Witness To Kill (Change Of Life Book 1) (4 page)

“You know,” he said, gesturing around the restaurant. “This
here’s onea the few places down here people from New Orleans, natives, ya know,
is willin’ to go to ‘thout gettin’ roped in by out of towners visitin’ ‘em.”

As he spoke a waiter leaned between them, pouring from a
long-handled silver pot releasing streams from two spouts: hot black poured
from one joined at the cup by cold white flowing from the other.

Mary nodded. “I’ve been here a few times. I used to come
down here on weekends with some of the other girls after we closed,” she spoke
spooning the coffee and milk concoction. “Do a little barhopping. But it was
wild, too wild really . . . not fun. I guess by the time we got off and came
down here everybody was just too drunk.”

She held up her little cup and sipped cautiously.

“Some of them got mean . . . crowds of young guys . .
.yelling things . . . grabbing at you. It didn’t feel safe.”

“Right on that.” He was chewing his second beignet, white
flecks on his chin, his cheeks redder than his lips. “Seen lots of bad things
happen in my years down here. Girls alone . . . hell, even a group ain’t that
safe anymore. And that’s the worst thing could happen to these good folks . . .
the workin’ folks down here. Like those we was lookin’ at and talkin’ to on the
way down. This here’s their life, you know? Their life.”

He motioned around like a Cardinal granting a
stubby-fingered blessing. “Shore didn’t used to be that way. But now we got all
this
clean
government, we got all these, uh, these
ethics
comin’
out our, uh . . . comin’ out our ears. And now we got them panhandlers
botherin’ the tourists, crack heads . . . cheap pimps and their cheap whores,
workin’ right out on the street. Ten dollars ‘ll getcha anythin . . .
anythin’!”

He sucked his teeth.

“Kin tell ‘em a block away, them crack-heads. Skin hangin’
on their bones . . . barely hangin’, ribs look like my grannies washboard. Not
all of ‘em niggers either—”

She rattled her cup into its saucer. “Listen, I’m sorry
Sherry.” Her voice was quiet but firm. “I can’t stand that word. It’s wrong. I
won’t be around talk like that.” She took her sunglasses off and set them
beside her plate and looked straight into his face. “You’re being good to me,
good to my son and me. And I want to be nice in return. But, please. Please
don’t use that word . . . at least not around me.”

“Well Hon, OK, OK.” He flushed and nodded vigorously, raised
fleshy palms in surrender. “Sorry ‘bout that. Sorry. Know you’re right . . . my
girl’s always tellin’ me the same thing.” He sighed contritely. “Guess I been a
cop in the Easy too long. Like I said before . . . jest a dinosaur.” He gazed
down the street. “But managin’ things down here used to be a helluva lot
easier.”

He squinted into her uncovered eyes. “But, you know, though,
this crack . . .cain’t understand it—”

“Me either. Back in Kansas City most of the kids drank beer
and some of them smoked a little pot, the hippy-types. Mostly it was all pretty
innocent. But there was nothing to compare with this crack stuff you hear about
so much down here . . . it’s like another world.”

As Mary spoke she realized Sherry was guiding the
conversation in his slow southern way. Despite the error of the racial slur
sidetrack, he was leading her toward what he wanted to talk about.

“Know anythin’ about the traffickin’ down here . . . in the
Easy?” He studied her reaction with one eye, the other was only a folded
crease. “You know, drug traffickin’?”

“No . . . nothing . . . I really don’t know anything about
that.” She dropped her chin into the hand of the elbow resting on the table and
looked at her companion, she squeezed one of her own eyes shut and teased. “So
. . . now you’re the cop?”

He snickered and slid the third of the four rolls over to
his plate as he talked, furtively, like she might not notice. “Always.” He
nodded, chuckling softly. “Always. Guess it’s my curse.”

“You think drugs had something to do with Luis being
killed?”

“Well, yeah. Sure.” He answered through a quizzical look,
still chewing.

“It’s just like I told those FBI guys, uh, Sherry. I knew
him from work and from sharing the house. And a little from the other.”

She looked past him at a silver speck in the sky over the
earthwork, its contrails marred a denim blue. “But that’s it. I met his family,
his mother anyway . . . for the first time at the funeral. Some of his sisters
and one of his brothers stopped by now and then like I told that Ruggle guy.
But I guess when you think about it I really didn’t know too much about him.”

