Murder in the Rue Dauphine Page 2

  “You want to maybe work out together? Then I’ll buy you breakfast, and we can talk.”

  I don’t usually like to work out with anyone. Then again, he was a potential client. “Okay.”

  An hour and a half later, I was drenched in sweat and exhausted. Mike was not one of those people who go to the gym to socialize and gossip, either. He moved from exercise to exercise with few breaks between sets. We worked on chest, triceps, and back. By the time we were finished, I was afraid my arms would be too tired to steer my car. Mike was also sweaty and exhausted, but he grinned at me as we headed for the locker room. “You’ve got a great body. If you pushed it, you could be huge.”

  I looked at him. I’d thought my own routine was pretty grueling. “Do you want to compete in bodybuilding?”

  He looked startled. “Oh, no, I just like lifting weights. I like feeling sore, you know? It’s pretty crazy, I know, but I’ve always liked it. I started when I was 13, and I’ve worked out about five days a week ever since.”

  That was a first. Of all the reasons to work out, I’d never met someone who enjoyed it. I hate working out. I do like being in shape, though. I wish I was one of the lucky ones who can just maintain their shape at all times, whether they work out or not. The lucky ones should be boiled in oil. We showered, and decided to have breakfast at the Bluebird Cafe on Prytania.

  The Bluebird Cafe is one of the best diners in the city. It was about 10 o’clock when we got there. The air-conditioning was going full blast, which was a blessed relief. It was already about 90 degrees and about 90 percent humidity. It was going to be hotter than hell. After the waitress took our orders and left, I lit a cigarette. “Now, why do you think you need a detective?”

  “You smoke?” Mike made a face, like he had just picked up a rock to find worms and slugs underneath it.

  “Nasty habit, I know, but it’s all I have left. No booze, no drugs, no fat, no sex with strangers. Just nicotine.” Not completely true, but what did he know?

  “Well, everyone should have some vices.” He smiled at me and then stared down at the table. “This is kind of hard for me to talk about.”

  “It always is,” I said in my most reassuring voice, one that I practiced for use on clients. I stared at his face, which was starting to redden a bit, and I wondered what he needed a detective for. Did he want me to spy on his lover to find out if he was cheating? Fidelity is an obsolete term these days. Guess what? If you think they’re cheating, they are.

  “I’ve lived here about two years.” He took a deep gulp of his orange juice, and his hand was shaking just a little bit. “I moved here from Birmingham after I broke up with my boyfriend. There was no reason for me to stay there, you know? My family cut me off when I came out, my boyfriend was gone, and it’s not like Birmingham is the most gay-friendly place. So I came to New Orleans and stayed.”

  Like thousands of others before you, I thought, as our waitress, Claire, delivered our food. He smiled at her, and she practically melted into a puddle in her shoes. She flirted with him for a little while, something about strawberry or grape jam, and he flirted right back at her. He was good at it. When she finally left, he looked at me and shrugged: Women.

  I’m not ugly. I’ve had my share of waitresses and waiters flirt with me. But as far as Claire was concerned, I didn’t exist. It was a humbling experience. I didn’t like it. It would be hard to be friends with Mike Hansen.

  “Well, after I moved here I started dating Ronnie Bishop. He’s a mailman.” He said it in the same tone that a priest might say the word heretic. “You know him?”

  “Slightly,” I said carefully. There was no sense in going into my own brief history with Ronnie. Who knew how he actually felt about the guy? Ronnie was a tall guy with a lean, muscled body and blond hair the color of white gold that rarely occurs in nature. He was good-looking, if you liked that type. I don’t.

  “We were together for two years, give or take.” Mike kept talking as if I hadn’t answered him. He still hadn’t looked up from his food. “I don’t want to bad-mouth him, but it wasn’t fun.”

  “Why did you stay with him?”

