NO Quarter

by Robert Asprin

I lit a cigarette for myself, having bought a pack on the way here with money I was now conserving. I hated waiting tables, but I was already missing those tips. That’s the ugly dichotomy of my—or anybody else’s—job.

  I took a minute to study the phone pole on the corner, stapled endlessly with intact and tearing fliers, with the corners of old ones. Rusty staples ran up it from a point below my knees to well above my head. Handbills for guitar lessons, computer troubleshooting, lost dogs, garage sales. Lots of fliers for local bands that hadn’t existed two months ago and wouldn’t two months hence—Woad, Big Giant Jenny, $s & ¢s, the Garfunkels, Scurvy Mervy Is a Pervy. Some of the names were pop culture references, some were just weird for the sake of weird. They’ll never stop saying New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz, and there is indeed a fine local music scene and a lot of homegrown talent. But c’mon, this is the Quarter. Every success—every artist who’s been shrewd and smart and dedicated and lucky—could have his or her own personal entourage of loser wannabes that will nonetheless continue to talk shit about how true and righteous they are, and how if you make it you’re a sellout, and you sure you can’t spare ‘nother smoke dude?

  Alex had been upset about my going alone. Last night I’d done what I could to assure her that I would be fine. Would I take unnecessary risks? Of course not. Would I take any risks? Of course ... though I didn’t know what kind of danger I might find tonight, couldn’t even really speculate. I meant to gather some info on Dunk. Maestro had laid out a number of elementary pointers for fact-finding at the start of this hunt, and I’d done quite well—no small thanks to the way Alex had handled Chanel at Molly’s.

  Was tonight’s job genuinely dangerous? I didn’t know, presumed so, and walked into the club.

  Check Point Charlie’s has a feature that sets it apart from other local bar/music venues: it’s also a laundromat. When I first heard about this place, I was struck by the perverse hilarity of it. How typically New Orleans, how decadent, that people drink so much here they need booze at their laundromat? But, eventually, I understood. Check Point’s is a 24-hour joint. Few Quarterites live a nine-to-five, Monday-through-Friday kind of life. We do laundry whenever. Why not at four a.m., maybe the only free time you have for chores? You want to sit in a sterile laundromat at four in the morning watching your underthings go round and round? Probably not. Who else is open at that hour anyway? At Check Point’s you can dump your stuff in a machine, have a beer, shoot some pool, flirt with whoever happens to be around, and you don’t have to worry about the place being held up. Bar robberies in the Quarter are about as rare as murders. They happen, but they’re virtually freak occurrences.

  They happen ...

  It didn’t matter to Sunshine that as a crime statistic she was a severe anomaly.

  The earlier band scurried around the stage breaking down its gear. A typical “Decatur style” crowd milled around—i.e., service industry and semi-trash—though the club is several rungs up the respectability ladder from, say, Sin City. Check Point’s has a raised level at the rear where there are a pair of pool tables, and from up there I heard the comforting clack-clack, which reminded me of a few dollar games I’d shot up there. Check Point’s washers and dryers were in an alcove at the opposite end of the bar.

  I ordered a bottled beer at the bar. I’m not a beer drinker, but didn’t want to be the exception, sipping a soda all night. Besides, the dark bottle hid the level inside. I could nurse this thing awhile.

  I caught a few familiar faces, but faces only, couldn’t come up with names—probably customers from the restaurant, not familiar enough to do anything but throw a nod. I mostly blended with the dark wood and brick decor, and watched the stage, and waited.

  A group I assumed to be Clamjaphry started assembling on the stage. They had that serious, self-important manner of a band playing its first paying gig. The drum kit went up, amps were hauled onto the stage, jacks plugged into them. Somebody tapped on a microphone tapped with a fingernail, and a young twenty-something girl with eye-watering scarlet hair, sunglasses, and a very lithesome figure, started getting a level, saying, “One-two, one-two ...”

  Outside, overhead, I heard a helicopter pass low. Sometimes they’re police choppers, sometimes news. Those circle longer. This one faded quickly.

  I counted four band members.

