Shadows and Lies

by Eden Butler

  She hadn’t expected that. Not from me. Maybe she thought our small connection to Simmons gave us a reason to stick together. But I don’t partner with criminals, no matter how pretty they are or how fucking miserable their lives have been. Alex’s face flushed a high, bright pink and I bit my lip trying not to laugh as I moved to hold the door open for her; a gentlemanly move that we both knew was all smart ass.

  “That’s freaking blackmail,” she said, words and attitude turning back to the same bite and level as when I first dragged her into the office.

  “Yeah well,” I stopped between the threshold of the open door, pushing a forced grin onto my lips, “I used to be a cop. I never said I was a nice guy.”

  Thieves have means, especially seasoned thieves like me. Neil Ryan had his smart phone and that nosey Big Brother app. Me, I had Google and the skills that allowed me to hack into the Orleans Parish Tax Assessor’s office without bothering a soul.

  “Too fucking easy,” I said to myself, walking toward my apartment on Burgundy Street trying to beat the looming rain. It was well past ten, that time in the Quarter when the tourists are just heading out to party and the locals try to avoid them. The wind was harsh, moving the smells of the river behind me, mixing with the musty draft of whatever that stench was that never leaves the city and I stepped a little quicker, cursing the pain in my toes from the too-tight Manolo Blahniks I had borrowed from my best friend for the evening. Misty’s feet were at least a half a size smaller than mine.

  A few more taps of my thumb on my phone and I had Ryan’s address in the Warehouse District. It was one of those pricier places with secured parking and the square footage that only people who don’t want to live in the Quarter can land. Other than his name, some mild information I gathered a few months back when I visited Cavanagh, I didn’t know much about Neil Ryan. Military records are simple enough to find, so was the business license with his and his friends’ names, but I needed to find some dirt on this guy.

  He had way too much on me.

  Five more blocks of my feet pinching in those shoes and I’d be in a hot bath, nursing a glass of Jack. The streets were oddly quiet; not much in the way of lost tourists or hustlers looking to score some free cash, but then it was go time and they would be on Bourbon, maybe hanging out around the Square looking for easy marks. That had been my plan that afternoon when I’d caught wind of the fundraiser happening at the Marriott. A few drunk politicians boozing up their constituent’s donations as Misty’s girls gyrated around them half naked at my best friend’s club, and I’d found out everything I needed to know about the event. It should have been an easy score. A few wallets, maybe some high-end phones, and I could have spent the rest of the weekend in my place or around it looking for my damn cat.

  Then Ryan pinched me, that asshole.

  I was stupid, trying to lift that mark’s wallet; he was attached to the headliner, for chrissakes. I’d grown clumsy, careless in the months since I left Timber’s employment. Employment. Not a word I’d generally use for luring tourist into frequenting whatever club needed the action or the drops I’d make for him. The money had been great, hell, I gotten my apartment because Timber wanted me not to worry about being in a shitty place. But then he’d become a little too attached to me. I couldn’t have that. Besides, “delivery girl” was a waste of my skills.

  Wanda, the “foster mother” the state landed me with when I was twelve, made damn sure her kids knew everything about corrupting the system—working a grift so the idiot you were swindling thought they’d somehow lost a bet; hacking an ATM machine with a duplicate master key and the right malware when you needed a couple hundred bucks. Of course, Wanda’s favorite hustle was sweetheart jobs where she, and then me, once I’d grown into my tits, honed in on a lonely widower or lifelong bachelor and made with the sweet eyes, gave them some sappy story about being sick, needing surgery, anything really that had them handing over the cash. New Orleans wasn’t the easiest city to work a hustle in, not unless you wanted to target the tourists, which would never land you more than five, maybe seven hundred in one weekend. But those sweetheart jobs could be hella lucrative. But then Wanda got greedy, got pinched big time. She crossed a line and I’d been forced to help send her away.

  In the distance I could see the gray brick of my building with the New Orleans Saints and Louisiana state flags flapping away from the poles attached to the balconies. Then, just like that, I became aware of something else. In the blink of an eye, the wind stopped and everything froze in time. I’d had this feeling before—my breath fogging in front of me, that weird sensation that someone was so close I could feel the warmth of their whispers against my neck and the distinct sense that someone was lurking nearby, watching each step I took.

