Black Cat Weekly #92

Chapter 5-2

WowHe stepped into a tall foyer scented with roses. A marble floor and tall spiral staircase with marble steps and a mahogany railing twisted its way upstairs. Lana took his hand, pulled him through the foyer.

“Let’s take my car,” she said. “Daddy just bought me a Porsche.”

Oh, yes. Luck like this will never last.

Oh, yes. Luck like this will never last.She led him down a long hall, past a library on the left, a dining room on the right, past the kitchen to a door which opened to a garage where another white Mercedes sat next to a silver Porsche.

Billy felt a grin crawl on his face.

Of course, this will never last. But I’ll take as much as I can from Miss Lana Bourgeois.

Of course, this will never last.But I’ll take as much as I can from Miss Lana Bourgeois.* * * *

* * * *Only, it did last. She liked Billy’s dark brown eyes and eyelashes any girl would envy, which was news to Billy. She liked the way he doted on her. He told her his bad luck with cars. She thought it was cute he didn’t have one, always took the streetcar or a bus.

“You’re different, Billy. Not like the guys I know. Guys with money are so superficial and I’m no great beauty.”

She was more than pretty enough for Billy. He took everything she gave him, just like he took everything he could from the cars and from the unattended purses in stores. He’d discovered some women left their purses in shopping baskets or outside dressing rooms. A quick snatch of a wallet brought cash. Then a quick dump in a convenient trash can on the way out of the mall.

* * * *

* * * *Sparky Jones pulled the jeweler’s loop from his right eye and said, “It’s a diamond. Good one.”

Billy had lifted it from a dark-green BMW with a Texas license plate in a French Quarter parking lot a couple hours before dawn Saturday morning. There were plenty of small pay-as-you-park lots doting the Quarter, where people slipped bills into a slot in a steel box at the edge of the parking lot, their cars safe from being towed but not safe when they forgot to lock every door. A casual walk through the lots, trying the doors, usually found one or two unlocked.

“Ever think of stepping up your game?” Sparky wore the same suit, sat the same way behind his desk. Man never changed.

“What to you mean?”

“Houses or businesses, instead of cars and purses and backpacks.”

Billy had just discovered another venture, cruising Tulane and Loyola universities while dressed like a college student in T-shirt and jeans to pick up a backpack lying around in a hall or left at a table in the all-you-can-eat cafeterias while the student went for seconds. Sparky paid $50 for each smart phone or iPad and $100 for each laptop, $200 for Macintoshes. Many of the students left their wallets in their backpacks and their pot and other dope, which he disposed of with the backpacks. Tulane students always had cash.

“You’re slick enough to slip into a house, maybe even a business.” Sparky tried a smile, looking like a lizard.

“They have alarms, and I don’t wanna get caught committing burglary.”

“Every time you go into a car, you’re committing burglary.”

“I am? I thought it was just called theft.”

“Burglary. A felony. Every time you lift something over $500, that’s also a felony.”

Billy tried not to look worried. “What’s the difference between a felony and misdemeanor. The amount of time in jail if convicted?”

“Yeah, and felons are sentenced to hard labor. In a penitentiary, instead of parish prison.”

Both words sent shivers through Billy.

“I’ll stay at what I’m good at.”

“People who think small, stay small.”

Billy thought—and small fish get away.

and small fish get away.Billy stood up and Sparky shrugged, dug cash from his desk drawer. Billy walked out with his largest haul. He needed it. He was taking Lana to dinner at the granddame of New Orleans restaurants. Antoine’s.

* * * *

* * * *Billy took as much as Miss Lana Bourgeois gave and it lasted through summer and fall and into winter. His luck at work also held up. No cop ever stopped him while he worked. It was as if he were ghost, a phantom who slipped in and out of cars, university halls, department stores. He swam away like the little fish no one saw. A minnow.

It wasn’t until he was cleaning up his room again did he find the wolf’s head onyx ring under his bed. Damn, it must have fallen out of his pocket. Billy sat on his bed and looked at the ring. If Lana saw it, she might put it together. The black Mercedes was her father’s car, and this was probably his ring.

He tossed it into his trash can, then realized he might bring Lana here tonight. She thought his apartment was cute. He stuffed it into the front pocket of his jeans. He’d throw it away outside. He glanced at the clock and saw he had to step it up. He made sure to lock up the apartment. There was a ladies Longines La Grande Classique woman’s watch inside. He looked it up on the net and it retailed for $1,700. He also had two men’s gold rings and a gold cigarette case, of all things. The cash from the more recent haul he’ll use tonight for another sumptuous meal at Restaurant Eiffel on St. Charles Avenue.

