“Are you out of your mind? Even if he would listen to me, which he won’t, those two meat-fisted killers are undoubtedly looking for me. That’s why I’m here.”
“You still don’t get it? Tony needs you alive with the money. Because with the cash in your hands, you’re compromised. You can bet he was filming everything that took place on his boat. The video is probably already duplicated six times and tucked away for safekeeping. But if you don’t have the money, and if you’re alive, then you’re the thing that he fears most – someone who can testify against him and put him behind bars.”
“Wonderful. You’ve just given him a definitive reason to kill me, as if Ribeye and Frankie didn’t have reason enough already.”
“Tony won’t know who you’ve talked to or what you may have planned, or who you might have told that you’re going to see him. He won’t do anything to you, even if he wanted to, which he won’t.”
“And the other two? They’re going to sit by and watch?”
“You let me deal with Tony about that. Just go to Tony and tell him about what his men did to you and that they took the money. That’s all it will take. Trust me.” I didn’t trust her at all.
But what she said had given me an idea.
Chapter 54
I had thought I had sunk as low as I could go when I retreated to Taylor’s, but I proved I could submerge even lower. By deceiving Washington Eby into helping me.
That afternoon Washington and I bounced down the highway in his ancient unairconditioned truck. I had taken a couple of pain pills before we left, but my left arm still ached with each jolt. Rolling down the windows did nothing to alleviate the heat, and the wind blowing in only seemed to increase the denseness of the air. Sweat poured from my brow and armpits as well as down my back. My jeans and collared shirt, which I had persuaded Washington to retrieve from my house, were now limp and damp.
The interstate highway from Baton Rouge to New Orleans travels through the heart of a delta built up over centuries by the Mississippi River; flat alluvial land without a hill, mound or swale to disturb the terrain. The road runs in arrow-straight sections for miles, a narrow valley bordered by tall trees.
Washington had gladly agreed to take me down to the Crescent City when I shamelessly lied to him that my car was broken. Washington slowed at the three-mile bridge that spanned a vast swamp. Trees reaching up from thirty feet below, nestling against the edges of the concrete railings, were silent ushers on the entryway to the city. We came across the Bonne Carre Spillway, whose floodgates were opened whenever the Mississippi River got too high, and wheezed around the last curve, passing the few cypress trees that remained, their elegant, gnarled trunks rising out of stagnant olive pools. Decapitated cypress knees encircled them, a muddy remembrance of what had once been a forest.
We weren’t headed downtown. The meeting was not to take place in the French Quarter. That was too public. Too crowded with tourists. Rather, we took the Carrollton Avenue exit and drove southwest down this wide boulevard lined with oak trees, to where the river made the sharp turn that gave the Crescent City its name.
From Carrollton to Tchoupitoulas Street, along warehouses that lined the Mississippi River levee, where the river level on the other side of the massive earthwork rose higher than the roofs. This was the high edge of the bowl that was New Orleans, the
‘sliver by the river’ that hadn’t flooded when the 17th Street Canal levee failed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Washington had not spoken during the drive. But now, a few blocks short of our destination, he pulled the truck onto a narrow side street and turned off the engine.
“You know, Durnella said I was crazy to drive to New Orleans. She hates this city. Before the storm, her people lived here and she wouldn’t come visit them. Then Katrina flooded them out, and there’s no one left to visit. So, she didn’t want me to come at all.”
“You know I’ll pay for the gas and for your time.”
