NO Quarter

by Robert Asprin

  “You must be the Juggernaut,” I said. My voice was surprisingly calm and strong. “Well, I’m Bone. I hear you’ve been looking for me. Why?”

  He hadn’t expected a conversation, but he recovered from his surprise quick enough. “You got something I want,” he said. “You stol’ that picture from Dunk. Want it back, an’ maybe want to teach you a lesson about messin’ in my business, boyo.” He took a threatening step forward, then stopped. I saw Maestro twitch, then grow still. He was giving me my time.

  “Yeah,” I said. “You killed the woman who drew that picture. You remember Sunshine? Or maybe you never even knew her name. Well, she was once my wife.”

  “She was a whore!” Jugger spat on the floor and took another stomping step towards me. “A whore who tried to steal my bitch. Nobody fuckin’ steals my bitch! She got what was comin’ to her. I hexed her good, too, made sure she got a bad death and a bad time in the afterworld.

  “And Dunk?” I held my place, kept my voice perfectly calm but hard as stone, as Maestro began to move again. I watched as he came up out of the booth with no more weight or presence or sound than a shadow. I didn’t so much see him as I felt him glide up behind Jugger. “What about Dunk? You killed him. Now you’ve got no ... bitch.” I found the ugliness of the word, the way that Jugger used it, staggering and foul. I leaned forward, just a degree or two, and looked right into Jugger’s mad eyes. “Are you really surprised that Dunk preferred Sunshine to you?”

  “You ... mother-fuckin’ ...” Jugger choked out, then he roared. It was a primal sound, like the yowl of a big predator. He drew a large, wickedly pointed weapon, not an ice pick unless it was on steroids, from a pocket hidden somewhere in the expanse of his overalls.

  Tripwire ...

  I froze as he lunged for me, fast. Christ, was he fast, like a moving wall, and he held his steel pointed directly at my heart. I’d wanted to confont him, to make him face what he had done. I’d known he might attack, but I had not been completely prepared for the reality of it. It was like what facing a bull in the corrida must be like for a matador. Death came for me on huge, stomping boots, and I couldn’t move, couldn’t think. I could only watch.

  And the thought that came to me then, in that shattered fragment of time in which death rushed toward me, was that it had been worth it to face him. It had been essential. I hadn’t said the words for him. I hadn’t said them for myself. I had said them for Sunshine.

  And then, before that terrible, lightning-fast lunge could puncture my heart, Maestro was on him, sailing in from his right like a viper striking its prey, slicing his neck with a shining razor of a knife.

  Maestro’s steel bit into Jugger’s thick neck, slid through in a flash, and left a sudden red line behind it. The line widened instantly. Blood gushed with dismaying force from the wound, spraying everywhere in a shocking scarlet plume. Blood like that, a river, a waterfall of blood, belonged in a Sam Peckinpah film, not in this quiet bar in the Quarter.

  But this was no movie.

  Maestro pivoted out of the move like a ballet dancer in the midst of some danse macabre, releasing the dripping razor to clatter on the floor. The lighting was dim, but not so dim that I couldn’t see faces. The Juggernaut’s eyes got wide. He clapped his hands over the sudden, gaping wound in his neck, and spun to look at Maestro. As he recognized his attacker, his eyes bulged even wider, like they were going to pop out of his skull. His mouth worked, but nothing came out other than obscene gurgling and whistling sounds.

  On his face I saw an expression of absolute, astonished betrayal.

  And Maestro ... his face had twisted from its normal, bland expression into a strange, cold grin that belonged on a pagan icon. Or a death’s head. Here was a different, deadly, singular, focused person, someone or something that I had never seen before. It is one thing to know someone can kill. It is quite another to come face to face with that killer. His years, his practiced, easy calm had fallen away to reveal ... something else. A predator. A raptor caught up in the joy of its killing dive, flexing its talons as it grasped its prey. Exhibiting, for that moment, a predator’s joy.

  Then, Maestro stepped back from his work and slapped a final button on the jukebox, starting the speakers blaring to life. Metalica, I thought as I smothered a hysterical giggle. “No Remorse.” Old stuff. How had that gotten into the Bear’s jukebox?