She kept her eyes on the plane as she talked and her mind
formed an image of sweet gentle Luis, sweet gentle
dead
Luis. Her mind
recreated the scene of meeting him. On her first night he’d interceded on her
behalf with Big Max, a bullying alcoholic cook at
Maison Paris
notoriously
hard on new staff
.
If Max didn’t think you were sufficiently deferential
he would let you die on the vine as a waiter, angry customers blaming
you
for slow service and mistakes
,
stiffing the server for the sins of the
kitchen
.
Luis saved her from his unreasonable wrath that night,
assembling and putting up the orders she needed, grinning sweetly at her over
the chest high aluminum service counter while he ignored the glowering
Frenchman.

After that kindness, they became friends. And later, she
remembered with a stitch in her chest, they became casual lovers.

Casual! Jesus! Casual! The story of my life!

During their year of sharing the house the males became
close, doing ‘guy’ things together, Luis helped teach Brian to swim and ride a
bike; on domestic issues the boys teamed against the woman.

Now, she thought glumly, poor Luis is gone, and poor little
Brian’s noncommittal and even more withdrawn.

“So . . . you guys know why he was killed?” She sucked in a
breath and reached for the survivor of his assault on the rolls. “I’m going to
eat this because I know I need to. But, I tell you, I haven’t been able to eat
much—” She took a small bite and set the remainder down.

“Yeah, I kin imagine ain’t been easy on you these past few
days, you’n the boy. I’ll tell what I know . . . ain’t much.”

He shifted in his chair and rubbed the side of his face, the
hat brim slanted over his eyes.

“But you gotta be kinda cool about what I say . . . don’t
let on I told you nothin’ when Ruggle runs you back down.” His jowls sagged
until he resembled a hound-dog. “And Hon, he will. They been pagin’ me already
. . . wanna make sure they’re runnin’ this whole show. And you know, truth of
it is,” his face lifted as he snickered, “they ain’t all that sure ‘bout me.”
He patted the cell-phone holstered next to his gun on his belt and proclaimed
innocently. “But the boys downtown’ll tell ‘em I ain’t real good workin’ this
newfangled stuff.”

He snickered again, a little more mischievously. “Dinosaur,
like I said.”

As she listened, she was halfheartedly watching a robot on
the sidewalk between Decatur and the Monde. It stood next to a coffee can with
a hand-lettered card sticking out:
Keep Robby Running
. An inverted
aluminum funnel was secured on its top by a wire running under a square silver
chin, metallic arms and legs stuck out at machinelike angles from a rectangular
thorax. It stood perfectly erect and its limbs moved in staccato chops as the
Monde
patrons stared, the head notched in specific short jerks, its eyes as dull as
the ends of burnt corks. Encouraged by the words and hand gestures of her
parents, a girl of about five kept a wary eye on the robot as she edged near
and stooped to drop a bill into the coffee can, then scurried back to their
table still eyeing the machine. The silver head cocked respectfully at the
adults, but the eyes stayed shallow and dumb.

Sherry’s voice jerked her back to their discussion. “. . .
and it looks like he musta got mixed in with some bad-asses out of Miami . . .
Cubans. Dunno what the connection is . . . but the strike force guys took your
ID’s and I think they already figured out who them bastards are . . . and they
think they know who they’re connected in with.” He rubbed his chin and studied
her face with a wide eye. “Ya know . . . the descriptions you gave me t’other
night were ‘bout as good as any I ever had, even down to that smell . . . what
was it you said? Lilac?”

The wide eye foraged her plate while he talked.

“An’ Hon, I been doin’ this a long time, you know?” The eye
lifted inquisitively. “Shore you never seen them boys before?”

“No, never,” she frowned and squarely met the blue plate
eye. “I guess I do tend to notice details. Before Brian . . . when I was
younger, I was an art student, pretty serious. I guess from my training . . .”
She arched her brows and dramatized. “The
eye
of the artist and all
that. I guess I do pick up on details. And the view from up there was good,”
she sighed. “I could see and hear everything. I tell you, it was intense up
there. I guess it was only a few minutes but it seemed to go on forever . . .”

Her voice trembled off, her heart began a velvety pounding.
She joined her lips and closed her eyes, drew a deep breath through her nose.
Then she opened her eyes and smiled at Sherry thinly, crinkling her nose. “And
I’ve always had a keen sense of smell. Details. Like you said . . . a curse.”
She breathed in again and caught his eye. “So . . . why were those men in New
Orleans?”

