NO Quarter (27 page)

Lynch ticked them off on his skeletal fingers. “One did a sentence for grand theft auto, one for check fraud, one for assault
...
”

That one could be Jugger
, I thought.

“
...
and, I’m afraid, one for murder.”

I didn’t have to fake my surprised look.

“I’m sorry, but the gossips are right on this one, kiddo. The guy stabbed his girlfriend with a kitchen knife. She tried to kill him with it first, though. There were two witnesses.”

“Jesus wept,”
I muttered, but I was thinking hard and fast. “Maybe you ought to send word to this guy
...
”

“And tell him there’s a band of vigilantes after him? I don’t think so, Maestro. Sounds like there’s some rough stuff brewing, and I’m too old to get in the middle of it. You want this guy warned,
you
do it. Maybe he can get out of the Quarter. He’s—let’s see
...
”

I watched files being mentally shuffled behind those sharp eyes.

“Munoz. That’s the name. José Munoz.”

I felt my stomach suddenly shrink.

Jo-Jo.

“I hope you find him before someone else does.” Lynch stared into his glass for a moment. “There are a lot of guilty people walking the streets free, Maestro. But it’s when someone innocent goes to jail, or gets offed for no good reason
...
those are the troubling moral things that stay with us to the grave.” I had a feeling he was speaking from personal experience.

“Thanks,” I rose to leave. He stood with me shaking my hand again, his grip even firmer than before.

“Good luck.”

Esplanade Avenue divides us from the Faubourg Marigny, which is a neighborhood much quieter and gentler than ours. It has its bars, restaurants, shops, its own scene and culture and flavor. It’s not the Quarter,
and doesn’t try or want to be. I know people in the Marigny. I have visited the Marigny. We are both a part of the city of New Orleans. Yet, in a real sense, we’re separate states.

Maestro had speed-dialed me earlier to test our new cell phones. The ringing had startled me. I was having a last cup of coffee at the apartment before heading out on tonight’s job when I heard the weird chirping and put the lightweight, tiny phone to my ear.

Despite its size, it had good sound quality. Maestro told me what he’d learned that afternoon about Jo-Jo. My blood went a touch cold. It certainly seemed the evidence was piling up on our Latino suspect. Maestro hoped to find him sometime tonight. I wished him luck.

I didn’t ask Maestro about the source of his information, and he didn’t volunteer to reveal it. We were partners, yes, but I understood he had his reservations, myself being the amateur, understood his nagging desire to keep me away from all potential danger. He would probably—consciously or otherwise—continue to try to marginalize me in this hunt, especially now that he had his own reasons for being involved. My thought? He could try. I had my bead on Dunk, and I had tracked him down without Maestro’s help. Whatever else happened, Dunk was
mine
.

Check Point Charlie’s squatted on the corner of Esplanade and Decatur. I hiked over at about ten-thirty, experiencing that common Quarterite vertigo when encountering two lanes of traffic after days or weeks or months of dealing only with the Quarter’s narrow one-ways. I don’t drive, and so never have to worry about negotiating anything except foot traffic. Still, it can be a powerful moment of culture shock. Esplanade was a border street, wide, split by a tree-lined median, fronted by large old homes. Cars rolled up and down it.

I don’t feel guilty for the amount of time I spend in the Quarter, the degree to which I ignore the rest of our city. Home, job, friends, recreation—all are found in the Quarter. The rest of it ... the downtown, the old walled cemeter
ies where tour groups go, the plantation estates, the parks, the outlying suburbs, Lake Pontchartrain
...
I’m content where I am. I’m happy.
Or as happy as I can be
. For once in my life, I thoroughly belong.

In spite of the heat, I had let my dark hair out of its ponytail, hadn’t combed it. The high humidity made it stick to the back of my neck. It flowed disheveled around my lean shoulders. I wore my boots, black jeans, a T-shirt. Slacker neutral. Shouldn’t call a lick of attention to myself.

There was heat lightning across the river, lighting the sky above the West Bank that’s—I think—actually
east
from here. We don’t use a North-South-East-West compass in the Quarter. Instead, you refer directions by adjacent districts or border streets or the Mississippi. The wide sheets of lightning were accompanied by no thunder, but flashed spooky, ghostly. A freight train grumbled and squealed along the tracks beyond the levee wall and parking lot. I heard a boat blast its horn on the river.

