Jack was moving toward the other one now, Crispin Reyna, having seen how it was done. He heard Roy telling Franklin de Dios he could step out of the car or get pulled clear through the window, heard that and saw Crispin Reyna’s hand on the glove box, punching the button to open it. Jack reached in and grabbed a handful of Crispin Reyna’s hair and yanked him back against the seat, hard. He changed hands then, learning how to do this as he went along, pressed the palm of his left hand against the guy’s face, to hold him there, while he felt inside the glove box with his other hand. Jack stepped back from the car with a bluesteel automatic, holding it lightly, looking at its dull sheen in the streetlight. He liked the feel of it. He stepped back in when he saw Crispin Reyna turn to look at him. Jack motioned for him to face straight ahead and touched the barrel to the guy’s right ear.
Roy had Franklin de Dios out of the car now, telling him to lean against it and spread his legs apart, “Come on, spread ’em,” the guy doing what he was told without expression, his Creole-looking face with its pointy cheekbones carved from some kind of smooth, hard wood.
“Should we take these fuckers to Central Lockup and then have to do all that paperwork, or what?”
Jack said, “I hate paperwork.”
Roy said, “It perturbs me off, too. What do you think? The river’s right there.”
Jack saw Franklin de Dios’s calm eyes staring at him and he put his hand to his face, elbow on the roof of the car. “The mighty Mississippi, that’s a thought. The current’d take ’em clear down to Pilot Town. If they can swim.”
“You wouldn’t want to weight ’em down none?”
“I thought we might give ’em a chance.”
Now Crispin Reyna was speaking, saying they were fucking dumb cops and they had better call their superior right now. “I tell you we have the permission to be here.”
“On second thought,” Jack said, “how about drop ’em in the Outlet Canal? They’ll be in the Gulf before morning.” He saw Roy, taller than Franklin de Dios, nodding.
“Less you want to take ’em to the graveyard of strangers.”
“Where’s that?”
“John the Baptist Parish, in the swamp. They say if all the bodies dumped there ever stood up, man, you’d have a crowd could fill the Superdome.”
“It’s hard,” Jack said, “isn’t it?”
What they couldn’t do was let them go just yet. Lucy would need an hour or so free of worry and looking over her shoulder. So they put Franklin de Dios and Crispin Reyna in the trunk of the Chrysler, Crispin bilingual in his protests, but finally got them spooned against each other like a couple of Angola sweethearts in the Big Stripe dorm, Roy telling them to mind and he’d let them out after while.
They discussed the guns for a minute, both 9-millimeter Berettas. Beauties, Roy said, better than those six-shooter Smiths cops had to pack when he was on the force. They stuck the guns under the front seat of Jack’s car, then had a discussion on the best place to leave the Chrysler, with the key in the ignition. Jack mentioned City Park, West End. Roy mentioned out toward Chalmette in St. Bernard Parish there were a lot of good places. Jack said, Yeah, and nobody would ever find them either. Roy said, Well, where we going after? Jack said he thought they may as well get the show on the road; stop by the St. Louis Hotel, find out what room the fundraiser was in and what the setup looked like. Roy said, Well, shit, we’ll drop these dudes off on the way.
That’s what they did. Roy drove the Chrysler with Jack following behind and left it on Tchoupitoulas near Calliope, where they used to park cars for the World’s Fair. As Roy got in the Scirocco Jack was grinning, waiting to tell him, “It’s too bad we can’t stay and watch. Some guy’s gonna come along and take off with that Chrysler. Be driving down the street and wonder what in the hell that noise is, coming from the trunk. Like somebody pounding to get out. Or he hears a voice calling to him like it’s from far away, ‘Help, señor, help.’ ”
Roy said, “Delaney, you’re a weird fucker, you know it?”
Jack didn’t say anything. He felt pretty good, the way things were going.
THEY PARKED AT A CAB STAND on Bienville. Roy, who would never get over having been a cop, said it was all right; he knew the cabbies and if they didn’t like it, fuck ’em. The St. Louis Hotel was right across the street.
