NO Quarter

by Robert Asprin

  “Well, our team has official practice every Sunday night, down at Fahey’s. It starts at midnight. First, can you make it on Sundays?” I took a drag on my cigarette, and held the smoke, waiting.

  Jo-Jo shook his head. “Sundays I’m tending bar from midnight to eight at Flanagan’s.”

  I blew out a plume. “Every Sunday?”

  “For a month now. Look, I appreciate you thinking of me for your team—Maestro, was it? But I don’t really have time for pool.”

  “No harm, no foul. Sorry to trouble you. Thanks for hearing me out.”

  He nodded and went into the back. I ditched the cigarette, returned to the dining room, ate, paid, and headed out. Vincent said he’d throw any good shooters he knew my way.

  Back at home, I opened the phone book. I knew the guy who managed Flanagan’s on St. Philip. He was there. I gave him a song and dance, saying how I thought I had seen Hector behind the bar when I was passing by in a cab last Sunday at around midnight. Boris, the manager, told me I’d seen Jo-Jo, who he had hired a month ago and was working out well. Hector, so far as Boris knew, was still up in Angola. I thanked him, promised to stop by sometime soon, and hung up.

  That put a big fat black line through Jo-Jo’s name.

  Sunshine’s murder had taken place last Sunday. She’d come by the Calf around ten-thirty or eleven. Her body had been discovered a little before two o’clock in the morning. She couldn’t have been lying there very long.

  Damn. Jo-Jo had been prime suspect material. I sighed. Maybe I’d let my inclinations toward nailing the murder to him affect my judgment.

  I changed clothes to more common Quarter apparel and went back out. Night had fallen. I went by the Stage Door, but the Juggernaut wasn’t there. The stray dog was, though. That figured. Now that I’d lost my best suspect, I couldn’t find the secondary one that usually clung to me like a leech. Rather than get into a funk about it, though, I fed the stray some leftovers I’d brought from my dinner at Two Sisters for that purpose—I’m a pushover for homeless critters, they’re so much more grateful for handouts than people are—and focused my head. The Stage Door had a certain rough quality about it. Probably Jugger was drawn to that, since it more or less matched his own coarse character. There are all sorts of bars in the Quarter, of course, but only a few that cater specifically toward the type of clientele among which the Juggernaut might be included.

  I headed off toward the nearest one. This was how a hunt was supposed to go, I reminded myself doggedly. Gather all possible suspects, eliminate them as quickly as you can, examine those you’ve got left. We were doing that, Bone and I. Even so, I had the creeping sense that time was running out. Every day that we didn’t bag Sunshine’s killer was one more day he might disappear from the Quarter, from the city ... if he weren’t long gone already. That feeling, coupled with my uneasy doubts from earlier about my age and abilities, left me almost queasy.

  After a half hour of making the rounds, I was back at square one. I hadn’t had to go in anyplace, since the Juggernaut stood out in any crowd and I had only to glance in a bar’s door from the street to see he wasn’t in any of the places I’d looked.

  By now, a drink was starting to sound good, despite last night’s overindulgence. I knew I wouldn’t be doing that again soon, though. I was a stone’s throw from the Stage Door, thought what the hell, and went in.

  There was Jugger. That figured too.

  He gave me the usual “hi-ho-good-to-see-you” treatment. He held a partially eaten Lucky Dog in one hand and a pool cue in the other. He wore those same overalls, head-stomping boots, and funky necklace. I offered to buy him a drink this time. It was time I got down to business with Jugger. By hook or by crook, I wanted to know if this big, violent, annoying guy was a viable suspect or not.

  I handed him his beer and lifted my Irish, tried to think of an appropriate toast, then decided to do without one.

  Jugger smacked his lips, “Aahhh! Thanks, Maestro. How about we rack ‘em?”

  “Mind if we sit and talk a minute? I just woke up. Still waiting for the head to clear.”

  He shrugged gigantic shoulders and we grabbed a table. Before I could say another word, he said, “Say, Maestro, do you know anybody named ‘Bone’? Skinny guy, long hair? You seen him around maybe?” His big chunky face was set in neutral.

