Gods of New Orleans (11 page)

A couple of times around Chicago City airspace and she’d asked for a shot at flying them home. That’s when Mr. Dashing turned to Mr. Damned. He’d recoiled in horror, standing at the pilot’s position. His hands clenched the wheel as if he’d feared her suggestion would bring down a fiery bolt of retribution from above.

If only he knew what the gods were really all about
.

Emma smirked at the memories and put her attention back on what mattered. Had they made a mistake coming to this spot? Would they be safe? Hardy said this deck belonged to him outright.

“Bought it off Mistah Bacchus myself. Free and clear, just like the two of you now.”

He’d laughed at his little joke and then told them about the watering hole under the deck. A one-room joint with a piano and a little stage beside it. The tavern owner used to play the horn, Hardy had said.

“He might could have it still. Kickin’ it around waitin’ on the right mouth to come with the kiss of music.”

Emma wouldn’t soon forget those words of Hardy’s. The man had kept his eyes on her mouth as he spoke, and for a moment she wasn’t sure if she’d live to see her and Eddie get set up in a place of their own. Hardy’s face said hunger. The bad kind. The kind that doesn’t go away no matter how much a man puts on his plate.

But he let them go with a wave, while his other hand rested on his breast just above where Emma had seen him tuck the gun he shot Otis with.

“Think we’ll make it, Eddie?” she asked. “Think we’ll be okay?”

“Sure thing, Lovebird. Gonna be fine. Just you wait and see. Got real family down here now. Not like in Chicago City when it was just me and the band to lean on. We got a whole krewe gonna help us out once they know I’m back in town.”

She turned around to see him straining to stay upright in the chair. His lips peeled back to show his teeth as he pivoted and put his feet flat like he would try to stand.

“Wait, Eddie‌—‌” she said, but it was too late. He lurched up and stood for second. She was on her feet in a flash and went to him.

~•~

By some miracle Eddie stayed on his feet until Emma got him out of the ship for the second time that day. He’d even kept up beside her as they went down the stairs to the tavern beneath the deck.

The neighborhood was in an old part of town. Hardy called it Old Storyville. The street they’d flown over on the way to the deck was called Iberville and, except for the deck and tavern, it didn’t have much along it. In all directions, a distant row of houses stood across an open area of freshly cleared land.

Emma could see the ruins of a few buildings here and there in the space surrounding the tavern and deck. Piles of brick and wood waited for workmen to come along and clear away the remains. Emma got a flash of fear as she remembered the scrapyard in Chicago City: the stacks of furniture, railroad ties and coils of wire, fence posts, buckets, chains and tools, and all that idle machinery. Most of it had been stolen from her father’s power plant and everything in the yard was going to build the next World’s Fair beside Lake Michigan.

Now, here in New Orleans, Emma wondered what would be built on the newly razed land around her and whether or not crime was involved.

She almost laughed at herself for even thinking it could be otherwise.

“Better get inside, Lovebird,” Eddie said. She turned to see him staring into the growing dusk around them. The clouds overhead made the darkness fall quicker and dusk would soon become full night. Emma put an arm around Eddie and let him rest his weight on her for a moment.

The tavern not only stood beneath the deck, but inside of it, too. The scaffold holding up the deck framed the squat building, making it look like the tavern had sprouted from the ground and grown up into the scaffold like some kind of parasitic plant. Emma imagined a bottle being tossed off the deck one day and weeks later people coming by to see a roof sticking out of the soil, and then the second story windows. Finally the bottom floor would have risen out of the earth with its bright red door and soot-stained clapboards.

Emma stared at the peeling red paint on the door until Eddie prodded her with his hip against hers.

“Go on, Emma. Gettin’ cold out here.”

She opened the door and helped Eddie across the threshold. Inside, a half dozen faces greeted them as they stood in the door.

“Lettin’ in the cold,” the barkeep said. He was a white man in shirt sleeves with a shiny bald head and a little tuft of hair hanging off his chin. He stood behind a polished counter on the right side of the room. Glass bottles of all colors sat on a shelf behind him, against a mirror framed in dark wood. The barkeep picked up a pair of glasses and jutted his chin in their direction. “Go’on shut that door, Miss Emma.”

