I drove out to Milt’s to have some copies of the snapshot made, then took Claiborne back down-town.
Don wasn’t at his desk. A clerk went off to find him, and ten minutes later he came gliding in, shirtsleeves rolled up and sweat stains the size of mud flaps under his arms. His clip-on tie was lying on the desk like a museum relic.
“Hear about Eddie Gonzalez?” he said, sitting. “Went down for the count. Pushing coke at The Green Door.”
He leaned back in his chair and let out a long breath.
“You’ve got three minutes,” he said.
“I’ll take two of them and keep the other for later. I’ve got a picture. I want it circulated to your men.”
I caught the glint of suspicion in his eye. “Anything I should know about?”
“Just some kid whose parents want to find her is all.”
“Missing persons is down the hall to the left, Lew.”
“A favor, Don.”
“Been a lot of those lately.”
“I hear you.”
“Okay, okay, you’ve got it. That all?”
I handed the copies over. “That’s all. Thanks, Don.”
“Right.” And he was out the door.
I knew how it was. I’d tried it myself for a while, putting in time as an MP. Then the army and I came to an understanding: they would keep me out of a court martial and psychiatric hospital if I would quit busting heads and go on home. At the time it sounded like the best deal anybody ever made me.
I slid out of downtown headquarters and hit the streets. First the crash pads in the Quarter that pulled them in from all over the world it seemed, then those uptown. Actress, I kept thinking. All I knew about New Orleans theater was Nobody Likes a Smartass, which from every indication had been running continuously (and ubiquitously) from about the time Bienville founded the city.
Finally, at three or so in the afternoon, I walked into Jackson Square armed with a Central Grocery sandwich.
I hadn’t been there for a long time, but nothing much had changed. A group of bluegrass musicians played by the fountain. Stretched out on the grass nearby were a number of hippies or freaks or whatever they were calling themselves those days-anyhow, they had long hair and their own aggressive dress code. I watched some of the girls in cutoffs and halters and suddenly felt old. Old and tired. Christ, I thought, just turned thirty and they look like kids to me.
I made rounds with my picture, then dropped onto a bench by one particularly fetching specimen of late childhood and ate my sandwich.
I waited.
After an hour or so I gave it up-lots of distractions and a nagging notion that the world might not be so bad after all, but no Cordelia-and wandered over toward the cathedral. I don’t know why. Anyhow, halfway inside the door, about where they start selling trinkets to tourists, I turned around and walked back out.
Until 1850 or so, Jackson Square had been Place d’Armes, and it was there, during the years of Spanish rule a century earlier, that rebellious French leaders had been executed. A few blocks landward, in Congo Square, slaves were allowed to pursue music and mores otherwise proscribed by the Code Noir and femme de couleur libre Marie Laveau held court over regular Sunday voodoo rituals. Scenes from our rich heritage hereabouts. Laveau, incidentally, was said to have consorted with alligators. Obviously one hell of a woman.
That night LaVerne and I had dinner at Commander’s Palace. Trout Almandine because they make the best in the city and a Mouton-Rothschild because we felt like it. The wine steward seemed a bit huffy at first but, as the evening went on, grew ever friendlier in proportion to the growing redness of his face.
“You know an actress named Willona?” I asked Verne at one point.
“Can’t say I do, Lew. But lots of girls call themselves actresses.”
We went back to the wine and small talk.
About two in the morning Verne’s phone rang and she rolled over to get it. I could hear a heavy, almost growling voice on the other end, but couldn’t make out words.
“Yeah, honey?” Verne said. More growling. “Really? Kinda late for a working girl, you gotta give better notice…. Yeah, sure, honey, I understand, of course I do…. Yeah, I know where it is…. I’ll be there, sure…. Give me thirty, thirty-five minutes, huh?”
She hung up.
“Gotta split, Lew,” she said. “One of my regulars.”
I nodded and she swung out of bed toward the closet. She had more clothes in there than they had at Maison Blanche.
I waited until she’d left, then got up, dressed, and went home.
Chapter Three
Home these days was a four-room apartment on St. Charles where trolleys clanked by late at night and you could always smell the river. It had a couple of overstuffed couches, some Italian chairs, a king-size bed, even pictures on the wall. Mostly Impressionist.
I parked the bug on the street and went in. Poured a brandy and sat on one of the couches sipping at it.
I was thinking about Cordelia Clayson and the ways it could go. Maybe she was hustling on the street corners by now, I didn’t know. Maybe she was into drugs, or booze. Or plain old for-the-hell-of-it sex. Or Jesus. Anything was possible. Whatever, I didn’t feel too hopeful about the news that sooner or later I was going to have to bring her parents. I’d seen too many times what the city could do.
Actress, I kept thinking. Actress. I didn’t know anything about acting, but I’d had a professor at college who had done a bibliography of New Orleans theater since 1868 or some such date, and tomorrow I’d give him a call. Right now it was time for bed. I finished off the brandy, undressed, set the alarm for seven, and hit the sack.
I was wakened at six by the phone.
“Yeah?” I managed to get out.
“Lew? I’m calling from downtown.”
“Don. Don’t you ever go home?”
“Funny, my wife’s always asking me the same thing. Can you come down here, Lew? It’s Vice. They think they’ve got your girl.”
I drove over expecting to talk to Cordelia Clayson in a detention room. Instead, I was ushered into a room on the fourth floor lined with books and what looked like cans of film. Don introduced me to Sergeants Polanski and Verrick and left. “Can’t watch this shit, Lew. Daughters of my own,” he said.
“Something we picked up at a party down on Esplanade,” Polanski told me. “Thought you’d be interested.”
While he was talking he threaded film into a projector. When he raised his hand, Verrick hit the lights and there we were, in dreamland.
A big white dude in black socks was doing things to a young black girl. Alternately fucking and sucking and beating and lecturing her on the philosophy of the bedroom and woman’s natural submission. It sounded like something out of de Sade by way of Heffner and Masters and Johnson-the redeeming social significance, I guess.
It was cheaply made, frames jumpy, figures and faces out of focus. But the girl was undeniably Cordelia.
The film lasted maybe fifteen minutes. Nobody said a word the whole time.
“Your girl?” Polanski said when it was over and the lights were back on.
I nodded.
“Who made it-you know?” I said after a moment.
“Guy by the name of Sanders. You get to know them by their style after a while-camera angles, things like that. Bud Sanders. Rents a cheap motel room, turns a girl up high on speed or whatever’s going, and rolls the camera. Mostly the men are the same ones over and over.”
“You pick him up?”
“What the hell for?” Polanski said. “He’d be back out on the street before we started the paper-work.”
“What about community standards?”
“You’re kidding. In New Orleans?”
“We could try,” Verrick added, “keep him busy a while. But it wouldn’t be long. Nothing would stick. Water off a duck’s back. Then he’d just go out and rent a new camera and start all over again.”
I nodded. I’d seen porn films in my time, some in the line of business, a few for pleasure, but this one had really got to me. I was thinking about Mr. and Mrs. Clayson up on Jackson Avenue and what I’d tell them.