NO Quarter

by Robert Asprin

  “I’m getting this round,” Alex said as she slapped down a bill, effectively nailing Chanel to her barstool.

  My manner stayed perfectly at ease, as if Chanel and I hadn’t had short words the last time I’d seen her. It would make her start to think she was blowing the incident out of proportion. I figured with a few more rounds, and Alex’s fun friendly presence, Chanel might be susceptible to some questions—if they were presented just right.

  As it was, she saved us all the bother.

  “Bone ... hey ... have you heard anything about Sunshine’s funeral?”

  I paused solemnly, “Funeral wouldn’t be here, Chanel. Sunshine had some family in Chicago. I’m sure her body’s gone there.”

  “Her body ...” she repeated, examining the term and shuddering. Her spiked red hair was shoved under her cap. She’d traded her Big Daddy’s T-shirt for a loose plaid shirt that didn’t over-accentuate her breasts. “Dammit,” she sighed. “Chicago. Was she from there? I never even knew. Never knew anything about her, really. Never bothered. Dammit.”

  Alex put a hand on Chanel’s wrist and squeezed. “Hey, nobody saw this coming.”

  “Actually,” I interjected, “somebody did. Whoever it was who killed her.”

  Chanel chugged a big swallow of her cocktail. “I keep wondering, keep thinking, what if it was me? What if some fucker decided to stab me? Kill me? Who would know I was born in Columbus? That I met Joni Mitchell when I was five years old? That I’ve driven on the Autobahn at 130-miles-per-hour, that—that—that I want to live in Hawaii someday when I’m old and be the old smiling lady that little kids wave to on her front porch and—and—fuck fuck fuck ...” Her voice cracked. She knocked back the rest of her drink, slammed it on the bartop. “Are the cops ever going to catch this son of a bitch? Are they even trying?”

  “What would you be doing that the cops aren’t?” I threw the question out almost rhetorically, but I watched her closely, waiting.

  “I’d collar that punk prick bastard of a boyfriend, stick him in a dark wet room and beat him with a hose, just for starters!” Chanel waved for and got a fast reload on her cocktail—a regular’s treatment from the bartender.

  Alex’s hand was still on Chanel’s wrist. “Sunshine had a boyfriend?” she asked gently. Of course, I didn’t point out that Chanel had more or less claimed ignorance on the subject when I’d talked to her before. Quarterites may love to gossip, but they apparently don’t take well to being questioned outright.

  “Arrogant little faggot.” Her hand shook a little getting a cigarette to her lips. Still standing behind the stools, arm folded around Alex, I lit it for her.

  I’ve never liked “faggot” as a catchall insult. It doesn’t have the ring or persuasiveness of “jerkoff” or “nimrod.” Besides, having grown up in San Francisco and worked in Quarter restaurants the past two years, I normally reacted to “faggot” the same way right-thinking white people respond to hearing “nigger.”

  Now, though, I didn’t react. I just listened.

  “Name’s Dunk. He came by the club a few times starting a month or two back. Scuzzy. Looked like one of those dirt-bag kids that panhandle and peddle their asses around the Quarter. He talked some shit. How Sunshine was totally devoted to him, how he was going to be big someday, y’know, just like everybody talks that same crap. He said Sunshine was lucky—lucky—to be supporting his freeloading punk ass now, because of course he was going to be some famous hot-shit musician someday.” Chanel shook her head sharply, warming to the subject, getting angry.

  Which was where I wanted her, if it would loosen more info out of her. “You can’t mean Sunshine was supporting this kid financially?”

  “Rent, roof over his head, bills, the works. ‘Course, every dollar he could get his grubby hands on he blew on dope.”

  My arm tensed slightly around Alex.

  “I knew Sunshine used to be into coke,” Alex said, thoughtfully, before I could think of a way to pry slyly into the subject, “but I thought she’d quit, years ago. Was she back on it? Doing it with this Dunk guy?”