  “He threatened to kill himself every time I tried to leave.” Mike shuddered. “It was awful. He was smothering and possessive and jealous. It got to the point that if I left the house to walk down to the A&P for a gallon of milk, he was sure I was meeting someone to cheat on him with. He would go into these jealous rages. After Mardi Gras this year, I asked him to move out. I couldn’t take it anymore. I was gonna go crazy.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, he got mad and started yelling, calling me a whore and stuff like that.” He took another swallow of orange juice. “He punched me in the face. I hit him back. My neighbor upstairs, Glen, called the police. I threatened to get a restraining order and have the police move him out. It was such a relief when he was finally gone.”

  Sad story, I was thinking as Claire came by and refilled my coffee.

  “I have bad luck picking boyfriends, you know?” His voice got a faraway sound to it. “But I met this guy a couple of months ago when I was in Pensacola for the weekend.”

  Memorial Day weekend in Pensacola drew thousands of gay men from all over the country. Mike would fit right in with all the muscled studs packed into Speedos wandering the white sands. “Memorial Day?”

  “No, I didn’t go this year,” Mike said. “Didn’t feel like it. No, this was a few weeks earlier. I met a nice older guy at one of the bars there, and we went back to his hotel room.” His eyes got dreamy. “The sex was incredible, and he was nice too. He told me he was from Savannah.”

  “Okay.” He didn’t need a detective. He needed a travel agent.

  “I couldn’t stop thinking about him when I got back home,” Mike said. “Crazy, I know, but I called Savannah information and couldn’t get a listing for him.”

  “And you want me to find him for you?”

  He laughed. “No, I found him myself. Here! He wasn’t from Savannah at all. He’d lied about that. He was from here!”

  I was confused. “Yeah?”

  He lowered his voice. “It’s kind of complicated. He’s not out like we are. He has a wife and kids.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “I’m not finished.” He rolled his eyes at me. “Anyway, he explained everything to me, about why he couldn’t be out and everything. He comes from an old family here in the city, and his dad would have cut him off without a cent if he did. But his dad is sick, dying. Once he dies, he’ll come out and divorce his wife, and we can be together.”

  It never ceased to amaze me how many married men in New Orleans are gay.

  “So we started meeting in secret, because no one could know.” Mike frowned. “But then, a week ago last Friday, he got a videotape in the mail at his office. Of us. Together in bed. The person who sent it wants money.”

  “Blackmail.”

  He nodded. “Exactly. He wants to just pay it and forget about it, but I don’t think that’s smart. I said we should hire a detective, and here I am.” He leaned back in his chair, folding his arms.

  I took a drink of my coffee and said nothing for a moment. “There are three ways to deal with a blackmailer, Mike. First, you can pay him. Second, you could go to the police and hope they’ll be discreet. The third is to kill the blackmailer.”

  His face paled beneath the freckles. “I don’t want you to kill anyone.”

  “Good.” Like I would.

  “And we can’t go to the police—he’s too well-known in town for that. People would talk, and it would get around.”

  “The only option left is to pay him.”

  “But if we do that, there’s no guarantee that we’ll ever be able to stop.”

  I shrugged. “And what do you want me to do?”

  “Find him. Get all the copies of the tape.” Mike smiled at me. “We’ll pay you the $50,000 he wants. But that has to buy your silence too.”

  “I don’t discuss my cases with anyone.”

  “Not even your lover?”

  “Not even my lover.”

  “Okay,” Mike said. “You interested?”

  Fifty thousand dollars was a lot of money. It was more than I made the last year. “Yeah.”

  “Great!” Mike smiled. “I’ll go tell my boyfriend, and get some money for you as a deposit. You’ll need to see the tape, I suppose. I’ll have to get the note and tape from him. Do you want to meet me at my apartment around 2?”

  “I’ll type up a contract we can sign.” I nodded.

  He gave me his address. “I’ll see you there at 2, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Just ring the bottom bell at the gate, and I’ll come let you in.” We shook hands, and he walked out. I sat there for a minute with my cooling coffee. I was at loose ends; Paul was out of town for a few days, and a nice little blackmail case could be fun. I wondered who Mike’s closeted boyfriend was.

  Fifty grand. I sat there for a minute, daydreaming about spending the money.

