The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Erotica

Erotophobia ^{O’Neil De Noux}

She shook out her long brown hair, turned her cobalt-blue eyes towards me and winked as the slim Negro named Sammy began to unbutton her blouse. She was trying her best not to act nervous. Sammy’s fingers shook as he moved from the top button of her green silk blouse to the second button.

I leaned my left shoulder against the brick wall of the makeshift photo studio and watched. The second floor of a defunct shoe factory, the studio was little more than an open room with a hardwood floor, worn brick walls lined with windows overlooking Claiborne Avenue and two large glass skylights above. It smelled musty and faintly of varnish.

The photographer, Sammy’s older cousin Joe Cairo, snapped a picture with his 35mm Leica. Joe was thin and light-skinned and about twenty-five. Shirtless, he wore blue jeans and no shoes. His skin was already shiny with sweat. Sammy was also shirtless and shoeless, wearing only a pair of baggy white shorts. His skin was so black it looked like varnished mahogany against Brigid’s pale flesh.

Yeah, her name was Brigid. Brigid de Loup, white female, twenty-seven, five feet three inches with pouty lips and a gorgeous face. Gorgeous. With her green blouse, she wore a tight black skirt and a pair of open-toe black high heels.

She bit her lower lip as Sammy’s fingers moved to the third button, the one between her breasts. She looked at him and raised her arms and put her hands behind her head. Sammy let out a high-pitched noise and moved his fingers down to the fourth button.

My name? Lucien Caye, white male, thirty, six feet even, with brown eyes and wavy brown hair in need of a haircut. I stood there with my arms folded and watched, my snub-nosed .38 Smith and Wesson in a leather holster on my right hip. I’m a private eye.

“You’re going to have to pull my blouse out,” Brigid told Sammy.

Sammy nodded, his gaze focused on her chest as he pulled her blouse out of her skirt and unbuttoned the final two buttons. He pushed the blouse off her shoulders and dropped it to the floor.

I loosened my black and gold tie and unbuttoned the top button of my white dress shirt, then stuck my hands in the pockets of my pleated black suit pants to straighten out my rising dick.

Brigid looked at me as she turned her back to Sammy, who fumbled with the button at the back of her skirt. Her white bra was lacy and low cut. Jesus, her breasts looked luscious.

I moved to one of the windows and opened it and flapped my shirt as the air filtered through the high branches of the oaks lining Claiborne. The spring of ’48 was already a scorcher, yet the air was surprisingly cool and smelled of rain. A typical afternoon New Orleans rainstorm was coming. I could feel it.

Brigid had come to me two weeks earlier, in a Cadillac, with diamonds on her fingers and pearls around her neck, and told me she needed a bodyguard.

Yeah. Right.

“I suffer from erotophobia,” she said, crossing her legs as she sat in the soft-back chair next to my desk.

“What?”

“It’s the fear of erotic experiences.”

Yeah. Right.

If someone had told me back when I was a cop that a stunning dish would tell me that one day, I’d have looked at them as if they were retarded.

She told me her doctor prescribed “shock therapy”, and she needed a bodyguard.

“I want to feel erotic. But I also want to be safe.”

She told me she was married and her husband approved of what she had in mind.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Sexy pictures.”

Sammy finally got the button undone and unzipped her skirt.

“Go down on your knees,” Joe the photographer told Sammy, repositioning himself to their side. I kept behind Joe, to keep out of the pictures.

“Now,” Joe said. “Pull her skirt down.”

Brigid looked back at Sammy and wiggled her ass. Sammy’s hands grabbed the sides of the skirt and pulled it down over her hips, his face about four inches from the white panties covering her ass. Brigid turned, put her left hand on his shoulder and stepped out of her skirt.

“Take her stockings off next,” Joe said.

Brigid lifted her left leg and told Sammy he’d need to take her shoes off first. He did, then reached up to unsnap her stockings from her lacy garter belt.

He rolled each stocking down, his sinewy fingers roaming down her legs. Brigid put her arms behind her head again and spread her feet wide for him. She bit her lower lip again.

Sammy, on his haunches now, wiped sweat from his forehead and looked back at his cousin who told him the bra was next. I felt perspiration working its way down my back. My temples were already damp with sweat.

Brigid started to turn and Joe told her to do it face to face. He switched to his second Leica. Brigid gave Joe a look, a knowing look, and something passed between them. I was sure.

