“Sorry I had to split last time,” I showed him my cell phone. “Got an urgent call, and I had to go.”
Jugger handed me my Irish. “That’s okay. What do you do anyway? For a living.”
“Free-lance accountant. Good job, but it keeps me on call a lot.”
I didn’t have a job and didn’t need one, but that wasn’t common knowledge around the Quarter. If Jugger started asking around, people would probably say something like, “Is that what he does? Free-lance accountant? Sounds right to me. I always thought he was fast with numbers.”
He nodded his big shaved head. “Hey, how about a game?”
“Sure.” It beat sitting at a table with him.
He gruffly shooed away the guy he’d been playing when I came in, and started re-racking the balls.
I didn’t really understand why Jugger was so determined to be my buddy. Maybe I’d impressed him by making that fair call on the game he’d shot with Willie last night. He probably didn’t get a lot of people contradicting or standing up to him. Whatever, tonight he was treating me like his lifelong pal.
I broke, and nothing dropped. He picked a tough carom with the seven and the four that would have left him near perfect to run the table if he made it. He didn’t. I decided on solids, and started putting them down, though I still wasn’t giving him my best game. With his temper, who knew how he would take to being drubbed too badly?
He regaled me with more of his delightful stories about the mayhem he’d inflicted, both on the Inside and out in the World. He was nothing but proud of the things he’d done. Every ass he had kicked, every face he’d bashed in, each bone he’d broken, belonged to some guy who “had it coming.” No exceptions. He told me yet again about the poor dude who had “messed with his bitch.” I nodded along to it all, shooting my game, keeping one eye on the doors.
“Only reason I got bagged this time was ’cause a guy ratted on me to the cops. They were doing their extra patrols for New Year’s and he sent them after me. I hadn’t had time to wash off my hands, and they stopped me on the street and backtracked to where I’d left that sumbitch. I guess it’s a good thing after all I didn’t kill him.”
“Yeah. Good thing.”
If the assault had been around this New Year’s Eve, then the Juggernaut had served roughly six months. That sounded like a reasonable sentence.
“My little bitch kept begging me not to kill him.” Jugger laughed, sinking the nine, then the fifteen. He lined up on the eight. “If’n he hadn’t I probably would’ve broke that guy’s neck.”
He put the eight ball into the corner pocket.
If he hadn’t ... referring to his “little bitch.” Well, that certainly settled the Juggernaut’s sexual preference ... or did it? Alex had suggested that Jugger might be bisexual, something that simply had never crossed my mind. One of the lingering handicaps of being hopelessly heterosexual, I guess. Even so it meant Jugger was definitely at least half gay.
“As it is, that snitch is definitely gonna pay. Too bad he ain’t ’round here. Got some gris-gris with his name on it.” He laughed again, obviously taken with the great comedy of it.
The Bear had told me about Jugger being into guys, but confirmed information is always better than just information. It was why I’d done that hopefully sly consult with Lynch in the Mystic Den earlier. That visit had turned Jo-Jo from hot suspect into red-hot suspect. I now also knew that the two recent black ex-cons the Bear had mentioned only in passing had done time for check fraud and grand-theft auto. Those weren’t inherently violent crimes, so it lessened the chance that either of them had tagged Sunshine.
I racked for another game.
That was when the circus blew in.
I had Jo-Jo spotted even before the bartender hailed him by name. He was with two guys who were still wearing their green Two Sisters jackets, and he had a leggy, curvy blond wired to his arm. She nuzzled his shoulder and stared at him adoringly. With a complexion even more olive than mine, short curly black hair, and soft matinee idol features, I could see why he wouldn’t be hard on any woman’s eyes.
He had apparently already changed out of his work getup, was sporting slacks and a stylish shirt. His grin was bright and confident. It was almost as if the blond was simply part of his ensemble.
The group gathered up some beers at the bar and retired to an empty table toward the back of the place.
“Your shot, Maestro.” Jugger had broken the rack, power-slamming his cue and scattering the balls everywhere. It was just one of those freak things that nothing had dropped.
