“And you’re the one who wants to keep working with a murderer!”
“Then just go!” said Rickey. “There’s no way I’m ever gonna live up to your goddamn altar-boy ethics. Just go on and forget everything we’ve ever done together. Fuck it!”
He threw his half-full coffee mug into the yard and heard it shatter on one of the paving stones that led up to the porch. A light came on in the house next door, a shutter swung open, and an old woman’s voice yelled, “You people knock it off before I call the police!”
“I’m not going anywhere,” said G-man. “I’m not forgetting anything. But I want to talk to Lenny.”
“You gonna ask him how he killed that old man? Not even give him the benefit of the doubt? ‘Hey, Lenny, I know it says he died of heart failure but c’mon, you took out a hit on the guy, right?’ That’ll go over real well.”
“I don’t care how it goes over. I want to hear what he has to say.”
“What about the restaurant?”
“What about it?”
“If we piss Lenny off …”
“Rickey, what’s happened to you? You used to say Lenny could go to hell if he didn’t like the way we did things. Now it’s like you’re living out of his pocket. Yeah, tell me to fuck off if you want, but it’s true.”
Rickey put his head in his hands. It was true, he realized. He had grown dependent on the monthly stipend, on Lenny’s vast knowledge of the restaurant world, on the ability of Lenny and the suits to handle any problem that cropped up. He’d become so impressed with this ability that he had stopped asking himself exactly how the problems were being handled. He guessed something had been bound to blow up in his face sooner or later, but this was uglier than anything he could have imagined.
“Let’s just try to calm down,” he said. “The sun’s not even up yet. Why don’t we fix some breakfast and call Lenny later?”
“I don’t feel like fixing breakfast. Lenny’s used to dealing with emergencies, and as far as I’m concerned, this is an emergency. I’m calling him right now.”
G-man went back into the house. Rickey sat hunched on the steps clutching his temples. He could feel the first tectonic rumbles of a truly awesome headache. This was even more terrible than he’d thought. G-man had never refused to fix him breakfast before.
Ninety minutes later they were in Lenny’s office at Crescent. Rumpled and unshaven, Lenny glowered behind his desk. For the first time since they’d met him, he looked well and truly angry. The obituary page lay before him. He picked it up with two fingers as if the feel of it disgusted him, considered it briefly, and let it fall back to the desktop. “I can’t even believe I’m looking at this,” he said. “Are you actually accusing me of something? Should I call De La Cerda?”
“I’m not planning to nark on you, if that’s what you mean,” said G-man. “I just want to know what happened.”
“Evidently the man had a heart attack. I don’t know how you think I made that happen.”
“C’mon, Lenny. On Tuesday afternoon you tell Rickey you’re taking care of the problem. The guy drops dead Tuesday night. We’re not supposed to wonder about that?”
“Fine,” said Lenny. “So G-man thinks I’m a murderer. Rickey, what do you think?”
Rickey, who had been staring at the floor, looked up. He knew exactly what Lenny was doing. Whatever had happened to Rondo Johnson, Lenny must have had a hand in it. But Lenny was using all kinds of misdirection, pretending his feelings were hurt, trying to intimidate them a little (not too much, though—Rickey had expected the lawyer to be here and had been surprised to find Lenny alone). Now he was feeling around the edges of their solidarity, checking to see if he still had an ally in Rickey, knowing he probably did. It was a loathsome, brilliant strategy, and Rickey was shocked to realize how much he admired it.
“I don’t think you made Mr. Johnson drop dead,” he said. Technically it was true—he doubted Lenny had ever laid eyes on Rondo Johnson. “I’m only here because G talked about leaving. I can’t do the restaurant without him.”
“Oh yes you can,” said Lenny.
“No way. We’ve always been in this together.”
“Listen. G’s a great cook—of course we don’t want him to leave. But when you own a restaurant, you get ruthless. You don’t take shit from people who want to mess you up. You don’t stop just because something upsets you. And you don’t say you can’t get it done without some other person, because you never know who’s going to walk out on you. So is he walking out? Looks to me like he’s still here. G-man? You going anywhere in the next few minutes?”
