Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 128, No. 5. Whole No. 783, November 2006

Sneaky Pete from Bourbon Street by John Edward Ames

Michigan-born John Edward Ames has lived in New Orleans since 1986. Under his own name and several pen names he has written 61 novels, the latest of which (writing as USA Today bestseller Ralph Compton) is Deadwood Gulch, a frontier mystery from Signet (11/06). He returned to NOLA only seven weeks after Katrina to find that his apartment in the heart of town was mercifully spared most of the storm’s wrath.

I’ve gone to school on you, Mr. Sloan,” Justin Breaux assured his visitor, extending a welcoming hand across the bar. “I’m told you rate aces high.”

Reno Sloan gripped the bartender’s hand. It felt moist and gummy, and seemed to peel away when he let go of it. And no wonder — the August day was still, hot, and humid, the trees motionless as paintings, and only the dark half of the Ragin’ Cajun Club appeared to be properly air-conditioned.

“Spot of the giant killer?” Breaux added. “It’s on the house.”

“Vodka martini,” Reno decided. “I’d prefer beer, but once I hit forty it started going right to the waistline.”

He cast his eye around the French Quarter barroom while Breaux mixed the cocktail. The bon ton of New Orleans didn’t hang around here, mostly tourists and French Quarter habitués. The décor consisted mainly of regal purple and gold hangings, the official colors of Mardi Gras, and photos of local musicians who’d gone national.

Breaux set the drink in front of Reno on a napkin. “What I called you about, Mr. Sloan, is a homicide.”

Reno hesitated for the space of a few heartbeats. “Homicide? That can get tricky for a private investigator. If it’s still an open case, the D.A. can have my license pulled for obstruction.”

Breaux shook his head. “This one’s in the books, far as the police are concerned. My brother’s a cop in the Sixth District, he poked into it pretty good.”

“Who was killed?”

“Fellow named Peter D’Antoni.”

“I can’t place the name.”

Breaux crossed his arms over his chest. “No reason why you should. The first impression he gave was — well, have you ever known one of these whining sad sacks who’s been stood up by life? Poor guy had some mental problems, and he was antisocial in a big way. He earned a nickname on Bourbon Street — everybody called him Sneaky Pete.”

Sloan raised inquisitive brows. “Not exactly a flattering handle.”

“He always kept to himself,” Breaux explained, “and he hardly ever went out of his place until everyone else was off the street. He didn’t know about life on the treadmill — nobody was even sure how he made his living except me. See, he lived in the apartment over this bar, and his mail was delivered down here. Pete got a disability check every month from Social Security.”

“When and where was he killed?”

Breaux pointed overhead. “Little over a month ago, right upstairs in that four-room walk-up. Same place he lived in for the last twenty years.”

“Have you known him all that time?”

“Only ten years of it.”

Reno asked the bartender, “You’re sure the death was ruled a homicide?”

“According to my brother, that was never in doubt. Pete was shot once through the heart, probably as he answered his door. And there was no gun found in the apartment, so it wasn’t suicide.”

“All right, so NOPD nosed it and couldn’t find the killer. No offense, Justin, but what’s the percentage for you? It’s not usual for anyone except family to hire a P.I. and nose into a murder cops have closed out.”

Breaux’s mouth quirked, not quite a grin. “I sense more than I can explain, okay? Actually, I tried to investigate it myself — you know, on the Internet with those P.I. services? I found no family or known associates. Pete never owned a car, never had a driver’s license or criminal record, never even had a phone — the only paper trail he left was his utility bills. As for my interest in the matter...”

Breaux shrugged a shoulder. “I got a wife and three kids, and without them I’d go nuts. Pete had nobody, and I was the best — probably the only — friend he had. We’re open all night here, and he’d come down sometimes toward sunrise when it was slow. We’d talk. He wasn’t sneaky, just shy and messed up.”

Breaux moved down the bar to make change for a customer who disappeared into one of the video poker booths.

“I’m also thinking,” he resumed when he returned, “how Pete could have been rich if he’d had an ounce of business sense. I think he was one of those... idiot... you know...”

“Idiot savants?” Reno suggested.

“Yeah, that’s it. Just a second.”

