NO Quarter (7 page)

Bone turned around suddenly, but I’d glided up behind him, past whatever radar he had. He was startled and his stance was wobbly again.

“Maestro—“

“I thought you said you were going to stay at the Calf.”

He recovered himself, shaking his head. “I didn’t say that.
You
said you were stepping out to ask about Sunshine. Well, I did the same thing.”

I glanced past him, to the entrance to Big Daddy’s. “You went asking in there?” My tone was clipped.

“Right. I know one of waitresses from around. Chanel. I was just talking to—“

I’d seen him talking to the redhead. “Look, Bone, I want to talk to you about this. But let’s get off the street. We’ll go to Fahey’s. Come on, I’ll buy a round.”

He looked at me funny. “Talk? Maestro, I ought to be getting back to the Calf. I left Alex sitting there. Talk about what? Did you find out something about Sunshine?” He asked it eagerly.

“Who killed her? No.” No one was within earshot, but I still wanted off the street.

“Talk to me on the way back to the Calf, then. I don’t want another drink. I’m going to meet Alex and go home.”

For the third time tonight I put a hand on him, on his shoulder this time. “Bone, we need to talk. Seriously.”

I guess I said it convincingly. After a few seconds he nodded. Tufts of his dark hair were sticking out from his ponytail, and his already thin face looked even more drawn. We hiked down to Fahey’s, which is just two blocks off Bourbon, on Burgundy and Toulouse. On the way, I thought about what I wanted to say.

We stepped into the air-conditioning. Milo was bartending. I took Bone at his word and just ordered him a soda, but by now I definitely wanted another cocktail. It was quiet in the bar but I led Bone back toward one of the high tables by the poker machines anyway. We were isolated. Even both pool tables were unoccupied, which was rare. Fahey’s is a little local Irish pub that
never plays Irish music, but is home base for several pool league teams and has a bank of cue lockers. There’s little or no “trash talking,” no big money games, but on any given night you can normally find half a dozen to a dozen solid shooters sorting out the pecking order over drinks.

“Okay,” Bone said, leaving the soda untouched and lighting a cigarette. “What?”

He wanted to be direct? Fine. Now was the time for it.

“What the hell are you trying to do?”

He had the perplexed look again. “How’s that?”

“Earlier you were ready to go charging off to the crime scene. Why?”

“To find out what happened to Sunshine—if it was true, and what exactly it was that happened.”

“And then you went over to Sunshine’s work place, asking questions.”

“Right.”

“Why?”

He was starting to look pissed off. “Like I said—to find out.”

I took a pull on my drink. “But why?”

Now he
was
getting angry. “What the hell you think?”

“Doesn’t matter what I think,” I said steadily. “Just answer, Bone. Why are you asking around about Sunshine’s murder?”

“So I can find out who’s the motherfucker who did it!”

I saw Milo glance our way, but the bar’s few other patrons didn’t pay us any attention. It was mostly service industry people, familiar faces.

I leaned forward on my stool and pinned him with my eyes. “And what do you plan on doing with that knowledge, if you get it?”

He bit back on an immediate retort. I watched him think it through. He puffed hard on his cigarette.

Finally, he said, “It depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether the cops know who did it, and whether they catch him.”

I had him thinking in an orderly fashion now. That was good. Before, he’d been reacting strictly from the gut. Still, I had a good idea where this was going, and that
wasn’t
good.

“What if the police don’t have any suspects, don’t pick anyone up?”

“Then
I’ll
find out who killed her.” His voice was a level growl. “And I’ll set things right.”

“Revenge?” I asked, almost softly.

“Justice
...
no, you’re right,
revenge
. The eye for an eye kind.”

I let out a long sigh. “Don’t personalize it,”

“What do you mean?” Anger flashed back into his eyes.

“Most of the murders the police get are what they call ‘smoking guns,’ where they know almost immediately who the perpetrator is.” I spoke slowly and quietly, trying to wind him back down. Sometimes boring lectures work. “You’re most likely to get killed by a family member or a close friend in the heat of an argument ... especially during the hot, humid summer months, like now. It’s the cases that aren’t obvious, the ‘whodunits’ that usually go unsolved. If they don’t come up with an answer in the first forty-eight hours, they usually quit. It’s not like TV or the detective novels. They’re overloaded with cases and simply don’t have any more time to put into any single case.”

