My Juliet (29 page)

Sonny lies in the dark with his eyes closed and Juliet is all he sees. She's standing at the fence with a finger at her chin studying his still-wet painting of the Beauvais. She's naked on the porch at home with her back turned to him, a wisp of pubic hair glowing in the streetlight, her breasts thick, shadowy globes hugging each side of her rib cage.

Then Sonny sees her on the dance floor at the F&M Patio Bar and the way she looked the night they met. The jukebox is playing and she's still in her uniform from school, her hair in a ponytail, long woolly socks pulled up to her knees. “Are you with anybody?” he says.

She nods and points to a group of high-born girls sitting at a table nearby. “Do they count?”

“My name is Sonny LaMott. I'm a senior at Holy Cross. If it's not too much to ask—”

“Juliet,” she answers, bringing her mouth close to his ear to be heard above the music. “Do you know, by chance, the mansion on Esplanade . . . ?”

After the bar closes they walk to Napoleon Avenue past the unmanned gatehouse of a rail yard and over the tracks to the river. The port this morning is quiet. They sit on warm boards in the shade of a crudely built lean-to and watch a ship approaching on the dark water. Juliet smells of smoke and lilac shampoo and her hand, when at last she surrenders it, is small and moist in Sonny's. He tries to kiss her and kiss her deep but she clenches her lips and gently nudges him away. “I just broke up with somebody.”

“You still love him?”

“I don't know, I don't want to.”

“I could be your boyfriend, Juliet.”

“Just be my friend first.”

Now in Louis's room a suffocating heaviness bears down on Sonny's chest and for minutes it seems he is unable to breathe. He opens his eyes and gasps for air and he doesn't relax until he feels Louis's hand press deep into his own.

“I love her anyway,” Sonny says.

“I know you do.”

“I've always loved her, I'll always love her.”

“I know it, Sonny. I know you will.”

5

SHE HAS SOME ÉTOUFFÉE FINALLY. IT'S at Dooky Chase's Restaurant, a black place just across Orleans Avenue from the Lafitte housing development, and she is disappointed when after only a few bites she is unable to eat any more. Fifteen years of life in the California sunshine has made her a lightweight in the cayenne pepper department, and she feels as if she has betrayed her Creole people. As if she should apologize to someone:
“Look, I let you down. I let us all down. God!”

When the waiter returns she holds air in her cheeks to show how fat she feels. She starts to give an excuse for not finishing her plate but the man nervously stops her. “They got two police outside waiting to speak to you.”

They're standing in the lot next to the Mustang, leaning against the trunk. “And I thought it was the cayenne pepper giving me indigestion,” she says as she shambles toward them.

Peroux comes to his full height and crosses his arms, as if to protect himself. “Nice to see you again, Miss Beauvais. And how was your meal today?”

“I'll tell you how it was, Lieutenant. Someone needs to franchise Dooky Chase and open fast-food restaurants all over the country. Instead of a billion hamburgers sold, I want to see signs boasting the same about stuffed jumbo shrimp and breast of chicken à la Dooky.”

It seems incredible, but she's managed to make even Lentini laugh.

“You think people would give up their Quarter Pounders for Dooky?” Peroux says.

“One day this Louisiana cooking will catch on, mark my words.”

“I'm glad to see your sense of humor has returned, Miss Beauvais.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant Peroux. Now, tell me, how is the investigation going? Are you making progress? Is there anything I can help you with?”

Peroux glances over at the project across the street, half a dozen children watching from a piece of ground stripped clean of vegetation, rectangular-shaped buildings with graffiti on the walls and plywood covering windows. “Just one question,” he says. “Miss Beauvais, before he went to the mansion last night, did you give Sonny LaMott something to give to your mother?”

She waits, closely considering the question. “Something for my mother,” she says, then feigns a sudden burst of enlightenment. “Like a piece of my mind, do you mean?”

“No. Something else. Like a letter or a sheet of paper.”

“You're confused again, Lieutenant. I didn't send Sonny LaMott to the Beauvais with a piece of paper. He volunteered to go there and bring me back one.”

“The check?”

She nods. “What else would I want from Mother?”

