The Contract

by JM Gulvin

  Nana cleared the dishes away and Gigi followed her through to the kitchen. ‘Look,’ she said more gently, ‘I can see how you are and the only thing that’s happened that’s any different to usual is that man showing up in his chauffeured car. Who is he? Do you owe him money or something? Is everything OK?’

  Laying a hand against her chest the old woman laughed out loud. ‘Owe him money, are you kidding me? No, I don’t owe him money. I don’t owe anybody money.’

  Reaching out she gave Gigi a hug. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Tout c’est bon. Tout c’est bien. It’s just a few old memories creeping up that I’d thought I’d forgotten is all.’

  *

  When Franklin pushed open the door he found Matthews with a blindfold over his eyes and his hands tied to his ankles where he lay on his side on the floor. No windows in the room and no furniture save a single, wooden chair. The pharmacist’s glasses lay next to him, one arm bent out of shape and one of the lenses fractured. He half sat up but slumped again and a hint of bloody spittle stained the corner of his mouth. Standing to one side, Franklin let Tobie pass and he sat down in the high-backed chair. Behind him Soulja Blue looked on and Franklin nodded for him to leave them alone.

  Matthews tried to sit up a second time but flopped onto his side. Tobie inspected him from the chair. He did not say anything. He just looked at the pharmacist then he gestured to Franklin who gripped Matthews under the arms. Hauling him upright he sat him against the wall. Matthews tried to wipe the spittle from his lip but he couldn’t reach because his hands were tied.

  ‘Wipe his mouth,’ Tobie said.

  ‘Who are you?’ Matthews sounded broken and scared. ‘Why have you brought me here?’

  ‘Wipe his mouth,’ Tobie repeated and Franklin took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped the gob of crimson saliva then dropped the handkerchief on the floor.

  ‘Where am I?’ Matthews uttered. ‘What do you want?’

  Tobie eyed him from the chair. ‘This morning you had a visitor. I want to know what was said.’

  The pharmacist worked his head around the bole of his neck as if he were trying to see. Franklin tightened the blindfold around his eyes.

  ‘The Texas Ranger, what did you tell him?’ Tobie sounded irritable. ‘Speak, man. I haven’t got all night.’

  ‘I didn’t tell him anything. He was asking about a patient and I told him I don’t talk about patients, I’m not at liberty to say.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘He had a bottle of pills I’d dispensed and told me they’d been used in a murder.’

  ‘And what did you tell him?’

  ‘Nothing, I told you. I don’t talk about patients. I never have and I never will.’

  Tobie sat there for a moment longer just watching him. Then he got up and tapped the floor with the tip of his cane.

  Outside his chauffeur was waiting and he glanced across the road to where Franklin’s taxi was parked. Franklin followed him out and they stood in the darkness then Tobie got in the car. Holding the door open Franklin looked down at him with a puzzled expression. ‘What was all that about?’ he said.

  ‘I wanted to see him myself.’

  ‘I don’t get it. How come we’re keeping him here?’

  Looking up at him the old man sighed. ‘Do I really have to spell it out? His wife will report him missing and in this city “missing” means murdered regardless of whether a body is found. The last person to talk to him was a Texas Ranger claiming to be down here investigating a homicide. That brings in the 3rd Precinct and the fat detective.’ He pointed across the Quarter with his cane. ‘If Williams was a felon we’ll find out his real name.’

  ‘And if he wasn’t?’ Franklin said.

  ‘What else would he be?’ the old man said. ‘He knew who ran that office; why else would he make the call?’

  *

  Quarrie woke to the sound of footfall on metal stairs. Reaching to his boot where it lay on the floor he slid out the snub-nose thirty-eight and they were knocking as he crossed the floor. Opening the door he stared into the unshaven face of an overweight man wearing a baggy-looking suit, his hair slick with a combination of grease and rain water. He was grinding at a plug of chew.

  ‘My name’s De La Martin,’ he said. ‘Homicide, 3rd Precinct.’ He pronounced the name “D-La” and considered the gun Quarrie was holding. ‘You might want to set that down.’

  Quarrie laid the gun on the bureau.