  Chanel blinked at Alex. I waited for a glimmer of distrust, and like that, the whole thing would be off, but Alex had done her work well. “Don’t know nothing about coke,” Chanel said. “Sunshine’s thing was crystal meth, far as I knew. She was cool with it, though. Dunk was just a stupid pothead.”

  Chanel turned, something deliberate in her expression now, and looked directly at me.

  “So, to answer your question, Bone,” she enunciated, the way you do when the booze gets its first real grip on you, “if I were the cops, I’d grab Dunk and get him to talk and hurt him a whole lot because for my money he’s the one that killed Sunshine, and even if he’s not ... it would be a hell of a lot of fun to make him bleed. The little faggot.”

  I hadn’t grilled Chanel. I hadn’t asked direct, leading, earnest questions. I had bumped into her; we’d made chitchat; she’d spouted off about Sunshine’s murder and might’ve mentioned something about Sunshine’s last boyfriend. No big deal.

  I gave Alex’s shoulder a squeeze.

  “Well, I’ve got to go home, get out of this monkey suit.” Alex smiled at Chanel, indicating her black-and-whites. “It was nice meeting you.”

  Chanel smiled, because Alex is easy to smile at. She turned to me, and the smile didn’t completely cool. She nodded. I returned it.

  I shouldered Alex’s knapsack, and we got out of there.

  * * *

  Excerpt from Bone’s Movie Diary:

  Movie interrogation scenes are usually pepped up with a little torture, be it cops, criminals, soldiers, or tribesmen doing the questioning. Torture makes me distinctly uncomfortable. It’s not the pain inflicted or the clever intricacies of the methods—it’s the helplessness of the victim. That affects me, & I have been known to squirm. Nonetheless everything must be rated, so I name the interrogation scene in Nineteen Eighty-Four, released in the titular year, as the best. John Hurt—stunningly gifted actor—is being tortured by Richard Burton in his final performance. (Burton’s death was another huge personal loss.) It’s a grim, relentless sequence—gorgeous in its ghastliness. Not interrogation per se, but brainwashing; still, the effect is the same. I’m always made most uncomfortable, though, when Hurt, after some serious measures by Burton, starts cooperating in his own persecution. It’s diabolical, & what’s worse, is that Burton remains utterly reasonable throughout, even during the bit with the face-eating rats in the cage. By the end you almost think he’s in the right.

  Ever have a really big dog try to follow you home?

  I stayed awhile at the Stage Door, keeping an eye out for Jo-Jo. He didn’t show. I didn’t want to stay too long, since I meant to make another pass through here sometime around two o’clock. I eavesdropped on the Court of Two Sisters crew still sitting at their table, but didn’t hear his name come up.

  Meanwhile, I shot racks with the Juggernaut. It got old fast.

  He was getting chummier with me. We carried on a “conversation” where I put in the occasional grunt or “uh-huh” and Jugger babbled about everything that came into his big, shaved head. He was a good stick, and I tried giving him a good game. My custom cue was in its locker at Fahey’s, though, and the Stage Door’s bar cues were pretty typical of bar cues everywhere. Mostly, though, it was the Juggernaut’s nonstop chatter that was throwing me.

  I made some I-should-be-going noises, and the Jugger immediately invited himself along. “Where we goin’?”

  Uh-oh.

  I quickly backed off the idea, and we shot another rack. The huge man in the overalls was putting away draft beers one after the other. I waited for them to take effect—not getting him drunk, but sending him to the sandbox so I could duck out. Since, however, I was more or less stuck for the moment, I made use of my time and Jugger’s loose tongue.

&n
bsp; He liked to talk a lot about fighting. Hardly pausing to take a breath, he told me about some of his triumphs: guys he had sucker-punched, people who had tried to back out of a confrontation but who he’d hospitalized anyway, the guy who sent him up and so had it coming in a big way. Fascinating stuff like that.

  It was inevitable he would get around to the fight that had most recently landed him in the clink. By now, I figured assault as the odds-on favorite for reasons he would have been in jail.

  I figured right.

