NO Quarter (29 page)

“I don’t think he had much choice,” I pointed out. Jo-Jo was standing now, and I thought urgently about the best, fastest way to extricate myself from the Juggernaut’s company. “The Quarter crowd usually stays neutral in spats like that, but if he had started trying to slap them around someone would have felt obligated to step in.”

Jo-Jo, head hung, walked toward the doors.

“I’m not talking about slapping them around,” Jugger growled. “I’ll tell you, Maestro, the last bitch that tried to get in my face like that didn’t walk away from it. Know what I mean?”

I nodded vaguely at what promised to be yet another patented kicked-some-guy’s-ass-ain’t-I-cool story. I saw which way down Toulouse Jo-Jo was now heading, and mentally noted the bars along that track.

I
had
to get out of here.

Right then the cell phone rang in my pocket. One of those improbable instances where the gods grant you a favor even before you send up a prayer. I shrugged at Jugger, turned away, and put the phone to my ear, plugging the other with a finger so I could hear over the juke.

Seconds later, not giving a damn about niceties now, I tossed my cue onto the table. “I got to go.” Jugger said something at my back but I was already gone, moving at a jog, not in the direction Jo-Jo had gone. My heart was thumping hard in my chest.

It had been Bone, of course. His brief message had ended with:
“I’m in trouble.”

Alcohol is blunt and, for me, uncomplicated. I don’t get violent or euphoric—I get grounded. While it may not be so to others, to me, that’s an appealing state. Drugs, on the other hand, can fly you in an almost infinite number of directions. Those possibilities have their appeal—to others, not to me.

As I’ve said, my only serious objection to illegal narcotics—another reason why I place booze above them as a social and recreational outlet—is this: in the drug culture, you must deal with the scum of the earth. Alcohol, whatever you want to say about it, is legal. You can buy it over the counter, you can order it in a bar, and on New Orleans’ streets you can drink it in the open for all to see. Drugs, you have to go a different route. Hell, just
getting
your drugs entails a lifestyle all its own, never mind actually using the stuff.

If you don’t like the ambience of one bar, go to another. In the Quarter you’ll have to walk about five feet. If you don’t like drinking with anyone at all, uncork a bottle at home—a bottle you can purchase at the corner food mart, along with your toilet paper, beef jerky, and a copy of
Swank
, and nobody will say, “Boo.”

But now, I had intentionally entered, for the first time in my life, that sleazy, scummy, seedy underworld of illegal street drugs. I had known it was a bothersome, complicated society. I’d also know it was a dangerous one.

But, foreknown or not, I had misstepped. And now I was in the shit.

We were in an apartment on Dumaine Street, a place I’d passed in the daylight many times and thought nothing of it because it was just a typical Quarter place: green-painted shutters over French doors that opened right onto the sidewalk, a faux gas lamp burning an electric bulb, stucco front crumbling a bit. Only a few weeks back I’d stopped in after my shift at Harry’s Corner, half a block up, a usually blissfully quiet place. I had decompressed and chatted and bantered with the bartender, who had pointed this place out to me through the windows. I’d watched with her as cars rolled up and stopped at a time of night when only Uniteds and some of the other fleet cabs were moving. Watched people come and go out of the apartment’s open doors, watched as one kid ran out and around to the driver’s side windows, carhop style. It was all very busy. I wondered why the neighbors didn’t buzz the cops.

The bartender shrugged her shoulders and said, “Maybe they’ve got the police paid off.” I didn’t give it much thought after that.

Werewolf and Firecracker had led me here, walked me in, and now were trying to verbally dissuade the leader of this pack of drug dealing kids from
bustin’ a cap in my ass
—his words. Spoken with all the exaggerated, urban-modern, gangland caricature-ness of a bad Tarantino rip-off. That was what this was, of course. Drug-dealing kids
acting
like dealers, this ridiculous, overstated punk who’d seen
Scarface
and
King of New York
a dozen times too many, who was burying himself in the part. You had to laugh.

But I wasn’t laughing. As phony as this all might be on one level, the pistol that he waved around the room was very goddamned real.

“I tol’ you tuh
sit
, boy. Yo. Huh? Fuck you be thinkin’, motherfucker? Fuckin’ think this a fuckin’ game, homie? Fuck your shit right up, a’rite? Dig?”

