Neal Rafferty New Orleans Mystery #1: The Killing Circle (A Neal Rafferty New Orleans Mystery) (2 page)

So what if Angelesi has finally taken a fall? I would like to forget the whole thing, but I can't. And there's not a damn thing I can do about any of it.

The office looked good to me while I was over at the old man's, but when I got there and took a look at the spotted glass and my toothbrush sitting on a sink behind a folding screen, I knew I'd be better off at Curly's.

Curly's is a dive on the scruffiest block in the Central Business District, an eight-minute walk from my office in the Jesuit Fathers’ building. The other advantage to Curly's is that it's open twenty-four hours a day, and although from the outside it looks like it's boarded up, under the ragged and sooty fight bills announcing Christian competition at St. Mary's gym in the Channel there is always some shark on the premises waiting to bleed five for his skills.

The regular shark at Curly's was Murphy Zeringue. I couldn't remember when I hadn't known Murphy. We'd gone through St. Alphonsus, then Redemptorist together, skipping out at any chance from under the scrutiny of the nuns so we could go over to Acy's and eat po’ boys while we watched the big guys play pool. From them we learned how to handle a cue stick, and from then on Murphy's interests had not developed much. During the day he was always downtown at Curly's shaking down as many fives as possible so he could head uptown to Grady's in the Channel and play for higher stakes at night.

Murphy called over to me as I got a bottle of beer from the bar. “Hey, Neal, you in for a game of cutthroat?”

“Sure, Murph.”

I watched while Murphy and a guy I'd never seen before finished up a lukewarm bout of eight ball. The guy was big though his muscles had gone to flab. There was something peculiar about his looks. His brown hair was too short for his big face and tiny, half-inch bangs edged his forehead. He looked like a forty-year-old Boy Scout recruit, but he smelled of bourbon. In that state he was no match for the Murph, which meant that one of us had an easy five coming. The idea of leaning over a cue stick for the rest of the day became more appealing.

Murphy's laugh cut into the sound of clicking balls and a five disappeared into his pocket. He stood there looking both pleased and sorry he'd won, that laugh a demoralizing one when the heat was on and you weren't. His buddy, with a face as smooth and lifeless as the piece of dull metal shading the bulb over the pool table, seemed to be taking it all as a matter of course, so we racked up, eliminating smalltalk like introductions. The fellow probably wouldn't be around long enough for me to remember his name anyway. He stuck through two more games, though, before he got agitated and called it quits, by which time Murph and I were each five ahead. He muttered obscenities when he paid off the last time. I was glad to see him go.

“Who's the Boy Scout?” I asked Murphy.

Murphy liked that one. “Good ID, Neal. Wrong jerk. He's a real screwball, but an easy five.”

Murphy and I set ourselves up with plenty of beer and settled into the real cutthroat stuff. Playing with Murphy is always cutthroat, whether or not that's the game, since he won't play for low stakes with anyone he knows well. It was understood we raised to twenty. But I felt hot. Before I knew it the day was passing the way a day ought to pass and a certain twenty-dollar bill kept passing, too. After a few games Murphy stopped laughing—which meant he had something important on his mind. As he racked the triangle of balls into line for the third time and still didn't find the right spot, he said, “Say, Neal, what say we put some
real
action into this game.” He looked up from the triangle. “Fifty.” A flash of smile replaced his stony gaze.

“You're on, Murph.”

He laughed his peculiar laugh, expecting it to have its usual effect. But I had played pool with him enough times to know I had the edge, since he had raised the stakes on his own round to win and had changed the game to business.

He found the right spot with no trouble and came around the table to break, hitching his pants up on his thin frame.

It was a beaut. Two solids sunk just as neat as could be on opposite sides of the table. If I hadn't known better I'd have whistled in admiration. The only shot he had was a long and difficult cut to the right pocket at the other end, but if he made it he would be set up to clean me. He lengthened his already long face by moving his jaw down. His eyes settled on the cue ball and he poked it nice and easy. It traveled to a perfect slice but it had been just a shade too soft. The ball went right to the edge and stopped.

