Neal Rafferty New Orleans Mystery #1: The Killing Circle (A Neal Rafferty New Orleans Mystery) (23 page)

“Maybe it isn't quite like that.”

He peered at me through the dimness. “If you say so. I've kidded myself before, too.” I didn't say anything. “Hell, maybe I'm being a sourpuss.” That still got him nothing. “Or maybe you mean what you say—you got business.”

I twirled my empty glass around and he brought the bottle over and set it down. I poured myself another drink and he resumed his glass polishing.

“Well, Al,” I shrugged, “who's to say if I say what I mean or not.” I looked resigned and got some more sympathy. “Say, Al,” I said with sudden hopefulness, “maybe you know the lady.”

“Could be, if she's ever made the mistake of wandering in here. Of course, during the winter I get an older crowd. What's her name?”

“Lucy McDermott.”

“No, I don't know her,” he said slowly. I felt my gut tighten. And it wasn't pure instinct. It was the absence of his clipped tone, the way his toweling hand slowed down, the way he put the glass very gingerly on the counter, the way he picked up the bottle of bourbon and the money and moved off. I sipped on my drink, watching his every move. He never turned around even when I tried to get his attention to order another drink. I've made wrong guesses, but I think he wanted me gone. It was too bad: He couldn't go anywhere and I was right where I wanted to be. I sat tight and waited. The crowd would be thinning out to nothing and then we would be alone together. Blissfully alone. I just wished he'd left the bottle of bourbon; it was going to be a long wait without it.

32

Lights Out

I spent the better part of an hour in the wings viewing Al's backside and marvelous profile and that's about all the time there was before curtain call.

The air had gotten thicker and the crowd noisier and one of Al's beer taps had gone dry. Behind me the Foosball table was being tossed, pounded, and turned on its side, and the big bruiser who looked like he had just walked off the set of
Muscle Beach Party
and was doing the maneuvering had run through several sets of challengers and emerged the still unbeaten champ. I was fast slipping over the edge into headachy moroseness.

All it took was one time, just one time out of the forty a minute that the door opened and banged shut. A big guy with something peculiar about his looks came in. It was the tiny half-inch bangs over his big, heavy face. A piranha nipping at my rear end couldn't have lifted it off the stool faster than the sight of the Boy Scout did. He moved through the crowd like Moses through the Red Sea and shoved his flabby torso sausaged into a Ban-Lon shirt against the other end of the bar. I moved off so he wouldn't see me and felt about as inconspicuous as a hunchback at a garden party, but he hadn't seen me yet. Al hurried over to him and they conferred, leaning low across the bar I scrunched down, trying to use a buck-toothed youth half as wide as myself as camouflage, but the Boy Scout's fringed head bobbed up and his eyes locked on me like I was the only other animal in the cage. Al reached for an unopened bottle, and Groz began to quickly slap bills on the counter That was my cue. I pushed through the bodies, passed a lot of Pepsodent smiles in tanned faces, waved to Al, who stood rigidly behind the bar, and a year later opened the door and choked on the clean, salty air.

The Boy Scout had vanished. I looked for him in every direction and in his tight red Ban-Lon he should have been about as hard to spot as Diamond Jim in a fish tank. I went down to the end of the row of buildings where there was a grassy lot. I peered between the parked cars for a crouching hulk. I crossed over to the other end of the buildings where there was another weedy alley and went along the side of a building, which housed a combination sporting goods store and drugstore, to the highway. On the other side of the glassed displays of aspirin, sunglasses, baseball hats and beach paraphernalia a street intersected the highway. There were only so many places to go. The most accessible escape routes were down the street, into the hamburger joint on the other side, or into the restaurant I'd parked the car next to. I hesitated to leave the street, knowing that if I chose the wrong place I could lose him forever so I walked slowly in front of the drug-sporting store to the corner, shoved my hands in my pockets, and consoled myself with the thought that there was still Al.

I stood at the corner for a few moments where I had a good view of the highway in both directions. Nothing. The side street became covered in darkness after half a block so I walked down the concrete edge to get a better look and was just about even with the back of the hamburger place when I heard a car engine accelerate behind it. A red sportster darted into the street, its headlights aimed at me. And it kept coming. I jumped into the weedy sand and as I hit the ground the car went over the edge as the driver tried to straighten out. Rubber scraped and the car jumped back into the street. There was more revving while Groz turned his fat head to me and gave me what I can only describe as an invitational smirk. Then he ground the gears, squealed all the way to the comer, and turned smartly onto the highway just in time to cut off another car which jerked to a stop.