It was an automatic, not a revolver, and he was rolling his wrist, pointing the big gun carelessly all over the place, even at his underlings, who didn’t appear bothered by it. He paced the front room, waving the gun. There were four of the kids here, plus Werewolf and Firecracker, and myself. And
this
bozo. Blond hair buzzed down to fuzz, two gold front teeth. He was white and acting out the worst possible black stereotype. He wore the gangsta clothes, talked the gangsta talk, was plainly impressed by his own mock-up.

He’d told me to sit. I did not sit. A break for the front doors might very well be fatal, but I wanted the option, wanted to be on my feet, facing this. I didn’t flinch when he stopped pacing and swung the pistol towards me.

“Lester
...
be cool dere,” Werewolf said in the kind of soothing tones one might use on a rabid dog, holding his hands out in a calming gesture. Firecracker’s pink eyes were wide and following the pistol, but neither of the cooks looked panicky.

I could feel adrenaline in my veins, but my head was clear. In fact, the scene had an almost surreal clarity to it. There were four colored paper clips scattered across the coffee table. One of the couch’s casters was missing. The kid standing by the front doors had wide red laces in his sneakers.

The shutters that would seal the front doors were opened, and the top halves of those doors were glass panes. Dumaine was quiet out there. Would someone in a passing car—even a cop—glance in here, see the pistol, and act? Help or do something? Did I want to be here if the police came? Me, who had come here to buy a dime bag of crystal meth?

I’d had my chance to call for help, and I had made my choice. I’d rung Maestro, not the cops, told him the address I’d noted on the way in, told him I
was in trouble. No time for anything else. I had gone in to use the bathroom.
Really, I had wanted that quick moment to hit the speed-dialer, wanted the flush of the toilet to cover those few words to Maestro. When I came out, I came face to weapon with this white “homeboy” impressionist—Lester—holding a pistol.

“Yo, I ain’t fuckin’ happy wit’chu neither, a’rite.” Lester kept the automatic aimed at my face but turned to glower at Werewolf. “You duh one brought this motherfucker here intuh my crib, yo. Shit ain’t cool. I might be fuckin’ this fucker up
good
.” He turned back toward me.

It was, I guess, my cue to start begging for my life. The bore of the barrel looked as big as I’ve always heard it does when you have a gun pointed at you. I blinked at it. It wasn’t fear I felt. Fear was on hold. I would get to it later maybe, when it wouldn’t interfere with me getting out of this room alive.

Lester had my dime bag of meth in his other hand. He fidgeted with it, bouncing it about. It was a plastic baggie with a twist-tie, and there was what I thought was an unjustly small amount of granules inside. Ten bucks for this? There’s another argument for sticking to alcohol. Cost-effectiveness. One of the kids had fetched the bag from a back bedroom at Lester’s command. Lester was maybe twenty-seven, twenty-eight. The four kids didn’t look old enough to drink.

“What you say now, fucker? Wanta ask me some more questions? Huh? Punk-ass motherfucker?”

“Lester, mon
...
”

“Maybe you and Firecracker ought to split,” I said, not turning Werewolf’s way. With his husky solid physique and brawny arms he was far and away the biggest one in the room. But Lester was the best armed.

“
Don’t
you be tellin’ nobody what tuh do!
Don’t
you be sayin’ shit, boy!”

“We not going no place.” Werewolf said it to me, not Lester. I was aware of Firecracker stealthily clocking everyone’s place in the room. The four kids looked almost bored. One wore a Walkman, lips moving, now and then uttering some obscene lyric out loud.

We had walked here from Check Point Charlie’s. Neither Werewolf nor Firecracker expected anything from me—no finder’s fee for hooking me up with a crystal meth connection. It was, to them, a comradely gesture. I was a coworker they respected, so they were helping me out.

One of the kids had opened the French doors, apparently recognizing Werewolf. Then we got shown in. Lester appeared, and I looked him over and wondered if Sunshine had been getting her meth from him. Wondered how
professional this joker in the ludicrous hip-hop clothes might be? Was he the sort that might panic or overreact or be careless? How good was he with an ice pick?

Werewolf introduced me, and I told Lester what I wanted.

“Yo yo, homie! Chill. Wuzza rush, huh?”

