Murder in the Rue Ursulines

Chapter Thirteen

Since the levee failure, granted, I hadn’t gone out to the bars in the Quarter much-just on special occasions, like Halloween, Southern Decadence, Mardi Gras, New Year’s, and so on. But I always stuck to the Fruit Loop-the bars ringing the area of St. Ann and Bourbon. There are five bars there, the loop stretching from Rawhide to Good Friends to Bourbon Pub and Oz to Café Lafitte in Exile. We call it the Fruit Loop because they’re all so close together they’re easy to walk between. One bar bores you-you grab your drink and head to another one. Though there are about ten more gay bars spread throughout the French Quarter, I never really went to any of the others with a great degree of frequency back when I used to go out pretty regularly.

The Brass Rail was one of those bars further up in the Quarter, on Burgundy Street near Canal. I’d been there a few times, but not since the levee failure. It was a small place on a corner, dimly lit on the inside, and its main attraction was the boys dancing on the bar. And when I say boys, I mean young men who look as though they’re barely legal. Every time I’d been in there, I’d wanted to ask the dancers for ID.

It was frequented by older men, who would perch on bar stools and give the dancers dollars in exchange for groping. I also suspected, that if the price was right, the boys would make their bodies available in private. They also sold lap dances, leading the patron to a darkened room with booths in the back of the bar. I always felt sorry for the young men, who often looked as if they were from small towns and working class backgrounds. It was different there from the other bars, where the dancers had thickly muscled bodies and seemed to be dancing out of choice. The boys at the Rail struck me as doing it because they didn’t have many other options. It might be all in my head, but I sensed a sadness to them, and I found myself wondering what they would be like in five years-where they would be, what they would be doing when they got too old for the Rail patrons.

It also made me sad to know that these boys could make more money working there than they could anywhere else.

The dancers usually started their show around nine on Friday nights, and the highlight of the evening was a dance contest judged by three people in the audience who were selected by the drag queen hostess of the evening. The winner got $100.

Even that seemed sad to me-given what they had to do to win. The more skin they showed, the higher the likelihood of getting that hundred dollar bill. So they would pull their underwear down and reveal their butts. They always danced in underwear, which made me feel like I’d stumbled into a high school slumber party.

At eight-thirty, I found a parking place, and walked up Burgundy Street. The Quarter was fairly empty. The Mardi Gras tourists were long gone and the vast majority of New Orleanians were honoring Lent. It was a two-week season of rest for the city until the NBA All-Star game would bring more hordes of tourists and their money into town like the plague. I hadn’t heard from Paige. I’d spent the rest of the day after getting home from the gym doing more on-line research on Karen Zorn, to no avail. There just wasn’t much about her to find out. She’d vanished off the face of the earth. Her mother still hadn’t e-mailed or faxed the photograph, either.

It probably didn’t matter, anyway. Most likely, she was dead and her body would never be found.

I had also thought about calling Venus and telling her about Joey, but what could I really tell her? That I was now convinced he was the guy I’d seen coming out of Glynis’s house? I’d also been pretty convinced it was Freddy Bliss, and without proof, my word meant nothing. I needed something a little more concrete than that to take to Venus and Blaine. And it did occur to me he might be more willing to tell what he knew to another gay man than to a police officer.

The cops probably weren’t very welcome at the Brass Rail.

I paid my five-dollar cover to the big tattooed guy working the door, and walked into the bar. It consisted of two rooms-the big main room with the rectangular bar, and the seedy, dark, smaller back room where the dancers took their patrons. There were only about ten customers, all looking to be over fifty, seated on stools around the bar. Two young men with that scrawny underfed look the Rail patrons liked were walking around in boots and white underwear. As I watched, one of them stopped by one of the customers, who put a hand on his ass. The older man put his hand down the front of the dancer’s underwear, and the dancer looked over to me with a bored expression on his face. Finally, the patron tired of groping him, handed him a five, and turned back to his drink. I took a seat at the bar and ordered a bottle of Bud Lite from the bartender. “What time does the show start?” I asked as I passed him a ten.

“Supposed to start around ten.” He replied, sliding my change across the bar. He was in his early thirties, I judged, and a Cajun, with bluish black hair, blue eyes, and tattoos running up and down his bare arms. “But Floretta’s not even here yet.” He rolled his eyes. “Probably can’t find her coke dealer. And you know no drag queen can go on without her nose full of candy.”

