***   No One Left To Burn  ***

Chapter 1

10

                The golden glow of sunrise was just beginning to flicker in the east when I walked Meagan to her car. It took awhile to find it since she wasn’t sure where she had left it the night before. She said the confusion was because it had been raining so hard when she parked it, but I was more inclined to believe, however, that she couldn’t find it because she still had about a half a bag on.

                It was also most likely, however, the three bottles of wine that we had quaffed the night before that was the most influential in my decision-making process and had caused me to wander aimlessly, bleary-eyed and barefoot through the motel parking lot, which was still wet with rain puddles.

                   The past few hours had been devoted to unbridled, tempestuous, raw sex, and the consumption of three bottles of Poully Fousay.  Our lovemaking had been torrid, lengthy and unquestionably magnificent.  It could have easily established new and higher grading standards for copulation perfection, if one is into grading such activities. 

                We walked around about seventy-five percent of the motel property before we finally found Meagan’s car.  It was parked right next to mine, adjacent to the registration parking spaces.  We laughed about that lightly, and although I wasn’t my normal jovial self, I did feel a cheerful exuberance at finally finding the fucker.

                I immediately saw that it was exactly the kind of car I would have expected to see her driving.  Now that I’d gotten to know her so much better, inside information so to speak, I couldn’t visualize her jaunting around in anything else.  It was a snazzy little Mercedes Benz, bright red 450SL convertible with gold trim. It looked fully loaded.

                All things considered, Meagan looked pretty damned good as she slid into the driver’s seat.  Her hair was only slightly mussed and she had repaired her makeup prior to leaving my room.  If she felt as good on the inside as she looked good on the outside, then she was in fine fettle.  I, on the other hand, must have appeared disheveled to the highest dimension.  If I looked as bad on the outside as I felt bad on the inside, I must have looked repellent because I really felt like shit.

                Our goodbye was short and sweet, a kiss on the cheek and a promise to call. You know how those go.  I was well on my way, shuffling scuffily back to my sanctum, before Meagan’s little red car was out of the parking lot.

                Back in my room I stripped down and tore open the package of plastic razors. The bar of hand soap was fine for shaving and by being very careful, I ended up with only three little nicks which would soon disappear.   One cut was in the cleft of my chin.  Looking in the mirror kindled an obscure vision in my mind’s eye of the last person I’d seen who also carried evidence of a small nick in the cleft of his chinney chin chin.  I wondered if I would ever see Louie Chardon again. 

                I started to feel much better after I showered. I flipped on the TV as I walked around the room toweling off.  Good Morning America was on.  I don’t particularly care for the show, but since the local channel just cut in for their end-of-the-hour, five-minute allotment for weather and killings, I left it on.   I didn’t feel like channel surfing anyway.

                According to the weather forecast, it looked like another hot and humid, shirt sticking to your back, southern Louisiana day.  No shit!  It’s August for Chrissake.

                It was eight-thirty when I walked back to the bed and sat down to put on my socks and shoes.  With my socks on, I lay my head back on a pile of pillows to watch the rest of the local morning news.  My eyelids fluttered. They fluttered twice.  The first time they fluttered, they fluttered closed.  They must have snapped shut like a mousetrap.  The second time they fluttered, they fluttered open to the five-thirty evening news with Peter Jennings.

                I can be damn speedy when need be, and right now, it damn well needs be.  I dressed, threw my newly bought toiletries into the motel-provided laundry bag, and checked out in ten minutes flat.  I stopped at the 7-Eleven for gas and a Diet Coke, and at six o’clock sharp, pulled out onto the highway heading east for New Orleans .

                I set the cruise control at five miles per hour over the legal limit, thinking that should be slow enough to keep the highway patrol in check and still allow me to make good time.  I moved the seat back, stretched out and clicked on the car radio.  I took a lengthy gulp of my soda, relaxed and then watched disdainfully when the other cars heading east shot past me like I was standing still.

