NO Quarter

by Robert Asprin

  “Not the sense I mean here, okay?” I wanted to convey my point, or maybe just to listen to my own words, like a bystander. “How he walks on the street, how he checks out a barroom coming back from the toilet. How he stands when he talks to you. How his eyes move when his head doesn’t.”

  “Street smarts?” suggested Alex.

  “Oh, he’s got those. To be sure. But it’s like he’s always got them revved up. Even when he’s relaxing, when we’re two rounds past when we should’ve stopped drinking, and we’re jabbering about movies or pool or bullshit, and he’s having a good time, a genuine good time—hell, even then he’s waiting for it.”

  “It?”

  “The end. The other shoe to drop. It!”

  She frowned. “Waiting ... like, not complacently?”

  “Hell, no. He’s going to put up a hell of a fight! He’s got ten pent-up years of guard-duty nerves. But, see—is it justified? Is anyone still actually, truly after him after all these years? Could anyone still be hunting him?”

  Booboo was presently trying to insert her entire black body into my left boot where it lay on the floor.

  I let out another longer sigh. “How did I get talking about this?”

  “I think maybe you’ve had a cocktail or two tonight, unless I miss my guess.” Alex’s lips curled drolly.

  “Well, I’ll be slashing my booze budget now,” I said. I’d told her also about asking for some time off work. She offered to help out from her own paycheck if I needed it. I blinked, tired now. “You were wondering if Maestro would object to you coming on board the hunt, right? That was it. Answer: he doesn’t get to object.”

  Her laugh was soft, warm. So was she for that matter, as she edged nearer me on the couch. I put an arm around her.

  “I’ll feel better about this if I’m involved, too,” she snuggled in closer.

  “So will I.”

  “I ...” She breathed out, and it warmed my neck. “I want Sunshine’s murderer. I want him to die. I really do, and that doesn’t bother me, on any moral level. Isn’t that interesting? How about you?”

  “I don’t think it bothers me either,” I said honestly. “Don’t think, but don’t know. You can only be so sure about your own feelings. Regardless ... ” I shrugged, and we pressed nearer still. “I will kill whoever was holding onto that ice pick if I get the chance.”

  “So will I.” Words I’d just said, but she said them with different meaning, weight, depth.

  I helped Booboo extract herself from the boot, and Alex took me down the hall, to the bedroom. I didn’t question it, just followed, grateful for her companionship.

  * * *

  Awake. Awake!

  Like that, slam-crash, and I knew it was hours later, knew I was up out of bed ... knew the company I’d just been keeping. But at the moment I was frozen through, every muscle locked, tense, as if my body had turned to stone. My eyes were pried painfully wide, sweat above them, maybe tears below.

  I had woken stock-still and on my feet, naked, body caught in a paralyzed scream that had never emerged.

  Hands closed, gentle but firm, around my upper arms from behind, and that didn’t startle me. Alex had followed me. I had left the bedroom, come down the hall, come in here—the smaller room off the front room, where the television set lived, and more importantly the VCR and DVD player that were hooked to it. The movie room. It was as rumpled and slovenly as the rest of the apartment, but how comfortable it was to huddle in here, to play tapes from my collection that had been accumulating for years.

  On a wall, painted that generic apartment white, I had reverently tacked up the old sheet of Sunshine’s drawing paper that I’d stolen off her apartment door. Here were the dancing dragons, so detailed, down to the textured scales; and the magical forest, each branch and leaf so distinct. Meticulous penciling, very talented. Sunshine lay on her slab of rock. The dragons danced, forepaw-in-forepaw, around her, ritualistically. Sunshine’s hair was very long and dark, like it had been back when she’d drawn this. One knee was raised, one arm flung across the stone. She was looking wistfully up into the sky, and whatever she was looking for up there, it was plain she couldn’t find it.

  Alex had never seen the drawing before I brought it home yesterday after the visit to Sunshine’s apartment and Dunk. I’d shown it to her, and she’d stared, stunned. It had that effect. After, I’d told her about the hunt; it had seemed the right way and time to tell her.