“Don’t want your money. Won’t take it. Now, Durnella asked why you didn’t just rent a car or get your own car fixed. I told her you must’uv had a good reason. That woman worries about you. But, you’re a young guy still. Told her you were probably out cattin’ around. Jokin’, I was. But Durnella don’t cotton to talk like that. It just set her off. She thinks you ought to settle down with some nice girl, but you always seem to be sittin’ alone in that house. Then she took the reins of her own argument and rode off with it, talkin’ about how it ain’t right for a man to be alone in his life. Talked ‘bout all them loose girls and how it’s that stuff in the movies and on that Internet causin’ all this. If they just wouldn’t show it, she complained, them young girls would stay home and go to church and learn right livin’. Talked ‘bout how if all them kids went to Sunday School each week, there wouldn’t be no foolin’ around. If they’d just listen to the Preacher. But no, all the kids know better. Don’t have no respect for the Preacher or for the church. No wonder, she said, they don’t have no respect for their bodies. Went on and on, she did. ‘Course, I didn’t say nothin’. Don’t usually, you know. Don’t pay to argue. Take my advice. If a woman starts gettin’ up a head of steam, just back off and let her crank that valve wide open. Can’t win, you know. Just let her condensate on her own. But, served me right for talking ‘bout cattin’ ‘round.”
“Washington, it’s nothing like that.”
The old man patted me on the shoulder. “Know that, Neighbor. I know. Didn’t want to scare her. She gets the worries too easily and it’s bad for her pressure, the doctor says.”
The more he said, the worse I felt for deceiving him.
“Don’t think ‘bout apologizing,” he said earnestly. “Neighbor, you got some serious trouble. I know that. I see a lot. More people been at your house in the last week than I seen in a year. But, you didn’t come home last night. My old bladder can’t hold more than a thimbleful without wanting to be emptied. So, I’m looking out the window every time I’m passing to the bathroom. Your car is in the driveway and you’re not home? That’s not like you, I’m thinking. You’re not there this morning. Then you called right before lunch today. Get your clothes? Mighty strange request. Meet you outside of the neighborhood and fetch you to New Orleans? T’ain’t a usual thing to ask for a man who’s got a car. Something’s gotta be wrong, I’m thinkin’. So I joked about it so
Durnella’s not upset. Wrong joke.”
Washington shifted in his seat. “But when she finally quiets down I go into the backyard and then into your house. What a mess. No lawyer’s goin’ to leave his files and papers all over the floor like that. Insulation all over the hallway; crawl space door popped open. Something very unusual’s goin’ on. Would have straightened it up a bit if I had time, but I didn’t. Doorbell rang. So I looked out the latch of your door and there’s this little man on the front porch. Chinese or somethin’. I calls out and asks him what he’s wantin’. I wasn’t goin’ to open that door for no one. Says he gotta see you. I says you weren’t in and didn’t know when you’d be back. He slipped somethin’ under the door.”
Washington reached into his shirt pocket and handed me a wrinkled piece of paper that had been folded several times. “Didn’t read it. Figured it was none of my business. But that man said he had to see you and to give you this note. I said if I saw you I would, and now I have.”
I took the note and held it in my hand, unopened.
“Before I left, Durnella made me take this.” Washington held up the brown paper bag on the seat. “Sandwiches. Made three of them. One for you, one for me, and an extra to share. Put in a couple of apples too, and a few cookies.”
“Neighbor, I can tell trouble when it’s around. I’ve seen too much in my day. I learned early to watch, but to look like I wasn’t lookin’ and say and show nothin’. But all the time, though, I was watchin’. And I been watchin’ you. Your house. The way you look. The way you act. Things aren’t right. You don’t have no clients to speak of, then all
of a sudden it’s like a bus station over there, with people comin’ and goin’ at all hours. You wouldn’t leave that house for days at a time, and now you stay out all night. You never asked me for much of nothin’, then you ask to borrow my bateau and motor, and then you ask me to drive you to New Orleans, and I can see you got somethin’ wrong with that arm you’re favoring, all bandaged and all. No, things ain’t right.”
Washington reached back down into the well behind the seat. “I watch and I prepare.” He pulled his shotgun out and laid it across his lap.
I just stared at the gun. Washington, on whom I had imposed without compunction, who hadn’t even graduated from grammar school, was wiser and more thoughtful than I would ever be. All he wanted to do was to protect me. He had seen right through my ruse and had driven me to New Orleans, knowing all along that there was some kind of danger involved, never asking questions, just being ready with the double- gauged shotgun. Washington was ready to act. I had become an automaton put in motion by Taylor.
