NO Quarter (21 page)

“So is that it?” he asked. “Business-wise, I mean.”

“I think we’ve both done enough for one night, don’t you?” I stifled a yawn, realizing this cocktail on top of everything else tonight was putting me to sleep. I was tired from the hunt, I thought with a little dismay. It had been quite a long time. Yet I still felt good about what Bone and I were doing. Hunting Sunshine’s killer was a positive deed.

“Can I ask you something?” Bone pushed aside his soda.

I gave him the standard Quarter answer: “Well, you can ask.”

He’d heard it before, and chuckled again. “How did you come to retire from
...
your previous line of work?”

I went immediately into hyper-wary mode, but it was just reflex. I was already trusting Bone with a lot of crucial info about me. Glancing around, I saw that the drunk tourist couples had gone, and there were just two regulars left, down at the far end of the bar. They stumbled out as I watched, both looking loaded enough that I hoped they were heading home in cabs.

Padre came around from behind the bar. “I’m going to lock it up, guys. If you want to stay that’s fine, but I’ve had enough of everybody else.” He went to pull the shutters over the door and turn the key. He switched off the juke and it was suddenly very quiet in the Calf.

Bone waited, not impatiently. I gazed back at him an extra moment, then turned to Padre who was starting in on the cleaning and restocking that usually takes him half an hour at the end of his shifts.

“Padre, Bone here wants to know how I came to be retired. From the Outfit.”

Padre straightened slowly from wiping down the bartop. He measured both me and Bone from behind his eyeglasses.

“And how, pray tell, Maestro, does Bone know what you used to do for a living?”

“I told him. I told him because Bone and I are on a hunt. For whoever killed Sunshine.”

My words hung there, and Padre continued to stare. Padre was my oldest friend in the Quarter. Hell, my oldest friend anywhere, since I’d necessarily severed all ties when I’d bugged out of Detroit.

I went on. “He might even enjoy hearing the story of how I came to relocate down here. What do you think?”

Bone wasn’t saying a word throughout this, still just waiting and watching.

“A
hunt
...
” Padre murmured, like he couldn’t quite grasp that. “Wow. Never thought I’d hear you saying this.”

He reached into the cooler and twisted the cap off a beer. He came over to the booth and sat next to me so we were both facing Bone.

“Go ahead,” Padre said. He took a big swallow of beer. “Tell him.”

I leaned slightly forward, toward Bone. “Remember when I told you I wasn’t into the rough-off work when I was in the business? True, but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t handle myself. It comes in handy if you slip up and someone you’re hunting turns on you. I learned some fighting techniques formally, when I first was getting into fencing. Some, like down and dirty bar fighting, my buddies taught me. I mean, most self-defense classes don’t get into how to handle someone coming at you with a straight razor or a broken bottle.”

Bone nodded, following. I’ d decided not to tell him about my time in the military before I’d joined the Outfit.

“One night,” I continued, “I was asking what I thought were some low-key questions in a bar. Bars are gold mines for info everywhere, not just down here. Anyway, some guy I didn’t know suddenly started to draw down on me. I’m not good enough to play around with disarms when the other guy is waving heat. So I killed him.”

I paused to pull on my Irish, to let Bone absorb that. Actually, to be honest, I just wanted the drink at that point.

“I didn’t like doing it, but I figured I didn’t have a choice and that my connections would cover for me.”

Nobody in the booth mistook my humorless grunt for a laugh.

“As it turned out, the joke was on me. It seems the guy I dropped was the vacationing nephew of some out-of-town higher-up in the business. When I found that out, I knew the next step would be for my bosses to offer me up as a sacrificial apology to keep the peace. Didn’t matter one whit that the nephew was a notorious cowboy and borderline psycho who’d probably drawn on me just for giggles. Didn’t matter the years I’d put in. I was a foot soldier, totally expendable.”

I drained my tumbler to the ice and pushed it aside.

“Needless to say, I didn’t care much for the idea. I decided to implement my own Witness Protection Program and got the hell out of Dodge. Problem was, of course, my people were going to be sending out some other hunter/tracker to find me. Probably more than one. It would be important for my bosses to make that gesture, to appease the other gang.” I fished out my smokes. “Granted, I had the advantage of a head start, plus the knowledge of what sorts of trails my hunters would be likely to try to follow. I discovered I was
very
good at covering my own tracks. This may be the information age and the time of Big Brother, but a man can still slip through the cracks with enough determination.”

I lit my smoke. Bone’s eyes had gotten a bit wide.

“At this point,” I exhaled smoke, “Padre comes into the picture. You want to tell the rest of it?” I eyed my friend sidelong, giving him another chance to put the kibosh on the whole thing.

He swallowed more beer. “Naw, you finish it, Maestro. You’ve got such a lovely speaking voice.”