“You said not to
personalize
it.” He obviously didn’t like the sound of that.

“You’re not giving the police the time to do their job. Realize what they’re up against in every ‘whodunit.’ Give them the chance to check things out their way. Maybe they’ll get lucky. You’re already running around trying to start your own investigation. You’re going to call attention to yourself, maybe end up distracting the cops. I would recommend you chill out, at least enough to think clearly. It’s always better to fight cold than hot.”

He ground his cigarette into the table’s black plastic ashtray. It wasn’t earthshaking advice I was giving him, but hopefully I’d cooled him down sufficiently.

He looked at me, intent but not hostile now. “You didn’t just happen to bump into me up there on Bourbon, did you, Maestro? You came out looking for me. Didn’t you?”

“Yes,” I said simply.

“Why?” He gave me a wry little smile, appearing to enjoy giving me back my own earlier question.

I’d been thinking it over, though, trying to deduce why I felt such a strong protective instinct toward this kid who was, after all, a new acquaintance and not somebody I should be too invested in.

“I’m just looking out for you, Bone.”

“Why?” he asked again, enjoying it even more.

I took another healthy swallow of Irish. “Because you remind me of someone
...
someone I don’t want to see doing anything unnecessarily dangerous.”
Or stupid
, I added silently.

The smirk left his face. “So what do you want from me, Maestro?”

“To lay off this thing for forty-eight hours. See what the police can do.”

He nodded once. “And if they don’t come up with anything?”

“Then
you’ll
want to do something. Presuming you’re serious?”

“Very serious.”

I finished off my drink. “In that case, you could probably use some help.”

We stared at each other a moment across the tabletop. I thought of Rose turning over the Two of Cups.

“Forty-eight hours,” Bone finally said. “Okay. Clock’s ticking. Meanwhile
...
” We climbed off our stools. He had Alex waiting to be escorted home.

I didn’t have anyone waiting for me, but the Quarter, in its entirety, was my home, and
...
well, I didn’t take kindly to the murder of one of my household.

* * *

I still had Jet’s news to worry about, of course. That I’d put it on hold while hunting down Bone showed how serious I was about trying to safeguard the kid. Now, however, it was time to look into it.

My apartment is maybe a little too close to the action on Bourbon, so on busy weekends, and certainly during Carnival, I get a lot of crowd noises. I don’t particularly mind, though. My place is a “slave quarters” apartment, a local term I found a bit shocking when I first moved down here. It refers to a detached unit at the rear of a larger building. Mine abuts a flagstone patio planted with jasmine, where there’s enough space for me to swing a fencing foil or a
baston eskrima
around when the urge takes me. The plants and vines on the perimeter also block the view from the street and the main house, which makes it a good place to practice with live blades.

Jet had mentioned Decatur Street. If somebody was going along that street tonight looking and asking for me by name, that somebody didn’t know my movements. Decatur’s bars are more for the younger set, though there was one bartender I knew well.

I flipped through the phone directory, dialed the number. When the Bear answered I identified myself.

“Maestro!” the Bear’s gruff voice boomed through my earpiece. “How’s it goin’, Bro? I take it you got my message.”

I glanced at the answering machine next to the phone. I hadn’t checked it. “Actually, no. Somebody slipped me word on the street, something about
...
inquiries being made.”

“Right. An’ I know how you like your privacy.”

The Bear had the physical presence to match his basso-profundo voice. He was ... well, a bear of a man, except that real bears don’t have shoulder-length hair and tattoos. He’d also been in my sword club when it was active and was one of a handful of people who had my unlisted phone number. The bar where he currently worked was at Decatur’s far end.

“So, who is this guy?” I flexed my free hand.

“He came through here ‘bout, oh, hour an’ a half ago. Asked for you by name.”

“Asked who?”

“Me. I didn’t know him, so he got my best blank stare. He tried askin’ a few of my customers, but I told him he had to buy a drink or get out. He went.”

“He give you any trouble about that?” I asked.

“Naw. Actually he was well-mannered. Wasn’t drunk. Was wearin’ square clothes. Cheap, y’know, but neat—collared shirt, slacks.”

I absorbed that. “Okay. Tell me what he looked like, please.”

I could hear the bar’s raunchy jukebox in the background, ice cubes rattling. The Bear was making drinks while he talked.

