Gator Aide (7 page)

I towered over Hillard Williams, and could easily have patted him on the head. Instead I held myself back, allowing him to take my hand as Jake turned on his homeboy charm.

“Why, Hillard, didn’t y’all hear? Fish and Wildlife went and got themselves a female agent all the way from New York City. This is Rachel Porter. I thought this would be a good chance for her to meet the next likely mayor of our town and one of our most prominent citizens.”

Hillard casually began to stroke my hand as though I were a high-strung filly in need of some calming down.

“Well, it’s about time ol’ Hickok did something right. Welcome to New Orleans, honey.”

He gave my hand one last squeeze before I pulled free of his grasp. I tried to imagine kinky sex involving Hillard, Valerie, and Hook, but my mind drew a blank as the man’s eyes moved up and down my body, busy calculating my weight, height, and measurements.

“If there’s anything I can do to make your adjustment to our city any easier, darlin’, ya just holler, and I’ll do my darndest to help ya out.”

A movement drew my attention to the bay window overlooking the garden out back. Heavy burgundy drapes framed the view much like a stage curtain, and the bright afternoon sun flared into my eyes. Squinting against the glare, I saw a man’s dark silhouette slide out from behind the bulky material and realized someone had been standing there all along. Hillard took the opportunity to grab my hand once again as he followed my gaze.

“Well, excuse my backward manners. Gunter is so damn quiet sometimes I forget he’s even around. I want y’all to meet my advisor on foreign affairs. This here is Gunter Schuess.”

Tall and slim, with white-blond hair cut straight across the top like coarse bristles on a brush, Gunter glided toward us with liquid grace. He was dressed elegantly in black, his skin stark white in contrast. High cheekbones jutted up like precarious cliffs. His watery blue eyes flickered over me, then dismissed me quickly as if I were of little consequence. The slightest trace of a smile touched his lips, but no glimpse of humor was to be found in his eyes. Though his grip was light as he took hold of my hand, I was left with the impression that he could easily have crushed every bone in my body. Cold and dry to the touch, his skin reminded me of Hook. I held back a shiver as I let go. Schuess then faced Santou and nodded without offering his hand.

Jake broke the tension, turning to Hillard, who watched the proceedings with amusement.

“Why, Hillard, what are you needing an advisor on foreign affairs for? You haven’t even been elected mayor yet, let alone president. I thought that was another four years down the road for you.”

Hillard looked pleased, as if the thought was one he’d already contemplated. Gunter quickly intervened, his voice as smooth and carefully modulated as his manner.

“In this day and age of global communications, it is to every politician’s benefit to have as many contacts as possible outside his own realm. In Mr. Williams’s case, when he is mayor I will take on the task of bringing European business into the New Orleans area. There is a minor problem with unemployment here at the moment, is that not so? Presenting a global platform will attract foreign business and help to alleviate the situation. It is a very farsighted solution to the problem here, and one that is sure to win Mr. Williams the election.”

Gunter’s strong German accent added an underlying edge to the words, giving the speech a hypnotic effect.

Turning toward me, Hillard took my hand once again.

“Did ya know I’m runnin’ for mayor, sugar? Lord knows, I’m just a coonass country boy, but we got problems here, darlin’, that need fixin’ fast. I don’t mean to scare you none, but New Orleans is like one of those big ol’ oil tankers that’s hit a reef and is sinking like a rock. Why, industry’s leavin’ here in droves, and our river port is just a lazy coon dog out in the noonday sun. All we got growin’ here is people who’d rather collect welfare than work, and our murder rate’s worse than where you come from. You be careful when you go out at night, you hear me, honey? I’m tellin’ you the Lord’s honest truth. You’ll be robbed and raped and wonder what happened. And you stay away from that Bourbon Street. It’s riffraff like that are turning our wonderful city of New Orleans into a city of disease and human filth.”

It sounded as if Hillard were practicing for an upcoming rally. I pulled my hand out from under his, but he barely took notice.

“Most good solid workin’ folks think just like me, which is why I’m puttin’ myself through all this. It ain’t for me, darlin’. We gotta think of our children before they’re out on bread lines. Hell, you can forget about all those illegal aliens taking our jobs away. We’re under siege from the legal ones, we got so damn many of ’em. I ain’t no bigot, you understand. My motto is equal rights for all and special privileges for none.”

