Baton Rouge Bingo (2 page)

The GPS in our brand-new Explorer announced that it was about ninety miles to Baton Rouge from New Orleans when Frank punched in the coordinates into it before pulling away from the curb at the airport.

I stifled a laugh. It might only be ninety miles, but to a New Orleanian it’s like being sucked into a wormhole and winding up in another dimension.

Of course, New Orleanians are horrible snobs about the city’s
suburbs
,
always making snarky jokes about needing shots and a passport to head over to the West Bank or out to Metairie, so it should be no surprise that we also look down our noses at the rest of Louisiana. We act like there’s no intelligent life outside of Orleans Parish; nowhere decent to eat, no art or culture to speak of, and certainly no one we’d want to associate with could possibly live out there. It’s not true, of course—but we like to pretend it is.

As my Louisiana History teacher at Jesuit High School once sniffed contemptuously, “President Jefferson offered Napoleon ten million dollars for New Orleans, and for an extra five million he threw in the rest of the continent west of the Mississippi.”

Needless to say, this snobbish disdain for the rest of Louisiana was hardly endearing—which quite frequently means New Orleans gets screwed over by the state legislature.

So when Frank first mentioned this trip to Baton Rouge, I reacted the way any true New Orleanian would. I scrunched up my face like I’d smelled something really awful and said, “Ew. Do we have to?”

He rolled his eyes. “Yes, we do, and we need to buy a new car.”

This was even more horrifying to me than going to Baton Rouge, to be honest. I hate to drive—I
always
have. I don’t even like
riding
in cars. Given the way people drive in New Orleans, it’s understandable. Most drivers in New Orleans don’t use their signals, ignore street signs and traffic laws if inconvenient, and no one here knows how to make a left turn properly at an intersection. It always amazes me that there aren’t more traffic fatalities.

Fortunately, I grew up in the French Quarter and rarely had to leave my
neighborhood
,
let alone the city limits. The only time in my life I’d ever owned a car was when I went to college at Vanderbilt University—a car I sold after I flunked out and moved home. When I was on the stripper circuit with the Southern Knights, I simply caught a ride with one of the other dancers, flew, or borrowed my dad’s car. Once I was off that circuit, I never needed to own a car. The Quarter was kind of a self-contained neighborhood—there was the A&P on Royal Street (now a Rouse’s) and any number of mom-and-pop corner groceries. There was Mary’s True Value Hardware on Bourbon (now on Rampart), plenty of places to eat, and if I needed to buy new clothes, there were plenty of places around. Mom and Dad both had cars I could borrow any time I needed one, and in a pinch I could always take a cab. And my best friend David was always willing to cart me around whenever I needed to go somewhere.

Well, until the time we were chased down I-10 by a gang of artifact thieves who wound up running us off the road, totaling his car, and breaking his nose. After that, he probably wasn’t quite as willing anymore, but I also never asked him for a ride again.

Besides, by then I was already involved with both Frank and Colin, and both relocated to New Orleans and moved in with me. Colin owned a black Jaguar that seemed like something out of a James Bond movie. It was only a two-seater, but the three of us rarely needed to go anywhere in a car.

But resistant as I was to the notion of buying a car, I had to admit Frank had a point. His professional wrestling career was taking him all over the Gulf Coast, and the Jaguar ate gas like it only cost a quarter a gallon. Our friends Lindy and Rhoda—the Ninja Lesbians—were also coming in for a vacation, and they wanted to do plantation tours, so we needed something bigger. Why he settled on a Ford Explorer was beyond me, but as long as I never had to drive—and Frank promised he would
never
make me drive—I was fine with it.

And much as I hated to admit it, it was kind of a comfortable ride.

So I settled into my seat as Frank pulled away from the curb at the airport. We’d just dropped off Colin and the Ninja Lesbians. Rhoda and Lindy were heading back to Tel Aviv, and Colin was off on yet another spy job, the Goddess only knows where.