I couldn’t quite join in the wise-ass jocularity.

“I knew Padre by professional reputation,” I continued. “Before he retired, he was making a hell of a name for himself in the business.”

Bone’s palm suddenly slapped the tabletop. “Hold on! Is
everybody
I know an ex-mobster? You’ve got to be shitting me!”

Padre was snickering. “Didn’t Maestro tell you, Bone? ‘Mob’ is such an ugly word. He prefers ‘the Outfit.’”

I ignored him, wanting to get this finished.

“No, Bone,” I said. “Padre wasn’t in
my
business. He was a free-lance identity specialist. He had a lot of status among my circle of hunter/trackers. He did identity theft—that’s stealing another person’s official records, IDs, credit card numbers. It’s all done by computer—”

“I know what it is,” Bone retorted.

Right. Bone might not have had my background, but I wasn’t talking to a preschooler.

“This was ten, fifteen years ago, though,” Padre put in with a kind of casual pride. “I was very avant-garde.”

I nodded agreement, “Padre’s other gig was setting people up with false identities, ones that had never existed before. He would build fake pasts, from birth certificates to credit histories. He was indeed an
artiste
.”

Next to me, Padre bowed his head, grinning.

“I contacted him. It cost a pretty penny, but he set me up. All he had to know was where I wanted to be so he could doctor up the appropriate state ID and whatnot. I told him New Orleans.”

“Any particular reason?”

“I’d visited once or twice. Liked the place.” I shrugged. “Besides, people down here keep the same vampire hours I was used to. Reinventing myself in Bumblefuck, Missouri, might have been lower profile, but I’d go nuts inside of a week. Why bother to stay alive if you’re only going to bore yourself to death?
Besides, you know the Quarter. Once you’re established here, nobody will give the time of day to an outsider if they come asking around about you.”

That was certainly proving true in the case of my inquisitive friend with the silver crucifix.

“As it happened,” Padre said with a grin, “New Orleans was where I based. I started out in Texas, but that’s another story.”

“So you met Maestro when you supplied him with his new identity?” Bone leaned toward Padre, taking in every word.

“Yep,” I answered. “We got to be friends after that. Kindred spirits.”

“Maestro said you were retired,” Bone continued, still talking to Padre. “Why’s that?”

I lifted a hand. “Now, Bone, too many questions can—”

“I believe the young gentleman was addressing me,” Padre cut me off. “It happened like this, Bone. Some people showed up at my house one day, tied me up with duct tape, beat me to a bloody pulp, and trashed the place top to bottom. I thought they were going to set fire to it as well, but they didn’t. While I was in the hospital, I decided to retire. I had no idea who had assaulted me. They never said a word to me. That’s the scariest thing, actually—that kind of out-of-the-blue, could-happen-any-minute type violence—particularly when it’s directed at you. After that, I went back to tending bar, like in my college days. It’s a slightly less hazardous profession.”

He snickered again, and I had to admire somebody who could laugh at something like that. I certainly didn’t get a lot of chuckles out of my own past.

“I see what you mean by ‘kindred spirits.’” Bone looked back and forth between us. Then he shook his head sharply. “This has been fascinating, Maestro, really, but I’m going home. I called Alex to tell her I’m on the way. I’d better make good on that. Padre, think you can ring me a cab?”

For a second there I thought I saw Bone eyeing Padre in that odd, leery manner. He was getting the idea that, in the end, it may be that no one in the Quarter is who he first appears to be.

Maybe he was right. I rubbed my eyes. I was tired.

Padre unlocked the door for Bone when his cab rolled up and honked. He hopped in and was gone. I made to go too. Padre tapped my shoulder.

“Needless to say, Maestro, if there’s anything I can do to help out in this hunt, just let me know.”

It was virtually what Alex had said to me last evening. Did the whole world want in on this?

“Thanks, Padre. I may be missing some pool games for a little while.”

“That’s what co-captains are for.”

We shook hands and I went home.

It all came out, the night’s events, full disclosure, and Alex made herself
very
clear. I had told her about the hunt the day before. Now she was telling me.

“In on it?”

She nodded slowly, her eyes pinned to mine.

We were sitting on the couch. I’d come out of the cab, up the stairs, and found her waiting in my apartment—she’d had a key since Sunshine and I had taken her in. Booboo was waiting, too, looking at me intently with green eyes.
She
wanted mostly to sniff at the boots I’d pulled off my sore feet.

Booboo hadn’t liked Alex’s sharp tone. Neither had I, since I wasn’t giving her an argument; saw no basis for one. Hell, I agreed with her.

“You want in on it?” I repeated. “Good. I’d like that.”

“Not going to get all
boys’ club
on me?”

My eyebrows went up. “Where the hell are you getting
that
from?” Sexist is one of the last adjectives that could be applied to me.

