s toilet tank.”

Willie rolled her eyes.

I produced a silver cigarette lighter from the bucket. “On Sweety’s bedside table.”

“Well done. It belongs to an Uptown attorney. What a horse’s ass. Thinks he’s so smart. He doesn’t know the difference between piss and perfume. I’ll have fun returning that to him. Maybe I’ll drop by his house at dinnertime.”

“And this,” I said. “I found it in the upstairs hallway.” I held up a bullet.

Willie put out her hand.

“Did you have one of the bankers here last night?” I asked.

“This isn’t from a banker’s gun,” said Willie. “It’s for a .38.”

“How do you know?”

Willie reached under her pillow and pulled out a gun. With a flick of her wrist she opened the cylinder, slid the bullet in the chamber, and snapped the cylinder back into place. “That’s how I know. Get your mother.”

“She isn’t here,” I said. “Her bed is empty, and her garter belt isn’t on the chair.”

“Such a liar. Said she didn’t feel well. She had that sack of trash in my house. I haven’t gotten a report from Frankie. Did anyone see Cincinnati last night?” asked Willie.

“I don’t know. For a minute I thought he was in the store, but it was only Patrick. He scared the bejesus out of me.”

“Patrick, hmph. He’s nothing like his father, that’s for sure. How’s Charlie doing?”

“Talking crazy. I feel so bad for Patrick. I’m going to stop by today,” I told her.

“Charlie’s not crazy. His brain is a touch soft somewhere—that happens to some people. Happened to Charlie’s dad.” Willie sighed. “But don’t go saying he’s crazy, or he’ll be hauled off to the mental ward at Charity. I won’t let that happen. Not to a good man like Charlie. He took you in when none of us could be bothered. Here,” said Willie, throwing the twenty from Dora’s toilet at me. “Buy him groceries or whatever he needs. Let me know if he wants a girl sent over.”

I nodded. Charlie had been good to me. One day when I was fourteen, I told Charlie that I hated Mother. “Don’t hate her, Jo,” he told me. “Feel sorry for her. She’s not near as smart as you. She wasn’t born with your compass, so she wanders around, bumping into all sorts of walls. That’s sad.” I understood what he meant, and it made me see Mother differently. But wasn’t there some sort of rule that said parents had to be smarter than their kids? It didn’t seem fair.

“So what else don’t I know?” said Willie.

“Evangeline’s flying the red flag, and Dora ripped her velvet gown across the bosom again. I still have rooms to clean, so that’s all I know right now.”

“Ripped her dress, again? Like watermelons, those things. Okay, Evangeline is off for five days. Tell her to move upstairs to the attic. Have Sadie mend the gown. Now get out. I want to read the paper.”

I nodded and picked up the pail to leave. “Say, Willie, there was a man from Memphis that came by the shop yesterday. Tall, said he was an architect and played ball for Vanderbilt.”

“Good-looking guy with an expensive suit and watch?” asked Willie, not looking at me. She sipped her coffee and opened the paper.

My heart sank. “Yes, that’s him. He came here?” I asked.

“No, he wasn’t here.”

Thank goodness. Forrest Hearne didn’t seem like the type. “But you’ve heard of him?” I asked.

“Yeah, I heard of him,” said Willie. “He’s dead.”

SEVEN

“No one’s talkin’,” said Cokie, “not even Frankie. So you know somethin’ ain’t right.”

“Willie said she didn’t know details, just that he was dead,” I told Cokie on the sidewalk. “She didn’t want to talk about it. Said it wasn’t any of her business.” I stared at the pavement. I couldn’t believe that Forrest Hearne, the lovely man from Tennessee, was dead. “Who told you?” I asked Cokie.

“Saw Eddie Bones last night. He looked like he seen a ghost. I asked him what happened, and he said a well-to-do businessman done died, right there at the table in the club ’bout four
A.M.
”

Eddie Bones was the bandleader at the Sans Souci, a club on Bourbon Street.

