by Herren, Greg
“So, you don’t know if your brother was having money problems?”
“He wouldn’t talk about that with me if he was.” Jonny’s tone made it clear it was a ludicrous idea. “And he sure wouldn’t talk to Lorelle about it either—they don’t hardly talk to each other anymore, I don’t know why and Lorelle won’t say. But he’s always been kind of a dick to me, so.” He shrugged. “I just figured she got tired of him being a dick to her. You think he was having money troubles?”
“Just looking at possibilities.” I thought for a moment. “Can you think of anyone who’d want your brother dead?”
“Like I told the cops, Chanse, no.” He hung his head. “Robby and me, we weren’t close—we never were, we were too far apart in age.” His voice broke. “He was my brother and I loved him, but you know, he never wanted to have a whole lot to do with me, you know? I always thought it was because he was so much older than me—his oldest isn’t that much younger than I am, you know, but I always thought…” His voice trailed off. He added in a heartbroken whisper, “we’d have time. I mean, he was my brother.”
I patted his shoulder. I’m generally not very good in these kinds of situations. There’s nothing you can say that’s going to make the person’s pain go away, so I generally just don’t say anything until the silence gets awkward and I wind up saying something lame. I genuinely felt bad for the kid—with a baby of his own on the way, his brother murdered, and his mother missing and most likely dead. I waited for him to get hold of his emotions again, and said, “Marino’s lawyer wants me to find your mother, too, and wants to pay me a hell of a lot of money…but I won’t take their money if you aren’t comfortable with it—you hired me first.”
“Why would I mind?” he asked, seeming honestly confused. “We both want the same thing, so I don’t see what the problem is. The most important thing is finding Ma. As long as you find her, I don’t care how many people are paying you to do it.” He shook his head again. “I can’t believe Ma was going to change her testimony. Chanse, it doesn’t make any sense. You really need to find her, man.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him she was probably dead. I didn’t get into any of the issues, the possible conflicts of interest in having two clients with the same goal. There wasn’t any point, really.
“I know you’ll do the right thing.” He smiled at me as I stood up to go. “So I don’t have anything to worry about, right?”
He was still sitting on the steps when I drove away. I called Abby to get her take on the situation, but she didn’t pick up. I left a voicemail and tossed my phone into the passenger seat.
The Riverside Bar and Grill wasn’t very far from Jonny’s and Mona’s houses, actually. It was on a stretch of Tchoupitoulas Street where one side was a long brick warehouse that extended almost from the stoplight at Louisiana to the one at Napoleon. Tipitina’s sat on the corner at Napoleon, and the Rouse’s was kitty-corner from there. I could see the Tipitina’s sign about a half block farther uptown from the big neon sign for the Riverside. I pulled into the gravel parking lot and sat there for a moment. There were only two other cars in the lot besides mine—one a battered-looking navy blue Chevrolet Malibu, and the other a gray Nissan SUV.
The Riverside itself was only one story, made of brick, and wasn’t raised, sitting flat on the ground. It wasn’t that big, maybe could hold a hundred or so people at most from the looks of it. There was another sign on the slanted roof that matched the one mounted on the pole alongside the street. The slanted roof was slate and was missing a few tiles. The windows were all blacked out, and there was a big commercial-sized Dumpster on the far side of the building. I could smell its contents when I opened the car door. The front door was glass and had the traditional warning sign about gaming machines and minors taped on the inside, facing out. I got out of my car and pushed the door open, entering the dark inside.
When my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I could see the place was set up in a very simple fashion, nothing fancy. To the right were three tired-looking pool tables, with lights directly over them hanging from the ceiling on chains. An old-fashioned bubble jukebox sat in the corner next to a cigarette machine and row of video poker machines. The jukebox was blaring an old Patsy Cline song, “Walking After Midnight.” Some scarred tables were set up throughout the main area of the bar, with 1970s-style orange plastic chairs placed around them. Cracked black plastic ashtrays sat in the center of every table. The bar ran about two-thirds the length of the room, directly opposite the front door. The cement floor slanted toward the occasional drain. The overwhelming smell of Pine-Sol barely masked the reek of stale beer, urine, and old cigarette smoke.