Breaux did a deep kneebend and rummaged on a shelf beneath the register. When he turned around he laid a cheap composition book in front of Reno. “If you decide to take this case,” he said, “you’ll want to read a good chunk of this. Read a couple of pages now.”

While the bartender filled a few more orders, Reno did. It was all neatly printed in purple ink. The work was fiction, and the heavy emphasis on looks, clothing, and turbulent emotions soon identified it as romance.

“You sure Pete wrote this?” he asked Breaux. “I don’t read the bodice-ripper stuff, but my ex did and I used to look at it to get her idea of a real man. Ask me, this reads more like it was copied from a published book.”

Breaux’s grin of expectation upgraded itself to a victory smile. “You think so too, huh? Hell yes, Pete wrote it — in the wee hours he used to fill dozens of notebooks like this sitting right here at the bar. This is one he asked me to keep. Romance novels were the only books he read — three or four a week, he claimed. His apartment’s stacked full of them.”

“How ‘bout the notebooks — they still up there?”

Breaux’s smile melted like a snowflake on a river. “The cops thought I was the landlord and let me go up there. The only notebooks were blank. But this is why I’m suspicious — I watched Pete fill up those notebooks and then, as regular as the equinox, take them with him to the post office. Where was he sending them?”

Reno read a few more paragraphs. One sentence especially impressed him and he read it aloud: “ ‘Hers was a more subtle, sloe-eyed beauty that left glowing retinal afterimages when he closed his eyes.’ ”

He looked at Breaux. “Has the apartment been cleaned out yet?”

Breaux shook his head. “Landlord lives in Lafayette. Hasn’t got around to it yet.”

Reno said, “There’s no proof that Pete’s notebooks are linked to his murder, but I’ll shake a few bushes and see what falls out.”

The first indigo traces of evening colored the sky in feathery fingers by the time Reno retrieved his Jeep Commander from the U-Park-It on Decatur. He did his best thinking while behind the wheel, so he spent the next half-hour cruising St. Charles Avenue, just dogging the streetcars and trying to let some daylight in on the life and death of one Peter “Sneaky Pete” D’Antoni. Unlike police detectives, who were steeped in the inductive method and gathered a ton of information to obtain a pound of conclusions, Reno applied Occam’s razor to crime detection — keep the theories as simple as possible. Genius, he reminded himself, is the ability to see what’s been there all along.

I sense more than I can explain. Despite understanding what Breaux meant, Reno still had too little information. He swept right, onto Broadway, and bisected the Tulane fraternity ghetto, picking up Freret Street and heading downtown again. Lights blazed a halo over the French Quarter by the time Reno started up the rubber-runnered stairs behind the Ragin’ Cajun. All he had to sweat, he realized at a glance, was a conventional lock at least twenty years old. He dug the key ring full of copper shims out of his hip pocket and went to work on the mechanism. In thirty seconds the tumbler surrendered with a metallic snick.

Night heat was more suffocating, especially in New Orleans, and someone had closed and fastened the wooden shutters, turning the small apartment into a sweatbox. For a moment he stood just inside the door, listening. Only the wheezy rattle of a dying fridge and the distant sissing of water in pipes. He moved farther inside and detected the musty smell of old dust and lingering food odors.

He slapped at a light switch and sent a quick glance around to acclimate himself. The dingy little walkup cried out for painting, plastering, and paper-hanging, but was at least orderly. Even the waist-high stacks of romance novels that overflowed several large bookcases and lined every wall were neatly aligned.

Reno moved through a doorless archway into what was intended as a small dining room. However, D’Antoni had evidently used it as a reading room — a blue chintz easy chair was surrounded by more stacks of books, all romance paperbacks. The minimalist kitchen contained a ‘fifties-era refrigerator, a four-burner stove, and an ancient soapstone sink.

He popped open cabinets and pulled out drawers but found nothing that seemed useful. Reno rolled a seven, however, when he poked through the small bedroom that opened off the front room. He found a USPS Express Mail receipt tucked into a ceramic vase. The writing on the customer’s copy had faded, but he could make out the date: June 19, 2002. It was the address, however, that instantly focused his mind:

Reno read Gambit and other local media aimed at the culture vultures, and he recognized the name of Social Registerite Lydia Collins, a lawyer turned literary agent who was said to be the éminence grise behind some successful local writers. His reaction to the name was less a clear idea than a premonitory tingle. By the time he’d locked up and headed back to his car, however, the tingle had become a hunch.