Sherry looked away pensively and grunted. “Well, Mary . . .
truth of it is . . . bein’ so sure of
these
details might not be your
best thing. Nobody’s best thing, you know?” He continued to stare at her like
he was trying to make a foreigner understood something important. He studied
her face intently, then sat back and sighed, rubbing fingers under his eyes.
“Anyway . . . the coke . . . the
cocaine
. . . that we get here ‘n the
Easy . . . s’posedly it comes out of Miami. Guess a lot of it gets here through
Cuba . . .’specially now it’s openin’ up a little. Got some kinda network
operatin’ down there. You know,” he shrugged, “you got relatives on both sides
and all. Cuba’s broke and corrupt . . . not too far over there. Must be easy
pickin’s.”

He took a breath and shrugged again. “Doubt Castro . . .
that guy ever gonna die? Doubt ‘at old boy minds lookin’ the other way when a
little poisons comin’ our way, some money their way?” He snickered bitterly and
shook his head. “‘Member when we invited him to jest send all his criminals
over? Send ‘em over! Like we needed a few more?”

He shook his head. “More do-good bullshit from our friends
the feds.” As he talked he gazed vacantly over the dam, the jet had disappeared
into the distant blank sky, the parallel slashes dissolving like wounds
healing. “Anyway, they cook it up in somebody’s kitchen ‘round here somewhere .
. . real simple I hear, just mix in some bakin’ soda with the coke. Presto! Now
you got crack . . . worth a lot more that way.”

He sat back and motioned the hat around. “That shit’s ruined
it down here, you know? Crack has.” The hat kept shaking as he looked around
longingly. “Usta to be ‘bout perfect. ‘Course you always had yer drunks like
you mentioned . . . college kids mostly. And they was always your whores and
stuff . . . but nothin’ really
dangerous
. People, hell, even your cops .
. . they all jest kinda looked the other way on lots of things you couldn’t do
nowhere else. Lawlessness was a parta the charm. You know,
Big Easy
‘n
all that. We ignored the small stuff . . . stuff nobody really cared ‘bout.”

He sighed heavily, it was almost a moan.

“Shore ain’t like that now. Guns and drugs come in . . .
ruined it.”

He thumbed down the street toward Jackson Square. “All these
tourists with their nice little families don’t know how it really is around
here . . . how dangerous it is. City and the businesses work real hard to keep
‘em from knowin’ it . . . they hafta or they’ll all go broke.” He snorted
bitterly. “Mebbe they took some ‘a that PR money and paid the cops they got
workin’ down here a decent wage, . . . give ‘em ‘nough to get by on . . . enough
to take care o’their families on . . . maybe then things’d be better for
everbody.”

He paused contemplatively.

“But if we were honest,” on
honest
he coughed again.
We were honest . . . we’d tell ‘em we can’t keep up with the bad guys no more.”
He shook his head back and forth, the hound dog again. “And the bad guys these
days—”

“It doesn’t seem that grim to me. I expect being a cop has
made you cynical.”

He appraised her for a long instant then his face softened
to a smile. “Yeah, prob’ly am a little at that. Guess you got me on that.
LaDonna usta say the same thing.” He held the smile for an instant, then his
face turned more serious. “Anyway . . . your boy Luis musta did somethin’ to
piss these guys off enough to get ‘em up here. We figure after you called 911,
them boys panicked when they heard the unit comin’ and musta thought they had
to shoot ‘im or get arrested for beatin’ him up so bad. Hell, the doc said bad
as he was beat . . . prob’ly woulda died anyway. Time the smoke cleared them
boys’s prob’ly half way back down to Little Havana.”

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “We ‘spect they drove up.
Can’t find no records of travel.”

He studied her reaction, then reached over and patted her
wrestling hands, speaking softly. “Look, Hon . . . no way you kin make this
into your fault. You and that boy . . . stuck in there with those no-good
bastards . . . was all you could do.” He shook his head firmly. “No other
choice.”

“Yes,” she nodded numbly. “I’ve thought all that out . . .
about a million times. I think they
did
hear the siren. You should have
been there! It’s hard to explain. That siren kept getting louder and louder . .
. that’s when they shot him. But I did the only thing I could . . . I know
that. There was no way to get out with Brian up there. We were trapped . . .
there was nothing else I could do. It was a nightmare . . .we were lucky as it
is. I know that . . . I’ve been through it a million times. They would have . .
.”