Amanda Stevens - The Dollmaker

Dave had never come clean about the missing diary page. He could have gone on with his career with no one the wiser, but he knew. And by the time he tendered his resignation at the request of his superiors, destroying evidence in a homicide investigation had been only one of a dozen transgressions that had made him unfit to be a cop.

Renee Savaria’s killer had never been caught and now another girl who’d worked at the Gold Medallion was dead. If Dave had done his job right seven years ago, Nina Losier might still be alive today.

Idly, he watched the sidewalk artists and fortune tellers lined up along Pirates Alley as he drank the cold water. Street musicians played Dixieland jazz from beneath the shade trees, while earnest young men in black pants and white shirts passed out pamphlets from a local mission. A breeze rippled through the banana trees, bringing the scent of the river and the whisper of memories, and Dave closed his eyes for a moment.

I like it here, Daddy. It’s like a big party!

I like it here, too, Ruby. I wish you were with me right now.

He opened his eyes and blinked rapidly against the brightness as he watched a family of tourists stroll by. One of the little girls clutched a yellow balloon in a chubby fist, while clinging to her mother’s hand with the other. She smiled shyly at Dave and turned her head to stare after him as she plodded along in her mom’s wake.

Dave glanced away, not wanting to be pulled back into that dangerous nostalgia. Not here, where temptation lurked on every street corner. He loved the Quarter, but it was a place where a guy like him could get into a lot of trouble if he wasn’t careful. The languid decadence that slithered along the narrow streets and beckoned from hidden courtyards spoke to a darkness that had resided in his soul for as long as he could remember.

He finished his sandwich and drink and threw the trash away, then headed back to Bourbon. The closed-off street teemed with tourists, some of whom seemed at once fascinated and repelled by what they glimpsed through the half-open doorways.

JoJo Barone waited for him in a back booth. He wore a beige linen jacket that hung limply from his stooped shoulders, and a black shirt open at the neck. An unfiltered Camel smoldered between his yellowed fingers as he stared up at Dave through the smoke.

One of Dave’s uncles had died of lung cancer a few years back, and when Dave had gone to visit him in the hospital, he’d been so shocked by the man’s appearance he’d barely been able to look at him. The uncle he remembered had been a big, burly man with a hearty appetite and a booming laugh, but the advanced stages of the disease had given him the skeletal face and emaciated body of a POW. JoJo Barone’s sunken eyes and sallow complexion reminded Dave of his uncle.

“My barkeep tells me you were in earlier to see me,” he rasped. “Do I know you?”

Dave slid onto the bench across from him. “We met seven years ago when NOPD fished one of your dancers out of the river. Her name was Renee Savaria. Ring any bells?” Before he could answer, Dave said, “Seems like your girls have a bad habit of turning up dead, JoJo.”

The man watched Dave through the curling smoke. “Now I remember you. Detective Creasy, right? Took me a minute to place you. You look different than you did back then.”

“A lot can happen to a guy in seven years.”

“I hear that.” Light sparked off a heavy gold ring on JoJo’s pinky as he tipped ashes into an overflowing ashtray at his elbow. “So what can I do for you, Detective?”

“You can forget the detective part. I left the department a few years ago.”

“What are you doing here, then? Something tells me you didn’t come in to see the floor show.”

“I’d like to ask you some questions about Nina Losier’s murder.”

“In what capacity? You just said you’re not a cop anymore.”

“Call me a friend of the family.”

“No offense, Detective—”

“Dave.”

“You don’t look like the type of guy Graydon Losier would hire to wipe his ass, let alone invite to a Saturday soiree.” JoJo took a long drag on his cigarette and turned his head to cough out the smoke. He put a handkerchief to his mouth until the hacking fit was over, and when he brought it away, Dave saw spots of blood on the white linen.

JoJo tucked the handkerchief back into his pocket and acted as if nothing had happened. “But let’s say you are working for her old man. I still don’t get what you’re doing here. The cops already know who killed Nina.”

“That’s news to me,” Dave said. “Last I heard, they hadn’t made an arrest yet.”

“Don’t mean they don’t know who killed her. You want a name, all you gotta do is pick up a phone and call one of your old buddies down at the station.”

“I’d rather you tell me.”

JoJo motioned to a passing waitress, and a few seconds later, she brought him over a drink and a fresh Coke for Dave. He could smell the whiskey in the glass and pushed it away.

“If something’s wrong with your drink, I’ll have my girl bring you something else.”

“The drink is fine. I’m just not thirsty.”

JoJo smiled for the first time. “Now that surprises me. I had you pegged for a drinking man.” He gestured with his cigarette. “Something about the eyes. They always give away a man’s vices.” He lit a fresh cigarette from the butt in his hand. “Let me ask you something, Dave. You ever wish you could go back in time? Maybe to just one specific moment when a decision you made changed the entire course of your life?”

“All the time,” Dave said.

“Lately, I find myself thinking about the summer of ’62. That’s when my older brother gave me my first smoke. I was eleven years old. He stood there laughing his ass off while I puked up my guts behind the smokehouse. So I decided to show him what a big man I was, and for the past forty-five years, I haven’t gone more than an hour or two at a time without a cigarette in my hand. Except maybe when I’m sleeping.”

“What is it? Lung cancer?”

JoJo’s gray eyes showed surprise. “Most people assume emphysema. How’d you know?”

“I had an uncle who had it. I recognize the symptoms.”

“Helluva a way to go, from what I hear.”

“I can think of a few worse,” Dave said. “At least you made it this far. That’s more of a shot than Nina Losier got.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with that girl’s death. You’re wasting my time and yours if you think I did. Like I said, the cops already know who killed her.”

“And I’m still waiting for you to tell me.”

JoJo propped his elbows on the table and cupped one hand over the other. “Ever hear of a little cockroach named Jimmy Caisson?”

“Nina’s boyfriend?”

“He’s the kind of guy that likes to smack around his women. Puts a real tingle in his joystick, I reckon. You know the type. Beats the shit out of the old lady on Saturday night, then comes crawling back on hands and knees a couple days later begging for another chance. This time Jimmy got one too many chances.”

“There’s a problem with your theory, JoJo. Jimmy Caisson has an airtight alibi. At least a dozen witnesses can place him in a Biloxi casino on the night Nina was murdered.”

“Yeah, that’s what I hear. Interesting thing about that alibi, though. Jimmy has a cousin who looks enough like him to pass for his twin. They came in here together one night, I couldn’t tell the two assholes apart. And I’ve known Jimmy since he was knee-high to a piss ant. If those witnesses saw the cousin in that casino instead of Jimmy, it’d kind of blow a hole in his story, wouldn’t it?”

“You told the police about this cousin?”