“I confess I’m somewhat intrigued, Mr. Sloan,” Lydia Collins said as she led Reno into a salon featuring Regency furnishings and an Italian marble fireplace. “Why would a private investigator be interested in our writing group’s annual romance-fiction contest? I don’t normally associate it with hugger-mugger and derring-do.”

Reno got a good look at her in the afternoon sunlight. She was an attractive mid-forties, with honey-blond hair and lovely arching eyebrows. She wore a cool sleeveless dress of crème de menthe silk.

“It’s probably just a fishing trip,” he admitted. “I’ve been hired to look into the death — murder, I should say — of Peter D’Antoni, a longtime French Quarter resident.”

“Murder? And am I a suspect?” There was a teasing lilt in her voice. “That’s delicious.”

Reno ignored her lame remark. “You’ve heard of Mr. D’Antoni?” he essayed again.

“Not that I recall. Has someone suggested otherwise?”

“I understand that, a few years ago, he submitted some romance fiction to you as an entry for a writing contest.”

“Perhaps he did,” Lydia replied. “These contests are sponsored by local chapters of our national group, and open to anyone. The number of submissions is staggering.”

“Just curious: What happens to them after they’re read?”

“If a stamped envelope is enclosed, we send them back. If not, I shred them.”

“I suppose that not many men submit.”

“Of course not. Bear in mind it’s not a genre most men can master — or would want to.”

Reno kept his voice carefully neutral. “But if that atypical man had strong talent, and a woman were to submit his work, she could hold the keys to the mint, right?”

“I do believe you’re fencing with me, Mr. Sloan. I was hoping we might get along — you make an exciting first impression. Now you’re spoiling it.”

“I can’t help my manners. My father taught me that politeness is a form of weakness.”

Her laugh was pleasantly musical. “See why most men can’t master the romance genre? But you can’t be seriously suggesting that I — what? Stole this deceased gentleman’s writing and sold it as my own?”

“I’m not even hinting at it,” he assured her. “Just fishing. You wouldn’t need to sell it as your own. You were an attorney; you could easily create a persona to cash checks and so forth.”

She gave him a pitying look. “What about the inevitable phone calls from New York editors, many of whom know me and my voice? What about the jacket photo and local interviews? You’re out of your element, Mr. Sloan.”

Reno wasn’t sure if that odd contortion of her mouth was meant as a smile. If so, it wilted at his next remark. “All of those problems you just mentioned would evaporate, right, if one of your published authors submitted the work as her own?”

Until that moment Lydia Collins had treated his visit as the cocktails-and-gossip hour. Now, however, her face closed like a vault door. When she replied, her nuance of tone was colder than the words. “I trust you can find your own way out?”

Reno headed down St. Charles toward the Quarter, braking for the noontime gaggle streaming into Audubon Park. He wasn’t at all confident he was on the right track — like a sloppy scientific theory, his suspicion of Lydia Collins raised more questions than it answered.

He ate lunch in an oyster house on Bienville, reading more from D’Antoni’s composition book and contrasting it to a bestselling romance novel he’d picked up at a drugstore. The unpublished fragment, in his uninformed opinion, left the bestseller in the dust.

He retraced his route along St. Charles, again wondering if going with his first lead was hampering this case. The lack of any other leads seemed like a mountain in his path. Justin Breaux was still in the mix — a Bourbon Street bartender could clear five hundred a night in tips, but why spend more than half that on a gumshoe’s fee to possibly solve the murder of a mere acquaintance?

Since his divorce three years earlier Reno had rented the left half of a clinker-built shotgun duplex on Cherokee Street, half hidden in a lush riot of banana plants. A few moments on the Internet turned up a Web site for the Collins Literary Agency. Several of her more prominent local writers were named, and Reno took special interest in a Garden District resident named Samantha Maitland. Based on the amount of copy devoted to her, she was one of Lydia’s divas.

Not only was Samantha Maitland listed in the Uptown Directory, she readily agreed to speak with Reno that evening. That sparked his curiosity — he expected Lydia would have called her local clients by now and declared him toxic waste to be avoided.