I raced to the corner, crossed the highway, and jumped into my car. By the time I bypassed the main activity, the only things in sight were two taillights far down the road. My efforts to catch up with them were futile and about ten minutes later they turned to the left down one of the lettered avenues. I was too far away to judge the distance accurately, but I wasn't worried that Groz was trying to give me the slip. His smirk had been a definite dare to follow, and I had a hunch he was as ready for a showdown as I was.

I turned where I thought he had and drove down the halflit street. Houses in this area were sparse and some of them looked like they had already been closed down for the summer. I tooled slowly around the blocks looking for the red car and hung a left to get back on the first street running parallel with the highway. A couple of blocks down a car was pulled up on the curb in front of a house. I drove toward it. It was Groz's car. I passed it and parked on the opposite side of the street a block away. I could feel him waiting for me and without a gun it was a nasty feeling so I opted for the sneak approach around the back of the house.

There were no lights on in the house and the street light was too far away to penetrate the darkness. I wondered if he was playing games and had parked in front of the wrong house deliberately, but a tension told me to keep going.

I went around the back of the only other house on the block, a couple of hundred feet away from the house I was trying to get to. The sneak approach would be impossible—the only cover between where I stood and the house were the shadows I was already standing in. Not even a measly dune was in sight. I was walking into an obvious trap and I silently cursed Earl Slade for keeping my gun.

About the only thing I had left to use was pure bluff. I went back to the street and walked down the sidewalk to the house with my fist bunched up in my coat pocket. My legs didn't like the idea much and felt stiff and awkward, but somehow I ended up in front of the house in one piece. I felt better for a moment but the creepy feeling came back when nothing happened. I took a deep breath and walked boldly to the front door and knocked. When that didn't work, I went around to the side of the house and walked through the open carport, my hand still in my pocket. At the back of the house was a screened porch. I walked around it to the other side. The last window before the porch was shut but not draped. I peered inside and what I saw made me jump: the outline of a woman sitting in the middle of a sofa facing the front door I cupped my hands around my face to make sure I wasn't seeing things. She sat with her back to me, perfectly still.

I knocked on the glass. “Miss McDermott,” I called. I thought I saw her shoulders twitch almost imperceptibly, but she didn't turn around or move otherwise. I started rattling the glass again and calling to her and was so intent on getting her to turn to me that I wasn't aware that anyone was behind me until it was too late.

A flash of white light was the last thing I saw.

33

One Way to Convince Louie

I came around to a lot of shouting and a woman crying. The backs of my eyelids felt like they were jammed with sticks. I kept them shut and laid still and tried to concentrate on what was being said instead of the nausea and a headache that was coming on fast.

“You want ole Louie to put your lights out for good, you just keep on with your goddamn lies.” I recognized the slightly nasal tenor as Groz's. “You told Al not to tell anyone where you were. That was me you were talkin’ about.” The woman let out a gasped sob as something thudded on wood. “Stop that goddamn crying and give out with some answers. Shit. I didn't come all the way down here to listen to your bleating.”

The sobs subsided a bit. “I swear, Louie, I never laid eyes on him before. I don't know him. You gotta believe that. I sweat I'm not lying.”

“Screw that. I might of believed you if he hadn't shown up here. You expect me to believe that he just happened to show up right here on this fuckin’ island by accident? To your little hideaway that you were always so careful about keeping a secret?” He laughed. “I just bet, baby, that you didn't even think old Louie would remember, did you?” He paused and then yelled it again. “Did you, goddammit?”

“No, Louie,” she said quickly. “You got it all wrong. I figured you'd remember. I had to get out quick. I couldn't stick around to wait for you. I been waiting for you here. I knew you'd remember.”

“So you said. Only I don't see it that way. The way I got it figured is you were trying to cut me out of my dues and I don't like that.”

“No, Louie,” she said miserably. “That's not so. I told you already—I didn't get any more money out of Stan. I couldn't. He threatened to blow the whistle so I had to get out.”

