“Except you,” she pointed out. “You choose to be here.”
For a moment he was silent. She was right. It had been a long, long time since he’d had any ties to the neighborhood. His parents had died years ago, and his friends had moved away. Everyone he’d grown up with was gone—moved on to a better life, in prison or dead. The only thing holding him here was O’Shea’s. He couldn’t sell the place. Who would buy it? He couldn’t even torch it for the insurance money, because there wasn’t any. With his meager profits, who could afford insurance? All he could do was pack his bags and walk away. That was what most of the other businessmen on the street had done.
But where would he go? Someplace safer? He didn’t worry about his safety here. The punks pretty much left him alone. He wasn’t as easily intimidated as the other residents of Serenity. Like typical bullies, they never hit anyone who might hit back, and Jamey had demonstrated over the years that he would hit back, and hit hard.
The simple fact was there was no place he would rather be than on Serenity. This was his home. He might not have family or much in the way of friends, but he still had customers and neighbors. Somebody had to look out for them, and, for the last eight or ten years, that somebody was him.
But damned if he wanted to look after Karen Montez, too.
“You choose to live here,” she repeated. “Why do you find it so hard to believe that I choose that, too?”
“It’s my home.”
“I intend to make it my home.” Her smile was cool, confident, determined. “I intend to spend the rest of my life here.”
Hearing his phone ring through the open doors, he started across the street, then stopped in the middle to glance back at her. “Darlin’,” he said cynically, “let’s hope it’s a long one.”
Karen watched until he was out of sight, then gave the street a long, intent look both ways. She’d known something was a little odd before she’d driven more than a block down the street, but she hadn’t put her finger on it until Jamey O’Shea had mentioned it. Where were the people? Why weren’t the kids outside playing in the park? Why didn’t someone turn on a hose so they could cool off and have a little fun? Why weren’t the mothers sitting on their shady porches, talking back and forth?
Because they were scared. Because Serenity was a dangerous place. Sure, it was quiet right now, but it was an eerie quiet, a sort of calm-before-the-storm quiet. At any moment a car could come tearing down the street, its occupants shooting everything in sight. Rage could erupt in any one of the apartments. Violence could flare from any source.
That unnatural tension was why she was here. Jamey O’Shea might not think she could make a difference—heaven knew, her parents and her in-laws were convinced that she couldn’t—but she knew she could. Not by herself, of course; no one was that good. But with the staff she’d lined up and with even the slightest cooperation of the mothers on the street, she knew she could help turn the neighborhood back into the community it had once been. She could
And who was she trying to convince? a dry little voice inside her asked. The rest of the world? Or herself?
Fortunately, one of the movers commanded her attention before she had to answer that. “Ma’am,” he called from the veranda, using the formal address with the familiarity of a man who spent too much of his time working with strangers to remember names. “Where do you want all this stuff?”
Giving the sign on the fence one light touch for luck—for reassurance—she started across the yard to the steps. “Upstairs,” she directed. “Everything goes upstairs except the boxes marked ‘Kitchen.’”
She didn’t miss his grimace or his grumbling as he went back inside. The poor guy had probably thought he’d picked up an easy job when she’d hired him. All he’d had to do was load her furniture—two rooms full, maybe three—from a storage locker in Landry, drive the four hours to New Orleans and unload it. He hadn’t counted on a destination right smack in the middle of the city’s worst neighborhood, or on carrying everything up a narrow staircase to the second floor on what had to be one of the hottest, muggiest days of the summer.
That was what she was paying him for, she thought as she followed them up the stairs. Still, she felt a little guilty. After first being turned down by a mover familiar with this part of the French Quarter, she had deliberately withheld from this one even the slightest hint that their destination was considered no-man’s-land. In all the years she and Evan had lived in the city, she had never known this place existed. She had thought they’d covered every nook and cranny of the Quarter in their explorations, but they’d missed these crannies. That had probably been Evan’s doing. A New Orleans cop, he had tried his best to shield her from the city’s dark side.