There were a few people standing around outside Check Point’s, just that corner hang thing, checking out the scene without having to go in and buy a drink. Kids—I was immediately bummed for a smoke, gave it over, said to the next mendicant, “One’s the limit on my charity.” He shrugged, shuffled off.

I lit a cigarette for myself, having bought a pack on the way here with money I was now conserving. I hated waiting tables, but I was already missing those tips. That’s the ugly dichotomy of my—or anybody else’s—job.

I took a minute to study the phone pole on the corner, stapled endlessly with intact and tearing fliers, with the corners of old ones. Rusty staples ran up it from a point below my knees to well above my head. Handbills for guitar lessons, computer troubleshooting, lost dogs, garage sales. Lots of fliers for local bands that hadn’t existed two months ago and wouldn’t two months hence—Woad, Big Giant Jenny, $s & ¢s, the Garfunkels, Scurvy Mervy Is a Pervy. Some of the names were pop culture references, some were just weird for the sake of weird. They’ll never stop saying New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz, and there is indeed a fine local music scene and a
lot
of homegrown talent. But c’mon, this is the Quarter. Every success—every artist who’s been shrewd and smart and dedicated and lucky—could have his or her own personal entourage of loser wannabes that will nonetheless continue to talk shit about how true and righteous
they
are, and how if you make it you’re a sellout, and you sure you can’t spare ‘nother smoke dude?

Alex had been upset about my going alone. Last night I’d done what I could to assure her that I would be fine. Would I take unnecessary risks? Of course not. Would I take
any
risks? Of course
...
though I didn’t know what kind of danger I might find tonight, couldn’t even really speculate. I meant to gather some info on Dunk. Maestro had laid out a number of elementary pointers for fact-finding at the start of this hunt, and I’d done quite well—no small thanks to the way Alex had handled Chanel at Molly’s.

Was tonight’s job genuinely dangerous? I didn’t know, presumed so, and walked into the club.

Check Point Charlie’s has a feature that sets it apart from other local bar/music venues: it’s also a laundromat. When I first heard about this place, I was struck by the perverse hilarity of it. How typically New Orleans, how decadent, that people drink so much here they need booze at their
laundromat
? But, eventually, I understood. Check Point’s is a 24-hour joint. Few Quarterites live a nine-to-five, Monday-through-Friday kind of life. We do laundry whenever. Why not at four a.m., maybe the only free time you have for chores? You want to sit in a sterile laundromat at four in the morning watching your underthings go round and round? Probably not. Who else is open at that hour anyway? At Check Point’s you can dump your stuff in a machine, have a beer, shoot some pool, flirt with whoever happens to be around, and you don’t have to worry about the place being held up. Bar robberies in the Quarter are about as rare as murders. They happen, but they’re virtually freak occurrences.

They happen
...

It didn’t matter to Sunshine that as a crime statistic she was a severe anomaly.

The earlier band scurried around the stage breaking down its gear. A typical “Decatur style” crowd milled around—i.e., service industry and semi-trash—though the club is several rungs up the respectability ladder from, say, Sin City. Check Point’s has a raised level at the rear where there are a pair of pool tables, and from up there I heard the comforting
clack-clack
, which reminded me of a few dollar games I’d shot up there. Check Point’s washers and dryers were in an alcove at the opposite end of the bar.

I ordered a bottled beer at the bar. I’m not a beer drinker, but didn’t want to be the exception, sipping a soda all night. Besides, the dark bottle hid the level inside. I could nurse this thing awhile.

I caught a few familiar faces, but faces only, couldn’t come up with names—probably customers from the restaurant, not familiar enough to do anything but throw a nod. I mostly blended with the dark wood and brick decor, and watched the stage, and waited.