                Peggy Lee finished singing, “Is That All There Is?” Then the radio station broke in with a news update on the status of a congressional debate on a senator’s ethical dilemma involving his secretary and several hundred thousand dollars of missing campaign funds.  Personally, I thought the senator was in deep shit.  Then, as I listened to the report, my own significant ethical dilemma presented itself.  To wit!  Yesterday, John Burton hired me at my going rate per day, plus expenses, to find his daughter, Lila.  That means that today I should have been out searching and probing for information that might lead to the whereabouts of the fair lassie.  I should have been earning my remuneration by practicing my sharply honed and highly effective skills of sleuthing. But no, today I spent most of the morning and most of the afternoon zonked out in my motel room.  Anesthetized.  Also, I spent most of last night fucking his daughter, Meagan.  The ethical dilemma that I faced was, should John Burton get charged for my first day on the job?
                                                                         11

                My reflections on the day’s events suddenly ended.  Patrolman Freddie Davis brought the police car to a rough, jarring stop in front of Central Lockup, which brought me abruptly back to reality.  It took several seconds to refocus my eyes and return my vision from the rain-smeared windows of the car to my present surroundings.  I briefly wished I didn’t have to return.

                The ride to Central Lockup was uneventful.  No shit. Compared to the earlier ordeal I’d experienced, the trip downtown was anticlimactic.  A piece of cake.   Patrolman Davis radioed in ahead giving a few details of what had happened.  Sergeant Guidry was sitting next to him and was bent forward, blotting the blood flow from his rapidly swelling proboscis.

                He was mumbling a succession of select four-letter words at me.  The dialogue centered mainly on what he was going to do to me, or have done to me, for smacking him on his bulbous snout.

                My situation almost seemed funny.  Almost, but not quite.  My sides weren’t splitting.  Guidry personally couldn’t do a damn thing to me.  Physically, I think I could take the fat fart with very little effort.  However, it wasn’t what he could do to me that worried me, it was what he could have done to me that was more disconcerting.  As a Sergeant on the NOPD, Guidry had enough pull where it counted to make a private eye’s job a very miserable fucking existence.

                Guidry grumbled all the way to Central Lockup.  When we pulled to a stop in front of the building, he opened his door, kicked it back, rolled out of the car and slouched inside.  “Bring that worthless shit in,” he said to Davis , speaking past the crimson handkerchief he held to his nose.

                Bill Brass, Captain of the Homicide Division was still on duty when we walked in.  “Hi Rick,” he said.  He spoke around the short stub of an almost black cigar that he held in his mouth.  Then he saw Guidry cradling his nose in the bloody handkerchief, and the smile that started to form on his lips quickly vanished.  “What the hell happened to you, Guidry?” he demanded.

                “What in the hell happened to me?  Well I’ll tell you!  I’ll tell you what the hell happened to me!  This son of a bitch hit me.  And I’m going to see to it that he gets the fucking book thrown at him.  Resisting arrest, assaulting a police officer, the whole goddamned works.”

                “The hell you say,” I said defensively.  “I wasn’t resisting arrest.  I came to Lockup of my own free will.  Dan Marland will vouch for that.”

                Dan spoke up.  “That’s right, Bill.  Rick’s here of his own volition.  Guidry sure didn’t cuff him and bring him in.  As a matter of fact, Rick helped Freddie Davis get Sergeant Guidry into the car.”

                I didn’t remember it quite that way, but it sounded all right, so I didn’t say anything.  Bill looked from Guidry to me, to Dan and then to the cigar stub he held.  He spit a small piece of tobacco from his tongue then relit the cigar.  He looked back at the Sergeant and said, “I don’t know what all this shit’s about, Sergeant Guidry, but after I read Davis’ and your shift reports tomorrow, I’ll decide what action, if any, needs to be taken.”

                The “if any” caused Guidry’s eyes to become wide open and bulging.  His face turned a bright red, and he turned toward me and said viciously, “I’ll get you for this, Stevens.  I’ll get you good, and when I do, you’ll know for goddamn sure that you’ve been got.”  He wheeled around and stormed out of the room.  On his way to Charity Hospital to have his nose reset, I assumed.