He wanted to talk, maybe wanted to look me over first, like Brock at that Decatur bar. Maybe just wanted to bask in his inflated drug lord image, which, after all, meant nothing if no one was there to see it. These four dull-eyed kids didn’t seem terribly impressed.

So we had talked, and I managed to understand just enough of his self-crippled English, and seemed after a few minutes to convince him I was “cool.” But I hadn’t gone to this trouble to make friends or to obtain the crystal methamphetamine I was going to fork out ten precious dollars for. I was here for info. So I slid in a question, then another. Did he have a regular supply of meth, so I wouldn’t get stuck out? Had he been operating long enough that he was dependable?

“Know about that girl who was killed along the river? She had hold of this
tasty
crystal
...
”

I had seen Lester’s eyes narrow suddenly. He flicked a small gesture, and one of his kids got up and went to stand by the doors.

I pretended not to notice anything, said casually I needed to pee and walked into the bathroom I’d spotted when we arrived. Made my call on the cell phone, heard a quick ruckus outside the bathroom door, and came out to find everybody on their feet and Lester holding the automatic.

“Ho got iced at the river? Whachu askin’ for? Whachu wanta know, huh?
Cops
ask questions ‘bout that shit.”

“Lester, he wait tables.” Werewolf was still arguing for reason.

“Yo, motherfucker! That it? You some fuckin’ undercover cop punk thinks he can fuck wi’ me? Huh? Yo?” He now put the heavy, slightly cool barrel against my forehead where it pressed my flesh against my skull in a way that would probably leave a ring.

I blinked and blinked, then held my eyes wide, and for that instant the room was very, very still.

“Holy shit!”

My eyes, not my head, shifted sharply. I saw flames.

Lester turned, and the pressure of the bore eased off a bit.

Werewolf and Firecracker moved.

It looked like a couch cushion on fire. The flaming cushion burned from squarely atop the roof of the blue four-door that was parked immediately
outside and visible through the front doors’ glass. Yellow flame took hold of it, jumping higher and higher as the intensity of the fire increased.

I dropped as Werewolf’s big arm swept upward and caught Lester’s between the wrist and elbow. The pistol went up, flew out of his grip.

Firecracker’s sleek body slammed into the kid standing at the doors who’d called out the alarm and now stood gaping at the fire. The kid rebounded off the doorjamb, blood flecking from his forehead as he started to crumple. The doors flew open under Firecracker’s weight.

I did a fast twirl, had my feet under me, heard the automatic thump heavily on the floor behind me as I ran for the exit. I passed the kid wearing the Walkman on my way to the front doors. His lips were still moving, his eyes were watching the scene as dully as they would a Nintendo screen.

My boots hit the sidewalk as the big cushion flared up, burning brighter, smoking and stinking. Behind I heard voices, one of them Lester’s ... but no gunshots, and I was very thankful for that.
Very thankful
.

Werewolf and Firecracker ran for Royal. Werewolf’s steps hit heavy, hard; Firecracker’s thin albino body moved lithely. Running en masse wasn’t smart under the circumstances, though, so I turned toward Chartres, toward the river, legs pumping, head low
...
my head, that Lester had held a gun to
...

My eyes were wide and looking. Maestro stepped slightly out from the corner. I ran, he caught my pace, and we flew like the wind.

* * *

Excerpt from Bone’s Movie Diary:

Who is the more profoundly frightening movie archetype—the homicidal psychopath or the cold-blooded killer? We get all sorts of deranged murderers, from Richard Widmark’s pushing-old-wheelchaired-lady-down-the-stairs psycho in 1947’s
Kiss of Death
, through Andy Robinson in the original (& only worthwhile)
Dirty Harry
, to Michael Rooker’s sickeningly creepy nutcase in
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer,
which is so effective it’s nearly unwatchable; & stopping at all points along the way. At the spectrum’s other end we find Max von Sydow as the morally neutral assassin in
3 Days of the Condor
, Michael Beach’s entrancingly calm performance in
One False Move
, Rutger Hauer’s sinister & efficient terrorist in
Nighthawks
, etc. To kill in anger, in a fit of passion or just to appease the voices in one’s head
...
is that more, or less, comforting than those movie villains who go about the business of taking human life without a ripple of emotion, without ego, strictly professional about the matter? I am still contemplating this one.