NO Quarter (20 page)

When I strolled into the Calf, five minutes behind Bone, Padre said he was out back on the pay phone. Since Padre will let just about any regular use the bar phone, I figured Bone had marched straight through. I also guessed he was phoning Alex, not the cops.

Padre held up a glass and threw me a questioning look.

“Yeah, I’ll take one,” I said with feeling, and Padre put the Irish in front of the stool I grabbed.

Five minutes was pushing my luck, a little too close to make my “bumping into” Bone here a likely coincidence. I was sure he hadn’t spotted me at the Bear’s bar, or seen me stalking his stalkers out on the streets. I was doubly sure he’d missed it when I crept up behind a parked car and threw that bottle of water across the street and through the antique store’s window. At that moment the three gutter-punks had been making their move on Bone, and I’d
had
to act.

Citizens don’t run in the Quarter unless they’re jogging, and they usually do that up along the Moonwalk while the sun’s up. Someone in normal street clothes running is usually either running away from something or after someone. I’d done a discreet float back behind the punks, a “late for work or a date” stride. Walk fast, break into a lope for about four steps, drop back to a hurried stride, glance at your watch and run for another six steps.

Of course, I was doing it silently in my usual soft-soled felon-fliers. The act was just in case someone was watching the parade as it went down Ursulines and onto Royal. While the neighborhood watches aren’t all that effective, they will make note of the time and description of anyone they see running without the identifying shorts and sweats of a jogger, particularly at night.

Bone was either oblivious to the rat-bag gutter-punks a half block behind him, or he was playing it cool. I hoped for the latter.

I suppose I should be more sympathetic toward the nomadic tribes of lost kids that pass through and occasionally colonize the Quarter. From what I hear, a lot of them have tragic histories of abusive homes that they’ve run away from, preferring to beg for pocket change or rummage through restaurant Dumpsters for food. Once, when a delivery guy on a bike stopped me and asked if I wanted to buy a pizza for three dollars because he was stuck with a bunch on a false delivery call, I gave him a twenty for all four that he had, walked them over to the
Square, and gave them to the packs of kids that always seem to hang out there. I’m not totally lacking in the charitable department.

On the other hand, they’re scavengers. Their solution to the dangers of their lifestyle, chosen or otherwise, is to band together in groups. Well and good, but in a group they inevitably discover they can take a more aggressive role, and often do, being verbally abusive to anonymous passersby as a partial payback for what life has dealt them. Sometimes it’s much heavier than that.

Kids or not, I see this breed as being as dangerous as a sackful of rattlesnakes with their rattles removed. One night, ten o’clock, on Toulouse Street fifteen feet off Bourbon, a couple of them were panhandling and begging cigarettes in front of a bar. One of the Quarter regulars was having a bad night and instead of ignoring them or simply shaking his head, turned around and mouthed off at them. They both swung on him with knives and ran. One of the blades nicked his jugular and he bled to death long before 911 responded. That was less than a year ago.

Just kids down on their luck. Yeah. I’ll still watch my back around the little bastards.

I took a swallow of my whiskey. It was late, but not too late for me to be showing up at the Calf. There was a thin layer of regulars and two drunk but cheerful tourist couples. I sat and waited for Bone to emerge from the back.

To gutter-punks, twenty dollars is a small fortune. If Bone had been in the Bear’s bar trying to make a drug buy, it was easily assumed that he had money in his pocket. Probably more than twenty dollars. Skinny guy, traveling alone. Worth following to see if he ended up on a dark, empty street.

I had learned the “full plastic water bottle” trick from a lover a few years back, who’d never had to use it herself. She routinely walked a short stretch of Dauphine after work in the wee small hours. She refused to take a cab for four blocks, and wouldn’t let me gallantly escort her night after night. So she packed a folding Buck knife (women who dig knives are an old weakness of mine) and a bottled water. One of those liter bottles makes a nice weight. Throw one of those through a window and you’ll suddenly have a lot of attention focusing on you. Probably more than enough to scare off a would-be mugger.

It had been lucky, if that’s the word, that Bone had led his stalkers onto Royal Street, which is lined with numerous small businesses, all of which have alarmed windows.

After I’d hurled my plastic missile through the storefront, about six feet behind the punks, I’d stayed ducked behind the parked car long enough to make
sure they and Bone scattered in different directions. Then I quickly got myself the hell out of there.

I did a fast swing over Chartres and came down St. Ann. I gathered my weaponry in one hand, ready to ditch it under a car in case the cops beat all records in responding to the alarm. They didn’t.

When I hit Bourbon, I saw Bone yet again, and again wasn’t seen by him. He was a block ahead, walking at a calm pace, and had also had the smarts to come to Bourbon, not try to duck home through the empty streets. I hung back, watched him turn onto St. Peter, gave him five minutes, and followed him into the Calf.

I threw him a wave when he came back into the bar from out back. Feigning surprise at seeing him wouldn’t make sense, since Padre would have told me he was here. I didn’t want Bone knowing I’d shadowed him all the way from Decatur.

He didn’t look pale like when he’d come in after being interrogated by the police detective. Neither did he look too surprised to see me, returning my wave and coming over. His T-shirt collar and the edges of his hair were wet, like he’d splashed water on his face. He looked composed.

“I got one for you, Maestro.” He took the neighboring barstool. “Who’s the latter-day Spencer Tracy?”

“I give.”