  For those few seconds, I waited for him to move, and was ready to draw a blade on him. But he just sat there across the small circular table from me, waiting for my answer.

  Meanwhile, the bar phone had rung, and the bartender—a guy named Daniel—called to me, “Hey, Maestro! Someone on the phone for you, man.”

  “Excuse me,” I said to Jugger. It wouldn’t be Bone. He would have used the cellular phone. As I stood up from the table the realization struck me cold: I’d left my own cell phone back at the apartment! I had probably simply forgotten it when I’d changed clothes. Careful not to let anything show on my face, I walked over to the bar.

  Daniel passed me the receiver over the bartop. “Thanks. Hello?”

  “Maestro!” said a gruff rumbling voice. “The red alert perimeter’s been tripped. Your friend just turned up at Cosimo’s—silver crucifix an’ all. Yankee an’ a couple of his pals are holdin’ the guy there. I told the network to call me if he turned up, an’ I’ve been callin’ ‘round lookin’ for you. You interested in askin’ him some questions?”

  “You bet I am, Bear.”

  “Good. I’ll be meetin’ you there.”

  I turned back to the table where the Juggernaut was still waiting for an answer to his question: Do you know anybody named “Bone”?

  “No, I haven’t seen him.” Over the phone I could hear juke and rattling glasses behind Padre’s voice. “But I know where he’s heading, if he’s not already there—Cosimo’s.”

  I knew the place; had never been in. “What’s he doing there?”

  Padre told me.

  Maestro hadn’t picked up. I’d speed-dialed twice, listening to successive chirping rings; then punched his regular home phone, got his answering machine. I left a where are you? message, and he didn’t pick up while I was leaving it. It seemed crucial I report to Maestro that Dunk was now apparently hunting me. It might somehow figure in with his own dealings with Jo-Jo or the Juggernaut. Anyway, he liked to operate with a lot of info. This was info, and important. Dunk tracking me meant—had to mean—that Dunk was onto me. That put a kind of dizzy thrill of fear into me, a quality of emotion I couldn’t recall feeling before. It was entirely within the realm of possibility that Dunk’s intent was to kill me. That was an awesome, dreadful, staggering thought.

  Now, what Padre was telling me from the Fatted Calf about Maestro ...

  Somebody was hunting him, too? And why in hell hadn’t he told me?

  I kept the cell phone to my ear, listening intently. I’d stepped around the corner, off Decatur, for privacy.

  “So ... you were part of this ‘red alert perimeter’?”

  “Yep. Ah … hold on a minute, Bone. Yes, that’s three seventy-five, sweetie, thanks.” I had dialed the Calf’s number from memory, had caught Padre in the middle of his shift. Addressing me again, he said, “The Bear set it up. Do you know the Bear? It’s a bartender thing, Bone. People coming into our sanctuaries, asking unwarranted questions about someone like Maestro—someone well-respected, liked? No way. I admit I would’ve thought he’d tell you about it, though.”

  Probably figured I had enough on my mind, I thought. And yet, that just served to piss me off. Now I was worried about him. Was this how he felt about me?

  “If I wasn’t on shift,” he went on, “I’d be hightailing for Cosimo’s right now.”

  “But you don’t know if this Bear guy’s tracked him down yet, right? I mean, he was still looking for Maestro when he rang you?”

  “That’s right
.” Someone in the background was saying something loudly about either Manhattan or a Manhattan.

  “Well, thanks for the update, Padre. It’s so nice to be in the loop.”

  “Look, Bone, if you’re heading down there, please be careful. And help out Maestro if he needs it. We want him back in one piece. That was the whole point of this lookout thing.”

  I said solemnly, “I’ll do whatever I can.”

  I clicked the phone dead.

  “Yo!” About two paces behind me ...

  I was about a quarter of the way down the block from Decatur. On Decatur there were places still open, cars still passing, people, and more light than there was here. Was this all it took? You step ten yards off the beaten path and you’re fair game for the muggers? What right did New Orleans have calling itself a modern city? Maybe it was too modern was the problem ...

  Footsteps now, coming up fast. I stayed still that extra half-heartbeat, then tried to turn. I was caught by fingers gripping around the back of my neck, another hand grabbing the wrist of my hand that held the phone, and I was being pushed, up against someone’s wrought-iron alleyway gate, further out of the light.