“If you don’t mind,” Joe added in a shaky voice. “It’ll be sexier.”

Brigid smiled shyly. “That’s what I want.” Her voice was husky.

Her chest rose as she took in a deep breath. Sammy stood up and reached around her. It only took him a second to unhook the bra and pull it off, freeing Brigid’s nice round breasts.

Oh, God…

Her small nipples were pointed. Her breasts rose with her breathing. Sammy stared at them from less than a foot away. He blinked and said, “Wow.”

Brigid looked at me and smiled and I could see a nervous tic in her cheek. She took in another deep breath, her breasts rising again.

Joe stepped up and tapped Sammy on the shoulder and told him to go down on his knees again. “Now,” Joe said, “take her panties off.”

Joe hurriedly set up for more shots.

Sammy tucked his fingers into the top of her panties. Brigid leaned her head back to face the skylights and closed her eyes. Joe snapped away and my dick was a diamond-cutter now. Sammy pulled her panties down, his nose right in front of her bush. She stepped out of them, and he leaned back and stared at her thick pubic hair, a shade darker than the long hair on her pretty head. Brigid turned slowly and pointed her ass at Sammy who reached up and unhooked her garter belt and pulled it away.

“OK. Stop,” Joe said, sitting on the floor. He pulled his camera bag to him and unloaded both Leicas before loading them again.

Brigid slowly turned to face me. Her face was serious now and flushed. I moved my gaze down her body and almost came just looking at her. She winked at me when I looked back at her face, she rolled her shoulders slightly, her breasts swaying with her movement.

Joe told Sammy to stand up when the cameras were loaded. He took several pictures of them standing face to face, looking at one another and then asked them to stand side by side.

“No touching,” Brigid said, reminding Joe of the ground rules. He nodded and had them sit next, side by side with their legs straight out. Brigid leaned back on her hands and Sammy leered at her bush.

Then Joe had them sit cross-legged facing one another. I felt my dick stir again when she leaned back and shook out her hair and the light from the skylight seemed to illuminate her body. God, she looked so sexy with her breasts pointing and her legs open and all her bush exposed.

Joe asked Brigid to stand and put her hands on her hips and move her feet apart as Sammy remained sitting, staring at her pussy, which was at eye-level now. Brigid looked at Joe when he moved her, his hand on her hip. They exchanged brief, warm smiles as he moved her.

Sammy let out a deep breath and Brigid laughed. I was breathing pretty heavy myself. Jesus, what a scene. Joe moved them around in different positions and snapped furiously and switched cameras again.

He had them sit again and entwined their legs. Sammy’s dark skin was in stark contrast with Brigid’s fair skin. Joe moved in for close-ups of Brigid’s chest and moved down to snap her bush. She looked at him and moved her knees apart as she sat.

“Yeah. Yeah,” Joe said, snapping away. “Don’t stop.”

Joe pulled Brigid up by the hand and had her stand over Sammy, straddling his outstretched legs as he sat. Then Joe had her sit on Sammy’s legs, her legs open as she faced Sammy.

“Now lean back on your hands,” Joe said.

Brigid leaned back, her legs open, her pussy wide open to Sammy and Joe behind him snapping away, and me peeking at her pink slit. She was hairy. I like that in a woman. I especially liked the delicate hairs just outside her pussy.

Jesus. What a sight…

She looked at Joe for a long second, staring at him the way a woman does when she’s getting screwed. She wasn’t looking at the camera, and Sammy was just a prop. She looked at Joe. The look on her face was for him. It was a subtle move, but I caught it. Joe snapped at a furious pace.

Brigid finally climbed off Sammy, turned and walked to the bathroom and closed the door behind her. She walked purposefully, as if she had trouble moving her legs.

Sammy lay all the way down and panted, his chest slick with sweat now. Joe picked up his cameras and hurriedly reloaded both. I opened another window. The air was misty now and felt damp and cool on my face. I looked down on the avenue at the tops of the passing cars and then looked straight out at the dark branches and green leaves of the oaks. I wondered what the passers-by would think if they knew what was going on up here.

The bathroom door opened and Brigid came out, walking more steadily. She stepped over to her purse and took out her compact, then touched up her face with powder, re-applied dark red lipstick.

She smiled at Joe and said, “No pictures right now. OK?”

