NO Quarter

by Robert Asprin

  We were out front now, on St. Peter, the Calf across the street, but hours before Padre and the regulars showed up.

  “Alex, what happened?” I turned, squeezed her shoulders. Two doormen in those sad green jackets were sweating and standing by the club’s entrance. I do despise my job, but I don’t have to wear any uniform to it. Alex wears slacks and a white shirt.

  She looked into my eyes. I could see she was a little frightened, still, though she forced a brave smile. “I thought you’d just phone me back,” she said. “Honestly, I didn’t expect you to come out all this—“

  “Alex. Please.”

  “First off, I’m all right.”

  I nodded. She picked a cigarette from her shirt pocket, and I lit it. “Second,” I prompted, “you said someone threatened you. Who? And, how?” Just saying the words, entertaining the thought, I could feel the fury ... a waiting fury, but no less dangerous. I didn’t stop to wonder why I felt so protective toward her. I hadn’t been there for Sunshine. That wouldn’t—couldn’t—happen with Alex.

  She took a deep drag off her cigarette, holding it for a long moment before blowing it out. “He ... this guy ... started out as just another customer. He came to the window, drunk of course—because all those auslander tourists come here and think all physical laws are suspended for them! They think they can drink way beyond their limits, or the limits even of those of us who are used to it.” I could hear the anger building in her voice, but she caught herself and took a deep breath. “I deal with guys like him all the time. But he was more annoying than most. I tried to help him, but he got pushy—every time I brought him the cap or T-shirt he asked for, he demanded to see it in different colors and sizes.”

  She fortified herself with another quick puff. “He obviously had no intention of buying anything. He just wanted to make me run around the shop like a trained monkey.” I recognized the bitterness in her voice. Such treatment was all just part of the occasionally foul task of serving the public. Alex knew it. I knew it too.

  “Then he started making suggestive comments—trying to push my buttons, I guess. But they weren’t even very imaginative—nothing out of the ordinary. I refused to rise to the bait, and remained polite. Apparently that pissed him off, so he got really crude, telling me, in detail, about all of the deviate sex acts he wanted me to do for him, and how all I needed was a real man, like him. I had had enough by that time. I just wanted to get back to my cross-stitch. I told him he would have to leave. I obviously didn’t have what he wanted. When he refused I told him I was going to call security. He got really mad. And that’s when he said it.”

  Alex’s hands were shaking a little, but I couldn’t tell whether it was from fear or fury.

  “What did he say? Exactly?” Alex doesn’t have my memory, but I knew she could come close.

  “He said,” she lowered her voice, attempting to approximate his vocal tone and style of speech, “ ‘Wanna gimme trouble, huh, d’yuh? Well, watchit or yer gonna end up like that bitch by the river las’ night.’ I yelled for security, at which point he apparently reached the limit of his drunken bravery and ran off.”

  Alex looked up at me. “He said, ‘... like that bitch by the river last night.’ Bone, do you think he could be the one who got Sunshine? That’s why I called you.”

  Not because some cretin had threatened to kill her, but because she thought I would want to know what he said about Sunshine. Brave, but ...

  “So what does he look like?”

  Alex has a natural eye for detail. She described him as mid-forties, a round face with a pudgy gut, and mud-colored hair cut short.

  “He had a new T-shirt with a flashy black and red logo. I think it had the silhouette of a woman. I’m sorry, I can’t remember what the logo said.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll figure it out.” Alex couldn’t remember what the logo said, but I quickly sorted through the images that matched her description, came up with a matching design and the name of the bar it had come from: Sin City.

  Alex insisted on going back to the gift shop, calmer than when I arrived. We planned to meet at two tonight at the Calf, everything as usual. I marveled again at how tough she was for such a tiny thing.

  My dash across the Quarter had winded me, but I didn’t notice until I set out, walking now. I felt it now, the tightness in my smoker’s lungs, calves a little rubbery, sore. More, though, I felt dogged purpose ... felt it cold and remorseless, even as the fury came with me while I walked.