                Patrolman Davis disappeared to fill out his report, and Dan Marland left when Bill put the lighter to his stogie.  Dan can’t tolerate the smell of cigars.  He also says that cigars are really link trainers for cocksuckers.  I’m not sure about that, but it could be true.   At any rate, I stoically remained and Bill and myself were left alone in the room.

                I met Bill the second day after I hit town from Florida .  I was driving down Chef Highway through a pretty bad part of town the first time I met him.  It was raining like a son of a bitch and his car was off to the side of the road with his front left tire flat as a fritter.  The trunk lid was up and I could see his full head of silver gray hair bobbing while he tried to drag his spare tire out.

                The heart is one body organ where size really makes a difference, and mine was really big that day, so I pulled over to lend a hand.  He looked like he was about fifty-two or fifty-three, but I found out later that my guess was one year off on the young side.  He was fifty-four.  But he was still old enough that I let him hold my umbrella over us while I did the grunt work.

                I rolled the airless tire to the back of the car and tossed it into the trunk, and was just reaching up to slam the lid when we were approached by three strut-walking, cool talking black kids. They weren’t real big but they thought they were tough.  The biggest of the three started jive talking Bill, while the other two were eyeing our cars, I guess trying to decide which one to take.

                The big one jerked the umbrella out of Bill’s hand and took a swipe at him with it.  Bill probably weighed two hundred and twenty pounds, and was tall enough to be burly but certainly wouldn’t be considered fat by any means.  He didn’t go after the kid.  At first I thought he was going to, but he played it straight and while keeping his eyes on the guy, he walked back to where I was standing by the open trunk.   They’d decided on my car, naturally.  It was only two weeks old. I knew they’d made their selection when one of the punks held out his hand and asked for the keys.

                Shit.

                I wasn’t about to argue.  They hadn’t shown it yet, but I knew at least one of them would have a gun.  It was still concealed, but I knew it was there somewhere.

                I was just reaching into my pocket when Mary Poppins poked the umbrella toward the open trunk and spoke to Bill.  “What else you got in there, Old Man, besides a fucking flat tire?  Huh?  What else you got, honkey?”

                Bill leaned into the trunk mumbling something.  My hand was coming out of my pocket with the keys to my car. At the same time, Bill was coming out of his car trunk with a Remington automatic twelve-gauge shotgun.  “Freeze, mother fuckers,” he yelled at the three.  Then he fired off two blasts into the top of a big elm tree branch hanging overhead.

                Amos and Andy and the Kingfish froze.  Small branches, leaves and twigs came falling down around them.    It started to look like fall had come early.  Then a big black crow plopped on the ground in front of them.  They stared at it with wide eyes.

                “This must be your lucky day, you miserable pukes,” Bill said.   I ought to dust all three of you worthless assholes right here.”  His eyes were slits when he waved the gun back and forth as he spoke.  “But the weather’s too damn bad to stand in, to answer a bunch of fucking questions for the cops.  So here’s the deal, cocksuckers, if you can get out of range before I squeeze off another shot you’re home free.  But listen to me carefully.  If I ever set eyes on your ugly hides again you won’t be so lucky.  Now get!”

                While Bill was talking, the three would-be thugs stood dead still in the drizzling rain with their mouths hanging open and stared at him in disbelief.   When he said “now get!” they spun on their heels and took off.  Gushes of water spewed up when their shoes landed without concern in the deep puddles of muddy rainwater that had formed on the sidewalk.

                Kingfish was running funny, and I think he’d shit his pants.  Bill picked up the slaughtered crow and threw it after them.  It sailed through the air like it had been tossed by a NFL quarterback.  The big one, still carrying my umbrella, turned his head and looked back just as the dead fowl arrived.  He caught it with a smack in the forehead.

                Jesus, I thought.  What a sight.  His face was engulfed in blood and feathers like the bird had exploded when it hit him.  They were almost out of range when Bill fired the shotgun up into the tree again.  The old fucker actually had a smile on his face.  “Jesus Christ, man,” I yelled.  “You’ll have the place crawling with the fucking police.” 