Sonny follows Lentini to the small room where Peroux sits waiting at a cafeteria table cluttered with yellowing, weeks-old sections of the
Times-Picayune
. The room holds the sharp odor of Pine-Sol even though the floor looks as if it hasn't been cleaned in months. A fan with blue blades churns the torpid air and riffles the dust, while failing utterly to cut the heat.

“Sonny LaMott,” comes a voice, then the slap of a hand on metal. It is Peroux, shoving his chair out from under him as he rises to his feet. “Come have a seat here, podna.”

The detective pulls back a folding chair directly across from where he was sitting. A service revolver, neatly tucked in a glossy leather sleeve, hugs his belt.

“You've had a rough day, haven't you, podna?”

“I've had better, Lieutenant. Thank you for asking.”

Only now does Sonny notice the tape recorder on the table, a light on its face glowing red.

“Well, if it means anything, I'm glad you could make it,” Peroux says, reaching over to depress the machine's Record button. “You ever get interviewed by the police before? I was telling Sergeant Lentini here how impressed I was with you earlier. You seem to have an answer for everything.” Peroux leans back in his chair, as relaxed as a man in his favorite recliner at home. “Hey, Sonny, you know I'm just playing, right?” He points a finger at the recorder. “This is more for your protection than for mine. When I'm taking notes, I can't keep up too good when my interview gets a head of steam. You don't want me to screw up your statement, do you?”

“No sir.”

“We're just trying to figure out who would want to hurt that old lady like that.”

“They killed her, Lieutenant.”

“Yeah. Yeah, they did kill her. And I bet nothing hurts more than that, huh, podna?”

Overhead banks of uncovered fluorescent tubes burble against the ceiling, several of them dripping rusty water. Something tugs at Sonny's memory and he recalls the year 1971 and a building on Gravier Street and his own voice as he and Juliet start down the long hall:
“I don't think I can go through with this . . .”

Lentini shuffles over to a window and sits against a radiator housing, a look of such boredom on his face that his eyes flutter as he struggles to keep from nodding off.

“Sonny,” Peroux says, “last night when you went to Esplanade for Juliet's check . . . ?”

“Yes sir. We already talked about that.”

“It was raining pretty hard, wasn't it?”

“Yes, it was. Pretty hard. Real hard, as a matter of fact.”

Peroux takes out his notebook and looks over a page. “Sonny, you said you went in the house through the front door and walked right straight up the stairs.”

“Yes sir.”

“And a little later Mrs. Beauvais told you something from her bedroom?”

“She thought I was Juliet.”

“Right. She thought you were Juliet. Sonny, after you went down the stairs then came back up again, did you open the door to Mrs. Beauvais's room yourself or did she open it?”

“Let me think. Well, I guess we both opened it. I knocked, as I recall, and then I think I turned the knob after she said to come in. At the same time I was opening it she was opening it too, but from her side. Does that make sense?”

Peroux looks at Lentini, whose eyes are still closed. “Does that make sense?”

Lentini shrugs.

“Sonny, you open any other doors while you were up on the second floor?”

“When I was up there the first time, Juliet had said her room was the third one off the stairs to the right and so I did open that one but Mrs. Huey was sleeping inside.”

“Any others?”

“Yeah. I opened the door to the bedroom between Miss Marcelle and Mrs. Huey. That was Juliet's room. Or it used to be her room. All her old things were in there.”

“So you opened three doors altogether?”

“Right.”

“In all your previous visits to the house, you ever go up there and open those doors before?”

“Not that I recall. I never really went up there. Me and Miss Marcelle always sat in the parlor. I did go upstairs years ago, though, back when Juliet and I were dating in school.”

“In the last few weeks, to your knowledge, did you go through any of those doors up there?”

“No.”

Peroux throws another look at Lentini before referring to his notebook. “Sonny, were you wearing gloves last night when you went in the house?”

Sonny folds his hands together and rests them on the table. He lets out a breath. “It's kind of hot for gloves, Lieutenant. It's seventy-some degrees out. And I was there for Juliet's clothes and check. Why would I be wearing gloves?”

“You didn't answer my question, podna.”

“No, Lieutenant. I was not wearing gloves last night.”

