The lull after he fell silent became painful, then excruciating. The color ebbed from her face.
“Even if you manage to ruin my career by proving D’Antoni wrote some of my novel,” she finally replied, “it doesn’t prove I killed him.”
“No, but I suspect that gun making a bulge in the side of your handbag might. Amateur killers seldom bother to get rid of murder weapons. And before you try to douse my light, just a warning: Under my shirt there’s a .45 automatic in an armpit holster.”
A haggard slump of her shoulders was Samantha’s only visible response. When Reno fished the nickel-plated.38 snubby from her bag, she suddenly collapsed into a wing chair, her face bloodless.
“I tell people my husband and I are split up,” she said as if the words were being wrenched out of her. “In truth, he left me for an ‘actress’ in L.A. I was devastated, I couldn’t write, and I had just signed a three-book contract worth almost a half-million dollars. Lydia only showed me D’Antoni’s work — a sort of nudge. It was I who looked him up from the address on his submission.”
She sent Reno a pleading glance. “It was only meant as a desperate stopgap until I could get my muse back. I never expected such success. D’Antoni already had several entire novels, so I typed one into my computer and my editor raved over it. I bought two more — all three made the Times list.”
“I take it you paid him?”
She blushed to the roots of her hair. “Yes, but just barely enough to salve my conscience. He didn’t seem to value his work all that much, and I feared that paying him too much would, well, tip him off.”
“That’ll earn you jewels in heaven,” Reno barbed.
“My efforts didn’t matter. He became aware of the books’ success and got quite upset with me.”
“And instead of just brooming him, you had to kill him?”
“Yes,” she said emphatically. “It wasn’t the money, he didn’t care. He wanted recognition for his work. Even if he couldn’t have proved he wrote the books, I couldn’t risk being linked to such an... unromantic figure. And if he could prove authorship I would have been devastated financially — ghostwriters can be kept secret from readers, but never from editors. I would have been forced to pay every dollar back.”
Reno tapped the number of the Sixth District police headquarters into his cell. Before he sent the call he met Samantha’s eyes. “You may decide to fight this. But there’s a good chance Lydia will be charged in a conspiracy and turn state’s evidence, adding stronger motive to the forensics evidence. It’s a lead-pipe cinch that most juries will be hostile to a rich, prominent woman who grinds up a man as poor and maladjusted as Pete D’Antoni. Just remember: Plead guilty and there’s no jury.”
Reno sent the number. While the phone burred, he glanced outside through the parlor windows and watched the rapid onsweep of dark clouds. The mother of all storms was said to be gathering strength out in the Gulf and might even be drawing a bead on New Orleans. It’ll blow past us, Reno thought idly. They usually do.
Copyright © 2006 John Edward Ames
When the Levees Break
by O’Neil De Noux
Born and raised in New Orleans, where he was a police officer in adjacent Jefferson Parish for twelve years and a P.I. for six years, O’Neil De Noux is currently in Lake Charles, LA. Still displaced by Katrina, he’s attempting to resettle along the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. His new book, New Orleans Confidential, is a collection of 1940s noir P.I. stories.
Five days before Katrina blew into town, topping the levees in Jefferson and St. Bernard Parishes, breaking through the levee at the 17th Street Canal, the London Avenue Canal, and Industrial Canal to inundate New Orleans, Detective John Raven Beau started his vacation by having his houseboat raised into dry dock. Five days after Katrina, Beau sat in a flat-bottom pirogue next to Sad Lisa. The hurricane had lifted his houseboat off the dry dock and deposited her between the remains of two huge boat sheds and the skeleton of Joe Boughten’s Boat Repair Yard, which had shielded the big winds from Sad Lisa, now floating in eight feet of water that covered the entire area. Lake Pontchartrain had taken the land as far as Beau could see.
With the strong summer sun beating down on the brown water, Beau and his partner had to shield their eyes from the glare with hands over brows, although both wore dark sunglasses. The stench was the worst part, reeking of dead fish, mildew, and a thick petroleum smell. The oaks were dying, the ones that hadn’t toppled over. The roofs of large trucks could be seen on what used to be high ground, boats littered the entire area, most upside down, half-sunk, pleasure crafts next to shrimp boats. A half-mile away, the levee breach at the 17th Street Canal was still pouring into the city.
“Well, she’s not listing,” said Beau’s new partner, Juanita Cruz. Five years younger than Beau, Cruz was twenty-five and had been promoted to detective a month before Katrina — or B.K. as it was now known. For the rest of time, this new New Orleans would be A.K. — after Katrina. Her brown-black hair pulled into a bun, she wore a black T-shirt over baggy black nylon pants and black combat boots. Across the rear of her T-shirt, NOPD was stenciled in silver letters. Beau wore the same getup, his .9mm Beretta Model 92F in a canvas holster along his right hip.
Beau tied up against his houseboat, heard a noise, and looked up into Joe Boughten’s face. Joe smiled weakly and said, “She’s seaworthy. Only one around here that is.”
Beau climbed aboard, followed by Cruz. Joe, in a soiled T-shirt that was once white, baggy gray shorts, face unshaven, eyes bleary, held up a can of beer and said, “Want a brew? They’re hot, ‘a course, but that’s the way the British drink it, ain’t it?”
“Engine ruined?”
“No gas. We emptied the tanks, remember?”
“How’d you get beer?”
“I stocked up before the storm.” Joe belched, then excused himself to Cruz, who stared at him real hard.
“Tell me you didn’t ride out the storm,” Beau said as he looked around Sad Lisa. Pieces of railing were missing, so were the seat cushions of the built-in seats, but he’d stored the radar and antennas below before putting the boat into dry dock, so it didn’t appear much else was missing. Then he saw the tarp on the roof. Joe had covered a hole.
Joe waited for him to look back before saying, “It was like bein’ in the middle of an atomic blast.” He turned to Cruz. “Wind so strong, rain slammin’, waves crashin’, things flyin’, hittin’ everything.” He belched again and took a step back. “Been listenin’ to the radio. Is it true about all the shit at the Dome?”
Beau shrugged. Cruz told him some of it was true.
Joe waved his hand. “No looters been by here yet, but they will, I’m sure.”
“Unlikely for the moment,” said Beau. “We had to get through two checkpoints. Coast Guard and National Guard stopping everything on the water.”
“Good. Bet they don’t check at night. Never seen it so dark around here.”
Beau went inside and dug out a canvas suitcase and started packing clothes. He could smell bacon now, saw a pan on the stove with three slices in it. There was enough propane to last awhile. “Hey,” he called out to Joe.