“White, early thirties. Light brown hair. Recent haircut—a short, cheap cut but, again, neat. Blue eyes, soft-lookin’. Narrow jaw. Wore a silver crucifix on a chain around his neck. No rings in the ears, but both lobes had multiple piercings. No tats on the hands or neck. Five foot nine. One forty—one forty-five. Not muscular. No watch on his wrist, no cell phone clipped to his belt.”

It was the sort of thoroughness one could expect from the Bear. He was in his forties, easygoing enough, but he’d spent his youth in the military. Special Forces—that much he’d said, and I never asked further. I figured he had been in on some serious shit, but his past was as off-limits as mine.

I ran his description through my head and nothing clicked.

“Is this trouble for you, Maestro?” he asked after a few seconds.

“Honestly, I don’t know. I appreciate your concern, though. And the info.”

“It’s all good. Hey, you heard ‘bout the girl gettin’ iced at the river?”

“Yes.”

“Bummer, eh?”

Then he asked about the pool team in way of polite chitchat, and I gave him the quick low-down. He was himself a fine stick, but he’d quit playing in the league several sessions back when his chronic back trouble acted up.

Finally he rang off.

I emptied my pockets, kicked off my shoes and stepped into sandals. It had been a long night, and a sad and disturbing one. I lit a stick of incense on the small altar in the closet off my front room, sat cross-legged on the floor in front of it, and began the
Shanmatha
contemplation to clear my mind. It couldn’t hurt to say a prayer for Sunshine’s soul tonight.

I escorted Alex back as far as my apartment. Her unit was just above mine. Once there, we discovered neither one of us wanted
to be alone. Sunshine had died alone, and that thought haunted us.
We spent the night on
my couch, just holding each other—nothing more, just warm companionship against the dark.

I woke alone and badly, absurdly late, deep into the afternoon. I hadn’t dreamt specifically of Sunshine, but I’d been trapped in seemingly endless running-in-glue type nightmares, which left me feeling limp and lousy. It was so late Alex had already gone to work. I realized I should have gotten up with her. Should have seen if she was okay. We were both grieving through the aftermath of a friend’s death. Alex might have wanted some comforting before going off to the gift shop.

Nodding over my first cup of coffee, I tried to come to grips with the truth. Sunshine was gone. My head told me I should be reacting. But I felt nothing
...
emotionally flat-lined. Oh, the grief was there, and the anger, but it was all limbo-like. Stalled, like a storm front. I was waiting. I had promised Maestro. Forty-eight hours, during which time New Orleans’ finest might solve the case, nab Sunshine’s killer and set the wheels of justice cleanly into motion.

They might
...

I’ve no gripes with the NOPD. I like safe streets to walk, and the thicker the police presence, the better. The Quarter’s police district is the Eighth, and I’ve poured coffee for and chatted with a fair number of its officers who stop through late nights at my restaurant. Always civil, decent tippers to boot, they certainly appeared competent.

But they were
people
. I knew what Maestro said was true, that the police were overworked, had only so much time and manpower to devote to any single case.

I went looking for my smokes. My apartment is a comfortable place, and part of comfortable is that I don’t expect to be visited by the Royal Family without adequate notice. Which is to say if a hurricane hit the place, it wouldn’t make all that much difference.

I picked my way into the bedroom, found my smokes, crumpled and tossed the empty pack with a grunt. Booboo, my cat, leapt at it, bounding from
whichever of her hiding spots she was favoring today, went skittering across an unexpected clear patch of floor, and crashed into a stack of videotapes.

Booboo was a native Quarterite. She’ adopted me shortly after Sunshine had moved out.

Sunshine
...

I stared a slow blinking moment at the bed, which was banked with blankets and assorted debris. The bed Sunshine had picked out for us. The same bed Sunshine had slept on with me when we were married. We’d brought it with us from San Francisco. I’ve never had a driver’s license, so I navigated while Sunshine drove the moving van all the way. Was it too late for us to make it work between us, even then, even before we got to the Quarter?

My fists clenched unconsciously until I felt my nails dig into my hands.

Forty-eight hours
...
well, minus about twelve of them now. I had agreed to do nothing, take no action.
Revenge
—so I’d said to Maestro last night, at Fahey’s, and I’d meant it. Goddamned right I did. Once those forty-eight hours were completely expired and the police had nothing
...
what, exactly, did I intend to do?

