Murder in the Rue St. Ann (5 page)

“Why not?” he asked. His eyebrows arched over imploring eyes.

“Well,” I said, “ I don’t like the idea of people beating off to your picture.” That sounded stupid and childish, even to me. I regretted it as soon as I said it.

Paul folded his arms, and his thick black eyebrows knit together over his strong nose. “I would be wearing shorts, at the very least, Chanse.”

I could tell by his tone he was getting annoyed, and I felt my own annoyance building. “Paul, what I’m saying here is I don’t like the idea of other guys looking at you that way.”

 “So, you’d rather I gained weight?” He pulled at the straps of his tank top. “Should I stop taking care of myself and wearing clothes like this?”

“Don’t be stupid.” I took a deep breath. “It’s hard enough as it is.”

He tilted his head. “What’s hard?”

“Paul—“ I tried to find the right words, to try to salvage this conversation. “You know you’re hot, Paul. Well, all I’m saying is—“

“So, what you’re saying is you still want me to look good, but you don’t want anyone else looking at me.” His smile was gone completely. He started to bounce on his toes, and veins popped out in his biceps.

“Well, it bothers me.” There—I’d said it.

“Why?” He looked at me like I was crazy. “Why would that bother you?”

The light bulb went on. “You like having people look at you.”

He tilted his head to one side. “Don’t you?”

“Well, yeah, but—“ I floundered. It
was
nice. I’d have been lying if I said otherwise. It felt good to have someone look at you in that appraising way, to try to imagine what’s you’d look like naked, to
want
to see you naked. But that wasn’t why I worked out. It wasn’t why I was following Paul’s diet, his workout.  “Why isn’t it enough that I look at you? Why do you need validation from other people?”

“Chanse, that’s not what this is about.” He shook his head. “I’m proud of the way I look—and look at how you’ve been hitting the gym lately!”

“I’m getting myself into better shape for you, Paul, not for people to look at me.”

He shook his head. “Chanse, you shouldn’t be doing all of this for me.” He tapped me in the center of my chest. “You should be doing it for you.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. “Are you going to do it? Pose, I mean?”

“Are you asking me not to?” Paul replied.

It sounded like a test question, one where I could pass or fail. Fuck it. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

“Then, I guess I need to think about this.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to get running.”

“Where?” I couldn’t believe what I’d said , or the whiny way it came out.

He frowned at me. “I told you I have some things to do, Chanse.” He shook his head. “You want to meet for dinner at seven? Juan’s Flying Burrito?”

Juan’s wasn’t on our diet. “Yeah. Sure.”

He winked at me. “Well, you knew I’ve posed before. And I’ve posed nude, Chanse—but this isn’t going to be, so just relax, okay?” He started to walk away, then stopped. “Let me ask you this, Chanse. Does other people looking at me bother you because you don’t want them to look at me, or does it bother you because you would rather they looked at you?”

I just stared at him. After a moment, he shrugged and walked away.

I watched him until he rounded the corner at Dauphine. I didn’t know what to think. Maybe he was right--maybe I
was
jealous when people looked at him. But if the situation was reversed, I didn’t believe he could honestly tell me he wouldn’t feel the exact same way. I loved him and thought he was the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen, but couldn’t he understand how
tiring
it was always to be made to feel inadequate? To see guys checking out your boyfriend and knowing they’re thinking,
Why is he with THAT guy?
And it would only get worse if he posed for that magazine cover. And what was this “I’ve posed nude” shit? Why was I just now finding out?

What
else
hadn’t he told me?

The gate hadn’t shut, so I walked through it and up the stairs. I knocked on the door. I heard footsteps, then a slender young man opened the door. He had large green eyes, short black hair parted in the middle and gelled stiff, and a rather large nose the rest of his face dropped back from. He was slender— maybe 140 pounds, and wore baggy jeans and an orange T-shirt with an iron-on patch of Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman on it. In a very soft voice he said, “May I help you?” Behind him I heard a male voice say something I couldn’t make out, followed by a high-pitched girlish peal of laugher.