He nodded.

Brigid moved over to Sammy and said, “Stand up and put your hands on your head.”

“Huh?”

She bent over and grabbed his right hand and pulled him up. Then she lifted his hands and put them on his head, the way we did the Krauts we took prisoner outside Rome. She yanked Sammy’s shorts down, pulled them off his feet and tossed them aside. He wore no underwear. His long thin dick stood straight up like a flag pole. Brigid smiled and looked Sammy in the eyes.

She reached down and grabbed Sammy’s dick. He jumped. Slowly, she worked her hand up and down his long dick. Sammy moaned.

Brigid looked at me and said, “I don’t want y’all to think I’m just a tease.”

Jesus, a white woman giving a Negro a hand job. Unbefuckinlievable. I figured she knew it wouldn’t bother me in the way it would bother most white boys. She had me pegged from day one, I guess, from the way I treated Joe and the Negroes we’d come across during her posing sessions.

Brigid looked at Joe and it was there again, that come-hither sexy look, but only for a moment. She bent over, her legs stiff, her ass straight up, and leaned over and kissed the tip of Sammy’s cock. He rocked on his feet and she increased her jerking motion until he came. She caught it with her free hand and wiped Sammy’s come on his chest when he finished. Then she turned to Joe and asked if he wanted a hand job. He shook his head.

She looked at me and said, “Need some help with those blue balls?”

I shook my head slowly and watched her go back into the bathroom. She left the door open this time and washed her hands. She towelled off, left the towel and walked straight back to me. She put her hands on my chest, leaned up and gave me a fluttery kiss on my lips.

Then she went over to Joe and gave him the same fluttery kiss. I could see him squirm and then close his eyes. He smiled warmly at her when she pulled away.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s finish these rolls.”

Joe told Sammy to go wash off. When he returned, Joe posed them together naked. The climax of the shooting had Brigid straddling Sammy’s legs again as they sat, her pussy wide open and Sammy’s dick up and hard again.

When Joe ran out of film again, Brigid got up and told me, “Time to get the film, big boy. I hope you counted the rolls.”

I had.

Joe unloaded both cameras and gave me the six rolls of film. We watched Brigid dress. Sammy went into the bathroom. He was still there when Brigid and I left.

Sitting in my pre-war 1940 DeSoto, her legs crossed and her skirt riding high on her naked thighs, Brigid smiled at me and said, “Next time we’ll shoot in a cemetery.”

“Yeah?” I could smell her perfume again in the confines of the car.

“Joe knows some gravediggers at Cypress Grove. Posing naked among the crypts, in front of a captive audience… alive and dead, will be so delicious.”

It didn’t take a fuckin’ genius to figure the one thing this woman didn’t have – was erotophobia. I still hadn’t figured her angle.

“When did Joe tell you about the gravediggers?”

She winked at me. “When I called him yesterday. That was when he told me he had his cousin lined up for today’s session.”

The rain came down hard now and the windshield was fogging as I tooled the DeSoto up Claiborne, away from the Negro section called Treme towards uptown where the rich lily-whites lived in their Victorian and Neo-Classical and Greek Revival homes. I cracked my window and felt the rain flutter my hair.

Brigid leaned against the passenger door and watched me. Her dress was so high I could almost see her ass the way she rolled her hips. She eye-fucked me all the way home, ogling me every time I looked her way.

Jesus, she was so fuckin’ pretty and so fuckin’ sexy and so fuckin’ nasty. She hired me to make sure no one raped her. That was the last thing a man would do with a woman like her. At least, that was the last thing I’d do. I’d want her to come to me, wrap those legs around me and fuck me back.

“Want to come in and meet my husband?” she asked when I pulled up in front of her white Greek Revival home on Audubon Boulevard.

“No, that’s OK.”

“He’s waiting for me to tell him what it was like.” She raised her purse and added, “And to develop the film.” Her husband had a built-in darkroom.

She pulled a white envelope from her purse and handed it to me. Cash. She always paid me in small bills. I actually got paid to watch her get naked and pose with her legs open. Tell me America isn’t a great country.

Brigid opened the door, stopped, moved across the seat and kissed me. I felt her tongue as she French kissed me in front of her big house and I thought I would come right there. I watched her hips as she walked away, barefoot up her front walk to the large front gallery with its nine white columns. Her high-heel dangling from her left hand, she turned back and waved at me and went in the front cut-glass door of her big house.

