NO Quarter (23 page)

I should have been so lucky.

“How about you and me shooting the next rack?” The big guy was smiling, but still wary. It was a very creepy look, mostly because he seemed to be trying to be genuinely friendly. His eyes, sunk deep beneath his heavy brow, glittered a bright, strange neon blue. But that
smile
. His mouth looked like it could swallow the average human head.

“Thanks, but I’ll pass,” I said, managing to smile back. All I wanted from this man was distance. “I’ve seen your game, and mine’s not good enough to shoot money with you.”

Sometimes a little flattery is enough to make any problem go away. Sometimes it isn’t.

“Com’on,” he insisted, like a child that was going to ask and insist until he got his way—a 350-pound child. “That kid called you ‘Maestro.’ I figure anyone with a handle like that knows which end of a cue stick to point down-range.”

“You’d think so,” I agreed, looking to keep things amiable and still brush him off. “But I got that name from teaching people to handle an epee, not a stick.” I was vaguely hoping I could lose his interest with an unfamiliar word or two.

“No shit. I haven’t picked up a foil since I was eighteen.”

You never can tell, especially in the Quarter.

He was smiling even broader now, and it was twice as disturbing. He was looking at me closer, appraising me anew. He was
warming
to me. The thought wasn’t terribly pleasant.

“Lemme buy you a drink and we’ll shoot a couple’a racks for fun.”

I was already in too deep. If I refused a drink now with this short-fused monster, I’d run the risk of offending him. I was supposed to be doing a quiet lookout for Jo-Jo. I calculated that I could still do that and shoot a rack or two. I signaled to German Caroline for another Irish.

“Appreciate the gesture,” I toasted him with the drink as he started racking. “By the way, didn’t catch your name.” I offered my hand. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow.

He took a step toward me in his stomping boots, and folded one enormous, callused mitt over my hand so that it disappeared. He didn’t squeeze hard but I got a quick idea of how solid and strong he was.

“I’m called Jugger,” he said in his low rumbling voice. “Short for Juggernaut.”

Suddenly, the evening got a lot more interesting.

“Bone!”

My accumulating stubble had finally started itching bad enough for me to shave. I’d also showered, put on clean clothes, after spending the daylight doing the few domestic
chores that ever get done in my apartment. I did the dishes, which mostly consisted of washing out coffee mugs, took out the trash. One of the privileges of Quarter living is that we get garbage pickups every day except Sundays. Garbage is important in New Orleans. During Mardi Gras we determine the tonnage of the trash that is collected from our streets, and that’s how we measure the success or failure of any given year’s Carnival.
The first full day of my leave of absence
, I thought with some dismay,
and I’ve turned into a housefrau
. Oh, well. Wasn’t so bad, really.

Alex was back at work after her weekend. It had been particularly nice waking up next to her, and I decided I could get used to that. I hadn’t slept with anyone since Sunshine left. It seemed wrong. But somehow, I knew this time Sunshine wouldn’t mind.

“Bone.”

I could hear the sneer in the voice—female, familiar. I was walking along Dauphine, and the voice snapped from behind. I considered just walking on but, instead, stopped and turned.

Judith, the hysteria-prone waitress from work, stood with one curvy hip shot outward, her fist resting on it, chest thrust forward. A very deliberate pose of sexuality as aggression—and entirely wasted on me. Besides, the look of naked scorn on her kewpie doll face made her decidedly unattractive.

She stood outside the corner grocery where I go for cigarettes. She was still obviously upset that I’d dared to ignore her a few nights back during her Great Coffee Drama with the espresso machine.

“Judith,” I said with the same neutral affability I use on my tourist feeders.

She sashayed a step nearer, cocked her hip in the other direction. “I heard about you and the cops. I heard you were in some
seeer
-ious shit.” The grin she offered wasn’t friendly.

No thanks to you!
I thought, rolling my eyes. Detective Zanders’ visit to the restaurant continued to have repercussions. It annoyed me to be the subject of gossip, doubly so hearing this bimbo chickiepoo talk about it.

Argue with her? Screw that. Indifference, I knew, was my best weapon against Judith. I turned away. It was nearing midnight, but it was still hot because night means nothing to the summer heat. Although it had rained briefly and heavily in the afternoon, the temperature dropped a few degrees only for the length of the downpour.