Too bad he hadn’t been able to protect himself as well as he had protected her.
The stairs opened onto a wide hall that ended at the left in front of a tall window that faced the brick building next door. On the right it traveled thirty feet before making a turn toward the front. At its end was one of the turret rooms, a perfect octagon with windows on five of its sides. It would be a lovely room for a study or a nursery—not that she would ever have need of a nursery. She’d found that out only three days after Evan’s death. It hadn’t been enough that she’d lost her husband of nine years so unexpectedly, so violently, but she had also lost a part of herself. She would never be a mother, would never know the joy of holding her own baby in her arms. It would have broken Evan’s heart if he’d known, but he would have tried to hide it. He would have assured her that it was all right, that they could adopt, that they could love any baby, not just their own, and with him at her side, that would have been true. They could have made a family anyway.
She couldn’t do it on her own, though. She had lost too much in the last few years—Evan, the chance to have her own child, Kathy. She couldn’t lose any more.
So what the hell was she doing here?
Forcing a smile to counter the dampness in her eyes, she wandered into the center room, back to the windows that looked down into the narrow backyard. She had wanted one of the front rooms for her bedroom, one of them with the big bay windows and the broad seat underneath, but common sense had voted against it. Drive-by shootings on Serenity occurred with more frequency at night. For safety’s sake—at least until things had begun to change—the rooms facing the street would be used only during the day, when violence still erupted but usually with some small warning.
The room was dusty and musty. She should have delayed the move a few days to give herself a chance to come in and give the place a thorough cleaning, but instead she had arranged to move in immediately following this morning’s closing. If she had waited, she had been afraid she would never do it. She might have let her parents and Evan’s parents influence her, let them persuade her that this was sheer folly. She would have thought about the horror stories the real estate agent had related, and given second and third thoughts to the woman murdered in the storefront mission less than a block away. She would have considered what advice Evan would give if he were here, or Kathy if she could, and she would have been cowardly. She would have given up her plans, written the money off as a loss and stayed in Landry, forever grieving, forever sorrowful, forever guilt-ridden.
She would have died there.
So instead of cleaning empty rooms, she would clean around her furniture. She would vacuum and dust one room at a time until the house was properly spotless. She would unpack and straighten up and settle in...and then the real work would begin.
Bending and pulling, she opened every window except the one in the middle, painted shut or swollen closed thanks to the humidity. Across the hall in what would be her living room, she opened those windows, too, even the ones without screens. They gave her a view of just a few feet or so into O‘Shea’s Bar, tempting her to lean outside and call to Jamey O’Shea to notice that her windows were open. Naturally, she resisted the temptation and instead knelt on the wooden seat and studied the bar’s faç
ade.
Why did a man like Jamey O’Shea stay on Serenity? He was young enough—surely not much past forty—and apparently bright enough to make opportunities for himself elsewhere. He must have some business acumen to keep the bar in business long after almost everything else had shut down. He wasn’t making a tremendous profit, obviously, but he was getting by. Why would he choose to get by here when he could most likely be fairly successful elsewhere?
Someday, as soon as she was settled, she would ask Jolie. A former reporter, Jolie Wade—now Kendricks—had covered the police beat for the Times-Picayune. She’d been friendly with all the cops, but had become good friends with Evan and his partner, Michael Bennett. More important, she was from Serenity Street. She was one of those people Jamey had talked about who’d worked long and hard to get out. She’d gotten an education and made a name for herself as one of the best reporters in all of the South. Maybe she would know why Jamey was still here. Maybe she could give Karen information and advice about everyone down here.
Once she got over her shock that Karen was here.
