Murder in the Rue St. Ann (14 page)

He looked away from me. “Because you’re so jealous.”

“Jealous?” I stared at him. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“Yes, Chanse,
jealous
.”

“I’m not jealous!”

“Oh, yeah, right.” He smirked at me. “Remember the last time we went to Oz?”

“What about it?” Now I was getting defensive. I thought back. It had been about a month or so—we’d taken to staying home or going to movies instead of dancing. I remembered having a good time, and coming home about three in the morning and having intense sex.

“Don’t you remember your hissy fit?” His voice sounded sad more than anything else.

“You mean that guy who was flirting with you?” That I did remember.

“I mean the guy that was
talking
to me.”

We’d taken a break from dancing and I’d gone to get us both a drink. Paul was standing in the front corner by the dance floor. When I looked over from the bar, I noticed a guy in the middle of the dance floor moving in Paul’s direction. I watched as he walked up to Paul, put his hands on Paul’s chest and started talking to him. The guy was good-looking— in his early 20s with that slim, smooth boyish kind of body some guys are lucky enough to keep as adults. He was about my height, give or take. His beltless jeans hung low off his hips, and he wasn’t wearing underwear. I paid for our drinks and walked back over. I glared at him until he got the hint and left. “Come on, that guy wanted to sleep with you.” I said. “How could you think he wasn’t flirting with you?”

“You think
everyone
wants to sleep with me.” Paul replied.
I started to say “they do,” but stopped myself. I closed my mouth.

“Don’t think I don’t appreciate it—it’s really flattering.” He continued. “But it’s also kind of hard to deal with. I mean, when we go out I’m always afraid someone is going to talk to me and you’re going to get pissed off. Do you have any idea how hard that is on me?”

Hard on you?
I thought
. Has it ever occurred to you how hard it is to have everyone in the world want to fuck your boyfriend?

I just stared at him. I struggled to get hold of myself.
Client, not boyfriend
.  I took a deep breath. “Okay, okay, maybe I’m a little jealous. That’s not the issue here.” The real issue is a little thing called a first-degree murder charge. “You need to tell me the truth—everything, Paul. I can’t help you if you lie to me.”

“The truth.” He looked at me and swallowed. “Chanse, I wasn’t exactly a saint before we met, you know.”

“I didn’t think you were
.” I just had no idea of the extent of your sins.

“I met Mark on-line four years ago in a chatroom.” Paul rubbed his eyes. “He was living in Norfolk at the time. We traded pictures, and started talking a lot when we were both on-line. Then we started talking on the phone, and I decided to fly up and visit him.”

“Weren’t you living with Jeff then?” Jeff was my predecessor— the doctor in Dallas.

“Jeff and I had an open relationship.” He squirmed a bit in his chair. “I would have told you, but you never seemed to want to know anything about Jeff and me.”

“Oh.” He had tried to bring up Jeff from time to time, but I never encouraged it. “And I know how you feel about open relationships—“ He shrugged.

It’s no secret that I’ve never understood open relationships. My friend Blaine and his long-time lover had one. It never made much sense to me. Sex was such an intimate part of a relationship, I couldn’t grasp how you could allow someone you loved to have sex with someone else—whenever they wanted, whoever they wanted, as often as they wanted. That wasn’t what love was supposed to be like. “Go on.” I said.

“Mark and I hit it off really well, so I went back up there a few times over the next year or so.” He shrugged. “Then it just kind of petered out for us. We stayed friends, talking on-line or by e-mail, and I visited him once in a while, but the physical part was over a couple of years ago.” He took a deep breath. “Mark is why I moved here, you know?”

“What?”

“I came here to visit him after he moved here last year and fell in love with New Orleans. That’s why I decided to move here when Jeff and I were breaking up.”

Christ on the cross!

“And then I met you.” He shrugged. “And here we are.”

I took a deep breath.
He’s a client,
I told myself again
, not your boyfriend
. “And that’s all there was to it?”
What about the wrestling career, buddy?

“That’s all.”

“You need to tell me the whole truth, Paul.” I said carefully, trying to keep my temper. 
Client, not boyfriend. Client
. “If there’s anything else—trust me, the police are going to go through your life with a fine toothed comb. They don’t have a motive yet, but they’re going to be looking for one. Their case is pretty strong on the physical evidence, but….” I let my voice trail off.

“That’s all.” He shifted in his seat and wouldn’t meet my eyes. He picked up part of his sandwich, looked at it, and put it back down again. He licked  drops of mustard off a couple of fingers.

 I couldn’t look at him anymore. I turned my head and looked through the stained glass.
Please tell me
, I thought.
Please, please tell
me
.

His silence was deafening.

“You’re sure?” I had to say something, and I felt my anger rising. I gripped the armrests and squeezed them.
Stay calm, stay calm. Client, client, client
.

“Chanse, please.” He wouldn’t look at me.

Damn
it. “Do you think the police won’t find out about Cody Dallas?”

His face drained of color. “Oh—my—God. How do you—how did you—oh my God.” He buried his face in his hands.

“It’s a little hard for me to believe your story when you keep leaving out important details.” My voice was harsh. “If I found out about your little side career in videos, the police certainly will. Mark made videos too, didn’t he? In fact, your most recent match was against him, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, God.” He looked at me. “How—how did you find out?”

“I did an internet search on you.”
Deep breaths, easy now. Client—remember that, Chanse, don’t lose control
. “Apparently, you did an interview with a website about your retirement from wrestling, and revealed your real name.”

His eyes widened. He shook his head. “No, I didn’t.”

“I read it, Paul.” I ground my teeth, trying to keep my breathing measured.

