“A household accident.”
“Somebody close her legs?”
“Why’d you call me into your office, Carroll?”
“Got a call from NOPD this morning,” he said. He picked up the legal pad and stared at it, scratching the rim of a nostril with one fingernail. “Have a seat.”
I sat down and didn’t reply. I knew that whatever he planned on saying would come a teaspoon at a time. With LeBlanc, the issue was always control.
“A taxi driver was found in his cab with his neck broken,” he said. “The cab was parked in an alley in the Quarter one block from North Rampart.”
I nodded.
“Did you hear what I said?” he asked.
“Got it,” I said.
“The cab was wedged in the alley. Whoever killed the driver couldn’t open the door and had to kick out the windshield.”
“This was a robbery?” I said.
“That’s what NOPD thought. Except the driver had over eight hundred dollars in his pocket.” LeBlanc looked down at his legal pad again. “A guy named Beaumont Melancon. Ring a bell?”
“No.”
“He was a Murphy artist.”
A Murphy artist is a pimp who lets his hooker set up the john, then bursts in on the tryst, claiming to be the outraged husband or boyfriend, thereby terrifying and subsequently extorting the john.
“What does this have to do with us?” I said.
“A little later the same night, two guys in the same general area claimed a guy with an ugly face beat the living shit out of them.”
“Why’d the guy attack them?”
“They said they didn’t know. They said he just came out of nowhere and started ripping ass.”
“What’s the rest of it, Carroll?”
“A homicide cop started checking bars and guesthouses from Burgundy down to Jackson Square. The night clerk at one guesthouse said he saw a black woman leave one of the rooms and walk toward North Rampart. The two guys who got their asses kicked started making fun of her. Then a guy from the guesthouse came out of the same room the black woman did and followed her and the two white guys.”
“The beating victims were white and baiting a black woman?”
“That’s what I said.”
“No, you didn’t,” I replied. “Was the guy with the ugly face white or black?”
“They didn’t say.”
“Who is ‘they’?”
“NOPD. Did you get drunk last night?”
“I have no idea why you’re telling me all this,” I said.
“I’m trying to give you a heads-up.”
“I see. I appreciate that. But I’m going back to my office.”