Bluebottle (6 page)

My face and general size were all that registered with today's barkeep at first glance. He was fiftyish, hair like a well-used
steel wool pad, black T-shirt faded to purple. The image on the shirt had faded too, like good intentions or hopeful prospects.
He'd grabbed a glass and turned to fill it from the tap before it occurred to him there had n't
been
any deliveries.

He looked closer at my black suit, blue shirt and tie. Godzilla might just as well have come into his bar and primly ordered
a daiquiri.

By then the beer glass was half full. He let go of the tap's paddlelike handle. Dumped the beer and ditched the glass. It
bobbed in a sinkful of others.

"Do something for you, boy?"

Stepping up to the bar, I didn't respond. Our faces were two feet apart. His eyes slid sideways, right, left. What the hell:
he was on his own ground here. Safe.

Four elderly men sat over a game of dominoes at a nearby table. Three others off to my right threw darts at a much-abused
board. No one at the back booth.

"Looking for Joe Montagna," I said.

"Never heard of him."

I let several moments go by. Sand through fingers. These are the days of our lives.

"Tell you what. You take some time, think about it, much time as you need. I'll sit here quiedy with a beer while you do.
Whatever you started drawing up before's fine."

The barkeep crossed his arms atop a small, hard mound of belly.

"I ain't serving you, boy, you hear? Ain't about to. Best advice I have for you is to go right back out that door."

Domino and dart games had stopped.

"I'd like that beer now, sir, if you don't mind." I held out a hand, fingersspread. "What can we do? It's the law."

He shrugged and moved closer to the bar. "Hey. You're right." He reached for a glass with his left hand, the one I was supposed
to follow, while his right hand snaked beneath die bar.

Baseball bat? Lengdi of pipe wrapped in tape? Handgun?

I grabbed the front of his T-shirt and hauled him across. Maybe closer up I'd be able to make out what that faded image was.
Momentarily he looked like one of those figurehead mermaids from the prow of a ship. His T-shirt collar began to rip.

"What's the
second
best advice you havefor me?"

I heard a rush of air and a sharp whistle close by my right ear as a dart flew past and buried itself behind the bar square
between a bottle of Dewar's and one of B&B crawling with gnat-size insects.

I looked around. Players had parted right and left to reveal the thrower, three darts intertwined in left-hand fingers, another
in his right ready to go.

"Step away," he said.

I'd kept my hold on the barkeep. Now I dragged him the rest of the way across the bar, scattering glasses, half-filled ashtrays,
stacks of napkins and cheap coasters, salt and pepper shakers. Hand at belt and collar, I swung him around in front of me.

Some way off, a toilet flushed. Then, as a door behind a baffle opened, the barest flare of light near the back wall. Light's
absence became a dark figure.

No one moved—except that dark figure.

"Step down, gentlemen," he said, a sixtyish, stocky man in charcoal-gray Italian suit, ice-blue Quiana shirt, dark tie, moving
unhurriedly towards us.

"Griffin, isn't it? How about a beer? First you'll have to turn loose of old Shank there, though," which I did.

'Two cold ones."

The barkeep shook his newly manumitted head.

"Ain't serving him, Mr. Montagna. Don't matter who tells me I got to."

Joey raised his head maybe a quarter-inch. The knot on his tie didn't even move.

"In my booth, please."

We sat waiting, watching one another across a floeof pale Formica. Shank brought the beers. Joey thanked him.

"Heard some about you, Griffin."

I waited.

"Most all I hear is good—long as a man don't find himself crossed with you."

I raised my glass in a toast. "You've been asking questions."

He lifted his own in acknowledgement, drained it in a single draw.

"You wanted to know about me, you could have gone to your own people. Jimmie Marconi, for instance."

"What makes you think I haven't?"

With no signal I caught, Shank broughtfresh beers.

"Jimmie said hands off. Now that was surprise enough, Jimmie not being one to put his marker in. He takes care of his business,
leaves the rest of us alone to do ours, everything runs smooth that way. What floored me was this other thing he said. You
tell Lewis to come see me, he said, when it's convenient.
When it's convenient.
Forty years I worked at Jimmie's side and I never once heard him say that before, not to no one."

5

L
neonardo's was atimecapsule diey forgot to bury. The restaurant had been there forever; nothing about it ever changed. Same
flockedred wallpaper, same portraits of owners hung high on the walls, same ancient black man sitting on a stool by the side
entrance rocking and nodding. Inside, there were no windows, and waitresses in beehive hair went about the same business they'd
gone about for forty years or more. The menu ran to heavy Italian, with a handful of New Orleans specialties, barbecued shrimp,
roast-beef and oyster po-boys, bread pudding, thrown in for good measure. Once you'd snapped off the heads and spurted juice
across the silly apron they insisted you wear, die barbecued shrimp finally didn't taste much different from the lasagna.
But no one in his right mind came to Leonardo's for the food.