“Nowhere,” she muttered, eyes going someplace else.

“Are you thinking Maestro might object?”

“Might he? I mean, to working with another nonprofessional.”

I sagged back on the couch. The air-conditioner, a window unit, was going, though I can’t afford to run it constantly like some people do in summer, those people who also get themselves outrageous electric bills. Above, the ceiling fan—there’s one in every room of my apartment—whirled. Like other features of life in the Big Easy, these are exotic at first, right out of
Casablanca
; then, later, they’re practical. I remembered Sunshine stepping through the door when we first rented the place, into this very room with me, both of us filled with hopes for some sort of better life. I remember her eyes, long, natural lashes fluttering as they rose, seeing that same fan that wasn’t turning then, and even so her lips forming to make a delighted, childlike
ooooohhh
.

I shook myself.

“Maestro?” I said, looking for the thread of what I was saying. “Maestro
...
well, he’s been retired ten years, hasn’t he? I’d say he’s lost his pro status as well. And
...
” My turn now to trail off uncertainly.

Alex cupped my knee, squeezed.

I sighed. “Well, you heard what I was saying, what he told me tonight at the Calf. I believe him, by the way. Same as I believe the rest of it. If he’s delusional, he’s got people—not just me—going along with him, and he’s portraying himself without a hitch. No.” I laid my hand over hers. “What I said—ten years. Killing this mafioso nephew
...
hey, at least he didn’t say the guy’s name was Vinnie. Then I
would
say delusional, no doubt. But think about it. Maestro retired—deserted the Outfit, came down here from up North, got himself an entirely different identity to live under
...
ten years ago
.”

Alex nodded, but it was a “go on” nod.

“Does he still seriously think he’s being hunted?” I asked softly.

That got her looking suddenly thoughtful.

“Ten years is a long time for anybody to be looking for anybody,” I continued. “Even if the object of the search is revenge. Even if it’s the Mob that’s looking for that revenge. From what Maestro says they couldn’t even have any leads to his whereabouts. The only lead is Padre.” Alex had shown something of my same shocked incredulity when I’d told her about Padre’s past. “If Maestro’s old cronies tracked him to Padre—bammo. Hunt’s over. So he’s still completely in the clear. And has been for a decade.”

“Sounds like you’re thinking delusional after all.” Alex rocked back into the cushions.

“No. No, not quite. But
...
I’ve spent a fair amount of time with him, especially these last couple of days. I’ve watched. Just about everything Maestro does is colored by the assumption that he’s in constant mortal jeopardy.”

She shrugged. She was wearing a formfitting white T-shirt that had a wolf baying at a full moon printed on it. She looked good in it. “In a larger sense,” she said, “we all are.”

“Not the sense I mean here, okay?” I wanted to convey my point, or maybe just to listen to my own words, like a bystander. “How he walks on the street, how he checks out a barroom coming back from the toilet. How he stands when he talks to you. How his eyes move when his head doesn’t.”

“Street smarts?” suggested Alex.

“Oh, he’s got those. To be sure. But it’s like he’s
always
got them revved up. Even when he’s relaxing, when we’re two rounds past when we should’ve stopped drinking, and we’re jabbering about movies or pool or bullshit, and he’s having a good time, a genuine good time—hell, even then he’s waiting for it.”

“It?”

“The end. The other shoe to drop. It!”

She frowned. “Waiting
...
like, not complacently?”

“Hell, no. He’s going to put up a hell of a fight! He’s got ten pent-up years of guard-duty nerves. But, see—is it justified? Is anyone still actually, truly after him after all these years?
Could
anyone still be hunting him?”

Booboo was presently trying to insert her entire black body into my left boot where it lay on the floor.

I let out another longer sigh. “How did I get talking about this?”

“I think maybe you’ve had a cocktail or two tonight, unless I miss my guess.” Alex’s lips curled drolly.

“Well, I’ll be slashing my booze budget now,” I said. I’d told her also about asking for some time off work. She offered to help out from her own paycheck if I needed it. I blinked, tired now. “You were wondering if Maestro would object to you coming on board the hunt, right? That was it. Answer: he doesn’t
get
to object.”

Her laugh was soft, warm. So was she for that matter, as she edged nearer me on the couch. I put an arm around her.

“I’ll feel better about this if I’m involved, too,” she snuggled in closer.

“So will I.”

“I
...
” She breathed out, and it warmed my neck. “I want Sunshine’s murderer. I want him to die. I really do, and that doesn’t bother me, on any moral level. Isn’t that interesting? How about you?”

“I don’t think it bothers me either,” I said honestly. “Don’t
think
, but don’t
know
. You can only be so sure about your own feelings. Regardless
...
” I shrugged, and we pressed nearer still. “I will kill whoever was holding onto that ice pick if I get the chance.”

“So will I.” Words I’d just said, but she said them with different meaning, weight, depth.