The writer lived on Harmony Street in the Garden District, a roomy pink stucco with a facade of Spanish tile. Reno eased into the drive, chunks of white marble gnashing under the Jeep’s tires. He parked and followed a cobblestone walkway around to the front porch. The yard lights were generous, and his eyes swept over the immaculate beds of African violets and gardenias, the lawn trimmed as taut as the green baize surface of a card table.

He crossed a marble-flagged vestibule and pressed the smooth nacre button of the doorbell, hearing atonal chimes sound within. Again self-doubt assailed him — it seemed absurd, surrounded by all these accouterments of wealth and upbringing, to associate Uptown mansions with the dingy little walk-up on Bourbon.

The door swung open, and Reno was caught flat-footed — instead of a maid in crisp linen, the woman smiling at him wore a white flounce-bottom skirt and matching jacket, open-toed pumps, and delicate gold butterfly earrings. She was a seraph-faced beauty in her early thirties, with liquid brown eyes and ginger hair coiled in a tight Psyche knot.

“You must be Reno Sloan,” she greeted him. “But I was so hoping you’d be wearing a snappy fedora with a rakish brim. I’ve always wanted to say to a real private eye, ‘What’s the grift, hawkshaw?’”

Reno threw back his head and laughed. “Well, you just did, Miss Maitland.”

“Technically it’s Mrs.,” she corrected him as she led Reno down an oak-floored hall. “My husband and I are separated. A mésalliance, as they say. By the way — I noticed your surprise when I answered the door myself. You see, according to my agent, I’m paperwork rich but pocket poor.”

She led him into a parlor off the hallway. Sheer curtains and brocade overdrapes covered the windows, and needlework tapestries done in fine Elizabethan tent stitch adorned the walls.

“As a matter of fact, I spoke with Lydia Collins earlier today,” Reno remarked. “Not about you, of course.”

“Oh? You two spoke about the man you mentioned to me on the phone — Peter D’Antoni?”

Reno nodded. She waved him into a comfortable leather chair and settled herself on a loveseat in the embrasure of a window.

“I’m sorry he was murdered,” she said, “but I’m sure I never met the man.”

He nodded again. “I didn’t think so. Mainly, I hoped to solicit your expert opinion on some writing — romance writing.”

He started to rise so he could give her the composition book in his left hand. But she stole a march on him, crossing to his chair, taking the book, and flumping down onto a velvet hassock a few feet away, one hand smoothing her skirt. After reading perhaps ten pages she looked up at Reno, eyes bright with roiled emotions. “This is simply superb. I’ve had twelve romances published, three of them bestsellers, and this makes me jealous. Is the author local?”

“He was. Pete D’Antoni evidently wrote this. And it’s possible he entered this, or other samples of his work, in the local romance writing contest.”

“Oh my... so that’s why you spoke with Lydia?”

“Yeah.” Samantha made no effort to leave the nearby hassock, and her proximity made Reno feel a tight bubble rising in his chest. “I wanted her to read this, too, but I managed to insult her and she tossed me.”

Samantha giggled. “Well, Lydia is certainly no saint, but it’s just impossible to think she could be involved in any serious crime such as murder. She’s been too busy with her agency and her own writing — I take it she mentioned to you that she recently sold her own first romance after years of selling them for others?”

“Actually, no. How recently?”

Samantha’s eyes widened and she aimed an entreating gaze at Reno. “Oh, don’t get me wrong! It was sold several months ago, but it was definitely her writing. I adore her, but she’s not a first-rate talent when it comes to writing fiction. I read the entire manuscript, and it simply can’t match this writing you brought tonight. In fact, Lydia sold her book to a fairly obscure publishing house for a very modest advance.”

Samantha fell silent, watching her visitor. “Did you speak,” she finally added, “with the other contest judge?”

“There are two?”

“Until last year, yes. A former client of Lydia’s helped out.”

“But D’Antoni’s submission was sent to your agent,” Reno pointed out.

“They all are, to keep things simple. Lydia gave half of them to Susan Gray. She lives up near Riverbend. She no longer writes.”

“Burnout?”

