by Nick Dorsey
“Amelia.” That was Sal’s voice, strained. Worried, almost.
She didn’t look back. “The slave quarters, Jackson. I need to get dressed.”
Tom was brought through the wood-paneled living where three massive couches sat waiting for occupants. He was pushed through a glass back door. Rose bushes gave way to beds of white iris and amaryllis that nearly hid the sandstone pavers leading back to a guest house styled as a one-story version of the main house. These smaller stand-alone apartments were sometimes called mother-in-law suites, but the term slave’s quarters was still popular with the old New Orleans set.
Perry the muscle and Jackson pushed Tom inside and what he saw didn’t cheer him up. This was no guest house. The building was mostly one decent-sized room. The floor was a bare concrete slab with a tool bench on one side of the room and a few stools sitting next to it. There were no windows. The place smelled of stone and metal and had the feel of a holding cell or a pen for an animal ready for slaughter. There was even a spigot on the wall and a hose hanging next to it. Like the place had been put together inside-out.
That was strange. Why would you need a hose inside? Tom didn’t think he’d want the answer to that.
The two men shut the door behind them. Perry said, “Strip.”
“What?”
“Strip or I’ll do it for you.”
Tom hesitated. “I’m not wearing a wire or anything.”
Perry took his charging-bull posture so Tom raised his hands in defeat and began to shrug off his clothes. “We’re on the same side of this, you know. We’ve got the same problem. Dominic.”
“Don’t know him,” Perry said, pursing his lips. He gingerly touched his nose and winced.
“I didn’t know who you were with, before,” Tom said. Trying to mend fences. Nobody was buying that. He was down to his boxers and wishing he hadn’t given up drinking.
Perry grimaced, eyed Tom up and down, then exchanged a long look with Jackson. He said. “Guy’s not recording anything.”
“Have a seat,” Jackson said, gesturing to a stool. “When Mrs. LaRocca is ready, we’ll talk.”
Perry gathered his clothing and phone and Jackson handed him a set of handcuffs. “Cuff yourself to the crossbar.” He gestured to a metal bar running between two legs of the stool. Tom began to cuff one hand to the bar, but Jackson stopped him. “Both hands around the bar, smart guy.”
Tom reluctantly did so. They left him there, and he began to wonder what sort of conversation he would be having with Mrs. LaRocca. He decided he didn’t want to stick around and find out if he could at all help it. Tom looked around the room and cursed. There was nothing he could see that would help him. The few drawers on the tool bench were secured with padlocks. He pushed himself backward and wiggled off the stool. The cuffs twisted his wrist and he had to turn his hands to get a grip on the thing, but he was able to grab it and lift it. He swung the stool experimentally, like a half-bright lion tamer waiving a chair. It wasn’t much, but at least he wasn’t totally defenseless. He had to keep telling himself that.
Louis didn’t have much to say on their drive to the LaRocca house. He didn’t even turn the radio on. He knew the back roads, at least, which Jean was thankful for. He angled the Cadillac past main thoroughfares and headed for the broken side streets where there were no lights or funds for street repair. Above them, the morning sun was giving up before noon, ceding territory to slow-moving storm clouds that rumbled and groaned as they conquered new sky.
Jean held her bat in between her legs. “So you’re what, a soldier? A bodyguard? Do you guys still use those sorts of labels or everybody just a ‘friend of ours’ or something?”
The big man looked at her like she was crazy, his mouth half-open, eyes wide. He said, “You know this car is like some sort of collector’s deal?”
“I’m sure Sal knows a mechanic.”
Louis shook his head. “I was just looking out for you.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. I’ve got a whole army of assholes looking out for me. I’m ever-so-goddamn grateful.”
LaRocca’s place was hidden behind a row of hedges, a nice sprawling place Uptown. When she got out of the car Louis said, “Leave the bat. Nobody’s going to talk to you like that.”
Jean only gripped it tighter. Holding it like she might have to use it soon.
Louis threw his hands up in defeat. “Okay, fine. Have it your way.”