“So someone shot him in the club?” I asked.

“Bones didn’t say nothin’ ’bout a gun,” said Cokie.

“Well, he couldn’t have just keeled over. You didn’t see this guy, Coke. He was a real gentleman, healthy and strong. He didn’t look like a boozer or a doper. He was in town for the Bowl. But he had cash, lots of it, and all of a sudden he’s dead? Where’s Eddie Bones now?”

“Headin’ to Baton Rouge,” said Cokie. “Said he had a gig up there.”

“He’s leaving town? Well, how are we going to find out what happened?”

“Why you so curious?” asked Cokie. “Ain’t the first time someone’s died in the Quarter.”

“I . . . just need to know. Where do you think Mr. Hearne is now?”

“I guess he’d be at the coroner’s.”

A loud rumble fired across the street. I looked up and saw Jesse Thierry on his motorcycle. He nodded to me. I nodded back.

Cokie waved to him. “Come on, now. This ain’t no way to spend New Year’s. Get in the cab before your momma comes walkin’ up with that no-good Cincinnati and all hell breaks loose.”

“Cokie, I need you to go to the coroner. Find out what happened,” I told him.

“Now, why you think he goin’ tell me about some rich dead man?”

“You could tell him Willie wants to know,” I said.

“Josie girl, you crazy. You goin’ get yourself in heaps o’ trouble. Get in the cab. I’ll take you over to Marlowe’s. That poor ol’ man needs some black-eyed peas to bring in the New Year.”

I stared out the window as Cokie drove me over to Patrick’s. The Sans Souci wasn’t exactly a fine establishment. The owner was a hustler and had B-girls in his club. Bar girls, like Dora’s sister, acted like normal patrons but they actually received a commission from the club. They chatted up the customers, encouraging them to buy expensive drinks or bottles of champagne. The more drinks the customer bought, the more money the girls made.

A line from Keats echoed in my head. “A thing of beauty is a joy forever . . . it will never pass into nothingness.” No. Something wasn’t right.

Cokie dropped me off in front of the Marlowes’ pale green town home, surrounded by its black fleur-de-lis fence. I thought it was lovely. Patrick couldn’t stand it. He said it was so passé it was embarrassing. Lately, it did smell a bit like old people inside, but I never mentioned that to Patrick.

I heard the piano as I approached the door. I stopped and leaned against the railing to listen. Patrick played so expressively that I often learned more about him from how he played than the things he told me. Despite our friendship, there had always been a low fence between us. I couldn’t figure out if I was the one who put it there, or Patrick. This morning he was playing Rachmaninoff,
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.
He was happy, peaceful. It amazed me how some people could touch an instrument and create something so beautiful, and when others tried, like me, it just sounded like mangled noise. I knocked on the door and the piano stopped abruptly.

“Happy New Year!” I said, holding up a bag I had packed in Willie’s kitchen.

Patrick’s glossy blond hair was disheveled and he still had imprints of waxy lipstick on the side of his face.

“Ah, now I see why you’re playing romantic Rachmaninoff. Got lots of smooches at midnight, did you?” I said, pushing past him into the house. Something about the lipstick bothered me.

“No, it was after midnight. I think people felt sorry for me because of this.” Patrick turned the left side of his face to me. A large bruise, the color of a plum, swelled across his temple into his hairline.

“Patrick! What happened?”

“What happened? You clocked me with a book. Don’t you remember?”

I sucked in a breath. “Oh, Patrick, I’m so sorry.”

“That’s okay. I told everyone I beat up a thief who was trying to rob an old woman on Bourbon,” said Patrick. “I’m a hero.”

Patrick was a hero, to me anyway. When he was six, his mother left Charlie and ran off to the West Indies to marry a sugar baron. Charlie was devastated but did right by Patrick and raised him well. Unlike me, Patrick held no grudge against his mother, just shrugged and said he understood. He looked forward to his trips to the West Indies to see her. Charlie treated Patrick more like a colleague than a son. They built the business together and, until recently, worked side by side every day.

