Crossroad Blues (The Nick Travers Novels) (15 page)
"You just said you did."
"I'm gettin' old. Now get your ass out of here and leave this mess alone. And think about that ghost story I just tole you. That man has caused a lot of misery."
Chapter 28
Cracker's eyes burned somethin' terrible. That hot white light they'd been shinin' in his face made him want to scream. Even when he closed his eyes, the light came through the blood in his eyelids with red-hot intensity. His whole face and body felt red, raw, and irritable. He wanted to find a cool clump of leaves near a tree, where the moss was free to grow, and fall asleep. Wake up when it came natural.
"Wake that old fuck up," a deep, scratchy voice said. It sounded like a white man, but when he tried to open his eyelids a little to see who was talking, he had to shut them right away.
"Sir, we want you to go back home real soon," the voice said again. "We'd like you to be comfortable, get a shower, and sleep. Hell, we'll even find you a juicy steak and a baked potato. Whatever you want. We just want to know what happened to those records your buddy Robert Johnson recorded. That's it. Very reasonable."
The voice was scratchy and raw from booze and cigarettes but kind of rough and soothing like the ole preacher who left him tin cans of food outside the church. Made him want to sleep.
"D.r Baker told me you used to work for a record producer in Texas. Said that man recorded Robert Johnson before he died, and you kept those records all these years. We know you didn't give Baker or that deputy the real thing. But I know what I want, so you can't pass another bad set off. Understand? Now, we don't want you to be up all night, and that hot light must be botherin' you. What'd you do with those records?"
"You stole my records," Cracker muttered. "I ain't got nothin' left. You stole 'em, and you kilt Willie. Damn, you sons a bitches
k-k
ilt
W-W
illie."
"Those records weren't worth shit. Most of the ones you gave Baker were warped like a fried egg. Almost all the others were a goddamned hillbilly band, only one blues song."
Cracker could see that fat green moss clinging to the tree and shafts of sunlight that cut wildly through high, leafy branches. The forest was a canopy over him, and he was safe. All that green protected him from the light and the dirty outside world. The very thing that killed R.L.
"I can make him say all kinds of shit," a black man's deep voice said. Sounded like the same man who found him hiding under the car and tied him up. Mouth of gold.
Gold Mouth found him huddled underneath that old car in Greenwood. Man took an old tree branch and poked him in the head until he had to come out. Then a young white boy grabbed him, tied him, and threw him in the back of a big truck. They covered him with a plastic sheet and let him ride on the wet metal for what seemed like days.
"Keep him up," the white man said. "He'll tell us what we want. If not, tell that new kid to come in here and keep watching him."
?
Cruz walked out into the hot August sun from the small brick building near Esplanade where he kept his cars and extra supplies for the Blues Shack. He put on his shades and ran his hands down over his suit to press out the black wrinkles.
"Floyd, this man is old. We don't want him to die. Go get him something to eat and let him sleep a little. He'll come around. But"--Cruz raised a finger--"if he dies without telling us anything, then all this will be worthless."
"Shit, what that ole fucka want? Chicken or a po' boy?"
"Ask him, Floyd, and give me a call later. I'll be in the office."
"Pascal, between you and me, you bonin' yo' secretary, ain't you? That's why you spend all that time at the club."
"I like to work. That's why I'm successful."
"That ain't no answer," Floyd said, his hair shimmering like a dirty, soaked mop.
"Call me later, Floyd, and tell me where I need to send you next. I don't give a shit if it's damned Tibet."
"Man, I thought one of them records was it, when we started to play that shit, sound like him to me."
"It wasn't Robert Johnson."
"How can you be sure?" Floyd asked, his gold teeth reflecting the sun.
"I just know."
"So we've just bent over twice and taken it in the ass over two collections that ain't worth a squirta piss. Hey man, you remember you wanted to know what was happenin' after Baker showed you them record contracts he found? Them ragged yellow ones from Texas that said this Devlin guy had some studio time with Johnson before he died?"