“Funny how he never threatened that before. Funny how it all happens the minute I leave town. It even gets funnier when you think about how the day I get back I find this goddamn punk in the apartment.” His heels clicked on the hard floor as he moved in the direction of her voice. I moved one eyelid a fraction. I could see his hair clipped short all over his skull. “You know what I think, Lucy? I think he got my part of the dough and it was him you were waiting for.”

He was standing in front of her, blocking her from my view. “You're crazy, Louie,” she said in a resigned voice.

“I'm crazy, am I?” He raised his arm and slapped her hard. She broke into renewed sobs. “You bitch. Don't you ever tell me I'm crazy.” He walked away from her over to a sideboard where a bottle of bourbon and glasses stood. Lucy had her face buried in her arms, leaning over the side of a shabby chain Thick dark auburn hair cascaded from her head onto her shoulders. I hoisted myself up on an elbow. A gun appeared like magic in the Boy Scout's hand.

“You take it slow and easy, punk.” The gun jerked nervously toward me, but he didn't seem to be drunk and that worried me. I had been lying on a thin Indian rug covering a cold concrete floor in front of the sofa. I got up slowly, testing the back of my head to see if it was still there. Louie's eyes were glittering brown holes in the puffed, flabby flesh around them. They twitched in their sockets. “Sit down there and don't move a fuckin’ inch or you're dead,” he said indicating the sofa. I did as I was told. The nervous eyes seemed to control his gun hand. Everytime they darted, the gun jerked. The palms of my hands began to sweat like they tend to do when a lunatic has a nervous gun aimed at you. For his kind it's easier to pull the trigger than not to. I sat very still, watching him as his eyeballs jumped from me to Lucy.

Her cries stopped. The only sound in the room was the chair creaking as she sat up in it. Her wavy hair dripped into her eyes and she pushed it back with crimson fingertips. Her face was swollen from crying and even under what looked like three layers of stage makeup I could see a bruise on her jaw. Where Louie's fingers had contacted her cheek purplish lines were starting to show under the rouge. Her eyebrows were rather bushy and black and underneath them were great big green eyes with thick false eyelashes that rose up to cuddle her forehead. Mascara coursed down her face. All she needed was a baggy suit and shoes three sizes too large to make the saddest of sad clowns. But her bone structure was fine, the eyes beautiful. Her face seemed relatively unlined, although who could tell under all that powder. If the hair was dyed, it was a good job. She could have been a handsome woman without the goo and the misery.

Louie's mouth curled into a sinister smile. “Looks like we have a little reunion here,” he snarled.

“I tell you, Louie, I never saw him before,” Lucy whined.

“The lady is telling the truth, Louie,” I chimed in.

“Who asked you, punk?” He opened the bottle of bourbon and poured three fingers neat. I remembered what Murphy said and felt better as he drained the glass.

“I just thought I'd try to clarify matters.”

He poured himself another drink. “We'll get to that. Where's the dough?” The gun jumped at me.

“If you're talking about blackmail money from Stanley Garber, I wouldn't know.”

He slammed the glass on the sideboard. “Get off that line, asshole.” He advanced toward me with the gun pointed at my nose. “I know all about you. You're nothin’ but a shit-eatin’ dick living cheap.” His eyes were beginning to take on an alcoholic shine. “I seen your set up. You'd jump out of ten feet of water for some dough. All you got is your cheap good looks. You're the kind makes suckers out of broads. I seen milions like you, punk. You get a woman like Lucy here and before she knows what the fuck happened, you got her goin’ halvseys with you. Don't think I ain't seen it before. How many you got pumpin’ it to you, asshole?”

He swaggered, gave a sniveling laugh, and turned to Lucy. The gun was still on me. “You shoulda seen the piece of class that came calling on him last night, baby. It would have made you eat your heart out.” He looked back at me. “That dame saved your life, you punk. I would have killed you. I would have killed you!” he yelled. His lower lip came out and he stood there quaking like a child throwing a temper tantrum who had long since forgotten why. On his flabby face under the fringe of hair was that curious combination of incomprehension and stubborness. It didn't take a mastermind to figure out that Lucy and I didn't know each other. He was acting like he had missed a few cards when the deck had been passed out. Fear slipped into Lucy's face until it looked on the verge of being torn apart with fright. I guessed that she was quite familiar with the violence behind the childlike temper, violence that could be triggered as easily as the gun he was holding. I didn't like the way he was trembling. It made me a dead man too easily.