I helped Booboo extract herself from the boot, and Alex took me down the hall, to the bedroom. I didn’t question it, just followed, grateful for her companionship.

* * *

Awake.
Awake!

Like that, slam-crash, and I knew it was hours later, knew I was up out of bed
...
knew the company I’d just been keeping. But at the moment I was frozen through, every muscle locked, tense, as if my body had turned to stone. My eyes were pried painfully wide, sweat above them, maybe tears below.

I had woken stock-still and on my feet, naked, body caught in a paralyzed scream that had never emerged.

Hands closed, gentle but firm, around my upper arms from behind, and that didn’t startle me. Alex had followed me. I had left the bedroom, come down the hall, come in here—the smaller room off the front room, where the television set lived, and more importantly the VCR and DVD player that were hooked to it. The movie room. It was as rumpled and slovenly as the rest of the apartment, but how comfortable it was to huddle in here, to play tapes from my collection that had been accumulating for years.

On a wall, painted that generic apartment white, I had reverently tacked up the old sheet of Sunshine’s drawing paper that I’d stolen off her apartment door. Here were the dancing dragons, so detailed, down to the textured scales; and the magical forest, each branch and leaf so distinct. Meticulous penciling, very talented. Sunshine lay on her slab of rock. The dragons danced, forepaw-in-forepaw, around her, ritualistically. Sunshine’s hair was very long and dark, like it had been back when she’d drawn this. One knee was raised, one arm flung across the stone. She was looking wistfully up into the sky, and whatever she was looking for up there, it was plain she couldn’t find it.

Alex had never seen the drawing before I brought it home yesterday after the visit to Sunshine’s apartment and Dunk. I’d shown it to her, and she’d stared, stunned. It had that effect. After, I’d told her about the hunt; it had seemed the right way and time to tell her.

Now I was standing there, directly in front of the patch of wall in the movie room where I’d tacked up the yellowing sheet of drawing paper. Alex stood behind, holding me.

The scream I hadn’t let loose stayed in me. The first of my muscles started to relax. Gently I let go of the fiercely-held breath in my lungs.

“Bone?”

“I’m okay,” I breathed.

Alex touched her forehead between my shoulder blades. “Was that sleepwalking?”

“Yes.” I swallowed. “But I remember it all. Is that how it’s supposed to be?”

“I don’t know.”

“I was asleep and walking,” I said slowly, studying the words as they came, “and dreaming. I dreamed Sunshine came into the bedroom and beckoned me up—”

“Bone.”

“—and led me here and gestured at this drawing. There was ... an urgency. It mattered that I saw this. And you were behind me. You heard me get up, asked me if I was okay. I didn’t answer, and you followed.”

Finally, I turned to her. The room was dim. The lamp we always leave on in the front room softened some of the shadows on Alex’s face.

“Then I woke up. It was the urgency of it all, the importance. It was too much. I was going to scream. I didn’t understand what Sunshine was trying to communicate, and it frustrated and scared me. But I woke up.” I ran my palms over my face. They came away wet.

Alex was biting her lip, looking up into my eyes. I smiled.

“I’m okay now.”

“Sleepwalking?” She sounded unsure.

“And some very vivid dreaming.” Now that my body had unlocked, I felt a tingling flow in all my limbs. It felt good.

“You’re sure it wasn’t her
...
well, her spirit?”

I put my hands on her bare shoulders.

“Don’t you think that makes sense?” she pressed. “Can’t you imagine that making sense—even a little bit?”

We hadn’t argued the matter before. Our friendship included very few actual disagreements, but we did disagree, here, on this, on the subject that was now waiting to hatch.

“Did you see her?” I asked, not sarcastic, not smarmy. “You were right behind me, right? I saw Sunshine two steps ahead, gesturing me forward. Did you
...
see that?”

“No,” she admitted. “Not really the point. If she were to visit someone in this apartment, best bet is it would be you.“

“Wouldn’t she want to visit somebody who would believe in her manifestation?” I squeezed Alex’s shoulders. Sunshine had been very vivid in my dream, yes, but she was also fading, fast and absolute the way dreams do. The emotions that had prompted my near-scream were all but evaporated. I was suddenly and hugely tired.

I made to steer Alex back to the bedroom.

She put a hand to my lean chest. “Dream, visitation—whatever. But maybe something or someone is trying to tell you something. Maybe
you’re
trying to tell you something. Your unconscious. Something about Sunshine. Think about it.”

I smiled again. “I’ll sleep on it.”

I followed Alex back to the bedroom and lay there, unable to get back to sleep. I listened to Alex’s breathing become slow and even. After a few minutes I got up again, walked back to the front room, and stared at the drawing. Could Sunshine really be trying to tell me something? Or, more likely, was it my own subconscious mind trying to send me a message?