I laughed and watched the young man who’d been groped jump up on the bar and start dancing. He was short, maybe about five-six on a good day, and had one of those silly looking hair-styles called a ‘faux hawk’, where the hair is gelled to stand up in the middle of his head like a Mohawk. It was a look I hated, which also made me feel like I was a hundred years old-one step away from saying Kids these days! He had some acne scattered over his face, and despite the big smile plastered on his face he moved his hands up and down his torso. He couldn’t quite hide the sadness on his face. He was cute in a boyish kind of way, with thick red lips, a prominent nose and big brown eyes.

He saw me looking at him and licked his lips, tilting his head down in what was probably supposed to be a seductive pose, pinched both of his dime-sized nipples and then made his way over to where I was seated. He squatted down in front of me, his crotch about six inches from my face. I wondered if he had stuffed his crotch, but then realized if patrons put their hands down there, he couldn’t. He leaned his head down to me, and said, “Hi. I’m Adonis.” He touched his forehead to mine.

That was another thing I hated about the Rail. I don’t like being touched unless I invite it. At the other bars, the strippers didn’t touch you until you lured them in with a dollar bill in your hand-which was how I liked it. At the Rail, the dancers felt free to touch you at any time. But I needed information, so I was going to have to put up with it. And I was going to have to tip big. There might be some kind of dancer’s code barring them from talking about each other. If that was the case, I’d have to find one with a grudge against Joey.

“Chanse,” I replied as he brushed his lips against my cheek. Somehow, I doubted his parents had named him Adonis. He had a thick Mississippi accent, crooked teeth, and reeked of cigaretttes and vodka. He actually pronounced it Uh-DAWN-ees. But he was cute-if not the kind of looker a goddess from Mount Olympus would fall in love with. I doubted he even knew who the original Adonis was.

“Nice to meet you,” he replied in what I assume was meant to be a coy voice. “You out looking for a good time, tonight? You want me to show you one?” He tilted his head down to one side. He was definitely trying for coy and shy. The effect was spoiled by his tired, sad eyes.

I shifted on my stool, pulling out my wallet and slipping out a twenty. “No, not really, although I’m sure you could definitely show me one.”

His eyes lit up at the sight of the bill. “You want a lap dance, sexy?” He moved his hips a little bit.

“No, what I want is some information.”

His eyes narrowed a bit. “You undercover vice?”

“No.” I took the twenty and rubbed the edge of it over his right nipple. “No, I’m just looking for some information. I can get it from you-“ I gestured to the other end of the bar, where a young Hispanic guy was dancing in red Unico briefs, “or I’ll get it from him or one of the other guys. It’s up to you. What do you say?” I felt a little nauseous about what I was doing. How much money did these kids make if a twenty got one of them so damned excited? And a lap dance for twenty dollars?

Maybe I was crazy, but that didn’t seem like very much for what you got.

“What kind of information?” He licked his lips. “I know all kinds of things.”

“I want to know about one of the other dancers. A guy named Joey.” I brushed the twenty against his nipple again. “You know him?”

“Oh, her.” He hissed the words. “What do you want to know about that bitch?” He scooted closer to me. Now his crotch was so close to my face I could smell his sweat. “I’m a lot more fun than she is.”

“Whatever you can tell me.” I tried not to recoil from him. I hated when gay men referred to other gay men with feminine pronouns. But I’d hoped to find one with a grudge, and I’d hit pay dirt.

“She’s a bitch.” He shrugged. “Says she’s from a Garden District family that threw her out when she came out. Bullshit is what that is. I might be just a small-town boy from Mississippi, but I know a yat accent when I hear one. She’s from da parish. Acts likes she’s better than all of us. Thinks her shit don’t stink.” He smiled at me. “We call her Hollywood, because she always says she looks like a movie star, and she’s going to go out there and be a big star.” He spat the words out. “She ain’t going to be no movie star. She ain’t that pretty.” He shrugged his thin shoulders. “I’m just as pretty as she is.” He gave me another lewd smile.

“Does he do drugs?”

“Honey, we all do drugs.” He reached into his sock and pulled out a crumpled cigarette. He lit it with a match from the bar. “That one-she’ll do pretty much anything for money, I can guarantee you that. And she don’t discriminate. You name it, she’ll do it. Me, I’ve got standards.” He pinched one of his nostrils closed and made an exaggerated sniff. “If it goes up your nose, Joey will do it. Coke, crystal, K, she does it all.”