  “That’s Clamjaphry?” I casually asked a guy I’d seen leading around one of the Quarter’s haunted house tours from time to time.

  “That’s them.” He nodded and wandered off.

  There was a drummer, a long-limbed bass player, a white guy with dreadlocks with a guitar, and the girl was apparently the lead singer.

  Where the hell was Dunk?

  Piper had named names for me when I’d plied him with that sandwich and beer, and I’d believed him. Should I have trusted him? How were you supposed to know what sources of info you could rely on? I felt annoyance, some self-directed anger and a bit of mild dread that I might have wasted my time coming here, that Dunk—my Dunk—was going to slip out of my fingers.

  There were some tables in front of the stage, but I kept to the back, standing, sipping minutely from my beer. Guitar strings twanged. Feedback whined. A drumstick tapped experimentally. The girl with the scarlet hair growled something—first to the bass player, who just shook his head, then at somebody off-stage. I couldn’t get a line of sight through the intervening bodies. Then someone moved, and I saw a Check Point staff member. More people filled the club.

  I checked the time. It was getting past even the normal delayed start of any live music show. I could hear the growing restlessness of the crowd. I could see the members of Clamjaphry on the stage start to jitter, their serious manner turning to worry. The dreadlocked guitarist turned to huddle urgently with the lead singer, who was spitting angry words and gesturing with growing violence.

  Something was wrong, and the crowd sensed that and seized on it. Someone started the classic foot-stomping chorus of “we-want-the-show,” probably just for fun, and it got quickly taken up. The crowd raised a whole lot of noise, and the band looked out on their audience for whom they hadn’t yet played a note, and looked more worried now, getting frantic. Another of Check Point’s staff members came up to the front of the stage, and the scarlet-haired girl started explaining something desperately.

  At that moment a lean and mangy figure came bounding up from the crowd, the heels of his combat boots coming down on the stage with a loud crack. Then, swiveling about, he bowed deeply, theatrically and insincerely, first to his band mates, then around at the now-jeering crowd, arms outspread with a flourish, saxophone held high in one hand.

  Dunk soaked up the catcalls with obvious relish. He sported the same camouflage pants and dirty white T-shirt I’d seen him wearing at Sunshine’s apartment. Tonight being an occasion, though, he wore a baseball cap over his sloppy sides-shaved hair. Emblazoned across the front was FUCK Y’ALL.

  Charming.

  Her hand over the microphone, the lead singer spat what were probably some choice words. Dunk leered back and gave her a good long look at his middle finger.

  She gave it up—all of Clamjaphry were visibly annoyed and irate at their late-coming band member—and cued the drummer.

  The sticks came down.

  It was that brand of D.I.Y. pseudo-punk that garage bands have been playing twenty, twenty-five years: fast, intentionally ugly, nihilistic. Even still, they were tight. It was a runaway dump truck sort of music, pounding and rattling, and I couldn’t understand a single lyric the scarlet-haired girl sprayed into the mike. She had a curiously angelic voice, though—robust, almost operatic, borne along by rapid-fire guitar, drums, bass.

  Dunk, for his part, stood loftily apart, tapping his foot purposely against the rhythm, a sneer on his face. It was clear that he thought that all this fuss and bother was just the groundwork for him. He drummed fingers ag
ainst his saxophone, bored, disdainful, impatient.

  The song hit its bridge and Dunk strutted to the fore of the stage. Up swung the sax, out blew a fantastic tangle of notes. The saxophone is not my favorite instrument. It’s got a shrillness I find grating. But ... the sound Dunk coaxed from his horn echoed with layers, nuanced and forceful. He commanded it. His notes hopped and hurtled among the music. And as competent and sincere as the music was, as much effort and conviction as the rest of Clamjaphry put into that music, Dunk’s wailing wiped them all into the background. He had the touch. He had the singular spark that separates expertise from capability, good intentions from genius.

  The crowd heard it, understood it, and let loose a wave of cheers and applause. Dunk turned his back when his solo was finished. The band carried on, making their competent music. But from that first number, Dunk’s sax became the centerpiece, and the cheers were for him. He knew it. He swaggered about, blew his notes in fabulous, effortless combinations. His band mates paid the price for him. He stood taller atop their crushed egos, and knew that too.