The rain came down in torrents that evening. I stood inside the French doors of my apartment balcony and watched it roll in sheets across Cabrini Playground here on Barracks Street. The oak branches waved in the torrent. The wind shook the thick rubbery leaves and white petals of the large magnolias. I looked beyond the playground at the slick, tilted roofs and red brick chimneys of the French Quarter. The old part of town always looked older in the rain.

I leaned against the glass door and looked down at my DeSoto parked against the curb. The glass felt cool against my cheek. The street wasn’t flooded yet at least. I took a sip of Scotch, felt it burn its way down to my empty belly, and closed the drapes.

I sat back on my sofa, in front of the revolving fan, and closed my eyes and remembered the first time we’d gone out to shoot pictures. It was in Cabrini Playground. It was a real turn-on watching Brigid sit in a tight red skirt, sit so Joe could see up her dress and take pictures of her white panties.

The second time was in City Park where she stripped down to her bra and panties to pose beneath an umbrella of oak branches. Two workers came across us and Brigid liked that. She liked an audience. Joe moved us to the back lagoon for some topless pictures, only some fishermen saw us and got pissed at the half-naked white girl with the black boy, so we had to bail out. My dick was a diamond-cutter again as I sat on my sofa. I finished my Scotch, readjusted my hard-on, knowing the only relief I could feel would be in a hot wash rag.

I closed my eyes and remembered the two brunette whores we came across just outside Rome, the day before I was wounded, Monte Cassino, 1944. The girls were about twenty, a little on the plump side with pale white skin. They fucked the entire platoon and got up to wave goodbye to us early the next morning, when we moved out.

My doorbell rang. I stood slowly and walked down the stairs to the door. Through the transom above the louvered front door, I saw the top of a yellow cab. I peeked out the door and Brigid was there, her hair dripping in the rain. I opened the door and she turned and waved to the cabby who drove off up Barracks.

Brigid stepped past me and stood dripping in the foyer. Wearing the same clothes she had for the photo session, she shivered and cupped her hands against her chest, her head bent forward. I closed the door. I put my hand under her chin and lifted her face and she blinked those cobalt eyes at me. They were red now with a blue semicircle bruise under her left eye.

“Pipi hit me,” she said, her lower lip quivering. “Can I come up?”

I took her right hand and brought her up and straight into my bathroom. I grabbed the box of kitchen matches from the medicine cabinet and lit the gas wall heater. Standing, I turned as Brigid dropped her bra.

“Don’t leave,” she said, bending over to run a bath. “You’ve seen it all.”

I put the lid down on the commode and sat and watched her take her clothes off. She smiled weakly at me, her lips still shaking as she climbed into the tub. The water continued running as she sank back.

“How about some coffee?”

“You have any Scotch?”

I stood and looked down at her. Her eyes were closed and the water moved dreamily over her naked body and she looked so damn sexy. I poured us each a double Johnnie Walker Red and went back in.

A silent hour and two drinks later, as well as two hard-ons, she stood up in the tub and asked me to pass her a towel. In the bright light of the bathroom, her skin looked white-pink. She dried herself and wrapped a fresh towel around her chest just above her breasts, and took my hand and led me out to the sofa where we sat.

She poured us both another Scotch, left hers on the coffee table next to the bottle and turned her back to me to lie across my lap as I sat straight up. I had to adjust my dick again and she knew and smiled at me.

“I’ll take care of that,” she said softly and closed her eyes.

With no make-up, with her hair still damp and getting frizzy, with the mouse under her eye – she was still gorgeous. Some women are like that, plain-knockdown-gorgeous.

After a while she told me that Pipi, that’s her husband, couldn’t get it up when she came in and told him about what she’d done. She even dug out the previous pictures and went down on him, but he was as limp as a Republican’s brain.

Then he hit her, punched her actually, and kicked her out, shoved her into the rain.

“At least he called a cab for me.” She opened her cobalt blues and blinked up at me. “Guess you figured he’s the one with erotophobia. Pipi’s the one afraid of erotic experiences.”

No shit.

She sat up, reached over and grabbed her drink and downed it with one gulp. I got up a second and moved to the balcony doors. I didn’t hear the rain any more, so I cracked them. It was still drizzling so I left them open and went back to the sofa. I felt the coolness immediately. It was nice.

