NO Quarter

by Robert Asprin

  Glancing around to make sure there were no eyes on the street, I knelt down for a closer look. He wasn’t breathing. Careful not to touch anything, I pulled out my lighter and flicked it. In the glow from the flame I saw two bloody punctures in Dunk’s chest. He wore a cord with a dried chicken’s foot around his neck, just like the one I had seen on Jugger—I was fairly sure he hadn’t had been wearing it earlier. He also had one of those tourist trinket voodoo dolls clutched in his fist.

  The examination took only seconds. No pulse, two wounds straight through to the heart. It had been so quick that his ruptured heart hadn’t had time to pump out much blood. Dunk was dead, that was certain. I was equally certain I wanted to get as far away as possible before someone else noticed. Jugger had definitely been here. He couldn’t be that far ahead. Making sure that I’d left no sign of my presence on the murder scene, I stood up and continued casually down Barracks. To anyone watching, I would have simply been a passerby who’d stopped to give a light to a bum.

  I decided to head back to the Stage Door, hoping to get lucky. I turned up Bourbon, mixing in with the party crowds to throw off anyone who might have seen me on Barracks, and glanced in the Bourbon street bars as I passed. Fortunately Jugger’s unusually large size made him easy to spot. He wasn’t in any of them. I turned on Toulouse and continued on to the Stage Door. This time the gods smiled on me, I spotted Jugger in the back, looking particularly sullen.

  “Hey, Jugger,” I greeted him warmly, “Where did you go? I waited for you, but you didn’t come back.” “Sorry ’bout dat. Had to take care o’ some business.” He chugged the remainder of his drink. “Fuckin’ two-timin’ bitch ... got what was comin’ to ’im.”

  I signaled the bartender for another and sat down. “So you showed him, huh?”

  “Damn right I did. Damn right. That skank’s gonna get hers, too. Bitch’s gonna pay for messin’ with mine. Gonna do right by you, too, Maestro.” He leaned over and whispered conspiratorially, “You don’t ‘ave ta tell me. I saw where she lives.”

  The smile froze on my face. He meant Alex. He had seen her with Dunk, followed her, and somehow I had missed him. She was next on his little list, and now he knew where she lived. Now I had no choice. If I were going to do something about the Juggernaut, I had to do it tonight.

  “Let me get you another drink. It’s on me.” I excused myself and went to the bar to collect our drinks. Setting them down in front of Jugger, I waved towards the restrooms and continued on to the back. I stopped short of actually going in, stood just out of Jugger’s line of sight while keeping him in mine. I would not lose him again. I made two quick calls, one to Bone and one to give the Bear his “warning order,” then rejoined Jugger at the table.

  “How about a game?”

  Ten minutes later Bone walked into the Stage Door, wearing an unusually brightly colored yellow and blue Hawaiian shirt. Jugger had his back to him, but I caught his eye and nodded. He said something to the bartender, turned and left, heading up Chartres.

  Jugger took his shot, and missed. As I moved into place and lined up my own shot, I spoke. “Hey, Jugger, are you still looking for that skinny guy? That Bone dude?” I sank the four-ball and moved on to my next shot

  He looked at me sharply. “Yeah, why?”

  “I think I just saw him. He was just in here, wearing a really bright yellow print shirt.”

  His head whipped around toward one door, then the other. “Did ya see which way he went?”

  “Afraid not. He talked to the bartender and left, but I didn’t see which direction.”

  “Thanks, Maestro.” He set his pool cue down, started to leave.

  “You’re not going to run out on me again, are you? I thought you really wanted this game. Or is it just because I’m kicking your butt all over the table?”

  The big guy actually looked crestfallen. “Aw, Maestro, you know it ain’t that. There’s just something I gotta take care of, and it can’t wait. How about I meet you back here in, say, half-an-hour, forty-five minutes? Would that be cool?”

