by Eden Butler
The Jack burned my throat as I tapped off the glass and I forgot all about the cat and the shitty day as I moved into my tiny bathroom. Now that I was home, I had changed my mind again: the bath would do me good, as had the Jack, and I stripped down, throwing my bra and thong with the wrinkled white shirt into the hamper next to the filling claw foot tub. The room steamed as I moved out of the way to close the door and slipped into the hot water slowly, inching my body beneath the heat, wincing as the growing blisters on my feet hit the water.
The antique cast iron tub, this place, was new to me, a luxury I’d never had when I was a kid or, hell even a year ago when Timber offered me a job. Before then, I had mostly crashed in dingy hotels, weekly-rented apartments with no locks on the door or no hot water heaters, smelling of stale cigarettes or worse. Sometimes Misty would let me camp out on her too small sofa when it wasn’t being used by a customer or one of Timber’s boys. Then Timber hired me, set me up with this place, promising it was mine for as long as I wanted it; telling me he wouldn’t ask for anything in return.
But he had. He’d kept at me, and when I decided I didn’t like belonging to anyone, I made Timber see reason—I let him know he could keep his job, the apartment and the fat bank rolls he tried using to get me to change my mind about quitting. I’d kept the apartment just by mentioning to the landlord that Timber was a friend and I was glad for it. It was homey, far too tiny for more than one person but, despite its ground-level position and the front steps just yards from the street, it was as safe a place as I’d ever been.
The floors were original, old pine that had been restored, keeping the faint nail holes and ware from the decades underneath all the polyurethane. The apartment was really one large room with a bath and bedroom off to the right, hidden behind a small hallway. It wasn’t much, but it kept me away from Misty’s groping customers and out of the drafty apartments with no heat or barely any insulation between the walls—places like the ones I’d lived in my whole life.
There were always homes, but that word was the most basic definition of what we’d dealt with under Wanda’s care. We had a roof. We had food and a toilet, but we had to work for everything we needed. In Wanda’s home if you wanted a toothbrush, you had to swindle a tourist for the cash to pay for it. If you wanted dinner, you had to bring in your take for the day. It took some getting used to, especially as a twelve year old just coming from the home I’d shared with my sister Stevie. That had been in Atlanta, with the Timmons; an elderly couple who really just wanted to help. We had started to make a home there, Stevie landing an internship in some swanky law office and our neighbor, Isiah Ferguson, being the only really good friend either of us ever had. Then Stevie got killed, Isiah ran off, and Mr. Timmons died and, well, I got stuck with Wanda here in New Orleans by some means I never cared enough to figure out.
Shit, I thought, wondering why all those useless memories had come crowding in all of the sudden. Thinking of my sister did me no good. Thinking of how it had been living in Atlanta, so close to normal, so close to being wanted would only invite depression which would keep me off my game. I hated how my eyes suddenly felt heavy, that a slight burn had crept into the corners of my eyelids.
Sliding down against the curved edged of the tub, I let the heat of the hot water wash away the day, taking from me the shit that had stacked up, and allowed myself to wonder, just for a second, about Neil Ryan.
It really was too bad that he still had that cop-vibe. Military types, cops, they tended to stay the same no matter their job title and, in my experience, they all looked down on folks like me. Of course they did. We stood on opposite ends of the law.
Still, hardass that he might be, Neil Ryan was too damn pretty. He had this square jaw, those high cheekbones and green eyes that reminded me of mint and the mojitos Misty always makes after she hits the farmer’s market. He was tall, but the good kind of tall, no more than maybe six foot, and had shoulders that seemed to go on and on.
But there was something else about him. I could see something in his eyes, something I had tried unsuccessfully to ignore as he interrogated me—he was fighting something, looking for something that was out of his reach, and it was more than some old jewelry box lifted from his house. I’d seen the same look a hundred times on the dozens of kids who came through Wanda’s over the years. Loss. Struggle, hell who didn’t have the same shadows in their eyes? But Ryan? Not many people wore that shadow like a badge, like it didn’t take away from the throb of temptation that came off him like cologne.
