Jazz Funeral (9 page)

She ran down the events of the night before for the other three, and threw in reports from the coroner and the crime lab. Ham’s death had been placed at about twenty-four hours before the body was found, give or take. And no prints had been found on the weapon or the open wine bottle. So there was no physical evidence.

Joe said, “You found Brocato about seven?”

“Seven-thirty.”

“And when did the girl leave the Rosenbaums’?”

“About five-thirty the day before.”

“That’d be about the right time, wouldn’t it?”

Skip nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. We gotta find her. We gotta find her fast. Carlson, what do you think?”

He shrugged. “Either someone’s got her or she’s in the Quarter; they all end up in the Quarter.”

“Well, how the hell do we find her?”

Carlson leaned back in his chair, undaunted by Joe’s impatience. “Now that’s a right int’restin’ question. They do pretty well over at VCD—used to work there myself.” He meant Vieux Carre District, the French Quarter station, where Skip had worked before coming to Homicide. “They leave flyers, that’s one thing; and they got some good connections. Quarter people are funny—some of ‘em’ll only talk to people they know. I’d call over there if I was you—no sense banging your heads against the wall.”

Joe nodded at Skip, who nodded back.

“There’s a few little tricks, though. The kids are like cockroaches—sleep all day, come out at night. If they do come out in daylight, they might go to Jackson Square—it’s free entertainment. At night they go to bars, usually after midnight—way after. There’s a few I can give you the names of. We closed down most of the bad ones a year or two ago—on North Rampart Street. But there’s still a few where they can go to meet some friendly chicken hawks and kiddie pornographers.”

Cappello winced.

Skip said, “Somehow I can’t see Melody getting into—”

“Get desperate enough, they all do. See, these kids don’t think of sex the same way you do. Lot of them have been abused, especially in homes where the mother’s remarried or got lots of boyfriends. To them, it ain’t exactly an expression of true love. More like a way to make a few bucks.”

“What I meant was, I don’t see how she could be that desperate—she’s been gone less than thirty-six hours.”

He ignored her. “First thing they learn’s they can’t get jobs—too young, no experience, no references, half the time no brains. Oh, sure, they might luck out—get to be a waitress or busboy. Whoopie-do. But most of ‘em are gonna peddle their ass one way or another. Even if it’s just dancin’ at Bayou Babies. But don’t get the idea that’s any great deliverance from evil—you go in there and see some fifteen-year-old kid shakin’ her booty six inches from some guy’s Adam’s apple, I guarantee you you’ll want to throw somethin’. And that’s nothin’ to what goes on upstairs. I never been there—I know this plumber got called over there. Says they got mattresses all over the floor and cribs along the sides. The kids sleep naked all over the place, anywhere they fall down, I guess. No tellin’ how loaded they have to be to get through that shit.”

“Who goes up there?”

“Preferred customers, I guess. I don’t know.”

“So we should look at Bayou Babies.”

“Hell, I knew this mother looked there six times in a week, all different times, never did find her daughter. Kid was dancin’ there, though. They all change their appearance, and they hang together, help each other. Lie for each other. They form packs is what they do.” He turned to Skip. “You know how many buildings in this city are unoccupied?”

She stared at him, didn’t have a clue what he was getting at.

“Something like thirty percent. Kids see boarded-up houses. They go in and sleep. They call them squats. Then there’s a bunch of cheap hotels—one that’s kind of famous. Know who William Burroughs is? They say he used to score junk there.”

Joe was getting impatient. “How about a list of their bars, hotels, known hangouts?”

“Hey, there’s other stuff. There’s facilities, you know. Covenant House. And a church where they hand out vouchers for mattresses. You can check all those places too. Other than that”— he turned his palms up—”all you can do is sit on balconies.”

Joe and Skip spoke together: “Sit on balconies?”

“Well, it’s not good police work, but it’s what I tell the parents to do. You just watch the crowds up there where you can see them and they can’t see you. ‘Cause if you walk into one of the kids’ bars — and I don’t even mean the chicken-hawk scenes, I mean the ones with the punked-out wackos and the game machines—they ain’t gonna roll out the red carpet.”

When he had left, Joe said, “Okay, what’s our strategy?”

“Find Melody,” said Cappello. “She’s all we’ve got, she’s almost certainly the key, and she might be in danger.”

“Skip?”