A man with an enormous beer gut in a black T-shirt reading Riverside in white letters was wiping down the bar counter with a white rag, and I could see another man of indeterminate age through the window to the kitchen. The man in the kitchen was wearing a hairnet and a white T-shirt, and sweat glistened on his forehead. I walked over to the bar and sat down on a stool, which wobbled a bit before settling.
“What can I get you?” the bartender asked, still wiping the bar down.
“Abita Amber,” I replied, putting a five down on the bar. He opened a cooler and popped the cap off the bottle, setting it down in front of me on top of a napkin that said Riverside Bar and Grill on it. He took the five and gave me a one and two quarters in change. I let it sit there. “Is Barney around?”
He crossed his arms, narrowed his eyes, and leaned back against the beer cooler. “Who’s looking?”
I pulled out one of my business cards and put it on top of my change. “The name’s Chanse MacLeod, and I’m a private eye. I’m looking for Mona O’Neill—her son Jonny’s worried about her.”
He stared at the card for a while, working the toothpick in his mouth. He put my card into his shirt pocket. “I’m Barney,” he said, not offering me his hand. Instead, he filled a glass with the soda gun and took a drink. “I haven’t seen Mona since Thursday night.”
“What time did you see her?” I took out my notepad and pen.
“She came by here on her way to St. Anselm’s.” Barney thought for a moment or two. “Was around nine, I guess—yeah, that lesbian on MSNBC was on.” He gestured to the silent big-screen TV mounted on the wall above the top-shelf liquor bottles. He grabbed a remote from under the bar and turned it on. Judge Judy was lecturing some penitent-looking man who was badly in need of a shower and some dental work. He muted the sound and put the remote back under the bar.
“How did she seem?”
“She was aggravated.” Barney sipped his soda. “Donna Calhoun was supposed to sit up all night with her at the church, but she wasn’t going to make it again, and Mona was fired up about it. Donna’s not the most dependable person.” He used his index finger to make a circle in front of his right temple. “I always told her not to get so worked up—Donna’s not been right in the head in years, but Mona didn’t like being there all night by herself. She came by here to see if I could sit with her.” He shook his head. “She knew I was short-staffed—one of my regular bartenders wrecked her motorcycle and wasn’t able to come in that night, so I had to fill in—like I’d been filling in ever since Serena wrecked the stupid bike.” He made a face. “How many times did I warn that girl to not drive like a maniac?” He scratched his arm. “Donna was just a substitute in the first place, someone else had canceled out already. Mona was the only one who was dependable enough to sit vigil all night.”
“Who was supposed to sit with her originally?”
He pondered this for a moment. “Don Sinclair, I think it was. Hold on for a minute.” He knelt down and dug around underneath the bar, then stood up again with a stained manila folder. He flipped it open and looked at a computer printout of a June calendar. His finger traced along the page and tapped the previous Thursday. “Yeah, Don Sinclair.” He made a face. “He’s not dependable, either—he drinks a bit. I think she really came by here looking to see if he was here, so she could p
ut a bug in his ear. Mona did like to read people the riot act once she worked herself up to it.” He snorted. “Besides, she knew I knew damned well Don was supposed to sit up all night in the church and had canceled on her. I wouldn’t have served him if he’d come in here.” He put both of his elbows on the bar and leaned forward. I could smell stale smoke on him. “I haven’t heard from her since she left for the church. Jonny thinks something happened to her?”
“Is that unusual?”
He looked me square in the eye. “Mona and I have been seeing each other for about a year, mister. But we don’t have no ties, we don’t check up on each other—it’s nice and casual, you know what I’m saying? Sometimes I don’t talk to her for days, even weeks sometimes. I don’t put no demands on her, and she don’t put none on me. We like it like that.”
“Apparently, no one’s heard from her since Thursday night,” I replied. “Her cell phone goes straight to voicemail, and no one’s seen her car, either.”
