My Juliet Read online

  The waiter points a stubby pencil at the wall. “I can give you fried shrimp. We serve étouffée only as a special.”

  Juliet gives her head a weary shake. “Ham and eggs, then. Coffee and toast and ice water and mixed-fruit jelly.”

  “The same,” Leonard tells the man. “But instead of the ham and eggs and coffee and toast and mixed-fruit jelly, let me have grits and bacon and biscuits and pineapple juice.”

  “You want the ice water?”

  “Yeah, give me the ice water.”

  “You ain’t even funny,” and Juliet draws on a cigarette. “Tell him he ain’t even funny,” she says to the waiter.

  But the waiter, writing on his pad, seems to like it well enough.

  They’re almost finished with the meal when Juliet says, “I figure I owe you for tonight. You can come up to the room and sleep with me if you want.”

  “I’m more in my man mood these days,” Leonard says, rubbing a piece of biscuit in the shallow pool of bacon grease on his plate. “But I do appreciate the invite.”

  “I said sleep, Leonard. I’m having my period.”

  “You just want me to sleep?”

  “I like a warm body in the bed with me.”

  Leonard pays with a credit card. He has one of those old-man wallets with rows of slits on both folds. His slits are full of cards.

  “Some people collect stamps,” she says. “Leonard Barbier? Leonard likes plastic.”

  He starts counting the cards, touching each one, eighteen altogether. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, it’s been fifteen years since my last confession.”

  “Speak to me, my son.”

  “My cards, Father? They belong to Big Leonard.”

  He didn’t finish his pineapple juice, so she reaches for it. “You stole your father’s wallet?”

  “It’s complicated.” He takes the glass out of her hand and drains the juice, then he chews on some ice. “Can I stop calling you Father now?”

  She nods and with a hand makes the sign of the cross in the air between them.

  “Well, and I hate this, I just hate it, but Big Leonard’s my sponsor. Or that’s how I’ve heard him refer to our arrangement. He’s my sponsor so long as I, quote unquote, stay out of the paper. Big Leonard, basically, is afraid he’ll pick up the Picayune one morning and read how Leonard Barbier III was arrested in the French Quarter and charged with crimes against nature or whatnot. That would put a serious dent in his lifestyle. He could lose a seat on one of his boards—the LSU board of supervisors, the board at the New Orleans Museum of Art. And what about his Carnival krewe? Oh, no, that just can’t happen. The world would end.”

  “I like that name, Big Leonard. It sounds like what somebody would call their penis. ‘Hi, there. Have you met Big Leonard?’”

  “Yes, well, the man’s a dick. You got that right.”

  Leonard didn’t finish the bacon either. She takes it and eats it all before he can think to protest. “I could forgive Mother a lot of things if she’d given me a wallet full of credit cards,” she says.

  “Believe me, it’s not something to be getting jealous about.”

  “Sure, it is. Your father’s sponsoring your experience as a degenerate white Negro playing jazz and living in a weekly/monthly and taking drugs and having out-of-wedlock relations with both men and women. It isn’t fair. Why won’t anyone sponsor me?” She’s talking with her mouth full. “The only thing Mama ever gave me was a giant case of the red ass. Just for that,” and it’s so much she’s afraid to swallow, “from here on out I’m going to call you Little Leonard.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Little Leonard.”

  “Say it again and everyone gets to hear what you did tonight.”

  “Little Leonard . . .”

  He starts to stand on his chair but she scrambles around the table and yanks him back down.

  In the room they strip to their underwear and dive under the covers and Juliet spoons with her chest pressed against his thin, unmuscled back. Although he smells of cooled sweat and grease and cigarette smoke she wouldn’t call the odor offensive. She closes her eyes and tries to sleep but sleep won’t come. As a girl her mother taught her to say the “Hail Mary” prayer over and over until the repetition lulled her to sleep but that doesn’t work now either. The window unit rumbles and from the avenue she hears horns blowing and trucks with wailing brakes and winos arguing over a bottle. The bottle breaks and the winos fall silent. Then a couple of car doors slam. But parking on the street below is for emergency vehicles only.