He was definitely doable. Well, he would have been if he wasn’t such a Boy Scout.
The soap bubbled over my russet skin, sliding against my legs as I moved them out of the water and stretched. I could have stayed there forever, letting the heady scent of the lavender soap relax me nearly as much as the Jack, but something beyond the door caught my attention, something that rekindled the fear I had repressed the moment I’d locked myself in tonight.
It could have been Minion finally scratching to get inside, but the sound was too heavy, the scuttle of feet more man-like than feline. The stopper came out easily with the tug of my big toe and I eased out of the water, immediately going for the lid on the back of my toilet and the Baby Glock nine millimeter taped underneath it.
No clothes in the bathroom, just a bunch of thick towels Misty had bought me when I’d moved into the apartment and I draped one around myself, water dripping into the heavy terrycloth as I held the cold metal of the gun lightly in my hand and listened for the noises to move outside my bathroom again.
I waited. I listened, letting the seconds slide by, maybe two full minutes, but heard nothing save the sound of thunder and the intermittent patter of rain against the windows. Slipping open the bathroom door, the old hinges creaking had me frowning, then I slowly inched into the small hallway, checking around the living room to the kitchen. Nothing. Next, my bedroom. As soon as I saw the open window, the one that led to the fire escape, I knew that someone had paid me a visit.
It might have been Cosmo, maybe disregarding my warning, reminding me that though I’d walked away from Timber, I hadn’t been forgotten. Maybe it had been Timber himself, sneaking into my place because he wanted me to know that I was still his; that no matter how many times I refused to be claimed, he would always try. Maybe it was some faceless asshole that I’d swindled. Maybe it was a newbie just on the grift looking to learn from me, or a simple B&E. Whoever it was would feel my wrath if I found them. No one comes in my place uninvited.
The bedroom was small and utterly empty of anyone but me. The open window allowed the whipping wind and rain to splatter onto my delicate pine floors and the curtains slapped like sails in a hurricane. Quickly closing the window, I dropped to the floor and tried to sop up the small puddle that had formed there with the towel I had been wearing. Beyond the fire escape there was nothing but the dark empty street. Anger replaced the worry and fear, spreading from my stomach to my chest—until I turned and saw my bed.
Someone had left gifts for me before. Small tokens that I guessed they thought would somehow soften my heart. Last week, there had been bouquets of flowers waiting for me, all different colors and types, lying against my front door. There’d been more flowers on my bed, and my missing thongs had been replaced by expensive lingerie I’d never be caught dead wearing. But tonight’s gift stretched beyond any hints of romance. At least, sane people romance.
The red box was small, no bigger than an 8x10 picture frame with black, felt lining, nestled in a nest of rose petals that also covered the foot of my bed and were scattered onto the floor. Around the box, set up like some sick shrine were pictures of me, black and white, with Misty, walking around the Market, smoking at the end of a bar, one with my chin dotted with powdered sugar as Misty and I ate beignets. And scratched into every single one of them was the rough etching of the word MINE. Over and over MINE, MINE, MINE, like some sick handwritten frame on the flimsy paper.
My stomach twisted, burned wi
th fear as I looked inside the box, removing a small lithograph that lay within, using the corner of my duvet to touch it, as if that could shield me from the effect of the engraving.
The colors of the print were vivid, warm hues of gold and red, with blues like the color of a clear pond, but that was where the warmth of the painting ended. The figures depicted were in conflict—a man and a woman, falling against a bed; her holding back her attacker as he brandished a knife over her in one hand and held a golden cup in the other. Her breasts were exposed and he wore only a cloth, draped lazily over his waist.
It didn’t say love to me. There was no warm affection, no sentiments of passion or desire depicted in any of the brushstrokes. This painting was about violence and possession, the fucked up ownership that Timber wanted me to submit to; the disgusting claim that a man makes over a woman without her permission, without caring about her wishes, her desires. It felt like a warning, one that had my body shaking, had me stepping back to find something to cover my naked body with.