I couldn’t help myself, I had to ask. “You have standards?”

“I only do pot. And just because I let these dirty old men touch me for money doesn’t mean I’m a whore.” He gestured with his cigarette. “I ain’t no whore, like Joey. I only do lap dances for guys I’m into. Like you.” He leered at me. “You sure you don’t want one? I can make you come in your pants.”

How appealing. “Do you know where he lives?”

“She shares a shotgun in the Marigny over on Touro Street with some of the other guys.” He shrugged. “They’re about ready to throw her ass out. She owes them money.”

“He working tonight?”

“She’s in the dressing room right now.” He made a face. “Joey don’t ever miss a Friday night. She’s won the contest three weeks in a row.” He gave me a nasty smile. “It all goes up her nose, though.”

“Thanks.” I handed him the twenty. He smiled and put it in his sock, rising in one fluid movement. He moved away to a man about sixty a few stools down from me. I heard him introduce himself, and turned my head away as the older man slid his hands into the front of Adonis’ underwear.

I wasn’t really sure what my plan was when Joey popped up on the bar. I thought about going to the dressing room, seeing if I could get in there-but that might have the opposite effect from what I wanted.

I doubted very seriously that this kid had killed Glynis Parrish; it didn’t make any kind of sense. Would anyone commit a high-profile murder like that and then show up for a shift as a dancer at the Brass Rail? But then, it didn’t make any sense that a dancer from the Brass Rail was coming out of Glynis’s house around the time of the murder, either.

Bizarre scenarios flew through my mind as I nursed the beer and watched two new dancers climb up on the bar. Maybe he was Glynis’s drug connection-although that didn’t make much sense, either. Nobody had ever said anything about her using drugs-but that could have been the ‘errands’ Rosemary had referred to.

My curiosity was consuming me.

I ordered another beer and gave faint smiles to dancers as they tried to flirt with me, to coax a dollar bill into their underwear. The bar began to fill up, and Floretta Flynn finally showed up, grabbing a shot of something from the bartender and downing it. She was going for a country western motif with a towering red wig and a green dress that looked as if it would have been the height of fashion at a prom in 1975. She gave me a brittle grin and walked back over to the sound system. Once she was there, she rubbed her hand across the bottom of her nose-the old make-sure-my-nose-is-still-there-because-it’s-numb-from-the-coke-and-make-sure-there’s-no-powder move. The three dancers on the bar jumped down and two more jumped up.

Bingo.

Joey looked good in black Calvin Klein underwear with a red waistband. It fit his body like a sheath. He was lean and muscular, his abs rippling as he undulated at the other end of the bar. His skin was completely smooth, no hair on his body anywhere except for a tantalizing glimpse of pubic fuzz. There was a tattoo of a cross on his right arm, which made me smile a little bit. No kid from the Garden District would have that tattoo, I mused to myself. I watched as he knelt down and let a heavy-set older man fondle his butt. He was good at his job. He clenched and tightened the muscles in his buttocks as the man slid his hands over them. Then, having earned his dollar, he got up and began moving his hips to the music. He danced over to another man, knelt down, and slid the front of his underwear down, giving the man a glimpse of his genitals. He was rewarded with a few more dollars, and he obviously was flirting with the man, whose hands reached up to pinch the small nipples on his muscled chest.

I had to give him credit. Out of all the dancers I’d seen, he was by far the best looking, and the best dancer. I wondered if Adonis’ hatred was jealousy.

The other dancer, a pretty, young-looking blond, stopped in front of me, and got down on his knees, presenting me his crotch. He gave me a lazy smile, and then bent backwards. He straightened up and smiled at me. “Having fun?”

“You’re very limber.” I replied.

“I was a gymnast.” He winked at me, and leaned in closer, whispering in my ear, “You have no idea how flexible I really am. Would you like to find out?”

“It’s very tempting.” I fished a dollar out of my pocket, and handed it to him.

“You can put it in my underwear.” He gave me a dazzling smile.

“It’s okay, really.” I smiled back at him.

“It’s your money.” He took the dollar and moved away, and I turned my eyes back to Joey. He was making his way to my side of the bar. A remix of Stevie Nicks’ “Stand Back” came on, and then he was in front of me. He knelt down and gave me a puzzled look. “You look familiar.”