“I’m looking for Mark Williams. My name is Chanse MacLeod—“ I reached into my back pocket for my badge. “—and I’m working for Dominique DuPre.”

He nodded, without giving the badge the courtesy of a glance. “She called to let us know you’d be coming.” He held the door open, and I walked into a large room. A chandelier hung from a 16-foot ceiling. The desks were slapdash things made out of particle board. Several of them were scattered about the room, with computers on top of them.. Equally cheap-looking chairs, garbage cans, and lamps accompanied them. A man and a woman were seated in chairs on the opposite sides of two desks that had been pushed together. Loose papers and file folders covered their shared work space.

The man was in his early 40’s, with bangs brushed forward over a receding hairline.  He had brown plastic glasses that dangled halfway down a wide, almost squashed-looking nose. The lenses were large and thick. The glasses had been glued together several times at the bridge. The  man  was laughing, his eyes were narrow slits, his mouth gaped open and his head shook. He was wearing a gray T-shirt with
attitude
written across the chest.

The woman facing him had blonde hair in dreadlocks. She wore a baggy, faded blue men’s shirt over cut-off men’s brown polyester pants. Her feet were in sandals. She turned her head and faced me. Her face was round, her cheeks full with deep dimples, and her eyes were round and black behind severe black plastic framed glasses. She was also smiling. “Hey, come on in!” she said.

My eyes wandered to the walls. They were covered with framed posters, which were actually blown-up
attitude
magazine covers. I recognized a hot muscle boy who’d been on
The Real World
; a muscular young Hispanic soap star; and an adorable young guy I’d seen dancing on the bar at the Pub a few times. He had almost tempted me to break my long standing rule about not tipping dancers. There were several others I didn’t recognize, but they were all young and beautiful and shirtless.

“Our past covers.” Said the guy who’d let me in. “My name is Zane Rathburn. I’m the artistic director. That’s Ghentry Rutledge, who’s the editor of the magazine, “ –the man in glasses nodded— “and Julian Eastwick, our sales director.”

“Eastwick as in
Witches of
,” she said in a girlish voice. She couldn’t be much older than 23. Her nose, lip and tongue were all pierced, and I spotted a tattoo of Wile E. Coyote on her unshaved calf.

I nodded to her. “Nice to meet you.”

“I’ll tell Mark you’re here,” Zane said,  He then walked across the room and knocked on a door, and walked into another room.

I sat down. “So what’s it like working here?” I asked Ghentry and Julian, just to make conversation. It was better than just sitting there staring at each other.

Julian tossed her dreads with a grin. Silver braces shone on her teeth. “ I like working in a queer environment. I like having a job where my boss doesn’t expect me to take out my jewelry, wear my hair in a certain style, or keep my tattoos covered.” Her blue eyes were serious. “I have a college degree, man, in English. And the only job I can get is being a salesperson. Wasn’t what I was expecting when I was paying my tuition.” She shrugged. “I could have gotten this job without a degree—but it’s fun working here.”

“Yeah.” Ghentry leaned back in his chair and his hands behind his head. Nicely shaped muscles moved in his arms. “I’ve had a lot of shitty jobs I hated that paid better than this, but we have a good time—I don’t mind coming to work, if you know what I mean.”

“Cool.”  I said. I’ve always thought enjoying your work was a lot more important than money. I’m not cracked out to be an employee, which was why I was self-employed.

The door opened again. Zane came back with another man. I stood back up.

“Mr. MacLeod?” A blue-eyed man stepped forward with his hand extended for a shake. He had thick dark blonde hair clipped about an inch above the top of his head. His eyebrows were brown, and had been shaved apart over the bridge of his straight nose. There were some tell-tale lines starting to show around his eyes and mouth, but they were hardly noticeable. His cheeks were dimpled, his lips full and thick, and his teeth straight and white. He was a little over six feet tall,  and probably about 190. He wore a tight black T-shirt with
attitude
printed on it. His tight faded jeans had a rip at the left knee.