Could Timber have done this? It had to have been him, didn’t it? He was controlling and possessive—but would he go to these lengths to scare me? But then I saw what lay behind the lithograph, and I dropped it, forgotten, on the bed.
Minion’s broken collar. There were rusty flakes along the seams that my heart knew was dried blood, and the tiny buckle had been twisted and broken. Fear and despair and heartbreak welled up in me, sudden and stabbing, fear I hadn’t felt since I had been told that my sister had been murdered. Time stopped as I tried to make sense of it all, feeling gutted and empty. Then the anger kicked in.
“Motherfucker.”
As I ran around my room, digging in my drawers and small closet for clothes, stuffing them all into my overnight bag, my mind raced with options, none of them good. I could try to find a hotel somewhere for the night, but that wouldn’t solve my problem for tomorrow. I could call Misty, but she was heavily under Timber’s thumb and no matter how tight we were, I couldn’t completely trust that she wouldn’t tell him where I was hiding. I damn sure couldn’t call Timber, not when he could have been the one orchestrating all these freaky gifts.
Slipping on my jeans and my waist length leather jacket, only one name came to mind. He was the man I’d swindled into letting me go tonight. He also wanted into Timber’s auction and, though I’d rather bite off my own tongue than ask that Boy Scout for a favor, I had nowhere left to go. Everyone was on Timber’s payroll or wanted to be. Neil Ryan wasn’t a nice guy but I knew he could damn well keep me safe.
There was too much space left on the smart screen. The program I used to navigate the meager links was from IBM and I had used it for years when I was a detective. It would chart and link the newspaper articles, the scanned photos I’d jacked from old case files, but the details were limited and the leads weak.
I sat against my dining room table staring up at that bright screen, eyes moving to the picture of my mother’s dead body as she lay on the cold ground outside of our house. There was only a trickle of blood from her head and she’d been thin and very pale. Blunt force trauma, the coroner had labeled her death. The dead kid they found in the river had been blamed for the murder, his DNA on my mom’s body. “Attempted robbery gone bad.” my sergeant had told me. “The kid must have felt shitty that the robbery turned into a homicide and drank himself in a stupor. Ending up drowned in the river.”
I never bought it. Too neat. Too easy. Too clean. That kid couldn’t have gotten the jump on my mother, he wasn’t a practiced criminal. I shifted my gaze to the autopsy photo, to the barely legal kid with the sunken eyes and bird chest. He was too thin and my mother had always been agile and wiry. Ask any drunk asshole who’d tried hitting on her at her favorite pub, McKinney’s, back in the day. They’d tell you just how vicious Fiona Ryan’s right cross had been. Something about her case never had set well with me. That scrawny kid had her wallet in his jacket and his hair under her fingernails but, something in my gut had always told me the case was too cut and dry. He was guilty, but I wasn’t sure of what.
My gaze flicked to the other images on the wall-sized screen. The dead teenager in Atlanta, a pretty girl with once-brown skin and jet black hair. It had been the only case Simmons had never closed and something had zipped in my ear when I’d dug it up. My former sergeant was the only connection, but I had no idea how to link a dead teenager in Atlanta with the not kosher death of my mother in Cavanagh. There were other details on that board, mostly records I’d lifted with the aid of a few Benjamins and bottles of whiskey, all about Simmons and the reprimands and never-proven accusations on his record with the Atlanta P.D.
“What are you hiding, old man?” I asked that grainy picture of Simmons tucked onto the corner of the board. Those cold eyes stared back at me, frozen with a glint of a con I hadn’t ever figured out. He never answered back, gave nothing away.
Tired from the day and the going-nowhere investigation I’d been working for over a year, I set the board to sleep mode and closed the doors of the thin cabinet that surrounded it. I didn’t want anyone knowing I had started this board. Sammy would only try to jump in, offering suggestions, telling me he’d stick his neck out for me no matter what and I couldn’t let that shit happen. The poor bastards who shared a father obsessed with the Rat Pack, Sammy’s brothers, Dean and Frank—the other partners in our security company, NOLA Elite Security, would likely worry that this investigation into my mother’s murder might distract me from our current contracts and the business we were trying to build.