“Holy shit,” he whispered. This was as much rage as Murphy ever displayed and it was always quickly replaced by that laugh. He couldn't shake me now, though. It wasn't the prettiest setup I'd ever had, but I felt more than up to tackling it. I leaned into the cue stick and leveraged Murphy's ruin.

The first one was easy, the second one harder. The third raised perspiration on my upper lip. I was beading down on the arrangement so hard I didn't hear the footsteps behind me or feel the vibration they set off in the loose floorboards.

“Hello, Neal.” There was only one owner for that voice. The perfect courtroom voice.

“Hello, Maurice,” I said without looking up. I knew exactly how he would be standing, weight evenly centered on his heels, his arms hanging purposefully at his side, one clutching a black satchel, not a briefcase, a satchel. Hell, a schoolbag. And he would be dressed the same way he had dressed all the years I had known him, probably since he was five. The three-piece black Western-cut suit, the white shirt, the black tie, the exact measure of gold watch chain showing, his black cowboy boots symmetrically scuffed. His alert, intelligent eyes would be staring out of his boyish face from behind slightly lopsided glasses, not missing a thing.

Maurice and I had met while I was still a fledgling patrolman and he was a law student. We were from different sides of the track and as opposite as the parts of town we came from. The son of a wealthy lawyer, he grew up in the Garden District, although his family was considered
nouveau riche
by the people whose families had inhabited the area for generations. The Garden District is directly across Magazine Street from the Irish Channel, their boundaries making them appear to be mirror images of each other. There the similarity ends. The money, the mansions, and the gentility are in the cool and shady Garden District. In the Channel, the shotguns and doubles are separated by alleyways and the people are tough. A lot of the city's cops come from the Channel, which should give you some idea about the place. Its big claim to fame is that John L. Sullivan trained for his fight with Jim Corbett here, but that isn't actually true. The confusion is a result, no doubt, of Sullivan's having been an Irishman. Something about the way Maurice and I grew up, though, must have given our personalities similar boundaries and we became friends immediately. It had never occurred to me to be anything but a cop and it had never occurred to Maurice to be anything but a lawyer. By the time he was thirty he'd been to the Supreme Court twice and by the time he was thirty-five he was considered the best hot-shot lawyer in town. By the time I was thirty-five, I was starting over, my career as a hot-shot cop finished. It was Maurice who finally convinced me I'd never get anything on Angelesi. He also told me I shouldn't waste my years of training and experience and gave me my first case.

I took low aim at the cue ball, hit, and pulled back fast. It did its work precisely and came back to the spot I wanted.

“Nice,” said Maurice, drowning out Murphy's laugh with his highest compliment.

The next shots were a piece of cake so I indulged in some conversation.

“Glad you dropped by, Maurice.”

“I am not ‘dropping by.’ I was looking for you.” He was emphasizing urgency, not making a judgment on how I keep my office hours.

“How'd you find me?”

“I considered hiring the Pinkertons, but then I remembered,” he paused, “this place.” Maurice is not very fond of being anywhere other than a courtroom or a law office.

“Just keeping the concentration sharp with a little luncheon relaxation.” I glanced up to see one of his eyebrows making its way down from a considerable height of forehead.

“I've got an interesting one if you're available.” There was no double meaning attached.

“I don't exactly have an abundance of time, Maurice,” I said, sizing up the eight ball. Murphy was beginning to show signs of strain.

“That's too bad. A client of mine is having some trouble, but I'm not ready yet to begin proceedings. I advised him that it should be investigated first.” His enunciation was concise. If the most respected and feared lawyer in the city thought the matter wasn't ready yet for his talents, then it was bound to be interesting indeed.

“Anyone I know?” I asked. Murphy quit looking like a beaten dog.

“I'm sure,” he started loudly. Then he lowered his voice, which is hard for Maurice to do. “I'm sure you've heard of him.” He stopped to let me chew on that a while.

I called my pocket.

“I was hoping you'd see him in my office this afternoon.”

“No doubt you advised him I'd be there.” The eight ball traversed the length of the table and came right back to thud in the pocket. I turned to face Maurice. “Who is he?”

Maurice clenched his teeth slightly to keep the sound in. “Carter Fleming. And yes I told him you'd be there at two o'clock.” He cleared his throat loudly. “Hell, Neal, half the police force is on overtime parking detail for lack of anything better to do. Business can't be that good.”