“Yeah.” She bit her pencil. “Yeah. It’s the danger part that’s getting to me. Obviously, Carlson just assumed she ran away. But we don’t know that. Maybe she caught the killer in the act and he killed her too. Or took her somewhere to think about it. Maybe he’s crazy enough to ask the family for ransom.”

“It worries me too,” said Joe. “And of course there’s that other nasty possibility.”

“Little sis did him?” said Cappello. “What for?”

“How do I know? She thinks she’s a singer, right? Maybe he wouldn’t let her sing at JazzFest. Skip, you need any help? For the routine stuff?”

She shook her head. “I’ve got it covered.”

The routine stuff. Might as well get on it. She had good friends at VCD. She phoned her buddy Vic De Sandro, who said he’d start on it right away. She called the Brocatos and suggested they have flyers made up. And then she asked the computer for criminal records: Ti-Belle’s, Ariel’s, George’s, Patty’s. And Ham’s, for good measure.

Everyone was clean. Next, alibis. George had been at work, Patty at home alone, then at the Rosenbaums’—two blocks from Ham’s—then back home. Ariel had been at work, and once, about three in the afternoon, at Ham’s house. Patty and Ariel weren’t exactly out of the question. And George probably wasn’t either. It wasn’t worth pursuing now, but she wondered if George could really account for every hour of his afternoon. Had he been alone in his private office at all that day? She wondered if there was any trouble between father and son—if she found any, that was soon enough to check.

At the moment, she wasn’t interested in any of these three. She’d saved Ti-Belle for last because everything about her begged to be scrutinized—her sudden rise from obscurity after hooking up with one of the city’s most influential music mavens, for instance; the continuing fights with Ham; and most of all, the way she’d been late to her own party.

Skip called Chicago first—Ti-Belle hadn’t been to see Jarvis Grablow. Then she called a friend who worked at an airline. The friend wasn’t supposed to, but he could pull up a list of passenger names for every flight out of New Orleans on a given day. Ti-Belle had said “a three-day trip,” so the friend checked both Monday and Tuesday. Ti-Belle hadn’t gone anywhere. Now, that was worth pursuing.

But first, an all-purpose investigative call that could save hours and hours of snail’s pace bumbling—to Allison Gaillard, long-lost Kappa sister with whom Skip had recently reconnected. Allison was a true belle who knew everything there was to know about how to get people to look at you and then how to keep them looking—a mistress of the Southern arts. She was someone with whom Skip hadn’t had the first thing in common when they’d been at Newcomb together (ever so briefly, before Skip flunked out). But for some reason, after Skip had gone off to Ole Miss, and then to San Francisco, and then had come back reinvented as a police officer, Allison had taken her on as a project. Skip didn’t get it, she was just grateful, because Allison knew everything about everyone; and what she didn’t know, she could find out in five minutes.

“Skip Langdon calling Gossip Central.”

“I’ve already pulled your file, officer. You’d be wanting Brocato lore, I suppose.”

“Allison, you’re amazing. If the city’d let me, I’d pay you handsomely.”

“Oh, you will, Skippy, you’ll definitely pay, quid pro quo. And we might as well start now. Who did it?”

Allison knew perfectly well Skip wasn’t going to spew out details of this or any case, but as the world’s greatest gossip, she had to try. “You haven’t given me anything yet. Besides, you’re more likely to know than I do.”

“I only know where the bodies are buried. I don’t know who buried them. Well, not always, anyhow. But I’ve known the Brocatos forever—or anyway, I know their next door neighbor, which is just as good. Do you know the whole story of George and Poor Boys?”

“No, but I’d love to.” Skip took off her right earring and settled in.

“Well, George is a true self-made man. The story goes that he was cooking in a restaurant when he got the idea for Poor Boys—and I mean short-order type cooking, by the way, not exactly
cordon bleu
stuff. He got his two brothers to go in with him—hence the name—and they somehow managed to drum up enough investors to make it work. It took them five years to get the first one started, with George going to night school while the thing gestated; getting a business degree. Charming story of family solidarity, except for one thing.”

“Let me guess. They’ve done nothing but fight ever since.”

