Thomas Adcock - New Orleans Noir

I pulled over in front of the house and turned off my lights. I got out of the car and lit another cigarette. We wrestled the body out, and lugged it into the dark house, which stank of decay and mold, rotting furniture scattered about as we made our way through it. We found the curving stairway to the second story, and carried him up. The first bedroom at the top of the stairs had a closet full of moldy clothing.

“Okay, let’s just put him here in the closet,” I said, panting and trying to catch my breath. Chad weighed a fucking ton. “But put him down for a minute.”

Phillip let go and the body fell to the floor with a thud. I had the body by the shoulders, and I staggered with the sudden weight. The tarp pulled down, exposing Chad’s head, and then I couldn’t hold him anymore, and he fell, dragging me down on top of him.

“FUCK!” I screamed, looking right into Chad’s open eyes. His mouth had come open as well, and in the moonlight I noticed something I hadn’t seen before.

There are bruises on his neck. Bruises that look like they came from fingers around his neck, choking the life out of him. A chill went down my spine. What the fuck — I looked back up at Phillip. I could almost hear him saying again, You’ve said a million times that anyone can get away with murder...

No wonder he hadn’t wanted to call the cops.

It hadn’t been an accident. It hadn’t been self-defense.

It was murder.

And I’d helped him cover it up. I was an accessory after the fact.

And even if I cooperated, testified against him, I might have to serve time myself. At the very least, author Anthony Andrews would get some very nasty publicity.

Does he know? I thought, my heart racing. Can he tell that I’ve seen? It was awful dark, and I only saw because my face was right there by Chad’s.

“Are you okay? Jesus, I’m sorry!”

He doesn’t know I know. Thank you, God .

Phillip grabbed me under the arms and lifted me up to my feet without effort. He started dusting me off. “Are you okay?”

“Didn’t know you were so strong,” I said. I forced a smile on my face. “I’m okay.”

“Don’t you want to put him in the closet?” he asked. “Or can we just leave him here?”

“No, he needs to go in the closet, just in case. Let’s do this and get out of here,” I said, managing to keep my voice steady. I can’t let him do this, I can’t let him get away with this, but I’ve got to get out of here. Think, Tony, think, there must be something I can do...

We shoved him in, standing up, and wedged the door shut.

“All right, now we have to get rid of his car, right?” He gave me a smile. “This means so much to me, Tony, you have no idea.” He gave me a hug, almost squeezing the breath out of me.

How come I never noticed how strong he is before now? Aloud, I said, “Well, maybe we could just leave it here after all.” I shrugged. “I mean, they probably wouldn’t think anything about it, really.”

Phillip raised an eyebrow. “But you said—”

“No, no, I know, we can’t leave it here.” I gave him a ghost of a smile and tried to keep my voice steady, even as I thought, I am alone in an abandoned house in an empty neighborhood with a killer. “I’m just a little — you know...” I tried to make a joke. “This isn’t exactly my normal Tuesday night routine.” I gave a hollow laugh. “No, we can’t leave the car parked out in front.”

“Okay.”

“We’ll leave the car in the Bywater,” I went on, my mind racing, trying to think of something, some clue, to leave behind. If they didn’t find the body, he’d get away with it, but how to tip them off and leave myself out of it...? “With any luck, the tires and everything will be stripped in a few days. If and when the cops finally find it, the body will be gone, and Chad will have just disappeared from the face of the earth.”

“Won’t they check the house for bodies before they bulldoze?”

“They already checked this house — they marked it as clear.” I’d picked the house for that very reason. I felt sick to my stomach. Oh, yes, the plan was clever. I’d outsmarted myself, that’s for damned sure. Tomorrow morning the bulldozers would level the place into a pile of rubble, and when the backhoe cleared it into a dumpster, if no telltale body parts fell out, that would be the end of it. Nope, Chad would be off to the dump, hopefully to be incinerated, and all Phillip would have to do was pretend he’d never seen or spoken to Chad again. Sure, they’d check his phone records and see that Chad had called, but all Phillip had to do was say they’d argued and Chad said he was going out in the Quarter. Besides, it would probably be days before anyone even noticed Chad was missing — and it wasn’t like the post-Katrina police force wasn’t already spread thin. Even before the storm, they weren’t exactly a ball of fire.

And Phillip was obviously a lot smarter than I’d given him credit for.

We left the car on Spain Street on a dark block on the lake side of St. Claude. I’d told Phillip to leave the windows down and the keys in the ignition. Someone would surely take that invitation to a free car. The police wouldn’t be looking for the vehicle for days, maybe even weeks — if ever. Maybe I could report the car stolen?

But that wouldn’t lead them back to Phillip.

Phillip got into my car and we pulled away from the curb. “Some adventure, huh?” he said, rolling down his window and lighting another cigarette. “Thanks, man.” He put his free hand on my inner thigh and stroked it, giving me the smile I’d seen him use a million times in bars. I knew exactly what that smile meant, and my blood ran cold. “Do you really think we’ll get away with it?”

“As long as you stick to your story and don’t freak when the police come by to interview you — if they ever do,” I replied, knowing that he wouldn’t freak. Oh no, he was much too clever for that. How could I have missed that before? If the body disposal went as planned, it could be days, even weeks, before anyone even notified the police. Chad worked as a waiter in a Quarter restaurant, and from all appearances, never seemed to have any friends. Who would miss him? He wouldn’t show up for work, they’d write him off — people tend to come and go quickly in New Orleans, especially now — and that would be the end of it. Unless a family member missed him, filed a missing-persons report, and really pressed the cops — which wouldn’t do much good, unless his family was wealthy and powerful.

You have to hate New Orleans sometimes.

As we drove down Claiborne, the one thing I couldn’t stop thinking about was those bruises on Chad’s throat, and the two hours Phillip had waited before he called me. His story was a lie. No one freaks out and stays alone with a dead body for two hours. And I hadn’t heard anything. Sure, I’d had the iPod on pretty loud, but I’d heard their fights before. As for the bruise on his cheek, the cut lips — maybe he’d done that to himself somehow, as he tried to figure out a way to get me to help him. There was no way I would ever know what had finally pushed Phillip over the edge, why he’d decided that Chad had to die rather than just breaking things off with him. Or maybe the story he’d told me was partially true — maybe Chad had hit him, he’d fought back, knocked him down, and Chad had hit his head on the table on the way down. But Phillip had definitely finished him off by choking him.

I fell for his story like an idiot, worried as always about poor dumb Phillip in a jam, and now I am an accessory after the fact.

Just get home, get away from him, and make an anonymous call to the police, tip them off. As long as they find the body before it’s too late...