“I saw you at Café Envie the other day. With Rosemary Shannon.”

“Oh.” He nodded, smiling. “And you came here to see me dance?

“You’re very good.”

He shrugged his shoulders and smiled at me. “Thanks.” He traced his fingers down the side of my face. “You’re very sexy. I love big men.”

“Thank you.” I put my hand on his boot. “You’re very sexy, too.”

“You know, I’d do you for free.” He lowered his head shyly. “You are so my type. You want to go back for a lap dance? We don’t have to do anything, if you’d rather not.”

“I’d rather just talk, if that’s okay with you.” I stood up when he nodded. “Let’s go.”

He gave a delighted laugh and jumped down from the bar. He grabbed my hand and led me through the crowd. As we passed Adonis, who had some man’s hands down the front of his underwear, he gave me a hateful look and turned his head away. Oddly, I felt bad, as though I should apologize to him. Joey pulled me into the back room, pushing me to a secluded booth in the very back. I sat down, and he sat next to me. He put his head on my shoulder. He placed his legs across mine. I stiffened at first, then relaxed. “Put your arm around me,” he whispered. “If the boss sees us just sitting, he’ll have my ass.” After a slight hesitation, I put my arm around his shoulders. His skin was taut and cool. His entire body relaxed into mine. “I hate working here,” He mumbled against my neck.

“Then why do it?” I asked. I was curious. With no offense intended to the other dancers, they weren’t in the same league as Joey. With his looks and muscled body, he could as easily be dancing at the Pub-where he wouldn’t have to do lap dances, where he wouldn’t have to be groped by old men, where I would think he could make a lot more money. Maybe it had never occurred to him. “Can’t you dance somewhere else?”

“I’m not as big as they want in the other, classier bars.” He shifted, pulling a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his boot. He lit one and blew the smoke out. “What else am I going to do?” he shrugged. “I need money. I could be a waiter or a bartender, I guess, but I only have to come to work here two nights a week and I make enough money to live.” He sighed. “This isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I moved to New Orleans, but-“ his voice trailed off. “What else can I do? Deal drugs? No thank you. At least this kind of work-“ he hesitated. “You make people happy, you know? These guys who come in here-they’re lonely mostly, and they just want to touch someone else. When they pay me to-you know-most of the time they just want to hold me and talk. A hundred bucks to let someone hold me for an hour and talk at me is pretty damned good money. Can’t make that working at McDonalds.”

“You know, I think I saw you the other night. Wednesday night.” I said, trying to keep my voice casual and conversational. “The night it was so foggy. I could swear it was you. You were wearing jeans and an LSU sweatshirt. Was that you?”

“Where did you see me?” He asked, delighted. He sat up straighter, which drove his crotch harder into mine.

“Just talk,” I said, pushing him gently away.

“You’re really sexy, you know. Just the kind of guy I like, big and strong and all muscle.” He brushed his lips against my ear. “I’d let you fuck me,” he breathed into my ear. “I don’t let most guys, you know. I let the clients blow me sometimes, but I don’t do penetration with anyone except men I am attracted to. Like you. Do you want to fuck me?”

“I saw you over on Ursulines Street. You were coming out of a house between Dauphine and Burgundy. Is that where you live?”

“Hardly. That’s Rosemary’s house.” He barked out a laugh. “I wish. That place is gorgeous. Someday I’m going to have a house like that, though. I’m going to be somebody.” He sighed. “But for now, no, I live with three other guys in this dump in the Marigny.” He started blowing smoke rings. “Half the time we don’t even have hot water, and the roaches-“ he shuddered. “They’re everywhere. It’s disgusting. It’s living like an animals.”

“How did you meet Rosemary?”

“I sat down on her stoop one day to have a smoke.” He picked his head up and frowned. “She came out and started talking to me. She said I reminded her of someone she used to know. I was hungry, and didn’t have any money. I asked for a couple of bucks. She said she was going to go run some errands, but if I carried some stuff for her, she’d buy me something to eat. I mean, it was a free meal, so why not, right?”

“Yeah.” The statement was so incredibly sad, I didn’t know what else to say.

“So we went to the Clover Grill after we did the errands, and she told me she’d pay me to do some errands for her from time to time…mostly it was picking up her dry-cleaning every Wednesday.” He laughed. “She sure went through some clothes every week! I’d pick up the clean stuff at the Quarter Laundrette, bring it by and pick up the next week’s load.” He shrugged. “Sometimes she had other stuff for me to do.”

