The Devil's Luck

by W E DeVore

  “I’m going to miss home.”

  “Home and me will be here when you get back,” he said, resting his elbows on the bar to bring his face closer to hers. “Do me a favor though, will you?”

  “Anything,” she said.

  “Don’t say yes, right away.”

  “Why?”

  Ben gave her sad smile. “So I can pretend you’re not leaving. Just for a few more days.”

  ◆◆◆

  The Beasts were well into their third set when Q’s phone vibrated on the bar in front of her. She picked it up, but didn’t recognize the number on the caller ID. “Hello?”

  She slid off the barstool and put her finger in her free ear, struggling to hear the voice on the other end of the line.

  “Q, it’s Devaughn. From Freddie’s Joint.” Devaughn sounded frazzled. “I hate to bother you this late, but Detective Sanger is in here making a mess of himself. I called Mr. Ernst to come get him, but he’s down at his camp. He gave me your number and told me to call you.”

  “It’s ok, Devaughn. Just tell me what’s going on. Hold on.” She threaded her way through the crowd and out the front door. “Now, what’s wrong with Sanger?”

  “You’d better just get down here and see for yourself. I need you to come get him. He’s making my customers nervous and I’ve got to get him out of here, but I don’t want to get him trouble.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  Devaughn paused and said, his voice tense, “His service weapon is still on his belt.”

  “I’ll get there as soon as I can. Did you cut him off?” Q was already waving at Ben to join her outside.

  “I tried, but he just took the bottle from my hand and went into the back. I’ve never seen him like this. Not even when he got fired that time.”

  If Sanger was intent on getting drunker than he did the evening Q had wandered into Freddie’s Joint intent on getting just as intoxicated as her friend, albeit for different reasons, Devaughn was about to have his hands full.

  “I’m on my way. Just don’t let him leave.” Q hung up and explained what was happening to Ben. “I need your car keys.”

  “You want me to come?” he asked.

  “No, I’ve got it. Can you get Josh to drive you home? I’ll get Sanger to sleep it off in our guest room.”

  Q sprinted across the parking lot to Ben’s Audi and quickly headed out towards her destination. On the way, she tried to think of all the possible scenarios she would be greeted with. She parked in front of the squat, brick building and pulled open the glass door to be greeted with a blast of frozen, air-conditioned cigar smoke. The two old men sitting at a nearby table looked up at her from under their fedoras and stopped playing their game of backgammon to watch her more closely. Having been in Freddy’s Joint more than once with her godfather, she knew that having a female person come inside for a drink was novelty enough without that female person being a white woman in Converse and a Pantera t-shirt.

  Devaughn walked out from behind the bar to greet her.

  “How is he?” she asked.

  “He’s back there.” He pointed to the dark game room. “Go see for yourself.”

  Sanger was slumped in a chair at the table in the far corner. A half-empty bottle of tequila was in front of him. He lazily pushed a single domino around the table.

  Q sat in the chair opposite him and leaned her elbows on the table, resting her chin in one palm. “How you doing, cowboy?”

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” He glared at her. “Are you just trying to get yourself killed?”

  “Devaughn called me. Seems like he’s funny about armed white cops getting drunk in his bar. Can’t seem to put my finger on why.” She gestured to the gun holstered on his belt.

  “Ah fuck,” Sanger said. “That was dumb.”

  “I’d tend to agree with you on that one.” She folded her hands on the table. “You gonna tell me what’s going on?”

  “Yvie stopped by the station after you left. We had dinner plans. I forgot. We had a fight.” He reached for the bottle and poured himself another shot. “She’s going to break up with me. Everything’s falling apart.”

  Q grinned at him. “Did she break up with you or storm out and tell you to go to hell.”

  He thought about it for a minute. “I think she told me to pull my head out of my ass… or maybe shove it in? I can’t remember now.”

  “Oh, boy, cowboy. She’s a goner.”

  He cursed and looked away. “I always fuck things up.”

  She laughed. “No, you don’t, and that’s not what I meant. You’re two weeks ahead of schedule.”

  Sanger closed one eye, struggling to focus on her words, “What?”

  Q sighed and folded her arms, reclining back in her chair. “Yvie has a pattern. First date, she’s the cool girl. Second date, she’s the fun girl. Third date, she’s the sexy girl. Then at or about the end of the first two months, if everything’s going perfect, she’s the volatile girl and goes off for no apparent reason. But there’s a good reason; she just hasn’t told you.”

  “Told me what?” he asked.

  “She’s in love with you, Aaron. It was a test. You were supposed to chase after her and picked her up and spin her around as dramatic music filled the air and confess your undying affection for her.”

  Sanger gave her a derisive stare. “You fucking with me, right?”

  “Nope.”

  “Where was I supposed to get the music?” he asked her, confusion addling his intoxicated reasoning skills.