The detective leans forward until his head is almost touching the table. “Look, podna, listen. Would you go down the hall with Sergeant Lentini here and spend a minute with our friend Mrs. Townsend and let her take your prints? You think you could do that?”

“I thought I was here to answer questions.”

Peroux pumps his head up and down. “And you've answered them. And we thank you. Mighty kind.”

Sonny can feel the involuntary pulsing of the veins in his neck, the heat rise in his face. “Am I a suspect, Lieutenant Peroux?”

Now more head pumping. “You are a suspect, Sonny. Yes, most definitely. But right now so is Juliet Beauvais. And so is Mrs. Huey and so are the drugheads on the next block. We've got us a whole shitload of suspects, although I do admit you pretty much top the list. You're our number-one suspect. Now, Sonny, will you be so kind as to let Mrs. Townsend take your prints or do you feel like you should confer with your lawyer first?”

Lentini leads Sonny to a room nearly identical to the first. They sit on metal chairs and wait facing each other until the print analyst appears in the open doorway. She's wiping her hands on a brown paper towel, and she smiles when they rise to their feet in unison.

“Mrs. Townsend,” Lentini says with a nod. “This is LaMott.”

“Hello, LaMott.”

She needs all of five minutes to take Sonny's prints, a process that somehow inspires in Sonny a feeling of solidarity with the woman. “I have paint on my hands,” he says.

“None that's getting in my way.”

“I used to be an artist in the French Quarter,” Sonny says, no less surprised by the statement than both she and Lentini seem to be.

“Did it hurt?” Peroux says when Sonny returns to the first room.

Sonny holds up a hand. “It makes your fingers kind of powdery after she puts on the cream. But you really don't feel anything.”

“Sonny, you know somebody name of Coulon?”

“Coulon?” He waits, figuring it necessary to give the impression that he's thinking about it. “No, I don't know a Coulon. Not personally anyway.”

“You know one impersonally maybe?”

“Sure I do. I bump into people all the time I don't know but impersonally.”

“Do you know any old veterinarian named Coulon you might've beat up one night with a club on the Esplanade Avenue neutral ground?”

“I've never beaten anyone with a club, Lieutenant.”

Peroux is nodding his head as if he's known this all along, that of course Sonny has never beaten anyone with a club. “And I suppose since you never beat Dr. Coulon with a club, then I suppose it follows you never stuck a piece of paper up that woman's privates, huh, podna?”

Something clicks shut in Sonny's throat and it is half a minute before he is able to say anything. His face burns red and he lowers his head and thumbs his eyes closed. “Did somebody really do that, Lieutenant?”

The detective reaches over and stops the recorder, just as Sonny feels Lentini, awake now, drawing the chair out from behind him.

“One more thing,” Peroux says. “Since you made such good friends with Mrs. Townsend, we were hoping you might enjoy meeting another friend, Mr. Arias. He's a polygraph expert. If you'd rather not meet him, or if you'd rather have your lawyer present when you do, it won't be no skin off my back. We can arrange to have the two of you sit together later on.”

“Let's do it now,” Sonny says.

When it's over, Sonny leaves the building with only a dim recollection of where he parked the truck. Outside, the humid air dumps a dense weight in his lungs and he begins to sweat so much that his clothes cling to his skin. Traffic thumps by and Sonny wonders how the state of Louisiana executes people these days, whether with the chair or an IV drip.

From behind him comes the sound of footsteps, then Peroux's voice. “That's the first time in my twenty-some-odd years as a peace officer where a suspect didn't ask right off how he did on the lie detector.”

Sonny glances at the man then turns back to the street.

“You may've impressed Mr. Arias, podna, but it still don't add up. No sir, it don't add up worth a good goddamn. Now go home, LaMott. I'm tired of looking at you.”

The parlor is empty but for the maid and her mother, who lies on white satin with a glass rosary in her hands. Juliet makes the sign of the cross and kneels next to the bier, her hands shaking as she brings them together in a steeple at her chest. The mortician did a good job, she has to admit. He succeeded in getting her hair and makeup right. And he's put her in a dress that appears to be from the days before her mother's wardrobe, once the envy of many a grande dame, was limited to purchases from the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store.