I was ashamed of the way I had acted towards Washington and the way I had mistreated and misjudged him. All I could muster was a quiet “Thanks.” It was hardly adequate.
“Don’t thank me, Neighbor. At least, not yet. Haven’t done a thing so far. Just wanted you to know I’m ready if that’s what’s needed. But I don’t think it should be. Now that we’ve come this far, what’s to say there’s a need to go any farther? Why don’t we just turn around and head home?
Go back to Baton Rouge? It made eminent sense. Why risk my life, and Washington’s, on a venture that seemed so full of potential peril?
And yet, I was here. My standards had shrunk. First, I had dreams of the entire four million. Then a portion of it. Then I lost it. But I had a new plan. For the first time in years, I felt alive. I was in pain, and my sliced left arm was throbbing constantly, but I was animated by all the possibilities. I was fully awake, as if the last five years had been a bad dream. I was fully present. It was the fear of danger, and the excitement of it, that made me feel as if I had come out of a long hibernation.
“Washington, that’s a fine offer, but I’ve got to finish this up, so please, just drive on and drop me off where I need to be.”
“Are you sure you’re not makin’ a mistake, Neighbor? Tell you what, at least read this note before you go. The Chinaman said it was important.”
I opened the wrinkled scrap of paper and smoothed it out. Spidery handwriting, in
pencil:
MUST see you TODAY. PLEASE.
I will come by later. Mr. Trey fired me.
I know about meetings late at night at plant. I know many things.
I DID NOT tell the Sheriff or Mr. Trey. I need a lawyer.”
It was signed “Kuo Htay.”
Chapter 55
So, Trey fired Kirk/Kuo, just as he said he would. And Kirk/Kuo saw late-night meetings, probably including the one Spider had with Taylor on the night he died.
That meant that I had to talk with Kirk/Kuo to find out what he knew. Of course, Kirk/Kuo’s not telling the sheriff about Taylor – if Taylor was whom he had seen – only increased the suspicion that would fall on me. And why didn’t he want to talk to the sheriff? What else was he hiding?
I realized that by waiting until now to hand me the note, Washington was trying to give me another reason to return to Baton Rouge. But I merely folded the paper and stuck it in my pocket. “Washington, I’ve got to finish what I’ve started.”
He shook his head unhappily as he cranked the ignition, “Not for me to run your life.” He turned the truck at the next corner and headed back toward Tchoupitoulas Street. “I’ll tell you, though, making a decision just to show you can make one don’t seem to me to be very high on a list of good reasons.”
To our right, behind decaying wood buildings and rusted metal warehouses, the levee loomed, dark and earthy.
“Now, I’m sure you’re thinking that you can do what you want ‘cause it won’t affect no one but you. But, Neighbor, don’t you understand? No one ever does anything that don’t affect someone else, somehow, someway.”
As we neared our destination, sickly trees lined both sides of the street. At last we saw a sign hanging perpendicular to the brick building two blocks ahead.
“TORCAMENTO’S.”
“Washington, drive past it the first time and cruise around the area a bit, OK?”
“Now, Neighbor, that’s a start. This city ain’t safe at all any more.”
The truck meandered slowly up and down the adjacent blocks. I did not see Ribeye, Frankie, or their car.
The unique pattern of New Orleans neighborhoods sometimes makes it difficult to determine what was ordinary and what extraordinary, for New Orleans is a checkerboard of housing types, races, and nationalities.
On one block, small kids on tricycles dashed up and down the street, their parents drinking beer and watching from metal chairs on open porches. On the next block, aimless-looking teenagers lounged against cars, throwing surly glances at the truck as it drove by. Another street over, a mother pushed an expensive baby carriage in front of columned homes hidden behind cast iron fences. Another corner – shotgun houses, narrow one-room-wide wooden buildings with sagging rooflines. A man in an undershirt bar-b-queing in a front yard that was only slightly larger than his grill.
