*** No One Left To Burn ***
Chapter 1
2
My car turned to its left after it jumped the curb and struck the fence broadside. All that remained of the once ornate and elegant wrought iron enclosure was a twisted, mangled mess. Two long, deep ruts gouged into the rich green lawn, and the twin furrows left by the car tires led straight into the elevated rose bed. The flowers still standing would never be straight again. The stems were either bent or broken and the buds and blossoms dangled at odd angles. They hung limply, looking as if they had been without water for weeks in the blazing sun. Right in the middle of this botanical setting, like a majestic king on his regal throne, sat my car. Andy Warhol couldn’t have designed it any better.
Foul smelling smoke from the smoldering upholstery drifted slowly out through the two missing windows. Crimson blood, supplied by my split and swollen lips, and by what felt like slightly loose incisors, was smeared all over the front seat. I was surprised at the amount of my life’s vital juice that had been lost. It looked as if the proverbial sacrificial lamb had been led to the slaughter. A clammy chill came over me as I realized that was just about what had happened, only instead, the offering had almost been me - not Lamb Chop.
From a distance of what I guessed to be maybe five or six blocks away, I could hear the eerie Gestapo-like sound of a police car siren. That didn’t take long, I thought. I never did see anyone come out of their house, but then, perhaps there was no need to. When you think about it, a 12-gauge shotgun blast, two cars bouncing off each other, and one car thrown crashing through an iron fence, I’m sure all created sufficient commotion to cause people to peek out from behind the security of their mini-blinds.
I was surprised though, and somewhat disappointed, that no one ventured out to scrutinize my well being because I could have been really fucked up.
The Cadillac kept going after our encounter, so my car was the only one at the scene. When the people who must have squinted out saw me out of my car and meandering about on unbroken limbs, they must have figured I didn’t need any emergency first aid. They considered the prudent thing to do was stay inside and call 911. They may have been right.
In just a few moments the police car came to an abrupt stop in front of the house on whose lawn my car was resting. Two men, one in uniform and one in civvies, crawled out from the front seat of the squad car. A third rather heavyset man in street clothes struggled out from the back seat. I recognized that man as Dan Marland.
Dan was a staff reporter for the Times Picayune newspaper and a darn good
one at that. We had been pretty good
friends ever since I opened my P.I. office in New Orleans.
As a matter of fact, we were good enough friends that I had given him a
key to my apartment. Dan’s
two-year-old marriage had fallen apart about six months ago when he came home
from work early one day and found his wife with her head between the legs of one
of the tennis instructors from the Metairie Country Club.
He cancelled his membership and moved into a small apartment on the east
side of Slidell, which is about forty miles east of the city.
That’s a long drive if you have a hot, live one on the string, so, if
I’m out of town and Dan has a hot date lined up, he sacks out at my place.
Dan’s a little younger than I am. The tale of the tape would show him to be thirty-two, standing six foot three and weighing in at two hundred forty pounds. He was built like a line backer. He graduated from the University of New Orleans School of Liberal Arts with a degree in English. A very good school, but it had no football team. If he’d attended a school with a program, he would have been a star football player and most likely would have been drafted into the NFL. The girls adored him. He was a big, lovable teddy bear with a baby face.
The first time I met Dan was the Monday before Mardi Gras about four years ago. We had been sitting at the bar in a little joint on Royal Street yakking about how lousy the fucking New Orleans Saints had been playing. After about three hours of swigging well Scotch we hooked up with two real fine looking babes who’d been sitting in the corner giving us the eye. We invested in a couple of drinks for them, and then the four of us took off for my apartment with great expectations. I was driving. We hadn’t gone more than a half-mile or so when I heard Dan’s explosive, reverberating bellow from the darkness of the back seat.
“Holy shit! I don’t believe this! This girl has a dick! Jesus Christ, Rick, they’re fucking guys!”
You may think us a couple of dumb shits, but don’t judge us until you’ve seen one of those beauties. Female impersonators who work the French Quarter can be damned good looking. Good looking enough that you can’t tell them from the real thing. They have nice legs and shapely bodies; they even have breasts for Chrissakes. Anyway, we beat the shit out of ‘em and dumped their asses at the Greyhound bus station on Loyola Avenue. We laugh about that night every time we’re together.
The officer coming from the passenger side of the black and white was Sergeant Alfonse Guidry of the New Orleans Police Department. If you took away the badge, his being a policeman would be the last occupation you’d guess for Guidry. He just didn’t look like a cop. Now I’m not sure how a cop is supposed to look, but whatever it is, as far as I was concerned, he didn’t have it. His face was slightly pocked with acne scars from his youth. He was probably thirty pounds overweight, but down here a little extra weight is not that unusual. One of the things New Orleans is famous for is its cuisine. The savory fried foods, which are indigenous to the bayou country, have caused many of those less attuned to the need for healthy eating habits to balloon at the waistline. His hair had thinned enough that the short-cropped style he wore made him look like the stereotypical Franciscan friar.
Guidry was strictly business and couldn’t wait to get to the action, whatever it was. He didn’t care. Whatever it was he was ready. He was also an obnoxious cocksucker. If I had to guess why, I’d say that it was most likely because he was still pissed off about being passed over for promotion. He had always fancied himself as the prize of the NOPD, and when Bob Arceneaux moved up to Lieutenant ahead of him, it really blew his mind. Ever since, he’s been a real sour motherfucker with a bad attitude, which are only two of the many reasons that he and I don’t get along. Like I said, he thinks he’s God’s gift overall, and I think he’s a first class asshole.
