She looked at him hard. Then her face lit up in a smile that just cracked him in two.
“Jesus,” she said, “it’s so nice to have a man around the house.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Newly promoted Detective Sergeant Leon Timmons was drunk and he was high. He was sailing, he was floating. He felt so good.
“Hey, Payne, hey, damn, boy, we, we got it made, huh?”
Payne snorted. They were in Big Sam’s, on Bourbon. Up on the stage a buxom woman shimmied. To Payne she looked like an animated piece of beef on a hook in a Jersey warehouse.
“Damn,” Timmons said, “damn, boy, she all girl, eh, Payno?”
“She’s all girl,” said Payne. “She’s a girl and a fuckin’ half.”
“Wooooo!” said Timmons, his eyes lighting up like headlamps.
Payne took a long swallow of Dixie beer. It was the only thing he liked about New Orleans and he was glad to be just about out of New Orleans.
Somebody put another beer in front of Timmons.
“Huh?” said Timmons.
“Leon, honey,” said the waitress, “gintlemin over thar said thanks to the man what almost shot the man what almost shot the president.”
Timmons raised the bottle in salute to his benefactors, who appeared to be a crowd of dentists from Dayton. They applauded in the red wash of light from the overheads, then went back to hooting at Bonnie Anne Clyde and her smoking.45’s up there on the stage.
“You’re quite a hero,” said Payne.
“Damn betcha. You know, Payne, ain’t yet heard whether old President what’s-his-name gonna have me up at the White House. Hell, that old boy ought give me a ticket to the town with my name written all over it.”
“That he should,” said Payne. “You saved his life, man. You stopped Bob Lee Swagger from blowing him up and you almost nailed Bob the Nailer, the great sniper himself.”
“That’s right,” said Timmons, who by now pretty much believed he’d actually fired the shot. He told Payne the story again in excruciating detail, with a few embellishments thrown in. Payne listened dully. Finally Timmons said, “You know, I might even be the NRA Police Officer of the Year.”
“You ought to think about selling your story to the movies, bub.”
“Ahead of you there, Payno. Got me a agent already, out in Hollywood. A very big guy. We gonna make a potful of money.”
“You don’t need no agent. You already got a potful of money.”
“Cain’t have too much money,” said Payne. “Ain’t no such thing as too much money.”
“Ummm,” said Payne.
Timmons’s eyes went back to Bonnie Anne Clyde. He licked his lips; his face had the hard set of a man who’d seen what he liked and liked what he’d seen.
“I believe you could get yourself that girl,” said Payne. “Seems to me she ought to be pleased to spend some time with the hero cop of New Orleans, who almost shot the man who almost shot the man who – well, you know.”
“I believe you are right,” said Timmons.
With a self-important twitch of his head, he beckoned the manager over. Quickly he told him what he wanted.
“Be right back,” the guy said.
“Whooo, think I’m gone be in the hot spot tonight,” said Timmons eagerly.
“Pussy-o-rama, Leon. Wall to wall and floor to ceiling,” said Payne.
The manager came back after Bonnie left the stage, to be replaced by Miss Suzie Cue and her eight-balls.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” he said. “She says, yeah, sure, anything for Detective Sergeant Timmons. Only thing is, see, she has the boyfriend, mean nigger motherfucker. So, what she wants is, um, discretion. Quietude. Nothing to rile Ben, ’cause Ben whack her upside the haid he catch her with another man.”
“Okay,” said Timmons. “So how we work it?”
“Out back at midnight. He’s a fireman, goes on duty at eleven-thirty. So you meet her out there, she takes you to her crib, you git your windshield wiper fluid changed but, like, good, my friend, Ben ain’t the wiser, she done bagged a celebrity, and the old world just goes humpty-humping along.”
“Oh, I lak thet,” said Timmons greedily.
“You goan have a time,” said the manager, a weaselly little rat-man with a pencil-thin mustache.
So Payne and Timmons sat through a couple of more sets, trying to put the Dixie Brewery out of business or at least get it to working nights, as if they were a pair of Navy bosun’s mates on shore leave for the first time since the sixties. Timmons’s elaborate hair, which bent in strange ways as it flowed off his ample, heroic brow, gleamed with mousse; he was set for a big night. Meanwhile Payne just sat there, sinking into himself further.
By the time it was nearly midnight, Timmons was extremely drunk. Payne got up, pointed to his watch, and Timmons lurched obediently to his feet, bulling his fat and sloppy way over.
“All set,” he said hornily.
“Then let’s go, big guy,” said Payne, pulling him down the narrow aisle and out to Bourbon.
The street had filled. It looked like party time in Hell. College kids from Ole Miss, northern tourists, large groups of sailors, a few aristocratic types in blue blazers and khakis with their sallow, nearly fleshless women in tow, all seethed and bucked along the narrow concourse. There was smoke everywhere; up and down the street lines had formed, some to get into the strip joints or the transsexual shows, some to buy T-shirts in the dinky souvenir shops, some to get into the fancy restaurants like Antoine’s or Arnaud’s. A few disconsolate wallflowers peered down from the balconies overhanging the scene.
“Now which way we go?” asked Payne, surveying the turmoil. “I can’t believe I’m skulking around to avoid riling some big nigger.”
“Shoot,” said Timmons, “no sense gittin’ the boy upset when his old lady be handing out the sweets for free. Maybe you wanta little old taste after I finish?”
“How long you be? Maybe twenty seconds?”
“Haw! I can ride a mare like that half the damn night!”
“Well, thanks, I’ll pass. Number Two in the saddle ain’t for me.”
They ambled through the raucous crowd, were jostled by sailors. Payne hated sailors from the Army, where you were supposed to hate sailors. And he sort of felt like a fight. He wanted to drive one of his fat fists into the dumb, girlish face of some aviation candidate over from Pensacola, and watch the boy collapse, spitting blood and teeth. But he just pushed on. The night was blue. The moon was full, over the low pastel buildings of the quarter. It reminded him of a jungle city. Felt like Saigon. No gooks, though. Lots of niggers, lots of fatboys and pretty girls, lots of action; no gooks. He remembered the sense of war and doom and what-the-hell-we-die-tomorrow joy that he had so loved when he was a lean and dangerous young Forces sergeant in the ’Nam, floating on amphetamines, just back from a long crazed month or so in the fuckin’ boonies, taking frontals.
Payne sighed, swept by melancholy. The whole world seemed to be here on Bourbon, coursing down the narrow street, all hot to trot, seething to get fucked, except for him. He stood apart. Jack Payne was different. He did the hard things.
Next to him, Timmons was aquiver with sexual tension. It was said that he could visit any brothel in New Orleans and have himself serviced mightily, so friendly and helpful was he to certain people, but there were always new experiences and sensations. So he was all hotted up.
“She a girl and a half,” he said again.
“She sure is,” said Payne. “Now where the hell we goin’?”
“Up here. Turn right, then behind the restaurant you turn left and we head down the alley. She’ll be in back, where the dancers park.”
“You sure know this town.”
“Know it well, that I do,” said Timmons, almost singing with anticipation. He was a happy man.
The crowd thinned as they turned off Bourbon down Toulouse and then saw the alleyway, a small gap, just the width of a car, between the old brick buildings. They turned into it. It smelled of old garbage and piss.