“I heard the cops think you’re the one that stabbed that girl at the river.”

Stopping this time, I felt something that was either very hot or very cold in the pit of my stomach. I turned back, slowly.

Judith’s grin had gained a few more teeth.

“Heard? Who from?” I realized as I said it that it was a pointless question. One rumormonger is as good as the next. And now I was buying into Judith’s game.

“Ohhhhh,” she teased, “just around.”

Of course, she might be making it all up. I couldn’t decide if that would make me angrier; and I
was
feeling anger.

“That
...
girl
...
was a very good friend of mine,” I said, gritting out the words. I flexed my right hand.

“Of course she was. Bone’s good friend. That’s why you had that big fight at Molly’s. Remember? A week or two back? Screaming and clawing at each other so the bartender had to pull you two apart. Sound familiar?”

Exaggerated, of course, like any rumor; but hearing it tightened my hand into a fist that went white. It hurt to even think about that night
...
that last, awful night of seeing Sunshine alive. But to hear it from this—this—

“Go to hell,” I spat. There was no point in prolonging this. I turned away, walking on, leaving her on the corner. My gut burned hotter/colder.

Behind me, Judith let loose a hyena’s laugh, and there wasn’t anything I could do.

* * *

I dialed the direct line straight into Pat O.’s gift shop and told Alex where to meet me after work. Some asking around had confirmed some things I already suspected.

The staff of my restaurant routinely did their drinking at the Abbey, a grunge bar a short, convenient stumble along Decatur. When bartenders at the
Abbey ordered food from us, one of the busboys would usually run it down there, and more often than not the portions would be much bigger than the regular public ever sees. When the restaurant crew showed up at the bar after shift, they could expect their drinks strong, and even the occasional free round. It wasn’t my kind of bar, but at thirty-one, I was in a different age and taste bracket from most of my slacker coworkers.

The staff of Big Daddy’s had staked out Molly’s on Toulouse as their turf.

I went there, feeling like I was returning to the scene of a crime. I would have felt like that anyway, but bumping into Judith, that dig she’d gotten in—and good—made it acute. I sidled in the door, tense, expecting
...
I didn’t know. Maybe for every head to turn, every finger to lift and point. I could still see it—Sunshine and me yelling at each other, so hateful and ugly, so far away from the closeness we’d once had.

That incident had made enough of an impact, I thought bitterly, that it had alerted the NOPD to my existence and still proved popular gossip. And now, it was a knife Judith had just used to get under my hide.

I edged to the bar as if I walked across broken glass, barefoot. There were a few people in the place, and a few of the heads did turn, but it was the normal bar check-out. I made a conscious effort to relax my posture, saunter the last few steps.

The bartender wasn’t the same gal who had been on duty
that
night. I ordered a soda and lit a cigarette, glanced down into the emptying pack.

For budgetary reasons, I wasn’t drinking. No big deal. If I wasn’t living in a community where the social scene was based in its bars, I no doubt wouldn’t drink nearly what I do, and sometimes I drink soda anyway when I’m out. Without the tips coming in for the next few days or however long, though, I couldn’t justify laying out much money for booze. But if I had to give up my smokes as well, God help everyone. It was too bad, I couldn’t help thinking, that nobody was
paying
me to do this hunt.

Quarters I could spare, though, so I slotted them into the table and killed the next half hour with some solo practice pool. I thought about seeing if I could get a money game going with someone, maybe pick up a couple bucks, but Molly’s wasn’t that kind of bar. Anyway, I certainly wasn’t going to solve my financial troubles on a pool table. I wasn’t a good enough player, and didn’t have the necessary diligence to hunt down the number of low-level cash games I’d
need to make any difference in my finances. And I didn’t have the time. I had much more important things to attend to.

I knocked off, waited for Alex, stood up from my barstool when she came in with her knapsack over her shoulder, and kissed her and ushered her onto the adjacent stool.

“How was work?” I asked.

“Ugh.” She ordered a rummincoke. Decompressing, she gave me a familiar run-down of her evening, with the usual incidents involving drunk/rude tourists, and drunk/horny college boys, and waiters and bartenders whining about how they’d never survive on these crappy tips, never make it till the
SEASON
.