  With a wound like that, it had to be over. No way could someone, even someone as big as Jugger, survive having his throat cut, through and through, from one side to the other. I was wrong. As Maestro triggered the jukebox—something he’d obviously preset before I’d forced him to change his plan—Jugger pounced.

  Maestro must have been expecting something. He spun, and with a speed I had not believed he—or anything human—possessed, he glided back out of range of Jugger’s lunge. A second long, wicked blade appeared in his hand as if he’d conjured it out of thin air. The Juggernaut, covered with blood, still held his own long knife.

  Perched on the bar top, I was within easy reach of Juggernaut’s blade. I hoped Maestro knew what he was doing. If not, nobody was going to walk away from this.

  * * *

  Excerpt from Bone’s Movie Diary:

  Movies are escapism. That’s wisdom as commonly accepted as you can get. But what are we escaping from? ... I’ve just spent 3 full minutes staring incredulously at that we I flung in there so casually. Who the hell am I to anoint myself spokesperson on so profound a point, to put words into anybody else’s mouth, no matter how sincerely I think I know best? But, anyway ... what am I escaping from? I think I can finally say, after viewing what may be thousands of films over the course of my years, it is the fundamental dissatisfaction of reality. Oh, not to go all black-beret existentialist: I don’t mean life is cruel or bleak or hopeless, or any of those adolescent fallback terms. Of course, there’s cruelty & bleakness & hopelessness. What did you think? But reality doesn’t tidy itself up the way films will—even bad movies usually have appropriate endings. Reality isn’t even satisfyingly dissatisfying. It’s streaming with loose ends, with unexplained motivations, with improbable turns of events. And it ends more like the smash-crash outta nowhere finale to Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974, classic Peter Fonda) than the beatific twisted wreckage wipeout that finishes off Vanishing Point (’70s again). The latter quenches a need for culmination. The former just makes me want to look both ways before crossing the train tracks.

  I was furious with Bone. It was bad enough that we’d had to change the game plan to use him as bait. Once that was accomplished, he should have left. But he was willing to face me and put our partnership on the line for a right to stay. Against my better judgment, I let him.

  Once the Juggernaut stepped through the door, he focused all of his attention on Bone, who sat calmly on the bar, taunting him. I realized that could work to my advantage. Jugger never saw me come up behind him. When he attacked Bone, I was in a perfect position to strike. My steel bit into his thick neck and pulled through the flesh like a hot knife through butter. The spray, which splattered me with blood as I went past, told me I’d hit the carotid. I’d also gone right through the larynx.

  He stumbled, but he didn’t go down. Turning, he faced me, eyes wide with disbelief. I was his only friend—at least, the only one he hadn’t killed—and I had betrayed him. I took the moment to lean over and hit the last button on the Juke. If Bone had not intervened I would have started the loud music the minute Jugger came through the door. As it was, I took a risk turning my back on him, even for a second, even when I’d given him a mortal wound.

  He lunged, his steel perfectly directed at me. Kill shots are great, but you don’t always get the immediate kill. Early on in my days with the Outfit, I’d once seen a man take a .38 slug in the heart. He still found the time and strength to empty his nine-millimeter at my “trainer” and then change magazines for several more shots before he f
inally keeled over. The trainer had been showing me, the newbie, the ropes. He took a round in the cheek, one in the elbow. I quickly decided to transfer over into the hunter/tracker branch of my organization.

  I had learned my lesson from that. I never truly dropped my guard. I sensed the big man move, and I glided back from his leap. I’d already cleared my Quicksilver. It might not be as sharp as the razor, but it gave me an extra inch or so of reach, and it had a needle point. Loud, harsh metal music pounded the air as Jugger brandished his weapon in his bloody hand. That was going to screw up his grip ... that, and the pints of blood he was rapidly losing. His overalls were already soaked with it.

  I had betrayed him. He probably realized I’d tagged him fatally, but the one hair-trigger thought now burning out of control through his suffocating brain was revenge. He was dying, but he meant to take me with him.