If Ribeye and Frankie were waiting, they were well hidden.
We passed by the restaurant a third time. The gold letters spelling out “TORCAMENTO’S” stood out boldly against the sign’s dark blue background. The building was distinct. Unlike the yellowed paint of the wooden homes and offices and the reddened rust of the sheet-metal buildings, the white brick restaurant with its fire-engine red door had none of the greenish tinge of mold and mildew that clung to anything porous in this damp city of verdant undergrowth. Even the cracked sidewalk in front of the restaurant was a chalky ivory, contrasting with the adjacent brownish grey concrete squares in front of the other buildings. Torcamento’s spoke of upkeep, of frequent bleach-washes, of pride, and of success.
Washington finally stopped on a nearby side street.
I hopped out. “Don’t park here. It will just raise suspicions.”
“Look Neighbor, I know how to disappear when I need to. Spent a lifetime doin’ that. I’ll be back in an hour. If you’re not here, I’m coming in that restaurant for you.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“I told you. I watch plenty. If it was just foolishness that you were down here for, you’d have laughed at my gun. You would have said something. But no, you just looked at that gun with big eyes liked you wish you had thought of it. So, I was right. This is all connected somehow. I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, but I do know trouble. That’s what you’ve been in, and that’s what you’re now in. I told you. Every decision affects someone else. I’m not going home without you. Couldn’t live with myself if I did.”
He grinned slowly. “Sure couldn’t live with Durnella if I did either. If you’re not out of that restaurant within the hour, I’m coming inside. With my gun.”
Chapter 56
Wooden barrels containing empty oyster shells crowded the sidewalk outside Torcamento’s red door.
Inside, the restaurant was dim, long, and narrow. Every surface was lined with tiles. White squares separated by black ceramic diamonds tessellated the floor, climbed up the wall, and gleamed from the ceiling. Old wooden tables, thick coats of dark black paint covering their marred surfaces, crowded against one another. The tile-topped bar ran along the left side of the room.
I looked around cautiously. There were only two people in the restaurant, the bartender and a customer, neither of whom was Ribeye or Frankie.
The bartender looked up at me. He had a broad chest and a narrow waist. He stood behind the bar, a small blunt oyster knife in his hand. His ears were tiny, or maybe they only looked that way because of his massive, muscled neck. Dressed in a white apron, he was expertly popping open oysters and placin
g them on a platter.
I recognized the customer sitting at the bar with his back to the door. It was Hubbard Estes, whom I hadn’t seen since he had laid me off as Old Parish Mortgage was shutting down. Still wearing a button-down white shirt. Still dressed in black suspenders holding up dark pants over highly polished shoes. His attire never changed. His hair, or what was left of it fringing his head, was now completely grey, but he was unmistakable.
And, as always, Hubbard was eating. Seated on a tall stool, with one foot resting on the metal rail that ran along the base of the bar, he was downing the freshly shucked oysters as quickly as they were put in front of him. He ate rapidly, but with a practiced neatness, and without a slurp or sound.
Only after he had finished the dozen on the platter before him did he acknowledge my presence. “Schex, you’re here! Been expecting you.”
I reluctantly walked over to shake his extended hand, but as I did the bartender moved to the front door and locked it.
“It’s OK, Schex. Trust me.”
I hadn’t admired Hubbard, not when I worked for him and certainly not when he let me go. And, I never trusted him.
The bartender positioned himself between me and the back exit. He made sure that I saw the gun tucked into the pocket of his apron.
“Now Schex, cooperate with the man. It’ll only take a minute.” The bartender expertly frisked me.
I had expected this. I wasn’t wearing a wire. I wasn’t carrying anything with me except what I intended to say.
Finished with his examination, the bartender returned to his station and poured two beers into cold steins.
“Satisfied?” I directed my comments to Hubbard.
“But Schex, I’m always satisfied. Come on. You came to see Tony. You have to go through the procedures.”
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