NO Quarter (10 page)

And then, I did.

Okay, so I was reaching. No way—it was too much of a coincidence.

But what if he really
had
killed Sunshine, had evoked her to Alex as a way of bragging about the deed? Not that I needed any more motivation. Sunshine’s death was too recent. Alex had been too close to her. Or maybe he’d just heard about the stabbing, thought it would be—what? Funny? Clever? Amusing to use it to threaten Alex? Maybe he was a murderer. Maybe he was a part of that disease that allows some people to mistreat others, to think that because we are the clerks in your shops and the cabbies in your taxis and the waiters in your restaurants that you can say or do what you like, that you’re the masters and we’re the vassals, and that there will be no repercussions.

He banged on the bartop until the bartender hulked over. He was already obviously loaded, but you have to be
damned
drunk before the typical Quarter bartender will cut you off. He got his drink, spent a moment disdainfully surveying his surroundings, and then wandered back to where I waited by the pool table. I had a quarter laid out on the table, a pool cue by my hand. I did my best to look bored.

Hair, weight, face—all just as Alex had said—and the T-shirt. He looked at the table, glanced up and noticed me.

“Hey, beanpole. I’ll play yuh.” He tossed another quarter onto the felt. “Rack ‘em.”

I left the bartop trivia machine to beep and chirp to itself and went to slot the quarters and rack the balls. The other customers were all up toward the front, drinking and talking and playing the juke.

One reason Sin City doesn’t have a league team is that its table is a liability, with felt like corrugated cardboard from having drinks spilled on it, a serious table roll, and house cues straight as shepherd crooks.

“What’s your name?” I asked, picking up the cue stick.

He sneered my way. “What’s yours?”

“Alex.”

He was no doubt much drunker than when he’d visited Pat O.’s gift shop. “Mitchell,” he said as he stepped to the table. “Back off, I’m breaking, and yer ‘bout to get yer ass whupped.”

He had come deliberately to this locals’ bar, instead of to the tourist clubs created for his kind, had bought a T-shirt as some symbol of solidarity
...
which meant he was looking for a
real
New Orleans’ experience. I knew his type. They want to know where it’s really happening, where the scene is, want the insider’s scoop, want to
be
inside, to be cool and hip. Some of these people are fun and worthwhile. Some are idiots. Some
...
well, some are something else.

Mitchell played sloppy and loud and belligerent. I lost consistently and found him starved for companionship, which I provided. By the third game I knew just about all there was to know about him and his life back in New Jersey. He was a schnook, a shlub, and seemed nothing more. He was still drinking, past all safety limits now.

During our fourth pool game I asked, “You heard about the girl getting stabbed by the river last night?”

By now he didn’t know if he was shooting solids or stripes, but he grunted, “Yeah.”

He straightened after his shot, started chalking his cue tip with deliberate, exaggerated motions, but seemed more to be using the stick to keep himself upright.

“Where were you last night?” I asked, enunciating explicitly but not loud. But there was nobody there to hear the question but him. I was near him now, very near. “Midnight to 2 a.m.—where? Where were you?”

He blinked. It must have seemed a non sequitur to him. Blinked more, and said, “I was
...
in Trenton. Did’n’ ge’ here ‘til disssmornin’
...
”

And he was crashing out, right there. He let go his cue and pitched toward the nearby men’s room door. I took a fast look around—no one was looking back this way—and followed him in.

Mitchell was trying to use the urinal, but the necessary motor skills and rudimentary knowledge of aiming had fled. He stood, half-crumpled against the graffiti-rife wall, swaying, making a pathetic little whimper. And that was satisfying, it was. It was karmic
...
but it wasn’t quite karmic enough.

He seemed hazily aware that someone was behind him and awkwardly cranked his head around, round face bleary, eyes trying to focus.