  ‘So you’re a Texas Ranger.’ De La Martin looked him up and down. ‘I’ve got questions I want to ask you. Best you go put a shirt on.’

  An NOPD prowl car was parked outside with two uniforms up front and they drove the short distance to the 3rd Precinct Station House on Chartres Street. A flat-roofed brick building that fronted the narrow road, it was shouldered by similar blocks either side. A pair of arched entrances occupied each end, one with a cut-away curb that looked as if it had been fashioned in the days of the surrey buggy. The other was built around a pair of wooden doors and three windows punctured the wall in between. Parking the cruiser out front the detective made a show of getting Quarrie out then marched him through the arch into the rain-soaked yard.

  They took him down a flight of stone stairs that twisted in a narrow spiral. At the bottom was a small landing where two uniforms ushered him past an office with De La Martin’s name on the door. Beyond that there was a small squad room and another office where a copier was busy with an incoming teletype. At the far end they came to a room furnished only by a table, chair and a three-sided steel mesh cage. They locked him in the cage and closed the office door, panelled with frosted glass. Quarrie could see shadows passing back and forth and hear the hubbub on the other side. There was nothing to sit on so he squatted cross-legged on the floor.

  *

  As soon as the prowl car left the hotel Franklin got out of his cab and locked the door. Waiting for a break in the traffic he crossed to the median with a newspaper folded under his arm. On the other sidewalk he went into the lobby where Yvonne was behind the desk. ‘3rd Precinct,’ Franklin told her. ‘I need a key to the Ranger’s room.’

  Upstairs he unlocked the door and went inside. For a moment he stood in the half-darkness where the drapes were pulled across the window, and studied the unmade bed. His gaze shifted to the chair and bureau beside the door. He took in the confines of the bathroom and nightstand. Then he opened the closet door.

  *

  Tobie spoke to Dean Andrews on the second-floor landing of the baroque-style office on Baronne. A chubby-looking man in a linen suit, Andrews wore a pair of black-framed Ray-Ban sunglasses as he always did even when he was indoors. He looked a little nervous and considered the older man’s snake’s head cane.

  ‘Mr Andrews,’ Tobie wore an easy smile. ‘Rather than us call you for the odd consultancy job now and then, when are you going to take up my offer and join the firm?’

  Andrews peered through his sunglasses with lines of perspiration marking his brow.

  ‘Rosslyn F Tobie and Associates,’ he said. ‘It’s a heck of an offer and I’m thinking seriously about it.’

  ‘You’re right. It is.’ Tobie’s smile had faded a little. ‘Don’t think, Mr Andrews. Make a decision before the offer is off the table once and for all.’

  He watched the attorney climb the stairs then went through to his office where two P53 Enfield Muskets were displayed crosswise beneath a painting of Jefferson Davis. Sitting down at his desk he sought through the stack of case files the girl had brought in earlier and then he looked up. Pushing back his chair he crossed to a wall safe behind the door. Working the combination he cast an eye across the bundles of cash and three metal bank boxes, then he reached for a blue paper file. Carrying it back to the desk he sat down once more and considered the name on the front with a thoughtful expression.

  *

  Sitting on the floor of the metal cage Quarrie went through all that had happened since he got off Mrs Feeley’s plane. He thought ab
out Colback and Pershing Gervais. He thought about the pharmacist and a cab driver who’d been there at every turn. He thought about who might’ve been on the phone to the fat detective who’d shown up at his door.

  Half an hour passed and nobody came. An hour went by and he knew they were trying to make him sweat. He was sweating. Despite the fact it was raining out, it did nothing to lessen the weight in the air.

  Another hour passed and he spent it sitting on the floor. Then the door opened and the fat man stood there along with a second detective wearing slacks and a short-sleeved shirt. ‘How you doing over there?’ De La Martin called.

  ‘Oh, it’s a regular home from home.’

  Head to one side De La Martin worked a palm across the shadow that built on his jaw.

  ‘Texas,’ he said. ‘We recovered a pair of Ruger Blackhawks from your nightstand drawer.’

  ‘Did you?’ Quarrie said. ‘That’s where I left them, Detective. Fact is I prefer a single action to an automatic and I prefer a pair.’