I drained my coffee and started finding clothes. What I intended right now was, of course, to get myself a fresh pack of smokes.

Booboo fixed me with accusatory green eyes. I checked her food and water bowls—both full. “I’m just going to the store,” I told her. “I’ll be right back.” She swished her black tail and did not blink.

It was crawfish-boil hot as I climbed downstairs and stepped out onto Burgundy Street. The daylight shrank my pupils behind my sunglasses as I hiked up toward the corner mart. Like a whole lot of Quarterites I know, I am not naturally attuned to the daytime.

I wanted to know who had killed Sunshine so that if the cops didn’t get him, I would. I’d said as much to Maestro.
Revenge
, of the Biblical eye-for-an-eye variety. Which meant, of course, that I intended to
kill
Sunshine’s murderer.

This time the thought didn’t startle or dismay me. I had done the math, thought it through, even as Maestro had tried to talk slow, deliberate reason at me. I knew what I meant. Knew what revenge was. I had decided without needing to decide. My wife—my dear friend—had been murdered. It seemed a no-brainer that her killer had to pay, either with the aid of the police and the courts, or through some more personal medium. Either way, the scales had to balance. I wouldn’t leave it like this.
I
would not allow it.

So, yes, I would kill. If need be. If it came to that.

The how of killing someone, of finding that particular someone if, in thirty-six hours and counting, the cops couldn’t
...
that wasn’t so clear-cut.

A car with Arkansas plates inched along Dauphine Street, the couple in the front seat ogling and pointing. The French Quarter is indeed something, visually striking, with its picturesque architecture, old Europe allure and quaintly crumbling ambience. But it was no good excuse for blocking traffic. A black and white United cab rolled up and quickly lay on its horn.

You could use some help.
Maestro’s words. I hadn’t expected that, what was evidently an offer of help. I didn’t know Maestro all that well. At least, I hadn’t known him all that long. But I’d already started to think of him as a friend, something beyond the routine bar-chum. He had a good knowledge of film and a pleasing store of risqué humor. He was easygoing and easy to talk to. On some level below our surfaces, though, we seemed to have clicked. We recognized each other in some fundamental way that bypassed the two decades’ age difference. I didn’t know if I could quite define it.

It made a curious kind of sense that he was offering to help me ... help me to hunt someone, and help perhaps even to do the killing. I didn’t know too much about his past—and Quarter etiquette deems it impolite to probe—but you don’t get a nickname like “Maestro” from a reputation for sitting on your hands.

I bought my cigarettes. Inside the store the day crew and a few of the customers were, inevitably, talking about the fatal stabbing by the river last night. Lots of clucking about the homicide rate, the need for more police, and, of course, the inescapable undercurrent:
Did you know her, did you know her?

My heart was beating heavy as I paused outside to light a smoke. My hand shook a bit as I snapped shut the lighter.

I’d had the radio on while I was making coffee, heard a newsbreak and knew the crime hadn’t been tidily solved while I slept.
“Police are investigating, but have no suspects at this time.”
I’d heard words like that often enough on local newscasts, was used to reading them in the paper. It was part of the tapestry of city living, nothing exclusive to New Orleans. (And once, crime and murder were a
much
worse problem here than they are today, I’m told.) But this was so absolutely personal, and every mention of Sunshine by strangers, by people who knew her only as a statistic, hit like a blow.

“Hey, Bone. What’s shakin’?”

Big Tommy stuck out one beefy paw for a friendly clasp. Muscular and flabby all at once, like a bodybuilder going to seed, he looked a little like a mountain man, with a full black beard and a mop-top of curls that must have been hell in the summer.

“Tommy, how’re things?”

“Fine, fine. Yourself?”

“They’ll do.”

Southern hospitality wasn’t invented by some novelist or Hollywood screenwriter. It’s the real deal. So, when your neighbor says hello, you stop and chat a moment.

“Where’re you going with that?” I said, nodding to the rolled up futon mattress he was holding up atop one cannonball shoulder.

“Takin’ it over to Greta’s place. You know Greta, right? Works at the Clover, morning shift. She’s just moved into a new place over on Dumaine. Left her bed behind in the old apartment. I told her I’d give her this”—Big Tommy shrugged the mattress awkwardly—“‘til she got somethin’ else. Greta bought me a cheeseburger once when I was broke.” Sweat was bright on his forehead, dripped in his beard.