  I pretended to ponder for a moment, making a show of looking at the run I had carefully lined up on the table. I finally decided I had stalled long enough to give Bone the head start he needed. “Sure, Jugger. Fine.” I smiled. “Give me a chance to warm up some more on the table and really kick your butt. But you’re buying the round!”

  He smiled back and thumped me on the shoulder, nearly knocking me down. He’d done that before, and I didn’t like it any better this time. “Thanks, Maestro. You’re a real pal.”

  Yeah, I thought, a real pal.

  He headed for the Toulouse door, stopping to talk to the bartender who helpfully pointed down Chartres. I watched him duck out, hoped Bone had made good time, and headed out myself—the other direction, down Toulouse. Both Bone and I were heading for the same place, the Bear’s bar. But Bone intended to lead Jugger on a merry chase while I took a more direct route.

  I had to make one brief stop along the way. My movie would have let out by now, so I needed another solid alibi. It was just after midnight, so I headed for the Dungeon, an infamous bar rumored to be the site of an actual slave dungeon during the early 1800s. Located just a half block off Bourbon on Toulouse, it was on my way, and it opened at midnight, so I knew the crowds would be heavy.

  I ducked down the long narrow stone passage that led from the street to the Dungeon door, making certain the security cameras in the passage caught a good view of my face. Once inside, I greeted the bouncer, Butch, and the bartender, Jenny, both good friends, and made certain they saw me head upstairs to the sound bar, again making sure the cameras caught me. There were no cameras pointed at the seating in the corners, so I headed for a back table, out of camera range. As usual at this hour, the place was packed. I waited for a large crowd to head out the exit, and joined them. I had spent many an hour sitting at the end of the bar with Butch, watching him track the security camera, so I knew just where I had to be to avoid being seen on the way out. It worked to my advantage that the cameras were designed to catch people coming in, which gave the bouncer warning of approaching trouble, rather than on the way out.

  Alibi established, I ducked out onto Toulouse and turned down Bourbon, heading for the Marigny and the Bear’s bar. Bone should be up around Canal Street by now—the opposite direction—and starting to head back. Juggernaut would certainly take Bone in a stand-up fight, but I was pretty sure he didn’t have a chance against him in a foot race.

  * * *

  I sidled up on the crowd coming out of the bar, mingling myself reasonably well with the riffraff. The Bear stood in the doorway waving everybody out urgently. “Com’on! Com’on! It’s a gas leak! There’s nothin’ I can do about it! Sorry, all right? Go do your drinkin’ somewhere else for a while. Put that fuckin’ cigarette out! What’s the matter with you, Bernie?”

  “I left my address book in there,” I said. I kept my face down, my posture a bit stooped, going through the crowd up to the Bear. A casual glance wouldn’t catch me.

  He hooked a thumb over his shoulder without looking at me. “Go get it. Com’on, y’all! Yeah, of course I’m gonna call somebody to come fix it. Soon as I get all you people out!”

  I ducked through the door, still hunched. I was breathing a little hard from the fast jog.

  Inside the bar as the last of the dozen or so patrons emptied out, I moved quickly. I did a fast check on both rest rooms, and found both unoccupied. Then I took position by the door, dropping money into the jukebox but making no selections. It was hugely unlikely anybody would realize I was still in here, or even remember me being on the scene.

  The Bear had concocted the scheme for emptying the place out, and I had to admit it was a beaut. See, this bar is notorious for gas leaks. It’s got an ancient heating system that the owner, who lives across the river in Gretna, refuses to tear out and repla
ce. So it gets patched here and there and springs new holes at least a few times a year, even in summer when, naturally, the heat’s not on. What’s more, tonight’s gas leak was completely authentic. I could smell it on the air. The Bear had rigged up a deal where he need only press down on a sturdy wrench he had wedged next to a pipe by the floor behind the bar, out of everybody’s view. When I had phoned, he had stepped down on the wrench with his boot, and presto! Instant gas leak.

  I could hear him dispersing everybody from out front. It was a Monday night, not too many people out. They quickly scattered to Decatur’s other available haunts. The Bear stood guard in front of the bar’s entrance, shooing away customers.