                His eyes had a mischievous sparkle in them when he flipped the lapel of his rain slicker back to expose his NOPD badge and said, “I am the fucking police.” 

                That was the end of that conversation.

                I learned a lot about Bill later that day over a cup of coffee at a little diner on Downman Road , not far from our encounter.  He had raised three sons who had given him seven grandkids.  All three of his boys were successful.  The youngest was a V.P. at the First National Bank of Commerce in Monroe , Louisiana .  The middle one was a professor at Tulane and the eldest one was a doctor of neurosurgery at Baptist Hospital .

                I met Bill five years ago.  Now, he’s old enough to retire and his wife has been after him to do it.  But he’s just too dedicated to the force to take that step, and that would account for why he’s still at central lockup so late in the day.

                With a frown, Bill looked at his cigar, which had mercifully extinguished itself again, and with a deep sigh said, “Let’s sit down here, Rick.  And now will you please tell me what the hell is going on.”

                We sat at a small table on a pair of rickety straight back chairs.  The NOPD didn’t spend a lot of its budget on furniture.   What we sat on popped and creaked and may have been there when Alan Pinkerton organized his famous National Detective Agency in l850.

                “Before I tell you what’s going on with me, Bill,” I replied, “You need to tell me what’s going on with Guidry.  Is he on some kind of medication or what?  The fucker acts like he ought to be on Prozac or something.  I never have cared that much for the guy.  I’ve always thought he was pretty crude.  He might very well think the same of me or worse, cause we never have gotten along that well.  But his actions over on Robert E. Lee were the worst I’ve ever seen.”

                Bill rolled the cigar stub between his thumb and forefinger when he spoke. “He’s going through some hard times right now, Rick.  Some are personal and some are professional, and it’s been tough on him trying to deal with both issues at the same time.

                “You might not have known this but he was passed over for promotion a couple of months ago and that upset him quite a bit.  He’s almost fifty and has been on the force over twenty-five years.  He got passed over because the mayor wants only college grads in the upper echelon of the force.  It’s a recent change in policy and it caught Guidry.  He only has a high school diploma.  Not that that’s bad, you understand.  It just doesn’t fit the new policy.

                “Also, he lived in Arabi almost twenty years until another change in policy required NOPD personnel to live in the City of New Orleans .  You remember when that change went into effect?   It was just after you came to town.  It caused all kinds of grumblings, and some of the newer people told them to take the job and shove it up their ass.  Guidry had too many years in to do that.  He fought it as long as he could. When he finally made the move to the city his attitude started to change.  Now on top of all that, I think he’s having problems with his kids, too.  He has two attending Abramson High School , which is not the best institution in the school system.  And you know how kids are today.”   Christ, I thought.  There’s another reference to how kids are.  “Jesus,” Bill said.  “I’m glad I don’t have kids in high school anymore.  It was bad enough when I did.  But now it’s even worse than ever.

                “Guidry has a son in the twelfth grade who’s in trouble all the time for fighting.  He got caught bringing a piece to class and got kicked out for the last half of the second semester of his junior year.  He had to go to summer school to make it up.  Couldn’t work that summer and that pissed Guidry off to no end.

                “He also has a daughter in the tenth grade and already she’s putting out.  I’ve heard Guidry on the phone with his wife talking about it.  I guess the Mrs. came home one-day and found the girl and her boyfriend going at it on the living room floor.”

                Bill looked at the cigar stub he held and I thought he was going to light it again.   I hoped not.  Then he made a face like it didn’t taste right and he tossed it into the wastebasket by the wall.

                “Guidry’s son wears a bunch of earrings and looks like he lives out of a dumpster.  The girl dresses better but she’s got purple hair and paints her fingernails bright green.  The two of them do whatever they can to make his life as fucking miserable as possible.  I feel sorry as hell for the poor bastard having kids like that.  It’d make you wonder where you went wrong as a parent.”