  It’s better to fight cold than hot.

  I mistook it for a movie quote for a second before I remembered Maestro saying the words to me at Fahey’s. He was offering me his services—whatever those services might be—in finding Sunshine’s killer. Fine. That was nice. I appreciated it.

  This, though ... this was mine.

  Sin City was on St. Philip, not far, and my breathing leveled—or at least no longer hurt me—by the time I arrived. I’d been in before. A good bar, with character, though that character was definitely on the scuzzy side. A long crypt of a place, with a pool table in back, but this wasn’t one of those bars where the silly-ass pool league commandeered the joint once a week to shoot their oh-so-deadly-serious games. Maestro had made nudges at me about joining up. I love pool, hate organized anything, but especially organized sports. Want to know what one semester of high school basketball did to me? Tell you later.

  So, I’d been here before, but not often. The bartender—husky biker type, tattooed shoulders—didn’t know me, and I didn’t immediately recognize any of the customers. There were only a few, but with my sunglasses still on, I gave each a good furtive looking at. None fit the description Alex had given me of the man who had threatened her life.

  Objectively I could understand that “threatened her life” was stretching it. Drunken imbeciles will say atrocious things that don’t, in the end, mean anything. But there are things that should not be said, by anyone, to anyone—and certainly, oh yes most abso-fucking-lutely, should never be said to my girlfriend.

  The vehemence of the thought caught me by surprise.

  I’d always thought of “girlfriend” as a kind of throw-away term, almost neutral. My feelings for Alex weren’t neutral in the least. They weren’t moderate. They were ...

  No way. She was like my sister, Sunshine’s sister, our very best friend, one of the family, but not ...

  When the hell did this happen? How?

  Impossible. Crazy, but there it was.

  And ... it felt right. Did she feel ... no, there would be time later to find out how Alex felt. After ... after we’d dealt with Sunshine’s murderer.

  I ordered a rummincoke, even though I was still only just out of bed. I didn’t want to be remembered for ordering soda or asking the burly bartender to make a pot of coffee. He looked like he was suffering with summer allergies. A number of people I’ve met who’ve never had allergies before become susceptible when they move down here. Christ knows what’s in our air, but luckily, it’s never caught up to me.

  The shirts were here for sale, tacked up on the spotty glass behind the bar, obscuring old fliers and dusty semi-pornographic Polaroids from birthday bashes and Halloweens. They all bore the Sin City logo. The threatening man’s shirt had been crisp and new. That he had been in here earlier—maybe earlier today—was no guarantee he’d be back, but this was the most logical place for a blind.

  It was tempting, of course, to grill the bartender, to see if he’d sold a shirt to anyone matching the description, but I didn’t know what was going to happen here, if anything, or what I might or meant to do. Calling the least attention to myself seemed right.

  Sin City had a trivia machine at the end of the long bartop. It put me a long way down from the swinging French doors, but I could also study incoming patrons at my leisure before they realized I was watching.

  I g
ave the trivia machine a few bucks, laid my smokes by my cocktail and settled in for an ambusher’s wait. Naturally I played the movie category, and even with only one eye on the game, I put the previous high scores to great shame.

  I drank slow but tipped well, the dirty panes of the French doors got dark, and I was long since trying to top my own scores. Sin City was close enough so I could hear the cathedral’s bells toll the passing quarter hours. I also heard the heavy, low-level rumble of a freight train on the tracks that run alongside the Mississippi. A meal would be a good idea. Not that I was particularly hungry, of course, but I would need something eventually to counteract the booze. It could wait, however.

  I watched people coming and going in the dimness. They were a youngish crowd, more punk than Goth or white trash. In my customary jeans and dark T-shirt, I wasn’t conspicuous. I filled an ashtray with butts, didn’t lose focus on what I was doing, and I didn’t see the man I wanted.

  And then, I did.

  Okay, so I was reaching. No way—it was too much of a coincidence.