  Two hours later De La Martin was back again with a yellow legal pad and a pen, which he laid on the table as he settled his bulk in the chair. Quarrie got up and pressed a hand to the mesh of the cage. ‘Are you kidding, Detective? Locking me up in here?’

  ‘It’s where I want you right now. Nothing personal, I don’t trust you, Texas. That’s all.’ De La Martin inspected the nib of his pen. ‘So tell me about Matthews,’ he said.

  Still Quarrie looked at him then he shrugged his shoulders and squatted on his heels once more. ‘He’s a pharmacist on North Rampart on St Ann.’

  A little languorous, the detective worked his molars on the plug of chew. ‘You were up there yesterday asking questions only he didn’t tell you what you wanted to know. You upset the man, Texas, trying to get him to break a confidence like that. He called the DA’s office right after you left. That’s how it was, right, you were asking a bunch of questions but he wouldn’t tell you what you wanted to know?’

  Quarrie did not reply.

  ‘Cat got your tongue there, does it?’ De La Martin’s gaze was hollow as he peered across the floor.

  ‘Nope, I’m just set here wondering who it was put you up to this. Pershing Gervais, maybe, over at the DA’s office. Was it him that gave you a call?’

  The detective laid down his pen. Taking a sodden-looking handkerchief from his pocket he mopped sweat where it scattered his brow. ‘Nobody gave me a call,’ he stated, ‘at least nobody from the DA’s office anyhow. Think before you answer my questions, Texas, or we’re not going to make any progress at all.’

  Once more he picked up the pen. ‘So we’ll start over, shall we? Where were you at last night?’

  ‘Apart from the hotel, you mean. I had a drink in a bar.’

  ‘Which bar?’

  ‘Cosimo’s on Burgundy.’

  De La Martin shifted his tobacco from one cheek to the other. ‘Cosimo’s.’ He spoke the name as he wrote it down. ‘So you like the Vieux Carré then, do you?’

  Quarrie glanced at the confines of the steel mesh cage. ‘The old quarter, it started out all right only now I ain’t so sure.’

  ‘What time did you show up there?’ De La Martin said.

  ‘The bar? I don’t know, I guess around eight o’clock.’

  ‘So where were you at before?’

  ‘In my room.’

  ‘Anybody up there with you?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Anybody see you go up?’

  ‘Sure: Yvonne from the hotel desk.’

  ‘What time was that exactly?’

  Again Quarrie pressed a hand to the mesh that separated them. ‘I’m a cop for Christ’s sake. Are you going to let me out of here?’

  De La Martin arched a brow. ‘All in good time, Texas; I asked you what time you went back to your room.’

  ‘I don’t know, four, four thirty, five o’clock maybe, I can’t tell you that for sure.’

  ‘So how did you get to Alabo Street? You’re not driving. Did you take a cab?’

  ‘I never heard of Alabo Street never mind took a cab.’

  The detective sat back in his chair. Working tobacco into his cheek he looked for somewhere to spit. Unable to find any suitable receptacle he leaned to the side and released a mouthful of juice then worked it into the linoleum with his sole. ‘Alabo Street is the 9th Ward and Matthews went home last night like he always does right after he closed the store. His car was parked on the driveway when his wife got back with her groceries. When she went in the house there was no sign of her husband at all. You’re the last person he spoke to, Texas, and he wouldn’t tell you what you wanted to know.’

  Quarrie did not say anything.

  ‘All evening Mrs Matthews is waiting but her husband he doesn’t come home. She’s getting worried now so she gives us a call. We have to hold off for twenty-four hours before someone can be classified as missing though, so there isn’t a whole lot we can do. Fact is he never did come home and he ain’t ever done that before.’ Pushing back his chair De La Martin crossed to the cage. ‘So what do you think, uh, you being the last person to see him and all?’

  The next time the door opened he saw Lieutenant Colback filling the space. He didn’t say anything, he just looked at Quarrie and told De La Martin to unlock the cage.

  His car was parked outside and Quarrie got in the passenger side. Colback didn’t start the engine, he just sat behind the wheel and gazed towards the Provincial Hotel.