Realizing that their arguments against this venture were falling on deaf ears, her parents had finally offered acceptance with one condition: if Karen discussed the move and the women’s center with Evan’s three best friends. Their intention had been so transparent, she thought with a faint smile. Could there be any doubt at all what Evan’s friends would say? Michael, a narcotics detective with the New Orleans Police Department? Remy Sinclair, an FBI agent? Smith Kendricks, Jolie’s husband and the newly-appointed U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana? They were all so straight, so law-and-order, so right-or-wrongblack-or-white-no-shades-of-gray. Of course they would be as vehemently opposed to this move as her family was.
And so she had refused. In fact, in the times she’d come house-hunting in New Orleans, she had guiltily avoided any contact with them. Eventually she would let them know she was here—maybe now, with the closing past, the papers signed, the house legally hers. Or maybe when she’d sunk much of the rest of Evan’s insurance money into the remodeling and repairs. Maybe not until Kathy’s House was open for business. Maybe she would send them invitations to the grand opening.
She hoped there was a grand opening. She fervently hoped that Jamey O’Shea was wrong, that she didn’t last only a few weeks or a few months before leaving with less than she’d come in with. She prayed that she didn’t end up like the woman down the street.
She wouldn’t, she silently promised herself. She had good sense. She wasn’t naive, merely hopeful. She believed in what she was doing and in herself. That was half the battle, right?
Movement on the street below caught her attention. A car was creeping down the center of the street, riding low to the ground, an old Chevy Impala that sounded as bad as it looked. The driver came to a stop right in front of her house, and three young men climbed out to take a closer look. The one in the front passenger seat was handsome, with the type of tall, dark and tough looks that had made her hormones rush when she was a teenager. Standing beside him was a blond, also tall, also handsome, displaying a world-class scowl. The man who had been seated in the back seat on her side wasn’t so dark as the first or so handsome as the second, but he looked tougher than either of them.
They stared at her, and, arms folded across her chest, she stared back, refusing to flinch or back away to the safety of the corner. She simply stared until the blond man took a look behind him, then gave the man beside him a tap on the shoulder.
Standing behind him, leaning in the doorway, arms crossed and looking as if he didn’t have a care in the world, was Jamey O’Shea. The three young men got in the car, though not without some posturing from their leader, then it continued its slow, rackety journey down the street.
When they were gone from sight, Jamey moved to the middle of the street. “There are two rules for staying alive and unharmed on Serenity Street, Ms. Montez,” he called. “Don’t stand in front of a window, and don’t draw Ryan Morgan’s attention.”
She didn’t say a word, didn’t ask who Ryan Morgan was. Without ever having heard his name before, she knew who he was. Mr. Tall, Dark and Dangerous. The leader of that ragged little gang. The man who controlled the men who controlled Serenity. The man who was probably going to make getting rid of her a top priority.
Leaning forward into the open window, she braced both hands on the old wood sill and answered in a far cheerier tone than she actually felt. “Thanks for the advice, Jamey.” She waited a beat before continuing. “Don’t be surprised if I don’t take it.”
The look he gave her in response was long, steady and very clearly annoyed. “I won’t. And I won’t be surprised if I find you dead some morning.” Then he smiled coolly, carelessly. “Welcome to Serenity Street.”
Nighttime in O’Shea’s was always a quiet time, whether the bar was virtually empty or, on rare occasions, filled to overflowing. Jamey’s customers weren’t the raucous sort. They didn’t get into arguments, didn’t fight or break up the place. They hardly even talked, not even to order. Hell, he’d known all of them for so long that he knew what they drank, when they were ready for another and when to cut off the flow and send them staggering home.
He stood behind the bar, a towel slung over his shoulder, a toothpick between his teeth. There was a baseball game on the television, but it could have been opera for all anyone cared. It was a miserably hot night, the ceiling fans overhead doing little besides stirring the damp, heated air in circles, but no one cared about that, either.