I slammed him with everything I had, the heel of my right hand driving in between the bridge of his nose and his left eye. I hit him that hard because I was only giving myself the one shot, no more. His head whipped back the way it had come, and kept going, smacking the splintery wood wall. His hips turned, and his feet didn’t follow, and down he went. He toppled, tangled, and managed to wedge his chubby body tight alongside the urinal, forehead touching the damp floor, ass high in the air. He stayed there.

On the way out I told the bartender he had a drunk passed out in the toilet.

* * *

Excerpt from Bone’s Movie Diary:

Is there any more viscerally satisfying movie moment than when Charles Bronson makes his first kill in
Death Wish
? He’s being mugged, & for that moment he is everyone who’s ever found himself at gunpoint surrendering wallet or purse to some scumbag. (Virtually everyone I know has been mugged at least once in their lives; it being that common, is it a social condition we’re supposed to just accept?) Instead, Bronson shoots the mugger, & however civilized we may think ourselves, it’s a beautiful, bloody, righteous,
quenching
moment! Bronson’s daughter is almost catatonic & his wife dead from a rape-assault. Nothing he can do will change what’s happened. But it’s that very helplessness, that powerless rage that we recognize & attach to. And so Bronson is out there getting even for all of us.

“I don’t get it.
What’s so special about an ice pick?”

It was late night at the Calf again.
Bone came in, asking if anybody had heard anything. He’d been keeping an eye on the news all day, but so far as he knew the cops didn’t have anything on Sunshine’s killing. I’d quietly corralled him and told him what I’d learned from Sneaky Pete that afternoon. He had blanched when I first told him how she’d been murdered.

“The fact that Sunshine wasn’t on a direct route home,” I said, “that she was deliberately off the beaten path and walking all the way out by the
river
. The Moonwalk doesn’t actually go anywhere, at least not toward where any Quarterite lives. That makes it unlikely that it was an ordinary mugging gone bad. The fact that whoever it was used an ice pick cinches it.”

“I’m still missing something here, Maestro,” Bone said, frowning. “What’s so significant about Sunshine being
...
killed with an ice pick? And what about all the voodoo stuff?”

To be honest, I had half expected that he would have forgotten our conversation at Fahey’s once last night’s cocktails wore off. What surprised me was that I found I was sort of glad he hadn’t. He was still focused on finding Sunshine’s killer and avenging her death, presuming the police didn’t come through. So far, twenty-four hours of the forty-eight had expired.

“Think about it, Bone,” I said patiently. Bone is intelligent, and usually I have no trouble speaking with him as an equal, despite the two decades I have on him. Every so often, though, something pops up to remind me of how young he is, how lacking in the experiences I’ve had and taken for granted. Then, too, there are times when I wonder if I was ever that young.

“Okay. I’m thinking about it,” he deadpanned. He was flexing his right hand. He’d been doing that off and on since we’d taken our stools.

“Our whole country is gun-happy,” I said. “Hell, these days I think even petty criminals that break into parked cars for radios carry guns. Predators are almost always packing when they’re out mugging. Why? Too many John and Jane Q. Citizens, paranoid about muggers and rapists and terrorists, are walking around armed too these days. So the predators
have
to pack heat. Otherwise, it’s too big a risk. Sunshine, you’ll note, was not shot.”

“I note.” He lit a cigarette. He was drinking a soda, but I didn’t ask why. Quarterites don’t have to drink liquor
every
night.

“As to the specifics of an ice pick
...
do you carry a knife? Or have you ever?”

Bone shook his head.

“I do,” I continued. “My favorite is a moderate-length folder knife with a lock blade. Easily hidden, and in a pinch I can possibly talk my way out of it if a cop tries to hassle me over having a concealed weapon.”

I paused for a sip of my drink, which was my usual Irish whiskey.

“An ice pick is a different animal altogether. Like a rigid construction sheath knife, you have to deal with the extra length when you’re carrying it. Speaking of sheaths, they don’t make them for ice picks, so you either have to come up with a rig yourself or carry it with the point exposed or capped with a wine cork. The damning twist is that if you get caught with one, there’s no way you can try to claim that it’s just a pocket knife or that you use it at work.”