The door was answered by a short guy layered with muscle. His nose was covered in a bandage, and recently, too. The bandage was stained with the bright red of fresh blood. His pinched face opened up when he saw Jean and Louis on the front stoop. “What the hell is this?”
“I want to talk to Sal.” Jean said it in a flat tone. Her Public Defender voice.
The guy at the door looked past her to Louis. “Is she serious?”
Louis shrugged. “I watched her. She made me. She knocked out a few of Sal’s headlights. I didn’t know what to do, Perry.”
Perry leaned between them to check out Sal’s Cadillac. “Holy shit,” he said. He held his hand out. “Give me that.”
“I told you so,” Louis said to Jean. Then, to Perry, he said, “What happened to your face?”
“It’s been a weird morning. Hey. Lady. This isn’t a game. I’m not asking.”
Jean looked between the two of them and decided to give the bat to Louis. He looked like the more rational of the two.
“Christ,” Perry said and he led them inside. They walked past a giant swamp scene and down a hall hung with family photos. “In the office,” Perry said as he cracked a set of French doors. “He’s been holding court. So I guess you, uh, await your audience here.” Then he was gone. Louis followed Jean into the leather-and-wood office. The old clunking gears of the old cuckoo clock forced the second hand around and the sound of it echoed throughout the house.
Quick footsteps sounded in the hall and then Sal was there, one hand handing a cup of coffee, the other flat over it as if he had run from the kitchen and was afraid he was going to spill it everywhere. He visibly deflated when he saw Jean. “Oh Christ, what now?”
“Stop sending these idiots after me,” Jean snapped.
“I’m sorry, Mr. LaRocca,” Louis said, then stopped as he realized when she had just said. “Hey. What the hell?”
“Nobody’s sending nobody after you, Ms. Perez.” Sal snarled, “Louis. What is this.”
“She saw me. She came at me with a bat and wanted to talk to you.”
“So call.”
“She smashed my phone with a goddamn bat. You said keep an eye on her, make sure she’s okay.” Louis shrugged his huge shoulders. “So here I am.”
Sal glared at him. He moved past Louis to look at Jean from behind the coffee mug, where two cartoon crawfish complete with hats and canes tap-danced around the ceramic. “You got your phone on you?” He sipped his coffee and smacked his lips.
Jean took a moment to think about it, then pulled out her phone and turned it off. That seemed to satisfy Sal. He said, “I know you’re probably tore up about your friend, but this isn’t going to go well. Why don’t you let Louis drive you home?”
The bit about her friend didn’t register with Jean. She took a seat on the worn leather couch, sinking in more than she was comfortable with. “You got your lawyer friend to make some moves and got me off the Sofia Adelfi case.”
Sal’s head moved down between his shoulder blades, turtle-like, the weight of the world on his shoulders. “No. I’m not having a discussion here. You’re going home. Or I can have Louis drive you over to the LSU hospital. Gunshots, that’s where they go.”
“Is that a threat?”
Sal slammed his coffee cup down on the old desk, upsetting an inkwell that had been dry for decades and breaking the handle off the mug. Coffee splashed as the ceramic split in two, sending the tap-dancing crawfish their separate ways. “Christ. I’m trying to help! Your boyfriend told me all about the black kid. What’s his name? Patton? I’
m real sorry, but it’s got nothing to do with me. And being here isn’t good for you.”
“Patton’s been shot?” For a moment Jean felt like she had been shot, too. Sal was muttering to himself as he fished a tie off an ancient coat rack and started mopping up the coffee. Louis tried to help but the old man bared his teeth. The big man stayed by the French doors. Jean’s heart was racing. A light sweat broke out on the back of her neck, even though the office was almost cool. Gone were the thoughts of Eason and his connection to the mob lawyer. She asked what happened, but Sal either didn’t know or didn’t want to tell her. She said, “It was Dominic, wasn’t it?”
There was a tap at the door. Perry stood on the other side of the array of glass panes, his head moving back and forth, trying to take in the whole scene. Louis, Sal, Jean, the coffee cup. Everything.
