by Brian Hodge
Approaching the hotel, April reached into her purse, then brandished her phone credit card. “If you want to go upstairs and grab a new disk, I’ll stay in the lobby and see if I can get Ron’s number from information.”
Justin said okay. To economize, they were in an older hotel, a small European-style pension, high ceilings and a mellow feeling of age ripening in the walls. For local flavor it beat the hell out of Holiday Inn. No TV and no phone in the rooms, though; for such luxuries you had to keep to the lobby.
Friday night foot traffic between the hotel and Bourbon Street was steady, and they entered the hotel lobby mingled with a couple other corners and goers. Justin hanging straight, for the stairs, April veering left, past the end of the desk toward a pair of pay phones.
Justin was at the foot of the stairs when he saw the two of them coming from the far side of the lobby, the homey little cluster of chairs around the television. He knew they were cops at first glance, had done his time around enough of their kind to make spotting them a sport comparable to bird-watching. To the initiated, their economy suits, well worn, and their world-weary expressions of no-bullshit cockiness were as obvious as a uniform. Their walk screamed they had every right to be here.
The heavily stubbled one flashed a badge, the one with sandy hair backing him up. “Justin Gray?”
Tight inside, with old memories slapping him in the face, he nodded. They damn well knew already.
“Could you move over to the wall? Lean in and spread ’em, I know you know the drill.”
Spend enough time in such company and they eventually lost the ability to intimidate by their presence alone. He was less afraid than irritated, scowling.
“Let me see that badge again,” and he reached. Maybe these two were just good actors.
The stubbled one grabbed him by the arm and the shoulder, spun him face-first into the wall, and this hotel felt very solid.
At the moment of impact, the guy’s foot smoothly hooked Justin’s ankle, yanked his legs wide and off balance, and this guy was feeling like very much a pro.
Justin was frisked, and a hand dipped into one jacket pocket, came out. One of them pretzeled his arms down to the small of his back and he felt the familiar bite of handcuffs.
He was spun around again, slammed back into the wall. Found himself looking at a packet of clear plastic — a perfect size for sleight-of-hand — dangling from the guy’s fingers. The half-dozen pebbles inside could only be rock cocaine. Chunks of crack had always reminded Justin of misshapen little molars.
“Sing along if you know the words,” said the sandy-haired cop. “You have the right to remain silent…”
“Oh, why the fuck are you even bothering?” Justin spat. “Whose payroll are you on, anyway? Mullavey’s? Nathan Forrest’s?”
The guy polished off his Mirandas without missing a beat, as he processed the situation in seconds: Word had to have leaked somewhere very wrong at NOPD headquarters after his visit this afternoon. Maybe all the way back to Nathan Forrest. Bad business to publicly gun down a tourist at his hotel, or out on the street in the Quarter, or snatch him kicking and screaming into a waiting van. No problem, they would shut him up while making it look nice and legal, just another sleazeball run afoul of the law. Two bought cops turning his checkered past against him, and they would find it no trouble. One scoop with the NCIC computer net, and they would have his record from St. Louis, including every detail of the drug bust and mug shots for easy ID. Maybe just enough from last year’s firefight in Tampa for added seasoning.
They could drag him down from his lonely soapbox and off the street with minimal fuss. Chances were he would be dead long before he’d be brought before a judge to determine probable cause in his arrest. They would either turn him directly over to Nathan Forrest, or shoot him while resisting arrest in a less crowded environment. Or go ahead and process him into a jail cell, let some troglodyte roommate with a homemade knife do the rest.
His only way out was April, and he had to keep these two from realizing they were together. These two goons wouldn’t know his wife was with him for this fool’s quest in their city, or even what she looked like. April’s arrest record was virgin white.
They flanked him, one on each side, and began to escort him through the lobby. The sight was of marginal interest to most of the others present … there but for the grace of God go I, and I wonder what the putz did, anyway. He could protest his innocence, tell everyone this was a frame-up, and at best they would only applaud his performance. Nice try.
April—
She had finished at the phone and was rounding the desk, and he knew she was going to blow it for herself, as well. Were their positions reversed, so would he, his first impulse being to demand to know what they were doing with his spouse in handcuffs.
Eyes dead serious, he dared not even blink as she drew near. April’s gaze drifted to meet his own, a tiny furrow creasing her brow, her lips beginning to form the word who, or what. A minute twitch of his head, and No, he mouthed, and felt the stubbled cop at his left take notice. Start to spin him a half turn to look into Justin’s face, find out what was going on with him. Even if April had gotten the message Justin knew the only way out was to make it look like a feint. Faking left while dodging right.
“Sucker.” He laughed, and kicked the cop as hard as he could in the groin.
April froze the instant Justin kicked the man to his left. Why he did it, she didn’t know, but something was terribly wrong here, and she saw when he twisted that his hands were cuffed behind him. The police? He’d done nothing wrong. The one with lighter hair took out his gun and whacked it down across the side of Justin’s head with an impact that made her wince, That was his skull that made that sound, and it put him on the floor.