“Which means—”

“Which means that whoever nailed Sunshine was going through a lot of extra inconvenience and risk just to carry his favorite killing tool. And that means she was being deliberately hunted. No accident or happenstance involved.”

“And the voodoo shit?”

“Actually proves it. Someone went to the trouble to put that stuff in place. Whether they intended some kind of ritual or were just trying to make it look that way, they definitely intended Sunshine as the victim.”

Bone nodded grimly. “Still
...
what was she doing by the river in the first place? I keep thinking about that. Did this ice-picker chase her there from Jackson Square?

I paused to light a cigarette of my own, blowing out a long plume of smoke. It was good to see the kid thinking logically, even if I didn’t have an answer to his question.

I hadn’t yet told Bone about the message Sunshine had left on my machine two days before her murder, or the note. I don’t give out my phone number willy-nilly, but I’d given it to her
...
probably during my brief infatuation, in hopes of
...
well, in hopes that didn’t mean anything now. I had no idea what Sunshine might have wanted to talk to me about, and I didn’t want to bother Bone with it. After all, we were still waiting for the cops to solve this.

“There’s even more to the ice-pick thing, though,” I said. “Ice-pick killings went out with Penny Dreadfuls. And they certainly have nothing to do with any version of the
Vodun
practiced here in the Quarter. That raises the question of who would prefer to use an ice pick instead of a more conventional blade weapon. I keep coming up with one answer. I think the hitter is an ex-con. Someone who is used to using a shank for quick kills.”

“A jailhouse shank, you mean?”

“A homemade prison knife, yes. Convicts have a whole lot of time on their hands, and they’ve devised every way imaginable to make weapons while they’re in stir. Classically, you take a spoon and grind the handle down to a point, either on the floor of your cell or on the sly in tool shop. The metal isn’t good enough to hold an edge, so what you end up with is essentially a point weapon, like a foil or an epee
...
or an ice pick. There’s no squaring off for fights in lockup because of the guards. You’ve got to be quick and unseen. Basically you walk up on someone, preferably from behind, and slam-punch a couple of holes in him without breaking stride.”

“Sounds like every prison film I’ve ever seen.”

That unexpectedly annoyed me. “We’re talking about the real world here, Bone,” I said, just a bit sharply.

He didn’t react to my tone. “Thanks, Maestro. I’ve been able to distinguish reality from fantasy for some time now.”

I decided to chuckle quietly at that. But we still had serious things to discuss.

“Now, the way I see it,” I said, leaning nearer his stool, “this very likely involves an ex-con. Possibly one who has an interest in the darker side of the occult. That’s a nasty breed of creature, especially if he’s made a habit of shanking people in the joint. The cops will smell the same sort of fish. They’ll be looking for local parolees and whatnot. That means we back off an extra couple of days before we stick our heads up, give them time to—“

“Hold that right there.”

I stopped. Bone had turned sharply on his stool and was staring at me intently. I automatically noted the tension in his thin wiry body.

“An extra couple of days?” He was speaking in that low growl I’d heard him use before.

“That’s right,” I answered blandly, waiting for him to say whatever was on his mind.

He seemed to be making an effort to rein himself in, as if he were on the verge of lashing out.

“I agreed, Maestro, to forty-eight hours,” he finally spoke, his jaw tense. “I agreed to that because you said the cops might take care of this thing within that time. That made sense to me. I also agreed because you made some vague noises about helping out. I appreciated the offer of help. I still appreciate it. I consider you a friend, and I don’t throw that term around indiscriminately. But, understand this.
You
dealt
yourself
in. I didn’t ask for the help. And, I have to say
...
I don’t have any real idea at all what kind of help you could give me.”