  Juliet knows it’s the police even before she hears voices and footsteps on the stairs and a busy knocking outside.

  “Five-O,” she whispers to Leonard.

  “Five who?” He lies on his belly and cocks his head her way.

  “Fuzz, baby. They’ve come to get us.”

  Leonard scrambles out of bed. He fishes around in his pant pockets and withdraws an empty vial and what’s left of a joint, then he stumbles into the bathroom and flushes them down the toilet.

  Juliet answers the door in her underwear.

  “Miss Beauvais?” It’s a male black who in the right light could pass for a male white. “Are you Miss Juliet Beauvais?”

  Juliet nods.

  “Miss Beauvais, I’m NOPD, Lieutenant Peroux? This here is Sergeant Lentini.” Juliet glances at the silent one and he removes his golf hat and looks at the floor. “I’m afraid we’ve come with bad news,” says the talker. “Miss Beauvais, somebody broke into your mother’s house last night and attacked her.” He waits for the long beat of a heart then says, “She’s dead.”

  “Mama?” Juliet throws a hand up to her mouth and stifles a scream. A spasm cuts through her, then a second more powerful one. “Oh, God. Mama.”

  Leonard, standing at the bathroom door, lets out a yelp.

  “Mother’s dead, sweetie,” she tells him.

  “Mother’s dead?” Struggling to get his pants on, Leonard nearly falls to the floor as he hurries out to join her. “I mean, your mother’s dead, Juliet? My God, what happened?”

  “She was murdered,” says Peroux. “Mrs. Huey found her early this morning.”

  “Who found her?” But then, oh yeah, it comes to her. “I’m just not accustomed to a cleaning woman being called like that,” Juliet explains.

  Peroux is staring at Leonard. “Who are you?”

  “He’s my boyfriend, Detective,” Juliet says.

  “This one’s your boyfriend? I thought Sonny LaMott was your boyfriend.”

  Leonard stutters when he says, “I’m her friend who’s a boy.”

  Lentini, looking up finally, seems to decide it’s okay now to put his hat back on.

  “You got a name, friend-who’s-a-boy?” asks Peroux.

  “Leonard Barbier,” Leonard says.

  “Who?”

  “His name is Leonard Barbier. Now if you don’t mind, Lieutenant, I’d like to get dressed.”

  “You ain’t Leonard Barbier,” Peroux says. “Leonard Barbier, I know Leonard Barbier. Leonard Barbier’s a lawyer here in town. Got a big office in the CBD.”

  “I’m Leonard the Third,” Leonard says.

  Peroux is still glaring at him when he says, “Miss Beauvais, would it put you out terribly to have Sergeant Lentini and myself look around your room?”

  “Why do you want to look around my room?”

  “Are you telling me not to, Miss Beauvais?”

  “Lieutenant, I don’t mean to be rude but you leave me no choice. First you tell me my mother’s been murdered then you want to go through my personal effects.” Juliet picks her clothes off the floor and starts putting them on. “It isn’t right. You’re welcome to look all you want, but play by the rules and get a search warrant.”

  Past his whiskers Peroux’s mouth turns up in a grin. “You’re right, of course. How insensitive of me.”

  “Do you think I killed her? Is that what you think?”

  “I haven’t for
med any opinion yet. Settle down, please, Miss Beauvais.”

  Leonard moves over to a window, quietly so as to avoid attention. He stands staring into a block of hazy morning light, blood drained from his face.

  “Where have I seen you before?” Peroux says to Juliet.

  She’s sitting on the bed, fussing with a shoe. She can’t believe she’s being asked that again. “Ever use the men’s room at the Napoleon House?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “They’ve got a picture of me naked hanging in there.” After a moment she adds, “By Sonny LaMott. Have you interviewed Sonny yet, Lieutenant? Have you searched his room?”

  Peroux seems to be thinking about it. But when he answers, it’s to an earlier question. “No, I believe it was someplace else.” From the pocket of his jacket he removes a stick of Wrigley’s. He lets the wrappers fall to the floor then he folds the gum in half and sticks it deep in the back of his mouth. “You ever do any pornography, Miss Beauvais?”