  Be cool. Deflect, I told myself, pretending like I was engrossed in my phone, in the bright colors and snarky posts on Twitter or Facebook that flashed on my screen; I even kept my face leaned toward the display. But my eyes darted everywhere, to the couple passing me on the other side of the street, the homeless woman with threadbare, ratty cargo pants pushing a grocery cart with a wobbling wheel, even to the guy blowing smoke from a cigarette into the night as he leaned against the light pole some hundred yards ahead. Still, none of these people paid attention to me. They weren’t the threat I was feeling, the one that had my skin crawling like it had been tickled by spiders.

  The homeless woman cursed when her cart toppled over and the all its ratty contents—worn blankets, empty Coke cans, yellowed newspapers, spilled out onto the damp sidewalk. I was going to walk right past her, knowing she’d ask me for a light, or for some cash, but then I heard her crying, all quiet, like she didn’t want anyone to know she was upset and that “sucker voice” as Wanda had always called it, started jabbering in my head.

  Don’t be a bitch. Go help her out. And then the one that always got me: You’re one bad day away from ending up just like her.

  “Shit,” I sighed, jogging over to the woman to help her pick up her crap.

  “Honey, thank you, thank you so much.” With me helping, she moved quicker, cupping her possessions like they were precious. “These damn sidewalks with all the cracks and holes always has me dropping my shit and I was trying to get to Unity before they closed.”

  My nod probably didn’t help and I knew there was nothing I could say to make her feel better. The homeless shelter had closed at least a half an hour before. She was thin, too thin in the way someone sick usually got when they couldn’t keep anything down and her skin was marred with brown scabs and spots. She looked fifty or sixty, but more than likely was only in her thirties. Meth, I’d guess. It was a damn shame really, how that shit takes over. I had a glancing thought about giving her my last twenty—had even gone so far as to reach into my jacket pocket—but then I caught sight of her face again, and how she had chewed her fingernails down to nothing.

  “Here,” I told her, pulling out a pen and one of the freebie coupons I’d landed the week before when the vendors needed day workers. “Tomorrow morning you go see Susan in the Market. She runs Eastside Deli.” I scribbled a note on the back of the coupon with my signature. “She owes me a Po-boy and they’re good. You tell her Alex gave this to you and she’ll feed you.” When she reached for it, I didn’t let it go immediately, squinting at the woman so she’d listen to me. “Don’t sell it.”

  “Oh I won’t. Thank you, doll.” She gave me a toothless, crooked smile and pocketed the coupon, patting it over and over. “God bless you and thank you!”

  My good deed done for the month, I turned back toward my building, suddenly remembering the sensation of being watched. Another glance behind me still showed the homeless woman pushing her cart away, no one else. Nothing that should have me on edge, but still, I couldn’t shake that feeling.

  When I’m nervous, I hum. My voice is shitty; I could carry a tune, just not very far. Yet for some reason, when my gut starts to twist and my hands shake, some stupid song pops into my head and comes rig
ht out through my mouth all on its own.

  Tonight’s selection was “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” God, how many times had Wanda sang that song when I was a kid?

  The guy up ahead stopped smoking when I came nearer and I realized that he was standing right in front of my building. The too-tight shoes had my feet pulsing—I’d probably have bruises on my toes—but I refused to quicken my pace, kept my steps slow and relaxed. To my right was an alley, one that dead ended around an empty apartment building. To my left was St. Louis Street; that was the route I’d take if whoever was waiting for me thought about getting too close.

  Damn that. I wasn’t going to give him the chance.

  One step back and I lost all the cool I’d been mustering. Turning the corner, I suddenly took off, trying my damnedest to run in those ridiculous shoes. My instincts once again had been spot on: someone was chasing behind me.

  “Alex. Wait!”

  Fuck you, jackass. I so will not!

  But God am I nosey. You kind of have to be in my line of work. Still, that curiosity always lands me in shit. There I was, alone in the dead of night, right in the heart of the Quarter with some heavy-footed asshole calling after me, and what did I do? I looked over my shoulder. Shouldn’t have done that. Doing that caused me a whole lotta headache.