I wasn’t being asked for anything. Despite which I said, “How about I give you a hand?”

Tommy grinned gratefully, and we lugged the damned mattress three and a half blocks and down a bricked cockroach-crawling entryway barely wider than Big Tommy’s shoulders. I hadn’t tied back my hair before coming out, and now it was plastered over my neck and shoulders. The day’s humidity was merciless.

I shot the breeze a minute or two with Greta—I did know her, a heavyset blond, good waitress—begged off Tommy’s repeated offers to buy me a beer, and skedaddled homeward. Going out for a cold one, though it was way to early for me, was nonetheless tempting. Tommy had lived half a block from me since I’d moved here. He was a good guy. His company would probably keep me distracted awhile. But I knew, I could
tell
, that I would be stepping aboard a merry-go-round while it was going—one round of beers at one bar and we’d bump into somebody we knew because that’s inevitable and because everybody knows everybody.
“Hey, Bone, Tommy what’s up? I was just on my way to such-and-where to see so-and-so who keeps asking ‘bout you c’mon lemme get this round c’mon we’ll shoot a coupl’a racks of pool I’m tired of beer I need a real drink
...
”

Hours
would disappear as we whirled through the Quarter. No.
No
. I just wasn’t in the mood. I love the Quarter and the sure sense of community here that I’ve never experienced anywhere else
...
but not today.

I got back to Burgundy, and ran into Todd, one of my neighbors in the building, as he was leaving. I didn’t know him well. He worked in one of the galleries on Royal, which made him a day person, so we seldom crossed paths. I waved to be neighborly and continued towards my apartment and blessed air-conditioning.

“Hey, Bone. What’s going on?”

Something in his tone caught my attention. “Not much, why?”

“The cops were here, lookin’ for you, ’bout a half hour ago. Is everything all right?”

My gut tightened and I felt chilled despite the heat. “Yeah everything’s fine. Probably a mistake. Thanks, though.” I forced a smile and walked woodenly back to my apartment.

The police!
Maestro said they would probably want to talk to me. I guess I just hadn’t taken it seriously, hadn’t absorbed the reality of it. I took a deep breath. So what? I hadn’t killed Sunshine. The sooner the cops got me off their list, the sooner they could look for the real killer. At least the fact they had been here meant they were doing
something
, however useless. I just needed to wait it out. I fought down the anger and frustration roiling just under the surface.
Wait.

I looked at the videotape stack that Booboo had toppled. If I had to wait, hunkering down with a good movie seemed the best distraction. If the police came back, I would deal with them then.

I felt like something pleasantly grim and was weighing the merits of
Sweet Smell of Success
against those of
Serpico
when I noticed the light winking on the answering machine. I almost ignored it. But, with a sigh, I did go over to play the message. It was Alex. Forty seconds later, my boot heels pounded the stairs as I hit the street, running this time.

* * *

Excerpt from Bone’s Movie Diary:

When life turns bleak, there is real comfort to be found in movies that are equally gloomy. Reality can be savagely dismal, but it can never match film’s facility to dramatize. That is, truth is stranger than fiction, but it needs a serious rewrite. Following Nine-Eleven, during the just-after-the-car-crash shock/jitters of not knowing what was next, I deliberately switched off the news; didn’t want to see & hear anymore, for a while, to take a break, so that I didn’t see the Twin Towers coming down every time I blinked. To escape I plugged in a DVD of
Fail-Safe
. 1964, helmed by Sidney Lumet (my favorite director), the best of the Cold War disaster pictures, the opposite to not-really-that-funny
Dr. Strangelove
’s take on same subject by Stanley Kubrick (Kubrick is overrated; never topped
Paths of Glory
&
Eyes Wide Shut
is 2½ hrs. of my life I want back).
Fail-Safe
is tense, frighteningly believable (still) & superbly acted—including dramatic parts for Walter Matthau, Larry Hagman &, get this, Dom DeLuise. Let me just spoil the ending by saying it concludes with atomic bombs dropped on NY, the Empire State Building used for ground zero. I sat, I watched this terrific movie, I knocked back half a bottle of rum, I was able to locate and handle my emotions as I hadn’t been able to since that Tues. morning ... & it was cathartic. I felt ready for reality once more. After all, how could it be more catastrophic than what I’d just experienced? Appraisal:
Fail-Safe
as movie * * * *;
Fail-Safe
as therapy ... priceless