“You think that’s funny?”
“My li’l boy watches a cartoon about a friendly snake. It’s got freckles under its eyes, like yours.”
“Sarah, you may have depths that have never been plumbed.”
Her mouth formed a cone, but no words came out.
“Forget it,” he said. He removed the lid from the shoebox and emptied the box. Bundles of fifty-dollar bills fell on the table. The bills were crisp and stiff, as though fresh from the mint. He thumbed their edges like decks of cards. “There’s thirty thousand dollars here,” he said. “It’s yours. But you have to change your ways.”
“You’re setting me up for something,” she said. “Maybe a snuff film. I ain’t putting up wit’ it.”
“It’s not a trick.” He was smiling now.
“Why you wanna do this? You don’t know me.”
“Maybe I can come see you sometime. Maybe we can be friends. Maybe I can help you get a job or go to school.”
“If I take that money, I ain’t gonna be around here.”
“Send me a postcard.”
Her eyes swam with confusion.
“That’s a joke. Go wherever you want.”
She picked up one of the bundles, then set it down. “Beaumont’s gonna take over half of this.”
He shook his head slowly.
“Why ain’t he?” she said.
“His circumstances have changed.”
“What happened out there?”
“You really want to know?”
She looked at him uncertainly.
“We talked a minute or two. That’s all,” he said.
Her eyes dropped to the bundles of money. She touched one as though it were a forbidden object. “This ain’t counterfeit?”
“Counterfeiters don’t give away the product of their labor. Show some trust in people, Sarah.”
She let out her breath as though a long day had caught up with her. “People don’t never tell me the troot’, not about anything. Why should you be different?”
“Because I’m a revelator.”
“A what?”
He put the bundles back in the box and replaced the top. He pushed the box toward her. “I’ll call a cab for you.”
“I ain’t taking this money. I ain’t taking this box. I ain’t taking nothing out of this room.”
“You have to take it.”
“No.”
He stood up, towering over her. He opened her purse and shook the bundles into it, then zipped it shut. The purse looked as big and round as a small watermelon. “Do as I say.” He raised a finger in her face when she tried to speak. “Don’t argue, and don’t disappoint me.”
She seemed to shrink, like a flower exposed to intense heat. “I ain’t meant to argue or make you mad.”
“Now go be a good girl.”
“Beaumont tole you where I stay?”
“Maybe.”
“What you done to him?”
He placed his hand on her head. His fingers resembled the tentacles of a small octopus threaded through her hair. “You’re a nice lady. The world has hurt you. I’ve tried to make up for that. It’s that simple.”
She waited a long time before she spoke. “If I walk out of here, you ain’t gonna do nothing to me? You’re sure about that?”
“You’ve done a good deed for me,” he said. “You just don’t know it.”
She looked at him, her eyes out of focus. Then she picked up the purse and put it inside her pink jacket and opened the door and hurried through the courtyard, the soles of her shoes clattering on the sidewalk. The rainwater on her hair looked like tinsel on a Christmas tree.
Down the street, two drunks stumbled from the topless bar. “Where you goin’, mama?” one yelled. “I got yo’ candy cane hangin’.”
Both men laughed so hard they could hardly hold each other up, then they followed her, bumping into each other, rounding the corner behind her and disappearing into the dark.
The next day, Tuesday, Carroll LeBlanc called me into his office. He was sitting in a swivel chair, dressed in a suit that was as bright as tin, his booted feet propped on the desk. The boots were Luccheses, the shafts hand-tooled with blue flower petals, the soles hardly scratched, the toes buffed. I had never seen him show any interest in horses or racetracks. A yellow legal pad covered with swirls of blue ballpoint ink and elaborate capital letters lay on his desk. He stared at me. “How’d your face get marked up?”
“A household accident.”
“Somebody close her legs?”
“Why’d you call me into your office, Carroll?”
“Got a call from NOPD this morning,” he said. He picked up the legal pad and stared at it, scratching the rim of a nostril with one fingernail. “Have a seat.”
I sat down and didn’t reply. I knew that whatever he planned on saying would come a teaspoon at a time. With LeBlanc, the issue was always control.
“A taxi driver was found in his cab with his neck broken,” he said. “The cab was parked in an alley in the Quarter one block from North Rampart.”
I nodded.
“Did you hear what I said?” he asked.
“Got it,” I said.
“The cab was wedged in the alley. Whoever killed the driver couldn’t open the door and had to kick out the windshield.”
“This was a robbery?” I said.
“That’s what NOPD thought. Except the driver had over eight hundred dollars in his pocket.” LeBlanc looked down at his legal pad again. “A guy named Beaumont Melancon. Ring a bell?”
“No.”
“He was a Murphy artist.”
A Murphy artist is a pimp who lets his hooker set up the john, then bursts in on the tryst, claiming to be the outraged husband or boyfriend, thereby terrifying and subsequently extorting the john.
“What does this have to do with us?” I said.
“A little later the same night, two guys in the same general area claimed a guy with an ugly face beat the living shit out of them.”
“Why’d the guy attack them?”
“They said they didn’t know. They said he just came out of nowhere and started ripping ass.”
“What’s the rest of it, Carroll?”
“A homicide cop started checking bars and guesthouses from Burgundy down to Jackson Square. The night clerk at one guesthouse said he saw a black woman leave one of the rooms and walk toward North Rampart. The two guys who got their asses kicked started making fun of her. Then a guy from the guesthouse came out of the same room the black woman did and followed her and the two white guys.”
“The beating victims were white and baiting a black woman?”
“That’s what I said.”
“No, you didn’t,” I replied. “Was the guy with the ugly face white or black?”
“They didn’t say.”
“Who is ‘they’?”
“NOPD. Did you get drunk last night?”
“I have no idea why you’re telling me all this,” I said.
“I’m trying to give you a heads-up.”
“I see. I appreciate that. But I’m going back to my office.”
He swung his feet off the desk. “The night clerk at the guesthouse said the black broad was probably a hooker he’d seen around. She’d been in the room of a guest. He left the guesthouse at midnight; he was carrying a beat-up suitcase with a belt around it. The homicide cop found a piece of paper in the trash can with an address on it. Guess what? It’s on East Main in New Iberia.”
LeBlanc read the address aloud. It was mine.
“Thanks for the tip,” I said. I got up to leave.
“That’s it?”
“What’s the name of the homicide cop at NOPD?”
“Magelli.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ve got more.”
“I think I’ve got the big picture. One of these days we’ll have a talk after hours, Carroll.”
“Feeling a little irritated, are we? If so, maybe you should go back to New Orleans and get your old job back. Oh, I forgot. You got fired twice there.”