  Juliet just keeps fooling with that shoe. “When you sign the release,” she says, “nobody bothers to tell you it’s a death certificate. But yes, Lieutenant, I have.”

  Peroux finds this funny. He laughs, anyway. “Miss Beauvais, we’ll need to be asking you some questions later today.” Then to Leonard: “You, too, podna.”

  When the sound of their car doors comes again, Leonard retreats from the window and stands in the middle of the room. “Why would that man think Sonny LaMott was your boyfriend?”

  “Shit if I know. And all I really wanted last night was some goddamned étouffée.”

  “Did you and Sonny get back together?”

  “Me get back with Sonny? Come on, Leonard. Use your head.”

  “That’s why you were asking all those questions at the club the other night, wasn’t it?”

  “Leonard, stop it. My mother is finally dead and the Beauvais is mine and what do you care anyway who I get back with or don’t get back with? You’re in your man mood these days.”

  “I’ll show you my man mood.”

  Leonard has a much easier time taking his clothes off than putting them on, and the same is true of Juliet. Having no detectives at the door is the difference.

  “Don’t forget my period,” she says.

  “Just be quiet and watch for a minute.”

  He lies on his back and she watches him and even helps toward the end, her favorite part. She figures it’s the least she can do. He finishes on her chest and she goes to the bathroom and gets a hand towel and wets it with hot water and wipes herself off.

  “You think you’re gonna miss your mama any?” Leonard asks through the open door.

  That, as it happens, is the very same question she’s been asking herself since checking to make sure her mother was dead a few hours earlier. “No,” she says, “I don’t.”

  “Hey, podna, you got a minute to help me out with something?” It’s Lieutenant Peroux, walking over to join him at the fence.

  Sonny can feel his guts rebelling at the prospect of more questions. Didn’t he do his part at the house earlier? Short of his confessing, he wonders what more they could possibly need.

  He and Peroux stand beneath the canopy of a giant magnolia, last night’s rainwater still dripping from the blossoms and large, glossy leaves.

  “LaMott?”

  “Go ahead, Lieutenant.”

  “Now tell me if I got this right. For a long time you’ve been coming here to visit. You sit in the living room and you and the lady have tea or coffee or whatever?”

  “I’m an artist, and sometimes when I’m in the neighborhood painting a particular house or garden or street corner I stop by to see how she’s doing, that’s correct.”

  “She was so fascinating, an old woman, you made a point to do that?”

  “I’ve known her since 1971, my senior year in high school. And I’ve always liked Miss Marcelle. And her age—the fact that she was older than me—didn’t matter.”

  “But I still don’t see why you kept coming here. What did you have in common besides the daughter neither of you’d seen in fifteen years?”

  “Nothing. Juliet was all we had in common.”

  “Nothing but Juliet. Now, Sonny, some time yesterday you stopped by and asked for money.”

  “Yes, I did. Well, it was a check actually. But the maid met me at the door and refused to give me one. She seemed to think it was inappropriate. Since it was Juliet’s money, she thought Juliet should be the one who came and got the check.”

  “The maid, LaMott? Do you mean Mrs. Huey?”

  Sonny nods.

  “So she didn’t give you the check?”

  “No.”

  “You never got it?”

  “No. Well, not from Mrs. Huey.”

  Peroux waits and so does Sonny.

  “What do you mean? ‘Not from Mrs. Huey.’ Did Mrs. Beauvais give you a check later on?”

  “Late last night I returned to the house a second time and she gave me one then.”

  “How late was this?”

  “Midnight maybe. I don’t know exactly. Somewhere like that.”

  Peroux takes his time, the activity in his mind bringing a slight wobble to his eyes. “So it’s midnight—late like you say—and you come here and knock on the door or ring the bell or what?”

  “I had Juliet’s key.”

  “So you just go right straight in the house?”

  “I know how bad that must sound, but it’s the way it happened, Lieutenant Peroux.”

