Heather Graham by Down in New Orleans

shuddered. “The good guy kills her.”
    Cindy hesitated. “Maybe it’s not fair to condemn him so quickly.”
    “Haven’t you read the newspapers?”
    “Yes, but someone else might have killed her, Gregory. I know that sometimes...well, I don’t know what was going on exactly, but she was still seeing Harry Duval upon occasion.”
    “Yeah, she was still seeing Harry. I thought Harry might be the bastard. He never wanted anything exclusive with Gina, but then again, he never really wanted to let her go.” Gregory looked at Cindy, his large, dark eyes haunted, handsome black face drawn. “I accused Harry right away.”
    “And?”
    “He swore he didn’t do it. He accused me of having done it.”
    “You?”
    “Yeah.”
    “My God, what did you say?”
    “Of course I swore that I didn’t do it.”
    “If you were to ask Jon Marcel,” Cindy said, “I betcha he’d deny that he did it as well.”
    “I’ll betcha he would,” Gregory agreed morosely. He pressed his glass toward Louis the bartender so that Louis could refill it. Jack Daniels Black. Cindy wondered if she’d be able to get Gregory to slow down a bit.
    Cindy watched him drink, gnawing on her lower lip. Gregory had been Gina’s friend, no more, but he had really loved her.
    “Odd thing was that...”
    “What?” Cindy demanded.
    “I had dinner with her. Just before it happened. I was with her...I heard her meeting someone when I left.”
    “Who?” Cindy gasped out, incredulous.
    Gregory shrugged. “Must have been Jon Marcel.”
    “It might have been someone else,” Cindy insisted. “It could have been Harry—”
    “Right. And if the wrong people knew that I’d been with her, it could have been me. I was with her.”
    “That good-looking, swine-bucket kin of hers was still coming after her now and then.”
    “Jacques?”
    “Jacques.” Seeing the confusion in his eyes, Cindy sighed. “Oh, come on, Gregory! They were distant cousins. Their mothers were third cousins or the like. Gregory, she slept with him. He held something over her.”
    Gregory stared at her, shrugged, drank down more of his bourbon.
    “It doesn’t matter.”
    “Why not.”
    “They say Marcel did it, and Marcel is in a coma now.”
    “A coma?” Cindy whispered.
    Gregory nodded sorrowfully. He sipped from his glass again, then spun around to look at her hard. “Whether we want to believe it or not, it looks like the verdict is in.”
    “They’ve proven it?”
    He shrugged. “More or less. There’s lots of rumor going around. Where there’s smoke, you know. Oh, hell, Cindy, haven’t you heard?”
    “Heard what?”
    He proceeded to tell her the latest.
    The club’s main office sat a level up from the ground floor and overlooked the stage, bar and entry from a large, see-through-one-way window. It was a spacious area with a huge modern desk, comfortable black leather sofa, numerous black leather wing chairs, refrigerator, wet bar, and complete entertainment system.
    It was Harry Duval’s favorite place. It was such a far cry from the mud and dirt and thatch of the poor home where he’d grown up that to this day, he still sometimes came up and just sat, and sometimes he just cried out with the pleasure of what was his—what he had done, what he had become, what he had acquired. What the snot-nosed Old Guard of Louisiana might say about him didn’t matter. That some called him a pimp was foolish—those who did so too obtrusively often wound up followed by shadow-thugs and beaten in dark alleys. Never cut up, never too badly hurt, never maimed.
    The poor bastards might be suspicious, but they could never prove he’d lifted a finger against them.
    Hey, it was a tough world. Shit happened.
    But then...
    Then there was what had happened to Gina.
    He frowned, looking out the window, shaking his head. Gina. The brightest and the best of them. Gina, with her laughter. Her smile. The optimism that must have been with her until her dying breath.
    Oh, God, yes,