  Goddamnit! I didn’t have time for this shit!

  I put up my shoulder so that my head didn’t hit the bars. Whoever was on me wasn’t that strong. He’d caught me off balance enough to move me. I moved slightly, experimentally, and discovered he wouldn’t be able to hold my arm still.

  “Yo, get dude’s phone!” It was the voice of that initial “Yo,” meaning the one holding my neck was a second person.

  For some reason, in this moment, under these circumstances, that pissed me off more than anything. Two against one. Not a rational thought, but powerful.

  The cell phone with the faux walnut housing, a gift from Padre, was torn out of my right hand, which consequently freed my arm completely.

  “Yo, see what dude’s got in his pockets!”

  That was the mastermind of the caper again. His enforcer started patting at my jeans pockets. I was carrying three dollars after shelling out two singles for the coffee Randy had poured me. He found it.

  I was still facing away from the pair, pressed against the gate. Behind, they were conferring, and the grip on my neck eased a little; and unfortunately I had no clue what these two were packing—knives, heat? It wouldn’t do to pivot suddenly around, drive the squared tip of my boot up into the balls of one, dig my fingers into the eyes of the other. No, wouldn’t do at all. Way too reckless. Goddamnit.

  “Yo, where’s the resta it?” asked Yo, and his confederate patted me down again from behind, found something of interest in the high pocket of the dark blue long-sleeved shirt I was wearing.

  My left hand came up without any order from the reasonable part of my mind, and closed over those searching fingers, squeezing, grinding the knuckles together.

  “You’re not getting my smokes.”

  It wasn’t my voice, but it had come from my mouth. I turned, pushing off from the gate’s bars, but I did it slowly, ominously. The other hand didn’t stay on my neck as I rounded, a look of I-don’t-know-what on my face. I held on to the hand that had been going for my cigarettes.

  I had had it.

  Two white kids, looking at me wide-eyed. I wasn’t behaving in any of the expected or endorsed manners: I wasn’t cooperating; I wasn’t pulling a weapon; I wasn’t showing them my best kung fu moves from a self-defense class. I was calling the game. It was over.

  Given the situation and a purely impartial view, I was very likely demonstrating the behavior most conducive toward getting myself seriously injured or killed.

  It had nothing to do with my cigarettes, understand.

  Neither kid had a knife or gun in hand. They were dressed in those overelaborate, mass-manufactured “street” clothes—fashions that maybe had come out of authentic American ghettos once upon a time, but that had since been inevitably co-opted, absorbed into the vast money-making industry and sold to the kids that knew less about “street” life than I did. And ... something familiar about these two ...

  “Yo,” said Yo, a look of stunned surprised on his young mook face, “it’s dude!”

  Last time I had seen him he’d been wearing a Walkman, lips moving to rap lyrics. The kid whose fingers I was still squeezing—and who was starting to looked pained by it—was one of the other background extras from Lester’s apartment on Dumaine Street. Maybe this was what they did on their nights off from dealing drugs.

  I tightened my grip, the bones crushing nicely together.

  “Yo, we should, like, take him back with us. The boss’ll wanta ...”

  And that got me laughing. It wasn’t my laugh. It was what you might hear atop a carnival haunted house coming from a painted clown with a wide mouth, filled with teeth.

  “The ‘boss’?” I said eventually. They were actually backing up a step, the kid whose fingers I gripped stretching out his arm. It was—to me, in that almost unearthly moment—immeasurably funny. “The boss?” What did they think this was? Some old-time gangster flick? Did they think Cagney or Edward G. Robinson was waiting for them back at the “hideout,” as in: Gee, bawhz, we brung yuh back dis mug with us ’cause we figured youse would wanta see him.

  They wouldn’t understand the joke. They hadn’t laughed along with me. In fact, they looked quite spooked.

  “Not me,” I told them. “Not tonight.”

  I let go of the kid’s fingers, and stood there, and waited, and they turned and did a fast jog up to Decatur, turning, and gone. I hadn’t tried to get the cell phone or my three bucks back. I had already pushed my luck so far beyond the pale it was preposterous.

