A half-hour and fifty questions later, Lieutenant Frenchy Capdeville pulled his black prowl car behind my car. He stepped out and shook his head at me, took off his brown suit coat and tossed it back in the prowl car.
Short and wiry, with curly black hair and a pencil-thin moustache, Capdeville looked like Zorro – with a flat Cajun nose. He waltzed past me and stood next to the open door of my car and looked at Brigid’s crossed legs. He pulled the ever-present cigarette from his mouth, flicked ashes on the driveway and told me, “You stay put.”
He reached his hand in and asked Brigid to step into the house with him. He left a rookie patrolman with an Irish name to guard me while other detectives arrived, one with a camera case. I looked up at the magnolia tree and tried counting the white blossoms, but lost count after twenty. At least the big tree, along with the two even larger oaks, kept the sun off me as I waited. I looked around at the neighbours who came out periodically to sneak a peek at the sideshow.
A detective arrived and waved at me on the way in. He was in my class at the academy. He was the only white boy I ever knew named Spade.
Willie Spade came out of the house an hour later and offered me a cigarette.
“I don’t smoke.”
“I forgot.” He shrugged and lit up with his Zippo. About an inch smaller than me with short carrot-red hair and too many freckles to count, Spade had deep-set brown eyes.
“I need to search your car. OK?”
He meant do I have your consent. I told him sure, go ahead, but didn’t expect him to pat me down first. No offense he said. No problem I said.
While he was digging in my back seat he said we needed to go to the office for my statement.
“I’d like to drive,” I said. “I’d rather not leave my car here.”
Spade turned and wiped sweat from his brow. “You can drive us both.”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t touch a fuckin’ thing in the house. She opened the door and I didn’t touch the railing on the way up the stairs. The only thing I touched was her arm, when I dragged her out.”
Spade narrowed his deep-set eyes. “You touched more of her than her arm.”
I nodded and leaned back in the hardwood folding chair in the small interview room. I looked out the lone window at the old wooden buildings across South White Street from the Detective Bureau Office on the second floor of the concrete Criminal Courts Building at Tulane and Broad. A grey pigeon landed on the window ledge and blinked at me.
“We found the murder weapon on the floor next to the bed.”
“Yeah?”
“A Colt .38. The misses says it’s Pipi’s gun. He kept it in the nightstand next to the bed. The drawer was open.”
“I didn’t notice.” I picked up the cup of coffee on the small table and took a sip. Cold.
“The doors and windows were all locked,” Spade said, watching me carefully for a reaction.
“What time did the doctor say he died?”
“Between 2 and 4 a.m. Give or take an hour.”
I nodded.
Spade leaned back in his chair and put his arms behind his head and I saw perspiration marks on his yellow shirt. His brown tie was loosened. “So you’re her alibi and she’s yours,” he said.
I nodded again and felt that hollow kick in my stomach.
There was a knock on the door and a hand reached in and waved Spade out. A couple minutes later Spade returned with a fresh cup of java, along with my wing tips. He dropped my shoes on the floor and put the coffee in front of me. He pulled my keys out and put them on the table before sitting himself.
“Find anything?” I said as I leaned down and pulled my shoes on.
“Nope.” Spade didn’t sound disappointed. He sounded a little relieved. He put his elbows up on the table and told me how they knew the killer came in the kitchen door. It rained last night. The killer came in through the back with muddy shoes, wiped them on the kitchen mat and still tracked mud all the way up to the bedroom, then tracked mud right back out.
“That’s why we had to search your pad and office,” he explained the obvious. They had to check out all my shoes, and everything else in my fuckin’ life.
“Let himself in with a key?” I asked when I sat up.
“Or,” Spade shrugged, “the door was unlocked and the killer flipped the latch on his way out, locking it. We have some prints, but smudges mostly.”
I nodded.
Spade let out a tired sigh and said, “You know the score. Whoever finds the body is automatically the first suspect.”
“Until you prove they didn’t do it. I know.”
I didn’t say – especially when it’s the wife and the man who’s fuckin’ the wife.
“I’ll be right back,” Spade said and left me with my fresh coffee and my view of South White Street.
A while later, just as I was thinking how an interview room would be better for the police without a window, the door opened and Frenchy Capdeville walked in with Spade. Capdeville took the chair. Spade leaned against the wall.
Capdeville smiled at me and asked if I knew anything about the pictures they found in Mr de Loup’s darkroom. I told them everything. Fuck, they knew it anyway.
I ended with a question. “Did your men sniff my sheets?”
Capdeville smiled again. “Who found the photographer?”
I waited.
“You come up with a nigger photographer for her, or did she?”
“She told me Pipi found him.”
Capdeville blew smoke in my face and gave me a speech, the usual one. I could leave for now, but they weren’t finished with me yet. They’d be back with more questions, he said, flicking ashes on the dirty floor. He made a point to tell me they weren’t finished with Mrs de Loup by a long shot. Her lawyer was on his way and they expected an extended interview.
“One more thing,” Capdeville said, looking me in the eyes. “You have any idea who did it?”
“Nope,” I lied, looking back at him with no expression in my eyes.
They let me go.
I drove around until dark, checking to see if I was followed so many times, I got a neck ache. I meandered through the narrow streets of the Quarter, through the twisting streets of the Faubourg Marigny and over to Treme where I parked the DeSoto on Dumaine Street.
I jumped a fence and moved through backyards, leaping two more fences to come up on Joe Cairo’s studio from the rear. As I moved up the back stairs, I thought how much this reminded me of a bad detective movie. Easy to figure and hard to forget.
I knocked on the back door. A yellow light came on and Joe’s face appeared behind the glass top of the wooden door. His jaw dropped. It actually dropped.
“Come on, open up,” I told him. “You don’t have much time.”
He opened the door and gave me a real innocent look, and I knew for sure he did it. I breezed past him, telling him to lock the door. I followed the lights to a back room bed with a suitcase and camera case on it.
“Going somewhere?” I sat in the only chair in the room, a worn green sofa.
Joe stood in the doorway. He looked around the room but not at me.
I put my hands behind my head and watched him carefully as I said, “She’s gonna roll over on you.”
Joe looked around the room again, his fingers twitching.
“If I figured it out, you know Homicide will. They’re a lot better at this.”
Joe started bouncing on his toes, his hands at his sides.
“They found the pictures. She’ll bat those big blue eyes at them, roll a tear down those pretty cheeks and tell them, ‘Look at the evil things my husband made me do… with a nigger.’”
Joe stopped bouncing and glared at me.
“Don’t be a sap,” I told him. “She’ll tie you up in a neat package. Cops like neat packages, cases tied up in a bow. Get out now. Leave. Go to California or Mexico. Just leave, or you’ll be in the electric chair before you know it.”