She settled her head back in my lap and closed her eyes again. The towel had risen and I could see a hint of her bush now. I reached over and picked up my drink and finished it, then put the glass back on the coffee table. A while later, she sighed and turned her face towards me and I could see by her even breathing she was asleep. The towel opened when she turned and I looked at her body again.

I wanted to fuck her so badly. I climbed out from under her head, stood and stretched. I reached down and scooped Brigid into my arms. I took her into my bedroom and laid her on the bed. She sighed again and I leaned over and kissed her lips gently. I grabbed the second pillow and went back out to the sofa and poured myself another stiff one. I was feeling kinda woozy by then anyway so I lay back on the sofa and tried some deep breathing with my eyes closed.

There was a movie I saw where a private eye turned Veronica Lake down because it ain’t good business to sleep with clients. Fuck that shit. Brigid wouldn’t have to ask me again. I pulled off my socks and gulped down the rest of my drink and lay back on the pillow and closed my eyes. I tried deep breathing and letting my mind float. And just as I was drifting I realized it wasn’t Veronica Lake. It was Ann Sheridan. Or was it Barbara Stanwyck in a blonde wig?

The banging of the French doors woke me. I sat up too quickly and felt dizzy and had to lean back on the sofa. It was pitch outside and nearly as dark inside. Lightning flashed and the rainy wind raised the drapes like floating ghosts. A roll of thunder made the old building shiver.

The wind felt cool on my face. I started to rise and saw her standing next to the sofa. I sank back as lightning flashed again, illuminating her naked body in white light. I felt her move up to me and felt her arms on my shoulders as she climbed on me. She said something, but the thunder drowned it.

I felt the weight of her body on my lap as she ripped at my shirt. I tried to help, but she tore it and we both pulled it off. She grabbed my belt and slapped my hand when I tried to help. Rising, she shoved my pants and underwear down and then sank back on me. I felt her bush up against my dick, her mouth searching my face for my lips. Our tongues worked against each other as I raised my hands for those breasts.

She moved her hips up and down slowly as we kissed. I felt the wetness between her legs. She rose high and reached down to guide my dick into her. She sank on it and shivered and then fucked me like I’ve never been fucked before.

And she talked nasty. “Oh, fuck me. Come on. Fuck me. Oh, God I love your dick. I love it. Fuck me. Yes. Yes. Oh, God.”

I like it when women call me God, even if it’s just for a little while.

She bounced on me. “More,” she said. “More!”

Hell, there was no more. She had it all.

She screamed and I came in her in long spurts and she cried out and held on to my neck. Then she collapsed on me and it took a while for our breathing to return to normal.

I looked over her shoulder as lightning flashed again and saw the wet floor next to the open balcony doors. The wind whipped up again and felt so damn good on our hot bodies. The thunder rolled once more and sounded further away. When I could gather enough strength, I kicked off my pants and shorts. I lifted her and carried her back into the bedroom. I climbed on her and fucked her nice and long the way second fucks should be, deep and time-consuming.

She wrapped her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck and kissed me and kissed me. She was one great, loving kisser. She made noises, sexy noises, but didn’t talk nasty. She just fucked me back in long hip-grinding pumps.

After I came I stayed in her until her gyrating hips slipped my dick out. I rolled on my back and pulled her to me and she snuggled her face in the crook of my neck, her hot body pressed against me.

Every once in a while I felt the breeze come in and try to cool us.

She was still pressed against me when the daylight woke me. I slipped out of bed, relieved myself and pulled on a fresh pair of boxers before brushing my teeth. She lay on her stomach, the sheet wrapped around her right leg, her long hair covering her face.

I went to the kitchen and started up a pot of coffee and chicory, bacon and eggs. She came in just as I was putting the bacon next to the eggs on the two plates on my small white Formica table. Naked, she walked up and planted a wet one on my lips. She leaned back and brushed her hair out of her face and said, “I used your toothbrush.”

“Sit down.” I went back and put the bacon pan in the sink and poured us two cups of strong coffee.

“You don’t have a barrette, do you?” She moved around the table and sat.

“Huh?”

“Left over from a previous fuck?”