Jack sat at a table in the big center courtyard, ordered vodka and a scotch when the waiter finally appeared. He asked the waiter if it was a slow night. The waiter said it seemed to be. Where was everybody? The waiter said they must be out having a good time.
Out on Bourbon Street bumping into each other, the whole bunch of them aimless, probably thinking, this is it, huh? The street a midway of skin shows and tacky novelty shops. The poor guys at Preservation Hall and the other joints playing that canned Dixieland, doing “When the Saints” over and over for the tourists in the doorways. There was some good music around, if Al Hirt was in town or you found a group with Bill Huntington playing his standup bass or Ellis Marsalis somewhere. His boy Wynton had left town with his horn to play for the world.
It didn’t matter, there was enough to see and you could always eat. Maybe it was because he lived here he didn’t understand why anyone would bother with Bourbon Street. If he came to town from somewhere else he’d sit right here and watch the lights in the fountain as he sipped his drink, soothed, in the shade of magnolias and japonicas at night, the whole courtyard all the way up bathed in a pale orange glow.
If he came from out of town he would look at the upper floors, at the white porch railings that ran all the way around the four sides and see doors to guest rooms and dark shutters decorating the windows, the hallways up there open to the courtyard. He would sit here as he was sitting now and decide you wouldn’t necessarily be seen going into somebody else’s room, but it could give you a funny feeling, being exposed like that, standing with your back to this whole place.
The fundraiser was in 501, top floor, the suite in the alcove there, right off the elevator. The desk clerk said he was out.
Roy was checking to see if he knew any of the help. If he didn’t it would be the only hotel in the Quarter. Roy said it was good to have a lot of friends. Especially if they owed you. He used to have a girl friend who lived on Bienville up just past Arnaud’s, a call girl named Nola Roy said did a better lunch business than the restaurant. He said she was a pretty thing and sweet as could be till her life closed in on her. That was the trouble with broads. On the one hand they made the best snitches, they were born to be informants, especially whores. But on the other hand they became emotional and didn’t know when to shut up.
“Now that I know that,” Roy had said, “what the fuck am I gonna do with it here?” Telling Jack the story after they met at Angola and became friends.
“This was a sweet kid I’m talking about. Didn’t look atall like a whore. She was demure, had this little tiny voice. ‘Oh, Roy, I didn’t have you as my friend I’d be smacked out twenty-four hours a day.’ ”
“That’s all you were?”
“Hey, friends can go to bed, can’t they? Two people misunderstood at home. My old woman, Rosemary, all she did was bitch that I was never home. You see her, you’d know why. And Nola was married to a guy was a half-assed bookmaker. You probably knew him, Dickie Duschene, sometime they call him Dudu, had a place upstairs on Dauphine. He’s making book and she’s hooking, so they didn’t have what you call a home life. The deal was, I’d stop by and Nola’d tell me her troubles, or anything she might’ve heard would be of interest to me. You know, stuff she picked up on the street or from Dickie. And my part of the deal, I’d look out for her and wouldn’t hassle ’em none, let ’em go about their business. One day I’m over there she’s sniffling and nervous like she’s strung out or somebody died. I ask her, ‘What’s wrong, precious?’ Nola pulls a trash bag out of the closet has thirty grand in it, all fifties and hundreds. I tell her, ‘My, you been working your cute little tail off, haven’t you?’ She says Dickie gave it to her but she’s afraid to keep it in the apartment. She gets a john every once in a while will go through her things. She says some freak’s liable to rip her off, so would I keep it for her. She says the money’s from Dickie’s bookmaking and card games in that joint he had, place on Dauphine looked like it was boarded up. Okay, but something doesn’t smell right. He’s gonna let her keep thirty grand in a room guys walk in and out of you don’t know? I said, ‘Hey, Nola, bullshit.’ She says he did, honest. But then tells me a little more. She found out Dickie was going out on her with this nurse at Charity and Nola had a fit. Started breaking things over at his place, so he gave her the thirty grand to calm her down. Only it worked the other way, made her nervous.”