Later, over dessert, Lana said, “I’ve a surprise for you?”

“Yeah.”

“Instead of dancing, we’re going to my house. I want to introduce you to my parents.”

* * * *

* * * *After all these months, Billy met Lana’s parents and they were as he’d expected. Her mother, Samantha, was pretty with the same dark hair, same green eyes as Lana and her father, Elvin, was tall with sandy hair. Both wore beige, the mother a beige dress that hung past her knees, the father a gauzy beige shirt over black slacks. Billy wore his new blue suit with a sky-blue tie. Lana wore a slinky yellow wrap dress.

“What are you drinking?” Elvin asked Billy.

“Sazeracs,” Lana answered for both.

Billy watched Lana’s father fix them the official cocktail of New Orleans—the Sazerac—mixing cognac, absinthe, two dashes of bitters and a cube of sugar.

“What do you do for a living, Billy?” Lana’s mother asked.

“I work in a bookstore.”

Her father asked what school Billy had gone to and Billy wanted to say he went to Holy Cross or Jesuit instead of telling them he went to a public high school. But he told them the truth. He’d gone to Fortier. In New Orleans, if you didn’t go to a private school, you usually ended up like the bumper sticker that went—Prowd New Orlins Publik Scool Graduit. They didn’t react. Maybe because Fortier was uptown.

Prowd New Orlins Publik Scool GraduitThe parents sat in thick sofa chairs in a front room filled with books in mahogany bookcases and oil paintings on dark walls. Billy sat on a loveseat and Lana came and sat in his lap, sending a shooting pain into his thigh. She laughed and jumped off to sit next to him and he reached into his pocket to see what hurt him and pulled out the onyx ring. He froze.

Close your hand—he thought but knew he couldn’t do it immediately.

Close your handLook up. They’re looking at you.

Look up. They’re looking at you.He turned to Lana who stared at the ring. She slowly reached for it. Billy didn’t want to look at her parents.

“I found it. Up the street. Next to the sidewalk.”

“When?” Lana picked up the ring.

“Uh. Couple weeks ago. When I came to pick you up.”

Lana told her father. “It’s the Autolycus.”

The father came over and Lana stood, handed him the ring. He nodded at it.

“Where did you find it?”

“On the sidewalk.”

“You’ve been carrying it around in your pocket?”

“I forgot it was there. Must have washed it in my jeans.”

Lana put a hand on Billy’s shoulder as her father took the ring to her mother.

“His brother. My Uncle Kozak gave it to him. It’s his emblem. Autolycus is the son of Hermes. Greek mythology.”

Her father looked at Billy and said he didn’t know how he lost the ring.

“We need to celebrate.”

It was nearly midnight when Lana and Billy stepped through the foyer into her front door, and she kissed him goodnight.

She held on to Billy’s shirt. “My father is so happy to get the Autolycus back. He hasn’t told Uncle Kozak because my uncle’s bad news.”

“What does that mean?”

“He does bad things.”

She shrugged, pulled him close and kissed him once again. She told him the night had been a big success.

On his way home Billy began to think about this relationship as maybe long term. She was not gorgeous, but she was sweet and rich and liked him a lot. And she was rich.

He was too juiced to go straight home so he walked past his apartment and up to St. Charles Avenue. A police car passed along the avenue and a streetcar clanged as it crossed an intersection. A black Cadillac parked on the avenue in front of Billy and a well-dressed couple climbed out and headed into a steak house. Billy pulled out the handkerchief he kept in a back pocked, eased over to try the door of the Caddy but it was locked. A small red light blinked on the dash. Alarm. He moved to the next car, a Volvo. Locked. He passed the restaurant and looked behind it, spotted a parking lot full of cars.

Lights along the rear of the restaurant illuminated the first row of cars but the ones at the back of the lot were in darkness and Billy found an unlocked white BMW with a woman’s clutch purse under the front seat. He rifled it quickly, removing sixty dollars from a wallet. He put the purse back in place. He popped the trunk but it was empty. He closed it as quietly as possible and moved to the next car.

An unlocked silver Lexis at the end of the line had nothing in the passenger area but Billy found a gray leather case the size of a laptop in the trunk. He unzipped it. The dim streetlight picked up a row of gold chains. Necklaces. He zipped up the bag, looked around as he softly closed the trunk and moved away, down the side street running from the avenue.

