“Yes.”
“Bummer, eh?”
Then he asked about the pool team in way of polite chitchat, and I gave him the quick low-down. He was himself a fine stick, but he’d quit playing in the league several sessions back when his chronic back trouble acted up.
Finally he rang off.
I emptied my pockets, kicked off my shoes and stepped into sandals. It had been a long night, and a sad and disturbing one. I lit a stick of incense on the small altar in the closet off my front room, sat cross-legged on the floor in front of it, and began the Shanmatha contemplation to clear my mind. It couldn’t hurt to say a prayer for Sunshine’s soul tonight.
I escorted Alex back as far as my apartment. Her unit was just above mine. Once there, we discovered neither one of us wanted to be alone. Sunshine had died alone, and that thought haunted us. We spent the night on my couch, just holding each other—nothing more, just warm companionship against the dark.
I woke alone and badly, absurdly late, deep into the afternoon. I hadn’t dreamt specifically of Sunshine, but I’d been trapped in seemingly endless running-in-glue type nightmares, which left me feeling limp and lousy. It was so late Alex had already gone to work. I realized I should have gotten up with her. Should have seen if she was okay. We were both grieving through the aftermath of a friend’s death. Alex might have wanted some comforting before going off to the gift shop.
Nodding over my first cup of coffee, I tried to come to grips with the truth. Sunshine was gone. My head told me I should be reacting. But I felt nothing ... emotionally flat-lined. Oh, the grief was there, and the anger, but it was all limbo-like. Stalled, like a storm front. I was waiting. I had promised Maestro. Forty-eight hours, during which time New Orleans’ finest might solve the case, nab Sunshine’s killer and set the wheels of justice cleanly into motion.
They might ...
I’ve no gripes with the NOPD. I like safe streets to walk, and the thicker the police presence, the better. The Quarter’s police district is the Eighth, and I’ve poured coffee for and chatted with a fair number of its officers who stop through late nights at my restaurant. Always civil, decent tippers to boot, they certainly appeared competent.
But they were people. I knew what Maestro said was true, that the police were overworked, had only so much time and manpower to devote to any single case.
I went looking for my smokes. My apartment is a comfortable place, and part of comfortable is that I don’t expect to be visited by the Royal Family without adequate notice. Which is to say if a hurricane hit the place, it wouldn’t make all that much difference.
I picked my way into the bedroom, found my smokes, crumpled and tossed the empty pack with a grunt. Booboo, my cat, leapt at it, bounding from whichever of her hiding spots she was favoring today, went skittering across an unexpected clear patch of floor, and crashed into a stack of videotapes.
Booboo was a native Quarterite. She’ adopted me shortly after Sunshine had moved out.
Sunshine ...
I stared a slow blinking moment at the bed, which was banked with blankets and assorted debris. The bed Sunshine had picked out for us. The same bed Sunshine had slept on with me when we were married. We’d brought it with us from San Francisco. I’ve never had a driver’s license, so I navigated while Sunshine drove the moving van all the way. Was it too late for us to make it work between us, even then, even before we got to the Quarter?
My fists clenched unconsciously until I felt my nails dig into my hands.
Forty-eight hours ... well, minus about twelve of them now. I had agreed to do nothing, take no action. Revenge—so I’d said to Maestro last night, at Fahey’s, and I’d meant it. Goddamned right I did. Once those forty-eight hours were completely expired and the police had nothing ... what, exactly, did I intend to do?
I drained my coffee and started finding clothes. What I intended right now was, of course, to get myself a fresh pack of smokes.
Booboo fixed me with accusatory green eyes. I checked her food and water bowls—both full. “I’m just going to the store,” I told her. “I’ll be right back.” She swished her black tail and did not blink.
It was crawfish-boil hot as I climbed downstairs and stepped out onto Burgundy Street. The daylight shrank my pupils behind my sunglasses as I hiked up toward the corner mart. Like a whole lot of Quarterites I know, I am not naturally attuned to the daytime.