  I had done something stupid—and immensely satisfying.

  I paused to light a cigarette, take one deep drag, and then I headed fast for Cosimo’s.

  * * *

  Excerpt from Bone’s Movie Diary:

  Westerns are all we’ve got that are ours. As a genre they are peculiarly American, because it is a culturally idiosyncratic historical age that these films are ostensibly chronicling. & hell, who doesn’t love a gunslinging Western? From the rousing—Rio Bravo, Magnificent Seven—to the intensely thoughtful—High Noon, John Wayne’s last bow The Shootist (& if you think the Duke couldn’t act, sit your ass down & watch this one). Naturally many Westerns are derivative, ripping off Kurosawa flicks, each other & any other available source. But that doesn’t diminish their strength and worthiness. Where would we be without My Darling Clementine, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance & Red River? I don’t want to know. We don’t get many good ones anymore, sadly. Westerns have gone the way of the musical. I confess an admiration for the truly surreal The Quick & the Dead from 1995, but of course it’s Clint Eastwood’s somber Unforgiven that garners the most modern attention. A good picture & one of the few Best Picture Oscar winners from the 1990s that one can actually stomach. [Note to self: must eviscerate the Academy’s choices from the ’90s. Dances With Wolves over GoodFellas? Forrest Gump over Quiz Show & Pulp Fiction—and Ed Wood for that matter?] Anyway, Unforgiven has several extraordinary, elevating moments. One of them is near the film’s end where Eastwood is holding a gun on a saloon full of armed men. He’s one against I don’t know how many. Any one of his opponents could draw on him & objectively have a fighting chance. 2, 3 or all, & Clint is a bullet-riddled corpse. Yet Eastwood, demonstrating intense cool & homicidal toughness, holds everyone at bay with his single weapon. The tension is terrific. The scene works, however, because it remains thoroughly believable. Appraisal: Unforgiven * * * ½

  To my horror, I found the Juggernaut was going to come along, and he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

  I had already ditched him twice in our budding “relationship”—once when I’d snuck out when he was in the sandbox, and again on the night Bone had called in his SOS. He wasn’t going
to let it happen a third time, and had that “stubborn child” manner about him again. I told him I had a date waiting for me, but even that didn’t deflect him. Stuffing the remains of his Lucky Dog into one of his pockets, he chugged the remains of his beer and invited himself along. I didn’t have time to argue. My mysterious stalker was waiting for me at Cosimo’s. People had gone to trouble on my behalf, especially the Bear, and it wouldn’t be right to leave them hanging.

  To Jugger’s earlier question about my knowing anybody named “Bone” I finally said, with a casual shrug, “Never heard the name. But there’s lots of weird handles around.”

  If I hadn’t forgotten my goddamn cell phone, I thought darkly, I could step into the rest room for a minute of privacy and buzz Bone. That Jugger was looking for him by name had me very worried. I couldn’t duck back to my place and grab it, though, since I couldn’t have Jugger following me to my address.

  So we set out on foot for Cosimo’s, me and my “buddy.”

  As we left Stage Door, the stray dog immediately tagged along, probably smelling the food in Jugger’s pocket. Jugger slowed, trying to shoo the dog away, but I kept a steady pace, not looking back, hoping he might actually stop to feed the dog so I could lose him.

  Behind me I heard the dog bark once, followed by a series of very loud “yi-yi-yi” yelps that ended abruptly. I spun around in time to see Jugger holding the dog by the throat, its body hanging like a limp rag from his massive fist. Stunned, I watched him shake it once, then toss the lifeless body to the side of the street. Brushing his hands on his overalls he hurried to catch up. I had to turn away quickly to keep him from seeing the horror on my face, while trying not to be sick. Any doubts that this man might be capable of murder had just been erased. It took all my concentration to keep walking, pretending that nothing unusual had happened, that we were still pals. Silently, I said a small prayer for the dog while Jugger kept up a steady spiel. I had to listen still one more time to the story about the guy he’d beaten that had “messed with his bitch,” and how he was going to take care of the guy who sold him out, once and for all. At this point I could hum the tune by heart. The walk seemed to take forever.