Gator Aide (6 page)

“If there’s anything else you think of, I can be reached here.”

Marie didn’t waver as I put the card down on the ground and backed away, keeping my eye on her until I felt safe enough to turn around. The children moved aside to clear a path, then fell in line, following me in silence as I walked to my car, started the motor, and pulled away. Then all hell broke loose in the yard once more, as if I had never been there. I rounded the corner and caught a glimpse of Marie as she disappeared into the wooden shed, closing the door firmly behind her.

Dry lightning crackled in the
late-morning heat as I headed back toward the office. With the rain coming quickly, day turned to night around noon. Along with thunderclouds, a thick white fog rolled in, and driving along the road became a more daring game of chicken than usual. Cypress trees appeared out of nowhere, gaunt skeletons beckoning me into the nearest ditch. A phantom bridge with no beginning or end floated above a field of sugarcane, held up by invisible hands. The world flickered in front of me to the tune of worn-out wipers as I thought about Marie on my slow crawl toward Slidell.

Picking up Charlie’s bad habits, I grabbed a candy bar and Coke for lunch on my way back to the office. My health food days in New York seemed a lifetime ago, when I had worked out six times a week and wouldn’t touch anything made with sugar. But I figured as long as I didn’t start hitting the Old Grand-Dad, I was still okay.

Walking down the hall at work, I heard the usual duck calls ring out loud and clear from behind. The pile of paperwork had grown on top of my desk; it needed to be taken care of… someday. Clipped to my phone were pink slips with messages. One of them was from Jake Santou. Not wanting to admit it, even to myself, I was pleased he’d phoned. There was something about the man I found intriguing.

Pushing the other messages aside for the moment, I returned Santou’s call. He picked up before I’d heard the first ring.

“Yeah. Santou here.”

For a southern guy, he reminded me a lot of New York.

“It’s Rachel Porter.”

Before I had a chance to add anything else, Santou cut in.

“Yeah, Porter. I’m glad you called back. Remember the offer I made last night? Well, I’ve got a meeting scheduled with the political hot dog who’s gonna win the next mayoral election, Hillard Williams. It’s for later this afternoon. Want to come along? It’ll give you a good dose of the local color. You might even pick up a pointer or two on the case.”

The name set off a fireman’s parade of alarm bells in my brain. If Williams was one of the first on Santou’s whodunit list, it seemed obvious that what Marie had told me was true. It also appeared that Valerie and Hillard Williams had been more than just a well-kept secret. I decided to play fair and fill Santou in on my meeting with Marie, and in what context Hillard Williams’s name had come up.

“Yeah, it’s something I’m checking out. This is a small town,
chè
r
e
. Lots of rumors float around here. Hell, I’ve already heard some about you.”

I skipped the bait. “What about Marie Tuttle? Why hasn’t anyone been there to question her yet?”

“You just covered that for me, Porter.” Santou gave a flat laugh. “Besides, she’s small potatoes. I haven’t got the time to waste.”

I took the dig without bothering to respond. I wasn’t about to make any snappy comebacks that might prompt Santou to rescind his offer. Getting off the phone, I headed into Hickok’s office to inform him of my meeting with Marie, and let him know that my dance card was filled for the afternoon.

He sniggered at my report on the events of the morning.

“That gal’s one little charmer, ain’t she? Could make the snakes jump right out of their baskets and head back into the swamp quicker than a .45. You gotta watch that woman with both of your eyes.”

The homilies were great, but I wanted to know fact from fiction. Sometimes down here it was hard to tell one from the other.

“Is what she told me about Hillard Williams true?”

Charlie took a sip of ginger ale that had the waft of bourbon to it—a vice he’d acquired soon after the discovery that he was minus a wife.

“Well, that man never could learn to keep his pecker in his pants. In the old days, when he was raking it in poaching gators, he was one tough little dude. He’s a little bitty shit, too.”

Getting information out of Hickok was like trying to pull on a strand of taffy.

“Marie said he was the head of the Nazi movement down here. Is that right?”

Hickok pulled out a nail clipper and began snapping at his fingernails, one after the other. I was beginning to understand why his wife had left home.

“That’s what they say, Bronx.”

“What do you say, Charlie?”

