Imogene in New Orleans (18 page)

“Yeah, Billy likes to keep an eye on his vital signs. So, tell me, what did Glenway think about Neil and Allen?” He viewed their likenesses in Glenway’s porch scene.

“Allen fixed his money and he stayed on Glenway about buying too much. Glenway liked to spend money, but, man, he could make it too, cuz. Loads of cash. I didn’t let him tell Allen everything he brought in. They bought whatever he put out there. I never seen nothing like it. It’d take me a year in the street to earn the coin he could make in a weekend. That’s how come he wouldn’t let me ‘work’ anymore. He really saved me from that life.” Buddy avoided eye contact with Jackson. He stared out into the backyard. “Everybody in New Awluns, it seemed, wanted something from Glenway, cuz.”

Jackson felt a sudden wave of sympathy, but Buddy was such a violent individual that he didn’t dare tell him. “What about Neil? What’d Neil want from Glenway?”

“I ain’t sure what he wanted except to tell him who to be with. All this time, these last six months, he kept telling Glenway about somebody he’d found for Glenway to date. He’d come over here and want to speak with Glenway alone.”

Jackson put the sketch back on the worktable. “Did he come over a lot?”

“Shoot, too much, far’s I’m concerned. I wouldn’t leave the house neither, even if Neil wanted me to leave. I’d just sit in my room and watch TV. But believe me, cuz, I kept my ear on what he was saying. It was like he wanted to drag Glenway back across the river all the time, and I ain’t ever did nothing to him. Naw, I didn’t like his friends. I liked Glenway, but I didn’t care nothing for them friends of his. He’d want me to go to his shows and all that, especially that one he had with my picture on the advertisement you got.” Buddy reached in Jackson’s pocket and grabbed the postcard. Jackson squirmed.

“This one. But I didn’t go. Ain’t nobody gonna go where they ain’t wanted. You can feel that shit, man. People ain’t gotta say they don’t want you, cuz. You’ll know by how they look and how they act. That’s how come me and Glenway fought. That’s all we fought about really. You gotta understand. I’ve been with men since I was sixteen years old. Some was rich and some was poor and some was regular. Matter of fact, I’ve been with some who knew Glenway and bought his work and kissed his ass at them art shows. Nobody was like Glenway Gilbert, cuz. I never met another one, not in the ten years I been livin’ this life on the streets.”

Buddy went to the kitchen and grabbed a Louisiana beer from the fridge. He offered one to Jackson, and when he refused, Buddy shrugged and put it on the table. As he opened the bottle, Jackson saw the wolf tattoo’s teeth flare up at him. Jackson took a quick back step. The teeth moved again as Buddy’s muscle rippled.

“You’re not living on the street anymore, though.” Jackson gawked at the wolf’s perfectly round eyes, which followed his every move. He fell for the illusion and couldn’t quit staring.

“I will be eventually, cuz. I ain’t got enough not to. Ain’t you here to see how I could’ve killed him? Why would I kill the only thing keeping me out of the bars every night, with a half dozen johns night and day?” Buddy took a big pull from his beer.

Jackson thought it best not to remind the hustler of all the art surrounding him. “What do you mean? You have this nice house that Glenway left you. You could live comfortably for several years if you’re smart.”

Buddy stepped in Jackson’s face. “You need to mind your own business. You don’t worry about my smarts.”

Buddy’s mention of the extra money Glenway kept from Allen was an added incentive to knock off Glenway. But Jackson had felt Buddy’s fury already, and he didn’t want to arouse it again. “I’m just saying that you can make it, Buddy.”

A shelf in the corner of the room caught Jackson’s eye. There were more than a dozen of the finest figurines he’d yet seen, sitting there in plain sight. Dust surrounded the precious stone carvings.

Buddy pointed at a particular piece. “Hey, cuz, that parade set is forty thousand dollars. Glenway said the stone he used is somethin’ called lapis lazuli. Check out that blue color.”

Jackson held the set in the palm of his hands. It was carved into a parade float with sparkling blue people throwing beads at Carnival. He held it up to the light pouring through the sunroom. “Incredible.”

He put it down and picked up a light green carving that looked like a courtesan. She had a wide grin on her face and a string of pearls leading down to her ample chest. She waved a fan in her face. Jackson wrapped his fingers around the piece.

Buddy said, “Hey, man, I need to change real quick.” He scooted out of the room.

Jackson waited a few moments and then placed the courtesan in his pocket and crept toward the bedroom, which had heavy curtains closing out the light. Buddy pulled his jeans off, revealing his ripped muscles in the dim light. Jackson’s cell phone dropped from Buddy’s jeans.

