New Orleans Noir

investment. Got six, seven other buildings to see this morning. You?” he asked, swiveling his own hips. “Thought you was married. You just like your papa.”
    “Here on a murder case. Know this young lady?” I flipped out the picture of Eva and he fished glasses from his robe pocket. “Killed the night of March 28.”
    “Let me think,” he said, staring at the snapshot. “Yeah, yeah, I seen her here that morning. Last time I come in to check on my investment. Around this time. I axed her what she was writing down in her little book, and she says, ‘A perm.’ Looked like a bunny with them funny pigtails.”
    “She leave alone?”
    “Yeah, yeah. No, wait—” He slapped his forehead. “Madonna, how could I forget? She left with that pazzo what got the blue beard.”
    Blue Beard.
    Bingo.
    Then somebody handed me some popcorn still warm in the bag.
    The next morning I radioed Blue Beard’s description in to the Eighth District station in the Quarter, and rang Pogo, Miss Ivonne, Miss Ping, and Uncle Dominic to ask them to contact me the minute they spotted him. Uncle Dominic told me he wanted a cut of the reward, and lost interest fast when I told him there wasn’t any. But both he and Miss Ivonne promised to make a few phone calls to help locate Blue Beard. Mrs. Pierce sputtered “God bless you” when I reported that I was zeroing in on the killer.
    Where the hell could he be? It wasn’t like a man with blue hair could hide just anywhere, even in the French Quarter.
    That afternoon I got a staticky message on my cell phone.
    Lily Lamont.
    A husky, spaced-out voice said she needed to talk with me in person. That evening. She left an address that at first she couldn’t remember right.
    My heels echoed on the flagstones in deserted Pirate’s Alley like the approaching footsteps in those radio plays my daddy used to listen to. A mist had rolled in from the river, wrapping St. Louis Cathedral in fog, and I squinted to make out the address under the halo of a streetlamp. I pictured Lily Lamont blowzy and toothless now, passed out on a filthy mattress cradling an empty bourbon bottle.
    Nothing could have prepared me for what I found.
    After I was buzzed in, I mounted a curved mahogany staircase that swept me up into a cavernous Creole ballroom under a spidery bronze chandelier. In a zebra-upholstered throne, there sat a mummified lady with white hair pulled back tight from her porcelain face, buttering a slice of raisin-bread toast.
    “I’m famished,” Lily Lamont said, taking a bite. “Would you care for some toast and tea? That’s all I ever, ever eat.”
    I shook my head. Perched in the zebra chair next to hers was a bulky goon with a body like a boxer’s gone to seed. He was caressing the top of his shiny bald head, several shades paler than his face.
    “I don’t believe we’ve ever formally met, Lieutenant Panarello,” she said. Her bones, thin as chopsticks, were swallowed by a red silk kimono fastened by a dragon brooch.
    “Not face-to-face.” What was I supposed to do, tell this lady I saw her on her knees in a men’s room thirty years ago?
    “And this is my associate, Lucas,” she said, gesturing to Baldie.
    I nodded, taking a seat in an elaborately carved bishop’s chair under an alabaster lamp of entwined snakes.
    “Nice place,” I said. The floor-to-ceiling windows were draped with damask swags. Outside, shadows from the extended arms of a spotlit Jesus loomed over the cathedral garden.
    “I bought this house last year from your uncle, Dominic Zuppardo.” Her sharp little teeth gnawed on the toast like a rat’s. “At a pretty penny. Actually, I paid him twice as much as the sale price we registered. That helped with my property assessment and his capital gains taxes. Smart man.”
    Bet Uncle Dominic is kissing her butt now, I thought. So that’s who tipped her off to my investigation.
    “Met your friend Miss Ivonne,” I said, since we were having a family reunion. “Place where Eva Pierce used to strip.”
    “How is Ivonne?” Lily asked with a tight smile. “I set her up with that club. I’ve never been in it, of course.” Her frail shoulders shuddered.
    Ditto, I thought. Miss Ivonne probably called her, too.
    “Look, I won’t beat around the bush,” Lily Lamont said, brushing toast crumbs from her fingertips. “I want you to call off your investigation into Eva Pierce’s death. The killer is probably in Timbuktu by now. Questioning all of these people is