“I say, every time you take a step, before you put your foot down, check exactly where it is you’re going.”

The top of his thumbnail whizzed past me. I was getting nowhere fast.

“Listen, Bronx. Politicians down here are as crooked as a dog’s hind leg, and Hillard is just about as crooked as they come. He’ll do or say whatever it takes to get himself elected, and he sure as hell seems to speak for a lot of the folks around here. He says he’s no Nazi. I ain’t gonna argue with him on that.”

“I hear he used to have a partner from New York that Marie described as a hoodlum.”

Charlie gave a slight laugh. “She was being charitable on that one.”

“I don’t understand why the police haven’t checked out Marie Tuttle. They must know about Valerie’s relation to her.”

Hickok popped open a box of Raisinets, his nod to nutrition. “It’s a bottom-drawer case, Bronx. Back-burner stuff for when their case load gets low, which is never. Ain’t nobody in N.O.P.D. gonna lose any shoe leather over a French Quarter hooker.”

The answer irritated me. “Well, maybe I’ll be able to find out some more for myself. If it’s all right with you, I’m going to be meeting with Hillard Williams at four o’clock this afternoon.”

For once Hickok was caught by surprise.

“You want to fill me in on how you managed to pull that off?”

I didn’t really, but there was no way around it. “The detective in charge of the Vaughn case invited me along. He wants us to pool information on this one.”

Hickok didn’t bother to look up as he emptied the box of Raisinets into his mouth. “And just who is this detective you’re talking about?”

“Jake Santou.”

Hickok’s eyebrows shot up as he went back to clipping his nails. “I’ll give you some leeway on this one, Bronx, but just make sure it’s the case you’re working on. I know that Cajun coonass, and I can guess what he’s really interested in. And it ain’t your investigating skills, neither. You just remember, you’re still working for me, so I get your reports. That also means hauling your rear end back out in that bayou and working this case in between everything else.”

I smiled as sweetly as possible as I walked out the door.

I met Santou outside the police precinct, where I hopped into a LeSabre so old that it made my VW look good. A red plastic crawfish and a set of black rosary beads swung from the rearview mirror, to the rhythm of late-afternoon traffic.

In the daylight, streaks of silver were finger-painted throughout his hair. Having worn a work shirt and jeans last night, he was a different person today in a brown sport jacket, chocolate slacks, and a beige shirt open at the neck to showcase the gold St. Anthony medal that lay against a chest covered with densely matted dark hair. His hooded eyes noticed me checking him out, but Santou was all business as he fought the traffic across Canal.

Originally the dividing line between the French, who considered the Quarter their own, and upstart Americans who dared to move into the area, the street now belonged to upscale department stores and the harried crowds that frequented them. A newly refurbished downtown, it could have been plunked anywhere in the U.S. and looked right at home.

We drove out toward the Garden District, passing the St. Charles streetcar on our way. Known in the past as the streetcar named Desire, which Tennessee Williams had made so famous, it slashed its way back and forth through the Garden District, its rails hot, shiny ribbons of steel under a blistering sun.

Once an exclusive section for the American nouveau riche, the Garden District is lined with one nineteenth-century gingerbread home after another. Each house had been built to surpass the next in an attempt to impress the French, who continued to view American residents as social scum. But Hillard’s house took the proverbial cake. Turning on to Prytania Street, Santou parked outside the high walls of the towering mansion, stained the shade of lemon meringue pie. Walking through the wrought-iron gate, I pulled at the hem of my dress as it clung to my legs in the heat. I had tried to make myself presentable for both Williams and Santou by running home to shower and change. It had been a long time since I’d worn anything besides pants and sneakers, but it seemed the least I could do to meet a character of Hillard’s notoriety.

Santou rang the doorbell, letting his finger rest on the buzzer for a minute or two. Just as I was beginning to think I’d been duped about any appointment, the door swung open, framing a hulking figure who made Santou look small. Towering at six feet five inches and weighing close to three hundred pounds, stood a man who could easily have been snatched up by any pro football team to play defense. Bearing a boxer’s flattened nose and a pompadour pomaded to perfection, Hillard’s butler was dressed in a red knit polo shirt complete with alligator emblem, white polyester pants, and pointy black shoes with a blinding shine. A thick gold band complete with a large, flashy diamond cut into the soft white flesh of his pinky finger. In the background, the high-pitched yap of a frenzied dog was on automatic, like a machine gun out of control.

