The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do (14 page)

An unexpected boom resounded from the apartment door, then another, and the door drunkenly wobbled open. And a bouquet of flowers with a man inside it stepped through pointing a long-stemmed pistol.

Jewel ran toward the rear of the apartment. There was a window in the back with smoked glass that he’d never been able to lift, and he didn’t know what it opened onto, but finely tuned fear instantly propelled him toward it.

“Don’t talk,” Powers Jones announced, then took a wild shot at Jewel in the shadows.

Squealing, Suze rolled onto her back on the couch, covering the pistol, and curled into a baby-nap ball, her scant costume flexed taut.

Powers pointed the pistol at her.

“Oh, yes,” he said, then followed Jewel.

Thomas stepped inside the door, a silver automatic in his hand. His feet kept moving as if he were stamping out a grass fire, and the pistol aimed at everything at least once.

The damn window naturally wouldn’t open, as Jewel had suspected that it wouldn’t, even with life on the line, and all he could find nearby was a frying pan with a layer of pork grease thickened in it. He picked it up by the wooden handle and began to beat at the window, pig essence and glass chips splattering up his arms and chest.

“He’s got to have a gun!” Thomas yelled. “Watch it!”

Slowly, Powers Jones edged along the wall of the dim hallway, waiting for the split-second meeting that would end this thing and raise his asking price in the future.

The frying pan thumped and glass could be heard tinkling down.

The pistol was a dull ache in the small of Suze’s back, then her hand found it and some basic instinct for combat took over. The flowery spade was most definitely the more dangerous, this took her but a blink to decide, and she rolled off the couch, knowing that life was a miracle, lobbing bullets toward the handiest danger.

The bullets whacked the walls of the hallway and grooved gashes in the ceiling, dropping a fine drywall mist.

“She’s shootin’!” Thomas yelled now. “Get her!”

Powers Jones was suddenly flat on his heaving belly in the dark hallway of a redneck nigger-killer’s hovel, with a lame for a partner and a white-trash mama trying to snuff him by sheer luck.

“Give me some help!” he hollered. “God damn, Thomas, she right by you!” There was no answer. “Thomas!”

The bathroom door had a lock on it, as every secret lipsticker knew, and locks kept people out. Suze made an acrobatic leap into the john, and slammed the door shut, then twisted the lock. She faced the door and sank in the corner between the tub and the toilet, her legs splayed out, the pistol on her lap.

Powers Jones raised himself to his knees and paused.

The window looked out over the rear room of the downstairs hair salon and an alley. There were jigsaw scales of glass still in the panes, but Jewel hurled himself through, then fell the six feet to the roof below. He was ripped on both sides but the cuts didn’t hurt, not like the jolt of landing did.

Abandoning stealth and cool, Powers Jones sprinted to the rear window and leaned out of it. He snapped two shots at Jewel, then watched as he rolled off the roof and out of sight. A woman with blue hair had been standing in the alley, patting her new do as she inspected herself in a compact mirror. Her mouth was now a grimace and she stared at the window.

“You get out of here!” she barked.

Powers met her gaze, then lazily shook his head.

“Forget you,” he said.

He started toward the apartment entrance. Thomas had now come into the room and was waving his pistol at the bathroom door.

“In there,” he said. “She’s in there.”

Adopting his most withering look, Powers Jones glared into the younger man’s face, then stepped quickly past him and out the door.

“Hey, wait, man,” Thomas said. “I watched the door, didn’t I?”

He looked from john to exit, indecisive, then blasted three rounds into the john. The wood splintered, something thick shattered, and there was a sharp shriek, then a moan. Thomas backed out of the apartment lest the wounded fox come back tough, his pistol at the ready. At the door he turned and saw that he was being left behind, shuddered, then ran.

14

I
T MUST
be voodoo, Jewel thought. Some brand of voodoo that’s connected by the clouds, or city pigeons, maybe. Some nigger magic is at work, that’s certain—how else could they find me so quick?

Jewel moved down the alley in an original gait that had the stealth of a chorus line and the speed of a paranoid diva. Run, drop to the ground, look for cover, stare toward the rooftops, then spring up and run some more.

His sides did not hurt, really, but sometimes there was a pesky stinging. He put his hands over the cuts, one on each love handle, and tried to stop the bleeding. But for something that didn’t really hurt, those cuts bled a lot.

