Neal Rafferty New Orleans Mystery #1: The Killing Circle (A Neal Rafferty New Orleans Mystery) (20 page)

Her fright turned to misery as she stared at some spot on the wall behind my head. I stepped toward her. She couldn't retreat without falling over the table. “Why are you afraid? Are you—would it have been your first time?”

She shook her head sadly. “Don't think that,” she said.

I wasn't sure what that meant, but I blundered on. “Are you afraid of me?” She didn't answer. “Are you afraid of all men?” She stared at something on the floor, like her feet. I lifted her head. “Did someone give you a rough time once?” She shut her eyes. “Catherine, I'm not going to pry, but if you had one bad experience it doesn't mean they're all going to be bad.” I couldn't help myself. I held her and touched her hair, face, and neck. “You're a beautiful, intelligent woman,” I said softly. “Men must want you all the time.”

She smiled, but her body was stiff. “You're nice, Neal.”

I shook my head. “I'm not any nicer than the next guy. Everyone gets carnal sometimes.”

“No. You're nice. Really. You are.”

I was exasperated. “For God's sake, Catherine, there's nothing wrong with being a little carnal sometimes. How do you know it isn't taking some serious willpower to keep from locking you in my bedroom overnight?”

“Is it?”

“Oh, for God's sake.” I stumbled over to my drink and took a mighty slug.

“Well, is it?”

“Yes,” I shouted. She started laughing. “What's so funny?”

“You are. And you really are very nice.”

“Damn it. Come here.” I didn't wait for her. I went to her and wrapped my arms around her and kissed her until the blood drained from my lips and we both needed air. “There,” I said letting go of her. “That wasn't very nice and I enjoyed it.”

I went into the kitchen and made another drink. I was getting drunk and I didn't care. She glared at me with clenched fists.

“Why do you always have to be so tough?” she said through her teeth.

I sighed. “I don't mean to. Really, I don't try to be.” The old man loomed somewhere in my consciousness. I felt depressed. “Let's just admit it, Catherine. We just don't get along very well.” I sat down wearily.

“No. No, that's not true.” She looked upset.

“Well, come over here and have a drink with me.”

“You're getting drunk.”

“You see. Another reason why I'm not very nice.”

She sat on the other side of the sofa resting her back against the arm. “Oh, Neal, why couldn't I have met you before?”

“Before what?”

“Oh, everything. It's me. I'm the problem. I give people a rough time, do terrible things to them, and then feel sorry for myself. I want things to be different with you.” She stopped but her eyes went on, swelling with despair. Then they went blank before that strange and frightening depth took over. I let her go. She must have remained fixated like that for well over five minutes before her head dropped to the back of the couch. I didn't move. I watched her I thought she had gone to sleep and bent over to take off my shoes. But when I sat up she was watching me. The despair was back as if she hadn't blanked out.

“What's wrong with a person who can't cry?” she asked.

I leaned over and took her hand. “Look, Catherine, you're probably very tired, and your emotions have taken such a battering over the past few days that they haven't left you anything to cry with. What you need is a good night's sleep. You take the bedroom. I'll sleep in here. And I'll fix breakfast for you in the morning.”

She looked surprised. “Don't you want to come with me?”

“Sure I want to. But I won't. You've got enough to cope with right now without me. I'll be right here if you need me, but what you really need is to get some rest. No one needs to be crowded while their wounds heal. And after that, well, we'll have all the time in the world.”

She stroked my hand for a few seconds. “I'd better go. I do need to sleep and I'll sleep better at home.”

“I'll take you home,” I said putting my shoes back on.

“No, don't, please. I think I need to be alone for a while.”

I went downstairs with her and held her hand while we walked to her car. I opened the door, then took her in my arms and kissed her. She let her body fall against me. We held on to each other for a while, needing just to stand there together touching. She broke away abruptly and drove off waving. I think she was crying.

27

What Murphy Said

Back up in the apartment, it occurred to me that I was more or less expecting the usual visit from Uncle Roddy and Fonte. As I sat there, I started feeling very destructive. I stood up with an urge to destroy the room and wished the bastard who had broken in earlier would come back so I could destroy him. I finally decided that a better idea than adding to the mess he'd made in the bedroom would be to go over to Grady's and hit some pool balls with Murphy.