  Claire slipped me the bill, and I had to laugh as I realized that Mike had stiffed me.

  Chapter Two

  The temperature must have climbed by at least ten degrees. The sun’s brightness was blinding. I cursed myself for not having unpacked my sunglasses. They were still in my suitcase. I was drenched with sweat by the time the air-conditioning in my car started blowing cold air.

  I had dealt with a blackmailer once before. I remembered my landlady’s blackmail case. Someone had managed to get her on video having sex with a pair of hot young bodybuilders. Barbara hadn’t been aware that they were both only 16. A lot of people would have crumbled in that situation and paid up. Not Barbara. She hired me. I caught the blackmailer and managed to get all of the evidence back. br />
  This situation was not quite the same. I admit, it was hard for me to have any sympathy for Mike’s lover. Selling yourself out for fear of being cut off from the cash is not exactly taking the high road. This guy had a wife and kids who were going to be hurt one day. I doubted the wife knew everything. Who was it that said the wife is always the last to know? However, I could put my own feelings aside. I wasn’t being paid to preach morality to Mike or his lover. I was to be paid—quite well—to catch a blackmailer. There were lots of ways to spend $50,000. I’d just bite my tongue, not offer an opinion, and do my job.

  And what kind of person was Mike Hansen? He was good-looking. He had a great body. Getting laid was not a problem for people like him. For him, it was a matter of who and when. He didn’t seem very smart. The Mike Hansens of the world got away with below-average intelligence. They looked so good, they could get away with anything. It added to their appeal. How many times had someone told me that their ideal man was someone gorgeous but stupid? He didn’t seem overly arrogant.

  But after a while, wouldn’t you get tired of looking at him? You can’t stay in bed all day, no matter how much you want to. What did he talk about with his lovers after the sex was over? Weightlifting? Or did his lovers just lay there and bask in the glow? Sorry, I’d want more than that.

  I pulled into the parking lot of my apartment building and let myself in the back door. My building was a turn-of-the-century Victorian originally built as a one-family dwelling. Now it was divided into six apartments. My apartment was one of the front two apartments on the first floor. I threw my gym bag on the bed and got a Dr. Pepper from the refrigerator. I had turned the air on that morning so the apartment was nice and cool. I hit the play button on my answering machine.

  Beep. “Hey, honey. It’s me, Paul. I just got into Newark and wanted to call and say I miss you. I have about an hour before my flight to Buffalo, so I think I am going to go grab a bagel or something. I’ll call you tonight from Dallas.”

  Beep. “Chanse, where the fuck are you? Call me when you get in. I’m at the paper.”

  I grinned. That was Paige Tourneur, my best friend. A typical message. Paige hates talking into answering machines.

  A crime reporter for the Times-Picayune, patience was not one of her virtues. I picked up the phone and called her direct line.

  She answered on the second ring. “Tourneur.” She sounded tired.

  “Hey, girl.”

  “Oh, Chanse, thank God,” she said. “I’m having a hell day today and was thinking about playing hooky this afternoon. Do you still have some of that killer weed we smoked the other day?”

  “Yes.” It was in a cigar box under my bed.

  “Great. Do you want me to pick up some po’boys on the way over?”

  “I can’t today, Paige, at least not this afternoon. I have to see a client at 2 o’clock.”

  “Damn.” She swore explosively. “I’ve got to get out of this pit, Chanse, I can’t take it another minute today. You know what I’m writing up for tomorrow? A fucking 3-year-old was killed in a drive-by in Treme. A 3-year-old. They were trying to get his 12-year-old brother. What the fuck is wrong with this city? I need a goddamned cigarette.” Paige’s major beef with her job was not being allowed to smoke at her computer. For Paige, who smoked a pack and a half a day, this was major tragedy. “How the hell do they expect me to write this kind of crap and not be able to smoke at my desk? Bastards, bastards, bastards.”