“Well, that ain’t like her. She talks to her kids every day—especially Jonny. He’s her baby, you know, and with that wife of his about to pop out a grandkid…no, that ain’t like her at all.” He rubbed his eyes and lit a Pall Mall with a book of Riverside matches. “We usually get together on Saturday afternoons, when we do, but I leave that to her. She didn’t call me this weekend. I just assumed she was pissed I didn’t go to the church with her, you know, or maybe something had come up, who knows? I figured she’d call when she was ready to see me, and that was just fine with me.”
“How long have you and Mona been involved?”
“I’ve known Mona most of my life—as long as I can remember.” He smiled faintly. “I went to de la Salle with Danny O’Neill, when she was at Sacred Heart. Her and Danny were always together, ever since they were kids, you know? We all grew up on the same block of St. Thomas Street in the Channel.” His eyes got a faraway look in them. “If it weren’t for Danny, I might have married her myself.” His face twisted. “’Stead of some of them bitches I married—I’d been better off not getting married at all.” He refilled his soda. “I started seeing Mona about a year ago, right around the time my last wife Debbie ran off. It just kind of happened, you know? I never thought Mona and me would have ever happened, but then Debbie took off and…” He shrugged. “It’s nothing serious, you know, just companionship—we made that clear right from the start. Neither one of us are wanting to get married again, you know? I’ve been married four times and ain’t about to put myself through that hell ever again—and Mona, you know, she never wanted to get married again after Danny died. What we have is real nice, you know? It’s comfortable, and at our age that’s about all you can hope for.”
“How often did you see her? Talk to her?”
“We talked pretty much every day—of course, I got more tied up around here at the bar after Serena wrecked her stupid motorbike.” He gestured around the place. “I thought owning my own business was the way to go after I retired, you know? But it’s a hell of a lot of headaches.”
“Then sell the place and quit your bitching,” the man in the kitchen said, coming through the saloon doors with a steaming plate of fried mushrooms. He set them down on the bar between us. There was a little bowl of sauce in one corner. He wiped his hands on his apron and held his right one out to me. “I’m Jermaine. What a nice lady like Miz O’Neill ever saw in a jackass white man like this one is a mystery to us all.”
“Chanse.” I shook his hand. “Were you here on Thursday night?”
Jermaine nodded. “Yeah, the bar was busy but I didn’t have no food orders, so I was out here refilling ice and shit. She was real agitated, not that this one ever noticed nothing unless it punched him in the face.” He grinned, and his bottom teeth were all gold. “Something had been bothering Miz O’Neill for about a week or so, I’d say—she hadn’t been acting like herself for a while. Not that this damned redneck ever noticed.”
I dipped one of the mushrooms into the sauce and popped it into my mouth. It was hot, but the batter was delicious.
“Fuck you, Jermaine,” Barney said pleasantly. “And get back to work. I’m not paying you to come out here and bother the customers. And who’s paying for these mushrooms?”
“Ain’t nothing to do in that damned kitchen right now except sweat, and you know it, so fuck you, and if I want to give the detective man a taste of what comes out of my kitchen I guess you can dock my pay for it if it means your sorry ass is gonna go broke.” Jermaine smiled back at him. “Unless you got a problem with me talking to this detective man about what a shitty man you were to Miz O’Neill, who could have done better than your sorry ass if she just would put a little bit of effort into it.” He turned back to me. “I never could figure it out, you know, unless it was just pure laziness on her part, you know?”
I gathered this was a regular sideshow act the two of them put on. Their words were insulting, but their tone was friendly. “You said something was bothering her—do you remember exactly when you noticed that?”
“Something was bothering her—he’s right about that.” Barney popped a mushroom in his mouth and chewed on it thoughtfully. “You need to put more beer in the batter, Jermaine. I’d say she started acting funny about a week or so ago.” He scratched his forehead. “Let me think on it. Yeah, it was about a week ago last Thursday, right, Jermaine?”
Jermaine nodded. “Yeah, it was a Thursday night, because I’d been off the day before.” He winked at me. “I generally have Tuesdays and Wednesdays off. She came in about seven, ordered a catfish po’boy and onion rings and a beer.”