“Ain’t it the way, as my mama’s cook used to say. He was married to a woman named Dorothy—Ham’s mom. Nice woman, stuck by him through thick and thin. But the sad part is, she never got to enjoy the thick. Died about the time he got the thing going. Well, that was about the time people started knowing him, and so after this, the story’s a little more reliable. Apparently, he was crazy about Dorothy, although this pretty much came as a shock to everybody because he just seemed like your basic stone-cold workaholic. When she died, he went into what I guess could only be called despair—unless you want to say it was a drunken stupor. Good thing his brothers were around to take care of the business—he didn’t draw a sober breath until the day he woke up married to Patty.”

“Wait a minute. He got drunk and married her?”

“Well, I don’t think it was quite like that. He got drunk after Dorothy died and stayed that way about six months; somewhere in that period, he married Patty. She was a real stunner, I gather.”

“Still is.”

“But the question is, what did they have in common—I mean with the age difference and Patty’s abiding interest in her own appearance and very little else? When he sobered up, which he quite soon did, George was said to be a little confused about the matter. Of course I was too young to know them then, but I’d say now it looks like Patty’s the one who drinks too much—and I’m not alone in that assessment either.

“But if the marriage was shaky, nature came along and settled the matter, in the form of Melody, whom George adores, by all accounts. Always has. So I guess the marriage turned out okay after all. It’s still extant.” She paused, thinking about it. “I don’t know. George is pretty cold, so maybe he didn’t much care what she was like—she was female, she was gorgeous, she was his kid’s mother. That’s enough for some guys.”

“Most of them, it seems like.”

“Yeah, the only problem is, we end up pissing them off by having personalities.”

“And Patty’s got to have one. I didn’t get much sense of her, though.”

“She seems like a hard bitch to me—pretty much somebody who saw a good thing and went after it. But what do I know? Lately, she’s been going to a lot of weird doctors for Chinese herbs and stuff. Maybe she’s sick or something.”

“What’s her background?”

“Skippy, with women like Patty, that’s the sort of thing one doesn’t ask. Let’s put it this way, whatever it is, it’s not Uptown. She’s a self-made woman as much as George is a self-made man. Only she made herself by latching onto George.”

Skip’s sense of democracy was slightly offended. “Well, it’d be the same thing if she did come from Uptown.”

“No, because that’s where she’s living now. If she was a poor girl from Uptown and married a rich guy in another town, that might be analogous. But if you’re from here and you stay here, you’re already made, there’s no self about it.”

“That’s one of the things I hate about the place.”

“Now, Skippy, it has its up side.”

Like the relationship she enjoyed with Allison. She’d grown up on State Street and knew she’d never get all this dirt if she hadn’t put in her preschool years in the neighbor kids’ sandboxes. Skip sighed. It was a hell of a trade-off. She said, “Do you happen to know if George is just a guy who drank too much in a crisis? Or is he in AA?” She was thinking of the wineglasses in Ham’s kitchen.

“Let me think.” She was quiet only a moment. “I’m sure I’ve seen him drink. Sure—at weddings, things like that? I saw him with a champagne flute that time Lala Bettencourt married Bony Henderson.”

“Bony?”

“For Bonaparte. It only lasted six weeks, but not because George Brocato didn’t toast the happy couple.”

“Tell me about Ham.”

“Well, he was about thirty-four, I guess. Quite a bit older than we are, but I used to see him around, didn’t you? Before he got incredibly famous. I always thought he was kind of quiet and nerdy, but then he turned up with all these cool musician friends. Funny how much better a guy looks if he’s got an entourage.”

“Look at George Lucas. What about the ex-wife?”

“Oh, Mason. Went to Sacred Heart. Perfectly nice lawyer. I guess I haven’t really heard much about her, probably because there’s not much to hear; now Ti-Belle’s another matter. She just dropped from the sky, like Patty. How do these women do it? Now you see them, now you don’t, or vice versa. I don’t know a damn thing about Ti-Belle and neither does anybody else. Burns me up. It’s bad for my reputation.”

Ti-Belle
.

She was just a little too mysterious to leave alone. When Skip was done with Allison, she dialed Ti-Belle but got no answer. That figured—she was probably at George and Patty’s. To go there or not? Somehow, it didn’t seem urgent enough to disturb the family. Instead, she drove out to Melody’s school.

Country Day might not be in the country, but it looked as if it was. Both building and grounds bespoke money and taste, cultivated the look of an Eastern prep school. It was amazing, Skip thought, how relaxed you could get just walking around there—though maybe not if you were a teenager. Between hormones and insecurity, it would probably take more than a few trees to calm you down.