“Leave us the fuck alone!” Sal yelled, and Perry took a step back. He snorted loud enough to be heard through the glass and walked down the hall. Not back to the front door, but in the other direction.
Sal stopped what he was doing and shook his head. “You and your boyfriend, you just don’t know when to keep your mouth shut, do you?”
“Boyfriend?”
“Mr. Connelly.” He dropped the tie. “You could have just gone up to University Medical Center, you know? Now it’s not up to me.”
“It’s not up to you? What does that mean?” Jean was yelling now, rising from the couch. “Where’s Tom?” Louis reached a big paw out and almost gently shoved her back down.
“Even bosses got bosses,” Sal said.
Jean was shocked by the man’s somber tone. The funny little used car salesman was gone, now. It was then that the seriousness of her situation finally occurred to Jean.
Patton had been shot.
And now she was in Sal LaRocca’s house.
“People know I’m here,” she said.
Sal lazily looked to Louis for confirmation. The big man waved his hand back and forth, maybe she was telling the truth. She could have told somebody to go see Sal LaRocca if anything happened to her. Louis shrugged and shook his head. Maybe she was telling the truth. Sure.
Probably not, though.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“I’m sorry it’s got to be this way,” Amelia LaRocca said as Jackson wheeled her into the room. Tom was waiting, both hands on the metal bar below the seat of the stool. Amelia took him in and stopped talking. She waved a hand and Jackson came around the wheelchair with a smirk stretching his circle beard. Tom took his chance. He pulled the stool up, biting his lip as the cuffs dug into his wrists, and tried to press one of the legs into Jackson’s stomach.
Circle Beard grabbed the leg and yanked it, hard, twisting the cuffs into Tom’s wrists and making him cry out. He pulled the chair up and to one side and threw a punch right into Tom’s solar plexus. The same place he had been hit before in Sal’s office. Jackson was turning out to be some sort of marksman. Tom doubled over, his arms still hoisted above his head by Jackson and the stool. The man wasn’t coming after him, so Tom stutter-stepped to the wall. The man let him prop himself up there and catch his breath. He was just a tired man in his boxers, thinking about how stupid that had been, and just how hopeless things were now.
Without warning, Jackson dropped the stool and Tom followed it to the ground. The man turned to his boss and said, “I told you he’d try something like that.”
Tom tried to collect himself on the floor. He caught Amelia’s eye. “This is how you do it? Kill me in a shed and bury me under your garden?”
“What do you know about last night?” Amelia said like he hadn’t just tried to escape. Her dress was a dark red, these crazy ruffles running from hip to shoulder. Almost Latin. Tom wondered if she always got dressed up to watch her guys torture somebody.
He said, “One of your guys shot my friend.”
Amelia raised a finger. That’s all it took. Jackson’s leather oxford struck him in the face and fireworks exploded over Tom’s cheek. He grunted and fell back onto the fallen stool, momentarily tangled in the metal legs.
“It’s true,” he gasped when he managed to turn himself over. “Dominic. I had nothing to do with anything last night. You’re the one with the problem.”
Jackson’s oxford was up again but Amelia stopped him and wheeled over to Tom. “Where is he?” she said.
Tom gave her a puzzled look. “You think I would be here if I knew?”
“Perry and Jackson have a theory. They think you and Dominic managed to hit three locations last night and kill two men. They think Dominic got the better of you and took off with the money. What do you say to that?”
Tom laughed. What else could he do? His life was on the line because a few idiots had a few half-assed theories. He said, “I’m working for a goddamn lawyer. I am not a stick-up artist.”
Amelia looked at Circle Beard but only got a shrug in response. “Mr. Connelly. You seem like a nice young man. But Sal’s overly fond of too many people right now.”
Tom tried to wipe the smile off his face. He wound up sneering at her. “You know it’s always been Dominic.”
“Jackson, do you have a gun?” The man with the circle beard looked surprised, but he nodded. When Amelia held out her hand he slipped a pistol with a walnut grip into her frail fingers. She could barely hold it up. Laying the gun in her lap, she said, “Give us a moment.”