  Now I was standing there, directly in front of the patch of wall in the movie room where I’d tacked up the yellowing sheet of drawing paper. Alex stood behind, holding me.

  The scream I hadn’t let loose stayed in me. The first of my muscles started to relax. Gently I let go of the fiercely-held breath in my lungs.

  “Bone?”

  “I’m okay,” I breathed.

  Alex touched her forehead between my shoulder blades. “Was that sleepwalking?”

  “Yes.” I swallowed. “But I remember it all. Is that how it’s supposed to be?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I was asleep and walking,” I said slowly, studying the words as they came, “and dreaming. I dreamed Sunshine came into the bedroom and beckoned me up—”

  “Bone.”

  “—and led me here and gestured at this drawing. There was ... an urgency. It mattered that I saw this. And you were behind me. You heard me get up, asked me if I was okay. I didn’t answer, and you followed.”

  Finally, I turned to her. The room was dim. The lamp we always leave on in the front room softened some of the shadows on Alex’s face.

  “Then I woke up. It was the urgency of it all, the importance. It was too much. I was going to scream. I didn’t understand what Sunshine was trying to communicate, and it frustrated and scared me. But I woke up.” I ran my palms over my face. They came away wet.

  Alex was biting her lip, looking up into my eyes. I smiled.

  “I’m okay now.”

  “Sleepwalking?” She sounded unsure.

  “And some very vivid dreaming.” Now that my body had unlocked, I felt a tingling flow in all my limbs. It felt good.

  “You’re sure it wasn’t her ... well, her spirit?”

  I put my hands on her bare shoulders.

  “Don’t you think that makes sense?” she pressed. “Can’t you imagine that making sense—even a little bit?”

  We hadn’t argued the matter before. Our friendship included very few actual disagreements, but we did disagree, here, on this, on the subject that was now waiting to hatch.

  “Did you see her?” I asked, not sarcastic, not smarmy. “You were right behind me, right? I saw Sunshine two steps ahead, gesturing me forward. Did you ... see that?”

  “No,” she admitted. “Not really the point. If she were to visit someone in this apartment, best bet is it would be you.“

  “Wouldn’t she want to visit somebody who would believe in her manifestation?” I squeezed Alex’s shoulders. Sunshine had been very vivid in my dream, yes, but she was also fading, fast and absolute the way dreams do. The emotions that had prompted my near-scream were all but evaporated. I was suddenly and hugely tired.

  I made to steer Alex back to the bedroom.

  She put a hand to my lean chest. “Dream, visitation—whatever. But maybe something or someone is trying to tell you something. Maybe you’re trying to tell you something. Your unconscious. Something about Sunshine. Think about it.”

  I smiled again. “I’ll sleep on it.”

  I followed Alex back to the bedroom and lay there, unable to get back to sleep. I listened to Alex’s breathing become slow and even. After a few minutes I got up again, walked back to the front room, and stared at the drawing. Could Sunshine really be trying to tell me something? Or, more likely, was it my own subconscious mind trying to send
me a message?

  I started to give up and go back to bed when I caught sight of the battered manila envelope lying where I had tossed it on top of the VCR. That envelope, the one Dunk had given me because he’d thought I was ... whoever. I had put it there the other day, then I’d forgotten about it. I picked it up, turned on the small lamp by the video cabinet and pulled the photo out. Staring at it in the lamplight, I suddenly realized what was so familiar about the photograph.

  * * *

  Excerpt from Bone’s Movie Diary:

  There’s nothing quite like a good ghost story. On screen they are distinctly different from other horror films. Think Poltergeist v. Rosemary’s Baby or Dracula. Two I saw as a kid—8 or 9 yrs. old—that scared me half to death were The Uninvited and 1963’s The Haunting. Both old, black & white, bloodless, maintaining a level of suspense & dread that mega-budgeted special effects can’t match without a good story & sincere effort. But, to show I’m not a classic movie snob, let me say I rank M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense from 1999 among the best of the sub-genre. Frightening, suspenseful, eventually quite touching. I was, first time I saw it, struck by all these emotional effects ... & one more. Pity. I felt tremendously sorry for the ghosts in the movie—not because of whatever horrible ways their earthly lives had ended & not because many were seeking belated justice for what they suffered as mortals. Instead, I felt sorry that they were trapped between the worlds, without the benefits of being either living or dead, caught in dismal repetitious cycles. How tiring it must be, I thought. How useless to be a ghost. Myself, I intend to cut my ties immediately. Whenever death finally overtakes me, I shall go forward toward ... toward ... well, whatever/wherever. What I won’t do is loiter around holding grudges about meaningless mortal matters. Let the living live, I’m outta here. Appraisals: Sixth Sense/Uninvited * * * ½; Haunting * * * *

  The Stage Door is on the corner of Toulouse and Chartres, four blocks closer to the river than my more normal hangout of Fahey’s. The distance between the clientele of the two bars, however, was much more pronounced.

  I had dressed myself only slightly less grubby than when I’d visited the Bear’s Decatur Street bar last night—old blue jeans and a faded red T-shirt. I was also out much earlier. There was still fading daylight in the sky. The Bear had mentioned the Stage Door as Jo-Jo’s hangout. Jo-Jo he’d described as a Mexican ladies’ man—but of course the fact that he was also a recently released ex-con had me particularly interested.

  Like I’ve said, everybody’s a suspect at the start of a hunt. However, Jo-Jo had a little more going for him. If he was in fact a vain pretty boy who dated or slept around a lot, then he might just be the type of ready-made trouble Sunshine always picked for her boyfriends. Also, Bone had said Sunshine had dated Hispanics—excuse me, Latinos—in the past, and he apparently had an interest in voodoo.

  There are lots of reasons to kill people. Actually, “motives” is the word I’m looking for. Jealousy is a good motive. I’d mentioned it to Bone last night because I wanted him to keep the possibilities in mind. He’d been at the Bear’s bar trying to track down whoever dealt Sunshine whatever dope she did. (I wondered if Bone understood how insular and cagey the drug-dealing world is.) It would be good if we could find that specific dealer, presuming there was one. Sunshine’s murder might have just been a drug buy gone bad ... though it didn’t make much sense that she’d be doing it on the Moonwalk in the middle of the night. I know how casually drugs move in some Quarter bars.

  Even so, Bone had to keep an open mind. So did I. Jealousy, blackmail, drugs—there were lots of motives that could lead to someone to do murder.

  With Jo-Jo, though, I was definitely figuring along the lines of a love affair gone awry. I would have liked to have milked the Bear for more on him, but I’d gone to some trouble to get the info I had without drawing attention. I didn’t want to spoil that.

  For instance, it would have been nice to know at what time of day or night Jo-Jo did his usual hanging at the Stage Door. The Bear had said he thought Jo-Jo was working at the nearby Court of Two Sisters, on Royal. I didn’t want to go snooping around his work, though, not yet. Two Sisters is a classy joint. It’s a lot easier to finesse information in a rough-and-tumble bar. However, I knew that some of the Two Sisters’ employees hit the Stage Door regularly. I might be able to pick up some solid facts about Jo-Jo just by eavesdropping.

  Another thing I wouldn’t have minded knowing was what kind of crime our Mexican friend had been in stir for.

  Fahey’s is a service industry hangout. Lots of waiters, busboys, and cooks show up. The Stage Door is the same, drawing in workers from a different set of restaurants. That’s where the similarity ends. Fahey’s is a spacious, low-key place that leans toward the Beatles on their sound system. The pool games there, as I’ve said, are mostly clean, and the people who drink there are educated, or at least well-mannered and passingly intelligent.

  The Stage Door, on the other hand, is cramped, and the heavy metal or rap blasting from the speakers makes it seem even smaller. The place has a shady, blue-collar vibe coming off even those wearing their natty restaurant black-and-whites. This is particularly apparent around the single pool table. Money games are often shot there, and from around one o’clock in the morning on, the stakes can get high. The woofing and trash-talking that goes on is loud and forceful enough so that, to the uninitiated, it often seems like a fight is about to break out any second.