  I preset all but the last button in a series of selections on the juke, found a good vantage point beside the door, and waited.

  I looked back down the length of Dauphine, waiting for the tell-tale bulk that would be Juggernaut to make the corner. I was three blocks down, and dare not go farther less he miss me—though how anyone could miss my garish shirt, even in pitch black, was unfathomable. I had not expected to be involved in a chase with a killer, but now that I was, my adrenaline pumped. Funny how the fear of dying can make you feel really alive.

  After Maestro had left, Alex and I had just sat on the couch, comfortable with each other’s silence. I held Alex, enjoying her soft warmth and thinking about what Maestro had said. He’d lost the Juggernaut. After watching Jugger’s earlier performance, I wasn’t thrilled with the thought of that monster running around loose out there, especially knowing that he wanted a piece of me. I wasn’t particularly worried about our safety inside the apartment, but it did bother me that Maestro had managed to loose track of him. Was Maestro losing it? Had he been retired from the Outfit too long after all? Lost his edge? I didn’t want to believe that. I had pinned a lot on his knowledge and experience, wanted to believe he would manage to find Jugger again. I just hoped he wasn’t foolish or stubborn enough to take him on by himself.

  I got up and walked into the movie room, where Sunshine’s drawing hung on the wall. Alex stood behind me, holding me, head resting between my shoulder blades, just like we’d stood there that last time ... the night of my sleepwalking dream about Sunshine.

  “It’s almost done,” she said, and all the edges were showing in her voice, too. That was okay, even a good thing. “We did the right thing. Maestro will get him.”

  The red thumbtack hung loosely in the lower left corner. I pushed it back in, but it dropped to the floor in a tiny sprinkle of white wall plaster, bouncing behind a messy stack of videotapes.

  I folded Alex into my arms. I was almost ready to blow off Maestro’s instructions, to send Alex up to her own apartment with the shotgun and go out looking on my own, when the phone rang. Maestro had found Jugger, but he needed my help to bring him to ground. He outlined his plan.

  “It will be dangerous. You’ll have to stay well ahead of him while making sure you don’t completely lose him.”

  “No problem. I know just the thing.”

  Five minutes later, after I’d persuaded Alex to go upstairs—she’d promised to do so, and I didn’t doubt her—I stepped out of my gate onto Burgundy. I’d dressed in comfortable jeans and an obnoxiously loud shirt Sunshine had bought me as a joke Christmas gift back in San Francisco. It was one of those awful shirts tourists wear on tropic vacations to show they can compete with the local flora. I had kept it only because I’d intended to donate it to the local homeless shelter, but I’d never quite gotten around to delivering it. The mission required me to be the prey in a cat and mouse game, but I had no intention of getting too close to this particular cat. This shirt, with its day-glow bright flowers, made me visible from space, much less from a few blocks away in the Quarter.

  I made the extra block to St. Louis, so I could come up on the bar without being spotted, turned on Chartres and ducked into Keuffer’s, kitty-cornered from the Stage Door. From there I could see Jugger and Maestro at the pool table. The Juggernaut’s attention seemed riveted on the game. Once I was certain Jugger had his back to me, I hurried across the street and stepped up to the bar. Maestro made eye contact and nodded, never breaking the motion of his shot. I signaled the bartender, some guy I didn’t know.

  “Can you tell me the way to Canal Street?”

  “Sure, just head up that way on Chartres five blocks or so. You’ll come to Canal.”

  “Thanks.” I glanced at Juggernaut to make sure he hadn’t spotted me—Maestro still had his full attention—then headed down Chartres toward Canal at a rapid pace. It being Monday, there weren’t a lot of people out, so I figured I could get a fairly good head start and still be seen by someone looking for me.

