Crossroad Blues (The Nick Travers Novels) (18 page)

River Street turned into Brooklyn. Over the river, the lights of New Orleans were a blurred glow. A few blocks away, he could hear the thumping music in a Jamaican nightclub, the drumming sound of cars over the bridge, and brown water churning around a tugboat. He stopped and looked for the house. Nick drove the strip twice before he realized the numbers jumped with only a vacant lot in the middle.

Someone was playing with him.

He looked back at the two shotgun homes on either side of the vacant lot and spit out the window. About thirty yards away lay the rusting gears that hauled people over the river during the World's Fair. Like most things in New Orleans, they were left to disintegrate.

Nick heard a car approach, and the square headlights of a van shone into his eyes. It was headed in the wrong direction, right for him.
Idiot.
Nick punched in the clutch and shifted into first. He wanted to get back to Virginia tucked warmly in his flannel sheets. The van kept coming.

He let out the clutch and tried to move out of the way, but the van must have been going about forty. He could see a heavy cage built on over the front grille as he took a hard swerve. The van rammed the passenger side of the hood. It was a teeth-rattling, bone-jarring hit that froze Nick's hands on the steering wheel. All he could do was hold on as his Jeep flipped on its side. He felt his shoulder and arm hit hard against rough loose asphalt. A hand and shoulder went numb, trapped between the door and the ground.

Blood boiled in his ears and a pain shot through his arm. He lay there for what seemed like minutes, unable to get up. His body wouldn't respond. His head pounded and took long swimming strokes. He wanted to close his eyes, but he knew they'd be coming for him. Like a snared animal, he used his uninjured hand to try to pull his arm free.

The van idled nearby, its heavy front grille unscathed. Its motor still chugged, and headlights burned into the back of his skull. Nick heard a door slam and the crunch of shoes on the gravel-filled road. Two pairs of shoes. French accents. Rough and guttural.

With a soft grunt, Nick pulled his arm free and reached under the seat for the Browning, which had slipped up under the brake. He grabbed it and sighed when he felt the cool trigger underneath his index finger. The men were Haitians. Their coal black Caribbean faces were expressionless as they approached Nick. Nick hung sideways, still trapped in his seat belt. He could hear the rolling thick tongues and smell the sharpness of their unwashed bodies.

One leaned down and twisted his head in observation. The other nodded and yelled across the street, "C'mon!" The men went silent, as the headlights continued to burn into his eyes. Soon Nick heard another pair of shoes on the gravel and could barely make out the shoes, old-time brogans.

Nick turned his head in pain again and looked up into the face of a gray-headed black man wearing overalls. Must've been in his eighties and wore a corduroy jacket lined with patches like scars. The man stared at him with hard gray eyes and poked at him with a cane.

A face so familiar. So distant. He waited to pull the gun and shoot the man. But Nick knew him from somewhere. He couldn't speak or think.
What about Robert Johnson? What happened to him?

"Dat 'im?" one of the Haitians asked, his teeth the color of piss-stained wood. His breath was hard and alcoholic, filled with rum. The old man grunted and handed him a couple of bills. The Haitians were a couple of cheap hit men. Nick knew of rumors about ex-Tontons Macoutes in Algiers who would shoot their own mother for a quarter.

"Son, this is none of your affair," the old man whispered to Nick as the Haitians got into their van and spun out. "Leave this bidness alone and everythin' will be jes' fine. Remember, Earl Snooks is dead."

The old man straightened up and hobbled back across the street. He got into a 1950s pickup truck and drove away with a loose muffler puttering like a machine gun. Nick's arm tingled with numbness. He lay there for a moment just breathing, then unlatched himself from his seat belt and plopped onto the hard concrete. As he slowly got to his knees, Nick reached for the gun and slid it back into his coat.

His old Jeep lay on the side of the Algiers street like roadkill. He should have shot those bastards. One half of the Jeep's front end was smashed in like an accordion. Antifreeze leaked like blood onto the dirty road.

Early this mornin'

when you knocked upon my door.

And I said, "Hello, Satan,

I believe it's time to go.

She jumped onto him and wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs behind his back. The tight leather of her boots squeaked as they rubbed together. He fingered the dimple in her chin and just looked at her. She crushed that fat lower lip and stared back.

The bus station was gray and empty, a big, cold cinder-block shed, except for two elderly black women sitting on their luggage. Jesse put his arm around the girl and led her into the men's bathroom. Millions of dust particles caught in a thick slab of sunlight cutting through high windows.

His breath came hard through his nose. The smell of the urinals and the sweet smell of her perfume mixed. His head felt hot and light as he ran his nose down through her chest, chewing at the front latch of her bra. She bit down on his ear now, playful and a little harder, and said things in German to him. They sounded nasty.

A toilet flushed in a stall down the row of dented doors with peeling paint.

He rushed her inside and slammed her back against the cold concrete-block wall. One hand moved around her waist while the other felt the etched wall's graffiti like a blind man.

Want to be my bitch?

She kicked the door closed behind them.

His eyes shut as he unlatched the front of her bra and put his mouth to her breasts. His hand slid down her flank and found a smooth bare leg and slowly moved upwards as she sighed. The lace of her panties felt like hospital gauze under his hands.