Leaning both elbows on the bar, he glanced around the room at his regulars. Someone like the social worker across the street would probably look at them and see sick souls in need of treatment, losers in need of her help, but they weren’t—at least, not all of them. They were unhappy people with more sorrows than the world’s deepest shot glass could drown, people with no place else to go, no family and no hope. Old Thomas over there in the corner had lost his wife of forty years in a drive-by shooting. Eldin, near the door, had lost a nine-year-old daughter in the same way. Ray had lost his wife when he’d lost his job. She had packed up the kids and moved back home to Mississippi with her sister, and he had moved in here.
Everyone had a sad story, and Jamey knew all of them. Sometimes it seemed that was his role: Serenity Street historian. Keeper of sorrows. Caretaker of broken lives.
For a man who had witnessed so much sorrow, he’d been remarkably untouched by it himself. He’d had disappointments—what man hadn’t?—but none he couldn’t live with, none that could turn him to a life of crime or drive him to drink. He regretted that he and his parents had never been much of a family, that James O’Shea had been a drunk, that Margie O’Shea would have been in the running for world’s worst mother if his buddy Nicky’s mother hadn’t already clinched the title. He regretted his teenage romance with Meghan Donovan and the brief marriage that had left her so bitter. He had a hundred regrets about the son who had prompted the marriage—that he’d been raised without a father, that his mother hadn’t been any more maternal than Margie, that she’d abandoned him when he was fifteen, that he’d grown into such a punk.
He regretted all those things, but he lived his life in spite of them. He hadn’t let them destroy him. He hadn’t gotten so bogged down in sorrow and misery that he’d crawled into a bottle and refused to come out.
But he understood people who did, people like Thomas, Eldin and Ray, and he looked out for them. He fed them when they’d forgotten to eat and checked up on them when they didn’t show up at their usual tables.
Historian, keeper, caretaker and guardian.
Leaning down as he was, he had a good view through the open doors of the house across the street. Lights were on both downstairs and up, bright and yellow in the dimly lit night. He had watched the moving van drive away this afternoon, its occupants looking relieved to be leaving it behind, but he hadn’t seen Karen Montez again since Morgan had stopped outside.
She hadn�
��t taken his warning about Ryan Morgan seriously, he suspected, but she would learn. It wouldn’t take any time at all on Serenity to learn that Morgan was the boss around here. He pulled all the strings, although, of course, he was only pulling them for someone else—for Jimmy Falcone, New Orleans’s wiliest and slipperiest crook.
The feds had thought they had Falcone cold over four years ago. Hell, with the evidence and testimony provided by Nicky Carlucci—Falcone’s attorney and personal adviser, and Jamey’s closest friend since childhood—Smith Kendricks had blown away the jury and walked off with a whole string of felony convictions in hand. Falcone, of course, had appealed, and, damn the son of a bitch, he had walked. Amid talk of threats, coercion, bribery and blackmail, the appeals court had overturned all but the most minor of his convictions, and the bastard had paid a fine, then walked away a free man.
Nicky wasn’t free. He was on the homestretch of a five-year sentence at the federal penitentiary over in Alabama. Practically everyone involved with Falcone had gotten locked up or fined in addition to being fired or—in the case of the politicians in his pocket—run out of office. But not the old man. He was still living in his big house, driving around in his black limousine and doing business as usual. In the last year the scope of his business had expanded to include Serenity Street. He ran the drugs, the gambling, the hookers and the loan sharks that had moved onto the street. He had his finger in every pie except O’Shea’s.
He wasn’t going to be thrilled by Karen Montez’s plans for his territory.
As if summoned by his attention, the ornately carved door at the house opened, and light flashed out onto the veranda before it closed again. For a moment she was just a shadow moving across the yard; then she stepped into the light that came from the nearest streetlamp. He slowly straightened as she crossed the street, disappeared into shadow, then reappeared in his doorway. She stopped just inside, glancing around more than a little disapprovingly at his clientele before making her way to the back. She climbed onto a stool directly in front of him, folded her hands together on the bar and waited for him to acknowledge her.
Convincing Jamey Page 2
