Patrick Quinlan - Smoked

Searching, searching.

Denny Cruz had murderer’s eyes.

That’s why the waiter never looked at him. It wasn’t the four-inch scar that came down the side of his face like a jagged stretch of highway – the scar that he left there against all the best advice of well-meaning people.

“Hey Cruz, you got the money, why don’t you get rid of that scar?” someone would say to him.

“Because I want to remember,” he would answer in a voice that rose just barely above a whisper. In Cruz’s experience, you didn’t need to talk loud to get people’s attention.

“Yeah, but one day a witness is gonna see that thing and you’re gonna go down.”

“I don’t leave witnesses.”

It wasn’t the scar. And it wasn’t his slim, razor sharp body. No. It was the eyes. Even now, after all these years, some mornings Cruz was startled to see those eyes looking back at him in the mirror. He had seen the same eyes in newspaper pictures from Rwanda. Men who had hacked thousands of innocent women and children apart with machetes, men who lived 40-deep in small, unlit cells, waiting to go on trial for genocide.

Killers.

In newspaper photographs, these men had the eyes.

Cruz sat in the open-air restaurant just off the lush courtyard and in-ground pool of the elegant Hotel St. Therese in New Orleans. He had just finished his breakfast, and his appetite had been good. He had polished off a plate of Eggs Bayou Lafourche, two golden beignets piled with snowy sugar, a glass of juice, and two cups of real New Orleans French Roast with chicory. It would be nice to light up a cigarette right about now. Of course, it was verboten to smoke indoors. Smokers like himself had been hounded and persecuted by the good clean pink-lunged people of the world for going on ten years. Soon, the smokers would probably be packed off to camps in the countryside. For their own good, you see.

No matter. Cruz felt good – well laid, well rested, well fed.

Today was the day.

He took a pleasant moment to survey his surroundings. The courtyard was green with the dense tropical plants grown there to give the place ambience. A few people sprawled about in white chaise lounges near the pool, chatting and sunning themselves. The air was heavy, the sun was bright and hot, and the sounds of conversation were muted. No children ran around, laughing and shouting. This was a place for adults. The St. Therese was a stately old place that had been a whorehouse before the turn of the century. It sat at the edge of the French Quarter, on busy North Rampart Street, across from Louis Armstrong Park, but no sound came in from the street.

It was fitting, Cruz noted, that he was sitting in an old whorehouse, and right across from him at the table, enjoying her breakfast in the splendid late morning sunshine, was a high priced whore. She was Brazilian, this sexy girl, and had deep bronze skin and blonde hair. The combination turned Cruz on to no end. That and the red mini dress she wore that barely covered her succulent ass. He was going to have to take her back up to the room again before the morning was over, that much was clear.

He liked the girl, mostly. It was her looks that did it for him. He was trying to see past the other thing.

The other thing was her brain.

He had never met such a highly-educated whore in his life. It didn’t seem to flow, this being a whore and at the same time, knowing so much.

She spoke four languages. Portuguese, Spanish, English and French. English was her weakest language, beyond doubt. As a teenager, she told him, she had gone on study exchange programs to both Paris and Caracas, Venezuela. After studying in Paris, she had taken three months and bummed around Europe, traveling as far to the east as Istanbul.

Where did the whoring come in? That’s what he was wondering. What role did that play in this whole thing? She couldn’t be very much older than 20. What did she do? Come back from Europe and decide the best thing to do was become a whore?

She had studied art and architecture. They were practically one and the same, she told him. She expounded on the architectural style of the hotel they were in, all the while scarfing down her Eggs Benedict with Canadian bacon. She told him about the paintings hanging on the walls of his suite. One was a bad knock-off of Van Gogh’s style. One was a bad knock-off of Andrew Wyeth’s style.

“You know a lot,” he said, as the waiter poured him more coffee. The waiter did not look at him or make any gesture or sign. “Such a beautiful girl, and smart too.”

She smiled at him. “How you talk.”

Her smile lit up her beauty light a thousand-watt lamp. Cruz sighed at the majesty and mystery of the world. Things were never what they seemed. He glanced at his watch again. It would be just another minute.

“Will you excuse me just one moment?” he said. “I have to take a call.”

The girl shrugged. She would. She wouldn’t. She indicated as much.

Cruz glided to the bank of old fashioned phone booths at the back of the restaurant. Real phone booths, with real doors and real privacy. He slid into the middle one, the one with the sign on it that said “Out of Order.”

He perched on the wooden seat that folded out from the wall.

The phone rang and Cruz grabbed it.

“Yeah?”

A man’s voice came on. “We checked the paper today. Still nothing.”

It was a deep, gravelly voice. The voice didn’t introduce itself, but in his mind Cruz could see the man it belonged to right away. Crag-faced, like that cartoon hero from the Fantastic Four way back when – the one made of stone. Big Vito, a man who would never say his own name.

Cruz knew what he was talking about. They were monitoring the internet version of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. They had read it the past four days, waiting for word. His employers were not patient men, and sometimes that grated on him.

“It took me a couple of days to set it up. I had to check everything out first. But I’m happy to say it’s all ready to go. It’s gonna happen tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“That’s right.”

“Good. We need you back here as soon as possible. We got a little something for you to take care of up north.”

“North?” Cruz said.

“Yeah, like New England.”

“Great. You gonna fly me straight up there?”

“No. We need you back here first.”

“All right. It’s your dime.”

“So everything will be done by tonight?”

“Tonight,” Cruz agreed.

“Good enough.” There was a pause. “Listen, how’s the girl?”

Across the restaurant, Cruz could see her, still at the table. She was examining something along the hem of her skirt. It gave him a flash of panty.

“She’s great. Very smart.”

“Smart?”

“Smart.”

“Uh, okay. How’s the suite?”

“Couldn’t be better. Richly appointed furnishings. Views of the French Quarter. 24-hour concierge.”

“All right, then. We got a new service and I just wanted to make sure everything worked out.”

“It’s great,” Cruz said.

“Then get it done, will ya? We’ll see you soon.”

Cruz returned to the table. It was shaping up to be a hot and sticky day. The girl was finishing her fruit cocktail. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember her name. Did it matter?

“What do you say?” he said. “Let’s go to the room, eh? I got a busy day today and I want to fuck you some more before I send you home.”

She slurped a cherry down, then licked the glass cup with her tongue.

“Good,” she said. “More money for me.”

They went upstairs.

“That bitch,” Darren Pelletier said.

His voice had taken on a nasal pitch because of the cotton wadding stuffed up his nose. A white plaster splint made an A-shape across its bridge. Both his eyes were black, and the whole package together made him look somewhat like a raccoon.