Little John’s, near Churchill Downs Racetrack, attracted tourists from all over the world. In a presidential tone and tailored suit, the diminutive Filipino pawnbroker explained that gold was selling at “an awesome” fifteen hundred dollars an ounce, “but not for long.” Now was the time to sell your unwanted jewelry, he insisted.
In the breakfast room, I popped the last bite of toasted onion bagel into my mouth before grabbing the remote. Behind Little John, a cop, a construction worker, a cowboy, and a Native American clumsily danced and sang to the melody of the disco classic “Y.M.C.A.” by the Village People. “We’re going to Little John’s today / To take our jewelry in and get our cash today / You will get a good deal / And you get paid for real / So bring it to Little John!” The train-wreck appeal of the commercial’s bad singing and acting had earned its originator cult status.
I started to turn off the TV and return to my writing when a local newsflash broke onto the screen. A reporter stood in front of a huge, somewhat run-down brick house, where yellow crime scene tape cordoned off the front yard. Behind her, a pair of policemen hulked at the front door. Two men in hazmat suits jostled a blue-gray rubber storage bin down the walkway and into a waiting vehicle at the curb. Curious passersby looked on from the other side of the lawn as an early morning June breeze rustled the leaves on a nearby sycamore. The wind picked up and drowned out the reporter’s words for a moment, but then it died down, and her voice rose. “An LMPD spokesperson said they discovered the body early this morning in what appeared to be a wine cellar of this dilapidated mansion in Old Louisville.” She turned to point at the façade of the building.
Old Louisville. The preservation district with hundreds of Victorian mansions just south of the downtown area, the neighborhood where Ramon and I had lived until a few years before. I stared at the screen, and something slowly dawned on me: This was the house we had considered buying. The house with the wine cellar. 1435 South Fourth Street.
The Richard Robinson place with its impressive parquet floors and a dozen bedrooms sat across from the entrance to one of Louisville’s famed walking courts, the pedestrian-only thoroughfares designed to add a bit of London flair when planners laid out the neighborhood. We had lived right around the corner, on Third Street. The seller didn’t want all that much for the mansion, but it needed so much work. Rotting wood dangled from the eaves and cornices. The wreck of a carriage house and the bombed-out kitchen presented a challenge I welcomed, but in the end, we decided to stay in Louisville’s Highlands neighborhood. It took just ten minutes to walk from my front door to my students at Bellarmine University, after all.
As far as I knew, the house had remained unoccupied, abandoned, but the reporter made it clear the mansion indeed had residents. Authorities had taken a couple into custody and charged the two men with murder.
Things had started the previous night, when police arrived at the residence after a 911 call about a domestic disturbance. One man had been arrested, and the police quickly heard grumblings about a body buried in the basement. The other had been taken in for questioning after police dug a rubber storage bin out of the dirt floor and sent its gruesome contents to the coroner. What had started out as an apparent lovers’ quarrel had quickly and unexpectedly led to the discovery of a homicide.
The reporter interviewed a neighbor, who, shaking her head, looked uneasily over her shoulder at the looming house. “I always knew there was something weird about this place,” she confided in a low tone. “It always gave off creepy vibes.”
Creepy, for sure. Unsettling stories abounded about the old house. Whether or not they could be substantiated was another thing. People claimed early occupants had died under mysterious circumstances and a drug addict had attacked and killed someone in the house. A blind tiger had attracted crowds during the Roaring Twenties, and in the ’70s a secret society used to meet in the house. Rumors claimed a sadistic doctor once practiced there and that for a time, when the house sat abandoned, a satanic cult had carried out rituals in the cellar of the mansion.
Unsettling stories abounded about the old house…Rumors claimed a sadistic doctor once practiced there and that for a time, when the house sat abandoned, a satanic cult had carried out rituals in the cellar of the mansion.A chill worked its way up my spine. I wondered if strange rites had played out in the same part of the basement where they had unearthed the body on the news, in that little dark room.