“Gene Hackman. Think about it. Both have an ease on the screen that’s very similar. Neither’s an over-the-top emoter. In fact, it’s tough to actually
catch
them at acting. They’re both character actors, even though they’ve usually played lead roles. Both are two-time Oscar winners.”

“Sensible,” I said, but I didn’t want to talk movies right now. Casually I said, “What’re you doing out so late tonight? Don’t you usually go straight home from work on Alex’s days off? Hey, let me get you one. Padre—”

“Just a soda,” Bone said as he pulled his cigarettes out. “Believe me, I’ve already had enough.” He lit a smoke. “Anyway, I went out doing a little operating
...
or trying to. First, though, let me tell you what I did that
worked
...
”

I suggested we relocate to the back booth, out of any immediate earshot. There Bone told me he was going to take a leave of absence from his restaurant gig, at least for a few days, in order to concentrate on the hunt.

“Makes sense,” I said, checking my line of sight to the Calf’s front door. “Can you afford time off work, though?”

“I’ll scrape by.”

“I could front you some scratch if it’s tight.”

It was the first time I’d ever offered him a loan. I knew some people could get weirdly offended about such things.

Bone thought about it a few seconds, then shook his head. “Not now. Maybe later. Thanks, though. Anyway, what I was saying. I bribed this kid named Piper with a sandwich and a beer and got him to tell me about Dunk—that scumbag I found in Sunshine’s apartment? Said he was her boyfriend? Well, I found out he’s a serious doper, but he’s also a musician, a sax player.”

Calling yourself a “musician” in the Quarter is easy as saying you’re a “novelist.” It’s all horseshit until you’re getting paid for it.

Bone continued. “Dunk’s got a gig at Check Point Charlie’s this weekend. He plays in a quasi-punk band called Clamjaphry. I figured to check out the show, get a longer look at him. Maybe find a way to question him. What do you think?”

I realized Bone wasn’t asking my permission. How much more comfortable I would have felt about this whole thing if he were acting strictly on my orders. I was the experienced party, after all. Bone, though, had the driving motive to see this hunt through to the end. Immovable object meets irresistible force? Maybe.

“Sounds good,” I agreed. “You’d blend in better with Check Point’s crowd anyway, at least at a rock gig. Watch how you handle it if you start asking Dunk questions, though. Try not to sound like you’re a cop or a reporter. Okay, that was the part of your night that ‘worked.’ How about the rest of it?” My tone didn’t change.

He told me what he had been doing at the Bear’s place, about Brock and the aborted dope deal. He mentioned nothing about the adventure I knew he’d had on the way here, with the three gutter punks. I wondered silently what he thought about that window shattering to save his skin. Oh well, if he wanted to believe in guardian angels, that was up to him.

On one hand, I felt relief. He hadn’t been trying to buy drugs for himself at the bar—or so he said, and I believed him. On the other hand, he’d been tackling a dangerous assignment from our “shopping list.” Too dangerous. I had figured on taking that one for myself, though obtaining an inventory of recent ex-cons in the Quarter was more of a priority. I had done that.

I told Bone about it.

“‘Juggernaut,’” he muttered, dragging on a fresh cigarette. “Jesus Christ,
he
sounds like fun, doesn’t he?”

“My contact said he’s strictly into guys.” I’d said nothing to Bone about the Bear being my contact or where I’d been tonight. If I told him we’d been at the same bar, he might think I was spying on him. “Juggernaut stays on the suspect list, of course, but we’ll probably eliminate him.”

“What motive could he have to kill Sunshine—that’s what you mean?”

“Right. Considering Sunshine’s tendency toward screwed-up relationships, I’d guess jealousy figured in it somewhere. But, who knows? We’ll keep an open mind.” I sipped a little more whiskey. “Did Sunshine date across racial lines? Did you personally ever know her to go around with blacks, Hispanics, or Orientals?”

He gave me an odd look, then he started chuckling.

“What’d I miss?” I asked.

Bone shook his head, still amused. “Sunshine and me were both living in San Francisco, Maestro, remember? Aw, maybe you wouldn’t understand. You don’t say ‘Hispanic’ out West. The word is ‘Latino.’ And it’s horribly politically incorrect to ask about dating across racial lines. You have to be very, very careful in SF whenever the issue of race comes up. People back there love to get offended about things.”

“None of which answers my questions,” I said flatly.

“Guess you had to be there,” he said with a shrug. “Sunshine dated two Latinos that I knew of and had a Japanese boyfriend for about three weeks, which was almost a record for her.”

“Nobody black?”

“Nope. Not for as long as I knew her.” Suddenly he was shaking his head again, all the amusement drained from his thin face. “Sunshine ... still hard really believing she’s dead.”

I nodded solemnly. I found myself studying Bone closely.

Clinical depression, which Alex told me Bone suffered as a teenager, was a serious condition. It went way beyond having the blues or the blahs, or feeling listless or gloomy. From what I gathered, it was like dragging around a battleship anchor. It put one in a permanent state of despair and dejection, where everything felt hopeless and pointless all the time.

Well
...
I guess not
permanent
. Not in Bone’s case, anyway. Alex had said he’d been hospitalized for a year. If he were committed, presumably by his parents, then he must have had a bad case. It was also safe to assume he had recovered. After all, he’d been released. Even so, here I was sitting across from him in the booth, furtively
studying
him, maybe even looking askance. Was I searching for some telltale hint of his past condition? That made me a little un
comfortable. I had a past that was no doubt more unconventional than Bone’s, and he was still treating me as a friend, without reservation.