Coast to Coast by Andrew McAleer

Author:Andrew McAleer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Down & Out Books

By May first the Yankees were 10-2 and in first place in the American League again. Far from the aberration of 1948’s third place finish. The newspaper headline told me a scientist discovered a second moon around Neptune. Same guy discovered one of the moons of Uranus as well. Interesting work, I supposed.

Later that day—at noon, just as the church bell of Immaculate Conception Church on Baronne Street chimed, I started to cross Canal Street when Jacqueline Ellen Balsley stepped off the Cemeteries Streetcar. She spotted me immediately and her face became cartoonish—eyes bulged, mouth circling into a big O, before she turned and slipped into the crowd and hurried off. Going to church? It is Sunday.

Wherever she was headed in a red satin dress and high heels on a Sunday she was in a hurry. I thought about shadowing her, but didn’t want to stand up my lunch date with Bethany Adams, my contact at the DA’s office. A PI’s gotta keep up his contacts. I kept my lunch date with Bethany, bought her a nice meal, listened to her for an hour, my mind wandering back to Jacqueline stepping off the streetcar, seeing me and scampering. My mind continued to wander and woke me early the next morning. Why? I wasn’t sure. It’s a free country and she can go anywhere she wanted. But why was she here? Early in my career I learned there’s no such thing as the perfect case. Not that this was much of a case. Since I was pretty much between gigs with a nice bottom line on my bank account I figured—first thing—locate Jacqueline. She had to be staying somewhere.

The following morning paper had a story about Israel preparing to celebrate its first anniversary tomorrow—a lot of people didn’t think they’d make it. I wasn’t one of them. Two of my Ranger buddies were over there, helping with the Israeli army. One wrote to me these were tough, determined bastards, like we were when we trained with British Commandos at Carrikfergus, Northern Ireland, then Scotland. Of the five hundred who volunteered for the 1st Ranger Battalion, only eighty-seven of us survived the war. Goddamn Nazis.

My building door closed and a shadow moved outside the smoky glass door of my office here on the first floor of 909 Barracks Street, in the lower French Quarter where the rents were low and people yelled at each other a lot. Ever see A Streetcar Named Desire? Stanley Kowalski screaming, “Stella!” That was a few blocks from here. My friend Tennessee Williams told me that.

My door opened and I pulled my feet off my oversized desk, folded the paper. Elvin Cini stepped in wearing the same gray suit he’d worn at the funeral back in March, looked around the room, decided it was safe and closed the door behind him. He held a fedora in his hands, his beady eyes locking on to mine as he crossed the big room. My office once housed an entire upholstery shop before my landlord tore the walls down.

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