From my experience as a researcher and writer of true-crime and paranormal stories, I knew claims involving satanic cults usually proved to be exaggerated, if not altogether false: satanic panic. True or not, I understood how such stories could arise from that basement. Cellars of old houses were inherently frightening, but the basement at the old Richard Robinson place fell in a category all its own. When I had walked through it two years before, a feeling of oppression pervaded the dimly lit interiors and seeped from the bare stone and brick walls. The layout was dizzying, even disconcerting. Instead of one large open space, the underground chambers of the mansion comprised a confusing warren of smallish rooms. That particular basement would have been an ideal location to film a horror flick.
On another local channel, the screen cut to the mugshots of two guys. Both looked to be in their thirties. The one on the left had spiky brown hair, narrow eyes, and prominent ears. A caption identified the clean-shaven individual as Jeffrey Mundt. Stubble and the hint of a soul patch covered the other’s chin, and his hairline receded at the temples. He looked away from the camera and wore something of a scowl. White block letters on a blue background identified him as Joseph Banis. Staring at the images, I listened as the newswoman said their names and revealed them as the two men arrested by police earlier that morning. Slowly, a flicker of recognition registered somewhere, and I squinted to better see their faces. I must have seen them in the neighborhood. Or did I know them from somewhere else?
On the coffee table, my cellphone started to vibrate. Ramon, calling from work.
“Are you watching the news?” he said.
“The house in Old Louisville? The one on Fourth Street?”
“I’m so glad we didn’t buy it.” He snorted softly. “And you saw who they arrested, right?”
“I just saw their names now. Mundt and Banis. Do we know them? They look so familiar.”
“Seriously?” Ramon stifled a laugh. “You don’t recognize them? You’re such a hobo.”
“I do, but I’m not sure from where.”
“The one was the bartender at Q. The other was his boyfriend, the really stuck-up one who moved back here from Chicago. Remember?”
My breath caught in my throat. “That’s right.” It all came back to me.
At the club everyone called Joseph Banis Joey. The so-called bad boy from a wealthy family. He had drug problems and had been to prison numerous times. Usually, when we saw him behind the bar fixing drinks, he wore only a pair of ratty jeans held up by a silver-studded belt. Temporary tattoos and colorful, phosphorescent body paint often adorned his sinewy upper torso. Bright pinks, yellows, and greens. One evening he had sported a stunning blue mohawk. Everyone called his boyfriend Jeff or Jase but we had never had any direct interaction with him.
Except for that rainy morning when Jeffrey Mundt arrived for his appointment with the real estate agent at 1435 South Fourth Street. Rushing up the front steps, he had brushed by without so much as a nod of the head as we returned to the sidewalk out front.
He had bought the old Robinson place after all.
The only other time we had seen him came one morning while waiting for a table at a popular St. Matthews breakfast place, where he stood ahead of us in the line. “Top o’ the morning to you,” he’d cry out whenever he saw anybody who warranted greeting. “God, what a cheeseball,” I had muttered under my breath.
“They know the name of the body yet?” Ramon asked.
“I don’t think so. They believe it might have been drug-related.”
“Hmm. Just what Old Louisville needs. Another dead body. Glad we stayed in the Highlands.”
“Nobody gets a break down there.” I walked into the kitchen for another bagel.
Many viewed Old Louisville as the redheaded stepchild of the city. Although people moved in from all over to restore once-neglected mansions and charming Victorian cottages, some still considered it a bad part of town. Thirty or forty years before, that might have been a valid claim. But since the 1970s, when residents fought to have the forty-some square blocks immediately south of the downtown area declared a historic preservation district, the neighborhood had seen an upswing. Nationwide, architects and historians acclaimed the impressive collection of antique homes; nonetheless, old-timers viewed Old Louisville as a Bohemian, if somewhat seedy, enclave where students mixed with upwardly mobile gay couples, intellectuals, and those looking to escape the cookie-cutter life of suburbia.
Every time they took a step forward, they took two steps back in Old Louisville. Despite the grandeur and opulence found in the core of the neighborhood, where old-growth trees shaded stunning sections of Millionaires Row and gas lamps evoked Victorian charm on secluded St. James Court, residents still had to exercise caution on certain blocks after dark.
Ramon and I knew this firsthand: the six-bedroom 1890s house we restored sat near the infamous corner of Fourth and Oak. Or, as the locals called it, Fourth and Crazy. And we were well acquainted with the prostitutes, drug dealers, and panhandlers who helped cast Old Louisville in an unfavorable light. Every now and then, the news reported a random shooting, stabbing, or mugging, and this didn’t help either.