  One thing in my favor, however, was what I had discovered long ago while working with swords: your average street fighter has no concept of how fast or how far a fencer can lunge. Right now the Jugger, who was plainly getting ready for another pounce, probably thought he was currently at a safe distance. In actuality, he was nearly ten inches inside my range. He’d told me when I first met him that he hadn’t picked up a sword since he was eighteen. His lack of practice worked to my advantage. I noted with some surprise that he held his weapon left-handed. He had always shot pool right-handed. He was versatile, I guessed.

  I couldn’t run the risk of his deciding to turn tail and run out into the street. The Bear was under my orders to stay guard out there, to keep anybody from coming in during the show. But even he wouldn’t be able to stop the Juggernaut if he hit the door with the full weight of his massive body. And that would be ... messy.

  Before he could complete his strike, I moved. Bone, thank all the gods, stayed put.

  Long lunge. My point penetrated Jugger’s right eye. Don’t step back—fall and roll sideways to avoid the thrust from his weapon side.

  I came up on one knee, knife ready for another lunge.

  It was over.

  He did a three-step stagger, a little weave, then dropped. His body hit the boards, actually shaking the place. He landed on a hip and rolled onto his broad back, thrashed forcefully for a few seconds, then weakly for a few more. He’d dropped his weapon, had a hand on his throat and one clapped over where his eye had been. His remaining eye wasn’t looking at me.

  Thankfully.

  I waited with a kind of totally detached and serene horror for a full minute after all movement had stopped. Even then, my first move was to step on his knife hand and pin it down while I withdrew my handkerchief, picked up his weapon—an oversized ice pick or a sharpened whetting steel, maybe—from the floor. Then I removed the envelope from my hip pocket, shook the card out onto his chest, and spiked it there with his own weapon.

  Bone came up beside me and put a hand on my shoulder. He looked down at my work. The tarot card was the Sun.

  “Maybe the cops will get the hint when they find the body.” Bone’s voice remained surprisingly steady.

  I had several spare pairs of surgical gloves in my pocket. I handed a set to Bone.

  The Bear had told me where he’d stashed the plastic tarpaulin behind the bar. We spread it on the floor and rolled Jugger onto it, onto his side. I picked up my razor and pocketed it. Then I grabbed the expensive, absorbent paper towels, handed some to Bone, and mopped. Jugger could bleed all he wanted to now. At least he wasn’t spouting anymore. I only had to worry about the red stuff he’d dropped on the floorboards, and some bleach and Pine Sol would take care of what I missed. Even before seeing to the floor, though, I meticulously wiped off the few drops I could feel already congealing on my face.

  We worked in silence. It seemed like forever, but at that moment the jukebox clicked off. I realized the song I’d played to cover the noise of the fight had only just finished. The winking display told me to make the rest of my selections.

  We tied up the wide tarp with coarse hemp ropes. The tarp covered the Juggernaut entirely. We threw the used towels into a bag for the incinerator. I stripped off my gloves and tossed them in, too, and directed Bone to do the same.

  “Bone,” I said, “you don’t need to know the rest. Go out the back. And burn that shirt.”

  He nodded, gave me his version of the warrior’s handshake, and headed out.

  I rapped sharply on the inside face of the front door. Two short, pause, two short. Then I waited. The Bear regularly carried a cell phone. It was nothing odd for him to make a call from out in front of the bar.

  By my wristwatch it was ninety-five seconds before the van rolled up to the door—and I mean to the door. It used the driveway and swung up onto the sidewalk, braking with about a foot and a half of clearance from the entrance. The big side door opened just as the Bear pushed open the bar’s door. He reached into the van and pulled out a plywood ramp.

  We grabbed the Juggernaut, dragged him up the ramp, and heaved his tarp-covered body into the van. I hopped in after, pulled up the ramp after me, and slid the door shut. No windows opened onto the bare bed of the van. The front seats were screened from the rear by a black curtain.