  He strode off the stage during the number that finished the set—his last solo done, so why hang around? He dropped into the crowd, marched toward the bar, absorbing the enthusiastic congratulations. On stage, Clamjaphry-minus-one rolled through the finale. The singer said something that got lost in a blare of feedback, and it was over. They started meekly disassembling their equipment.

  Was this why Sunshine had hooked up with this dirt-ball? Sunshine had always opted for lousy boyfriends, but Dunk was more rancid and repulsive than the worst choices I’d ever known her to make. The draw, the lure—Dunk’s very evident musical gifts—had that proved the seduction that drew her into the relationship?

  Dunk leaned against the bar, letting people buy him beers. I edged a hesitant step towards the crowd, but I soon realized I wouldn’t be able to get a word in, much less get near him. Dunk shed his arrogance on all around him, and some of the crowd actually got a kick out of it, buying him more beers, lauding him as a celebrity. Girls pressed in around him and he preened for them. He seemed particularly interested in one slender blond who had long hair that hung to her waist. The girl hovered near him, one bare shoulder peeking out from an artistically tattered red T-shirt. I was surprised to find myself fascinated with her bare shoulder and tight jeans. Something about her looked familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

  Not until she turned around. She wasn’t just familiar—she was Alex, disguised in a blond wig, extra makeup, and very tight jeans.

  I barely stopped myself from yelling her name, from lunging forward into the crowd to get to her. What was she doing here? I was terrified and furious, all at the same time. She turned, saw me, and winked. Then she turned back to hanging on Dunk’s every word.

  I gritted my teeth and waited. After far too long she left the crowd at the bar and wandered out the door. I wanted to go after her, but I knew that the moment I did it could compromise both of us, and I might lose my chance at Dunk. What did she think she was doing?

  Dunk continued to hold court at the bar. I continued to wait—and to fume.

  Eventually all those free drinks caught up with him, and he broke for the rest room, carrying his sax with him in a dirty pillowcase.

  I followed in after, and in the interval Dunk already had a joint lit. He leaned back into the corner, the pillow case between his booted feet, holding the smoke in his lungs—this after guzzling four or five large draft beers bought by his adoring fans. His eyes opened, dreamily, and still he managed to sneer.

  “That was a hell of a performance,” I said.

  He blew the smoke from his lungs.

  “Suck my dick.”

  “You should get yourself a record contract. You deserve one.”

  “Yuh gahdamn right I do.” He took another toke. We were the only two in the bathroom. A urinal gurgled. He exhaled again. “So, suck my dick.”

  “I think you played ...”

  I let it go, seeing what he meant. His dirty-nailed free hand had dipped into his roomy cargo pants. He pulled his half-hard cock into the pale light. He leaned his shoulders harder into the corner behind him, then thrust his hips forward.

  I wanted a conversation with this loathsome gutter-punk, wanted to coax information from him, but I certainly didn’t want to deal with this.

  I started shaking my head, turning away.

  He said, “Wai’, you. Yeah, dude ... yuh were at ... I saw ...”

  I watched him put it together, thinking, Shit.

  “... that picture ... Su’shine’s drawing. Offa the door. You took it! Di’n’cha? Di’n’cha, motherfucker!”

  He didn’t make for an especially threatening figure, his cock still hanging out, the joint still pinched between thumb and finger. I remembered—briefly—Mitchell in Sin City’s toilet, and didn’t dwell on it. KO-ing Dunk wasn’t going to accomplish anything. It might spoil things later on, and I couldn’t risk it.

  Still, I wasn’t going to get anything I wanted now.

  “You’ve got the wrong guy,” I raised my hands, turning again, exiting, hoping the beer and pot would muddle his head, wipe out the memory, give me the chance to approach him some other time, some other place. Which meant tonight was a bust. Dammit.

  I slid out through the bar, heading for the door, ticking grimly over whatever other useful ways I could spend the night, unwilling to waste time that might get me closer to the identity of Sunshine’s killer. I wondered if I was leaving him behind, here—Dunk ...