  I made Canal and turned away from the river, then slid back over to the corner and peeked around the building. Jugger wasn’t too hard to spot amid all the normal-sized pedestrians. He was several blocks back, close enough to have seen which way I turned, but far enough back so I was safe. I headed over to Dauphine, but Jugger had still not made the corner at Canal, so I pretended to look in the window of the GNC on the corner.

  I wanted a cigarette, but didn’t think I had that much time. A moment later, I spotted him coming around the building at Chartres. After a second more to be sure, I turned on Dauphine and headed back into the Quarter. Hated to admit it, but I was having fun—so long as I didn’t slip up and let him actually catch me. Whatever difficulty I might have with this chase, bad smoker’s lungs and all, I was fairly certain it would be worse for someone the Juggernaut’s size.

  I kept the chase going for about twenty minutes—ten shy of the amount of time Maestro said he needed—then ducked over to Decatur and turned toward the Marigny. I stayed under the streetlights as much as possible, to make certain Jugger could see me from a long way back, and picked up the pace. In short order, I found myself hurrying past my restaurant. I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the big windows and beyond them saw the dance going on between the waiters and the feeders. The reflected face didn’t look familiar, and the scene behind the windows looked improbably alien to me, like a ritual viewed through a museum exhibit’s glass. For that instant I felt, keenly, like I didn’t belong in there, had never belonged to that world.

  I’d built up a considerable lead by the time I reached the Bear’s bar. Glancing back, I spotted a shape that could only be the Juggernaut about three minutes behind. I made sure he saw me, then nodded to the Bear and ducked inside.

  The place was so dim that at first that I couldn’t see anything beyond the lights over the bar. The sound system played something soft and low. The jukebox was lit up as if it had been slotted with quarters and primed with selections, but it played nothing.

  “How far back?” Maestro’s voice came from behind me, by the door. I had completely missed him.

  “Two to three minutes, I’d guess.” I finally spotted him at a booth, sitting in the shadows just to the side of the door. He sat with his hands folded in front of him on the table. There was something odd about them, though, something different. Oh, I thought. Surgical gloves.

  “There’s a back exit through the storeroom behind the bar,” he said. “Duck out there. I’ll take it from here.” His voice was calm and sure, but it, too was oddly different. Flat. Emotionless.

  I’d thought long and hard about this moment, ever since Maestro had called to ask me to play a part in the final chase. The original plan had called for each of us to focus on our “own” suspect. But things had definitely not gone according to the plan. Now that I was involved, I realized I needed something more.

  Something for Sunshine.

  Instead of heading toward the storeroom, I turned to face him. “No, Maestro,” I said. “I’ll be staying.”

  “You’ll be what?” His voice dropped even lower. The tone I heard in it gave me a chill. But I knew what I wanted, and after what we’d already been through, I wasn’t go
ing to back down now.

  “I’m staying,” I said. “I want to talk to him, first.”

  “You’re out of your fucking mind!” I could hear the anger coming through now. “He’s already killed Dunk! He left him lying in the street, two holes in his heart. Do you understand this is not a game?”

  A cold calm filled me—a fine, icy grip. Soothing, in its way, and far removed from sadness and grief and anger.

  I didn’t want to fight Maestro over this, but I was not going to back down.

  “How can you ask me that?” I said. “Sunshine was my wife. Jugger killed her. I have to face him. That’s what this has been about, all along—not just revenge, but justice.” Without waiting for what he might say to that, I walked over to the bar and climbed up to sit on it, settling myself under the brightest light to be sure I would be the first thing Jugger saw. And the last thing. “You’ll want him distracted. Let me talk to him. Then do what you want. If we’re partners, you owe me this.”

  Something shifted behind Maestro’s eyes. My final words had hit the right target, had clinched something between us. They’d been meant to.

  “Hey, brother-man,” the Bear’s voice came from just outside. It was the signal.

  “Hey,” the Juggernaut returned the Bear’s greeting, then pushed open the door, and entered.

  He stepped into the dim light and stopped, spotting me immediately. He was obviously surprised to find me alone and waiting for him. “What the hell?”