“Yeah? Whadda youse want?”

I identified it right away as Little Italy, New York, one hundred percent.

Santou flashed his badge.

“Let me check on it.” Little Italy began to close the door, but Santou quickly wedged his foot inside.

“You mind if we step in? It’s awful hot out today.”

I had already begun to perspire and pushed my way through the open door, urged on by a cool breeze from inside. My brashness caught Little Italy off guard.

“Yeah. I s’ppose so.”

As he lumbered off, the air-conditioning took my breath away, along with the three-tiered crystal chandelier that hung in the center of the front hall. I could only guess how many gator skins had gone toward its purchase. A winding staircase stood off to the left. Made of mahogany, the steps led up to a second-floor landing that was bathed in a spectrum of colored light, the domed skylight above a mosaic of stained glass.

Little Italy suddenly loomed above me.

“Yeah. He’ll see youse, but he’s only gotta coupla minutes ta spare.”

Following him across the floor, I caught a glimpse of myself in the French cut-glass mirror. A mass of wild red waves, my hair curled down my back, the humidity making it frizz all the more. While the summer heat had tempted me to cut it off, long hair still seemed a badge of my youth, and I wasn’t ready to let it go.

Santou’s newly acquired Southern drawl drew my attention back to the walking hulk in front of us.

“You working for Hillard Williams down here?”

“Whadda I look like? A guest? I’m his bodyguard.” The heavy New York accent, interspersed with Santou’s Cajun patter, was like being caught between a bowl of gumbo and a heaping dish of linguine with clams.

“And just why would Hillard be needing the expertise of a bodyguard in our peaceful town?”

“Hey, you’re a cop. You should know this is one wacko place. I never seen so many weirdos in my life. When ya can’t find a decent pizza, ya know something ain’t right about a town.”

“My name’s Jake Santou. Who’d you be?”

I glanced at the heavy gold ID bracelet that hung from Little Italy’s wrist like a chain. When he didn’t respond, I answered for him. “Vincent.”

Vincent’s body stopped in place, a veritable Rock of Gibraltar as he turned to face me. “Nobody calls me that except my mother, and she’s dead. Call me Vinnie.”

The sharp rap of high heels caught my attention. I glanced over my shoulder in time to see a woman, carrying a dog the size of a Q-Tip with teeth, disappear up the stairs.

Little Italy answered my question before I had time to ask. “That’s Mrs. Williams, the boss’s wife. She don’t take much to company.”

Turning back around, Vinnie walked toward the end of the hall as Santou continued his interrogation. “You down here from New York, Vinnie?”

Little Italy didn’t bother to answer as he flung open the double doors to Hillard’s inner sanctum. Spread out before us was a room that rivaled the Harvard Men’s Club. Paneled in mahogany, the room was drenched in a golden glow from the afternoon sun that streamed in through a large bay window. An overhead fan pirouetted silently above us, its whirling blades reflecting in the barroom mirror that hung above an immense marble fireplace. But what dominated the room was the oversize desk of cherry wood that you could have rolled a bowling ball on. Mounted directly behind it, and jutting out from the wall, was a bleached alligator skull of gargantuan proportions, beneath which sat a maroon leather chair as regal as a king’s throne.

Perched in its seat was a man whose chest barely met the top of the desk, and whose balding pate was poorly disguised by a few wisps of hair combed from one side across to the other. A pair of electric blue eyes beamed at me in amusement from a face that had all the roundness of a chipmunk’s, its pouches stuffed with food for the coming winter. Jumping up to greet us, Hillard Williams stood five feet tall. A butterball of a man, his barrel chest gave him the appearance of a bantam rooster. The two top buttons of his short-sleeve white shirt were undone, so that curls of wiry white hair pushed their way out in masculine defiance. A pair of red suspenders held up pants which hung below a protruding belly.

“Well, if it ain’t my favorite detective. How ya doing, Jake? Good to see ya.” Hillard slapped him on the back as though Santou had choked on a chicken bone. “And who’s this pretty little lady here?”