Blood and Bone (7 page)

Hannibal wondered how long Daisy had been waiting for him to walk into the coffee shop. She had chosen a booth which offered a certain amount of privacy, while giving her a clear view of the door.

He spotted her easily enough. She had not told him how striking she was for a woman in her forties, but she had described herself as a natural ash blonde. Her hair was straightened, then waved in almost a Marilyn style. It struck a stark contrast against her coffee colored skin, but her face was pretty enough to pull his attention away from her hair. Her body was trim, nicely filling her simple yellow shift.

After asking Ray to stay at the counter and asking the waitress to bring him coffee, Hannibal joined Daisy in the booth. Her posture was erect, her eyes bright and intelligent, her nails meticulously manicured.

“Good morning,” he said. “Sorry to drag you out like this.”

“Is this trouble?” she asked. “Will you be followed by the police?”

Hannibal accepted his coffee and waited for the waitress to move away before he answered. The fresh perked aroma both energized and relaxed him for the unpleasant job ahead. “I didn't want you
disturbed so I didn't mention you to the police. I found your name and address among Ike Paton's effects.”

Daisy's brows knit together and she leaned in on her elbows. Her carefully manicured voice formed careful, measured words. “His effects? Just what is going on here Mister Jones?”

“I'm afraid your ex-husband is dead, Mrs. Sonneville.” Hannibal dipped his head to push his dark glasses more firmly into place. “I'm sorry to tell you he was murdered yesterday. I know you're not regularly in contact with him but I just thought you should know. I barely knew Ike, or is it Pat?”

“Pat, please.” Daisy sat back, her arms wrapped around herself. “He was Patrick Louis all his life until about a year ago. My first husband was a criminal, Mister Jones. My present husband doesn't know the kind of people I used to associate with. That's why I asked to meet you here. Pat and I have been divorced for seven years now. Seven years, but this still…” she swallowed, and apparently decided she had said enough. After a moment she said “Thank you for this. You didn't have to come here.”

Hannibal smiled. “My woman insisted I tell you, and not over the phone. But if you don't mind my asking, you were still in contact? Usually when a woman remarries that ends that.”

“I left Pat, Mister Jones, he didn't leave me. See, Pat was one of those men,” she glared defiantly at Hannibal as another member of a dirty species, “who believed who he slept with had nothing to do with who he loved. I could put up with his gangster friends, an occasional slap, but not that. So I left, but he never stopped chasing me. Then about a year ago he wrote me from Atlantic City saying he had finally found the perfect business opportunity and he was about to get
rich. I wrote back to tell him I wasn't interested. I guess this plan was as risky as everything else he ever did.” Her voice dropped with her eyes. “I guess it finally caught up with him.”

Hannibal subtly checked his watch. He had done the right thing, but he was burning daylight, Kyle's time. Still he hated to waste a possibility, so he would gamble two more minutes.

“Mrs. Sonneville, I'm involved in an investigation here in Baltimore and if you have a couple of minutes you might be able to save me some time.”

“Sure,” she smiled, seemingly relieved to change the subject.

“Have you ever heard of Jacob Mortimer?”

Her eyes rolled up the way people do when they're pretending to search their memories. “No, that name doesn't mean anything to me.”

“How about Bobby Newton?”

“Nope, sorry.”

“The Moonglow Club?”

“Sure,” she said along with the first genuine smile she had given him. “It's over on Fells Point. Place has been there forever. I've got to get back to the University, but if you've got a notebook I can give you good directions.”

“Great,” Hannibal said, pulling a pad and pen from his inside jacket pocket. As he had guessed, a glimpse of his gun did not bother a woman who had lived with Ike Paton, AKA Patrick Louis. She wrote in a script as precise as her speech.

“Math department.”

“What?” Daisy asked, looking up.

“I've been sitting here trying to decide what you teach at Maryland. I think math.”