"Yeah?" Cruz asked, cleaning his sunglasses and slipping them back on.
"Well, I checked out them contracts, and they was real. Man I found said he'd have to be a kick-ass forger to fake that paper. You knew that. But I also followed Baker 'round for a few days. Even listened to him bone his old lady from outside his bedroom window. Fine-lookin' white woman with tits like apples. Anyway, I seen him meet a few times in this place called JoJo's down on Conti."
"Yeah, I know the place. Probably be out of business when we start revving up."
"I checked it out. Turns out the old fucker who owns the joint is from the Delta. Real plugged in with that old circuit. Knew all them King Biscuit folks like Sonny Boy and Robert Lockwood."
Cruz stopped and stared at a street painter working. A dying banana-tree leaf touched his cheek. The man's painting was of the same alley where they stood. But there were no cars, no airbrushed signs advertising two-for-one T-shirts or jumbo cocktails. Only the flagstone sidewalks, the crooked iron balconies above the colonnades and passing horses. The world is a place of perceptions, he thought.
"Hey?" Floyd said. "See what I'm sayin'?"
Chapter 29
Randy Sexton lived in an 1860s shotgun cottage painted a bright yellow with green gingerbread trim, just off the streetcar line in Uptown. On the porch, Randy slumped in an unpainted Adirondack chair as an American flag caught stiffly on the breeze. He sipped on a glass of ice tea. Work gloves lay on the floor beside him. Randy stood and smiled as if embarrassed by his leisure, then walked down the steps and caught Nick's hand.
It was Saturday morning, but in New Orleans, the days of the week rolled by without consequence. Sometimes Nick felt he lived in the perpetual whirl of a never-ending party that was beginning to tire.
"Hey, man, I'm so sorry," Randy said. "I had no idea about your being in jail until yesterday, and your lawyer told me you were on the way home. Jesus. What happened?"
"Someone killed the old albino man and a sheriff's deputy who was helping me. When I got back to the motel the other night, they thought I was the killer. Man, I'd left them just a few hours before and they were just watching TV, laughing. I should have stayed."
Branches from the hedges littered the stone walkway to the porch like hair on a barbershop floor. An old plastic radio with a rounded dial was tuned to a classical station playing Dvorak's symphony
From the New World.
Randy nodded to a chair beside him and took another gulp of tea.
"Would you like some?"
"You have a beer?" Nick asked.
"It's ten in the morni--I'll get the beer."
He returned with a bottle of Dixie. Nick drank it in two gulps. The bottle was cold to the touch and the beer burned the back of his throat.
"Listen, I don't know what to do. This man Cracker had some old records he kept under his porch, said they were old blues recordings from the thirties. He said Baker stole the other half of the records. The ones I saw were all lacquer-coated aluminum. They weren't labeled and we never had them played. Hell, they could have been cows making love. Anyway, they were with Cracker and the deputy, Willie Brown, when I left. Now the sheriff's department people say they can't find anything like them."
"Holy shit," Randy said.
"Yeah, man. Holy shit. Brown thought Baker was trying to sell the first set and sent someone back for the rest."
"I don't know. He was too arrogant for that. It's not his style to leave New Orleans in mystery," Randy said. "He'd miss all his waiters and tailors too much. He was a man of routine. You know, I could tell you any day of the week what was in Baker's pockets? I could."
"Holes?"
"No, a pack of Doublemint, a money clip, keys, a handkerchief, and a rusted dime with a hole through it."
"I won't ask," Nick said. "You ever heard anything about Robert Johnson having another recording session? That other tracks exist?"
"Never. You would know more about that than me, man. Is that what you think those records were? Lost recordings?"
"I don't know. Maybe it's just something I'd like to believe. Would be a hell of a reason to kill somebody, maybe the greatest find of this century. Poor Willie Brown. He was a good guy. Kinda reminded me of Jay Medeaux."
Nick fiddled with the label on the Dixie bottle.