G-man didn’t answer.
“Well, then, Rickey, you assume he’s still your partner and you proceed accordingly. It’s a lot like being on the line. You’re slammed, right? It’s the middle of dinner service, you have fifty tickets up—do you start crying about how many more you might get?”
“No. You just keep putting ’em out.”
“OK. So that’s what you do here. Any questions?”
“Yeah,” said G-man. “What happened to Mr. Johnson? I’m not gonna do anything about it. What the hell could I do about it? I just want to know.”
“I have no idea.” The anger seemed to leave Lenny; his shoulders slumped; he looked terribly tired. For the first time, Rickey found himself wondering whether Mr. Johnson could have died a completely natural death. He didn’t believe it, really, but Lenny was so damn convincing. “G-man, what do you want me to do? I don’t know how to react when a friend suspects me of murder. Do you want me to swear I had nothing to do with it? Do you want a deposition?”
“I guess not,” said G-man. He had begun to look slightly embarrassed. “But it’s our restaurant. It should have been our problem. If you didn’t do anything to the old man, how’d you make the problem go away?”
“What do you think I did? I paid somebody off.”
“Who?”
“Lance Taliaferro on the City Council. Sammy Marx at the Finance Department.”
“You got any proof of that?”
“Of course I don’t have any proof! It was a bribe!”
This sounded so utterly New Orleanian that Rickey was certain he could see G-man being convinced—or deciding to be convinced; that was what it came down to, and Rickey had already realized that would be good enough. He knew G-man still wanted to be with him and work with him. Unlike Rickey, G-man needed to have at least a reasonable doubt about Lenny’s culpability in the death of the old man, and Lenny was trying hard to give him room for that doubt.
“I understand where you’re coming from,” said Lenny. He leaned across the desk and steepled his fingers as if in prayer. “I can see how it looks, the guy keeling over right after I said I’d take care of him. But I’m not some kind of thug, and you’re in over your head. You don’t just go around accusing people of murder. We still have to work together. I won’t hold this against you, but I’d really like to know whether I’ll have to deal with this kind of thing in the future.”
“I been in over my head for a long time. Rickey has too—he just won’t admit it.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No,” said G-man sullenly. “You won’t have to deal with this kinda thing in the future. Not from me, anyway.”
Rickey looked at G-man and saw the last of the fight go out of him. He felt ashamed, then quashed the feeling. This was best for both of them. They were already into Lenny for more money than they could imagine. They really had no choice but to go ahead. Besides, without Liquor, what did they have? They’d be back to working line jobs and worrying about the rent. And if they made an enemy out of Lenny Duveteaux, their viability on the New Orleans restaurant scene might be severely limited.
G-man was right: they were in way over their heads, and had been for a long time. But what the hell? When you were in over your head, you couldn’t expect to get rescued. You could only swim for the surface and hope you ended up in Waikiki, not on some godforsaken desert island populated by
cannibals.
Rickey said all this to G-man in the car on the way home. He got excited about the cannibal metaphor and swerved into the other lane, but it was still very early and there was little traffic on Magazine Street. “I mean, how can we not do the restaurant?” he concluded. “I know you still want to. Anyway, didn’t you believe Lenny?”
“I kinda believed him while we were sitting there. He’s a real good actor. Now that he’s not here, I don’t believe him one damn bit. And you don’t either—I can tell.”
Pretending to watch a city bus in the rearview mirror, Rickey didn’t say anything.
“You’re right, though. I still want to do the restaurant. But I got a few conditions.”
“Like what?”
“Like we stop letting Lenny handle every problem that comes up. I don’t know what happened to Mr. Johnson, and maybe I don’t want to know. But I do know we could have tried to handle it ourselves.”
“We did try.”
“I don’t mean just going to his house. We knew that wasn’t gonna work. C’mon—Lenny’s not even from here. We’re local boys. We know how to talk to local people. We can make ourselves welcome. We didn’t have to go crying to Lenny just because some old man was mean to us.”