Jackson tiptoed back into the sunroom and grabbed four more figurines from the shelf and jammed them in his shorts. He arranged the others on the shelf so to hide the theft. The figures felt like boulders as he walked. He worried about Buddy reaching in his pockets, as he had done several times, but he had to take the chance. He wanted to use the pieces to help find Glenway’s killer.

Jackson hurried back to the bedroom and heard the familiar ring on his cell phone. “Hey, do you mind if I answer that?”

Buddy silenced the noise and said, “Yeah, I do mind. What else do you want from me? Or from Glenway?”

“I want to know who killed him,” Jackson tried to look as sincere as possible.

“Yeah, well, why you think I was in the Quarter this morning? That’s the business I wanna know myself.” His arm quivered. Jackson stepped back, afraid of being accosted again. Buddy stepped toward him and Jackson retreated until his head bumped against a painting. “I tell you, cuz, I think the man who killed Glenway is a regular at the ballet.” Buddy put his hand on Jackson’s shoulder, immediately causing a fierce twitching sensation.

“Do you mean the ballet as in that bar the Tool Belt?”

“Yep.” The hustler squeezed his neck.

“You think he’s there right now?” Jackson squirmed out from under him.

“Naw, it’s closed now, cuz. That’s a late-night place. What I’m sayin’ is whoever killed Glenway is a regular at the ballet. That was one of his favorite places. I got sick of that place. The night he was killed, me and him fought ’cause he wanted to go. You probably won’t believe me, but I didn’t wanna go. Reminds me too much of that shit life. I said no, but he went by himself, the fool. And look what happened to him.”

A car honked outside and Buddy ran to the window in his room. When Jackson heard Buddy slam a closet door, he shifted forward and then backward, like a car stuck in a muddy ditch. He followed Buddy to the bedroom and spotted his cell phone on the night table, right beside where Buddy rummaged for something in the closet. As Jackson knelt down to swipe his phone, two of the figurines dropped from his pocket, the light green courtesan with the fan and a darker green piece of jade carved in the shape of a trumpeter. Buddy saw them shining on the floor. Jackson grabbed them and his phone and ran for the door.

“Sonuvabitch, cuz. Hey, get back here.”

Jackson galloped toward the front of the house and hit the statue beside the mirror, causing it to rock back and forth. He grabbed it with both hands. The honking outside continued.

Buddy started slamming doors in his room. “You better be fast, cuz. You think you gonna come in my house and steal shit…”

Jackson had to unlatch the locks on the front door. It seemed the locks had multiplied. Buddy’s voice boomed from the back of the house. “I’ll teach your ass for sure, you sonuvabitch.”

Jackson fumbled with the chain on the latch as he heard Buddy storming toward the door, screaming. Jackson couldn’t make his fingers work fast enough. His sunglasses fell to his eyes, and all of a sudden, everything was four shades darker than usual. “Come on. Come on…” He looked out the front window and saw Neil’s car passing by the house, honking. He flung the door open and took two steps forward when he heard the explosion of a shotgun firing above his head, hitting the fan and porch light above him. He felt shards from the multicolored, Tiffany-inspired glass raining down on his curly hair.

Seventeen

“Buddy, stop. Don’t shoot. You’ll kill me. My God.” Jackson shuffled around on the porch, hoping that Buddy couldn’t hit a moving target. As he bounced from side to side, pieces of stained glass fell off his clothes and clattered onto the floor.

Buddy charged forward with the gun pointed at Jackson. “Cuz, give back what you took. You should’ve known better than to steal from me.” He held one hand outstretched and the other on his gun, which swung around unsteadily.

“Buddy, those figurines aren’t yours—” Another shot fired just above Jackson’s head. Neil’s car vanished around the corner. “Okay, okay. I’m not stealing them from Glenway…or from you. I just need to borrow them.”

Buddy shook his head. His muscles looked twice as large with his arm wrapped around the shotgun. “You’re not taking shit from this house.”

Jackson caught sight of Neil speeding toward the house, the car filled with Imogene, Lena Ward, Billy, and Goose all piled on top of one another.

“What are you looking at, cuz?” As Buddy turned, Jackson ran to the end of the porch and jumped over the railing. Buddy fired off a shot, the bullet sending a piece of wood trim and several shavings into the air next to Jackson’s ear. Jackson landed in a flower bed and kicked up mulch as he dug in to run. Neil honked his horn and Jackson saw the car heading in his direction. Jackson clutched the figurines in his pocket and ran.