With that he got to his feet and marched out through the bar’s rear, toward the rest rooms. It was still half an hour before Alex was off work, or I imagine he would have just left the Calf at that point.

I blinked. My first reaction was, I think understandably, of the
who-the-hell-do-you-think-you’re-talking-to-kid
variety. I felt a strong surge of anger. But having had years of operating with my emotions, especially anger, carefully in check, I quickly centered myself. I imagined myself with a foil in hand, stepping onto the fencing strip, mind cool and clear.

Who the hell did Bone think he was talking to? The fact was, I realized calmly, he didn’t know.

I was suddenly aware of Padre standing on the other side of the bar, eyeing me.

“Bone all right?” he asked. Like any good bartender, he could track multiple patrons at once.

“He went to powder his nose,” I said. “Seems it’s out of joint.” I pushed my empty whiskey glass toward him.

Padre refilled it and got me another water back. “Bone is young, isn’t he?” he observed.

“I understand it’s a curable disease.”

“Yes. It is,” he agreed, as though my smartass comment had been serious. “He’s young, but I’d say he’s a good man. You always used to say good men were an endangered species and shouldn’t be wasted.”

It’s a good thing, in its way, that I don’t have many longtime friends. I hate it when they know me well enough to quote me at me.

Padre wandered off, and Bone came back. He regarded me from a few steps away, not retaking his barstool.

“Bone,” I said, my tone level and reasonable. I stood up. “Let’s take a walk.”

He glanced at the clock on the wall. There was still time before Alex showed up.

“There are a few things I’d like to explain to you,” I prodded him.

Finally he nodded. I dumped my fresh Irish in a go-cup, and we stepped outside.

* * *

We’d cut across the Square and come out now on Chartres Street, which was quiet this time of night, save for the occasional passing United cab. Bone wasn’t being pouty or sullenly silent. He was just waiting for me to talk.

Yeah,
talk
, but how to begin?
I’ve worked hard to keep my past just that—the past. In the Quarter, that’s fairly easy. Usually, nobody asks. It was a new thing for me, an
unnatural
thing, trusting someone like Bone with even a part of the truth. Only Padre knew the whole story about me, and he only knew because he’d been the one who’d helped me set up my new identity ten years ago.

I wasn’t sure how much I meant to tell Bone. Not all of it, of course, not yet, and probably not ever. Some of it, if he let it slip in the wrong place or to the wrong people, would land one or both of us in serious trouble.

“Do you remember—” I cut it short. Silly question, that. “Have you ever heard about the old
Mission Impossible
TV show?”

“Sure,” Bone answered. “They’ve made two movies from the series. First one directed by Brian De Palma, second by John Woo—”

“Right,” I cut him off. There had been nights he’d gotten so wound up talking about movie minutiae that I’d found myself wishing he had an “off” switch. “Anyway, in the show, the team gets a fifteen-second recording and a couple of photos, and then proceeds to pull off some
very
complicated scams and capers—you know what I’m talking about? Good. When I was younger, watching that show, I always wanted to see more about the unsung, unseen operators that put all that incredibly detailed information together for them. I mean, how do they know that the bad guy’s desk is exactly eighteen inches from the north wall so they can drill into it from the basement? Or that the mistress of the general will take the right-hand elevator at exactly two twenty-five so they can kidnap her and ring in a substitute?”

Bone nodded. I took a sip from my plastic go-cup.

“Well, that’s the kind of stuff I used to do. Only
...
I worked for the Outfit.”

We paused on a corner, and I automatically stepped out of the immediate circle of the streetlight. I hadn’t heard anything more about the guy both Jet and the Bear had warned me about last night.

“The Outfit,” Bone repeated. He looked me in the eye. “You’re talking about organized crime. Right? Mafia? Cosa Nostra?”

“The Outfit,” I insisted firmly, but I was pleased how fast he’d picked it up. “That’s what we called it. As for it being ‘organized crime,’ once you’ve seen it up close, you realize it really isn’t all that organized.”