  Q laughed. “It’s just a fantasy she has. I’m exaggerating, but not by much. Call her tomorrow. It’ll be fine. Call her now. You look pretty far gone yourself.”

  He rubbed at his eyes with the tips of his fingers. “Maybe I am. I don’t like the idea of losing her. Losing people is about all I’m good at.”

  “Oh, baby…” Q soothed. “Come on, now. Let me take you home. You’ll patch things up with Yvie. If you’re drunk enough to make a fool of yourself, I’ll take you over there right now. We’ll get you a ghetto blaster and a power ballad. Let you borrow a trench coat from Derek…”

  “That’s a hard pass,” he said. “There’s something else. Something that I should have told you. And you’re not going to like it.”

  He drained his shot and played with the empty glass, spinning it slowly on the table in front of him.

  “I don’t know how to stop this,” he said desolately. “What if I can’t stop it?”

  “Stop what?” she asked.

  “I think Mike Ackerman was murdered. I know Genevieve Kirkhardt was murdered.” He hesitated. “I think Ben could be next, Clementine.”

  Q pulled back and straightened her spine. “What did you just say?”

  “Did Ben meet with Charter Real Estate?”

  “Not yet. Tomorrow. Why?”

  “I don’t think it’s guns, Clementine.” He looked up at her, his eyes apologetic. “There’s something weird. I can’t put my finger on it. But Ben might be in danger.”

  “What kind of danger?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t puzzle through it. I keep trying, but I can’t. There’s something just off about this whole thing.”

  She gestured to the nearly empty bottle beside him. “Well, that’s not going to help anything. Aaron, Ben’s fine. He’s safe and sound at the Cove. If he’s in danger, you’ll fix it. I know you will.”

  “That’s not what I mean. Guns. Where are the guns?” he asked as if Q was hiding them in her piano at home. He pushed the bottle and the glasses aside with a clank. “His wife said he had guns. Everywhere at his house. Where are they?”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Exactly,” he said. “And if he sells. He has money. Why didn’t he spend it?”

  Q realized that Sanger was on the last drunken train stop before blackout station and intervened. “Come on, let me get you home before you pass out and I have to carry you. You need some water.”

  She st
ood up to fetch something non-alcoholic to help sober him up and Sanger pulled her back down. He continued to hold onto her arm. “What if I can’t save you both? What if I’m fixing things for Ben and Burn Bitch Burn takes a run at you? What if I can’t save you? What if he hurts you?”

  “Aaron, that’s a lot of ‘what ifs’…” She struggled to find some words of comfort and he leaned back in his chair, shaking her off.

  “You know what the worst part is?” he slurred and squinted his eyes at her. Q wondered how many of her he was seeing at the moment. “Someone could take you away from me and there’s not a damned thing I could do to stop it. Just like Avi. Just like Ima. You’d be gone, and it’d be my fault. I’m supposed to be able to protect the people I love, and I just can’t. Kol mah sheani ohev bakhayim sheli nilaqakh mameni. V’ani ohev otekha yoter meett hakhayim atsemam. Aval at lo yekholah lada’att at haemett.”

  Q stayed silent, waiting for him to resume speaking a language she understood. She didn’t need him to translate. She knew the pain he felt over his brother’s murder haunted him and picked at him deep inside.

  As he stared at her, his eyes flooded. “It isn’t good to love someone this much, Clementine.” He used the palm of his hand to wipe away the tears that slid down his cheek.

  “Maybe not, Aaron. But I’m probably the wrong person to ask about that. Come on, let’s get you home.” She called to Devaughn to help her walk Sanger to the car. Once he was safely secured in the passenger seat, she closed the door.

  “What does he owe you?” she asked.

  Devaughn shook his head. “I’ll put it on his tab. He’s good for it. Thank you for coming to get him.”

  She squeezed his hand in gratitude and got in the car behind the wheel. Sanger lolled his head to the side. “I can’t puzzle through it, Clementine. Why can’t I puzzle through it?”

  “We’ll puzzle through it together in the morning, Aaron. I promise. Close your eyes now. I’ve got you.”

  She drove through the darkened streets, her panic chewing at her insides, wondering how much of Sanger’s fear about Ben’s safety was warranted.

  As they pulled into her driveway, Sanger looked around. “Where are we?”

  “My place,” she said, cutting the motor.

  “Why are we here? I don’t want to be here,” he exclaimed, getting the kind of irrationally angry that only the inebriated can achieve.

  Q unfastened her seatbelt and turned in her seat to face him. “Sanger, we are here because your house has one bedroom and an uncomfortable couch that I am not sleeping on. I’m not leaving you on your own. You’re spending the night with us tonight. Don’t argue.”

  She got out of the car and waited by the hood for him to do the same. When he opened the door, one knee buckled, and he dropped to the pavement.

  “Oh, good grief. How much did you drink?” Q muttered, helping him to his feet.