  I knew him instantly—skin smooth like rich chocolate, tall like a basketball player, but thick like a lineman, Cosmo wheezed and huffed as he met me on the sidewalk when I stopped my half assed sprint. “Fuck, Alex…,” he rasped, leaning on his knees with his massive fingers, “what you run for?”

  I smacked him on the back of his down-turned head. “Why do you think? Hey asshole, don’t lurk at my place like you’re scoping it and think I’ll run up to you all chipper like.”

  “I… didn’t… think…”

  “Do you ever?” My heartbeat raced and the brick behind me scratched against my skin when I leaned against it, looking up at the black sky and the flickering stars, the soaring planes above, reminding myself that Cosmo was harmless. Well, he was harmless when it came to me. Still, I had to rein in my irritation and the remnants of anger and fear that continued to fog my head. “Shit, my feet hurt.” The building helped my balance as I worked to get my swollen feet out of those damn shoes. Filthy sidewalk or not, I’d be home in two minutes and I was done wearing those things. “Hold this,” I told Cosmo handing him my left shoe as I struggled with the right one. He’d finally caught his breath and looked at the black stiletto in his hand like it was contagious. “What?” I said, grabbing it back from him.

  “You gonna go barefoot on the pavement? That’s nasty.” When I glared at him, silently cursing the giant for lecturing me, he shrugged. “I’m just saying.”

  “Thanks, Dad, I got it.” I didn’t wait for him to follow me. My apartment was ground level and only a few feet of brick and mortar stood between me and that hot bath I had plans for. “You got a specific reason for being here?” I asked Cosmo, walking toward my building. “I’ve had a shitty day and want to get some sleep.”

  “How many shitty days since you left, Alex?”

  Oh. So that’s what he was here to bug me about. Timber. Yet again. It had been almost three months and the guy still sent his lackeys to pester me. I had no intention of returning, not to run his drops or do his errands and certainly not to warm his bed. “Really? You show up at my place this late, scare the shit out of me to nag me into going back?”

  “Listen, he’s off his game.” Cosmo came to my side, resting against the building next to my door as a cab passed in front of us. The big man kept his gaze forward watching the slow-moving car as it circled the street two more times. Finally, when the black and white hood disappeared down the Quarter, Cosmo glanced at me, reaching in his jacket pocket for another smoke. “I figure that the man doesn’t have his head on right.” He lit the cigarette and took in a deep drag. “He doesn’t know I’m here, if that’s what you’re thinking, but shit, Alex, we need him to get right again. People are starting to talk.”

  “That’s not my problem.”

  “Oh?” I hated when Cosmo looked at me like that—small smirk thinning his top lip and the cleft in his chin exaggerated. I knew what he was thinking. It was the same thing that ran through my head anytime one of his people came at me with the ‘Timber misses you’ sob story. Cosmo blew a ring of smoke and I pulled the cigarette from his fingers, leaning next to him as I filled my own lungs with all those delicious chemicals I knew would end me one day. “Y’all came up together, right?” I nodded, ignoring how he watched me, ignoring the niggling memories in my head of me and Timber as kids working tourists for pocket change. “And,” Cosmo said, taking back his smoke when I handed to him, “who covered your ass when Wanda went up for trial?”

  “It wasn’t…”

  “Who made sure no one fucked with you when she sent her boys to scare you out of testifying?”

  Timber had done all of that. He cared what happened to me, as much as anyone in our life can bring themselves to care. But Timber Ironside never did anything without wanting something in return and, after years of him pursuing me, trying to convince me that we were a perfect fit, he got exactly what he wanted.

  “He did all that for me, Cosmo.” I waved off his offer for another drag and crossed my arms, stepping away from the building so I could see his face. “Timber had my back, even when we were kids, but he’s not a kid anymore and what he wants from me now is something I won’t give him again.” Cosmo looked like he wanted to keep arguing, but the day, Ryan hassling me, my poor damn aching feet, had me not caring about anything but being in my bed. I’d already forgotten about the bath. Fuck that. The Jack though, yeah that was still going to happen. “Before you keep it up, remember that Timber made a deal with me as payback for keeping me safe when all that shit went down. I paid my debt. I don’t owe him anymore.”

