Ill Will (2 page)

I gave Mr. Williams enough time to be well away from my doorstep before heading out.

As I locked the outer lock I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. I was alone in the building at this hour. The only possible other tenant was the space-cadet artist on the first floor, but he could barely find his way out the door; dialing 911 would take two days of detox.

Violence, like ducking thrown objects, is something I try very, very hard to shun. Mostly I succeed. But today didn’t seem like it wanted to cooperate.

“Fuck,” I muttered, dropping my briefcase and pulling out my gun. Cordelia hates that I carry one. But post-Katrina New Orleans has aspects of the Wild West to it. Construction work has brought in an influx of men with a deficit of women to keep them in line. Plus, the crooks had come back. They couldn’t get a FEMA loan to cover the cost of lost cocaine; the dealers who had sold it to them weren’t happy about not getting paid, and with fewer people in the city there were fewer addicts to sell to. Turf wars had sprung up. Plus, the criminals were as messed up about losing their homes as the rest of us, and a punk with a gun and post-traumatic stress syndrome is not a pleasant person to deal with.

I was hoping it was Mr. Charles Williams coming back for one last speech and the sight of me in a don’t-fuck-with-me stance and the black barrel of a pistol pointed down the stairs would cause him to rethink.

I eased the safety off as the footsteps rounded the landing below me.

My stair climber was not a criminal, but a police officer.

One not very happy police officer. “Put that down right now,” she told me.

I did. It is so impolite to point guns at friends. Especially friends who are cops and can point a gun back at you. My stair climber was Joanne Ranson, NOPD.

Something told me this was not a “hey, let’s go out for beer” type visit.

I didn’t even ask. I turned around and unlocked my office door. I muttered, “I meant to be gone an hour ago.”

“Just my luck that you’re not.”

I noticed she didn’t call it good luck.

“What do you know about Carl Prejean?” she asked as she followed me in.

“Who?” I said, sitting at my desk.

Joanne ignored the visitor’s chair and perched on the near corner, forcing me to look up at her. I was getting a stiff neck from all these looming people.

“Like why would someone torch his house and car and why would he claim you sent them?”

“What?” I almost asked how and why, just to get all the interrogatives out of the way.

“He had your card, said you had hunted him down and threatened him.”

Now it was coming back to me. “Wait, that’s not quite what happened.”

“So, tell me what did happen.” She crossed her arms. This was official police business.

“Carl Prejean aka Karl Pearlman aka Cal Parker aka who knows who else, claims to be a contractor. A group of homeowners hired me to track him down after he absconded with their money.”

“You know that for sure?”

“I’m not an amateur. They showed me cashed checks. I toured the properties. His only work on any of them was to show up, fake an estimate—I saw those, too—then disappear with the money. They wanted to find him to sue him.”

“Well, one hothead decided not to wait for our courts to get back in gear. I’ll need your client list.”

I crossed my arms. “Not without more proof that one of them had something to do with it. He’s a scumbag, and scumbags treat everyone to their pond slime. It could be an ex-girlfriend who didn’t like him not paying child support, or workers he didn’t pay, or other clients he ripped off.”

“Except that you tracked him down and told them where he lived.”

“I didn’t suggest that they burn down his place, nor would I have given them the information if I thought they would do anything like this.” I get pompous when I get defensive.

“I’m not accusing you. But your group knew which house to burn. I have no proof those other people exist or that they knew how to find him.”

“Joanne, these are all honest, law-abiding people. The oldest was an eighty-two-year-old woman. He ripped her off for forty thousand dollars. She can’t afford to rebuild now and she’s going to probably have to spend the rest of her life in a rental apartment in Houston because of this crook. I’m not giving you their names without a subpoena.”

“You think he deserved it?”

“You think he didn’t?”

We stared at each other for a moment. I continued, “I told him the homeowners wanted either the repairs or their money back, with a strong preference on the latter. He blew me off, told me they could go fuck themselves and the next time I came near him, he’d greet me with a shotgun. He chose to rip them off, to make money off desperate people. He should go to jail and be sued for every penny he owns.”

“But he wasn’t. He had his house burned down instead.”

“So now he has what he left them with—a ruined house. At least he’ll get his insurance money and not have it stolen by a fake contractor.”

We again stared at each other.

“I’m not giving you their names.”

She sighed, and said, “I know.” Then added, just because she’s a cop, “You didn’t do it for them, did you?”

“No, I didn’t. Although I don’t think I would’ve pissed on him to put the fire out. Plus every one of their homes was stripped of anything valuable—copper wire, upstairs carpet, toilets. After they signed contracts with him.”

“Hard to prove. Those thieves are everywhere.”

“He’s not the innocent victim in all this. It wouldn’t be bad if he decided to relocate.”

She sighed again. “You need to watch your back. He said if he ever saw that girl private eye, she’d regret it.”

“I don’t plan on seeing him again.”

“He might have other ideas. He knows where your office is. Watch your back.”

“Why I carry a gun. I’m tired, I want to go home. Do I get a police escort to my car?”

“If you escort me to mine.” She slid off the desk, indicating this interview was over. She’d done her job. We all made those calculations—how much time, how much effort, and finally, was it worth it. She knew I had a point, if he’d ripped off my ten clients it was likely that he’d cheated multiple others. If I could find him—and it hadn’t been that hard, he wasn’t as clever as he thought he was—others could as well. Would my list of clients bring her closer to the person whose breaking point was breaking the law? Or would it just subject innocent people to an undeserved hell on top of the hell they already lived in?

“You probably don’t want to do this,” she said as she waited for me to lock the door, “but you might try to get your clients to come to the police. If there is evidence that he stole from them, he should pay for it.”