Emma’s face flashed in shock, but the barkeep settled her brow, laughing as he spoke. “Mistah Hardy say you comin’ on. Now what’ll it be?” he asked, setting the glasses down and turning to reach for a bottle. “First one on the house.”

The barkeep’s hand hovered in front of a clear bottle half full of clear liquid. It felt like a month of Sundays since Emma last had liquor cross her lips. She favored bourbon, but didn’t want to give these men any thoughts about her being a chippy. Letting on she knew her drinking, and could hold it, would send the wrong signals around the little room.

“Whatever you’re pouring is fine,” she said, taking a careful step to the nearest table and helping Eddie into a chair. The other men in the place were all white, but none of them seemed to care much about Emma’s choice of company. The two closest men kept eyes on her, but the others all went back to their drinks and conversation. Amidst the hushed voices and occasional chuckles, Emma took in the rest of the room.

The bar ran halfway down the right side of the space. At the far end of the room, opposite the door, a small stage took up the rest of the wall. Tables and chairs filled the middle of the room, with a little square of space set aside as a dance floor in front of the stage. On the left, a set of stairs led up, and a door beside the foot of the stairs connected to what Emma figured must be the kitchen or the barkeep’s rooms.

“Here ya’ go,” the man said from the bar. Emma heard the two glasses hit the counter. She checked Eddie, whose good eye said he felt safe. His mouth curled into a sad smile because of his busted lip, but Emma let herself relax just the same. She went to the bar and got the glasses. As she stepped away, it hit her that the tavern might have been operating out in the middle of nothing, but it was out in the open, too.

She turned to the barkeep. “Guess the law doesn’t bother you out here, huh?”

The barkeep nearly split his sides he doubled over so fast, slapping a palm on the bar top along with a few other men who whacked the tabletops in front of them.

“Law, Miss Emma? Now that is a good one. Gonna remember that next time we hit a slow season and can’t get music in here. Jokes like that one’d keep the crowd happy.” He set to chortling again and winked at her. “Law don’t mind what the law don’t want to see no how. Sure enough, law don’t want to be seein’ this tavern.”

“But why not?” Emma said, moving back to the table with Eddie and setting down the glasses. She had the full attention of the room and figured it was as good a time as any to get some answers about the new city she’d be calling home. “Hardy told you we were coming, so he must’ve told you where we came from.”

“Oh, sure enough, Mistah Hardy did. And you’d be wise callin’ the man mistah, too, Miss Emma. Folks down here take to politeness like bees to a flower. And they quick to sting you, case you forget.”

Emma’s mind flashed to the image of Hardy’s knife slamming Al Conroy’s hand into the station house wall.

“Sure enough,” Emma said to the barkeep. “So you’re all okay with me and Eddie here? We’d be strung up in two shakes if anybody saw us together on the street in Chicago City. I know New Orleans has her own ways, but how far does that go?”

“Not sure I follow you, Miss Emma,” the barkeep said. Before she could explain, another man spoke up from across the room.

“She means are the two of them safe to walk the streets of New Orleans. She and Mr. Collins here are sure to be out and about and making their way in the Crescent City, and a woman wants to feel safe when she sets up a home. Thing is, she’s already seen the worst New Orleans has to offer. Murder. In cold blood. Ain’t that right, Miss Emma?”

The man wore a white suit and a fedora that he kept tilted down over one side of his face. Emma figured that was why she hadn’t noticed him before. Other than Eddie, this guy was the only man in the place with colored skin. He’d been sitting by himself the entire time and as she looked at him, Emma got the sense she was in the presence of another character like Hardy‌—‌someone with a god in him. She couldn’t tell which one though, and she knew it wouldn’t come clear to her no matter how long or hard she stared at the man.

“Yeah,” Emma said, half furious and half frightened at how clearly this man knew her mind. “That’s exactly what I meant. Mind if I ask how you know it?

“Ghost knows a lot of things,” the barkeep said, eyeing the other man with a look that echoed Emma’s worries. “Mostly keeps to himself, except for them times when he feels like flappin’ his lips a little too much.”

The other man sniffed at that and threw back the rest of his drink. “Time I was gettin’ on myself,” he said, standing. He pinched the brim of his hat before striding across the room and up the stairs. Nobody spoke until the sound of a door closing came down into the tavern from above.