  “Fella was messin’ with my bitch. You don’t do that. You don’t mess with a real man’s bitch. You mess with mine, and you can expect to be taken apart.” He finished guzzling another beer.

  There was a simple carom shot sitting there on the table, staring at me. I tried a thin cut shot to a side pocket instead and made a show of grimacing when it missed. I was giving the Juggernaut a good game, not my best game. Why show him everything I had?

  I had to do some translating on what he’d said. The Bear had assured me the Jugger was strictly into males. That made “bitch” something other than the normal derogatory term. It was of course also a prison expression, one he probably knew very well. I’ve never done time and never intend to. However, I know that on the Inside even a lot of completely straight men will turn to homosexual acts just to keep themselves sane. The bigger and tougher you are, the easier it is to procure yourself a steady “bitch,” who is usually somebody smaller, weaker, and willing to submit to your needs. I wouldn’t imagine the Juggernaut having much trouble intimidating some kid into being his plaything.

  If, however, the Bear was right and Jugger was normally homosexual, inside or out in the World, then I pitied anybody coming between him and whoever his “bitch” was.

  I took some personal comfort in that the Bear had said Jugger was only into young guys. At fifty-plus, I wouldn’t be his cup of tea. Hopefully. His buddy-buddy manner with me, though, was bad enough. He slapped me on the shoulder when I took the eight neatly between the two and the five and into the corner to win the rack. I almost reacted reflexively when he touched me. It took me a few seconds of deliberate effort to relax my stance.

  “Great shot, Maestro!” he congratulated me.

  No quibbles about winning shots now, not with me. I was his new pal.

  “I gotta piss,” he said as he headed for the sandbox. “Be right back.”

  Needless to say, I did my quickest fade.

  * * *

  I had coordinated with Bone earlier over the phone. We were set to rendezvous at the Calf late. He was going to Molly’s, planning to use Alex to try to finagle information out of a Big Daddy’s waitress who had worked with Sunshine. That meant Alex was now definitely in on the action, though from the sound of it, Bone meant to keep her away from the rough stuff.

  I didn’t want Bone putting his foot in quicksand either. He’d shown some smarts so far, but that didn’t make him an experienced professional.

  Even so, as it crept up on two o’clock, I almost wished I could tell him to come join me on this particular operation tonight. I was a bit loath to return to the Stage Door, leery of finding the Juggernaut still there. If I could send Bone in instead, keep a watch on him from the street, then he could do the second lookout for Jo-Jo. I shook my head and had a private laugh. Bone wasn’t something I could attach to the end of a fishing line and cast in the water. He was my partner.

  The idea of being able to get in touch with him, though, struck me. Sure, we each had the other’s home phone number. But, what if I absolutely had to reach him right now? It was something to think about.

  After ducking out from the Stage Door, I passed a couple of hours doing some secondary look-overs. These were much easier than tracking down new faces. Jo-Jo and Jugger were new ex-con arrivals in the Quarter, but there was already an established population of Quarterites who’d done time and now worked jobs as bouncers, bartenders, etc. Even in the unique melting pot that makes up the Quarter, these particular people were easy to find.

  Mostly, my look-overs consisted of stopping in casually here and there. Often I didn’t even need to buy a drink or spend more than a minute or two. It was a list of some two or three dozen, and I didn’t intend to question these people—not now anyway. I only wanted to see that they were still around, that they hadn’t suddenly ditched their jobs and gone AWOL.

  “Hey Iggy, how’s it going?”

  “It’s cool, Maestro.”

  It was like that. If the ex-con I wanted happened to be working back in a restaurant kitchen, or someplace else I couldn’t just wander into, I needed only say a casual hello to the doorman, then add, “Hey, tell Max I said, ‘hi.’ He’s still working here, right?”

  In this way I confirmed by sight or reliable word that the Quarter’s normal ex-con population was accounted for.

  I had taken particular interest in the new arrivals for a good reason. An ice-pick murder definitely suggested an ex-con’s involvement. It was somebody newly released, though, that would be most likely to use the weapon. He’d have had less time to readjust to society and to break the incriminating habit. Someone who’d been back in the World a while was more likely to know better. Even if he couldn’t stop himself from committing a killing, he’d probably use a gun, or at least a knife that didn’t scream “prison yard shank.”