Night was beginning to lower a protective veil of darkness, but Jewel’s passage was not secret. The sidewalk was skittering with people who’d had a lifetime of experience in looking the other way while still noticing the shoe style and wallet potential of those they’d never seen before, officer. Honest.

Jewel was aware of everyone. His hands at his sides had droplets of blood bulging on the fingertips, and he looked down to watch them plop to the concrete. The trajectory of his vein-dribbles bombing the sidewalk occasionally caused him to stop. He stood still with hopelessness as the weight of the droplets built, then gently swayed his body to aim the blood at cracks, cigar stubs, or shards of glass.

There was altogether too much strangeness afoot in this place. People went around you, heads turned the other way, but they knew you
were running. Look up and they’re watching. Fall down and they’ll close in. They’re that way. You can tell.

When Jewel had gone three streets east and the bombardiering of his own blood was less diverting, he leaned against a phone booth to rest. He was trying to think, but he’d grown shy about reaching conclusions. His own thoughts seemed clumsy and weak, and ever having believed them to be snappy and strong had been his big mistake. He thought that now, and suspicion of his own brain was paralyzing him. He thumped at his head with bloodied hands, wondering whose side his mind was on, anyway!

Jewel pulled his hand away from the glass phone booth and saw that he’d left a palm print of blood. He raised his elbow and smeared the print, then was stunned to stillness when a lurking idea jumped his consciousness. It was the only thing to do that he’d come up with, and when his hand searched his pockets he found that he had some change. The phone book had not been ripped out of the booth, and this, too, seemed like a good omen.

Jewel found the number and dialed with shaky fingers.

On the sixth ring the phone was answered by a woman with a big-city tone.

“Kelly’s Pool Hall, Kelly speakin’.”

“What? Where is this?”

“Who you lookin’ for, Bub?”

Jewel’s free hand was disciplining his head by jerking at the hair.

“I got the number from the book! I’m tryin’ to find Pete.”

“Pete? Pete the snooker player? Sure, he’s usually here, but not right now.”

“Do you know where he lives?”

The woman’s laughter made Jewel yearn for rural crossroads with small stores, polite women, and good-natured sheriffs who winked on Saturday nights.

“You moron,” she said, finally. “He lives here.”

“I dialed this number.”

“Is this Cobb?”

Oh, no, Jewel thought.

“Why do you want to know?”

“ ’Cause Pete the snooker player is lookin’ for you, asshole. That’s why.” The woman paused, then made her voice solicitous. “Where’re you from, anyway, Cobb?”

The sudden friendliness of her tone prodded Jewel toward nostalgia.

“A sweet little place called Willow Creek.”

“Is that right? Well, there sure must be a lot of dumb motherfuckers come from around there, judgin’ by you.”

“Geez, lady,” Jewel said in a pained voice. “What is it, anyhow? You don’t even know me—why you gotta be so mean? I might be the spittin’ image of your favorite uncle, you know?”

“Poor lambikins,” she said. “I’m Peggy, Pete’s woman, and I ain’t friendly to nobody that’s friendly with him.”

“Oh. I’m not his friend, I’m just tryin’ to find him, is all.”

“Try the Catfish.”

“The what?”

“The Catfish Bar. It’s on Lafitte Street, by the river. He’ll be there elbow-buffin’ the rail, unless I’m wrong, which ain’t likely.”

The phone clicked in Jewel’s ear but he still said thank you before hanging his end up.

15

N
EAR THE
corner of Lafitte and Clay streets, Shade saw a small, murky man whom he recognized as Claude Lyons. Lyons was sitting on the hood of a dented Toyota parked in front of a white stone tenement stoop, drinking from a plastic quart of Tab.

Shade sat next to him, with his arms folded.

“How’s it goin’, Claude?”

Lyons raised his blunt face and almost smiled. His hair was dense brown and spongy, his body short and broad.

“Hey, Rene. You makin’ what you call a canvass of the neighborhood, huh? I thought you’d come up in the world.”

Shade nodded even though he didn’t quite get it.

“Is she dead?” Lyons asked.

“Who?”

After a swig of sugar-free, Lyons glumly faced Shade.

“It was the coons, I heard. I thought that shit had died down. If she’s dead, that is. You tell me.”