“I’ll talk to them,” I said following her down the stairs. In our silence we understood each other. Talking to them meant a call that could go unanswered for days because they were working on destroyed houses where there was no cell service. Or driving out to that desolate area hoping to find them there. The case should have been closed. I’d done what they asked. They’d paid me—not much, far less than it should have cost, but I couldn’t add to their money woes. This was a half a day, a day, of extra time and work.

“Why the hell do we always have to do the right thing,” I muttered as she held the downstairs door for me. It was still daylight, an orange glimmer of sun off to the west. At least the days were getting longer. Sunlight made a difference in a city with so many places without power.

“Because in the end it costs less,” she answered.

“You sure about that?”

“How’s Cordelia?”

“Busy. There aren’t enough doctors in this town.”

Joanne let the silence hang. I didn’t fill it. Finally she spoke, “Must be hard on you, not seeing her all the time.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Yeah, you did.”

“I’m supposed to be at the grocery store now. She’s working near Touro Hospital. Half the city closer to the grocery store than I am. But I’m the only one who has time to go grocery shopping.”

“Sucks to have a partner who saves people’s lives.”

“Especially when the cupboard is bare.” I didn’t want to talk about this. “How’s Alex?”

“Loves the job. Hates the commute.”

After Katrina, Alex, Joanne’s partner, had been laid off, like many other city workers. No residents means no tax revenue means nothing to pay people with. She’d worked with me for a while. I was beyond busy and she was smart and good with computers. But she didn’t want to rebuild a career as a private investigator, so when a job in arts and culture had opened in the lieutenant governor’s office, she’d taken it. It just meant driving to Baton Rouge every day, a trip of about ninety miles each way. She’d talked about taking an apartment up there, but there were none to be had in anything resembling her price range. Baton Rouge, as well as the rest of the state, was bloated full with the dispossessed of New Orleans.

I repeated to Joanne, “Must be hard on you, not seeing her all the time.”

“Sucks to have a partner who has to bring dance companies to Louisiana.” Somehow she packed even more sarcasm into it than I had. With a glance at her watch, she said, “She won’t be home for another hour or two. Want to go play pool or something?”

“You’re welcome to come with me to the grocery store.”

“Went yesterday. I’m way over my quota for long lines and Uptown ladies who don’t like the little people shopping in their grocery store.”

“I could so use a beer right about now,” I said.

“Couldn’t we all?” She looked at me. “Sometimes I almost feel like I’m single.”

“Sometimes I almost wish I were.” Both our statements hung in the air. Then I blurted out, “You were about to arrest me and now you’re suggesting adultery?”

“I was not about to arrest you.” She turned and walked to her car, which was parked just in front of mine.

I followed her. I had to get to my car, after all.

She turned just as she got to my front fender. “If you forget what I said, I’ll forget what you said. It’s been almost two years, you’d think we’d stop going crazy by now.”

“You saying sex with me is crazy?” I said with a smile, trying to throw some humor on this.

“Come on, you know I’m not saying that. What I am saying—attempting to and doing it badly—is that I want what I can’t have—my life before Katrina. A partner who works here in the city, who I can meet for lunch instead of a late dinner. A partner who doesn’t just break down and cry for no reason. I got through the flood waters, but I’m not sure I can get through this.”

I didn’t know what to say. I knew what I wanted to say, to tell her no, she couldn’t fall apart, because if my friends couldn’t hold it together I wasn’t sure I could. It was the so-called little things, the day after day after day, long lines and longer lines, starting to drive some place and realizing it’s not there anymore, another person who came back but decided not to stay, all those lost pieces of the life we used to have. Katrina was over; the news cycle had moved on. The flood waters had gone away; what they had left was still here—those of us who couldn’t forget because every day in some way, we had to remember.

“So there are dangerous moments when I long for…I don’t even know what. Not to be here. Part of the most despised police force in the country. Having to take a report on the crooks who stole a new a/c compressor a block from where we’re rebuilding our house. Frozen dinner after frozen dinner because who knows when Alex will get home and I can’t be bothered to cook for myself.”

“Hey, you get the groceries, I’ll cook for you.”

“Did I mention the kind, sensitive friends who are always there for you?”

“We are. As long as you don’t try to arrest us.”

“I wasn’t trying to arrest you.” She added, “You’d be in handcuffs now if I had been.”

She needed something from me I wasn’t sure I had to give. I simply said, “Joanne, you’ll be okay.” I put my arms around her and hugged her.

We held it for a moment. Too long. Then broke away.

“Gotta make groceries,” I mumbled.

“Yeah. I hear a microwave calling my name.” She took a step away, then said, “I mean it. Forget what I said. I think something and it sounds like an escape, then I say it and realize it’s just another trap.”

I watched her get in her car, then didn’t want to watch her anymore. I knew too well what she meant about dangerous thoughts. For one horrific moment, Katrina had unmoored all of us, thrown us helter-skelter, a terrifying freedom. If we couldn’t come back to New Orleans, where could we go? But some of us had fallen to earth here, on the flooded ground. Much as we tried to reclaim our old lives—or build new ones—we weren’t sure the ground would hold us. Everything had changed, and maybe it had changed so far and in ways we couldn’t even see that we’d never find our way back.

As she pulled away, I took out my cell phone. There would be no grocery run tonight. I was at the point that I’d shoot myself before I’d cross Canal Street today. A small grocery store in the French Quarter had opened, but parking was impossible. I occasionally made forays there on my bike, but it was near dark and I knew myself well enough to know I would not go home and leave again. I called a place on Frenchmen Street and ordered two shrimp po-boys. If Cordelia didn’t like it, she could go to the grocery store.