John Miller - Upside Down

Bennett narrowed his eyes. “What about her pal Erica?”

“She had a little kitchen accident involving a toaster oven and some spilled milk.”

“Good work, Arturo. As always. You're the best, kid. With the one notable, close-to-home exception.”

Marta. Arturo's heart dropped. “None of my business, sir, but I'd destroy those,” he said, gesturing at the envelope. “Souvenirs like those could prove very expensive.”

Bennett raised an eyebrow. Then he unlocked and opened a desk drawer and removed a thick envelope, which he handed to Arturo. “I added what I owe Marta.”

“The police have probably found them by now,” Arturo said. “The lawyer mentioned she had some volunteers or other coming in.”

“Yeah,” Bennett said thoughtfully. “Executions bring bleeding-heart pricks out of the woodwork. You earned your bonus. Take a few days and kick back. Bring a date to the club and dance. Invite Marta Ruiz. Class up the place.”

“She doesn't like noisy rooms.” He started to leave but turned at the door. “Marta didn't find Amber,” Arturo said. “I did. I guess her fee was a waste after all.”

“Well, Marta didn't find Amber, but she did handle some unpleasantness this morning. I wish I could afford to employ her full-time. It's nice to know she's around for the big jobs.”

Arturo felt the burn of jealousy. It was a bitch the way everybody overestimated Marta's ability. She was good, but not as good as her reputation. The thing he did was man's work. People weren't afraid of Marta, she had no presence. It wasn't her who got Amber's evidence.

Arturo left the office knowing that Bennett was a seriously bent gear, and he was far too attached to his filthy old pictures to ever destroy them. Not that Arturo gave a damn. What Bennett did or didn't do about those had nothing to do with him.

Faith Ann Porter sat cradling her backpack to her chest as the streetcar made its way up St. Charles Avenue. Faith Ann and Kimberly had lived in New Orleans for a little more than a year. She stared down at the damp knees of her jeans and thought about her mother, whose blood was staining her clothes and skin. How many times the two of them had ridden those few miles together during the past months. Sometimes they rode the streetcar for the sheer pleasure of the experience, sometimes because the five-year-old Dodge Neon had some problem. Faith Ann knew the transportation routes, because weeks before she had moved here she'd gathered as much information on New Orleans as she could so she wouldn't be a stranger. Research, her mother always told her, was crucial preparation.

Faith Ann felt an involuntary tear rolling down her cheek. She swiped it away with the back of her hand. She didn't have time to feel sad. She looked out the window to see where she was. Just one more stop. Faith Ann wondered if she should go to school, act like nothing had happened, and wait for the principal to send for her. She imagined herself walking into the office, where two cops would be standing there to inform her that some crackhead had murdered her mother along with some big-breasted client named Amber Lee.

She couldn't risk it. She had to remember that the cops were her enemies and they had ways of tricking people with lies. Even if Amber hadn't said so, Faith Ann knew from listening to her mother that the police and prosecutors had their own agendas. You couldn't trust most of them.

Hank and Millie Trammel were her only relatives. Millie was her mother's older sister and about the nicest person you'd ever hope to find. Hank was big and could be intimidating, but he was always nice to her and her mother. She held on to the thought that very soon Hank and Millie would be there to take care of her.

Faith Ann let her mind focus on its image of Horace Pond, her mother's client on death row. He was merely a picture on a corkboard and a small voice heard once over the speakerphone in her mother's office. She noticed that her fingers were trembling and she clenched her fists. She needed to form a plan-to decide how to spend the time until her relatives came, but all she could come up with was to go home and change clothes. At home, it would be easier to think. At home it would all be better. She would be safe at home.

Faith Ann felt the streetcar slowing for her stop and she stood. When it stopped, she climbed down from the cabin, stepping onto the neutral ground. It was just three blocks to her house.

New Orleans homicide detective Sergeant Michael Manseur turned onto Camp Street and pulled up behind one of the white prowlers whose doors were appointed with a decal depicting a five-pointed star set in a crescent moon. He switched off his flashing blue light and moved it from the dashboard to the floorboard. The day was warming rapidly, the sun shining, but the weatherman had promised a cold front would be pressing through later that afternoon. Temperatures would drop into the fifties by evening. Manseur had caught the call so he would be the primary on this one, a doubleheader called in by a law student. With luck, this one would be a slam dunk and he could go back to one of the eight active cases on his plate.

Manseur grabbed a new spiral murder book and checked his pocket for the Cross pen before he stepped from the Impala, locked the door, and walked into the old professional building. A uniformed patrolman standing in the lobby pointed him to the elevator and said, “It's on four.”

The detective pressed the button, and as he waited for the cab to descend he sneaked a sideways peek at his image in the gold-veined mirror tiles glued to the wall of the run-down office building. What he saw was a shortish man in a crumpled brown suit who was tapping a spiral notebook impatiently against his leg. He looked at the overworked, overweight, underpaid detective-a sad reflection. Behind his back, people sometimes called him Froggie, not because he was of French ancestry but because his face was wide, his lips thick, and his eyes seemed to bulge more than other people's did. He could see skin between the cables of dishwater-blond hair that he carefully combed over to hide his baldness. For years he had promised himself that one of these days he would invest in a hairpiece, but so far there was always something more important requiring his and his wife's salaries. But he knew that there were four things that were very special about him. The first three were his wife and two daughters, and the fourth was that he was an extremely good detective.

The ride to the fourth floor was slow, the cables supporting the car creaking, the motor laboring. The carpet under his wingtips was stained, the wood-panel walls scarred, the certificate of worthiness made illegible by the scratched plastic lens that protected it. Finally the cab stopped, and Manseur stepped out into a foyer whose floor was comprised of thousands of little white tiles. The border was formed of double black lines of small black tiles, accented at regular intervals with left-facing swastikas. Even though the tiles were laid into place a decade before Hitler adopted the symbol as his logo, forever trashing it, it was unsettling to see it used decoratively.

Manseur turned right and headed for the open door at the end of the dimly lit hallway, where uniformed cops were gathered. He heard the voices and put on his game face as he neared the crime scene.

He entered the reception room and cast his frown on a police sergeant, who was leaning back in an old chair and had his feet on the desk, telling a joke. “The fuckin' son of a bitch said he likes his coffee half full of hot sauce! I swear to-” The sergeant cut off the story and scrambled to his feet when his eyes met Manseur's. The other two patrolmen, who had been laughing, were struck mute. Their faces went red.