"Listen, I've got an idea of something we can do besides sitting on our hands and recounting the contents of Michael's pockets," Nick said.
"What?"
"Do you trust me?"
"Yeah."
"That I'd never do anything to embarrass the department?"
"Yeah."
"Let me use your phone. I need to make a few calls."
Chapter 30
Detective Jay Medeaux arrived red-faced and sweating at the Riverwalk. His tousled mop of blond hair and boyish face was a contradiction to the button-down shirt and candy-striped tie. A beeper hung beneath his big belly, and a Beretta 9mm on his hip.
"The monkey is in the tree," Jay said.
"Watch out for falling coconuts," Nick responded.
Jay sat down and pulled out two pieces of faxed info and handed them to him. Nick knew Jay from his sophomore year at Tulane, where they'd roomed together and shared a common interest in beer and a hatred of authority. Sometimes late at night after several beverages at JoJo's, they'd call their position coaches, pretending to be sportswriters for
The Times-Picayune
, wanting to know about their last bowel movement or the effectiveness of the "Thigh Master" on college athletes.
Jay never finished college. He left Tulane shortly after his knee turned into a knotted pulp that resembled a rotten grapefruit. It wasn't long before he enrolled in the academy to fulfill his lifelong dream of becoming a cop. He always loved those Eastwood movies.
"There you go. Kid's name, date of birth, previous arrest record, and his address in New Orleans," Jay said.
"You're all right, brother."
"Where's my sandwich,
brother
?"
"Easy there, big fella," Nick said. "Don't bite my hand."
"Well, get that shit out of the way."
He handed Jay a wax-paper-wrapped muffuletta from Central Grocery and a pack of Zapp's chips. The sandwich was stacked with salami, ham, provolone, and olive relish on special Italian bread. Damned good.
"So what's this all about?" Jay asked.
"I don't know if you want to know."
"I bet I do, since I'm risking my ass."
"Risking your ass? That's a little extreme," Nick said, and stole a chip. "You remember a colleague of mine, Michael Baker? No? Well, he disappeared while working on a project in Mississippi. When I went looking for him, one of his sources was kidnapped or killed or something while I was there. This kid you checked out for me was the one found dead at the scene with a sheriff's deputy."
Jay stared out at a tourist paddle wheeler playing calliope music and pigeons walking over an indigent girl passed out beside a fountain. Her hair was the color of cotton candy.
"The deputy, Willie Brown, played football at LSU Ever hear of him?"
"Can't say I have," Jay said. "But, of course, football players either study law enforcement or early childhood development."
"Or history?"
"Yeah, sorry, Nick. Some of the guys were intellectuals or harmonica players. Heard you were in the pokey. Make any pen pals?"
"How come every time you talk about jail, you have to throw in homosexuality? I'm sure lots of guys leave jail untouched."
"Like I said, make any pen pals?"
Nick opened his sandwich and a bag of chips. As he ate, the oil added fine thumbprints to the papers. He read back through, folded the sheets, and tucked them into his jeans.
"Kid has an address in the French Quarter," Nick said as he scrunched up the sandwich's wax paper. "Why would anyone leave him at the scene?"
"I'd say they didn't have time to grab the body. Probably got scared and hauled ass. Or thought it'd look like he was the shooter."
"I'd like to see his place."
"I'm sure their sheriff's department would want us to check his pad out," Jay said. "It would be very cooperative if the NOPD helped."
"You want an impartial observer?"
"Know any good ones?"
?
Keith Fields had lived in a one-bedroom apartment on the second story of an antique shop that specialized in tin soldiers. The door to the stairwell off Royal Street was unlocked, and they walked up the creaking steps to the unit. The halls smelled like dust and mildew, with dark water stains splotched through the white paint. At the top of the stairs, Jay knocked on the door.
No answer.
Jay knocked again and tried the doorknob.
"We really should try to notify any friends and family of the deceased, especially since they might be in danger," Jay said, jamming a tool that looked like a carrot peeler into the lock.