Now, they had found a body in a basement.
“You know, that storage bin wasn’t very big,” said Ramon. “They must have chopped him up to fit inside.”
“Gross.” Another shudder crept up my spine. “Do they know it was a he?”
“That’s what they’re saying. Gotta run. Bye.”
I switched to another local station. Two reporters at a sleek desk discussed the “body in the basement” and the Old Louisville mansion. A large monitor showed a straight-on shot of the imposing brick residence, then switched to a split screen with the faces of the suspects. I studied the images. The photo of Mundt appeared to be the same as the one shown on the previous channel, but Banis looked different. This time, he stared straight at the camera, but sculpted eyebrows added to the severity of his gaze. He was clean-shaven, save for a thin strip of beard that ran from below his lower lip down across his chin. Despite the circumstances, both looked relatively normal. Granted, Joseph Banis had that hard edge, but Jeffrey Mundt appeared to be your run-of-the-mill thirtysomething-year-old.
What between them had led to a body in the basement? An accident? Or something darker? Questions swam in my head, but I reminded myself the only thing known for certain was that they had found a corpse in the basement of the house at 1435 South Fourth Street. And that Jeffrey Mundt and Joseph Banis sat in jail.
I continued to stare at the images, a slight pang niggling in my stomach.
Someone rang the doorbell just then. Skippy, our friend stopping by to pick up a basket of books and bourbon for a silent auction at that weekend’s Pride celebration, waltzed through the front door. He’d already seen the news.
“It doesn’t surprise me in the least,” Skippy said. “That guy Joey is crazy as a loon. I told you what happened the last time I was at Q, didn’t I?”
“No, what happened?”
“I went to close out my tab at the end of the night, and it was like sixty dollars total on my credit card. When I checked my account the next day, there was another three-hundred-dollar charge on that card. When I called the club to complain, Joey cussed me out and said it was my fault.”
“Well, I don’t think he’s going to be running credit cards any time soon.”
“Let’s hope not,” said Skippy. “Have you heard anything about who’s in the tub? I heard that it was a three-way gone wrong. Supposedly it was a trick of theirs and things got out of hand. Rough sex.”
“Ah, I’d say so. Very rough.” We walked into the kitchen and I poured myself a cup of coffee. “Want some?”
“Nah. I still have to pick up a ton of donations. Need to run.” “OK, see you this weekend at Pride. I’m sure the fact that there’s a gay murder will give lots of ammunition to the Bible-thumpers.”
“Yeah, I heard the nutjobs from Westboro Baptist Church are supposed to show up. Here it is 2010 and they’re still living in the dark ages.” Skippy changed his tone then. “So, is this a story you’re interested in?”
“You mean for my next book?”
Skippy scoffed. “You’ve got a gay murder, beautiful but spooky Victorian mansions, and lots of eccentrics. Then there’s all the neighborhood drama and infighting. Old money and nouveau riche. Hustlers and prostitutes. Drag queens and cross-dressers up the wazoo. It’s like a movie waiting to happen. And there’s something about that house.”
“Maybe.”
Many of my books strove to capture the weird and wonderful that made people either love or hate Old Louisville, and the case unfolding now seemed to have it all. But this project would entail new territory. Sitting through trials. Getting on people’s nerves for dredging up painful memories and exposing the soft underbelly that always gets exposed when writing about real-life individuals. People still living and people who were dead. Things I had never done before. I’m sure I had gotten on people’s nerves in the past, but this would be different. I wasn’t convinced I had what it took to write this kind of book.
“Say, have you found me a bottle of Pappy twenty-three-year-old yet?” I said. Skippy worked at Brown-Forman, the huge wine and spirit distributing company based in Louisville.
“Hold your horses. I’m working on it. See you later.” After Skippy left, I finished my coffee. In the breakfast room, I returned my attention to the television. Bright morning sun filled the backyard. The newsflash had ended and when I searched on the other local channels, their coverage had finished as well. Before I turned off the TV, I heard the familiar strain of a Village People song. The cheesy Little John’s commercial was starting up again.
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