Samantha’s heart-shaped lips pressed into a frown. “No, legal distractions. She’s had recent difficulties with the IRS, something about hiding assets, as well as two civil suits for plagiarism.”

“She’s a romance writer?”

“That’s debatable,” Samantha replied. “I know my claws are showing, but I’ve never liked her. She likes to ‘set off whispers,’ as they say, and her on-the-make husband would seduce a Vestal Virgin. She’s more flashy than talented, and the male love interests in her fiction are too much like her real-life husband James: solitary men with cold manners. Her ‘love’ scenes are mere mechanical descriptions devoid of warmth or feeling.”

“How recently was she still a client of Lydia’s?”

“Until last spring. Susan fired her after a royalty dispute. I don’t know any details.”

Upstairs a child cried. “Thanks for your time, Mrs. Maitland,” Reno said as he stood up. “I’ll let myself out.”

New Orleans was called the Crescent City because it was situated on the first of two large bends in the Mississippi River. The second bend formed the suburban Riverbend area, and Reno noticed signs of old money everywhere. But the fine old houses and crumbling slate curbs had the patina of faded glory.

James and Susan Gray lived on Panola Street in a two-story house of vine-covered stone. Neglected crape myrtles languished in the strip of side yard. Based on what Samantha had told him last evening about the couple’s legal troubles, Reno had decided on a drop-by instead of a phone call. He eased into the crushed-shell cul-de-sac out front and was halfway across the lawn when the front door opened.

A tall, broad-shouldered man in a seawater-blue silk robe bent to scoop up a newspaper. He had a handsome but despotic face under a thatch of unruly, sand-colored hair.

“Mr. James Gray?” Reno inquired.

“Since birth. Who and what are you?”

“The name’s Reno Sloan. I’m a private investigator. I wonder if I might speak with your wife?”

“Ahh, the fog lifts. You’re here about the so-called plagiarism charges—”

“I’m not. No charges are involved. Is your wife home?”

His mouth curled into a sneer. “You’re out of luck, shamus. She’s disporting herself abroad. We take separate vacations.”

Reno glanced past him. All he could see was a short hallway with a large Chinese vase on a teakwood base.

“I can’t invite you in,” Gray added. “I have company downstairs, and at the moment she’s in dishabille.”

“You pick odd times to read the paper.”

“Bottle it, Sloan. Unlike a lowly security guard, you don’t even have a badge.”

Reno spread his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I just have a few questions. Maybe you could help me?”

“Normally I’d just toss you, but I’m curious to know what Susan has done now. That woman can ride out any scandal, but I worry about the legal costs. Fire away.”

“I understand your wife used to be one of the judges for a local writing contest?”

“Writing contest? Hell, she paid a Tulane grad student to read that dreck.”

“Did she ever have dealings with a man named Peter D’Antoni?” Reno asked.

“She’s had dealings with plenty of men, so I can’t say no. First I’ve heard of him, though.”

“Has she ever employed a ghostwriter?”

“Possibly. She’s a lazy wench. If so, she kept it secret from me.”

Reno suddenly felt weary. James Gray’s sneering attitude boiled down to one word: whatever.

“Well,” he told Gray, “back to the salt mines. Thanks for your time.”

The second time Reno stopped by the Maitland residence, in the middle of the afternoon two days after his first visit, a young black woman with stiffly sculpted hair answered the door.

“May I speak with Mrs. Maitland?” he inquired. “My name is—”

“Hello, Mr. Sloan!” Samantha’s voice called from the hallway. “It’s all right, Yolanda, please let the gentleman in.”

The maid disappeared into the bowels of the big house while Samantha led him into the side parlor. She wore matching white khaki shirt and shorts and a rose-colored sun hat.

“I notice you didn’t answer the door yourself this time,” Reno observed as he sank into the soft leather chair. “Is there a secret hall porter, too?”

Her playful tone implied he was a naughty thing. “Did I ever once say I don’t employ a maid? She’s off at five P.M.”

A mechanical smile was the best he could muster.

“Was your visit with Susan Gray productive?” she asked.

“I didn’t talk to her.”

“You didn’t—? But why?”

“Because you were using her as a smoke screen to throw me off and buy a little time — maybe to leave the country.”

An ugly constriction of her mouth transformed her into another woman. “I should throw you out, but I confess I’m curious to hear your ‘evidence’ for such a conclusion.”