                Yeah, I thought.  It would be rough to have kids that turned out like Guidry’s.   I also thought that they were the products of their home environment, in addition to having his genes.  The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

                Bill patted his shirt and jacket pockets like he was looking for another smoke, so I decided to tell him my story and get the hell out of there.  I started with the phone call I’d gotten from John Burton.  I finished relating the events of the past couple of days, omitting certain items I didn’t think he needed to know about and quickly glossed over my run in with Guidry.

                Bill had a concerned look on his face when he said, “this Burton fellow you mentioned called here the day before yesterday.  He said he had a need for a private investigator, so I gave him your name.  I sure hope I didn’t get you involved in something that resulted in what happened to you tonight.  I know you have your moments of being an unruly, stubborn renegade, Rick, but this guy trying to whack you on Robert E. Lee, now that, I think, is being just a bit pushy.  You must have really pissed someone off.   Do you have any ideas who it might be?”

                “Not the slightest idea, Bill.  And believe me, I’ve been giving it a lot of thought for the last hour or so.  I can’t see how there could be any connection with what happened tonight and what John Burton wants me to do, so don’t you worry about getting me involved.”

                Bill was silent for a few moments as he thought about what I’d said.  Then he got up and retrieved the dead cigar from the wastebasket and as he gazed at the cold end of the stub he said, “Rick, you probably ought to get yourself patched up and then go home and get some rest.  We’ll talk again tomorrow.”

                “Yeah, I guess you’re right, Bill.  I need to make a phone call first.”  And I reached for the phone on his desk.

                “Stay away from Guidry when you can, Rick.  I know you two have been on unfriendly terms for some time.  And if it keeps going like it has, especially like tonight for Chrissake, someone is going to get hurt.  I mean really hurt.  I wouldn’t want to see that.”

                “Okay, Bill,” I said.   “Incidentally, what was Guidry doing out there?  I didn’t expect to see him come driving up. Is he running down drunks now?  Uh - not that that’s the case you understand.”

                “Guidry just happened to be over that way and the dispatcher radioed him to go on over when the call came in about the commotion on Robert E. Lee.” 

                A sardonic smile crossed his face momentarily as if he were trying to picture me standing in that rose bed.  I took advantage of the lull in our conversation, and lifted the phone from its cradle. I punched in the number that Jan gave me.  I let the phone ring several times, but there was no answer.  She was probably just now on her way home, I thought.  I’d call again later after I, as Bill said, got myself patched up.

                Bill was getting ready to light that offensive smelling black cigar again, so I stood up and said, “Guess I’ll take your advice, Bill, and get some rest.  Tomorrow I have to try and find one young, very beautiful woman.”

                “Good looking girl, eh?  You always seem to get the good cases, Rick.  You must be living right.”

                I tossed the photo of Lila Burton on the table in front of Bill and asked, “do you think she’ll be hard to recognize?”

                Bill looked at the photo in wide-eyed amazement.

                “Hard to find?  Well now that I don’t know.  But hard to recognize?  Hell no!  Good-looking girl.  She must have at least a...”

                He let his final statement tail off, but I knew what he meant.  I’m a tit man myself.  But what I didn’t understand was the distorted look on his face.  He looked like he had just bitten into a fresh lime.  “What is it, Bill?”  I asked.  “What’s the matter?” 

                He didn’t answer my question, but said instead, “Sit back down, Rick.” 

                I forgot about calling Jan back, at least that is, for the moment.  I couldn’t take my eyes off of Bill.  He just kept looking from the photo, then back to me and then back to the photo.  Finally his eyes rested on me.

                “A while ago,” he said, “ you asked me what Sergeant Guidry was doing out there on Robert E. Lee Blvd.   Well, Rick, about two hours ago we got a call that the body of a young woman had been found in a motel over on Elysian Fields.”

                “Bill,” I croaked.  “Jesus Christ, do you mean...?  No, you don’t mean.  Ah shit, Bill. Oh fuck!  You do mean...”

                I was half out of my seat and having a fucking hot flash that wouldn’t quit.  My heart was pounding like crazy and the palms of my hands were suddenly tacky with perspiration.  My knees turned to mush, and could no longer support my half-erect being.  My body dropped back into the chair.  I’d been quickly waylaid by the complete understanding of just what he did mean.