  She dragged him across the yard and into the house, futilely trying to keep him walking in a straight line. Once they were in the foyer, she took a hold of his shoulders, guiding him from behind through the kitchen and into the guest room beyond. Sanger plopped down onto the guest bed, and he fell back with a heavy sigh onto the pillow. Q helped him to heave up his feet and pulled off his shoes. As she gingerly removed his sidearm and placed it on the nightstand, he opened his eyes. “I mean it, Clementine. I’d burn this city to the ground if something ever happened to you.”

  She sat on the bed next to him and smoothed out his hair. “Well, we’ll have to make sure that nothing does. Get some sleep. We’ll talk in the morning. You’re wasted.”

  “Please don’t leave me,” he whimpered.

  “I’m not going anywhere, cowboy. Get some sleep.”

  Sanger closed his eyes and Q folded the comforter over him, humming a lullaby from a faded memory of her own mother.

  J’ai marié un ouvrier

  Moi qui étais si vaillante fille,

  Mais c’était de m’en dispenser

  Sans attraper des reproches

  Mais quitte ton ouvrier,

  Et viens-t-en donc, c’est avec moi

  O viens-t-en donc, c’est avec moi

  Dessus l’écore du Tennessee

  Q’s voice caught as she sang through the remaining verses. When she was a teenager, she’d gone on an obsessive search for a translation of the song her late mother had brought with her from her Cajun family in Marksville to the nursery of her married home in New Orleans, and a few of the verses were doozies; telling the story of a woman running away to marry a carpenter, only to be left alone, weeping for her family on the banks of the Tennessee River when her husband and her baby drowned.

  Fucked up thing to sing to your kid, Mama.

  Once Sanger had fallen into a fitful sleep, she walked into the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea and calm her mind. After several eternal minutes of failing to do so, she went to the living room and sat at Stanley’s piano. She picked up the melody of her mother’s lullaby again and began to hum to herself.

  Her phone vibrated in her pocket and she pulled it out to be greeted with a picture of Yvie crossing her eyes and making a silly face, mugging for the camera. Q decided to play coy and make her sister-in-law suffer for her gamesmanship, whether it had been conscious or not. “What’s up, Yvie?”

  Yvie sounded like she had been crying. “Have you seen Aaron?”

  Q yawned. “Yeah, a few hours ago. Why?”

  “He’s not home. Where is he? I’m on his porch and he’s not here and he’s not answering his phone…”

  “And you’re acting like a crazy person,” Q finished. “What happened?”

  “He was being a dick. All sullen and quiet and…”

  “Sanger-like?” Q suggested.

  “No, Q. Not like himself. At all,” Yvie corrected and Q realized that she was right. Sanger hadn’t been any of those things since he’d began seeing Yvie.

  She took pity on her sister-in-law and said, “He’s here, Yvie. At our house. He had a bad day is all. Cops have a lot of them. You need to get used to it.”

  She heard Yvie open her car door. She sounded defeated. “And he came to you. Not me.”

  “No, Yvie. He went to a bar Ernst has been going to for forty years and got hammered. He was all twisted up over you and the bartender called Ernst to fetch him. Ernst told him to call me and I brought him here.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Come over. He’s asleep in the guest room. He’ll feel better if he wakes up next to you. He might puke on you in the middle of the night, but that’s a risk you’ll have to take.” Q bit the inside of her mouth and debated her next words. “Yvie, you need to cool it with the games, babe. He can’t take it.”

  “I wasn’t playing a game…”

  “Yes, you were. Just like that night at dinner. He gets plenty of chasing in his day job and he doesn’t need any from you. He needs you to stay. Just stay.” Yvie didn’t respond and Q continued, “Come on over.”

  “And what?” Yvie asked.

  “Stay.”

  ◆◆◆

  The next morning, Q walked into the kitchen to find Sanger sitting at the table in last night’s clothes. Dark circles bruised his eyes. She went to the refrigerator and pulled out a block of cream cheese and smeared a swath of it over the piece of French bread she tore from the loaf on the counter. She set it on a paper towel in front of him.

  “Eat.”

  “I’m not hungry.” Sanger continued to stare out the window.

  “You’ve mistaken me for someone who gives a flying fuck. Eat.”

  He took a bite and she moved to the coffee maker to start a fresh pot. “Now tell me what the hell is going on.”

  “Why are you mad at me?” he asked, squinting one eye against the morning light. “Did I get out of line or something?”

  Q scooped coffee into the filter, using her words to count each teaspoon. “You got drunk. In a public bar. With a loaded gun on your belt. You’re lucky Devaughn
called me and not the police. You should have gotten suspended. You could have lost your damned job. Uncle Ernst is going to read you the riot act. He might even tell your lieutenant, if he hasn’t already. Where’s Yvie? You can explain yourself to both of us.”

  “She left. She had an appointment. Why do you think I’m awake? God, my head is killing me,” he said, squinting at the sun in irritation.