As Hillard caught his breath to launch into another round, Santou cut him off.

“To tell you the truth, Hillard, we didn’t come here to discuss campaign strategy and platform stands. You’re the expert on that. We’re here on a police matter.” Santou paused a moment as he turned to glance at Gunter. “It’s something you might prefer to discuss in private.”

Hillard moved behind his desk as he waved us toward two plain wooden chairs in front.

“Oh, come on now, Jake. I’m sure that won’t be necessary. Besides, Gunter here should be in on whatever’s bothering y’all. He’s my liaison with the public. Kinda like my troubleshooter, if you know what I mean.”

Jake smiled. “Trouble already, Hillard? Shit, you ain’t even got into office yet.”

“Ain’t that the truth. I just might have to call on your services some when I get there. Make you my chief of police.” Turning toward me, Hillard gave a wink. “And as for you, darlin’, how ’bout I set up one of them special wildlife departments here in New Orleans proper so as I can make you head of it? Put a gal like you to good use. Get you to tame some of that wild life in this town.”

Hillard chortled at his own joke as he folded his hands on top of the desk. They looked tiny enough to belong to a child.

“So, what y’all here for? I got too many traffic tickets or something?” Hillard pulled out a stogie the size of one of Vinnie’s fists and lit up.

“Nah. Nothing like that, Hillard. I want to talk to you about one of those topless dancers over on Bourbon Street.”

“You talking about those dens of iniquity, Jake? Well, if ya got some gal you’re hankering to meet, you’re on your own, boy. That’s outta my league these days.” Hillard took a deep puff on his cigar, sending out a ring of smoke, and then winked at me as though I was being let in on a private joke. “What y’all think? Should my administration clean up all those girlie shows, or should we keep ’em and put the taxes to good use?”

Pulling another cigar out of his pocket, he thrust it toward Santou, who declined.

“What I was wondering, Hillard, was if you might have been acquainted with one girl in particular. A dancer by the name of Valerie Vaughn. Does that ring a bell with you?”

Hillard squirmed in his seat as he smiled down at his desk. “I was a man-’bout-town in my day. Ya know that, Jake. It’s not bragging or nothing, just a fact. But I’m a married man now. Mrs. Williams wouldn’t take kindly to no dancing girls coming up to the house.” Hillard turned to look at me. “I bet you wouldn’t put up with that nonsense none yourself. Though why anybody would wanna play around on a gal like you beats me.”

Tempted to retort with a caustic remark, I held back, leaving Hillard to fill the awkward silence with quick puffs on his cigar, like an inhalator supplying him with much-needed bursts of oxygen. Gunter drifted toward the window, folding himself back in the drapes where he gazed out at the garden, as if the subject matter was of little concern.

“But this might be a girl you would have known. Her aunt is Marie Tuttle. You remember her, Hillard.” Beads of sweat broke out on Hillard’s brow, his glistening head as highly polished as a cue ball. Placing his cigar in an ashtray molded in the shape of a gator’s claw, Hillard leaned as far forward in Santou’s direction as he could, rising partially out of his seat.

“I’m gonna take ya up on that offer of privacy, Jake. This ain’t no kinda discussion with a lady present.”

“I’m also working on the case, Mr. Williams.”

But Hillard no longer acknowledged me. “Jake, I really would feel a whole lot easier ’bout speaking on such a delicate topic if a lady weren’t present in the room.”

Not wanting to leave, I spoke up in my own defense. “Please don’t be concerned, Mr. Williams. Nothing that is said is going to offend me. I’m a federal agent, and as Detective Santou can confirm, my interest in this case is totally legitimate.”

Turning in my direction, Hillard rested the top half of his body on the desk and pulled himself forward until his feet were off the ground. “Sugar, this ain’t New York. You’re in New Orleans now, and we operate differently down here. So why don’t you just relax and lighten up? You’ll live longer that way.”

Pushing himself back in one fluid motion, Hillard sank into his chair as he smiled at me. “First off, darlin’, agent or not, ya look like a woman to me, and since I’m a Southern gentleman, there’s just some things that can’t be talked about in front of a lady. Secondly, you’ll excuse my bluntness, but I don’t see how a stripper’s death’s got anything to do with you protecting critters. And finally, I wish ya would stop calling me Mr. Williams. Why doncha just call me Hill.”