Mr. Marlowe sat in the living room on a chair near the window, clutching a tattered heart-shaped box that once held Valentine chocolates. “That’s new,” I whispered to Patrick.

“I don’t know where it came from. He won’t let go of it,” said Patrick. “Even sleeps with it. But I don’t care. At least he’s staying put.”

A few months before, Patrick’s father went through a period where he would get up in the middle of the night and try to leave the apartment in his pajamas. Patrick installed locks on the door that could only be opened with a key, but then Mr. Marlowe tried to climb out of a window. Willie got some medicine from Dr. Sully that helped, but now Mr. Marlowe rarely spoke.

“Happy New Year, Charlie!” I said, bending down and putting my hand on his knee.

His milky blue eyes slowly wandered over to my face. He stared at me with such a blank expression that I wondered if he even saw me. He squeezed the pink satin box against his chest and turned his head away.

“Do you know what’s inside the box?” I asked Patrick.

“I have no idea. Like I said, he won’t let me near it. I couldn’t even comb his hair today. Look at him. He looks like Albert Einstein.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll comb his hair.”

I crossed from the living room under the wide arch into the kitchen. I waved the twenty-dollar bill at Patrick and put it under the cookie tin on the shelf above the sink. “From Willie, via Dora’s toilet tank.”

“How bad was it this morning?”

“It wasn’t horrible,” I said, pouring myself a cup of coffee and unpacking the bag. “Sticky floors. Evangeline was cranky and threw a shoe at me. She’ll be in the attic for five days.”

“By the look on your face, I thought it was something really bad,” said Patrick, teetering back on the kitchen chair.

“There is something bad,” I said quietly over my shoulder from the stove. “Really bad.”

“What?”

“Remember that nice man from Memphis who came into the shop yesterday?”

“Of course. The rich football-playing poet,” said Patrick.

“Yeah, him.” I turned around from the sink. “He’s dead.”

Patrick’s chair thumped down against the floor. “What?”

I brought my coffee to the table and sat down. “He died in the Sans Souci last night.”

“Where’d you hear about it? I didn’t hear a thing.”

“Willie told me, but said she didn’t know any details. I just can’t believe it. Cokie talked to the bandleader, and he said that Mr. Hearne just slumped over and died at the table.”

Patrick crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow.

“Exactly. Did that man not look fit as a fiddle?”

“I’ll say he did,” said Patrick. “I would have taken him for a Vandy football player now. Did he end up buying anything yesterday?”

“Keats and Dickens. And the man had a bankroll something huge, along with a Lord Elgin watch and an expensive fountain pen.”

“Keats and Dickens, huh?” said Patrick. “That doesn’t sound like a mess of a man.” Patrick turned away from me. “It’s a shame. He seemed like such a nice man.”

I nodded. “Thanks for covering for me about the college stuff. I would have been embarrassed after he assumed I was at Newcomb.”

“But it’s true, Jo. You could have your pick. Even Newcomb at Tulane.”

I looked down at my fingers laced around the warm coffee cup. Patrick had told me I could get scholarship money from any of the local colleges. But I hated the idea of seeing people from high school, being the girl whose mother was a whore and walked around naked in a fur coat. I’d never have a chance to be normal.

Willie said normal was boring and that I should be grateful that I had a touch of spice. She said no one cared about boring people, and when they died, they were forgotten, like something that slips behind the dresser. Sometimes I wanted to slip behind the dresser. Being normal sounded perfectly wonderful.

“Mr. Vitrone died,” said Patrick, pointing to the obituaries spread out on the kitchen table. Patrick combed the death notices daily, looking for leads on books or rare volumes that might be for sale. “He had a nice collection of Proust. I think I’ll pay my respects to his wife and see if I can buy them off her.”

I nodded. “So what were you doing with someone from Doubleday?” I asked.

“Ran into him at the Faberts’ party. We started heckling each other about who had a more diverse inventory,” said Patrick.