  “Bone. Thought dat was you.”

  I recognized Werewolf, recognized Firecracker to the left, slightly behind. Cooks from the restaurant, I’d worked with them fairly often, always as a set. They were good workers. Whenever, on those busy swamping shifts that sometimes came up, they stayed on top of it and got the waiters their orders, and treated me particularly well, I always passed them a part of my tips—money I wouldn’t have made without the speed and efficiency with which they banged out those plates.

  It was Werewolf—solid shoulders, strong limbs—who’d addressed me. It would have to be, since Firecracker—a wisp by contrast, taciturn, mildly albino flesh—rarely made the effort to overcome his speech impediment for more than a word or two. Nevertheless, he grinned a timid hello at me.

  “Guys,” I waved. “What’re you doing here?”

  “Came see de show,” Werewolf said. His West Indies’ heritage gave him his accent and his flesh a pleasant, creamed-coffee hue. “You?”

  My head lifted slightly, but sharply. “I came out looking for some crystal meth. You know anybody selling it?”

  Good cooks, friendly guys, and we had a good professional relationship, but I’d never seen them outside work. They weren’t of that same low caste as Blitz, our dishwasher. I couldn’t coerce anything from them under any circumstances.

  Werewolf’s dark eyes stared a moment into mine, then shifted to Firecracker’s pink ones and stayed there. The two seemed to commune. I waited.

  Firecracker’s thin, whitish lips twitched into a grin once more.

  “ ... yi-yi-yeah,” he said.

  * * *

  Excerpt from Bone’s Movie Diary:

  The single most depressing movie I’ve ever seen is Slacker. Director Richard Linklater’s 1991 queasy voyeuristic glimpse into the go-nowhere, do-nothing, smugly aimless world of slacker youth leaves one in a kind of lethargic shock thinking how it will be when these kids are running things. It’s a low budget indie & very effective in its way, but I would rather eat a plate of spoiled shrimp than ever have to see it again.

  There was nothing to be done about showing up two nights running at the Stage Door, which wasn’t my normal prowl. Last time, I’d hit around eight in the evening, then again at about two o’clock. I was of course hoping to stumble on Jo-Jo—or should I say, José Munoz?
>
  I’d ordered my dinner in tonight, Chinese food that I ate with chopsticks while I listened to some Shostakovich violin concertos. Then I spent a little while limbering up in an exercise not unlike the one I used to teach my sword students to use in warming up for a match. At the height of my club’s enrollment, I’d had twelve pupils. It had remained an informal thing for the years I’d kept it active.

  It was a healthier social alternative to the bar scene. I never charged fees for my lessons, but I passed the hat whenever we rented equipment or fencing space. Mostly, we banged steel on various back patios around the Quarter, I imparted my knowledge of the sport as art, and we generally had a fun time.

  Yet I’d shut the club down. I’d backed a step further into a kind of self-imposed state of inactivity. Why was that?

  The limbering and breathing exercises, of course, helped to center my mind. When I was ready I put on some appropriate clothes, a comfortable amount of weaponry, and headed out. It was before midnight, a time of night I hadn’t yet tried the Stage Door. Maybe I could find out Jo-Jo’s work schedule at least, and thereby figure out when he was mostly likely to show.

  Who did I find when I got there? Guessed it in one.

  “Maestro!” the Juggernaut called out, coming toward me from the pool table. For one awful second I thought he was going to hug me, but he settled for shaking my hand with his giant paw.

  I’d scoped him from the street but had come in anyway. He was definitely a nuisance, but he was still technically on our suspects’ list. I would suffer his company if it meant I could establish for sure he hadn’t killed Sunshine.

  “Jugger,” I said with a seriously fake smile, “good to see you.”

  He liked that. “Let me buy you one!”

  It was the least he could do. I sighed, resigning myself to hanging out with the big man for a while. I’d already done my visual sweep, and Jo-Jo wasn’t among the patrons. There was only one Court of Two Sisters waiter, and he sat at the bar talking eagerly to a redheaded tourist girl who’d wandered in off Bourbon. I didn’t know the bartender.