  “He doesn’t see it that way, Alex.” There was no amusement left on Cosmo’s face. That gentle man—the one I’d seen rescuing abandoned kittens from a drain, the same one I’d watched beating the shit out of a dealer who’d tried raping a tourist when she was too high to pay him for a dime bag—looked at me then like he didn’t know me, like I was a threat that needed sorting. Above all else, Cosmo was loyal, and would do just about anything to keep Timber happy; even if it meant Timber wanted me sorted. “I guess I don’t see it that way either. You might want to rethink what you paid off. It would be a good idea to remember how much in the red you’re still in.” He look up into the sky, head shaking. “This is a rough city, Alex.” When he looked down at me, I saw the friendliness, the kindness completely vacant from his expression. “And you’re a little girl with no one watching your back.”

  My mom’s death left me as a ward of the state at eight. Until twelve, I had my seventeen year old sister who kept me safe. Then, she died and I had to figure how to watch my own back. I was no “little girl” and I sure wasn’t scared of Cosmo, but I’d be stupid if I wasn’t wary. No matter how long we’d known each other, if he was on some personal crusade to return me to Timber, I wouldn’t be able to convince him that my no meant hell no. Friend or not, my knife would make an appearance if he threatened me. It was the way our lives worked. Loyalty didn’t come easy and it was never fucking cheap. But once it was there, it was solid. Timber had Cosmo’s loyalty—I didn’t.

  “My red is my business, man.” My key pinched against my palm as I squeezed my fist around it and walked to my door. I was faster, smaller, more agile than Cosmo, but I’d need to be if he decided to make me go back to Timber. When that small glint of anger left his face and the stone cold stare that tightened his features began to soften, I stepped on my front stoop, telling Cosmo with one glare he wasn’t welcome in side.

  “I always liked you, Cosmo. You’ve always had Timber’s back.” One step back down so he could see my face. I firmed up my mouth, holding my lips tight. “But if you ever threaten me again, I’ll fucking cut you and I won’t feel shitty a
bout it either.”

  The big man’s eyebrows went up, wrinkling his forehead as though he hadn’t expected my anger. I didn’t care if he had. “You feel me?”

  “Yeah, Alex,” he said, rubbing his stubble as he squinted, like he was trying to see how serious I was, if my threat was something that he needed to worry about. Finally, the big man nodded, but only once. “I feel you.”

  Cosmo stayed on the stoop a full minute after my deadbolt was locked. I didn’t care that he could still be lurking or that the looming feeling that I was being watched had not eased even while I stood outside my building talking to the big man. Timber’s lackey and that weird juju vibe I’d felt would disappear the second I fixed my Jack. And that’s exactly where I headed as I walked through my apartment, stripping out of the suffocating leather jacket and that too-tight pencil skirt. Blinds and curtains covered the floor to ceiling windows and two dead bolts on both my front door and the back entrance that led into the courtyard kept me locked in tight. No one could see me unless I wanted them to.

  My skirt landed on my sofa and I popped open the first three buttons on my shirt before I made it to the liquor cabinet next to my small refrigerator. One sip took the edge off, a second one numbed the irritation Cosmo’s nagging had caused. By the third, my chest didn’t feel so tight and the knot in my stomach had loosened so that I barely noticed it anymore.

  Headlights slipped through the small opening in my kitchen curtains and I stood in front of it watching another cab, this one yellow, weave down the street. The sky had opened and the rain hadn’t begun with a trickle, but a deluge that had my hundred year old windows shaking from the wind and rumble of thunder. Hurricane season in Louisiana and the rain was as common in October as mosquitos on the river in August. Somewhere out in the weather and inky darkness my eight year old tabby, Minion, hid among the tourists, likely pouncing on the rats that waited for scraps of forgotten food and powdered sugar in the Quarter. It had been over a week and I hadn’t seen him. But Minion being gone was just another loss. He’d been a stray once already. I’d taken care of him, got him his shots and collared him, but I knew better than to get myself attached, especially to a creature who, like me, had very few loyalties.