  We met in college at LSU. I was a live-in brother at Beta Kappa fraternity. It surprises most people that I was a Greek in college. I got in because I was a football player. My background as trailer trash from East Texas wouldn’t have gotten me a bid. I think it was because I was trailer trash that I sold my soul to the brotherhood. I wanted to get as far as possible from that double-wide on the hard dirt lot on the wrong side of Cottonwood Wells—not that there was a right side to that blot on the map — as far as possible from a drunken father who worked nights at the beef packing plant and always smelled of sour beer and stale blood, from a mother that rarely bothered to put on anything other than a blue fuzzy robe and drank gin all day, from the high school snots who looked down their noses at us.

  My ability on the field soon started getting me invited to the “right” parties. I was always the worst-dressed boy. The girls sometimes managed to hide their smiles at my J.C. Penney’s finest. Some of them wanted me to be their boyfriend, to be their date at dances and proms and birthday parties. I knew the only reason they’d be caught dead with me in public was because I was the football star. In their bitchy little society it was a status symbol to have me on their arm in my ill-fitting clothes. I hated them all, burning with a contained rage at their condescension, at the fact they thought they were doing me a “favor” by dating me. I took great pleasure in never touching them physically.

  So when I was invited by Beta Kappa to pledge, I did. The brothers were the same kids from the right side of the tracks in Cottonwood Wells, but in Baton Rouge they didn’t know about my father in the meat plant, working late nights and getting dried blood under his fingernails that never seemed to come off. They didn’t know about my mother drinking her life away in a double-wide trailer, too drunk by 2 in the afternoon to keep up with General Hospital. They didn’t know about the J. C. Penney’s clothing that never fit me right. All they saw was the big guy with the football scholarship, which was something they could sell during future rush weeks. They never accepted me either. I was a trophy. By my third year in the house I hated them all. I stayed in my room, listening to music and studying. Sometimes I’d go out for a beer with a group of them. Much as I hated them, I liked wearing the sweatshirt with the BK on the front (even though I always thought of it as Burger King). I liked the big plantation-style house with the wide veranda, the big round columns, and the shady oak trees. The parties, fun at first, got old. I got tired of watching kids getting drunk and throwing up.

  Paige was a lifesaver. I met her my third year in the house. That year the brothers were beginning to whisper about me. They wondered why I never seemed to get laid. They began to wonder why I wouldn’t let anyone come with me to New Orleans. I was always afraid someone would see me in one of the gay bars there, my hand on some guy’s ass and my tongue down his throat.

  It was Little Sister Rush, which was an excuse to get drunk on Wednesday and Thursday as well as Friday. Some of the boys would fuck some poor drunk girl from the dorms and have something to brag about at Monday Night Meeting. It was Thursday night when I met Paige, International Drink Night at Beta Kappa. The party was held on the two upper floors of the house. Each room had a different drink. Everyone would move from room to room, getting more and more drunk. After an hour I went back down to my room, which was on the first floor. There was a girl sitting on my bed smoking a joint. Pink Floyd was playing on my stereo.

  She blew out a stream of smoke. “Your room?”

  I nodded.

  “Sorry” She offered me the joint. “I had to get away from that crowd of idiots upstairs. The only way I could deal with them was to get high.” She grinned. “You should lock your door.”

  I took a big hit and passed the joint back to her. It was spectacular grass. She was short, with reddish-blond hair and milky-white skin. She had a good figure, although a little on the plump side. She had large breasts that were barely contained within the red satin sleeveless blouse she was wearing. She had decent legs too. She was wearing a tight black skirt with fishnet stockings and black high heels. The most arresting feature about her was her eyes. The right one was blue, the left one green.

  She took the joint from me. She inhaled, holding it in until she had to fight a cough. She blew the smoke out in a huge cloud, coughed a bit, and took a sip from a can of Diet Pepsi. “So, you’re one of the brothers of Beta Kappa?”

  “Yeah.” I took the joint back from her. I was feeling pleasantly buzzed. “My name’s Chanse.”

  “Take a chance, sing and dance.” She giggled. “Paige Tourneur’s my name, getting stoned is my game.” She lit a cigarette. “So why did you join a fraternity? You don’t seem like an asshole.”