Open Mike
by James Nolan
French Quarter
There must be hundreds of kids who have wound up dead in the French Quarter. Eva Pierce was just one of them. Everywhere you walk in the neighborhood you see fliers about them taped to lampposts: Information Wanted or $5,000 Reward. And below is a blurry snapshot of some scruffy young person. After Eva’s body was discovered, bundled inside a blue Tommy Hilfiger comforter floating in Bayou St. John, the girl’s mother moved down here from Idaho or Iowa or Ohio — however you pronounce it — and blanketed the Quarter with those signs. She even printed her daughter’s last poem on the flier, but no dice. The fifteen hours between when Eva was last seen and when her body was found in the bayou remained a blank.
That’s when the mother rang me. I’m listed in the Yellow Pages: Off-Duty Homicide Detective: Dead or Alive, Inc.
Mrs. Pierce met me under the bingo board at Fiorella’s restaurant at the French Market. It wasn’t my suggestion. I hadn’t been to the market since I was a kid, when my daddy used to take me on Saturday mornings to squabble with his wop relatives while we loaded up at a discount on their fruits and vegetables. On my daddy’s side I’m related to everyone who ever sold a pastry, an eggplant, or a bottle of dago red in the Quarter, and on my mother’s side to everyone who ever ran the numbers, pimped girls, or took a kickback. I peeked inside the rotting old market, but sure didn’t see any Italians or tomatoes. Now it’s just Chinese selling knock-off sunglasses to tourists.
Mrs. Pierce was short and round as a cannoli, with a stiff gray bouffant and a complexion like powdered sugar. With those cat’s-eye bifocals, she looked like someone who might be playing bingo at Fiorella’s. But when she opened her mouth... Twilight Zone. Mrs. Pierce said it wasn’t drugs or sex that did her daughter in, but — get this — poetry.
“And the police aren’t doing anything,” she said with a flat Midwestern whine that made me want to go suck a lemon.
“Look, lady, I’m a cop — Lieutenant Vincent Panarello, Sixth District — and the police have more trouble than they can handle in New Orleans. They don’t pay us much... I got a wife and three kids in Terrytown, so that’s why I moonlight as a detective.”
“My daughter loved moonlight.”
“I bet.”
“She read her own original poetry every Tuesday night at that rodent-infested bar on Esplanade Avenue called the Dragon’s Den.” She was twisting the wrapper from her straw into a noose.
“Yeah, that used to be Ruby Red’s in my day. A college joint, the floor all covered with sawdust and peanut shells.” I didn’t tell her how drunk I used to get there in high school with a fake ID. While I was going to night school at Tulane, Ruby Red’s was where I met my first wife Janice, may she rest in peace.
“Well, the place has gone beatniky.” Mrs. Pierce leaned forward, her eyes watering. “And do you know what I think, Lieutenant Panarello?’
“Shoot.”
“I think one of those poets murdered my daughter. One of those characters who read at the open mike. And that’s where I want you to start. To listen for clues when the poets read. Eventually one of them will give himself away.”
“Listening to the perms will cost you extra.” And so will the French Quarter, but I’d already averaged that in when I quoted her my fee.
“I’ll meet you there Tuesday at 9 p.m. It’s above that Thai restaurant. Just go through the alley—”
“I know how to get up there.” I could have climbed those worn wooden steps next to the crumbling brick wall in my sleep. That’s where I first kissed Janice. Funny, but she also wrote poems she read to me on the sagging wrought-iron balcony. The life I really wanted was the one I had planned with her. The life I settled for is the one I got.
Mrs. Pierce handed me a picture of her daughter, a list of her friends, and a check. I eyed the amount. Local bank.
“What your daughter do for a living?” I pushed back my chair, antsy to blow Fiorella’s. I could already smell the fried chicken grease on my clothes.
“Why, she was a poet and interpretive dancer.”
“Interpretive dancer. Gotcha.”
I studied the photo. Eva was about twenty-four, pretty, with skin as pale and powdery as a moth’s wing. But she was dressed in a ratty red sweater over a pink print dress over black sweatpants. Her dyed black hair was hanging in two stringy hanks of pigtail like a cocker spaniel’s ears. Who would want to kill her, I wondered, except the fashion police?
When I got down to the station I pulled the report. Eva was last seen at Molly’s bar on Decatur Street at 4 a.m. on a Tuesday, where she told her roommate, Pogo Lamont, that she was going home to feed their one-eyed dog named Welfare. They lived on Ursulines at Bourbon, upper slave quarter, uptown side. She never made it home. After an anonymous 911 tip, her body was hoisted out of the bayou at 7 p.m. the next evening. One clean shot through the temple, real professional. No forced sexual entry. Her purse was lying open on the grassy bank, surrounded by a gaggle of ducks trying to get at the bag of stale popcorn inside. A cell phone and twenty-five dollars were tucked in the bag, so the motive wasn’t robbery. Also inside the purse were a red lipstick, a flea collar, a black notebook filled with poems, two 10 mg. Valiums, an Ohio picture ID, a plastic straw that tested positive for cocaine residue, and a worn-out restraining order against Brack Self, a bartender and “performance artist” who turned out to have been locked up the whole time in Tampa for beating on his present girlfriend. That, and an Egyptian scarab, a petrified dung beetle supposed to be a symbol of immortality.
Which didn’t seem to have worked for Eva Pierce, poet and stripper.
I made it to the Dragon’s Den on a sticky Tuesday evening, with a woolly sky trapping humidity inside the city like a soggy blanket. It had been trying to rain for two weeks. The air was always just about to clear but never did, as if old Mother Nature were working on her orgasm. I carried an umbrella, expecting a downpour. The place was right next to the river, and hadn’t seen a drop of paint since I last walked in the door thirty years ago, with all my hair and a young man’s cocky swagger. A whistle was moaning as a freight train clacked along the nearby tracks, and the huge live oak out front shrouded the crumbling façade in a tangle of shadows. An old rickshaw was parked outside, where an elfin creature with orange hair sat scribbling in a notebook. He shot me a look through thick black plastic glasses, and then went back to writing.
Guess I’d found the poets.
I slapped a black beret on my head as I headed through the clammy alley, the bricks so decrepit that ferns were sprouting from the walls. I needed to blend in with the artsy crowd here, so I wore a blousy purple shirt and tight black pants, and carried a paperback by some poet I’d had to read at night school called Oscar Wilde. A wizened old Chinese guy was squatting over a tub of vegetables in the patio, and the air smelled like spices. Something was sizzling in the kitchen. I felt like I was in Hong Kong looking for my Shanghai Lil.
Except for the Far East decor, the bar upstairs hadn’t changed that much. A small stage and dance floor had been added at the center, and the tables were low, surrounded by pillows on the floor. Is that where poets eat, I wondered, on the floor?
“I’ll have something light and refreshing, with a twist of lime,” I lisped to the two-ton Oriental gal behind the bar, waving my pinky. A biker type in a leather cowboy hat was observing me from across the bar.