  I stopped home briefly to swap my red T-shirt for a faded green one, keeping the old blue jeans.

  I was dawdling, putting off heading back to the Stage Door. I did a long loop and came back along Chartres. I would at least scope the place through the side window first. The Juggernaut would be easy to spot.

  I didn’t see him. I kept moving, around the corner to the Toulouse side doors, petted the friendly, somewhat bedraggled, stray dog that hung by the door looking for handouts. I have to admit, I much prefer the furry kind of stray to the human kind.

  I wandered in. German Caroline was off and there was nobody else in the bar from before. There was also no one who could be Jo-Jo. A new pair of Court of Two Sisters waiters sat at the back table now, green jackets over their chair-backs. I picked a stool within earshot and ordered a Coke. If I wanted to still be on my feet to rendezvous with Bone I’d have to take it easy with the Irish.

  That unpleasant mix of rap and heavy metal boomed from the speakers, but I could still hear the waiters’ conversation. It helped that they were loudly decompressing from their shift.

  It was a brand of dialogue you can find in virtually any bar in the Quarter. The main topic is complaining about management, your customers, even your coworkers. No insult is too low. The two waiters were letting loose with their opinions. They were both in their young twenties, so their speech was peppered with “like,” “y’know,” and “dude.” I shouldn’t be too judgmental, I suppose. When I was a kid, we were ruining the English language forever with “daddy-o,” and later, “groovy.”

  I of course stayed alert for the Juggernaut or anybody wearing a silver crucifix around his neck. If the Jugger confronted me, asking why I’d ditched him, I would explain that I had gotten an urgent page. I didn’t have a pager on me—or even own one—to support that, but I figured I could still make it believable enough.

  If silver crucifix man showed up, I would respond however the situation demanded. I wondered idly if the Bear’s red alert perimeter would actually bag this mystery character. That would be nice. I didn’t like him hanging over my head, particularly not now. I was on my first tracking job in ten years, and didn’t need any distractions.

  “—Jo-Jo—”

  My ears went up. I sipped my Coke and blocked out all other sound in the bar, focusing a tight beam of attention on the waiters’ table.

  “Man, he is, like, so full of himself!” one said.

  “God’s gift to women, dude,” said the other.

  “Not to hear it from Yolanda! Man
, she told Jo-Jo’s ass off!”

  “I never seen anybody spend so much time, y’know, like, looking in the mirror, dude.”

  “Not a guy anyway.”

  Both waiters laughed at that. Then, summing up Jo-Jo in succinct terms, the skinnier of the two said, “Dumb-ass method Mexican.”

  I puzzled over that as they moved on to their next victim. I must have misheard over the blare of the music. Picking through the syllables, I still couldn’t come up with anything, and it wasn’t like I could go over and ask them to run it again.

  I sighed silently. A few minutes later, the waiters split. At least I’d confirmed that Jo-Jo was working at the Two Sisters. I couldn’t see anything else I could accomplish tonight at the Stage Door, and decided it was about time to start rolling toward the Calf. I didn’t want to be bumping into the Jugger again tonight, though it was good I now had an idea where I might find him if I wanted to.

  Dumb-ass method Mexican?

  I shrugged. Like, y’know, dude, who knows?

  St. Peter Street, late because I’d insisted on stopping by my apartment, Alex and I walked out in the street between the rank of showroom motorcycles that always crowd the front of Johnny White’s and the line of Uniteds cruising for late drunk fares out of Pat O.’s. We cut around a gaggle of young gangsta-from-da-hood types standing on the sidewalk. They would scoot—and rightly so—at the first sign of police. Alex’s hand tightened in mine as I kept the kids in the corner of my eye—not worried, too open out here for anybody to start anything, but you don’t totally trust your assumptions.

  Christ ... was this Maestro’s thinking turning up in my head?