I was never sure why they did come. Maybe this was where the folks used to bring them on special occasions when diey were
kids or where, he in scratchy wool suit, pajamas underneath, and the family Dodge with its green visored windshield, she in
long pleated skirt and flats, they'd had their firstal most-grown-up date. Perhaps they all simply took comfort from the fact
that in here, no matter what cataclysms took place outside, nothing changed.

Jimmie Marconi came because he'd always come here. His old man had come here and
his
old man before him. Places like New York, Boston, you'd have a regular neighborhood, do business from a booth in the bar on
the corner or out of a family restaurant with checkered tablecloths, candles and pots of good, thick marinara reeking of garlic
and fresh basil bubbling in the kitchen. That's the way things worked. People wanted tofind you—request a favor, ask for justice,
tell you their daughter'd got knocked up by some guy refused to do the right thing—they knew where to come. Here it was different.
No neighborhood, families spread out all through the city, across the river, out by Kenner and Jefferson. But when they needed
you, they still knew where to come.

"You don't want to do this, boy," the ancient black man told me as I stood with one foot on the cement step up to Leonardo's.

"Probably right," I said, entering as he went back to rocking and nodding.

I pushed my way like an icebreaker past the frontdesk, through baffles of small rooms and beehived waitresses, around the
shoal of a chattering, bantamweight maitre d' in double-breasted suit, to the main dining room.

Faces turned to watch me. Conversations stopped.

A guy whose neck put me in mind of bulls sat over an espresso at a table near the door. Sucking on a lemon slice, he lumbered
to his feet as I came in. So did his counterpart, all wire and nerve endings, at a rear table.

Jimmie's head rose, too. He regarded me for a moment, two, three, nothing showing in his face. Then his hand came up an inch
or two. The bookends sat down.

I did the same, across from Jimmie, who tucked back into his plate of cannelloni and, finishing that, pulled close a bowl
of cantaloupe with shaved prosciutto.

"You eaten yet?"

I shook my head.

"Mama Bella'd be happy to fix you up something special."

"Mama's other patrons might not appreciate that, sir."

Jimmie nodded and ate his melon slowly, pushing the bowl away when he was done. Then he spoke to the room:

"Closing up in here now, folks. Any of you have food coming, they'll bring it to you out front. Please keep your wallets in
your pockets, though; tonight your money's no good. Please have a complimentary drink, too, while waiting—and please come
back."

We watched as customers slid from booths and stood, tugging at polyester sport coats, cotton skirts and silk dresses before
shuffling out.

"You too," he told his bookends when the citizens were gone.

They didn't like it—eyesflashing
You know you can't
trust these people
—but they left.

"Have a coffee with me at least?"

"Sure."

Busboys in yellow vests and black pants came through a doorway at the back of the room to retrieve dishes.

"Sister doing okay, Joseph?" Jimmie asked one of them.

"Yessir. Thank you, sir."

"Heading for college this fall, I understand," Jimmie said to the other, who nodded. "You know you got a job here anytime
you need it, right? Summers, holidays. Anytime."

They took the dishes away. Moments later the one whose sister was doing okay returned with two espressos.

"Good health," Jimmie said.

I nodded. One healthy sip and my coffee was gone. Jimmie held the saucer in his left hand, up close to his face, working the
cup with his right. Something axlike about that face. Sharp nose, narrow features. Eyes like wedges.

"Don't know as how I ever sat across the tablefroma black man before."

No response called for—none I'd care to give, at any rate.

Jimmie's hand fluttered up. No one seemed to be watching, but fresh coffees materialized.

"We've known each other now what? four, five years? I try to keep track of you. What it looks like to me is, you have trouble
enough keeping track of yourself."

What could I say?

'That's what we're here for, Griffin. To bear witness, to take notice. Ever doubt that, you just look into a child's eyes."

"Your man, Joey the Mountain. He's been asking about me."

"Not anymore he ain't."

"And about the woman I was with the night I got shot."

Jimmie sipped at his coffee.

"You doing okay, right? From die shooting. You recovered."

I nodded.

"That's good." Jimmie threw back the last spoonful or so of his espresso. "Never could get where I was able to care much for
this stuff, but I keep trying. What I want is a drink. You want a drink?"

I didn't catch any signal, but the maitre d' materialized at our table.

"Single-malt Scotch suit you?" Jimmie said.

"Always has."

Two doubles, Marcel."

They were there in a blink. I picked up mine and looked through it, remembering how she'd done that very thing in the dive
down on Dryades. I swirled the first taste, oily, deep, abiding, over the back of my tongue. Life was good.

"What we hear is, Eddie Bone called you that night."

"He did. Said I should catch him at the club later on."

"He didn't say what he wanted."

"No."

"He ever call you like that before?"

"No again."

Jimmie wet the tip of his tongue with Scotch. He put the glass down before him on the table and sat looking at it.