  “I could arrest you for that. I could take you in.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Did you kill that woman, LaMott?”

  “No, Lieutenant. I swear on my mother’s grave I didn’t.”

  A long silence. Peroux trying to decide how to proceed. He searches the grounds for Lentini, then finally: “So you just let yourself in. Let’s get back to that.”

  “Well, as I told you, Lieutenant, I went in through the front door. First I wanted to get some clothes for Juliet from her closet—she’d asked for this—but after I went in her room I realized what a crazy thing I was doing and I started to leave. I was passing Miss Marcelle’s room when she said something through the door. She thought I was Juliet.”

  “You remember what she said?”

  “That she regretted things in the past and that she hoped the two of them could start over in the morning. She said she wanted to be Juliet’s mother again.”

  “Go on.”

  “I went downstairs and at some point I decided that while I was there I’d just as well go get Juliet’s check and be done with it. Obviously I wasn’t thinking rationally, but I believed it would somehow keep the peace between them. So I walked back up and knocked on Miss Marcelle’s door and when she answered I could see immediately her shock at finding who it was. Her face, anyway, went from an expression of absolute joy to one of surprise then to one of anger. I stood there fumbling for words and eventually managed to express my embarrassment for letting myself in without her permission. I started to leave again but she said no, to wait a minute, so I stood at the door and watched as she wrote out the check at a table by the bed. Even more than my being in the house she seemed upset that I wasn’t Juliet. She kept saying they needed to talk. As I was leaving she told me I was never welcome in the Beauvais again, and never to come back. I told her I was sorry I’d compromised our friendship. And she said . . .”

  The detective nods for Sonny to continue.

  “She said I’d done more than that. ‘You’ve killed it,’ is how she put it.”

  “And the two of you had this big conversation and Mrs. Huey didn’t leave her room to see what the commotion was all about?”

  “There wasn’t any commotion. We were just talking, Lieutenant.”

  Peroux seems to be trying to decide what to ask next. Once again he looks around for his partner. “That’s a helluva story, son. A helluva damn story.”

  Sonny shrugs. “It’s the truth.”

 
The detective is smiling. Shaking his head. “And where was Juliet all this time you were prowling around uninvited in her mama’s house?”

  “Waiting for me back at my place.”

  “Okay, podna.” Peroux is writing in his notebook, the effort pulling his mouth down in a frown. “LaMott, listen. I want you to come see me later this afternoon. That’s police headquarters on Broad Street. Say about five o’clock.”

  “Down by the old Falstaff Brewery?”

  “That’s right, down by the brewery. Come up to the Criminal Investigation Division on the third floor and we’ll find us an empty room and sit and have some coffee and go over all this again. Between now and then I want you to think about anything you might’ve left out.”

  Sonny nods. “Okay. So am I free to go?”

  “Free for now, anyway,” the detective says, then flashes a smile before walking away.

  In the French Quarter a miracle: Juliet has found a parking spot less than a mile away from her destination, her mother’s bank on Chartres Street.

  She dunks a couple of coins in the meter. The bank opened less than an hour earlier and inside the floor, though pocked with gum droppings, shines from last night’s mopping. Still undecided whether to take the cash in big or small denominations, Juliet joins five or six others in the queue corral and waits her turn. She’s jumpy from too much coffee and too little sleep. Menstrual cramps add to her torment.

  She wonders if Lentini is a mute or if with a partner like that high yellow it’s impossible to get a word in edgewise.

  “Give it to me in hundreds,” she tells the teller when it’s her turn.

  The teller is wearing a tan suit identical to those worn by all the others behind the counter. A tasteful, teal-colored ascot finishes the outfit. “Do you have a current ID?”

  Juliet pulls out her California driver’s license and slides it across the faux marble surface. “No, why don’t you make it tens and twenties. Give me a big wad.”

  The woman types something at her computer terminal, eyes colored with beads of amber from the screen. When she can’t seem to find what she’s looking for, she glances up at Juliet with a nervous smile. “Excuse me a moment, Ms. Beauvais,” then she walks over to a man seated at a desk.