“What’re you talking about, Claude?”

“The girl over on Voltaire that the coons shot.” Lyons rested a hand on Shade’s arm and leaned toward him. “You can tell me—is it true she was preg-o?”

“Where was this?”

“Just down Voltaire, man. You been gone fishin’, or what? Little while ago a busload of coons come down and murdered a pregnant girl over there. Shot her through the baby’s head, killed ’em both.”

“Are you sure of this?”

“I heard it from Leo at the grocery.”

“I better get over there.”

“No kiddin’, man,” Lyons said. “And believe you me, Rene—ain’t nobody happy about this shit comin’ round again. I thought we’d settled it.”

Shade walked quickly toward Voltaire Street, his senses pitched for weirdness, for clearly ominous coincidences were occurring. There was more shooting going on in a shorter span of time than Saint Bruno had tolerated since Auguste Beaurain had swept Frogtown clean of conspiratorial St. Louis dagos back in 1967. And
that
combat had had a mutant sense of civic pride about it that the present carnage lacked entirely.

The bored sweaters from the Chalk & Stroke were still on the sidewalk assessing the merits of the action across the street. They stood there in somber clots, the slack-lipped recorders of neighborhood legend, absorbing it all for improved retellings, countless. Shade walked through them and heard several angry voices speak of revenge.

Two uniformed cops were at the narrow door that led upstairs from between Connie’s Hair Salon and the Olde Frenchtown Antique Shop.

As Shade approached, How Blanchette came down the stairs. He began to shake his head when he saw Shade. He held his meaty hands to the sky.

“Shade, I been lookin’ for you. Baby, somethin’ is goin’ on, and, like, we don’t know what it is.”

“What happened here? Guy over on Lafitte stopped me and said a woman got wasted over here.”

“Nah,” Blanchette said.

“By blacks.”

“That part is makin’ the rounds accurate. But the girl, a little spotted panty-type farm girl, with tits like your head, she’s not gonna die. Blood all over her, but she’s not really hurt that bad.”

Shade pointed upstairs.

“Anything to see?”

“Blood. A guitar. Some cold fish sticks.”

“Hunh.”

“The girl, you want to know who she is?”

“Tell me who she is, How.”

“Okay. Name’s Susan Magruder. She’s better known as the old lady of a plowboy hard-ass named Jewel Cobb.” Blanchette chuckled. “Now, from the name you might figure him for an Afro-Sheen sort of guy, but you’d be wrong. Actually he’s about twenty, with—and I think you’ll find this interestin’—no visible means of support and a glob of blond hair that he piles up like a sort of Casper the Ghost Elvis.”

It was no surprise.

“I had a feeling it might be a guy like that.”

“Two or three black hoods come in here,” Blanchette said, “and old blondie does a bellywhopper out the back window. He leaves Miss Tits to the dinges, and she hides herself in the john. Only one of the hoods seems to have heard of that trick, you know, and sends her a couple of goodwill messages through the door. Poor thing got some splinters driven into her shoulders, and a bullet chipped off a piece of thigh.” Blanchette nodded at a blue-haired woman who was sitting in a police car. “She saw the white guy come out the back window and one of the guys who was tryin’ to shoot him. She’s sort of outraged, you know. An old-time neighborhood lady, you see, doesn’t think it’s right, smokes comin’ down here to kill a white guy, even a stranger.”

Although night was now nearly full-fledged, the heat of the day was lingering, hairlines dripped down faces, tempers went on the prowl, and relief was driving a hard bargain.

Shade spent several minutes talking to Mrs. Prouxl, the blue-haired lady. She told him that she’d just come out of the hair salon where not Connie but her assistant, Hank, had given her a new do that tended to draw an admirer’s gaze up to her eyes, which were her best features, or at least so she’d always been convincingly told, when this blond, a boy, really, flew like a brick out of the second-story window and an eyelash later one of our equals under the law stuck his burrhead out the same window and tried to kill him for no reason. How could there be a
reason for that? The white boy seemed to be bleeding, too, although from a bullet or what she couldn’t say, and the whole ordeal just made her glad she was closin’ in on gettin’ called home, because in her day it just never could’ve happened, and if that was what modern life was going to be like, she’d rather switch channels in a very big way.