Free Twin Cities Noir by Julie Schaper

little on the chubby side, matronly even. Not at all the kind of figure a pair of thong panties would enhance.
    If the article was correct, she’d been in the Big Apple when Kid had been given that delicate little sexual appetizer. So, if Christine Coyer didn’t give it to him, who did?
    During my college days, my clothing came from the Salvation Army. I shopped there in protest against consumerism and conformity. I shop there now out of necessity. For ten bucks I picked up a passable gray suit, a nearly white shirt, and a tie that didn’t make me puke. I washed up in the men’s room of a Super America on 7th, changed into the suit, and hoofed it to the address on Summit Avenue given in the newspaper story.
    Like a big park , Kid had described the place. His perspective was limited. It was the fucking Tuileries Gardens, a huge expanse of tended flower beds and sculpted shrubbery with a château dead center. The cosmetics business had been very good to Ms. Coyer. And to her husband, no doubt. So good, in fact, one had to wonder why a man would do any of the dirty landscape work himself. Or hire someone like Kid to help.
    I knocked on the door, a cold call, something I’d often done in my days as a journalist. I had my notepad and pen out, in case I needed to pretend to be a reporter.
    A woman answered. “Yes?”
    I told her I was looking for Christine Coyer’s husband.
    “He’s not here,” she informed me. “Do you have an appointment?”
    No, just hoping to get lucky, I told her.
    “Would you like to leave a message?”
    I didn’t. I thanked her and left.
    I headed back to the river thinking the woman’s accent was French, but not heavily so. Quebec, maybe. Her black hair when let down would easily reach her ass. And that body in thong panties would be enough to drive any man to murder.
    What to do?
    I could go to the police. Would they believe me? If I produced the panties, they might be inclined to look more skeptically on the rich man’s story.
    I could go to an old colleague. I still knew plenty of press people who’d take the story and dig.
    But the influence of money should never be underestimated. Everybody’s integrity is for sale if the price is right. So I knew that turning the information and the panties over to anybody else was risky.
    I realized I was probably the only shot Kid had at justice.
    I sat by the river, smelling the mud churned up from the bottom, but also smelling the perfume of the black-haired woman as it had come to me on the cool air from inside the big house. I couldn’t stop myself from imagining what she wore under her dress. I could understand completely why Kid had been so eager and disregarded the obvious dangers.
    For a long time, I’d been telling myself I was happy with nothing. Give me a bedroll and a place to lay it, a decent meal now and then, and a few bucks for a bottle of booze, and what more did I need?
    But the circumstances of Kid’s death suddenly opened the door on a dark, attractive possibility.
    I thought about the lovely house and its gardens.
    I thought about that fine, beautiful woman inside.
    I thought about the deceased Christine Coyer and all the money she’d left behind.
    I thought about all that I didn’t have, all that I’d fooled myself into believing I didn’t care about—a set of new clothes, a soft mattress, something as simple as a haircut, for God’s sake, nothing big really, but still out of my reach.
    I was a starved man looking at the possibility of a feast. In the end the choice was easy. After all, what good did justice do the dead?
    I got the telephone number from a friend still employed in the newspaper business. I kept calling until the rich man answered.
    I identified myself—not with my real name—and told him I was a friend of Lester Greene.
    He scraped together a showing of indignity. “I can’t imagine what we have to discuss.”
    “A gift,” I told him. “One your wife gave to him. Only she wasn’t really your