James Sallis - Bluebottle

"Joey, what are you doing here?"

"What the fuck you think I'm doing, Griffin. Keeping you in one piece. Allyou tough guys are a pain in the ass."

He started off through the trees with Ellis on his shoulder, walking at a full clip. Might as well have been a raincoat. The dark blue Pontiac would be his.

"You coming or what, Griffin?" he said, never looking back.

I RODE THE tail ofjoey's Pontiac back into town, to a deserted dry cleaner's just off the warehouse district, part of our intermittent inner-city ghost town. Tumbleweed blowing past skulls in the street wouldn't look out of place. New Orleans is riddled with these inexplicable lapses: you'll have whole blocks or sections abandoned, boarded up or kicked in, then right next to it everything's fine, commerce carrying on as usual, dragging life along.

Joey got out, retrieved Ellis from the trunk, and came over to my car. When he leaned down, Ellis's head swung forward and banged against the fender.

"Wait."

He started off, then came back: "Someone be with you to take your order soon." He vanished into the building.

Not a creature was stirring.

Well, in truth lots of creatures were stirring. Rats the size of beavers that in other parts of the city took to the trees hunting squirrel; cockroaches that, you cooked them up, they'd serve a family of four; street-smart starved dogs and scrawny cats looking as if every extra day tickedoff on the chart of their lives was a victory over holocaust.

Just no human creatures. That you could see, anyway. Didn't mean none were there.

And after half an hour or so, one was.

Jimmie Marconi came down the outside stairs from the building's second floor, some kind of office up there probably, in the old days kept workers and management comfortably apart. One of Marconi's men, the wiry one from Leonardo's, followed him, stepping into the recess of a doorway at the bottom of the stairs to become shadow. His eyes peered out at car, street, buildings opposite.

"Here's what you need to know," Marconi told me after he'd got in and sat a moment. "Nothing."

Then he laughed. He and Joey could have worked up one hell of a routine together.

"You do have a way of getting in over your head, Griffin."

I allowed as how he had a point.

'We counted on that."

A kid on a bike came into view down the street and proceeded up it, weaving in slow curves fromcurb to curb. Marconi's man's eyes tracked him from the shadowed doorway.

Death was the only thing that would ever rush Jimmie Marconi. I sat quiedy, waiting till he was ready to go on.

"Funny how Eddie Bone never told you what he wanted, that time he called."

"He said we'd talk about it when we got together."

"Puts you off like that, then he doesn't show at all, sends along this woman instead."

"Looks that way."

"And you still don't have any idea what he wanted."

"None."

Marconi nodded. "Ambitious man, Eddie. Worked hard, took care of business. Good with details."

Yes.

"Ambitious. Always wanted to be a bigger man than he was. Had this whole world of his own, friends, places he went regularly, they'd treat him like some fucking big-shot You ever see the layout at his apartment, you know what I mean. Nothing wrong with any of that long as he kept it to himself."

Marconi looked around at the seats, floormats, dash.

"Nice car."

"My girlfriend's."

"I know. LaVerne. She's finetoo."

He smiled, a perfectly gentle, suave smile that put me in mind of carnivorous fish.

"Once in a while Eddie'd do contract work for us. Pickups, deliveries, moving things from here to there. Nothing complicated. Month or so before his death, things fell out so as he wound up holding more of our money than he probably ever should have. But he was dependable-right? "

Marconi watched the kid go out of sight up the street.

"Eddie was okay long as he didn't try to think. Man just couldn't think in straight lines to save himself. Get things all tangled up."

Marconi looked at me.

"I'm telling you this. It don't go any further."

I nodded.

"I don't know what the fuck he thought he was doing. Got it up his ass somehow that he was gonna… what is it they're always saying in lousy movies these days… he was gonna 'make a difference.' This fucker in his silk suits he don't ever get dry-cleaned, they smell like a goddamn gym sock, but he's gonna make a difference.

" Week or two goes by and we start to wonder. So Joey goes by. Eddie tells him the money's gone. This woman he had at the apartment must have taken it, but he's on her trail. Day later Joey goes back and wants to know how it's going. Good, Eddie says. Yeah, well we know where you been hanging out, Joey tells him. We know what's been coming out of your mouth."

Marconi looked out the window. At one time the building's entire side had been painted with the firm's logo and name. Now only the ghosts of white letters, DY CL N NG, remained.

"This was my folks' place. Started it the year they were married. He was nineteen and she was seventeen. Got the whole thing going on a hundred dollars. What you gonna do with a hundred dollars these days, Griffin? People in the neighborhood said Valentine Marconi could get the stains out of anything-maybe even your soul."

Someone came down the stairs at the side of the building. The wiry bodyguard went over and they spoke. Then the bodyguard started towards the car. Marconi rolled the window down. The bodyguard spoke softly into his ear and Marconi nodded.

"We still don't know," Marconi said. He cranked the window back up. "Maybe the woman took the money, like Eddie said. Maybe she talked him into doing it. Or maybe it was Eddie's screwed-up idea all along, his pitiful fucking idea of hitting the jackpot, and the two of them were together on it, accomplices.

"Maybe these dickheads"-he glanced at the stairs, Ellis up there somewhere, in some condition-"engineered the whole thing. Took the money outfromunder Eddie or got him all busted up on their great cause. What we think is, one way or another Eddie gave it to them."

"To make a difference."

"Yeah. Boy up there didn't seem to want to talk about it. Thought he was some kind of soldier."

"He's dead."

Marconi shook his head. "Soon."

"You, one of your gophers, killed Eddie."

"It's what happens, Griffin."

"And Dana Esmay?"

"Police say suicide. Why not? Maybe she couldn't live with what she did, or with what she thought someone else was going to do once they found her. For all we know, she had the money, and the toy soldiers put her down for it-or because she knew they had it. We wanted to find her. Hell, I even asked you to help. And we needed to have a talk with the toy soldiers, ask them if maybe they knew anything about our money."

"Which is why Joey was following me."

"Sooner or later you were gonna come across those boys. You'd find them or they'd find you."

Someone stepped onto the second-floor landing. He held his fist out, thumb down.

Marconi shook his head. "Another tin soldier tipped over on the board. Dead with his toy honor intact Take care, Griffin."

"Mr. Marconi."

He stopped with one foot out of the car.

"I don't much like being lied to."

"I can appreciate that."

"Or set up. Or tailed."

He shrugged without looking back at me. "Who would?"

The wiry bodyguard came out of the doorway. He stood scanning the street as Marconi went up the stairs, then with a glance my way turned and followed.

It was night now. Streetlights ran long fingers in through the window and caressed the back wall. Neither of us had made any move to turn on lights in the house.

"You missed it all, Lew. I got up and came in looking for you and there was Hosie on the couch making these horrible gasping sounds. That was bad enough, but then they stopped. I couldn't tell whether he was breathing or not I didn't think he was."