I focused quickly on the table, kicking myself a bit for having been so obviously distracted.
I’d gotten a good study on Jo-Jo in those seconds I’d watched him cross the bar. I’d seen his type before and wasn’t fooled by the pretty boy facade. He smelled like hard streets and jail smarts. Slender and graceful, he’d be fast as lightning in a fight. I could get a very good idea how someone would handle himself, simply by observing his gait. Jo-Jo had played rough games all his life. That he had survived to what I guessed were his mid-thirties meant he’d learned how to take his opponents down quick. He didn’t have the body bulk to stand up in a prolonged brawl.
After my initial lapse, I refused to let myself even glance at Jo-Jo’s table for at least four innings. (For you pool neophytes, an inning is how long a player holds the table before missing a shot, or winning or losing the rack.) At this point in the hunt I didn’t want anyone to notice that I had more than a passing, casual interest in the man. As for Jugger, I figured any outside observer would realize he was the one interested in me.
As it turned out, I needn’t have worried about scoping Jo-Jo too hard.
When the chunky brunette came charging in off Toulouse, every head turned. I cranked around and focused. She was in a huge huff, heaving big breaths that lifted her ample breasts. Her fingernails were out like claws, and her teeth were bared. Every Quarterite has seen this woman in one form or another, and every Quarterite would know what was coming.
“Jo-Jo! You fucking motherfucker cheating bastard!”
Jugger straightened up from his shot, leaned a big hip against the table and watched.
The brunette went straight for Jo-Jo’s table like a locomotive. The blond was instantly on her feet, stepping forward. The two guys in the green jackets wisely pushed back in their chairs, knowing that a “cat fight,” if not bloodier than a brawl between men, is still usually nastier.
As for Jo-Jo ... he sat there and let the blond intercept the brunette. He looked rather put-upon and saddened by the spectacle, though. Being fought over by two women might appeal to the male fantasy mentality, but the reality is unpleasant.
The jukebox was playing its normal rowdy music, but I had no trouble hearing the two women.
“Bitch! Getcher hands off my man!”
“He ain’t your fuckin’ man, bitch!”
There was a lot of that, plus a lot of arm-waving and confrontational body language. In the end, it really didn’t look much different from a man-to-man fracas. Guys did exactly the same thing ... at least, until somebody finally threw a punch. I waited along with the rest of the bar to see if this would go that far. Even the bartender was obviously reluctant to intervene.
Abruptly Jo-Jo stood, marched past both women without looking or saying a word, and walked out the doors.
The brunette spun, went after him, and a few seconds later we could all hear the screech of her voice receding as she followed him down Toulouse Street. The blond, her teeth bared, visibly shaking, sat back down and glared at Jo-Jo’s empty chair.
End of round one.
The Juggernaut laughed almost as hard as when he’d talked about his New Year’s assault, then went back to the game. He was shooting a good game, but had his two wedged in behind the eight, so I knew I’d get another
shot this rack. Even though the rest of the bar had now turned its attention back to whatever they were doing before, they were actively seeming not to eavesdrop on the quarrel. There was a very good chance it wasn’t over yet. We’d all seen variations on this waltz too many times before. This was why I’d felt no burning need to go shadowing after Jo-Jo when he did his walkout.
Sure enough, our Latin lover came back in alone about five minutes later and made a beeline for the blond. Bending over the table, he leaned in close to say something into her ear. Before he had a chance to say more than a few words, the blond popped up and did her own march-out, her shapely legs stiff, her red-lipsticked mouth set in a tight line.
Jo-Jo watched her go, then sat down looking tired and vaguely disgusted. He picked up the beer he had abandoned earlier and took a long swallow. His two green-jacketed friends had since migrated over to the bar.
Round two.
Jugger started telling me about a guy a few years earlier who had tried passing an IOU at a card game he sat in on. I had the sneaking feeling I knew how the story came out. He interrupted himself when the brunette came back in, face stony, mascara running down from her eyes. She walked up to the table and stared at Jo-Jo without saying anything. He looked back at her but, probably wisely, didn’t offer any words.