  That was pretty much the scene I found wandering in off Toulouse’s sidewalk. I figured if I didn’t find Jo-Jo on this run, I’d hit here again after one or two o’clock. By then a new bartender would be on and if anybody else was still hanging, they’d no doubt be too owl-eyed to remember my face.

  It would have been tight enough inside even if it hadn’t been crowded. I had to wait until a huge guy at the table took his shot, then edged past him to an open seat at the bar. German Caroline was bartending, and came over as soon as she saw me. The “German” was to distinguish her from British Caroline and Tennessee Caroline, also Quarterites.

  I said a lot of people use nicknames down here. I didn’t say they were all clever.

  “Hey, Herr Dirigent!” Caroline called out. “You shooting or scouting tonight?”

  “Just watching,” I said with a smile. German Caroline has been around the scene awhile. I’ve always hoped that that “Dirigent” she calls me translates as “Maestro,” and not something else entirely. “I heard the Hanoi Hangovers have a couple of new sticks on their team and I thought I’d try to scope them out before we shoot against them in a couple of weeks.”

  Perfectly reasonable. The Hangovers shot out of here, a good team but notorious for disputing shots, most often when they stood to lose a rack. If I were a lesser man, I’d say they were all a bunch of pussies. Good thing I’m not a lesser man.

  “How’re you doing this session?” Caroline doesn’t speak with much of an accent.

  “The Snake Plisskens or me, personally?” Our team name comes from how so many of our players are transplants who’ve “escaped” New York. It helps to keep the mood light.

  “Both,” she smiled.

  “Team’s good.” I rattled off our stats. “Padre especially. Me, I’m shooting so-so, but I still have my good nights.”

  “Sounds like a personal problem, Herr Dirigent. Take it up with the Chaplain.”

  I chuckled.

  “Gott in Himmel,” she said suddenly, exaggerating her accent. “You must be dying of thirst. Are you still drinking Tullamore Dew?”

  I nodded and tossed a fiver on the bar.

  Caroline set down my Irish and scooped up the money. “Well, good to see you. You should come around more often. Okay?”

  I blew her a kiss and she wandered off down the bar. While big money rolls through the bars during Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest, most Quarter bars live and die on the local
business that tides them through the dry spells. Bartenders are often hired because of their “cult” followings, and there is an ongoing low-key competition among them for the limited pool of regulars. Even so, somebody that drinks at Molly’s—the one on Decatur, not Toulouse—isn’t likely to start making O’Flaherty’s, for instance, his regular hangout, no matter who’s bartending.

  After ten years in the Quarter I’ve seen a lot of bars change ownership and names. Longtime Quarterites will sometimes continue to refer to a bar by its old name, even if that name is obsolete by two incarnations. The Calf/Yo Mama’s thing is a perfect example.

  I took my drink in my hand and pivoted around to face the pool table, my elbows resting on the bar behind me. While seeming to watch the action of the game, I made a leisurely scan to see who all was in the Stage Door.

  The Court of Two Sisters waiters and busboys were easy to spot, their bright green jackets hung over the backs of their chairs as they gathered around a circular table near the back. A few faces I didn’t recognize, and those I did were mostly nodding acquaintances. But nobody among them fit the description of Jo-Jo I had gotten from the Bear. Still I kept an ear cocked in their direction, listening to hear if the name popped up in conversation.

  The huge guy at the table was wearing big, stomping boots, and a pair of overalls that had enough fabric to cover a good-sized Volkswagen. His head was shaved. He wasn’t all flab, not by any means. A lot of his enormous weight looked like muscle. Something that looked like a dried bird claw on a leather thong dangled from his massive neck.

  The other shooter was some skinny kid who wore a blue baseball cap pulled low. The big man would have dwarfed anybody in the bar, but he looked big enough to carry his opponent in his pocket.

  I watched the kid make a precise short-rail shot, easing the cue ball off the rail around the six to tap the eight into the corner. It’s satisfying to win a game on a well-executed tough shot.