“Yeah, but we had so much other stuff to deal with—”
“Rickey, we have to deal with everything. Otherwise we might as well be working in one of Lenny’s kitchens.”
Rickey parked in front of the house and killed the engine. As they got out, he saw his broken coffee mug on the front walk. Embarrassed, he kicked it into the tall grass at the side of the yard.
“I never liked that mug anyway,” said G-man.
“G, listen …”
“Yeah?”
“I’m really sorry about all this. I wish it never happened.”
“I’m sorry too.” G-man turned to look at Rickey. “I never would’ve walked out on you.”
“I know you wouldn’t,” said Rickey. He put his arms around G-man and kissed him square on the mouth, not giving a damn about who might be watching or what they’d think.
“You want some breakfast?” said G-man. “I was thinking about fixing some French toast. I mean, if you still feel like it.”
“I’d love some.”
“You got any cheese dough in the fridge I should know about?”
“No, I was too upset even to make cheese straws. I was too upset even to have a drink.”
“I know what you mean. I wanted a drink last night, and then I just thought, why bother?”
“We can’t let that happen again.”
“We won’t. You know it’s a bad situation when you can’t even be bothered to get drunk.”
“We just gotta remember two rules: we’re in this together no matter what, and there is always alcohol.”
“It’s a deal,” said G-man as they let themselves into the house.
chapter 25
Lenny opened the top drawer of his desk, dislodging the tiny directional microphone that peeked through the keyhole. He ran the tape back a few minutes, then pressed PLAY. “We still have to work together,” his voice said from the speaker. “I won’t hold this against you, but I’d really like to know whether I’ll have to deal with this kind of thing in the future.”
“I been in over my head for a long time. Rickey has too—”
He rewound it to the beginning, ejected the tape, and marked it in a way only he could understand. He’d been taping his phone calls for a decade, but only a couple of years ago had he begun to record the conversations that took place in his office. Once he’d started, he couldn’t imagine why he had waited so long.
He wondered whether Rickey and G-man believed his wronged-innocent act. Probably they didn’t; they were naïve but not stupid. But if he had managed to plant even a seed of doubt, that would be good enough. G-man wouldn’t be a problem; maybe he’d had some momentary twinge of Catholic guilt, but Rickey was the alpha male of that pair, and Rickey didn’t give a damn what Lenny had done to Rondo Johnson. Lenny suspected that Rickey would have cheerfully strangled the old man himself had he thought he could get away with it. Nothing was going to come between that kid and his dream restaurant. Lenny liked that. In time, he thought he and Rickey would truly come to understand each other.
He took out the business card De La Cerda had given him, the one De La Cerda’s guys had found in Johnson’s house, and dialed the number on it. “Escargot’s kitchen, Terrance speaking,” said the voice on the other end.
“Let me talk to Mike, please.”
“He ain’t here. Probably won’t be in till ten or so. You like to leave a message?”
“No thanks. I’ll give him a call later.”
Lenny flipped through his Rolodex and dialed a number with a Metairie exchange. “Yeah?” said Mike Mouton’s sleepy voice after four rings.
“Jesus Christ,” said Lenny in the voice he used when one of his cooks had fucked something up really badly. “Don’t tell me you’re still in bed while your staff sets up the kitchen.”
“Huh? Who is this?”
“This is Lenny Duveteaux. You there, Mike? Take that pillow off your head and listen good. I know what you’re doing. I know you called me at Crescent that night. I know about the other trouble you stirred up. None of it’s going to work.”
“I don’t know what you’re—”
“Let’s dispense with the bullshit, Mike. You haven’t changed a bit since I worked with you at the Fontainebleu. Why do you have such a hard-on for Rickey anyway?”
“Why do I what?”
Lenny could hear the actual sound of Mike biting his tongue, torn between losing his threadbare temper and kissing Lenny’s ass.
“Don’t want to share, huh? Well, I don’t really care. But understand this—it needs to stop, and not just for our sake. You’re really going sideways, buddy.”