The other man did. Tom leaned on the stool and watched the other man leave. His sneer was gone. All traces of humor or braggadocio were gone. All that was left was a burning desire to walk out of that room alive. When the door was shut, he took a deep breath. “I have a son,” he said.
“Family’s important,” Amelia said, without a trace of conviction. “My Uncle Frederico built up an empire. I spent the last forty years watching it get washed away. We need something like those islands in the gulf. Barrier islands. And reefs that keep out the storms? Break it up before it floods the city.” She looked down at the gun in her lap. “Listen to me ramble. The storm has come and gone and we’re still drowning, Sal and I. He’s a good man, but he’s not Uncle Freddy. He’s vulnerable, even if he won’t admit it. He couldn’t see Dominic. Neither one of us could. Couldn’t see how dangerous he was. And he’s not seeing you, either.”
Tom’s ears were pounding. His fingers tightened around the seat of the stool, thinking he could maybe throw it at her. She was an old woman after all. And he didn’t think she was telling her little story as a way to send him on his way.
“Maybe you didn’t have anything to do with last night. But you’ve been sniffing around,” she said and used both hands to hold the pistol on him. It wasn’t the first time she had held one. “I’m sure you’re a fine father. But we need to protect ourselves. We need those little islands out on the coast, dispersing those things that would destroy us.”
“And you think I’d make a good one,” Tom snarled. “My body, anyway.”
Somebody tapped on the door. Urgent little rattling taps that sounded dull from the inside. Jackson opened the door and raised his hands apologetically. Perry pushed his way right behind the man, frantic. “Some lady just showed up with a bat.”
“A what?” Jackson said.
“She’s talking to Mr. LaRocca right now.”
“She’s got a bat?” Amelia said, frowning.
“She had one, yeah. Lawyer lady.”
Jean. It had to be. Tom scrambled to his feet, holding the stool in front of him. He took an uncontrollable step toward Amelia.
“Wait,” he said, but she raised her gun, the barrel swaying in her atrophied hands.
Jean took it all in. Patton. Tom having been there. She held up her phone to show Sal the blank screen. To show him she wasn’t recording.
She said, “You know it was Dominic Barese.”
Sal’s nostrils flared and something inside him gave a little bit. “I know there’s an empty apartment on Napoleon Avenue, all cleaned out. So you don’t worry about that. And there’s an old lady
in Harahan who doesn’t know where her son is. So don’t go bothering anybody. Okay? Whoever you’re looking for, he’s probably long gone somewheres. Beyond that? I know nothing about nothing.”
“Do you know where Tom is right now?” Jean said.
Sal shook his head and watched Louis clean up shards of broken coffee cup for a moment. That was a yes, Jean thought, and now she was getting nervous. She could feel the unease coming off Sal and Louis both and it made her arms break out in gooseflesh and caused the hairs on the back of her neck to stand up.
Louis might be a dumb lunk, but Sal was not. And dumb or not, they were dangerous. And she had basically kidnapped one of these dangerous gangsters and forced him to take her into the lion’s den. Dear God, why had she done that?
I’m a fighter.
Jesus, the words sounded uncertain and ridiculous, even to her. She had the sudden urge to scream and run from the house.
She fought that as best she could, cleared her throat, and said, “Coming here was a mistake.”
“Yeah,” Sal agreed, not looking at her.
“And my friend is in the hospital.” She said it all too quickly.
“Yeah,” Sal said, and then he did look up. “Why don’t you let Louis give you a ride over there?” He said it like he had just thought of it, and it was maybe the best idea he ever had. Louis stood with a palm-full of glistening shards and shrugged.
Jean nodded. She was getting her breath under control, trying not to focus on the sweat beading at her forehead. The room suddenly felt very small and stuffy, and the leather couch seemed to be collapsing, sinking in on itself. She stood before the thing could devour her whole.
She stopped herself.
I’m a fighter.
She wouldn’t let herself run, now. Not when it was so important that she stay.
“I want to see Tom,” she said. “And I’ve got information to trade.”
“Don’t,” Sal said. “You got a way out of here, right now.”
“No,” Jean said, and she sat down. Sal sighed.