“Hey!” she cried, before she could stop herself. She grabbed the man’s arm before he could swing again, and now she was on the brunt end of his temper, glaring eyes and cigarette breath in her face. He pushed her back toward the desk, then shoved his badge before her eyes.
“Touch me again,” he said, “and we can make it two for the price of one, okay, chère? You want that?”
Behind him, Justin rolled over, laughed again — it sounded so forced to one who knew the sound of his real laughter. His right eye was clenched shut, blood streaming from a cut through the eyebrow and along the ridge of bone at his temple.
“Why don’t you bring her along too?” Justin said before she could speak again, and it didn’t even sound like his voice, his personality. “I could use a last meal.”
“Shut the fuck up,” said the light-haired cop. The unshaven one raised unsteadily out of doubled-over misery. He still wore a pained look, and aimed a halfhearted kick into Justin’s ribs.
April pressed herself back against the hotel desk, felt the rapt gaze of the clerk over her shoulder. Nails digging into the wood, she held herself in place, biting her lip while every instinct screamed for her to do something, say something, get this cleared up, they’d see they had the wrong man—
But no, right and wrong didn’t even factor in. Let intellect override emotion and confusion, and the truth was plain. These two were no better than a Central American death squad come to silence a dissident. They were simply forced to be more cautious.
They had Justin up on his feet, and he was as wobbly as a tranquilized lion, but okay. She glared at him as she might any lowlife who’d just hit her with a crude proposition. Slumped forward as he was, there was no way either cop could see him wink his left eye, then dart a glance toward the lobby door.
April huffed and her feet were moving before she could even reason it out, go, just go. Behind her, they were prodding Justin along and apparently giving no more thought to her. What Justin no doubt wanted.
Out on St. Peter, April crossed the street and ran for the rental parked at curbside, several car lengths down. Her hand plunged into her purse for the keys. She threw herself behind the wheel as the two cops came through the hotel’s doorway, J
ustin struggling between them, ever the recalcitrant prisoner, buying time, and damn it, even thirty quiet seconds to figure something out would be a luxury.
Follow their car, see where they took him? Try her best to come back soon with a sympathetic lawyer? But suppose their plans were even more direct?
She ground the engine to life, left the lights off. Bit her lip while watching them approach a sedan parked ahead.
Fuck it, there was no time for subtlety here.
April jammed the shift lever into drive, revved the motor and wrenched away from the curb. Barreled forward while both cops still had their hands full trying to get Justin in through the rear driver’s-side door. She popped the lights on full bright and leaned heavily on the horn, and snared the attention of all three.
Justin dived headfirst into the backseat, no place else to go. She jammed the brakes and skidded, hit the open door and sheared it off cleanly. Glass sprayed from her right headlight.
The two cops had scrambled out of her path, one vaulting up onto the sedan’s roof and rolling off onto the sidewalk, and the other — the one with five o’clock shadow and throbbing testicles — trying to sprint back across the street. Whether she bumped him with the car or he got tagged by the flying door, April didn’t know, everything too fast for clarity, she only knew he went down hard.
A flash at her window — Justin, popping out of the sedan’s backseat and running to catch up. April leaned over to open the passenger door for him. He fell in cockeyed and she stomped the gas with the door still open, and he tried hooking the handle with his toe.
Knuckles luminous against the wheel, eyes wide, April ducked her head and glanced back, see if the police would fight back. The one she had sent flying was floundering on hands and knees. The other was on his feet again after his tumble across the sedan’s roof, leaning against the car, gun drawn, and she braced, too wired to question the shot that never came.
She screeched around the corner, and Justin was maneuvering in the seat, struggling upright with his hands still bound behind him, and he looked quite the disheveled mess, and never before so beautiful … battered, scarecrow hair and all.
“Okay. Okay,” he said rapidly, gulping wind and regarding everything with wide newborn’s eyes. “Okay. That worked.”
She burst into nervous laughter — he sounded so surprised. No pursuit behind them, not yet, and she hooked the car onto North Rampart, then a block later jogged across to Basin to head the opposite direction. Stairstepping through the blocks, no such thing as a straight line.
Justin was shaking his head, still breathing as if he’d just finished a windsprint. “You know what they did? They planted a package of crack on me. I don’t fucking believe this.”
“Why didn’t he shoot?” April couldn’t keep her eyes from the rearview mirror. “That one? He was aiming right through the back window, why didn’t he shoot?”
“I don’t know.” Justin cleared his throat. Took a deep, calming breath. “Maybe … maybe he knew they’d fucked up, didn’t want to make it any worse. And it would have been, unless he shot lucky enough to kill us both. Whether he hit anything or not, he’d have to file a shooting report. It could blow up in their faces, maybe.”
April kept quiet a moment, turning this over. No matter how many of them were crooked, running around with no restraint was a risk. Staying in someone’s hip pocket was a low-profile endeavor. Surely not everybody in the system would look the other way.
“So … you don’t think they’ll radio us in?”
“Maybe not.” His voice was breathless, hopeful. “Put out an APB, they’ve got no guarantee who brings us in. It’s just that much more control of the situation they lose.”