Daisy raised a small hand to cover her squeaky giggle. Her eyes flashed at him, almost but not quite flirting. “Mister Jones, that makes my day. I don't teach at Maryland. I'm a cleaning woman.”

The door was open but the place was obviously closed. Hannibal and Ray walked into a dark cavern filled with dancing shadows bounced off the long mirror behind the bar. Chairs were turned up on tables, their legs thrust toward the ceiling. The odor of stale beer rose from the tables, the chairs, the floor itself.

Quick footsteps violated the silence of the sleeping club. The man stalking toward them wore a plaid jacket and pants that, incredibly, did not match. Wire framed aviator style glasses shielded his eyes. Even in the dark, Hannibal could see the blond thatch on his head was not all his own hair. The man was two or three inches shorter than Hannibal, but he looked his visitors up and down with a hard eye.

“Sunglasses, as dark as it is in here?” the man said. “You the police or the mob? Don't matter. Got no use for either of you. Get the hell out.”

“Not a cop,” Hannibal said, offering his card. “Not the mob. Name's Hannibal Jones. You the owner?”

“Quentin Moon,” the man said, examining the card closely as if he expected it to yield additional information, some deeper meaning. “Yeah, I'm the owner. I'm also the manager, part time bartender, clean up boy, bouncer, chief cook and bottle washer.”

“Mister Moon, I just need five minutes of your time.”

“I'm kind of busy,” Moon said, tucking Hannibal's card into his shirt pocket. “Hit the road, Jack.”

Before he could say anything else, Hannibal felt a hand on his arm, then heard the door open and close behind him. He imagined Moon had a woman meeting him, which would explain his inhospitable welcome. But it was a man who brushed past Hannibal on his way in. A man who Hannibal thought looked like an eerie, white fun house mirror image of himself. He was taller and broader than Hannibal, and wore cheap sunglasses with his black suit. And, of course, Hannibal had a neck.

Never willing to miss a possible conflict, Hannibal followed the bigger man into the club, with Ray at his side. The new man glanced at Hannibal, then removed his own glasses and focused on Moon.

“You know why I'm here,” the newcomer said. “You ain't paid.”

“And I ain't going to,” Moon bellowed back. “You think you scare me? You don't scare me. I been hustled by experts.”

“Uh-huh.” No Neck threw a hand around Moon's neck and put his weight behind a right hook into Moon's belly. Moon doubled into a ball and dropped to the floor. Hannibal looked back at the door, to see No Neck's backup grinning there, no gun drawn.

“Wait a minute man,” Hannibal said, smiling like an old friend. “You going to shake the man down with me standing here?”

“You a cop?”

“No,” Hannibal said, hands stretched wide.

“Then piss off.” No Neck stiff-armed Hannibal hard enough to send him into the bar.

“You getting to be a problem, Moon,” No Neck said, kicking Moon in the chest. “Last guy had this beat was too easy, but I ain't allowing no exceptions.”

“Maybe just this one.” Hannibal's words made No Neck turn. Hannibal's gloved fist raked across his jaw.

No Neck shook his head to clear it, and his lips spread into a broad grin. “You ain't got enough ass, stud.”

No Neck raised his fists like a seasoned boxer and bounced a couple of crisp jabs off Hannibal's forearms. As he stepped in to deliver an overhand right, Hannibal sidestepped and whipped a front snap kick into his gut. His enemy grunted, so Hannibal kicked him again. Backup Man had not drawn yet. Good.

No Neck lowered his guard and Hannibal jerked the man's head back with a straight left. Dazed, No Neck charged, but Hannibal easily moved aside, pounding the back of his head as he went by. When No Neck wheeled around, Hannibal put an uppercut through his guard. It put the mob man on his butt.

Now Backup Man reached to his waistband, but Hannibal filled his own left fist with automatic first. “Don't,” he said. “I'd have to kill you, then your partner. Why don't you just come help him to his feet?”