“To begin with, no one has ever confused my mug with Fabio’s. Yet you and Lydia both came on to me. And both of you were dressed to the nines to receive a lowly keyhole peeper.”

Her confidence was back. “What did you expect — a riding crop and handcuffs?”

“Both you and Lydia,” he pressed on, ignoring her, “were too willing, and quick, to see me. Nobody has to talk to a private dick, and in my experience it’s often the guilty parties who are most eager to cooperate and create the illusion of innocence.”

“This isn’t evidence!”

“Not in court, but it works for me. Another thing — within thirty seconds of meeting me, you described yourself as ‘paperwork rich but pocket poor.’ If that were true, you’d hardly parade the fact — especially as a writer with a public image to maintain.”

“Good luck proving anything in court,” she lashed out. “All this is so thin it’s not even circumstantial.”

“This is a bit more damning,” Reno replied, pulling a paperback titled Cypress Nights from a back pocket and flipping it open. “My ex is one of your biggest fans, she loaned this to me. Here’s what first caught my eye: ‘Hers was a more subtle, sloe-eyed beauty that left glowing retinal afterimages when he closed his eyes.’ ”

He looked up at her. “I figure he mailed all the tablets to you, but he must have copied one for proof. The first forty pages of Cypress Nights are almost verbatim from Pete’s composition book. His handwriting can be factually established, and it will do no good to say he copied it from your published book — forensics can date the drying of ink to within a few days.”

The lull after he fell silent became painful, then excruciating. The color ebbed from her face.

“Even if you manage to ruin my career by proving D’Antoni wrote some of my novel,” she finally replied, “it doesn’t prove I killed him.”

“No, but I suspect that gun making a bulge in the side of your handbag might. Amateur killers seldom bother to get rid of murder weapons. And before you try to douse my light, just a warning: Under my shirt there’s a .45 automatic in an armpit holster.”

A haggard slump of her shoulders was Samantha’s only visible response. When Reno fished the nickel-plated.38 snubby from her bag, she suddenly collapsed into a wing chair, her face bloodless.

“I tell people my husband and I are split up,” she said as if the words were being wrenched out of her. “In truth, he left me for an ‘actress’ in L.A. I was devastated, I couldn’t write, and I had just signed a three-book contract worth almost a half-million dollars. Lydia only showed me D’Antoni’s work — a sort of nudge. It was I who looked him up from the address on his submission.”

She sent Reno a pleading glance. “It was only meant as a desperate stopgap until I could get my muse back. I never expected such success. D’Antoni already had several entire novels, so I typed one into my computer and my editor raved over it. I bought two more — all three made the Times list.”

“I take it you paid him?”

She blushed to the roots of her hair. “Yes, but just barely enough to salve my conscience. He didn’t seem to value his work all that much, and I feared that paying him too much would, well, tip him off.”

“That’ll earn you jewels in heaven,” Reno barbed.

“My efforts didn’t matter. He became aware of the books’ success and got quite upset with me.”

“And instead of just brooming him, you had to kill him?”

“Yes,” she said emphatically. “It wasn’t the money, he didn’t care. He wanted recognition for his work. Even if he couldn’t have proved he wrote the books, I couldn’t risk being linked to such an... unromantic figure. And if he could prove authorship I would have been devastated financially — ghostwriters can be kept secret from readers, but never from editors. I would have been forced to pay every dollar back.”

Reno tapped the number of the Sixth District police headquarters into his cell. Before he sent the call he met Samantha’s eyes. “You may decide to fight this. But there’s a good chance Lydia will be charged in a conspiracy and turn state’s evidence, adding stronger motive to the forensics evidence. It’s a lead-pipe cinch that most juries will be hostile to a rich, prominent woman who grinds up a man as poor and maladjusted as Pete D’Antoni. Just remember: Plead guilty and there’s no jury.”

Reno sent the number. While the phone burred, he glanced outside through the parlor windows and watched the rapid onsweep of dark clouds. The mother of all storms was said to be gathering strength out in the Gulf and might even be drawing a bead on New Orleans. It’ll blow past us, Reno thought idly. They usually do.

Copyright © 2006 John Edward Ames