I wanted to know who had killed Sunshine so that if the cops didn’t get him, I would. I’d said as much to Maestro. Revenge, of the Biblical eye-for-an-eye variety. Which meant, of course, that I intended to kill Sunshine’s murderer.
This time the thought didn’t startle or dismay me. I had done the math, thought it through, even as Maestro had tried to talk slow, deliberate reason at me. I knew what I meant. Knew what revenge was. I had decided without needing to decide. My wife—my dear friend—had been murdered. It seemed a no-brainer that her killer had to pay, either with the aid of the police and the courts, or through some more personal medium. Either way, the scales had to balance. I wouldn’t leave it like this. I would not allow it.
So, yes, I would kill. If need be. If it came to that.
The how of killing someone, of finding that particular someone if, in thirty-six hours and counting, the cops couldn’t ... that wasn’t so clear-cut.
A car with Arkansas plates inched along Dauphine Street, the couple in the front seat ogling and pointing. The French Quarter is indeed something, visually striking, with its picturesque architecture, old Europe allure and quaintly crumbling ambience. But it was no good excuse for blocking traffic. A black and white United cab rolled up and quickly lay on its horn.
You could use some help. Maestro’s words. I hadn’t expected that, what was evidently an offer of help. I didn’t know Maestro all that well. At least, I hadn’t known him all that long. But I’d already started to think of him as a friend, something beyond the routine bar-chum. He had a good knowledge of film and a pleasing store of risqué humor. He was easygoing and easy to talk to. On some level below our surfaces, though, we seemed to have clicked. We recognized each other in some fundamental way that bypassed the two decades’ age difference. I didn’t know if I could quite define it.
It made a curious kind of sense that he was offering to help me ... help me to hunt someone, and help perhaps even to do the killing. I didn’t know too much about his past—and Quarter etiquette deems it impolite to probe—but you don’t get a nickname like “Maestro” from a reputation for sitting on your hands.
I bought my cigarettes. Inside the store the day crew and a few of the customers were, inevitably, talking about the fatal stabbing by the river last night. Lots of clucking about the homicide rate, the need for more police, and, of course, the inescapable undercurrent: Did you know her, did you know her?
My heart was beating heavy as I paused outside to light a smoke. My hand shook a bit as I snapped shut the lighter.
I’d had the radio on while I was making coffee, heard a newsbreak and knew the crime hadn’t been tidily solved while I slept. “Police are investigating, but have no suspects at this time.” I’d heard words like that often enough on local newscasts, was used to reading them in the paper. It was part of the tapestry of city living, nothing exclusive to New Orleans. (And once, crime and murder were a much worse problem here than they are today, I’m told.) But this was so absolutely personal, and every mention of Sunshine by strangers, by people who knew her only as a statistic, hit like a blow.
“Hey, Bone. What’s shakin’?”
Big Tommy stuck out one beefy paw for a friendly clasp. Muscular and flabby all at once, like a bodybuilder going to seed, he looked a little like a mountain man, with a full black beard and a mop-top of curls that must have been hell in the summer.
“Tommy, how’re things?”
“Fine, fine. Yourself?”
>
“They’ll do.”
Southern hospitality wasn’t invented by some novelist or Hollywood screenwriter. It’s the real deal. So, when your neighbor says hello, you stop and chat a moment.
“Where’re you going with that?” I said, nodding to the rolled up futon mattress he was holding up atop one cannonball shoulder.
“Takin’ it over to Greta’s place. You know Greta, right? Works at the Clover, morning shift. She’s just moved into a new place over on Dumaine. Left her bed behind in the old apartment. I told her I’d give her this”—Big Tommy shrugged the mattress awkwardly—“‘til she got somethin’ else. Greta bought me a cheeseburger once when I was broke.” Sweat was bright on his forehead, dripped in his beard.
I wasn’t being asked for anything. Despite which I said, “How about I give you a hand?”
Tommy grinned gratefully, and we lugged the damned mattress three and a half blocks and down a bricked cockroach-crawling entryway barely wider than Big Tommy’s shoulders. I hadn’t tied back my hair before coming out, and now it was plastered over my neck and shoulders. The day’s humidity was merciless.