Rhoda and Lindy were Israeli nationals, employed by the Mossad. Colin had gone through training with Rhoda and was Lindy’s trainer when she’d joined the Mossad. Colin had left the Mossad to work for the Blackledge Agency, one of the top undercover guns-for-hire organizations in the world. He’d been trying to get Rhoda and Lindy to join him there, but without much luck. Frank and I had met them when we were all looking for Kali’s Eye, a jewel stolen from a temple in a very small country during the Vietnam War. They’d become a part of our extended family since then, and had become masters at finding reasons to visit New Orleans.

I loved them.

I tried not to think about what their jobs entailed. It was the only way I could handle it. I just told myself whenever I did think about it that they were all three highly trained professionals.

I knew Colin was very good at his job, and whenever I worried about him, I just reminded myself over and over again he’d come home safely.

He had every time so far, after all.

“It’s a shame they couldn’t stay another few days,” I said as Frank signaled and swung around a slow-moving pickup truck. “The Ninjas have never seen you in the ring.”

That was another reason Frank wanted us to get a car—his professional wrestling career was
really
taking off. He was currently champion of the Gulf States Wrestling Association and had to travel a lot for appearances and title defenses. The reason we were heading to Baton Rouge was because Frank was defending his title against his archenemy, Kid Karisma, there. The GSWA was doing a live broadcast from the Pete Maravich Assembly Center on the LSU campus. The center had sold out less than a week after tickets went on sale. This was a big deal for the league—their biggest show thus far,
and
it was going to air on pay-per-view. Stephen Wamsley, the promoter, had said the subscriptions were so high he was already planning another one in a few months at the New Orleans Arena.

When Frank first started with them, the shows had been at Knights of Columbus halls and high school gyms, with the occasional show at a casino. They taped some of the shows for broadcast on a little-watched regional cable network. But Stephen, who’d taken over for his father shortly after signing Frank, was a hustler. He’d moved the broadcasts to a national cable network, and they were starting to catch on. Every time the ratings went up, more money flowed into the GSWA coffers. This meant better production values for the broadcasts and more money for the guys.

I was so incredibly proud of Frank. It was hard enough for someone to start a career as a professional wrestler in his late forties. Not only had Frank done so, but he’d become the biggest star in his promotion. He was always swarmed after his matches with adoring fans wanting autographs and pictures. Stephen was even talking about adding a merchandise page to their website, which was getting a ridiculous amount of hits.

Frank had over five thousand fans on his wrestler’s Facebook page.

It was no surprise to me that Frank was becoming such a big star.

Of course, Frank looked phenomenal in his shiny black pleather trunks with the lightning bolt across his perfectly shaped hard ass, the knee pads, and the shiny black leather boots.

I loved sitting in the crowd listening to them cheer for my guy, you know? And always smiled to myself when I heard the women talking about how sexy he was.

If you only knew
,
I would think,
how sexy he looks out of the tights.

“Yeah,” Frank replied, accelerating as he pulled back onto I-10 West. “It was good seeing them again.”

“Are you nervous?” I asked, putting my knees up on the dashboard and scrunching down in my seat. The match wasn’t until tomorrow, but Frank
always
experiences a little stage fright before a match—and this one was bigger than any other show he’d ever done.

Hell,
I
was nervous for him.

“Not really,” he replied as we left dry land and headed out over Lake Pontchartrain. He glanced over at me and smiled. “I’m actually feeling remarkably calm. It’s going to be a great show, I think. Jeff and I have worked out some pretty great stuff for the match.” Jeff was Kid Karisma’s real name. Despite the big feud that was the main part of their current story for the promotion, both Frank and I were really fond of Jeff Protheroe. He was in his late twenties, was former military, and lived with his wife and baby daughter near Pensacola in the Florida panhandle.

He was also really good-looking, with an amazing body.

“Nothing too crazy, I hope—nothing where either of you might get injured,” I said, glancing over at him.

“Nah.” He looked in the rearview mirror and fell silent again.

“You’ve been acting kind of weird all day, Frank. Want to tell me what’s going on with you?” It was true. Frank always got weird on days when Colin was leaving for a job—he generally just kind of shut down. It was how he dealt with
his
fears about Colin not coming home. But today had been a different kind of weird, a kind of forced cheerfulness that was somehow worse than his silence.