He had to cut a trail through the azaleas and rosebushes separating Buddy’s yard from the neighbor’s. He saw Neil’s car and skipped over a fountain and through a Japanese rock garden next door. Shotgun pellets sprayed the trunk of a magnolia tree beside his head and he ducked. He pumped his arms. His phone rang, but he couldn’t check it. He ran through another yard and another until he saw the road where Neil had turned. He heard Buddy shout, “You ain’t getting away from me.”

He jumped out in the middle of the road and began flailing his arms in the air. He saw Neil circling the block and then accelerating toward him. Billy swung open the car door and shouted for Neil to stop.

Jackson hopped the curb and rushed to the car. As he leaned into the front seat, he heard branches snapping in the yard behind him, as if someone was running toward him. He slid in beside Billy.

Neil took off as Buddy began screaming, “I’ll get you, cuz.”

“Everybody duck down,” Jackson said. “Buddy shot at me. He’ll do it again. I heard him stuffing his pockets with bullets.” Imogene and Lena tried to do as he suggested. Goose stayed in his normal position, gazing at Jackson with his lazy eyes.

“Maybe we can catch the ferry,” Neil said.

“No, I’ve been on the boat long enough today, Neil. Please.” Jackson looked at Neil’s face from underneath Goose’s saggy jowls.

“But I promised Imogene we’d try it on the way back,” Neil said, sitting up in his seat to look at Imogene through the rearview mirror.

“This isn’t the time to play tourist. Hell, we’ve been shot at. Just get us back to the city.” Jackson poked his head out the window and saw Buddy standing on the curb.

Billy sat in between Neil and Jackson, scrunched up with Goose in his lap. On normal occasions, he would’ve sided with his partner, in the cause of safety, but currently the plastic console was digging into his tailbone. He told Jackson he wanted out of the seat.

Jackson had to relent. “Fine. Just drive by the dock and see how it looks before we load the car.”

“We’ll be passing it anyway on our way to the bridge.” Neil drove on. “Jackson, why was he shooting at you?”

“Because he’s crazy and impulsive. I thought he was going to spring on me the whole time, like a jack-in-the-box but with muscles and a temper.” Jackson left out the part about him “borrowing” the figurines. What Buddy had said about Neil made him unsure. He would need to run the information by Billy before divulging it to his New Orleans friends.

Neil pulled up to the dock right as the metal drawbridge was letting down on the boat and the first cars began loading onto the vessel. The cars crept so slowly that Jackson could hardly stand it. He growled and then popped out of the vehicle to figure out the source of the delay. Five cars were ahead of them in line. He scanned the streets of Algiers.

“Hey, Jack, what you lookin’ for, son?” Imogene’s hat poked out the back window.

Jackson paced back and forth, expecting the hustler at any moment. “This is a bad idea. I’m telling you. If we eat bullets, it’s your fault. I tried to tell you.” Jackson couldn’t stand still. He fiddled with the buttons on his shirt, wiped his sunglasses off, patted his hair, and scanned the old streets of Algiers as cars slowly crept onto the boat. There were two more to board when he saw an old hog of a motorcycle gliding down the road. It looked like a chop-shop piece with short handlebars, an old motor, and fangs painted on the gas tank.

The second-to-last car pulled in, and Buddy navigated his motorcycle into the parking lot. He had a long leather bag thrown over his shoulder, just large enough for a gun. Jackson grabbed the doorframe. “Neil, I told you. There’s Buddy.”

“What does he think he’s doing? Move, Jackson.” Neil thrust the door open and jumped out. “I’ll show him.” He ran to the edge of the boat and began yelling, “You want us to call the law, Buddy? You give the word and that’s what I’ll do?”

Jackson knew full well who the law was in New Orleans, and he wasn’t about to call Rogers and his crew to help. He figured Neil knew the same thing, but he wasn’t sure.

Buddy didn’t respond to Neil’s threats. He just kept cruising toward the ferry. The last car pulled onto the vessel. The drawbridge ramp lifted bit by bit. Jackson felt he could shut it faster himself.

The attendant scowled at Neil. “Sir, I need you to back up.” Neil put his hands on his hips and did as asked. The ferry floated a few feet out into the water.

Buddy drove to the edge of the pier and patted his gun case, glaring at Jackson the entire time. Jackson felt a cold chill. Neil put his arm around him and led him to the car, as the boat began its meandering trip back to New Orleans.