Free Big Easy Bonanza by Julie Smith, Tony Dunbar Page A

one since she returned to this preposterous backwater—and she didn’t care if she did entertain Mr. Steve Steinman, murder witness. She didn’t care what the lieutenant or the chief or Mr. Steinman himself thought. She, Skip, felt like kicking off her shoes and drinking beer. She proceeded to do so.
    “Why exactly,” she said, “were you filming the Rex parade?”
    “Why? Are you kidding? Why? It was going to be part of my chef d’oeuvre, that’s why. I’m at AFI and…”
    “AFI?”
    “The American Film Institute. Do you know how many now-famous films started out as AFI student projects?”
    “No. A lot?”
    “Oh, hell, I don’t know. A few, at any rate. Anyway, I wrote this screenplay about a woman who gets involved in a crime and she runs away—to New Orleans—but it’s Carnival and what she finds there is worse than anything she left behind, and then she’s got two sets of bad guys after her. Oh, well, you don’t want to know the whole story—I was just trying to get some color shots at the parade today, but everything’s changed now.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “How can I do a movie about a fictional crime when I actually saw a real one?”
    “You mean now you want to do a documentary?”
    He looked embarrassed. “Of course not. Nothing like that. It’s just that—I got the idea to come to New Orleans because I knew Cookie and wanted to see Mardi Gras, but now that I’m here, the whole thing seems so much bigger and richer than I thought. I mean, even without the murder. Now I feel like I want to set more of the story here—make it more about New Orleans. I mean—I don’t know what I want. All of a sudden my old idea seems jejune, that’s all.”
    “Jejune?” said Skip. “Puerile as well?”
    “Callow and infantile.”
    “Jejune,” said Skip again, savoring the silly sound of the syllables. She and Steve laughed like lovers sharing a favorite threadbare joke. “Another beer?”
    He crumpled up his can and handed it to her. “Tell me about this guy, will you? I mean, about the St. Amants. Was Chauncey some sort of fancy Creole from a family prominent for generations?”
    “By no means. He was from a very middle class family that lives out by Lake Pontchartrain. I’ve met his parents—very nice, very ordinary. But Chauncey went to Tulane, where he met Bitty Mayhew, who’s a member of one of the oldest Uptown WASP families, and he married her. Her father was then president of the Carrollton Bank—and more or less king of the city, as opposed to being merely Rex—but despite the kid’s humble beginnings, he took Chauncey on and they say he was never sorry. Chauncey was smart, and in due time he became president of Carrollton. Civic leader too—good works up the kazoo.
    “As for Bitty, she drinks too much and always has, ever since I’ve known her anyway, which is all my life. They have a daughter who drinks too much and lives off her trust fund and a son who’s an insufferable brat—and who also drinks too much.”
    “That would be Marcelle and Henry. I hear there’s a best friend too.”
    “Cookie’s been filling you in.”
    “Not only on the St. Amants. I know the names of every member of your family as well. But the best friend—Tolliver Albert—what’s he like?”
    “I like him—always have. He’s your basic aging bachelor, which in New Orleans usually means a closet queen; but if he’s gay, he’s discreet. Quite the man-about-town, favorite escort and all that, but never any special lady friends. Who knows about his proclivities?”
    “Maybe he was Dolly—maybe he and Bitty were having an affair.”
    “As a matter of fact, it was Tolliver’s balcony she stood on. But he and Bitty aren’t an item, believe me. She likes booze, not men.”
    Steve sighed. “I wish I had more of the hang of New Orleans.”
    He sounded so wistful Skip wanted to pat him. “It’s not easy. The social structure’s got more strata than a shale cliff.”
    “So I gather.