Upside Down by John Ramsey Miller Read Free Book Online Page B

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.
    “What's the deal here?” Manseur asked the sergeant. His New Orleans accent made the word
here
sound like
heeyah.
    The cop opened his notebook. “Two female vics, forty-seven and forty-three. Multiple bullet wounds, probably from a .38. No brass. One is Kimberly Porter, the forty-seven-year-old. It's her office. The other is Amber Lee, forty-three years.”
    “Did anybody touch anything?”
    “My people know better. The first officer was sure they were dead and came right out. Porter's law student, Napoleon Ferris, called 911 at 7:10. He's in the kitchen now cooling his heels. The janitor saw him come in, and a minute later he came flying down the fire stairs screaming bloody murder. Ferris swears he came straight here from breakfast at the Camellia Grill.”
    “How did you identify the vics?” Manseur was writing everything down in his own brand of chicken scratches and symbols.
    “Ferris is last year Tulane law. He knew Porter from being a legal volunteer. Seems students can handle cases in their last year of law school. And I recognized Amber Lee. There's an outstanding warrant out for her—”
    “Warrant . . . for?”
    “Embezzlement.”
    “And how did you know her?”
    “From the River Club. Amber's worked there for years and I think was the manager, sort of. I'da never figured her for a thief, but Mr. Bennett himself filed the charges.”
    “You knew her from the River Club,” Manseur repeated, interjecting a fleck of suspicion in his words.
    “I did some security work for the club back in the day,” the sergeant said defensively.
    Manseur didn't know Jerry Bennett personally, but he knew
of
him. Bennett was one of those “special friends” of the police department, the mayor, the aldermen and fire departments. That meant he was both rich and generous and carried a gold badge the sheriff gave him that allowed him to carry a firearm and could be used in Orleans Parish to avoid traffic tickets—and he would never have to pay one or appear in court, if he got one.
    Like most cops, Manseur had accepted his share of
lagniappe
from merchants during his eighteen years on the job. As a patrolman he'd turned a deaf ear when a benefactor's car was begging for a parking violation. Sometimes he'd stopped a driver who was going a little too fast, maybe had suspicious breath, and let the guy skate. He had fixed tickets when it didn't matter. But proudly, he had never compromised his