  But what if he really had killed Sunshine, had evoked her to Alex as a way of bragging about the deed? Not that I needed any more motivation. Sunshine’s death was too recent. Alex had been too close to her. Or maybe he’d just heard about the stabbing, thought it would be—what? Funny? Clever? Amusing to use it to threaten Alex? Maybe he was a murderer. Maybe he was a part of that disease that allows some people to mistreat others, to think that because we are the clerks in your shops and the cabbies in your taxis and the waiters in your restaurants that you can say or do what you like, that you’re the masters and we’re the vassals, and that there will be no repercussions.

  He banged on the bartop until the bartender hulked over. He was already obviously loaded, but you have to be damned drunk before the typical Quarter bartender will cut you off. He got his drink, spent a moment disdainfully surveying his surroundings, and then wandered back to where I waited by the pool table. I had a quarter laid out on the table, a pool cue by my hand. I did my best to look bored.

  Hair, weight, face—all just as Alex had said—and the T-shirt. He looked at the table, glanced up and noticed me.

  “Hey, beanpole. I’ll play yuh.” He tossed another quarter onto the felt. “Rack ‘em.”

  I left the bartop trivia machine to beep and chirp to itself and went to slot the quarters and rack the balls. The other customers were all up toward the front, drinking and talking and playing the juke.

  One reason Sin City doesn’t have a league team is that its table is a liability, with felt like corrugated cardboard from having drinks spilled on it, a serious table roll, and house cues straight as shepherd crooks.

  “What’s your name?” I asked, picking up the cue stick.

  He sneered my way. “What’s yours?”

  “Alex.”

  He was no doubt much drunker than when he’d visited Pat O.’s gift shop. “Mitchell,” he said as he stepped to the table. “Back off, I’m breaking, and yer ‘bout to get yer ass whupped.”

  He had come deliberately to this locals’ bar, instead of to the tourist clubs created for his kind, had bought a T-shirt as some symbol of solidarity ... which meant he was looking for a real New Orleans’ experience. I knew his type. They want to know where it’s really happening, where the scene is, want the insider’s scoop, want to be inside, to be cool and hip. Some of these people are fun and worthwhile. Some are idiots. Some ... well, some are something else.

  Mitchell played sloppy and loud and belligerent. I lost consistently and found him starved for companionship, which I provided. By the third game I knew just about all there was to know about him and his life back in New Jersey. He was a schnook, a shlub, and seemed nothing more. He was still drinking, past all safety limits now.

  During our fourth pool game I asked, “You heard about the girl getting stabbed by the river last night?”

  By now he didn’t know if he was shooting solids or stripes, but he grunted, “Yeah.”

  He straightened after his shot, started chalking his cue tip with deliberate, exaggerated motions, but seemed more to be using the stick to keep himself upright.

  “Where were you last night?” I asked, enunciating explicitly but not loud. But there was nobody there to hear the question but him. I was near him now, very near. “Midnight to 2 a.m.—where? Where were you?”

  He blinked. It must have seemed a non sequitur to him. Blinked more, and said, “I was ... in Trenton. Did’n’ ge’ here ‘til disssmornin’ ...”

  And he was crashing out, right there. He let go his cue and pitched toward the nearby men’s room door. I took a fast look around—no one was looking back this way—and followed him in.

  Mitchell was trying to use the urinal, but the necessary motor skills and rudimentary knowledge of aiming had fled. He stood, half-crumpled against the graffiti-rife wall, swaying, making a pathetic little whimper. And that was satisfying, it was. It was karmic ... but it wasn’t quite karmic enough.

  He seemed hazily aware that someone was behind him and awkwardly cranked his head around, round face bleary, eyes trying to focus.

  I slammed him with everything I had, the heel of my right hand driving in between the bridge of his nose and his left eye. I hit him that hard because I was only giving myself the one shot, no more. His head whipped back the way it had come, and kept going, smacking the splintery wood wall. His hips turned, and his feet didn’t follow, and down he went. He toppled, tangled, and managed to wedge his chubby body tight alongside the urinal, forehead touching the damp floor, ass high in the air. He stayed there.