I shot the breeze a minute or two with Greta—I did know her, a heavyset blond, good waitress—begged off Tommy’s repeated offers to buy me a beer, and skedaddled homeward. Going out for a cold one, though it was way to early for me, was nonetheless tempting. Tommy had lived half a block from me since I’d moved here. He was a good guy. His company would probably keep me distracted awhile. But I knew, I could tell, that I would be stepping aboard a merry-go-round while it was going—one round of beers at one bar and we’d bump into somebody we knew because that’s inevitable and because everybody knows everybody. “Hey, Bone, Tommy what’s up? I was just on my way to such-and-where to see so-and-so who keeps asking ‘bout you c’mon lemme get this round c’mon we’ll shoot a coupl’a racks of pool I’m tired of beer I need a real drink ...”
Hours would disappear as we whirled through the Quarter. No. No. I just wasn’t in the mood. I love the Quarter and the sure sense of community here that I’ve never experienced anywhere else ... but not today.
I got back to Burgundy, and ran into Todd, one of my neighbors in the building, as he was leaving. I didn’t know him well. He worked in one of the galleries on Royal, which made him a day person, so we seldom crossed paths. I waved to be neighborly and continued towards my apartment and blessed air-conditioning.
“Hey, Bone. What’s going on?”
Something in his tone caught my attention. “Not much, why?”
“The cops were here, lookin’ for you, ’bout a half hour ago. Is everything all right?”
My gut tightened and I felt chilled despite the heat. “Yeah everything’s fine. Probably a mistake. Thanks, though.” I forced a smile and walked woodenly back to my apartment.
The police! Maestro said they would probably want to talk to me. I guess I just hadn’t taken it seriously, hadn’t absorbed the reality of it. I took a deep breath. So what? I hadn’t killed Sunshine. The sooner the cops got me off their list, the sooner they could look for the real killer. At least the fact they had been here meant they were doing something, however useless. I just needed to wait it out. I fought down the anger and frustration roiling just under the surface. Wait.
I looked at the videotape stack that Booboo had toppled. If I had to wait, hunkering down with a good movie seemed the best distraction. If the police came back, I would deal with them then.
I felt like something pleasantly grim and was weighing the merits of Sweet Smell of Success against those of Serpico when I noticed the light winking on the answering machine. I almost ignored it. But, with a sigh, I did go over to play the message. It was Alex. Forty seconds later, my boot heels pounded the stairs as I hit the street, running this time.
* * *
Excerpt from Bone’s Movie Diary:
When life turns bleak, there is real comfort to be found in movies that are equally gloomy. Reality can be savagely dismal, but it can never match film’s facility to dramatize. That is, truth is stranger than fiction, but it needs a serious rewrite. Following Nine-Eleven, during the just-after-the-car-crash shock/jitters of not knowing what was next, I deliberately switched off the news; didn’t want to see & hear anymore, for a while, to take a break, so that I didn’t see the Twin Towers coming down every time I blinked. To escape I plugged in a DVD of Fail-Safe. 1964, helmed by Sidney Lumet (my favorite director), the best of the Cold War disaster pictures, the opposite to not-really-that-funny Dr. Strangelove’s take on same subject by Stanley Kubrick (Kubrick is overrated; never topped Paths of Glory & Eyes Wide Shut is 2½ hrs. of my life I want back). Fail-Safe is tense, frighteningly believable (still) & superbly acted—including dramatic parts for Walter Matthau, Larry Hagman &, get this, Dom DeLuise. Let me just spoil the ending by saying it concludes with atomic bombs dropped on NY, the Empire State Building used for ground zero. I sat, I watched this terrific movie, I knocked back half a bottle of rum, I was able to locate and handle my emotions as I hadn’t been able to since that Tues. morning ... & it was cathartic. I felt ready for reality once more. After all, how could it be more catastrophic than what I’d just experienced? Appraisal: Fail-Safe as movie * * * *; Fail-Safe as therapy ... priceless
I had insisted that Bone give the police forty-eight hours. I had no intention of doing the same. While I would avoid any direct involvement in the investigation, that didn’t mean doing nothing. I needed information. I needed to find out what the police knew, and that meant finding a source.