A man sitting at a table across from the bar was the first to break the silence. “Birdman gonna take the other one he goes mouthin’ off like that again. You watch.”

“Watch your own damn self, Jonas,” the barkeep said. “Ghost has friends, too.”

“Friends he may have,” the man replied. “But he don’t have near enough as matches the enemies that boy’s found for himself.”

“Which one is he?” Emma asked the room, halfway eyeing the man who’d spoken up.

The men ignored her. Some exchanged knowing looks, a few others just stared into their drinks. Emma kept at it. This wasn’t the first time she’d got the silent treatment from a room full of men just for opening her mouth. “I asked which one he was, or do I sound too much like a little girl to get a question answered?”

Still nobody spoke up. Then the barkeep grunted and leaned over his bar again.

“Ghost, he’s a riverboat gambler. Man like to be tryin’ his hand at a game of cards more than he like to eat. He come and go easy as you please, like a few other men and women in New Orleans. Like Mistah Hardy, whom you have already had the pleasure of meeting. Ghost ain’t that much different, but he different enough.”

Emma wrinkled her nose at the barkeep. She got the sense the man would have that be the last of it, but Emma felt like he’d only put more questions into the air, and she’d as soon have answers as let another second tick by.

“I get why he’s called
Ghost.
Any man wears a suit like that would be. But what’s with the mind-reading, and how deep are we with Ha . . . Mister Hardy, I mean. What do we owe him for letting us set up on his deck? He didn’t say he’d let on we were coming, but he did say someone here would have the skinny on the deal.”

“Well,” the barkeep began, “as concerns the man we call the Ghost, I’ve said all I’m willing to say. You’ll have to wait until he decides to explain himself to you. Or one of these fools in here gets drunk enough to let his own lips do the telling. Course, most everyone in here, yours truly included, like to be seein’ straight, so I wouldn’t hold your breath waitin’ on more news about the Ghost from any of us.

“As for
the deal . . .
Mistah Hardy didn’t tell me proper, mind. But these gentlemen around you can all attest to his fairness. Berthin’ up above comes with a simple price. Just a little work is all.”

“What kind of work?” Emma said, not liking the sound of it but ready to do just about anything to get something like solid ground under her feet again.

“As I understand it, Mistah Collins here”‌—‌the barkeep paused to acknowledge Eddie with a wave‌—‌”he plays a horn, is that right?”

“Sure is,” Eddie said, and Emma could see him bracing himself to rise if he needed to. The safety he’d felt before was clearly a thing of the past now. She put a hand on his arm and tried to make her eyes show him she could handle things.

“Well, Mistah Collins, it just so happens that I have a stage, as Mistah Hardy no doubt told you. And I like to be having music on my stage from time to time.”

The barkeep came around and leaned his back against the bar, crossing his arms and regarding both of them with the friendliest wolf’s grin Emma had seen in a long while. “Usually,” the barkeep went on, “music’s good when the boys and girls come through from around the way. That’s two, three times a week at most. Once the projects go up around here, though, we’ll have a more steady flow. See more feet on my dance floor every night.”

Emma let the barkeep’s words settle into silence before she asked the question that had been burning on her tongue.

“That’s it? Eddie plays his horn three nights a week and we can berth up top?”

“That’s it,” the barkeep said. “Sounds good to you, sounds good to me.”

“Sounds too good,” Emma said, and she didn’t miss a few whispers and shuffled feet from the men nearby.

“Settle yourselves, boys. Miss Emma’s got a worry bone, any man can tell.” The barkeep returned his attention to her. “Don’t you fret none. Mistah Hardy look out for them what do him right and proud, and Mistah Collins here gonna do the man very right and very proud. Now, why you still have that look on your face says you thinkin’ like a rabbit?”

“What about me?” Emma said. “What do I have to do so Mister Hardy feels right and proud about my being here?”

A man who sat next to the one called Jonas spoke up and couldn’t get half a thought out before laughing so hard he had to stop. Emma caught the last few words that fell off the man’s tongue.

“ . . . room upstairs,” he said. The man laughed again, swallowed some beer from his glass, then wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Emma glared at him when he turned his wrinkled and boozy nose in her direction. “This Old Storyville, ain’t it?” he said and laughed again, his cheeks going pink as the dawn.