I began to haunt the Quarter for the first time in years, trying to get a handle on Eva’s world. Mostly she hung out in what they used to call Little Sicily, around the French Market and lower Decatur Street, where my daddy grew up. Like all the Sicilians in this town, his family had lived over their corner grocery store, Angelo’s Superette at Decatur and Governor Nicholls. My only relative left in the neighborhood was Aunt Olivia, a butch little old maid who used to run a laundromat with her mama on Dauphine Street. She owned half the Quarter, and my Uncle Dominic, who hadn’t worn anything but pajamas for the past twenty years, owned the other half. When I was young everyone was always going, Oh, jeez, you got family in the Quarter, you should visit them. But like my mama always said, “Me, I don’t go by them dagos none. They just as soon stick a knife in your back.”
The neighborhood was a different place now, and I couldn’t understand what anyone down here did to make a living. You hardly saw any grocery stores or dry cleaners or fruit vendors or florists or printing offices or notions stores. Mostly the shops were Pakistani joints selling Mardi Gras masks made in China. Even the criminals were candy-assed, just a bunch of two-bit drug dealers and purse snatchers, nothing like the outfit my mama’s family used to run. In those days, if a girl didn’t cough up to her pimp, she got a Saturday-night makeover with acid splashed in her face. The girls used to roll the sailors right and left, slipping mickeys in their drinks or switchblades between their ribs. Now I walked around at night unarmed with a couple hundred bucks in my pocket. The streets were filled with gutter punks, their mangy mutts, and older kids playing dress-up. These kids thought they were being bad bad bad. They’d snort their little powders and do their little humpety-hump on somebody’s futon. Then they’d ride their bikes and eat their vegetables, just like their mamas told them. They even recycled.
I figured with all these Pollyannas floating around, older predators were bound to be lurking in the shadows, dying to take a bite out of this innocent flesh. So the first place I hit was where Eva used to strip, Les Girls de Paree on Iberville between Royal and Chartres. This block of seedy dives was the real thing, the way the whole Quarter used to look when I was coming up. The Vieux Carré Commission must have preserved it as a historical diorama. A hulking bozo with a mullet haircut held the doors open onto the pulsing red lights of a dark pit belting out bump-and-grind. Inside, Les Girls smelled like dirty drawers in a hamper. Or to put it less delicately, like ass.
Some skanky brunette with zits on her behind was rubbing her crotch on an aluminum pole and jiggling her store- bought titties. You’d have to be pretty desperate to throw a boner for a rancid slice of luncheon meat like that. Only two old guys were sitting in the shadows, and I couldn’t figure out how this joint sucked in any bucks. Finally, Mullet-head waltzed over to ask what I wanted.
“I want to talk about Eva Pierce.”
“Miss Ivonne,” he called out, eyeballing me up and down, “copper here.”
This over-the-hill fluffball with champagne hair clopped over to my table. I couldn’t take my eyes off her lips. “What can I do for you, officer?”
“Eva Pierce” is all I said. Her lips were pink and puffed out like Vienna Sausages. They must have kept a vat of collagen under the bar.
“I’ve been waiting for this little bereavement call,” she said, sliding into a chair. “I’m still broke-up about Eva. She didn’t belong here, and I was glad to see her leave. All she ever did was write poetry and sip 7-Up. But she sure attracted the chicken-hawks.”
“Anyone in particular?”
“I don’t rat out my customers.”
“Eva liked it rough, and swung both ways, right?”
“Where you hear that, babe?” She yanked a Vantage from inside her bra and lipped it.
“Her roommate Pogo.”
“Me and his momma used to have the best damn time.” she shrieked, pounding the table. “But don’t ever cross that woman. No siree.”
“You know Lily Lamont?”
She slit her eyes at me. “You sure get around for a cop.”
“Some people pay me to.”
“Look, officer,” she said, shooting a stream of smoke toward the ceiling through those lips, “Eva went home with a couple of the girls here, but they just wanted somebody’s shoulder to cry on. Eva was a mommy, not a dyke. She took care of stray animals and people. Like that Brack creature and poor Pogo. She was like Dorothy in the goddamn Wizard of Oz. All she ever talked about was that farm in Ohio.”
“So who’d want to kill her?”
“You got me,” she said. “Maybe the wicked witch with her flying monkeys. Or the blue guy.”
“The blue guy?”
Miss Yvonne stifled a laugh. “Buffed-up psycho used to come in here, hair and beard dyed cobalt-blue. He wore a cat-o’-nine-tails around his neck. Sure took a liking to Eva, but I run him off.”
I was walking back down Chartres Street, thinking about Janice, when I heard a dog leash rattling behind me.
“Oh, Lieutenant Girlfriend.” It was Pogo walking this dust mop named Welfare, now squatting at the curb. I hadn’t seen Pogo since last Tuesday at the Dragon’s Den. I was becoming a regular at the open mike, and starting to get a kick out of it. It was like a cross between a gong show and the observation room on Acutely Disturbed at DePaul’s.
“Been meaning to ask you,” I said. “Eva go to the movies a lot?”
“Never,” he said, picking up a dog turd between two fingers with a plastic baggie. “She preferred to star in her own epic drama.”
“So why was she carrying popcorn the night she died?”
He stopped. “Popcorn? I never thought about that. Maybe she swung by the Cloister after she said goodnight at Molly’s. Sometimes the bartender there hands out bags of popcorn. Just before dawn.”
I smiled. The Cloister. A few doors down Decatur from Molly’s.
Pogo put the plastic baggie in his pocket. Who would’ve ever thought that one day the Quarter would be filled with rich people walking around with dog turds in their pockets? The dagos moved to Kenner just in time.
“Ever see Eva around a man with a blue beard? Blue hair and beard. And a whip?”
“Oh, him.”
“She date him?”
“He followed her to the open mike from Les Girls. She wouldn’t have anything to do with him. Now we have to listen to his poetry.”
“His perms any good?”
Pogo pulled out the baggie of dog mess and waved it in my face. “See you at the open mike, Lieutenant Girlfriend.”
If the garage rock band at the Cloister banged out one more song, I thought my skull would pop. I nursed several Seven and Sevens while I jotted down random thoughts in my notebook, hoping Swamp Gas would finally run out of steam. The crowd was twenty-somethings dressed in black with all the hardware in Home Depot dangling off their mugs. I wondered if they got snared in each other’s rings and things when they got down to business and had to use a wire cutter to separate themselves. Nobody seemed to be having a particularly good time. Janice and I’d had more fun eating thirty-five-cent plates of red beans and rice at Buster Holmes. A steady stream of couples was going in and out of the bathrooms in back, but not for any lovey-dovey. They were wiping their noses and clenching their jaws when they walked out. That explained the coke residue on the straw in Eva’s purse.
Finally I was getting somewhere.