She drew herself up with barely-contained, furious dignity, spat noisily on the table in front of him, then turned and swept out of the Stage Door, her head held high.
Round three.
Jo-Jo sat quietly, staring at nothing in particular. With slow, careful motions he drank down the rest of his beer.
He was going to head out, having absorbed all the public humiliation one man could reasonably stand. I wanted to follow. If he went on tonight to get himself good and plastered, as seemed likely, he might be susceptible to a little friendly bar chatter from a stranger.
“Bitches,” the Juggernaut growled. We were on a new rack. He slammed a shot into a corner pocket so hard the ball rattled and popped back out onto the table. “They’ll always mess you up. Punk shouldn’t have let them get away with that shit.” He sneered in Jo-Jo’s direction.
“I don’t think he had much choice,” I pointed out. Jo-Jo was standing now, and I thought urgently about the best, fastest way to extricate myself from the Juggernaut’s company. “The Quarter crowd usually stays neutral in spats like that, but if he had started trying to slap them around someone would have felt obligated to step in.”
Jo-Jo, head hung, walked toward the doors.
“I’m not talking about slapping them around,” Jugger growled. “I’ll tell you, Maestro, the last bitch that tried to get in my face like that didn’t walk away from it. Know what I mean?”
I nodded vaguely at what promised to be yet another patented kicked-some-guy’s-ass-ain’t-I-cool story. I saw which way down Toulouse Jo-Jo was now heading, and mentally noted the bars along that track.
I had to get out of here.
Right then the cell phone rang in my pocket. One of those improbable instances where the gods grant you a favor even before you send up a prayer. I shrugged at Jugger, turned away, and put the phone to my ear, plugging the other with a finger so I could hear over the juke.
Seconds later, not giving a damn about niceties now, I tossed my cue onto the table. “I got to go.” Jugger said something at my back but I was already gone, moving at a jog, not in the direction Jo-Jo had gone. My heart was thumping hard in my chest.
It had been Bone, of course. His brief message had ended with: “I’m in trouble.”
Alcohol is blunt and, for me, uncomplicated. I don’t get violent or euphoric—I get grounded. While it may not be so to others, to me, that’s an appealing state. Drugs, on the other hand, can fly you in an almost infinite number of directions. Those possibilities have their appeal—to others, not to me.
As I’ve said, my only serious objection to illegal narcotics—another reason why I place booze above them as a social and recreational outlet—is this: in the drug culture, you must deal with the scum of the earth. Alcohol, whatever you want to say about it, is legal. You can buy it over the counter, you can order it in a bar, and on New Orleans’ streets you can drink it in the open for all to see. Drugs, you have to go a different route. Hell, just getting your drugs entails a lifestyle all its own, never mind actually using the stuff.
If you don’t like the ambience of one bar, go to another. In the Quarter you’ll have to walk about five feet. If you don’t like drinking with anyone at all, uncork a bottle at home—a bottle you can purchase at the corner food mart, along with your toilet paper, beef jerky, and a copy of Swank, and nobody will say, “Boo.”
But now, I had intentionally entered, for the first time in my life, that sleazy, scummy, seedy underworld of illegal street drugs. I had known it was a bothersome, complicated society. I’d also know it was a dangerous one.
But, foreknown or not, I had misstepped. And now I was in the shit.
We were in an apartment on Dumaine Street, a place I’d passed in the daylight many times and thought nothing of it because it was just a typical Quarter place: green-painted shutters over French doors that opened right onto the sidewalk, a faux gas lamp burning an electric bulb, stucco front crumbling a bit. Only a few weeks back I’d stopped in after my shift at Harry’s Corner, half a block up, a usually blissfully quiet place. I had decompressed and chatted and bantered with the bartender, who had pointed this place out to me through the windows. I’d watched with her as cars rolled up and stopped at a time of night when only Uniteds and some of the other fleet cabs were moving. Watched people come and go out of the apartment’s open doors, watched as one kid ran out and around to the driver’s side windows, carhop style. It was all very busy. I wondered why the neighbors didn’t buzz the cops.