A group I assumed to be Clamjaphry started assembling on the stage. They had that serious, self-important manner of a band playing its first paying
gig. The drum kit went up, amps were hauled onto the stage, jacks plugged into them. Somebody tapped on a microphone tapped with a fingernail, and a young twenty-something girl with eye-watering scarlet hair, sunglasses, and a very lithesome figure, started getting a level, saying,
“One-two, one-two
...
”

Outside, overhead, I heard a helicopter pass low. Sometimes they’re police choppers, sometimes news. Those circle longer. This one faded quickly.

I counted four band members.

“That’s Clamjaphry?” I casually asked a guy I’d seen leading around one of the Quarter’s haunted house tours from time to time.

“That’s them.” He nodded and wandered off.

There was a drummer, a long-limbed bass player, a white guy with dreadlocks with a guitar, and the girl was apparently the lead singer.

Where the hell was Dunk?

Piper had named names for me when I’d plied him with that sandwich and beer, and I’d believed him. Should I have trusted him? How were you supposed to know what sources of info you could rely on? I felt annoyance, some self-directed anger and a bit of mild dread that I might have wasted my time coming here
,
that Dunk—
my
Dunk—was going to slip out of my fingers.

There were some tables in front of the stage, but I kept to the back, standing, sipping minutely from my beer. Guitar strings twanged. Feedback whined. A drumstick tapped experimentally. The girl with the scarlet hair growled something—first to the bass player, who just shook his head, then at somebody off-stage. I couldn’t get a line of sight through the intervening bodies. Then someone moved, and I saw a Check Point staff member. More people filled the club.

I checked the time. It was getting past even the normal delayed start of any live music show. I could hear the growing restlessness of the crowd. I could see the members of Clamjaphry on the stage start to jitter, their serious manner turning to worry. The dreadlocked guitarist turned to huddle urgently with the lead singer, who was spitting angry words and gesturing with growing violence.

Something was wrong, and the crowd sensed that and seized on it. Someone started the classic foot-stomping chorus of “we-want-the-show,” probably just for fun, and it got quickly taken up. The crowd raised a whole lot of noise, and the band looked out on their audience for whom they hadn’t yet played a note, and looked more worried now, getting frantic. Another of Check Point’s staff members came up to the front of the stage, and the scarlet-haired girl started explaining something desperately.

At that moment a lean and mangy figure came bounding up from the crowd, the heels of his combat boots coming down on the stage with a loud crack. Then, swiveling about, he bowed deeply, theatrically and insincerely, first to his band mates, then around at the now-jeering crowd, arms outspread with a flourish, saxophone held high in one hand.

Dunk soaked up the catcalls with obvious relish. He sported the same camouflage pants and dirty white T-shirt I’d seen him wearing at Sunshine’s apartment. Tonight being an occasion, though, he wore a baseball cap over his sloppy sides-shaved hair. Emblazoned across the front was FUCK Y’ALL.

Charming
.

Her hand over the microphone, the lead singer spat what were probably some choice words. Dunk leered back and gave her a good long look at his middle finger.

She gave it up—all of Clamjaphry were visibly annoyed and irate at their late-coming band member—and cued the drummer.

The sticks came down.

It was that brand of D.I.Y. pseudo-punk that garage bands have been playing twenty, twenty-five years: fast, intentionally ugly, nihilistic. Even still, they were tight. It was a runaway dump truck sort of music, pounding and rattling, and I couldn’t understand a single lyric the scarlet-haired girl sprayed into the mike. She had a curiously angelic voice, though—robust, almost operatic, borne along by rapid-fire guitar, drums, bass.

Dunk, for his part, stood loftily apart, tapping his foot purposely against the rhythm, a sneer on his face. It was clear that he thought that all this fuss and bother was just the groundwork for
him
. He drummed fingers against his saxophone, bored, disdainful, impatient.

The song hit its bridge and Dunk strutted to the fore of the stage. Up swung the sax, out blew a fantastic tangle of notes. The saxophone is not my favorite instrument. It’s got a shrillness I find grating. But
...
the sound Dunk coaxed from his horn echoed with layers, nuanced and forceful. He commanded it. His notes hopped and hurtled among the music. And as competent and sincere as the music was, as much effort and conviction as the rest of Clamjaphry put into that music, Dunk’s wailing wiped them all into the background.
He
had the touch.
He
had the singular spark that separates expertise from capability, good intentions from genius.