“So you are bankrolling them!” Mike said. “I knew it!”
“They’re my friends, you numb fuck. I look out for my friends. See you around town.”
Lenny hung up, smiling with the satisfaction of a job well done. Liquor was completely back on track now; he could feel it. Time to pay some attention to his own restaurants. He opened the kitchen log his chef de cuisine had left on his desk last night. Daunte never showed up for dinner service, he read. Daunte was one of the PM dishwashers. Ran short of plates thru-out service until Polynice got here. P. scraped and loaded plates all night, plus did his other work.
Daunte was history, of course, like anyone who missed a shift without calling. Lenny decided to promote Polynice to the chief porter’s job. He sort of hated to do it; a good night porter was hard to find. Most guys just didn’t want to hump garbage, hose down floors, and empty grease traps for six-fifty an hour. Polynice had never complained. He deserved the promotion. Lenny thought he might even be able to put Polynice on the line eventually. He didn’t know why; it was just a feeling he had. He’d always been proud of his ability to spot a good cook.
Mike let the receiver fall to the floor without even trying to find the cradle. He scrabbled through the clutter on his nightstand, located a small plastic bag, and sucked a blast of medium-grade cocaine up each nostril. These two hits left the bag almost empty. He pressed the disconnect button on the phone and dialed NuShawn’s beeper. Only when fifteen minutes had crawled by and NuShawn still hadn’t called back did Mike notice that it was eight in the morning.
Why had Lenny called him so early? And what was the terrible thing he’d said—Why do you have such a hard-on for Rickey? It was the disgrace, that Lenny could even think that. When Mike looked back on the past year, it seemed to him that things had been fine until he’d hired Rickey. All his problems dated from Rickey’s tenure at Escargot’s and, even worse, the time right after Rickey had quit. Now Terrance, Mike’s only reliable dishwasher, was quitting to work at Rickey’s restaurant; he’d put in his notice a week ago. Pinky Mouton had stepped up his usual insinuations about how Mike was never going t
o amount to anything, almost as if he were comparing his son with Rickey. Lenny Duveteaux, one of the richest and most powerful restaurateurs in New Orleans, was calling him up and threatening him.
When Mike had learned about Rickey’s arrest warrant, he’d just tried to help Lenny out. It wasn’t his fault if Lenny didn’t want to be helped. But what had Lenny meant when he said I know about the other trouble you stirred up? He couldn’t know about the old man on Lafitte Avenue. How could he? Rondo Johnson had worked as a security guard at one of Pinky’s properties years ago and was ridiculously loyal to the Moutons. He wouldn’t have told anybody that Mike was paying him to raise a stink about the new restaurant.
Mike got up and started a pot of coffee in his tiny modular kitchen. His mind was racing as he drank his first cup and flipped through the morning paper. The Saints wanted a new stadium. Another idiot had drowned in Bayou Segnette. The mayor was trying to award himself a third term. Mike turned the page and ran his eye down the column of obituaries. A swallow of black coffee stuck halfway down his throat, and he coughed convulsively, spraying it all over the paper.
Rondo Johnson was dead. Jesus Christ, was there anything these people wouldn’t do to fuck with him? In some hazy part of his mind, Mike knew he was crossing the boundaries of real paranoia. Certainly Rickey had assaulted him and mocked him and turned people against him, but could Rickey really have had anything to do with Johnson’s death? Mike shook his head. They wouldn’t have killed a man just to spite him, would they? Then he remembered Uncle George, shot to death in the very property Rickey was now leasing for his restaurant. Obviously it tied in somehow.
Mike gnawed the inside of his cheek. All of this was aimed at him, a big gaudy slap in the face. If they would kill an innocent old man just to fuck with his head, mightn’t they kill him too if he kept getting in their way?
He locked his apartment, got in his car, and pulled onto the service road that led to the I-10. Once on the highway, he didn’t take the French Quarter exit but continued until he reached the exit that would deliver him to NuShawn’s house. Early or not, he couldn’t face this day without some help.
Liquor Page 21