“I swear to you, Chanse, I didn’t do any interviews. Like anyone would care that I was quitting.” He gave a short laugh. “Besides, the last thing in the world I want is for people to know I’m Cody Dallas.” He stood up. “Come on.” He walked into the little room he’d set up as his office. His little white laptop sat in the center of it, hooked up to a disk drive and a printer. He turned it on, and logged onto the Internet. He typed in
www.codydallas.net
. I stood behind him as the site loaded. When it came up, there was the same picture of Paul, smiling in the low cut red speedo I’d seen on the other site. He pushed his chair back. “See?”

I closed my eyes. Christ, he even had his own wrestling web-site. I counted to ten, struggling not to lose my temper. I opened my eyes and read the text. It was basically an announcement that he was shutting down the site and retiring.

“When I started seeing you, I decided to retire.” He explained. “That match with Mark was my last one. I didn’t tell you about it—well, I didn’t think you’d understand.”

“Well, you were right about that. I don’t understand.” I folded my arms and walked over to the window. “I don’t understand why you never told me about this wrestling thing. I don’t understand why you never told me about modeling nude. I don’t understand a lot of things, Paul.”

“You’re being unfair.” He folded his arms, veins bulging in his forearms. “There’s a lot I don’t know about your past—stuff you’ve never shared with me.”

“I never posed nude or made porn videos.”

He made a face. “It wasn’t porn.”

“No, they were just videos for guys who are into wrestling to watch and enjoy, right?” Like I’d just fallen off the turnip truck or something. “Come on, Paul—they’re beat-off tapes.” Why couldn’t he just admit it?

“You can be such an asshole.” He said bitterly.

I bit my lip and closed my eyes.
Get back on track, Chanse
. “Okay. I’m sorry. But cut me some slack here, Paul—this is a lot to deal with.” I sat down on the window ledge. “But you’ve got to understand something, my friend. You’ve got to be honest with me and Loren—completely, 100 percent honest. These charges against you are serious. You could get the death penalty.’

“But I didn’t kill Mark.”

“I didn’t say you did. The police think so, though—and the evidence looks pretty bad. Now, why did you go over to see him in person instead of calling?”

“Well, I did want to tell him that I wasn’t going to pose for the cover.” Paul leaned back in his chair.  “But I’d gotten this weird email yesterday afternoon, and I wanted to talk to him about it.”

“A weird email?”

“From a fan of the videos.”

“What was weird about it?”

“Well, for one thing, it came to my private email account, not Cody’s.” He sighed. “On my website—“ he gestured to the computer screen, “—there was a link where fans could email me direct, you know? I had a standard email response I’d send them. It was weird someone contacted me direct—but you say some website posted my real name, right? That would explain it, I guess.”

I walked over to the computer and typed in
www.ilovetoprope.com
. Once the page loaded, I clicked on the link to Cody Dallas Interview.

Paul stared at the computer screen. “Chanse, I never gave this interview. I’ve never even heard of this website before.” He typed in
www.toprope.com
.  “This is the site for the company.”

The page loaded. A large picture of a hot guy with a shaved head and goatee wearing a black leather thong came up. There were smaller pictures, of muscular guys in underwear or speedos wrestling down another side, with links to the videos the pictures were taken from. “Okay, we’ll come back to that.” I said. “What about this email?”

He clicked on his mail icon, and his inbox came up. He clicked on one on the envelopes. The letter opened.

Dear Paul, or Cody, or whatever you call yourself now—

I’ve been a huge fan of yours ever since your first video was released. You are Top Rope’s sexiest wrestler, and so handsome too. I’ve always wanted to meet you.

I can’t believe you lost that match to Mark Miller, and are retiring. I know you threw that match because you were retiring. What a shitty thing to do to your fans, those of us who have supported you and bought your tapes loyally all these years
.
 The least you could have done was gone out on a high note instead of throwing a match to that arrogant, cocky son of a bitch. Mark Miller isn’t fit to carry your speedo, let alone beat you. That is such bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. But don’t worry about that—he’ll pay for it.

You, on the other hand, should be ashamed of yourself. One day you’ll understand what you have done to your fans, and you’ll be sorry.

There was no signature at the bottom. I whistled. “Huh.”

“I wanted to talk to Mark about it.” He sighed. “I mean, I’ve gotten weird emails before—but it was mostly from guys who wanted to wrestle me, date me, whatever. This was, I don’t know, just weird. It kind of scared me.”

“Most people who write threatening letters—or emails—generally don’t ever do anything about it.” I said. This was true—just venting their spleen usually did the trick for them.

“I knew I had some time before I was meeting you at dinner, so I decided to go down to the Quarter.” He groaned. “Fuck, I left my car on Burgundy Street. It’s probably been towed, huh?”

I sighed. “I’ll take you over to the impound lot.” It was under I-10 on Claiborne, right behind St. Louis Cemetery Number One.

He stood up, looking at me. “So, you don’t think this guy who sent the email could be dangerous?”

I shook my head. “It’s possible, but I can’t say for sure..”

His voice dropped. “Do you think I killed him?”

I didn’t answer, searching my head for the right answer.

“You do.” His entire body began to shake, beads of sweat gathered on his forehead. His skin looked whitish. “You think I killed him!”

Something in me just snapped—I don’t know, maybe it was all the tension that had built up. I started yelling at him. “How
can
I believe you? Tell me what the fuck I am supposed to think! I just found out my boyfriend has posed bare-assed! I just found out my boyfriend had a porn career I knew nothing about! What else don’t I know about, huh? You have this whole other life I don’t know about! Maybe you
are
a killer! How the fuck am I supposed to know? Tell me! Tell me what to believe!” Spittle flew in his face.

His eyes filled with tears. “You’re hurting me.” He whispered.

I stared at him and the anger drained out of me. I realized I was clutching his biceps. I’d been shaking him.