He pressed the case against his chest with his left hand as he walked so no one would see a man carrying a case in the darkness. He crossed the street, away from the streetlights, his heart beating hard again, perspiration running down his temples. As he reached the corner, a dog barked at him, and he jumped. A car came up behind him and he moved away from the corner streetlight. The car passed him. A police car. It took the next corner and Billy stopped, looked around quickly.

Cars lined this side of the narrow street and Billy slid the gray case under a white Honda Civic, turned and retraced his steps past two cars and waited. Headlights approached the corner and he waited until the police car turned back up his street to start walking slowly up the sidewalk. A spotlight illuminated him, so he turned back and stopped.

“Just stand there,” a voice called out and Billy complied.

It was a two-man car and both officers came over.

“What are doing out tonight?”

“Just walking the neighborhood.” He gave them his address, which wasn’t six blocks away. “I walk when I can’t sleep. Sometimes in the middle of the night.”

“You’re an i***t. This is New Orleans.”

The smaller of the officers patted him down and pulled out Billy’s wallet, cell phone and the cash from his front pocket.

“How much you got here?”

Billy tells them about sixty dollars.

The taller officer shined his flashlight under the cars Billy had walked past. The white Honda was ahead, and they didn’t look under it. Billy hadn’t reached it yet, had he? They took his driver’s license and checked him out before telling him he shouldn’t walk around like that at night.

An excited call came over their radios and the big cop answered, and they handed Billy his wallet and license and hurried back to their car, hitting the blue lights and zipping away. As they accelerated, Billy walked to the Honda, pulled out the case, and headed home.

OK—he thought. Enough of this. They had his name now. Damn that was close. He realized it could have been the end with his rich girlfriend Lana. They may even figure he’d stolen the onyx ring. Damn.

OKEnough of this.Damn that was close.DamnTime to give up on crime.

* * * *

* * * *Summer’s Pool Hall reeked of cooked cabbage today and Billy’s eyes felt a burning sensation as he stepped into the small room where Sparky Jones sat in his black suit behind his beat-up desk.

“Well, well. William Earl James. How are you today?”

Billy stopped. He hadn’t given Sparky his full name. Nothing beyond Uh, Willie. Sparky smiled, waved to one of the chairs in front of his desk. Billy looked into the other room. Empty as usual. He moved to the desk, laid the gray case atop it, and sat.

“So, what you got for me?”

Billy unzipped the case, lay it open.

“Sixty gold chains,” said Billy. The chains were each sixteen inches long, links in different thickness, each marked 24 karat. Sparky started pulling them out, examining them.

The door opened behind Billy and a tall man in a charcoal gray suit stepped in, stood just inside the door.

“Quality stuff here,” Sparky said.

The man by the door turned his eyes to Billy and it was like looking into pools of black ink.

Sparky said, “I’ll give you fifty each. That’s $3,000.”

The man looked familiar. Maybe like someone in the movies.

The man took in a deep breath and said, “Sparky tells me you’re a pretty slick guy.”

Billy turned to Sparky who grinned at him again, then turned back.

“Did you know Autolycus is the King of Thieves.”

Autolycus? He said Autolycus.

Autolycus?Autolycus.The man’s deep-set eyes showed no emotion, his face deadpan. Billy’s breathing increased. He squeezed his hands together.

“What else did you steal from my brother’s car?”

Oh, Lord. Uncle Kozak. What did Lana say? He does bad things.

Oh, Lord. Uncle Kozak.He does bad things.“Uh.” What else did I take?

What else did I take?“Oh, a couple gold chains and a watch.”

“Gold Vacheron Constantin. Sparky returned it to me.”

Uncle Kozak stepped forward, opened his coat to show a large pistol in a holster on his right hip. He looked a little like his brother, Lana’s father. That’s what was familiar to Billy. Except for the black onyx eyes.

“After my brother’s car was burgled, we spotted you cruisin’ the neighborhood, sneaking into unlocked cars.”

Billy’s shoulder slumped.

He said, “We.” Oh, Lord.

He said, “We.” Oh, Lord.“Sparky says you have potential. Time you stepped up to houses and businesses, instead of cars and purses and backpacks. You like my niece?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You want to see her again?”

Billy slowly nodded.

A reptilian smile came to Uncle Kozak’s face.

“You’re working for me now.”

O’Neil De Noux (oneildenoux.com) has 47 books published, more than 400 short story sales and a screenplay produced in 2000. His writing has garnered a number of awards, including the Shamus Award twice, the Derringer Award, and Police Book of the Year (awarded by PoliceWriters.com). Two of his stories have been featured in The Best American Mystery Stories (2003 and 2013). He is a past Vice-President of the Private Eye Writers of America.

The Best American Mystery Stories