Grady's was still crowded. All the pool tables were taken, but I didn't see Murphy at any of them. That was peculiar. I found him in the back, hunched over a beer at the bar.

“Hello, Neal,” he said. He was listless, a little loaded maybe. His thin brown face, pointed and ratlike, was longer than usual.

“What's the matter, Murphy?”

He turned to me. “What's the matter? Haven't you heard, Neal? Curly's is gone.”

I had never seen Murphy like this. I hadn't seen Murphy without a cue stick in his hands for probably fifteen years.

“I know, Murph. I read about it in the paper”

“Have you seen it? To the ground, Neal. I mean, Curly's is gone.”

I told Grady to get me a beer.

“I don't know what to do with myself during the day,” Murphy said.

“Why don't you just come here and play?”

“There's no one here, Neal,” he said with disgust. “Grady can't hardly get his ass out of bed before two o'clock.”

“Well, you can't sit around like this forever. You've got to find another place. What about that place over on Exchange Alley?”

“Bunch of screwballs and addicts over there.”

“Speaking of screwballs, I need to talk to you about something, Murph. Remember the Boy Scout? That guy we played pool with over at Curly's the other day?”

“Yeah. The last day.”

“Yeah. Well, I need to know everything you know about him, Murphy. It's important. I know his name is Louie. You got a last name for him?”

“Groz,” he answered. He looked straight ahead. I knew there was something terribly wrong with Murphy when he didn't ask why I wanted to know.

“Where do you know him from?”

“Curly's.”

“From how long ago?”

“I don't know. He's been coming in there off and on for the last several months. A nasty guy, but an easy five. He always cursed when he paid off.”

“Right. I remember him doing that when he paid off the other day. What happened when he came back?”

“How'd you know about that?” Ah, a spark of life.

“I ran into him that night. He told me there'd been some trouble.”

“I'll say. He came back in a coupla hours later and accused me of pickpocketing him. He said his wallet was missing after he left Curly's. Maybe so, but he sure had it while he was in there. He paid us off out of it. Right?”

“So what did you do?”

“I told him to eat it. He got so filthy-mouthed that Curly came over and tossed his ass out. Told him he'd call the cops if he bothered to come back.” He shook his head. “Curly, Curly.”

“Come on, Murphy. What else do you know about Groz? Do you know where he lives? Does he work? I need it all, Murph. It's important.”

He talked into his been “I know all the four letter words he knows.” He looked at me. “He's a drunk. He always came to Curly's in the morning and he was always drunk. He's lost all his coordination from drinking. He blows the easy shots. It's like he can't concentrate anymore. I tell you what, Neal, if that guy wasn't so crocked all the time, he'd be dangerous. You know what I mean?”

I thought I did. I asked him if Groz had ever brought a woman into Curly's or ever talked about Lucy. Murphy said the only woman he'd ever heard the Boy Scout talk about was some mother or another.

I stayed with Murphy for a while, drank several beers, and tried to snap him out of it. There seemed to be no way. He wouldn't even stand me for a fifty dollar game of pool. I finally figured he would just have to go through his time of grief.

I left Grady's more loaded than I needed to be, but I felt bold. And in no mood to go home.

28

Getting Warm

I went through the sparse forest, the picture-book forest. Lamps glowed softly through the trees, but the houses and the spaces between them were dark. I got that feeling again that they were all unoccupied, unreal. I felt my attitude changing. It was never quiet like this in the Channel, but loud and crass and cramped. I knew my roots were still there, but I wondered if my heart was. I reflected on the effect of the booze in my system. It didn't seem like my heart should be thudding like it was.

Catherine came to the door with a robe wrapped loosely around her, her hair tossed from sleep, thick looking. She showed no surprise that I was there.

“Have you been alone long enough now?” I asked her.

“Yes.”

I went in and kissed her like I was coming in from work. “I've had a lot to drink.”

She looked at me without expression. “I'll make you some coffee,” she said.

I sat in the kitchen and watched her pour water into a small drip pot. We didn't speak. Every now and then she would turn from the stove and look at me.