  On the way out I told the bartender he had a drunk passed out in the toilet.

  * * *

  Excerpt from Bone’s Movie Diary:

  Is there any more viscerally satisfying movie moment than when Charles Bronson makes his first kill in Death Wish? He’s being mugged, & for that moment he is everyone who’s ever found himself at gunpoint surrendering wallet or purse to some scumbag. (Virtually everyone I know has been mugged at least once in their lives; it being that common, is it a social condition we’re supposed to just accept?) Instead, Bronson shoots the mugger, & however civilized we may think ourselves, it’s a beautiful, bloody, righteous, quenching moment! Bronson’s daughter is almost catatonic & his wife dead from a rape-assault. Nothing he can do will change what’s happened. But it’s that very helplessness, that powerless rage that we recognize & attach to. And so Bronson is out there getting even for all of us.

  “I don’t get it. What’s so special about an ice pick?”

  It was late night at the Calf again. Bone came in, asking if anybody had heard anything. He’d been keeping an eye on the news all day, but so far as he knew the cops didn’t have anything on Sunshine’s killing. I’d quietly corralled him and told him what I’d learned from Sneaky Pete that afternoon. He had blanched when I first told him how she’d been murdered.

  “The fact that Sunshine wasn’t on a direct route home,” I said, “that she was deliberately off the beaten path and walking all the way out by the river. The Moonwalk doesn’t actually go anywhere, at least not toward where any Quarterite lives. That makes it unlikely that it was an ordinary mugging gone bad. The fact that whoever it was used an ice pick cinches it.”

  “I’m still missing something here, Maestro,” Bone said, frowning. “What’s so significant about Sunshine being ... killed with an ice pick? And what about all the voodoo stuff?”

  To be honest, I had half expected that he would have forgotten our conversation at Fahey’s once last night’s cocktails wore off. What surprised me was that I found I was sort of glad he hadn’t. He was still focused on finding Sunshine’s killer and avenging her death, presuming the police didn’t come through. So far, twenty-four hours of the forty-eight had expired.

  “Think about it, Bone,” I said patiently. Bone is intell
igent, and usually I have no trouble speaking with him as an equal, despite the two decades I have on him. Every so often, though, something pops up to remind me of how young he is, how lacking in the experiences I’ve had and taken for granted. Then, too, there are times when I wonder if I was ever that young.

  “Okay. I’m thinking about it,” he deadpanned. He was flexing his right hand. He’d been doing that off and on since we’d taken our stools.

  “Our whole country is gun-happy,” I said. “Hell, these days I think even petty criminals that break into parked cars for radios carry guns. Predators are almost always packing when they’re out mugging. Why? Too many John and Jane Q. Citizens, paranoid about muggers and rapists and terrorists, are walking around armed too these days. So the predators have to pack heat. Otherwise, it’s too big a risk. Sunshine, you’ll note, was not shot.”

  “I note.” He lit a cigarette. He was drinking a soda, but I didn’t ask why. Quarterites don’t have to drink liquor every night.

  “As to the specifics of an ice pick ... do you carry a knife? Or have you ever?”

  Bone shook his head.

  “I do,” I continued. “My favorite is a moderate-length folder knife with a lock blade. Easily hidden, and in a pinch I can possibly talk my way out of it if a cop tries to hassle me over having a concealed weapon.”

  I paused for a sip of my drink, which was my usual Irish whiskey.

  “An ice pick is a different animal altogether. Like a rigid construction sheath knife, you have to deal with the extra length when you’re carrying it. Speaking of sheaths, they don’t make them for ice picks, so you either have to come up with a rig yourself or carry it with the point exposed or capped with a wine cork. The damning twist is that if you get caught with one, there’s no way you can try to claim that it’s just a pocket knife or that you use it at work.”