“What about this last Wednesday night?”

“I went by there like usual.” He shrugged. “It was really weird, but hey, you know, money’s money, you know? And I was broke. So I showed up, like usual, and she let me in for just a second. She took the cleaning from me, but said she didn’t have anything to go back out this time. That was a first. And usually she would make me a sandwich or something to eat, and we’d hang in the kitchen for a while. This time, though, she didn’t want to hang around. She looked out the curtains one time, and told me I had to go. She really rushed me out, you know. I was kind of pissed, to tell you the truth. I saw someone across the street when I came out-and I slammed the door to let her know I was pissed.” He shrugged. “And that was you, right? And now you’ve found me.” He sounded delighted.

“Don’t you watch the news?” I asked. It was getting uncomfortably warm.

“Nah, I don’t watch that shit. It’s depressing.” He shrugged.

“Did you hear about the actress who got killed?”

“Do I look like I’m deaf?” He dropped his cigarette on the floor. “Everybody’s heard about that.”

“She was killed in that house.” I replied. “It wasn’t Rosemary’s house, it was hers. Rosemary worked for her. That’s whose drycleaning you were picking up. And you were there, inside the house, the night Glynis Parrish was murdered.”

“Dude.” He whispered. “No way.”

“You have to talk to the police, Joey. You have to tell them you were there.”

“No, I am not talking to the police.” He started to get up, but I grabbed his arm and pulled him back down. “Man, that hurt.” He rubbed his arm. “I can’t talk to the police. I got a warrant.” His voice got whiny. “They’ll put me in jail.”

“I have friends in the department, Joey. I won’t let that happen.” I didn’t know how much pull I had, but I’d do what I could. “You have to. If they find you on their own-and if I found you, the police can-it’ll be much harder on you. With a warrant and all.”

“Jesus.” He got up. “I have to get back to work.” He adjusted his underwear. He leaned down and brushed his lips against my cheek again. “I really do like you,” he said softly. “That’s not a part of my act, either. I really really like you. And you’ll help me out? You aren’t just saying that?””

I dug a twenty out of my wallet and handed it to him. “I’d like to spend some more time with you. Can I get your number? I’ll take you out to lunch tomorrow if you’d like.”

“You got your cell handy?”

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and programmed the number in as he gave it to me. “My last name’s Rutledge. You didn’t tell me yours.”

“Chanse. Chanse MacLeod.”

“Take a chance?” He giggled, and kissed my cheek again. “You better call me, man. Don’t make me come looking for you.”

“You won’t blow me off?”

“I never turn down a free meal. And I want to get to know you better, too, big man. You’re exactly what I look for in a man.” He walked out of the back room and into the dressing room. The door shut behind him.

I slowly got up and pushed through the crowd. Three different boys were dancing on the bar. A Kylie Minogue song was playing. Adonis was one of the boys up on the bar, and when I passed him he stuck his tongue out at me. I had to get out of the bar.

I took a deep breath when I got outside, and leaned against the wall.

I felt sorry for him. His life was about to explode, but he wanted to be famous. He was about to get his chance. Maybe he could use the notoriety to improve his lot. The guy whose wife cut his dick off-Bobbitt? He’d made a couple of porn movies. Joey had the body for it. Maybe that would be his way out. Maybe he could make some money, get to make a fresh start somewhere.

I felt almost paternal towards him, and that was weird. He wasn’t all that much younger than me. I started walking to my car.

I never pass up a free meal.

I shook my head and started walking faster until I reached my car. I got in and sat there for a moment, waiting for my heart to stop beating so fast.

Maybe I should wait for him to get off work, take him back to my place, make him something to eat…

…and what? Turn him over to Venus? I’d call her after I talked to him, have her meet us wherever we decided on for lunch.

Yeah. It was best to just drive home and call it a night. Go to bed by myself, and call him in the morning. It wasn’t an act-there was no need for him to put on an act for me. He just thought I was some hot guy who was into him, who just happened to see him the night he’d made a hundred bucks for doing Rosemary a favor.

She was setting Freddy up.

The trick was going to be finding out why she was doing it.

I started the car, and pulled out onto Burgundy Street.

Paige was going to just fucking love this.