  Padre took the wheel and sent us lurching off the sidewalk and down Decatur. He had made up the phony signs for the sides of the van—big magnetic sheets that peeled right off. They said PRIMEAUX GAS EXPERTS. Even had a phone number. If anyone asked, the Bear would say he had called the bar’s owner in Gretna after first calling for the repair crew, and that the owner, tightwad that he was, had ordered the Bear to cancel the professional repairs. The Bear would then go in and patch the leak up himself. No big deal. He’d done it before.

  Meanwhile, I heard no sirens as Padre drove at a modest, normal speed. Beside me in the darkness of the van’s rear, the Juggernaut remained a large dead mound ... and I didn’t feel too old to be doing this.

  No, not too old at all.

  * * *

  I’d ordered a full week to cool-off, so seeing everybody again at once was a pleasant shock.

  We’d coordinated our schedule at that last all-present summit conference, after the operation, so that our crew would not cross paths for a week. Of course, I did put in one appearance at the Calf, since my total no-show would seem strange, but I did it on a night when Alex was off work and Bone wasn’t there to collect her. I stayed long enough for one drink and had a brief conversation with Padre about our eight-ball team, within earshot of several regulars.

  I had missed seeing Bone the most.

  I hit the Calf at about two-thirty. The Bear was punching numbers on the jukebox, throwing comments over his shoulder at Padre behind the bar about the “wimp-ass selection.” Padre chuckled and set a fresh cocktail in front of Alex, who was in her black-and-whites. I glided up and tossed a bill on the bartop.

  “Let me get it,” I said as I nodded to Padre, which got me a hardy hug and a sound kiss on the cheek from Alex. Though I probably would have gotten those anyway. Padre said a casual hello.

  The Bear and I shook hands, and we got into an almost immediate argument about college football draft picks. It was actually an argument from several years ago, and people were used to us trotting it out every so often. I picked up my Irish, and, nodding more hellos to the tipsy regulars, wandered down to where Bone sat at the trivia machine.

  “How’s it going, Bone?” I said, glancing at the screen over his shoulder. Movie trivia, of course.

  “I hate my fucking job,” he said around the cigarette burning between his lips. He glanced at me, and a definite flicker of warmth showed in his eyes.

  I nodded. The gripe was practically his mantra. I suppose I might feel the same way if I had a square job, or if I needed to be working any job at all to make ends meet. Fact was I had left Detroit with a good nest egg, as well as a few ... treasures, so to speak. Even after buying
my new identity from Padre I’d had a solid amount left over. My first year in New Orleans, I had made a fluke killing on the stock market, one of those ridiculous, overnight fortune deals. Five months before that, I’d been a dabbling investor. Now I had ... well, I had enough.

  “Although, I figured out how to make up for lost tips,” Bone said. He hesitated and grinned. “Alex and I decided we could save money if we shared an apartment.”

  I congratulated them both and ordered drinks all around to celebrate the happy news.

  Padre closed it down at about a quarter after three, which was about the earliest he could get away with it, what with the grill working again and the Calf serving its topnotch burgers. When the shutters were pulled, we assembled with our various drinks in the back booth. The Bear sat next to me, Bone and Alex snuggled opposite, and Padre pulled up a chair.

  “To a job, I think, well done,” I said, lifting my glass. Everybody drank to it, smiling and grinning.

  Then we reviewed thoroughly. Padre had returned the van to its place of origin, which was at a friend of his in Mid-City. Gone were the PRIMEAUX GAS EXPERTS signs. Also, Padre had put the original authentic license plates back on the vehicle.

  I’d tossed the straight razor and my Al Mar Quicksilver into two different segments of the Mississippi. The cell phone had gone in too, per Padre’s instructions. I hated to lose the Quicksilver, but I could and would get another.

  No one at Alex’s job had questioned her absence. Food poisoning happens. Bone, obviously, was back to work.

  The corpses of both the Juggernaut and Dunk had been dutifully discovered—Dunk’s where he had fallen, Jugger’s where we had placed it on the Moonwalk—and the events splashed briefly across the evening news programs. The police had made their standard request for anyone with information to come forward. So far as what had turned up in the paper or any news show, nobody had. It was never even mentioned that there was a link between the two murder victims.