When Backup Man came near, Ray slapped his head and took his gun. Then Hannibal motioned to him to help No Neck up.

“Now, I don't know either of you, and I don't want to know you,” Hannibal said. “But I want you to know me. Call your friends down in DC and ask them who Hannibal Jones is. Then cross this place off your list, understand? Because, my friend, if I have to come all
the way back up here to talk to you, I will seriously fuck you up. Understand?”

The action had taken less than two minutes. Hannibal was not even breathing hard. After the two shakedown artists backed out of the room, Hannibal put his gun away. Moon regained his feet, using the bar for balance. His breathing was deep but ragged.

“Now, five minutes of your time?” Hannibal asked as if the unpleasant interruption had not happened.

“You kidding? After that, you can have all the time you want. Come back to my office.”

Quentin Moon's office was brightly lit and colorfully decorated. Money was scattered across his desk, mixed in with cash register receipts and small notes, probably IOU's. Moon lurched to his chair and waved Hannibal and Ray to two others.

“Those bent nose types been hassling me since I opened the place twenty years ago,” Moon said. “They come around every so often to slap me around. I learned long ago that if you say no and stick to it, they eventually decide you ain't worth the hassle. But thanks for saving me some lumps.”

“My pleasure,” Hannibal said, his eyes following Moon across the floor. “So this was your place from the beginning?”

“You got it,” Moon said, returning with three beers and glasses. He handed Samuel Addams bottles to his guests, keeping a Miller Lite for himself.

Hannibal shared a smile with Ray while they opened and poured their brews. “So, Quentin, do you remember a kid named Bobby Newton?”

“Do I?” Moon pulled an Alka Seltzer packet out of his desk drawer and dropped the tablets into his beer. “That kid made me more money than anybody I ever had in the club, before or since. Everybody was
looking for the new Al Green, and I had him right here in my place, three times a week for eight months. He had the soul, man, but when he wanted to, he could turn around and be as funky as Sly.”

Moon's eyes drifted into the past while his beer threatened to boil over. The fizzing sound dominated the room for a moment. Abruptly he grabbed his glass and swallowed half its contents. Hannibal turned his head to hide his disgust.

“I know it's been a long time, but his family's lost track of him and I'm trying to find him. Did you know him well enough to have an idea where he went?”

“Hey, I knew Bobby pretty well,” Moon said, starting to search through a set of cabinets on the far side of his office. “Went over to his pad lots of times. Sat and listened to records and got high with him and his wife.”

“Wife?” Hannibal and Ray exchanged another stunned look. “Camille?”

“Who?” Moon asked. “No, her name was Barbie. Here, check this out.” He produced a rolled up poster. When he spread it against the closed cabinet door it revealed a four foot tall photo of “Bobby Newton”, now playing at the Moonglow. He looked so happy, so free, Hannibal understood why he chose to leave the life his father provided to make one for himself.

“Barbie was half black, half Latin?” Hannibal asked.

“Yeah, that's the girl,” Moon said, laying the poster on his desk. “She really loved him. Never missed a show at the club.”

It made sense, Hannibal thought. A guy who would call himself Bobby Newton would call a girl named Barbie by the nickname Dolly. He was getting a picture of this kid as a sharp, rebellious, witty, talented guy. He could go anywhere.

“Did they ever talk about moving on to bigger things?”

“Not seriously,” Moon said, pouring the rest of his beer into his glass. “I don't think fame and fortune was his thing. Bobby already had money from somewhere. More than I could pay him, that's for sure. Besides, they were having too much fun here. I tell you, Barbie loved to watch him work on stage. They even hired a maid. The theory was, she would clean and help out while Barbie was pregnant, but after little Angela was born, she took care of her so Barbie could be here at the club when he was on.”

Hannibal emptied his glass and leaned forward in his chair to watch Moon's eyes closely. “And where is Mister Bobby Newton now?”