“Yeah. Right.” I put her coffee in front of her and sat across the table and ate my bacon and eggs and watched her breasts as she lifted her fork to eat. OK, I looked at her face too and stared into those turquoise eyes that glittered back at me as she ate. But mostly I looked at her tits. Round and perfectly symmetrical, they were so fuckin’ pretty. I can’t explain it. Tits have a power over men. Women will never understand. We have no fuckin’ idea ourselves.

The eggs and bacon weren’t bad. The coffee was nice and strong. After, we took a bath together. Soaping each other and rinsing off, we stayed in the tub until the water cooled and that felt even better than the warm water.

“Will you take me home? I don’t want to go alone.”

Brigid stood in the bathroom, her belly against the sink as she applied make-up to her face. In her bra and panties, she had her butt out. I told her I’d bring her home.

“I want to pick up some things. Will you take me to my mother’s after?”

“Sure.”

I finished my coffee, put the cup on the nightstand and then dressed myself. She came out and ran her hand across my shoulders as she passed behind me to pick up her skirt.

I finished tying my sky-blue tie, the one with the palm tree on it, and ran my fingers down the crease of my pleated blue suit pants.

“Nice shoes,” she said when I slipped on my two-tone black and white wing tips. Women always noticed shoes.

I finished in time to watch Brigid finish. I liked watching women dress, nearly as much as watching them undress. I grabbed my suit coat on the way out.

“You’re not bringing a gun?”

“You gonna get naked in front of any strange men on the way home?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t need to shoot anybody, do I?”

Pipi’s black Packard was in the driveway. I parked behind it and followed Brigid in. I waited in the marble-floored foyer and watched Brigid’s hips as she moved up the large spiral staircase. Figured I was about to meet old Pipi, the fuckin’ wife-beater himself. I hate men that hit women. Hate ’em.

Just as I peeked in at the Audubon prints on the walls of the study, Brigid screamed upstairs. I took the stairs three at a time and followed the screams up to a large bedroom with giant flamingo lamps, blond furniture and a huge round bed with the body of a man on it. The man’s head lay in a pool of blood. Brigid had her back pressed up against a large chifforobe in the right corner of the room, next to the drapes. She covered her face with her hands and screamed again.

The man lay on his side. I leaned over to look at his face. I recognized Pipi de Loup from the society page, even with the unmistakable dull look of death on his waxen face and his eyes blackened from the concussion of the bullet. The back of his head was a mass of dyed black hair and brain tissue. Brigid turned around and started crying.

I looked at the mirror above the long dresser, looked into my own eyes and felt my stomach bottom out. I saw the word “sap” written across my face.

I moved over and grabbed Brigid’s hand and led her out of the bedroom and down the stairs and out to my car. I opened the passenger door and told her to sit. Then I went next door and called the police.

Brigid was still crying when I got back to the DeSoto. I leaned against the rear fender and waited. Two patrolmen arrived first. I knew neither. I pointed at the house. The taller went in, the other took out his notebook and asked my name.

A half-hour and fifty questions later, Lieutenant Frenchy Capdeville pulled his black prowl car behind my car. He stepped out and shook his head at me, took off his brown suit coat and tossed it back in the prowl car.

Short and wiry, with curly black hair and a pencil-thin moustache, Capdeville looked like Zorro – with a flat Cajun nose. He waltzed past me and stood next to the open door of my car and looked at Brigid’s crossed legs. He pulled the ever-present cigarette from his mouth, flicked ashes on the driveway and told me, “You stay put.”

He reached his hand in and asked Brigid to step into the house with him. He left a rookie patrolman with an Irish name to guard me while other detectives arrived, one with a camera case. I looked up at the magnolia tree and tried counting the white blossoms, but lost count after twenty. At least the big tree, along with the two even larger oaks, kept the sun off me as I waited. I looked around at the neighbours who came out periodically to sneak a peek at the sideshow.

A detective arrived and waved at me on the way in. He was in my class at the academy. He was the only white boy I ever knew named Spade.

Willie Spade came out of the house an hour later and offered me a cigarette.

“I don’t smoke.”

“I forgot.” He shrugged and lit up with his Zippo. About an inch smaller than me with short carrot-red hair and too many freckles to count, Spade had deep-set brown eyes.

“I need to search your car. OK?”

He meant do I have your consent. I told him sure, go ahead, but didn’t expect him to pat me down first. No offense he said. No problem I said.

While he was digging in my back seat he said we needed to go to the office for my statement.