She sat across from me and watched while I sipped coffee. Under her watchful eyes, I felt compelled to say something.

“I didn't come here for coffee.”

“I know.” She put her hands together and rested her chin on her fingertips. Her body swayed back and forth slightly.

This time I led the way to the bedroom. We handled each other gently, a bit hesitantly, like neither of us had ever had anyone before. She didn't shudder or shake, but my quick first response left both of us trembling. We lay there kissing and stroking, first-time lovers still filled with desire, unable to rest. We lay there until I felt my blood soar again, and this time we got lost in it. There was no time, just the darkness, the dampness, and the way we moved. We fell away from each other; hardly able to keep our fingertips touching. I took her hand and put it over my heart and held it there.

We stayed like that until the cool air forced us to find the covers. She put her head on my shoulder and lay in the crook of my arm, getting warm. I didn't feel the least bit sleepy. I looked around the dark room, seeing the outlines of the bookcases. I thought I could see the pictures, the dark statuettes. I could feel the brown and beige atmosphere of the large room, so unfamiliar, so unlike any other room I'd ever been in. Territory that was not mine, the territory of the warm body next to me. I would enjoy the gradual feeling of becoming at ease in this alien atmosphere. I remembered when familiarity finally put me at ease in Myra's green and white bedroom. It had taken a long time because I couldn't get over knowing that I was not the only man who shared her most personal place with her. Things would be easier for Catherine and me. I had a place now, too. I thought about our time together there. I thought it might even be nice to move out of the Euclid, get a place where there were trees and a yard, more of a house. I thought about all the choices there could be. Catherine's breathing seemed deep and regular.

“Neal?” It surprised me when she spoke.

“Hm.”

“It's nice like this, isn't it?”

“Yes.”

“It's been a long time for me, Neal.” The way she said it, I waited for her to go on, like she was going to make something clear to me. “What about you?” she asked.

“Yes. It's been a long time for me, too.”

I waited again.

“Was it someone you were in love with?”

“Yes.”

She didn't speak for a long time. I was starting to drift off.

“Why aren't you with her now? Why didn't you marry her?”

I thought about all the times I'd tried to make an honest woman out of Myra. “Honey, you're not rich enough,” she told me. She had wanted me to buy her a house. So I lived at home, saving every penny. I was going to get her the biggest, finest house I could. “She's dead. She was murdered.”

Catherine's body tensed. She didn't ask me any more about it. I turned to her and put my arms around her. We fell asleep that way.

29

The Milton McDermotts

When I woke up that morning Catherine was gone. She'd left me a note that she would be at the hospital and would see me later. I put my message under hers—I would be in Florida. I went back to the Euclid first to get my gun.

I decided to find out at the New Orleans post office what points a letter postmarked Gulf Breeze could have been mailed from instead of trusting my Chevy to get me to Florida before the post office there closed. I left with a list that included most of Santa Rosa County and parts of Escambia County and spent the better part of the next five hours on an irritably hot and uneventful drive east. Just mile after mile of uninteresting express highway that starts to roll a bit after you get out of the flat land New Orleans sits on. I bypassed Pensacola and the beach area by staying on the highway until I had to get off to get to Milton, the county seat of Santa Rosa.

It would have been easy if Lucy McDermott had been listed in the directory for either county or if she had a new listing, but those are the kinds of things a private detective does first that always add up to a big zero. There weren't enough McDermotts in either county to sneeze at, so I jotted all of them down with their statistics. After all, Lucy's dead aunt could be one of them just like she could be any other name that was listed. After that I went over to the municipal building where the records are kept and got a cooperative guy there who liked that I was from the hot spot on the river and wanted to try to find me a clue. But first he wanted to know the current status of Bourbon Street. And that only after he had given me a rundown of the singularly swinging time he'd had on the strip many years ago. He still had the name of every joint he'd visited carefully filed away in a prominent memory cell, along with the name of his favorite stripper in each one. He chuckled, chortled, and snorted over it all and finally got around to asking for the second time what I needed. He went through some files and told me that no Lucy McDermott had been born or married there, nor had she died there, and that he sure would like to do some more digging, but it was time to close and I should come back tomorrow.