I leaned toward him over the desk. “First off, Mr. Williams, I’m here on official business, so obviously there is a tie-in with wildlife. Secondly, my name is Agent Porter. Please refer to me that way in the future. And finally, this is as relaxed as I get.” Sliding back in my chair, I held Hillard’s gaze until Santou broke the tension.

“You know what, Hillard? I think I will take one of those cigars.”

Pulling out a stogie from his desk, Hillard rolled it across the top. Santou caught it as it fell off the wooden edge into his hand. Carefully biting off the end, he stuck the cigar in his mouth and lit up, taking the first few puffs in silence.

“You’re right, Hillard. This is a delicate topic.” Turning in my direction, Santou’s eyes narrowed in on mine so that I knew what was coming before he even said it. “I’m sure Agent Porter understands that as well, and won’t mind giving us a moment in private to ourselves.”

He couldn’t have made it any clearer that this was his interrogation, and he wasn’t about to let me jeopardize it. He also couldn’t have been more wrong. I minded more than he knew. Given no choice on the matter, I flashed Santou a look that left little doubt as to how I felt as I walked across the room, having been dismissed. I’d been told as a girl growing up that attitudes toward women would change, and on the surface they had. But scratch just beneath the politically correct exterior of the nineties, and all the same prejudices were alive and well, with each same wall to be knocked down as sturdy as ever. New York was bad enough. But in the past few months working in Louisiana, I’d become convinced that a change of attitude here would require nothing less than a second Civil War.

Walking out the door, I nearly smacked into the woman I had seen running up the stairs. Dolores Williams was dressed in black capri pants and a midriff blouse lost beneath a blizzard of sequins. She had obviously been eavesdropping on the conversation. Her hand was slapped over the muzzle of a toy poodle that, on closer inspection, could have been mistaken for a white cotton ball, but for two pink bows and ten stubby nails painted a dazzling shade of red.

As for Dolores, an overabundance of makeup worked against her effort to appear young and fresh. Heavy pancake and powder revealed a deep network of lines, while shoulder-length bleached blond hair styled in a girlish flip did little to sustain the illusion. A pair of dark sunglasses covered her eyes. What had probably been an hourglass figure at one time had come to resemble a brandy snifter. Nearly as tall as me, Dolores must have been Hillard’s idea of an Aryan goddess at one time. Now she was just his bothersome wife. As she swayed precariously back and forth on a pair of red high-heeled mules, it was apparent that Dolores’s lack of balance came from the Southern Comfort I could smell on her breath. I estimated that she clocked in at around fifty, though the twin ravages of age and too much liquor had taken their toll. Dolores bounced against the wall as she stuck out her hand for balance, holding on to the poodle, which I now noticed had only three legs. When she let go of the dog’s snout, it bared its teeth at me, emitting a low growl of warning.

“Stop that, Fifi.”

The dog looked at me with pure hatred as I started to introduce myself.

“Save your breath, honey. I heard what’s going on, and let me tell you, that whore got what she deserved.”

Dolores sported a lighter accent than her husband’s, though her speech tended to slur.

“Did you know Valerie Vaughn?” I had the feeling Dolores knew plenty. Her remark came from a woman well aware of what her husband had been up to, and was now making him pay for it dearly.

“If you mean did I know her intimately, like we got together and had lunch, no. But I can tell you we shared more than just my husband.”

I no longer cared what tap dance Hillard was doing in the next room. Santou had unknowingly done me a huge favor.

“Would you mind talking to me about it, Mrs. Williams? I’m working on the case. I’d be interested to hear whatever you have to say.”

“I bet you would.” She barked a loud laugh as Fifi tried to jump from her arms. Leaning heavily against the wall, Dolores studied me carefully in her inebriated state.

“You don’t look like a cop to me. What are you? Undercover or something?”

“I’m with the Fish and Wildlife Service. An alligator was found in Ms. Vaughn’s apartment. It had been killed as well. That’s why I was called in.”

“You’re here about that damn gator? Jesus Christ! What a crock, though I suppose I should be grateful for small favors.” Dolores pulled the dog closer until its head was buried in a sea of sequins. “Thank God that walking handbag’s dead. At least there’s some justice left in the world.”