"Jesse, before you nail that young girl to the post, there's a little matter we need to discuss," said Puka, who had come to him like a disgruntled Vernon out of the mist.

"Sorry I'm late, had a little business to 'tend to," Jesse said as he dabbed a fork into the last mouthful of eggs Benedict at the Blues Shack Sunday gospel brunch. A choir on the stage below belted out hymns honoring Jesus. "That albino just wanted to sleep. Never had to beat him a bit. That lack of sleep really works, kept on mumblin' 'bout a man name Big Earl. Earl Snooks."

"Snooks? Never heard of him," Mr. Cruz said, his long, black hair and beard shone almost blue, like a raven. "He say this man knows about the real records?"

Cruz leaned over the upper railing and watched the show below. He lit a menthol cigarette. "Kid, I got about a half-dozen blues experts who helped me put this place together. Pay them out my ass. They'll find out about this Snooks guy."

"What do we do with the ole man?" Jesse asked, sopping up the rest of the yellow sauce with a roll.

"I don't give a shit. Looks like we're one notch up the fuckin' ladder," Cruz said, laughing smoke out his nose. "You know, I got a goddamned empire built here. My own record label, own restaurant. One of the biggest attractions in the French Quarter. All I learned how to do was market a natural commodity. Like corn and cotton. Same damned thing, all in the marketing. Make those yuppie tourists feel safe in a well-lighted area, get a cool logo, have a few bands playing. They go home thinking they had a real cool experience. Sure, they were down with the brothers. Why do you think that is, Jesse? Southern guilt? Wanting to be accepted?"

"Don't know," Jesse said.

Hell, he didn't even know what Cruz was talking about, and Jesse didn't care. He just kept thinking about the plan Puka had. Said he shouldn't be payin' no respect to the man who got Keith killed. Wanted to know all about them damned records. Jesse was so sick about people talkin' about that man Robert Johnson and not his own skills that he wanted to puke. But Puka got his attention when he said, "I got a plan that's gonna make us so rich that the streets of Las Vegas will open up to us covered in green shag carpet."

His own personal Graceland. The girl from Germany, his Priscilla. Hell, he could take his momma to Wal-Mart anytime he liked. Buy her a new dress, some of that perfume that Charlie's Angel sold.

"I appreciate y'all staying with that albino last night," Cruz said, knocking him out of the dream. "What time did he finally talk?"

"Around six. Floyd's at home sleeping it off. Said you'd want to know."

"Well, go home and get some sleep. We might start getting some heat from the cops about your buddy Keith. I wish you could have gotten him out of there, but I understand. Just stay real cool and keep this all to ourselves."

"Yesterday, when me and Floyd was messin' with that ole nigra, I seen the same man that chased me in the Delta. That big, scruffy white dude with black hair."

Cruz snorted out some more smoke. "His name is Travers." He leaned so close to Jesse that he could smell breath like a cigarette put out in a whiskey glass. "I want you to find his weak spot for me, son. I want you to search it out like flies on shit. See what that sarcastic mother-fucker dreams about. What he lives for. Because we might just want to take that shit away to give us some breathing room."

Nick took another sip of beer and sat down beside her. She hadn't moved, just lay like a kid, wrapped in a blanket on the sofa. The comfort kind of made him mad. She should be empathizing with him, moving around and fretting. Maybe make some chicken soup. She pulled the blanket open wide to offer him inside. He took another sip of beer, leaving it half-empty, and set it beside her cereal bowl.

Virgina jumped off the couch and bounded across the floor to Nick, hands on hips, jaw a little askew and staring. Her hair was pasted down flat on her head, and she wore no makeup; her eyelashes almost translucent.

"Nick."

"Virginia, please. Let's stay with our pact. Keep that mystery and all that crap," he said, and turned to leave. She grabbed his elbow and walked him in close, then raised up on her toes and kissed him on the neck.

Nick waited for JoJo and Loretta on the steps of their two-story Creole town house on Royal Street. He knew they were at church and would be back soon. There was never a Sunday that those two missed a service. In their world, it was completely unthinkable not to go, just a mandatory part of life.

He unwrapped a couple of muffins he'd bought at the A & P down the street, along with a bottle of orange juice and a pack of Marlboros. The sun shone hard in his eyes as he chewed and watched the tourists meandering in and out of the antique shops.

He smoked a cigarette, put it out, then leaned back on the stairs and slept. The dreams came through his mind with force. Random, weird patterns. Black-and-white images of searching for Robert Johnson--his music grinding beneath a huge needle. Johnson gagging on his own blood as he vomited. Johnson smiling up at him and telling him,
You're not welcome
. It was the old image from that dime store photograph now given a face.

You're not a part of this, he said. You're not welcome.

Nick squinted up into the faces of JoJo and Loretta. JoJo in a pressed out-of-date blue pin-striped suit with dust-creased knees. Loretta in a long blue silk dress. Her wide, black Eskimo face drawn on with thick makeup.

"You all right, kid?" JoJo asked

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. You should see the van."

"Come on in, son. I'm 'bout to cook a little breakfast for this ole fart," Loretta said sweetly.

"Ole fart. Ole fart," JoJo mumbled as he ambled up the stairs, his polished black shoes reflecting into Nick's eyes.