“Make it two-thirty.” Maurice knows that I'm a man of principle.

“Good.” He turned and strode out of the bar

Carter Fleming, huh? The
Times-Picayune
society editor had dubbed him a leading citizen, but in spite of that endorsement, he really was one—and from an old family that still had its money. But while other uptown socialites were turning their bank presidents into carnival kings, Carter Fleming was out buying up their banks.

Murphy was busy picking his ear up from my side of the table, but if I know how to read a face, he hadn't picked up as much information as he would have liked.

“Well, Murph, it looks like we'll have to pick this up some other time.”

“Sure, Neal, at Grady's,” he said and laughed. One hand dove into his pocket, but it wasn't coming out again—not yet. “Hot-shot client, huh?”

I pulled at an earlobe. “I'll get the games, Murph.”

One thing I like about Murphy is he's quick on the pickup.

“Great, Neal.” He pulled out five crumpled tens and made a great show of smoothing them out on the edge of the table. “Next time we play for fifty right off, huh?”

“You're on, Murph.”

The guarantee of high stakes gilded Murphy's laugh as he handed over my winnings. He had gotten exactly what he wanted after all.

3

One for the Books

I had been so geared up to spend the day playing pool that I was sorry to leave Curly's. I was probably sorrier to leave the air conditioning, but from the way Murphy asked two marks seated at the bar if they wanted to play cutthroat, the temperature in the joint would soon be equal to the stakes. It wouldn't be like Murphy to let any more money slip through his fingers that day.

I had just enough time to have a quick lunch at the sandwich shop on the first floor of the good Fathers’ building before heading over to Maurice's law office. The lunch rush was just about over, which left Leone a lot of time to banter me from behind the counter as she fixed a sandwich. I tuned her out and reviewed what I knew of Carter Fleming. There were a few different factions of Flemings now. The money was oil money and Carter Fleming had most of it and was the best known of the lot. He was constantly written up in the society section of the paper for some flamboyance or another. A patron of the arts who collected rare paintings and also bought the works of promising young artists from New Orleans and elsewhere, he had spread a little of the right kind of PR around, made names for some of the young promisings, and raised the value of his collection. There was also a Mrs. Fleming whose charitable works and city beautification plans were often in the news. My memory failed me about the same time my sandwich arrived.

By the time I was ready to go to the garage and get my car it was well after two o'clock. The afternoon heat settled on my face as I stepped out of the sandwich shop. Gabe, the garage attendant, was persistently and to no avail mopping his sweaty black brow. We exchanged a few complaints and I took off.

The few minutes’ drive over to Tulane Avenue took twice the time with the traffic meandering through the business district, but I managed to arrive with a couple of minutes to spare. Maurice's office was a small shotgun double that had been converted into law offices. His secretary, Pinkie, was, as usual in lax moments, sitting behind the desk preening her unrealistically long rosy nails. I had often wondered how she could type so well with them. I asked her.

She flashed me a big smile and said, “Easy,” whipped a piece of paper into the machine, set it whirring , and within a split second had typed a single line. She handed it to me, cupped her chin in her hand, and looked at me demurely from behind thick lashes every bit as long as her nails. The line read: “Five o'clock is closer than you think. What's up?”

I gave her a long once-over. Her small, flawless face, made up in an attempt to look older, was framed by her short wispy hair. She looked pretty in the soft light thrown by the desk lamp.

“Things that a sweet young thing like yourself shouldn't know about,” I answered.

“I'm not exactly a kid, you know,” she said haughtily, and got busy trying to ignore me.

“No, you're not exactly a kid,” I conceded.

With a cool glance she informed me that Fleming was already with Maurice. I stroked her smooth cheek with a finger and moved on down the hall to Maurice's office, knocked once, and opened the door.

Maurice was sitting behind his big mahogany desk. Fleming had drawn up a chair and sat hunched over the desk in Maurice's direction. He turned sharply and rose as I walked in. He was a big man with dark abundant hair and a smooth unlined face. He looked strong, but his stomach indicated that he lived the good life. His big handsome squarish white face broke into a wide grin showing off big squarish teeth. He stepped forward and extended his hand. I took it and got a hard politician's crush.