I listened and smiled and watched the door.

I lit another smoke and, lowering my head slightly, whispered, “Target’s here.”

“You mean Chanel?” Alex arched an eyebrow. “Where’d you pick up the James Bond lingo?”

Too much hanging around Maestro
, I thought with a little wince. Molly’s had filled up with a decently sized crowd since I’d walked in. Using the mirror, I pointed out Chanel to Alex, making sure I wasn’t seen. Then I backed off my stool, retreated to the back of the bar and fed dollars I couldn’t really afford into one of the poker machines. “Video crack,” the locals call these monsters. And, yes, 24-hour drinking and legalized gambling make New Orleans a veritable nest of vice. The fact that these machines are as prevalent in Quarter bars as ATMs means that weak-willed service industry folk lose a good chunk of their overall tips to these beeping, winking, highly addictive contraptions.

I can understand the draw, same way I understand why people jump out of perfectly good airplanes and call it skydiving, but it doesn’t grab me, that gambling rush. Still, in the abstract it would be a fine thing to hit the jackpot for $500 right about now. In reality, however, I fed the machine my money slowly, betting only one credit a toss, and remained sharply aware of Alex moving toward the barstool where Chanel had settled.

Chanel was wearing civvies, like last time I’d seen her outside Big Daddy’s on Bourbon after she’d got off work—the night of Sunshine’s murder. I remembered that hadn’t gone so good. I’d wanted info about Sunshine, but had been a little clumsy, a little heavy-handed. That, I realized with a mild sense of historical importance, had actually marked the start of the hunt—my asking those questions, acting on my desire to know
who
had killed Sunshine, so I could
do
something about it.

Now, the hunt was even more serious. I was partnered with Maestro, who had demonstrated he had some know-how in these matters.

I had also welcomed Alex in on the hunt. I’d been very sincere when I said I was glad to have her with us. I most certainly meant to keep her from any harm, a bit like—but even more earnestly—what Maestro wanted for me.

Here, though, was something Alex could definitely help in, and which didn’t have a risk factor. Alex is generally warmer than I am—friendlier, easier with people, able to break ice like she doesn’t even know what ice is. I’m not socially incompetent by any means, but Alex could charm a person out of catalepsy.

She’d been immediately game when I told her what I had planned. Happy about it too. I wondered if maybe she thought I’d been shining her on when I’d told her she could come on board. Probably not, probably just enthused, the same way I was eager to move this forward, to put us all nearer to identifying and locating Sunshine’s killer.

I gave Alex her time. My credits dipped and rose around the three-dollar mark, and I glanced back periodically to see how things were going. Alex and Chanel were talking. In no time they’d probably be yammering like old friends. Alex had a knack that, frankly, I could only admire.

When it was time, I wandered across the bar, pretending to notice Chanel for the first time.

I threw her a casual nod. “How’s it going?” I slid an arm around Alex, “No luck on poker tonight, honey.” Then, ran my gaze back and forth between the two women. “Hey, I didn’t know you two knew each other.”

“Didn’t,” Alex said, with a fetching grin. “Do now.”

“Bone,” Chanel said, just getting around to responding to my greeting. She was a little off, wanting to be aloof with me, but now I was attached to the person she’d just been chatting so friendly with. What to do?

“I’m getting this round,” Alex said as she slapped down a bill, effectively nailing Chanel to her barstool.

My manner stayed perfectly at ease, as if Chanel and I hadn’t had short words the last time I’d seen her. It would make her start to think she was blowing the incident out of proportion. I figured with a few more rounds, and Alex’s fun friendly presence, Chanel might be susceptible to some questions—if they were presented just right.

As it was, she saved us all the bother.

“Bone
...
hey
...
have you heard anything about Sunshine’s funeral?”

I paused solemnly, “Funeral wouldn’t be here, Chanel. Sunshine had some family in Chicago. I’m sure her body’s gone there.”

“Her body
...
” she repeated, examining the term and shuddering. Her spiked red hair was shoved under her cap. She’d traded her Big Daddy’s T-shirt
for a loose plaid shirt that didn’t over-accentuate her breasts. “Dammit,” she sighed. “Chicago. Was she from there? I never even knew. Never knew anything about her, really. Never bothered.
Dammit.
”