I found myself staring at the two framed posters affixed to the cabinet doors—one of the Cavanagh, Tennessee cityscape with the wide, tall mountains ghosting behind the small, turn of the century structures and the expanse of green fields outside the edges of town. The other was of New Orleans, Jackson’s Square at dawn, with the looming presence of the old president astride his horse, the shadow of light and dark obscuring his face against the mammoth outline of St. Louis Cathedral. Cavanagh and New Orleans, my two homes, my past and present, anchoring the mysteries I feared I’d never unravel.
Shaking off my reverie, I hit the shower, trying to drown myself in the hot spray, loving how the water massaged the tension from my shoulders. For all its comfort, though, I still couldn’t linger. I’d never quite let go of that regimented shit, shower, shave mantra drilled into every service man since time immemorial and so I was lathered up, rinsed and in my boxers within ten minutes.
I’d liked this place when Sammy showed it to me. It was yet another Auciello cousin—that family had dozens—that had brokered the deal for the apartment. It was away from the bustle of Quarter traffic, right in the Warehouse District, S. Peter Street, where the streets were impossibly narrow, but the townhouses and condos had plenty of square footage. This place had secured parking and was one of the only buildings in the district that had coveted wrought iron balconies, right on the parade route. I didn’t really care about watching the parades, but I did love the space and all the upgrades the contractors had used to make my home convenient and sparsely comfortable as possible. There was a pool in the courtyard out back that I never used and the brick walls were clean, covered in a glaze that made them shine. I liked that almost as much as I liked the stained concrete floors and the dark wood kitchen cabinets. There were two bedrooms in this place, one for me to sleep in, and one for me to workout in and keep the boxes of shit from my mom’s house that I hadn’t quite figured out what to do with.
A quick sweep of my living room to make sure the door was locked, then I flicked off the light above the kitchen sink before ducking into my room and falling into bed. The day, that damn fundraiser and the hell cat Alex, had worn me out. I rolled over, tucking in deep to the fluffy duvet Sammy’s mom had bought me when I told her I was sleeping on a wool blanket I’d gotten in basic, when suddenly my brain went off like a live wire. I hated that shit—being dog tired, whipped completely by the day, but then crashing in bed only to have your brain buzz with thought
s and ideas, memories, all the shit you can’t tune out or shut off when you should be sleeping.
That night’s live wire thoughts were, first, on my mom, the image of her on that cold grass outside our house, eye unfocused, staring at nothing. Then, the image slipped away and landed right on Alex Black’s pretty doe eyes and pouty mouth. Those were thoughts that had no business being in my head. Still, those lips, man. Had she been any other woman, maybe someone I’d hooked up with at a bar or a woman I met at the market, then I’d be all over her. Who wouldn’t be? Beautiful bronze skin, lips worth nibbling, and an ass that looked like an upside down apple. Perfect, tight. Shit. Just thinking about that had my dick on high alert.
I rolled over, groaning against my pillow as I remembered the way she smelled, the little shock of fear in her eyes as we talked about the asshole bugging her. Still, she wasn’t a woman I’d ever touch. I don’t date lowlifes. I don’t fuck them and from what I’d seen of her record, that woman was the fucking face of the criminal element. Damn shame.
Dick still throbbing, I thought about rubbing one out, I even rolled over onto my back and grabbed myself, pushing down my cotton boxers, but then I heard something outside my window, something that rang out against the slap of thunder and the dimming torrent of rain hitting against my balcony one room over. Sounded distinctly like someone mumbling “fuck this rain.”
You had to be careful in the city. The balconies were coveted for a reason and after only a handful of months living here, I’d kicked out at least two homeless men and one runaway off my balcony. Normally they were just trying to stay dry and off the streets, organizing their game plan by taking a breather. Sometimes, though, those unwanted guests had grander ideas. Ideas that could get you killed by home owners who didn’t need a good reason to shoot an intruder.