But first, I needed knowledge of a different sort, something that the police weren’t likely to have. That would require going out in the daytime. Not an easy thing for someone used to waking after sunset, but I figured the information would be worth the sacrifice. I dragged myself out of bed around three, dressed, and, after a moment’s thought, grabbed an old cable box and an empty incense container and threw them in a bag. Thus prepared with props and an alibi, I stepped outside the cool darkness of my apartment—only to be blinded by the glare of the huge glowing disk in the sky. Oh, yeah ... it was the sun. It had been a while since I had seen it that high in the sky. I scrambled to pull my sunglasses over my eyes while ducking back into the shaded alcove by my door. As I huddled in the shadows waiting for my eyes to adjust, I could not help but think of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula, cowering beneath the deadly onslaught of daylight. It hadn’t taken a vampire bite to turn me into a creature of the night—just a little time living in the French Quarter.
Once I could see again, I headed down Bourbon Street, toward St. Ann. This early in the day, Bourbon was still open to motorized vehicle traffic and the Quarter was an entirely different place. Instead of the wanton lady of the evening I knew so well, cloaked in darkness and adorned with garish neon and beads, the daytime Quarter was a quaint French Colonial Lady, showing her age in the cracks and crevices clearly visible in the unforgiving light. The smell of stale beer and puke, usually so prevalent on Bourbon, had given way to smells of café au lait and beignets, burgers, gumbo, and seafood, seasoned with hot asphalt.
I’m normally alert on the street, aware of those around me. In ten years down here, I haven’t been successfully mugged. Today, though, I felt an extra wariness. I still had no idea who’d been walking Decatur last night looking for me. My subconscious hadn’t conveniently matched the Bear’s description with some hidden mental file while I’d slept.
I stopped in front of Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo. One of the older buildings in New Orleans, it had once been home to Marie Laveau II, one of fifteen children of the original Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. Now it housed a shop catering to tourists and occult practitioners. The cracked paint and ancient timbers of the building added an air of authenticity that probably made it easier for tourists to believe they were in the presence of old magic. Above the door a hand-painted sign promised:
Special Exhibit
Strange Gods, Strange Altars
Inside the shadowy interior, the air was thick with the smell of incense and essential oils. Shelves lined the walls, overflowing with an eclectic combination of candles, fetishes, gris-gris, dolls, and potions, as well as statues of Catholic saints and rosary beads, statues of Marie Laveau. Altars for various religions and rituals were artistically scattered about the room. Gator skulls, carved masks, and chicken feet hung from the ceiling and off the shelves. One section of the building was set aside as a small Voodoo museum. T-shirts, books, jewelry, and posters filled the remaining spaces. But I knew the front was mostly for the tourists. Anything serious took place beyond the beaded curtain separating the main store from the back room.
“Can I help you?”
The young man behind the counter wore a Voodoo Shop T-shirt and had spiked hair. I didn’t know him. “Just came to get some incense,” I said. “Is Mother Mystic around?”
“Is that Maestro?” The clipped contralto of her lilting, accented English echoed from somewhere in the back. A moment later Mother Mystic swept out through the beaded curtain, her arms open in greeting. A bright caftan draped her ample figure in colors that complemented her mahogany skin. “My dear Maestro, I have not seen you out my way much. At least, not in the daylight.”
My patterns were getting much too predictable. I would have to do something about that.
“I was just out doing some daytime errands and decided to stop by.” I grinned. She cocked an eyebrow at me as if she didn’t entirely believe it. “I needed to pick up some more incense for my altar.” I pulled out the empty box. Actually I had plenty of incense at home.
“Well, you know where to find it.” She gestured towards the large display. “Let Mother know if you need anything special.”
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