                “I don’t know, Rick,” Bill said in an almost whisper.  “That is, well, I’m not sure.  I just got a glimpse of the girl when they brought her in.  Then the call on you came in.  Like I said, Rick.  I just got a short, quick glimpse of her.  She had been dead about five days and she didn’t look too good, if you know what I mean.  But there’s a likeness of her in this photo, though.  Let’s go take a look.”

                A visit to the morgue is not my idea of a fun time.  The place always gives me the creeps, an eerie feeling; even though I’ve been there on several occasions.  I thought that I’d gotten used to seeing death when I was in Operation Desert Storm.  Lord knows there was enough of it, especially at the very end, when Saddam’s elite guard was high-tailing it back to Baghdad .   But this was different, very different.  While we walked on the slick tile floor in front of the stainless steel doors and sliding drawers, I began to feel extremely tense and wished very much that I was somewhere else.

                The morgue attendant periodically checked the numbers on the doors as we moved along.  Then he stopped, selected one, opened the heavy door and pulled out the sterile looking tray.

                When I first saw the picture of Lila Burton her father gave me, I lightly wondered if I’d be able to recognize her if she were wearing more clothing than she was wearing in the photo.  It never, I mean never, crossed my mind that I’d find her with less clothing on.  The body before us was nude and covered only with a single white sheet.

                Bill flipped the sheet back and when he did, I knew what he had meant when he’d said she didn’t look very good.  He had been right.  She didn’t look very good. She didn’t look very good at all.  But as bad as she looked, she was recognizable.  Recognizable enough to tell me that Lila Burton had been found.

                “That’s her,” I mumbled.  “Son of a bitch!  That’s her all right.”  My mind was abruptly non-attendant.  There were no visible signs of violence on what I could see of her.  I glanced up at Bill and asked, “What do they think killed her, Bill?  Shit!  I can’t believe this.”

                “It’s hard to say, Rick.  There aren’t any outward signs we can see that would indicate foul play.  An autopsy is scheduled for tomorrow morning.  We’ll know more then. But if I were a betting man, I’d wager that this had something to do with it.”  As Bill spoke, he pulled the white sheet all the way down to Lila’s waist.  He turned her left arm so that the inside of the elbow was exposed.  My weary eyes slowly followed the trail laid by his index finger that stopped at a small red and purple bruise that looked like a mark left by a needle.

                “Shit!”

                “Yeah, I know what you mean, Rick.”  Bill said it almost as if talking to himself.

                “Did your guys find anything on her or in the room where she was found that might give the police a clue?”

                Bill breathed a heavy tired-sounding sigh.  “Nope. Nothing.  Not a thing, Rick, not a damn thing.”

                As we stood gazing down at what was once a very lovely girl, I became aware of the sharp cold in the room and my own fatigue.  “Let’s get out of here,” I said, and Bill gave me an understanding nod.  The attendant replaced the sheet over Lila and slid the heavy tray back into its frigid resting-place.  We thanked him and left.

                When we were back in his office, Bill asked, “do you want to tell your client or do you want the police to do it?”

                “I took the job of finding her and I found her,” I said.   “ Not exactly the way I had in mind, but if it’s okay with you, I guess I want to tell him.”

                “Well, Rick, it isn’t normal procedure, you know, you telling him instead of the police.  But then, there hasn’t been a positive identification yet, so we can’t even be sure he’s involved.  Okay, Rick.  You tell him what we’ve found, and when you talk to him, would you ask him to drop by?  We’ll have him take a look to be sure.”

                “Sure, Bill,” I said, with a sigh of exhaustion.  “I’m out of here.  I’m going home and get some shut-eye.  I’ll give you a call tomorrow around noon and get the results of the M.E.’s findings.”

                Bill might not be convinced that the girl in the morgue was Lila Burton, but as far as I was concerned, it was as obvious as the bulge in a ballet dancer’s snug tights.

Page Twelve and Thirteen

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