'We want the woman," he said.

"Why?"

"Not something you ask."

Okay. I had another taste. "What about the shooter?"

Marconi shrugged. "He turns up, we want to talk to him. Where you from?"

I told him.

"You got snapping turtles up there, right? Big fuckers that look like rocks, move just about as fast. And once they bite down—it
don't matter what on, a stick, your hand—they don't let go till it thunders. I figure you're like those turtles, get your
beak onto something, you don't let go. No way you're gonna hold off looking for this woman."

The maitre d' brought new glasses of single malt. Crystal. Stricdy Sunday best: I don't think regular folks in regular clothes
and regular lives got them. We sat quiedy.

"Maybe this time I help
you,"
Jimmie said after a while.

"Sounds to me like any help rendered here, it would be mutual."

"So we help one another, then."

He slid a four-by-six photo across the table. Dana Es-may looked out at me.

"You understand how it is. Our people walk in down there, everything stops. They start asking questions, suddenly everybody's
deaf and halfway out the door. You, it's different. You know the scene, people know you. Fifty a day plus expenses sound about
right?"

"Couple of conditions. I report only to you—"

"No problem."

"—and I say it's over, whatever the reason, it's over. No questions asked."

"Don't see why not."

I polished off my Scotch. When I was a kid, Mom made pitchers of Kool-Aid, poured it into bright-colored spun-aluminum glasses,
green, gold, silver, blue. Other kids gulped theirs down in an instant. My own sat for half an hour as I sipped and savored.
They never understood how I could do that.

"Anything you need, information, money, names, you only have to call. My private number's on the back of the photo."

"Thanks. Better get to work, huh?"

I was almost to the door when he spoke.

"Appreciate what you did for my daughter, Griffin."

The etiquette of these things dictated that I not mention it until he did; now I was free to ask.

"She okay, then? Still at home?"

"Nah. Was for a while. Says much as she loves me she can't be around me. Too much baggage's the way she puts it. Too much
stuff cluttering up the shelves. Last I heard from her she's living with this older guy up in Jackson. Both of them got custom
Harleys, his jet-black, hers pink, make their living, such as it is, hauling all this shit in a trailer—old army equipment,
dolls, iron cookware—between flea markets. Talk about too much crap cluttering up the shelves. So how long's
that
gonna last? I don't see her much, or hear from her. Not direcdy. But at least I know she's alive. Thanks for coming in, Griffin."

I had to wonder when was the last time Jimmie Marconi thanked someone.

T
WO GUYS HAD
her back in die kitchen. They'd bent her forward over the table and kicked her legs apart and one of them, a
congenital lowlife named Duke Heslep, was holding her there, hands pushed down on her shoulders, while the other one bucked
in and out and whenever she made a sound pulled at the hair he'd wrapped in one fist.

Heslep's who I was looking for. Week before, when his trial date on an assault charge rolled up, he'd failed to show. Holding
Heslep's bond, Frankie DeNoux wound up forfeiting, not the sort of story's end Frankie much cared for. So he commissioned
a sequel, suggesting that I locate Mr. Heslep and remind him of his duty as a citizen.

Half a day of asking questions and making myself a general pain in the ass led me to an abandoned apartment house in the weblike
tangle of streets just uptown of Lee Circle and riverside of St. Charles. The door stood open—off its hinges, in feet, and
leaning against the wall. Inside there seemed to be two categories of bodies: those caught up in some contemporary version
of the tarantella, and those stoned or otherwise semicomatose on couchs, stained mattresses and floor.

Largely unnoticed, I walked through the former and stepped over and around the latter to another open doorway rear left.

"Sweet
young stuff, Duke. You gonna want some once I'm done."

The one on the joyride had his back to me. Duke stared in fascination at the wavelike motion of the girl's buttocks when his
friend drove into her. I was there beside them before they knew it.

"Who the fuck—" Duke began.

I grabbed his hair and slammed his face against the table, putting an end to his curiosity.

The other guy fell out of the girl as he stepped towards me. He landed a quick, hard jab with his left as his right came around
for a hook—a great punch, but it quickly lost force since I now had a death grip on his privates. I hung on and squeezed.
Hoped I was tight enough for him.

When finally it penetrated that tilings had changed, the girl, without moving any other portion of her anatomy, turned her
head, face blank, pupils black buttons. Her eyes went from the hand I had clamped on the guy's privates to the one still pressing
Duke's face against the table, blood from his broken nose pooling beneath. Then she looked at me.

'What do
you
like?"

Using his privates like the handle of a shotput, I threw Humper against the wall. He slid down it into a huddle, hugging himself
and retching. Then I pulled Duke upright, hand still wrapped in his hair, and told him he was coming with me. Blood glopped
onto his shirt when he nodded.

I marched him out through bodies and down the stairs. His eyes darted about looking halfheartedly for help he was not going
to get. Only when we were outside did I realize the girl had followed us.