“We’d still better ditch the car soon.”
“Definitely. Definitely.”
April drove, pushing the speedometer well over the limit, threading the needle through traffic. She made a conscious effort to back off, slow down. The last thing they needed was a routine traffic stop. One look at Justin and his handcuffs, and the situation would escalate all over again. She broke into a grin.
“Makes you wonder how they’re going to explain their door.”
He cut loose with raspy laughter, then groaned. “What the hell are we going to do about these handcuffs?”
One crisis at a time, please. April braked at a stoplight, touched his jaw, gently forced his head around so she could get a look at where he’d been pistol-whipped. One look at the bleeding, puffy wound set her stomach churning with empathy.
“How is it?”
“Starting to hurt again. Oy.”
“Is your vision blurry or anything?”
“Nah.” He blinked rapidly. “It’s clear.”
She leaned forward, kissed him hurriedly on the lips. Tried to look into his eyes, deeply, survival of trust and love under fire, and all she could do was get the giggles again. Seeing him lying on the floor of the hotel lobby, playing the sexist swine.
“You could use a last meal? Jesus!”
He shrugged, laughed a bit. “It was all I could think of.” He nodded toward the intersection. “Green light.”
April drove on a meandering journey south, seizing upon the descending calm. Here were the facts: They were friendless in this city. They were wanted dead, no doubt, first Justin and now herself, and they couldn’t trust the police. To take the quickest road out of town would be pointless, as Mullavey and his brother could obviously reach back down to Tampa and swat them there. More immediately, they were driving a car best abandoned, and even though she might find enough tissues in her purse to clean Justin up, the fact remained that, modeling handcuffs, he still looked conspicuous, even by New Orleans standards.
Options were few.
“Lean closer,” she said, and Justin did so. She reached into his inner jacket pocket to pull out the small folded map, spread it out across his lap. They had, not long ago, passed south within easy sight of the Superdome, and pinpointing their location wasn’t hard. Nor was charting a course for where she decided to go.
“You’re going back to Granvier’s?” Justin said.
“What else can we do? It’s because of him we’re in this mess.”
“That’s stretching it a bit, don’t you think?”
“Well,” she said, conceding. “It’s at least enough that I can shame him into taking us in for a while.”
It was there a moment later, the sudden flashfire of rage, as confusing as it was misdirected. An astringent thought, No, it’s not Christophe Granvier’s fault we’re like this, and I know it, because it’s your fault, yours, you were the one who pushed it all this far. Knowing this to be unfair, knowing also that she, to deal with it, at least had to allow it past the mental threshold. There. Acknowledged. Gone.
What irony. Last year’s mutual anguish had come from her hesitating to trust Justin to hang in until the end. Now it was almost as if she were condemning him for having swung too far in the opposite direction. His defiant stranglehold on purpose, to do the right thing even if it killed them both.
All right. Enough. Enough.
“Hold my hand,” April said softly. Dropping the right from the steering wheel. “Hold my hand.”
Justin shifted with discomfort. “I’m, uh…” A melancholy laugh stuck in his throat.
Oh. Right. She pushed her hand behind his back, and they interlocked fingers in an odd configuration. She couldn’t even tell if it was his left hand or right.
No matter. Better. Better.
At Granvier’s house, she made one circle around the block. Looked okay, so she stopped. Once she got Justin safely in the house, away from public eyes, she could head back out alone and get rid of the car.
She let him out of the car and they paced up the walk to the front door. The sidewalks felt perpetually damp and slick in the Garden District, she had noticed earlier, along with its scent of decaying leaves. This place would never feel far from Halloween.
April thumbed the bell, pounded on the doo
r when he didn’t answer quickly enough. And when he did, Christophe Granvier simply stared. Two bedraggled waifs in the night, could she blame him?
“It’s gotten worse,” she said, and did not wait for an invitation. Barging past, yanking Justin along by the elbow, until they stood in his hall.
“I’d shake hands again,” Justin told him. “But, well…” He turned so Granvier could see the manacles.
“You’ve been hurt.” Granvier shut the door and, after a quick glance toward the street, locked it and yanked down a blind over the leaded door glass. He took a step toward Justin with obvious concern.
“We didn’t know where else to go.” April pressed close to Justin, while reaching out to touch Granvier on the arm. “Justin came up here to go to bat for you, and you didn’t want to have anything to do with it. Okay, fine, we couldn’t force you to do anything. But it’s way past us now, these people…”
And the interim perils of this evening spilled forth. Granvier listened without interruption, and there was no way she could condemn him for his earlier dismissal; it clearly had sprung from something far more insidious than apathy. In his eyes she could see the feeble beat of a crushed heart, knew that while he might no longer take action on behalf of himself, he still might for someone else. She hoped. How she hoped.
“Isn’t there anyone in this entire city you know,” she said, “that you can call for help, for their influence, for anything?”
The impassive black face, too lined, too much gray sprinkled in his hair. “For this matter? In this city? No. But there is, perhaps, someone, somewhere else.”