  ‘So, Lieutenant,’ Quarrie looked sideways at him. ‘What was all that about?’

  ‘That was New Orleans. It’s the way things work down here.’

  ‘You had nothing to do with it then? Not some lesson you thought you’d teach an out of state cop who ruffled your feathers maybe, huh?’

  Colback looked round. ‘If I wanted to teach you a lesson, believe me, buddy, you’d know.’

  ‘Gervais then I figure.’ Quarrie curled his lip. ‘So where will I find the sumbitch, uh?’

  ‘You won’t.’ Colback shook his head. ‘Not if you know what’s good for you. I just told you, this is New Orleans. Like you said, you’re out of state and you’re out of your depth as well.’

  ‘When do I get my guns back?’ Quarrie said.

  ‘When De La Martin’s done with them I suppose. I guess you feel kind of naked without them, don’t you? Well, it’s like Gervais told you yesterday. You’re a civilian here. You only get to carry them because I agreed.’

  ‘So what did you say to him?’ Quarrie said.

  ‘De La Martin?’ Colback shrugged. ‘I told him I’d vouch for you, at least for the time being anyway. I managed to persuade him that you were down here because of a murder in Texas and that you’d cleared it with me. The way things have played out with this pharmacist, I told him it’s possible there might be a connection between what you’re looking at and his disappearance and that’s the only reason he let you go.’

  Quarrie stared straight ahead. ‘Lieutenant,’ he said, ‘I pay a visit to the pharmacist and they tell me he calls the DA. The chief investigator hauls me down to your office and the next thing I know that excuse for a cop shows up at my door. I figure somebody’s messing with me and that ain’t the smartest thing anyone could do.’ Taking a package of cigarettes from his shirt pocket he rolled the window down and rested his arm on the sill.

  ‘Listen to me,’ Colback said. ‘I told you. New Orleans ain’t like other cities, it’s a cesspool is what it is. Maybe you’ve got a point and you probably got a beef as well. We need to be clear about something though. Pershing Gervais called me yesterday and not the other way round.’

  Quarrie did not say anything. He just drew on his cigarette.

  ‘Despite your suspicions it’s perfectly feasible that nobody tipped De La Martin off. Matthews went missing and if that happens in this neck of the woods it usually means they’ve been murdered. When his wife called the department to report it, it’s D-Lay she would’ve talked to.’

  ‘D-Lay,
’ Quarrie said. ‘That what you call him, Lieutenant? Like there’s a delay between his mouth maybe when he spits tobacco juice and the workings of a normal brain?’ He flicked ash from the tip of his smoke. ‘The fact is somebody didn’t want me talking to that pharmacist. The question I’m asking is who.’

  Nine

  When he got back to the hotel Yvonne gave him a disparaging look. Ignoring her he went up to his room and closed the door. Colback was right, he did feel naked without his weapons and it wasn’t just the Blackhawks, they had taken the snub-nose as well. Sitting down on the bed he took a moment to think then the phone rang and Yvonne told him he had a call.

  It was Van Hanigan in Amarillo and his tone was a little weary. ‘So how’s it going down there?’

  ‘Captain,’ Quarrie said. ‘I figure you know how it is already or you wouldn’t be giving me a call.’ Lighting a cigarette he lay back and propped the heel of one boot against the toe of the other. He told Van Hanigan what had happened and the captain was silent on the end of the phone.

  ‘You’re getting some shit back there then?’

  ‘I got the odd phone call to deal with I guess. Someone from the DA’s office down there called the Feds on Loyola Avenue and they called the field office here. About an hour ago I had Patterson chirping in my ear.’

  ‘Do you want me out of here?’ Quarrie said.

  ‘No, I don’t. I want you to find out what’s going on. Only do it quickly, will you? I’m too old for the politics now.’

  When he hung up Quarrie called the district attorney’s office looking for Gervais, but they told him he went out to lunch.

  ‘Yes, mam, I know that,’ Quarrie said. ‘I’m supposed to be at that lunch but I can’t remember what restaurant he said.’

  ‘McAlister’s on Canal Street,’ she told him. ‘You’re very late. He’s been there quite a while.’