The bartender shrugged her shoulders and said, “Maybe they’ve got the police paid off.” I didn’t give it much thought after that.
Werewolf and Firecracker had led me here, walked me in, and now were trying to verbally dissuade the leader of this pack of drug dealing kids from bustin’ a cap in my ass—his words. Spoken with all the exaggerated, urban-modern, gangland caricature-ness of a bad Tarantino rip-off. That was what this was, of course. Drug-dealing kids acting like dealers, this ridiculous, overstated punk who’d seen Scarface and King of New York a dozen times too many, who was burying himself in the part. You had to laugh.
But I wasn’t laughing. As phony as this all might be on one level, the pistol that he waved around the room was very goddamned real.
“I tol’ you tuh sit, boy. Yo. Huh? Fuck you be thinkin’, motherfucker? Fuckin’ think this a fuckin’ game, homie? Fuck your shit right up, a’rite? Dig?”
It was an automatic, not a revolver, and he was rolling his wrist, pointing the big gun carelessly all over the place, even at his underlings, who didn’t appear bothered by it. He paced the front room, waving the gun. There were four of the kids here, plus Werewolf and Firecracker, and myself. And this bozo. Blond hair buzzed down to fuzz, two gold front teeth. He was white and acting out the worst possible black stereotype. He wore the gangsta clothes, talked the gangsta talk, was plainly impressed by his own mock-up.
He’d told me to sit. I did not sit. A break for the front doors might very well be fatal, but I wanted the option, wanted to be on my feet, facing this. I didn’t flinch when he stopped pacing and swung the pistol towards me.
“Lester ... be cool dere,” Werewolf said in the kind of soothing tones one might use on a rabid dog, holding his hands out in a calming gesture. Firecracker’s pink eyes were wide and following the pistol, but neither of the cooks looked panicky.
I could feel adrenaline in my veins, but my head was clear. In fact, the scene had an almost surreal clarity to it. There were four colored paper clips scattered across the coffee table. One of the couch’s casters was missing. The kid standing
by the front doors had wide red laces in his sneakers.
The shutters that would seal the front doors were opened, and the top halves of those doors were glass panes. Dumaine was quiet out there. Would someone in a passing car—even a cop—glance in here, see the pistol, and act? Help or do something? Did I want to be here if the police came? Me, who had come here to buy a dime bag of crystal meth?
I’d had my chance to call for help, and I had made my choice. I’d rung Maestro, not the cops, told him the address I’d noted on the way in, told him I was in trouble. No time for anything else. I had gone in to use the bathroom. Really, I had wanted that quick moment to hit the speed-dialer, wanted the flush of the toilet to cover those few words to Maestro. When I came out, I came face to weapon with this white “homeboy” impressionist—Lester—holding a pistol.
“Yo, I ain’t fuckin’ happy wit’chu neither, a’rite.” Lester kept the automatic aimed at my face but turned to glower at Werewolf. “You duh one brought this motherfucker here intuh my crib, yo. Shit ain’t cool. I might be fuckin’ this fucker up good.” He turned back toward me.
It was, I guess, my cue to start begging for my life. The bore of the barrel looked as big as I’ve always heard it does when you have a gun pointed at you. I blinked at it. It wasn’t fear I felt. Fear was on hold. I would get to it later maybe, when it wouldn’t interfere with me getting out of this room alive.
Lester had my dime bag of meth in his other hand. He fidgeted with it, bouncing it about. It was a plastic baggie with a twist-tie, and there was what I thought was an unjustly small amount of granules inside. Ten bucks for this? There’s another argument for sticking to alcohol. Cost-effectiveness. One of the kids had fetched the bag from a back bedroom at Lester’s command. Lester was maybe twenty-seven, twenty-eight. The four kids didn’t look old enough to drink.
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