“I’d like to drive,” I said. “I’d rather not leave my car here.”

Spade turned and wiped sweat from his brow. “You can drive us both.”

“No,” I said. “I didn’t touch a fuckin’ thing in the house. She opened the door and I didn’t touch the railing on the way up the stairs. The only thing I touched was her arm, when I dragged her out.”

Spade narrowed his deep-set eyes. “You touched more of her than her arm.”

I nodded and leaned back in the hardwood folding chair in the small interview room. I looked out the lone window at the old wooden buildings across South White Street from the Detective Bureau Office on the second floor of the concrete Criminal Courts Building at Tulane and Broad. A grey pigeon landed on the window ledge and blinked at me.

“We found the murder weapon on the floor next to the bed.”

“Yeah?”

“A Colt .38. The misses says it’s Pipi’s gun. He kept it in the nightstand next to the bed. The drawer was open.”

“I didn’t notice.” I picked up the cup of coffee on the small table and took a sip. Cold.

“The doors and windows were all locked,” Spade said, watching me carefully for a reaction.

“What time did the doctor say he died?”

“Between 2 and 4 a.m. Give or take an hour.”

I nodded.

Spade leaned back in his chair and put his arms behind his head and I saw perspiration marks on his yellow shirt. His brown tie was loosened. “So you’re her alibi and she’s yours,” he said.

I nodded again and felt that hollow kick in my stomach.

There was a knock on the door and a hand reached in and waved Spade out. A couple minutes later Spade returned with a fresh cup of java, along with my wing tips. He dropped my shoes on the floor and put the coffee in front of me. He pulled my keys out and put them on the table before sitting himself.

“Find anything?” I said as I leaned down and pulled my shoes on.

“Nope.” Spade didn’t sound disappointed. He sounded a little relieved. He put his elbows up on the table and told me how they knew the killer came in the kitchen door. It rained last night. The killer came in through the back with muddy shoes, wiped them on the kitchen mat and still tracked mud all the way up to the bedroom, then tracked mud right back out.

“That’s why we had to search your pad and office,” he explained the obvious. They had to check out all my shoes, and everything else in my fuckin’ life.

“Let himself in with a key?” I asked when I sat up.

“Or,” Spade shrugged, “the door was unlocked and the killer flipped the latch on his way out, locking it. We have some prints, but smudges mostly.”

I nodded.

Spade let out a tired sigh and said, “You know the score. Whoever finds the body is automatically the first suspect.”

“Until you prove they didn’t do it. I know.”

I didn’t say – especially when it’s the wife and the man who’s fuckin’ the wife.

“I’ll be right back,” Spade said and left me with my fresh coffee and my view of South White Street.

A while later, just as I was thinking how an interview room would be better for the police without a window, the door opened and Frenchy Capdeville walked in with Spade. Capdeville took the chair. Spade leaned against the wall.

Capdeville smiled at me and asked if I knew anything about the pictures they found in Mr de Loup’s darkroom. I told them everything. Fuck, they knew it anyway.

I ended with a question. “Did your men sniff my sheets?”

Capdeville smiled again. “Who found the photographer?”

I waited.

“You come up with a nigger photographer for her, or did she?”

“She told me Pipi found him.”

Capdeville blew smoke in my face and gave me a speech, the usual one. I could leave for now, but they weren’t finished with me yet. They’d be back with more questions, he said, flicking ashes on the dirty floor. He made a point to tell me they weren’t finished with Mrs de Loup by a long shot. Her lawyer was on his way and they expected an extended interview.

“One more thing,” Capdeville said, looking me in the eyes. “You have any idea who did it?”

“Nope,” I lied, looking back at him with no expression in my eyes.

They let me go.

I drove around until dark, checking to see if I was followed so many times, I got a neck ache. I meandered through the narrow streets of the Quarter, through the twisting streets of the Faubourg Marigny and over to Treme where I parked the DeSoto on Dumaine Street.

I jumped a fence and moved through backyards, leaping two more fences to come up on Joe Cairo’s studio from the rear. As I moved up the back stairs, I thought how much this reminded me of a bad detective movie. Easy to figure and hard to forget.

I knocked on the back door. A yellow light came on and Joe’s face appeared behind the glass top of the wooden door. His jaw dropped. It actually dropped.

“Come on, open up,” I told him. “You don’t have much time.”