The uniformed cop was a rookie. I
had seen him around a few times but I didn’t really know him.
As they approached me I could tell by the way Guidry was hobbling, that
his feet, made flat by walking the street beat for so many years, were really
giving him trouble. When he got
close enough to see me standing next to the Lincoln, he formed a contemptuous
sneer on his face that could have meant either hate or happiness; his hate for
me or his happiness at seeing me in this situation.
I know that someday, if the two of us keep brushing shoulders, I’m
going to smear that sneer of his, and smear it right off his fucking face.
“Well, well, well. I’ll
be damned,” he muttered. “If it
isn’t Rick Stevens, the world’s most fearless private detective.
Just can’t keep your nose clean can you?
What is it this time? You
been in the bottle?”
“Can it, fat head,” I said. “This isn’t what you think it is. Some guy just tried to pop me. I’m lucky to be standing here talking to you.”
I took a step back and then leaned back another. If the size of Guidry’s nose was any indication of its smelling abilities all could be lost. My body was still trying to chemically process all of the hooch I’d had to drink in the past twenty-four hours, and I knew that I must smell like a gin mill. If Guidry thought he could stick me with a DUI he’d be fucking deliriously ecstatic.
“Well I’m glad someone was lucky.” He said it with an annoying syrupy tone that made me feel like he really didn’t mean it.
As a general rule, I’m a pretty patient person, but Guidry possesses an inherent talent for trying that patience. He is especially good at it because he does it purposely. In legalese, that means with intent and malice aforethought. In short, I think he gets his jollies pissing me off. I was trying as best I could to hold on to the last few strands of my self-control. But alas, as hard as I tried, this evening’s events were just too much to cope with. I lost it. I stepped up real close to Guidry, disregarding the stench of booze I took with me. Our faces were almost touching when I growled, “Guidry, you bastard! You dumb ignorant bastard! Someday I’m going to mash that huge beak you call a nose all over your goddamned face!” His eyes only blinked and the sneer never wavered but remained pasted on his thick lips. He didn’t rattle easily.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see his companion nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other, not knowing for sure what he should do. His movements were animated as he started toward where we were standing. His lower jaw was gaping and his mouth was in contention for being the biggest opening seen tonight, considering I’d seen St. Peter in the muzzle of that blunderbuss which had taken out the windows of my car and almost me with them. That is a slight stretch, but he did look befuddled.
Guidry took a step back after my short tirade, then, reached for me as he spoke. “All right, Stevens, you son of a bitch, let’s go!” He glanced at the rookie patrolman who had just managed to get his mouth shut, but who still appeared wide-eyed from all the current happenings, and snapped, “Freddie, you drive. Me and Mr. Stevens will ride in the back.”
Me in the back seat with Guidry? No fucking way. He would love to get me in the back seat with him. That way, if I even looked at him the wrong way or made an innocent move like to scratch my crotch or something, he’d have all the excuse he’d need to beat the shit out of me.
My jostle with Guidry had taken maybe two or three minutes. Four max. During this time Dan had been ambling around the scene snapping pictures. I mention this only because as I glanced over at Dan, who was now coming back to the police car, Guidry jerked hard on my right arm. As I spun my head around he jerked again, a little harder this time and snarled “Goddamn you Stevens; I said let’s go! I’m taking your ass in. I’m tired of fucking with you.”
Now to give you a little insight into part of my hidden personality, if there is something that really riles the shit out of me, it’s being pushed around by some cop who thinks he can take advantage of his salary-paying public. Alfonse Guidry is a cop who’s like that. Unfortunately, the NOPD has more than their fair share of pricks like Sergeant Guidry. I roughly snatched my arm away from his grasp and mimicked his stupid sneer as I said, “Keep your goddamned hands off the threads, you tub of shit!”
His apathetic sneer turned into a triumphant smile as he reached for me again. “This is just what I’ve always wanted on you, Stevens. Now you’re going to top it all off by adding resisting arrest to the rest of the shit I’m going to charge you with. This must be my lucky day!”
Son of a bitch! How I hated this asshole. I knew what I was about to do was wrong and could possibly get me into a ton of trouble; maybe even cost me my license. I didn’t really want to do it. Yes, I did. You bet your ass I wanted to do it. Dan saw what was about to happen and got his camera up just as my overhand right caught Guidry flush on the nose. Always before, only the urge, but now, reality. It mashed! As the blow landed the entire area was illuminated by the bright resplendence of Dan’s camera flash, and for an instant, I was blinded. Slowly my vision returned. When I regained my sight and my surroundings were discernable, I saw that blood had gone everywhere, Guidry had gone down, and Freddie had gone white. The fact that Freddie had gone white was the most startling, though, because you see, the rookie cop was black.
Dan and I went over to the squad car and got into the back seat. Since the time the police arrived, Dan hadn’t said a word. Now he looked over at me with a broad panoramic smile and said, “Beautiful, Rick. Absolutely spectacular.”
I faked a half-assed smile back at him, although I was thinking that I might have blown it really good this time. Too late. I stuck my head out the car window and called to Freddie, who was still trying desperately to get Sergeant Guidry on his feet,
“Central lockup if you please.”
No One Left To Burn may be found Here!
Biography | Reviews | Guest Book | Links | Contact
Copyright © 2003 [BondDesign]. All rights reserved.
