New Orleans Confidential by O'Neil De Noux

Author:O'Neil De Noux
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 1940s, mystery, new orleans, privateeye
Publisher: O'Neil De Noux

The Heart Has Reasons

For two days she came and sat under the WPA shelter in Cabrini Playground with her baby, sometimes rocking the infant, sometimes walking between the oaks and magnolias, back and forth. Sometimes she would sing. She came around nine a.m. and around lunchtime she’d reach into the paper bag she’d brought and nibble on a sandwich. After, she would cover her shoulder with a small pink blanket and nurse her baby beneath the blanket. Around five p.m., she would walk away, up Dauphine Street.

On the third morning the rain swept in, one of those all-day New Orleans rainstorms that started suddenly then built into monsoon proportions. The newspaper said to expect showers brought in by an atypical autumn cool front from Canada, which would finally break the heat wave that has lingered through the sizzling summer of 1948. I grabbed two umbrellas and found her huddled under the shelter.

“Come on,” I told her, “come get out of the rain.” I held out an umbrella. When she didn’t take it immediately, I stood it against the wall and stepped away to give her some room. She looked younger up close, nineteen, maybe eighteen and stood about five-two, a thin girl with short, dark brown hair and darker brown eyes, all saucered-wide and blinking at me with genuine fear.

I took another step away from her, not wanting to tower over her with my six foot frame, and smiled as warmly as I could. “Please. Come take your baby out of the rain.” I opened the second umbrella and handed it to her.

Slowly, a shaky white hand extended for the umbrella, those big eyes still staring at me. I took a step toward the edge of the shelter. A loud thunderclap caused us both to jump and the baby started crying.

I led the way back across the small playground, the umbrellas pretty useless in the deluge, and hurried through the brick and wrought iron fence to narrow Barracks Street, having to pause a moment to let a yellow cab pass. She moved carefully behind me and I held the door to my building open for her. I closed the umbrellas and started up the stairs for my apartment. “I’ll bring towels down,” I called back to her, then took the stairs two at a time.

Moving quickly, I grabbed two large towels from my bathroom, lighting the gas heater while I was in there and pulled the big terry-cloth robe I never wore from the closet, draping it over the bathroom door before leaving my apartment door open on the way out. She stood next to the smoky glass door of my office, rocking her baby, who had stopped crying. She still gave me that frightened look when I came down and extended the towels to her.

“Top of the stairs, take a left. My apartment door’s open.” I reached into my suit coat pocket and pulled out a business card. “That’s my office behind you. The number’s on the card. Go upstairs.

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