He opened the door and gave me a real innocent look, and I knew for sure he did it. I breezed past him, telling him to lock the door. I followed the lights to a back room bed with a suitcase and camera case on it.

“Going somewhere?” I sat in the only chair in the room, a worn green sofa.

Joe stood in the doorway. He looked around the room but not at me.

I put my hands behind my head and watched him carefully as I said, “She’s gonna roll over on you.”

Joe looked around the room again, his fingers twitching.

“If I figured it out, you know Homicide will. They’re a lot better at this.”

Joe started bouncing on his toes, his hands at his sides.

“They found the pictures. She’ll bat those big blue eyes at them, roll a tear down those pretty cheeks and tell them, ‘Look at the evil things my husband made me do… with a nigger.’”

Joe stopped bouncing and glared at me.

“Don’t be a sap,” I told him. “She’ll tie you up in a neat package. Cops like neat packages, cases tied up in a bow. Get out now. Leave. Go to California or Mexico. Just leave, or you’ll be in the electric chair before you know it.”

Joe leaned his left shoulder against the door frame. “There’s nothing for her to tell.”

“OK.” I stood up. “Wait here. They’ll be here soon.” I looked at the half-packed suitcase and said, “Don’t tell me you thought she was gonna run off with you.”

Joe puffed out his cheeks.

“Look around. Look how you live. You saw how she lived.” I stepped up to his face. “She used you, just like she used me.”

Joe squinted at me. “What you mean, she used you?”

“She came over last night.”

Joe shook his head. “She went to her mama’s.”

“Come on, wise up. She fucked us both. Only you’re gonna take the hot squat.”

Joe balled his hands into fists.

I looked him hard in the eyes. “What’s the matter with you? You killed a fuckin’ white man. You’re history.”

He blinked.

“Forget her, man.”

I could see the wheels turning behind his eyes. He opened his mouth, shut it, then said, “He beat his wife.”

“I know.” That was the thing that tipped the scales, that brought me to Treme, instead of just going home. I hate wife-beaters. I lowered my voice. “You killed a white man. You’re in a world of shit, man.”

“How… how did you… know?”

How? It was a gut feeling. It was the way Brigid looked at him, the way he looked back. It was that look of intimacy. Joe was the obvious killer, so obvious it was obscene.

“It had to be you,” I told him, “because it wasn’t me.”

Joe blinked and I could see his eyes were wet.

“You willing to turn her in? You willing to tell the cops she was in on it?”

He looked at me and shook his head. “I’d never do that.”

“Then you better beat feet. Go to California. Change your name. But get out now.”

Joe looked hesitatingly at his suitcase.

“Forget her,” I said forcefully.

“Forget her?”

“Like a bad dream.”

I stepped past him. I knew if I was caught here, I’d be in a world of shit too.

Joe grabbed my arm, but let go as soon as I turned. He looked down at my feet said, “Why you helpin’ me?”

“Because I’m more like you than I’m like them.”

I’m not sure it registered, not completely.

“You’re not getting rid of me to keep her for yourself,” he said in a voice that told me he didn’t believe that.

“She’s done with both of us, man.”

I went out the way I came, my heart pounding in my chest as I jumped the fences. I slipped behind the wheel of the DeSoto and looked around before starting it. I took the long way home.

It’s night again. The French doors of my balcony are open, but there is no breeze. I’m on my fourth Scotch, or is it my fifth? I’m waiting for Capdeville and Spade. They’ll be here soon, asking about Joe Cairo, wondering where the fuck he went.

I’ll tell them I drove around and went to Cairo’s on a hunch. Figuring someone must have seen a white man jumping fences, I’ll tell them I tried to sneak up on Cairo, but he was gone.

They’ll do a lot of yelling, a lot of guessing, but won’t be able to pin anything on me. After all, I didn’t do it. I was too busy fucking the wife at the time of the murder. I close my eyes for a moment and the Scotch has me thinking that maybe, just maybe she’ll come. But I know better.

Rising from the sofa, I take my drink into the bedroom and look at the messed-up bed.

God, she was so fuckin’ beautiful it hurt.

I sit on the edge of my bed. It still smells like sex. I’m sure, if I look hard, I’ll find some of her pubic hair scattered in the sheets. That’s all I have left – the debris of sex, the memories, and the fuckin’ heartache.