Ace Atkins - New Orleans Noir - The Classics

I brought the guy to his knees.

“Sir, when your grandkids are sitting on your lap this Christmas and everything is all warm and fuzzy, I want you to remember this. I want you to think about it as you light the tree, cut the turkey, and pat the kids on the head. Tell the boys when they come to New Orleans to treat the ladies real nice.”

I released my grip. He wouldn’t think about what I said. He was not me, and I was not him. I remembered something a psychologist friend had told me years ago: Don’t expect anything from a pig but a grunt.

She agreed to walk with me to the Quarter only after I gave her fifty bucks. It was fifty I didn’t have, but it was the only way. Together we crossed Canal, dodging cars, soon smelling that cooked-onion-and-exhaust scent that floats around the old district.

I took her to a small bar off Decatur to talk, really it was just a place to sit and drink, only four feet from a sliding window. I got two beers in paper cups, and we sat down. No one around us except an elderly black waiter in a tattered brown sweater. Sarah finished half her beer in one gulp.

I asked her if she was afraid.

“No. Not of you.”

“What then?”

She finished her beer and pulled a cigarette from a pack extracted from a cheap vinyl purse. I lit it.

“Tell me about you and Fats. You know he’s dead?”

“I know.”

She sat there for a moment just looking at me.

“Was he a regular?”

She dropped her head, kneading the palm of her hand into her forehead. The cigarette held high in her fingers.

“Did you work for him at his apartment or did he get a hotel?”

She scratched the inside corner of her mouth and took another drag of the cigarette.

“You were with him the night he died, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

I exhaled a long breath and gambled with what I said next. “That man didn’t have anything. Why’d you set him up? You could’ve rolled anybody, like those two in the hotel. You’d come up with a lot more money than what Fats had. He was a sweet old guy. He had more talent than someone like you could ever comprehend. Just tell me who helped you.”

“Stop it. Just stop it. You don’t know anything.”

“Why?”

“You got it all messed ’round. You don’t know how it was.”

“How was it, Sarah? You tell me.”

“I loved him.”

I laughed.

“He tole me he’d marry me. Imagine that. Him marrying me. Even sold his saxophone to—” She was sobbing now.

I waited. When she stopped, she told me about how they first met. Thursday nights she would wait for him outside JoJo’s, listening to his sweet music. The day he told her that he loved her, it was raining. “Real black clouds over the Mississippi,” she said.

“So why’d he sell his sax?”

“To buy me.”

It was two in the morning when I got back to the Warehouse District, lonely, cold, and tired. I didn’t want to be alone. A light was on across Julia Street in the warehouse of a neighbor, one of the many artists who lived in the district. A ballet instructor. Beautiful girl. Good person.

I parked my Jeep, grabbed a six-pack of Abita out of the fridge, then found myself buzzing her from the street-level intercom. I could hear Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 5 filtering out a cracked second-story window and reverberating off the concrete and bricks down the street. Her blurred image floating past the dim windows.

As I stood there, I suddenly felt silly because she could have company. I guess I arrogantly thought she would always just be there when I needed her. Just waiting, no need for a life of her own. But I guess she thought of me like one of the neighborhood cats that she consistently fed whenever they decided to wander by for a meal.

Sam slid back a rusted viewing slot, then opened the door smiling. Short blond hair and blue eyes. She wore cutoff gray sweatpants and a man’s ribbed white tank top tied at her waist. She’d been dancing a long time — enough to build a sweat.

“I don’t remember ordering a pizza,” she said.

“I do. Should be here in fifteen minutes — chicken, artichoke hearts, and white cheese.”

She shook her head and laughed. She slid two heavy bolts behind us, and I followed her up the stairs. I put my hand on her back. It was very warm.

The next day I played the waiting game in a little tourist café on Royal. I waited and I watched Sarah’s apartment. I ate two bowls of bland gumbo and a soggy muffuletta, drank draft Abita until I got loopy, and then switched to “Authentic French Market Coffee.” Tasted like Maxwell House.

I saw her walk outside to a scrolled balcony in a loose-fitting robe and lean over, sipping coffee. That was noon.

At three, she came back to the balcony. She sat down in a director’s chair, propped her feet on the iron railing, and read. The Billie Holiday book?

At 3:43, she went back inside and did not come back out for two hours. The bright sunshine barely warming a cold day retreated, and the shadows finally returned, falling over my face.

Around six, she came out of the street entrance walking toward Esplanade. I tucked the copy of Nine Stories back in my jacket pocket, where I always kept it, placed a few bills under the weight of a salt shaker, and began to follow.

I had a ragged Tulane cap pulled low over my eyes and wore sunglasses — some Lew Archer I was. I pulled the collar of my trench coat tighter around my face. Not just for disguise, but also to block the cold. December wind shooting down those old alleys and boulevards can make a man want to keep inside.

She went into the A&P on Royal, and I stayed outside. In a few minutes she returned, unwrapping a pack of cigarettes and continuing toward the far end of Royal. She walked into a place with the doors propped wide open, leaned over the bar, and French-kissed the bartender. He struck an effeminate, embarrassed pose and laughed. She patted him on the face and kept walking.

At the end of the street, she went inside a bed and breakfast. Semirenovated. New awning, peeling paint on the windows. I got close enough to see through the double-door windows. She was talking to someone at the front desk. Then she turned, going deeper inside the building. I waited.

It was cold. There were no restaurants or coffee houses on this side of the district. It hadn’t been civilized yet. I blew hot breath through closed fits.

I waited.

I got solicited twice. Once by a man. Once by a woman. And had a strange conversation with a derelict.

“Crack,” he said.

“Gave it up for the holidays. Thank you, though.”

“Naw, man. Dat’s my name.”

“Your name is Crack?”

“Shore.”

I asked “Crack” where the nearest liquor store was. He said it was on Rampart, so I gave him a few bucks and told him to buy me a fifth of Jack Daniel’s and whatever he wanted. Actually, it wasn’t really a gamble to give him money. Most of those guys work on a strange ethical code when it comes to a fellow drinker.

He came back, and we sat on the other side of Esplanade watching the bed and breakfast until nearly ten o’clock. The whiskey tasted like sweet gasoline.

When Sarah came back, her hair was mussed, her jaw worked overtime on gum, and she looked tired. She certainly did not expect what came next as she bent down to restrap a sequined stiletto.

As she pulled the buckle tight around her ankle, an early-seventies black Chrysler whipped around the corner of Chartres, speeding right toward us. I had no time to push her out of the way or yell. I could only watch as she just stayed bent over with her butt in the air. Hand still touching those ridiculous shoes. Very still.

I knew the car would hit her.

But it didn’t. Instead, the car skidded to a halt next to her, and a white arm grabbed her by the hair and jerked her in. She screamed as I sprinted across the street. Because of the tinted windows I couldn’t see the driver, who put the car back in gear and weaved to hit me.