“Serena hadn’t wrecked her damned bike yet, so I was in the office,” Barney remembered. “I didn’t even know she was here until I came out to get a Coke. Yeah, she was drinking a beer—which I thought was weird. That wasn’t like Mona—she had to sit vigil that night and she never drank when she was going to the church.” He ate another mushroom. “Not that Mona was a big drinker anyway—she’d sometimes have a beer, or a glass of wine, but that was about it. She never was big on drinking—even when we were kids. Me and Danny tied on some good ones, but not Mona. I asked her about it, and she said she’d had a bad day—but that’s all she would say about it. It was still bothering her when she came over that Saturday, you know, she always comes to my place, she was always afraid Jonny might catch us if we were at her place—but she didn’t want to talk about it—and that was that. She’s stubborn, you know—there was no point in pressing her about it—she’d tell me about it when she was ready to tell me about it, or she never would. That’s just how she is.” He looked at me. “I mean, we’re casual, like I said. We don’t press each other about stuff. If she wanted me to know, she’d tell me. Asking her would just piss her off, and I had other things on my mind, if you know what I mean.”
I put that image out of my mind. “So, you had no idea what the problem was?”
“Well, I just assumed it was Jonny. I mean, it usually was.” He made a face. “If it was something to do with the church, she would have told me, since I was part of Save Our Churches. It usually always was Jonny, anyway—and that piece of trash he married. Mona worries about the two of them all the time.”
“You didn’t think she was trash when she worked here,” Jermaine observed.
“That was before she got knocked up by a kid five years younger than her,” Barney snapped.
“Heather’s five years older than Jonny?” I couldn’t have heard that right.
Jermaine laughed. “Oh, yeah. They met here, you know.”
“Jonny was always more trouble to Mona than he was worth,” Barney added.
“Jonny was a problem for her?”
“Butter wouldn’t melt in that kid’s mouth, you know, but he’s a real piece of work, that one is.” Barney rolled his eyes. “Kicked out of de la Salle his senior year, never graduated—I don’t think he even bothered to ever get his GED, either. He’s always been a problem for Mona. He was a change-of-life baby for her, you know�
�and she always spoiled him. She wasn’t that way with Robby and Lorelle, uh-uh, they toed the line and she disciplined those two. Jonny’s always been wild and out of control—he’s had some run-ins with the police, you know—and then he knocked up that trashy girl. Mona is always making excuses for him, not having a daddy, blah blah blah. And I told Mona buying him and Heather that house was a mistake, but she thought it might make him grow up.” He shook his head again. “You see that place? What a fucking dump. It’s a wonder the city ain’t blighted it right out from under them. He can’t be bothered to take care of it, doesn’t mow the damned grass—Mona hired a neighborhood kid to do it, you know—and Jonny got mad because the kid tried mowing it in the morning before it gets too damned hot! Woke him up, and he needs his sleep, don’t you know, because he’s going to be a big champion fighter.” He shook his head. “He needs to be spanked, is what he needs, the spoiled brat.”
Jermaine exhaled. “The kid ain’t that bad, Barney, and you know it. You’re just mad because the girl—” He cut himself off.
“How long did she work here?” I looked from one to the other.
Barney shot daggers out his eyes at Jermaine before turning back to me. “She worked here about a year—behind the bar and sometimes waitressed. She was a good worker, I’ll give her that.” He said it grudgingly.
“How old is she, exactly?”
“Twenty-five.” Barney laughed at the look on my face. “Yeah, that’s right, she’s at least five years older than Jonny. Now, what would a girl that age want with a boy his age? It ain’t right—there’s something wrong with that girl. And she’s a thief.”
“You don’t know that,” Jermaine cautioned.
“The hell I don’t,” Barney roared. “Every night that little bitch worked the registers came up short, didn’t they? Only on the nights she worked. I never caught her with her hand in the till—but I was sure enough going to fire her thieving ass when she quit.” He gave me a sour look. “She quit because she’d married Jonny, and she hasn’t turned her hand to do a goddamned thing ever since.” He blew out a long breath. “If something’s happened to Mona—I’ll bet you free drinks for the rest of your life, Mr. MacLeod, that little bitch had something to do with it.”