And — hoo-whee! — what would my aunt-tee say if things turned out to clear Frank? What would any of my chilly relations say when it was written up in the newspapers the way I reasoned how things really went down in connection with the death of Eugenia Malreaux?
Frank helped himself somehow to Miss Eugenia’s wall safe, that’s for certain. But legally speaking, maybe there was a way of muddying up certainty. That thumbprint of Frank’s? He must have brushed the dial of that safe a hundred times reaching for tools to tend the old lady’s tulip trees. Frank’s fingerprints that no doubt would be found all over the murder weapon? Well, of course Frank’s prints are on that axe — probably a hundred times over the years of pruning trees.
But why would Frank murder Miss Eugenia anyhow? If it was true what was said at his trial and he’d stolen jewelry from her before, then he hardly needed a goose that laid golden eggs to be dead. Philip Malreaux, on the other hand, had plenty of motive, which he’d been brooding over since his awful boyhood; since the first night his mama raped him.
Philip’s fingerprints were never found on the wall safe in the brick shed. Why not? Maybe he was careful to wear gloves. But if Philip’s fingerprints showed up on the axe, which was likely, it was for the simple reason that nobody but the owner of a safe deposit box account is allowed to put anything into it. So why would he do that?
Maybe Philip Malreaux came across that axe before the police did and ran down to the bank with it, thinking his buddy Frank Masson must have got liquored up and killed Miss Eugenia on account of hearing so many stories about the old bag that you could toss your lunch.
Having seen a bunch of loose ends in every single criminal matter that ever crossed my desk at the D.A.’s office, I was unsurprised by the case of my own brother and his wormy pal. For instance, how come Frank took the fall for murdering Miss Eugenia? Well, maybe it was his way of doing a good deed for somebody before playing a trick on the calendar.
And there’s the little matter of what everybody overlooked right from the jump: What about old man Malreaux, by which I mean Philip’s daddy? Mightn’t the old man himself have gone crazed over all the years of carrying around the sickening knowledge of what went on in his house?
But mostly my theorizing was informed by what I alone knew about — namely, Frank’s last letter and the money that came with it, and the contents of my long conversation at the Star Lounge with Malreaux. Three things I was not bringing up with the boss.
“My brother was no killer, he was just sad,” I continued. “Sad as a dead bird in a birdbath.”
“He was sure as hell a thief, I am sorry to inform you, Walter. And even if this Philip Malreaux was in on the crime like you are intimating, even if he was the one who did the whacking on his mama’s skull — well, as party to felony theft when the axe fell, you know your brother was equally guilty of murder.”
“But we don’t know that the theft and the murder occurred at the same time,” I said. “Or if Frank was even involved in the theft part.”
“Then how come that jewelry ends up in his bedroom?”
“He could have come by it honestly,” I lied. I thought about the Devil and his Christmas pie. “He could have bought it off Malreaux.”
“Sure, and boar hogs might grow teats some day... Are you talking like reasonable-doubt talk, Walter?” he asked. “Because if you are, I don’t like hearing that from a man supposed to be a prosecutor.”
He glared at me while taking a last chew of sandwich, like it was me he wanted in his teeth.
“Especially when we’re talking a heinous crime I prosecuted myself,” said the boss, “and which I don’t especially want to open up again. You get me?”
I said I sure did.
“Reasonable-doubt talk,” added the boss, “that could imperil a man’s career around here.”
And so, under threat as I considered myself to be, I had the right to remain silent, except for resigning from the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office.
The very next day, I found office space for no rent: The pink house in Gentilly. I am today waiting on contractors to come renovate the place as the offices of Walter Masson, Esq., criminal defense counsel.
I already have two clients: the late Frank Masson, whose case I am taking pro bono, and Philip Malreaux, who has the wherewithal to pay me handsomely.
That’s part of the deal I struck with Malreaux.
As for all that money in the chifforobe, I am keeping it, in a kind of solidarity with my big brother.
And hell walked in
by Jeri Cain Rossi
Bywater
The rain will never stop.
And her landlord would never fix the air conditioner, she thought, while she sat naked at the kitchen table fanning herself, sweating and stinking. As the bath water faucet dripped, she took two ice trays from the refrigerator and emptied them in. She stepped into the claw-foot tub filled with bath water and ice cocktail, lay back, and submerged, eyes open. Through the ripples, she looked up at her drowning reflection in the full-length mirror on the ceiling. Her long black tresses floated around her lily white flesh like the passion of Ophelia.
Her long black tresses floated around her lily white flesh like the passion of Ophelia. Her ex was bartending at the Sugar Park, a dive bar at Dauphine and France Streets in the Bywater, what was left of it. She went in to use the ATM and there he was, not looking so good — not that anybody was looking good since the storm of two-thousand-ought-five. Curious, she sat down for a nightcap. He walked over to her stool like it was the last few steps to the electric chair. He politely asked what she wanted and she politely told him red wine. Like he didn’t know, the coward. That was their drink. She had an urge to lunge over the bar and rake his face for treating her like a stranger, like their time together didn’t matter.
“Why, thank you so much,” she said, sugary sweet when he returned with the beverage. At least she could savor the pleasure of having him serve her.
His new girl, an emaciated brunette, walked out of the kitchen like a coiffed skeleton in a red halter dress. Her scapulae jutted and the vertebrae stretched like a mountain ridge down her back. They must be doing coke, she noted. The brunette had those deer-caught-in-the-headlights eyes. They were more bugged-out than usual. Yeah, coke or crystal meth, and lots of it. The brunette sat at the other end of the bar near the TV. She had no jealousy for this girl, this brunette girl, she told herself. She started to chew her fingernails, then caught herself.
Thinking back on it, there was nothing heroic about their affair, her and her ex. It was cowardice on both accounts. He was a charming heartbreaker trying to extricate himself from another fling that had run its course and she was the willing vehicle of his getaway. Just to be a bitch. The luxury of it. There’s something alluring about being on the arm of a good-looking heartbreaker, like having something in your pocket everybody wants. And they indeed made quite an enviable ruckus, staggering around the Quarter arm-in-arm, howling merrily — beautiful, barefoot, and besotted. However, his attention began to waver toward the end of the summer. In fact, the night before the storm he made his move for the brunette.
That was months ago, and her insides were still charred like so many buildings in the neighborhood. There’s nothing like knowing where you really stand when your man goes off with another girl during a cat-five hurricane, leaving you to die. She took a long gulp of Vendage and shuddered at its horribleness.
Maybe she read it somewhere in a book at the Isle of Salvation Botanica, maybe she imagined it, but this is what she figured: She’d fuck a hundred men. Each man would be a pin stuck deep into her ex’s cheating voodoo-doll heart. Each seduction would be a ritual to cleanse herself of his brutal rebuff. Then she wouldn’t want him anymore. Furthermore, she imagined her indifference would revive his interest, because that’s how it is with heartbreakers. He would be cursed to want her forevermore. And all evidence of the hurricane would go away as if it didn’t happen. The shotgun houses would rebuild the way they were before. The people would come back. The music would play. Paradise would return.