Frank glanced over at me and gave me a rather faint smile before turning his attention back to I-10, where it belonged. “You know me too well.” He turned down the volume of the car stereo, cutting off Amy Winehouse in mid-lyric. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you something all day, and really, there’s no better way than just coming out with it.” He exhaled. “I got an e-mail from my sister this morning.”

That got my attention. I sat up and leaned against the door, giving him my full attention.

I didn’t really know much about Frank’s sister. I knew her name was Teresa; she was married, had three kids, and lived somewhere in north Alabama. She sent Frank a birthday card and a Christmas card every year. The Christmas card often included a photograph of her family in front of a Christmas tree wearing Christmas sweaters; Frank always threw it into the garbage after opening it. (I am not proud to admit that I dug it out to look at the picture and read the note written inside every year—it was always innocuous and impersonal.) Whenever I asked Frank about his sister, he always brushed the question away. This, of course, drove me insane with curiosity. I’d been tempted, more than once, to research her and her family—I
am
a licensed private eye with an insatiable—some might say obsessive—curiosity. But I knew Frank would be pissed if he ever found out I’d snooped, and reluctantly I always decided to wait for him to discuss her with me when he was ready. I did know that his parents had both died in a car accident when he was in his early twenties. Teresa and her family were the only living relatives he had left.

I also knew they hadn’t spoken in over ten years.

“Oh?” It took all of my self-control to make that one syllable sound innocent and calm.

Frank glanced at me out of the corner of his eyes and had the decency to start laughing. “You’re not fooling me a bit, Scotty.” He reached over and patted my left knee with his right hand as we loomed up behind a slow-moving U-Haul truck over the Bonnet Carré Spillway. “You’re dying of curiosity, aren’t you?”

“Not in the least,” I sniffed, resting my head against the car window as he swung the Explorer into the next lane and passed the U-Haul.

“Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.”
He laughed. “Because you don’t have a curious bone in your body, right?” When I didn’t answer, he went on. “Seriously, Scotty, I appreciate you never pressing me about my sister.” His hand was still resting on my bare leg, and I put my own hand on top of it. Frank has gorgeous hands. They were big, with strong thick fingers. He always kept his nails clean and trimmed. I traced a vein from his wrist up to his elbow. “I’ve never really wanted to talk much about her. It hurts still, after all this time. We used to be so close when we were kids. But she said some pretty awful things to me, unforgivable things, really.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his tanned neck. “She’s very religious, very fundamentalist Christian.” The knuckles on the hand gripping the steering wheel whitened. “She loves me as her brother, but just can’t condone my
lifestyle choice
.”
His voice tightened on the last two words. “And she just can’t be a part of my life until I recognize my sin, ask God for forgiveness, and follow a righteous path.”

“Oh, how awful. She actually said that to you?” I grimaced.
That
explained it.

He nodded. “Yeah, and I wasn’t exactly nice to her. I may have told her to shove her Leviticus up her self-righteous ass.” The corners of his mouth twitched.

“Why didn’t you invite her down to meet me and Colin?” I asked. “Surely, once she met us…”

“I didn’t want to put either of you through that. And besides—she doesn’t approve of my being gay. You think having two partners would win her over?”

“But, Frank, you’ve braved the Bradleys. You
know
how awful Dad’s family is. She couldn’t be any worse than Papa Bradley.”

He laughed. “You always think Papa Bradley is a lot worse than he really is. He’s not that bad, Scotty. He’s always been very nice to me.”

It took a lot of effort not to roll my eyes. I’d finally come to a kind of détente with the Bradley side of the family, but it was an uneasy truce. “If you say so.”

“Anyway, that’s beside the point now.” He sped up to go around a pickup truck with furniture in the bed tied down with what looked like bungee cords. “It seems silly now, to have gone so long without speaking to her.” He glanced over at me as he maneuvered back into the right lane. “She’s my only family, really. Since Mom and Dad were killed…” He shook his head. “Maybe that’s why I got so angry with her, I don’t know. We’d always been close. She’s only two years older than me.” He laughed. “We drifted apart when we got older. Anyway. She
is
my sister, even if her religion tells her I’m going to hell.”