I shook his hand. His grip was fraternity-trained strong. “Call me Chanse.” I said.

“And you call me Mark.” He clapped me on the back. “Come on into my office so we can talk.”

He shut the door behind me. His office was completely different from the outer one. It was decorated in mahogany, brass, and glass. The walls were painted a dark green. There were no posters on the walls. The large desk was immaculate—everything was neatly stacked and carefully ordered. He sat down in his chair, leaned forward, and cupped his chin in his hands. “What they’re doing to Dominique is terrible, isn’t it?” he said, shaking his head slightly.

I sat down, pulled a notebook from my briefcase and flipped it open. “Just who is doing what to Dominique?”

“I know she told you about the trouble with the liquor licenses.” He shook his head. “You’d think the other clubs would welcome another one into the fold. More clubs means more people. I managed to get the club open for Southern Decadence, and you couldn’t tell a difference—
all
the bars were full.”

“So you all managed to get it open for Decadence? How?” Paul and I had gone out during Decadence, but had never gone beyond the St. Ann line on Bourbon. It hadn’t even crossed my mind. That dividing line, invisible as it may be, was fixed in my head.

He nodded. “We got them a special event license. She couldn’t stay open for 24 hours, but she could open at nine as an event and stay open till six in the morning. She did a bang up business too.”

“And the other bars see this as threatening?”

He held up his hands. “I don’t understand it, Chanse. It doesn’t make much sense. I have friends who bartend at Oz and they say it was the busiest Decadence there ever. My friends at the Pub say the same thing. Business was up everywhere. But both bars are trying to keep her from opening.”

I scribbled that down. “And you’ve told Dominique this?”

“She doesn’t believe me.” Mark shrugged. “They’re nice to her when she sees them, and act friendly, so she can’t believe they’d do her dirty like that.” His eyes hardened. “She doesn’t realize how things work here in the Quarter. How much do you know about the bars?”

“Not much.” I’d been to all of them, but didn’t know much about them. Some of the bartenders and barbacks I recognized, but for the most part I didn’t know their names. I didn’t know who owned or managed either the Pub or Oz. I knew the same company owned Rawhide, Lafitte’s, Good Friend’s, and the Clover Grill, but I didn’t know the company’s name. The bars were just a place to go, drink, and meet guys. Since I’d met Paul, I’d gone mainly to drink and dance, back when we went out. Paul and I had taken to staying home more and more.

Who owned or ran the bars hadn’t been of much interest to me.

“It’s a savage, cutthroat business.” Mark said, shaking his head. “I’m telling you, Chanse, look no further than the bars.”

“Do you have any proof? Have any threats been made?”

“They’re way too smart for that.”

This wasn’t much help, so I stood up. “All right, thanks Mark. If I have more questions—“

“Please give me a shout. I want to help in any way I can.”

I walked over to the door.

He stood up. “Sometimes—“ He hesitated.

I stopped. “Yes?”

“I wonder if it’s because she’s black.”

I froze with my hand on the doorknob. I wondered if this was going to come up. Since I’d first laid eyes on a publicity still of Dominique on a website, I’d hoped it wouldn’t.

Race is a complicated issue. Most white people like to think it isn’t anymore. The Civil Rights movement had been a success, and all the problems of black people were finished, over, done with. They could vote, they could go to college, and they could get any job they wanted.

But the vast majority of black folks in New Orleans were still unemployed, or working at minimum wage jobs. Black women still worked as maids and paid companions in the Garden District and Uptown—some of them worked for the families their mothers had worked for before them. The majority of the bellmen and porters at the hotels of the Quarter were black men. Burger flipper, grocery bagger, drug stores, waiter and waitress, convenience store clerk—these were jobs  the Civil Rights movement  had opened the doors to.

If most white people liked to think that the problems were over, they did so only by ignoring the evidence of the poverty and desperation all around them.