“Just a couple more questions.”
“A couple.”
“You said a while back, you two were having problems before he disappeared. What was that about?”
“I loved Jerry, and I know he loved me. But like I said, he was different when he came back. And after we moved here, he had a tough time finding work. I guess I figured, a major in the Special Forces, a man like that could always find a job, even in New Orleans. But the corporate stuff — there’s not a lot of companies down here for that work. He did some bodyguard work, but he wanted to be a director of security somewhere. Thought he’d earned that. He told me we should move. I wanted him to give it time. It’d hardly been six months. New Orleans can grow on you.”
“But you’re sure he wouldn’t have walked out.”
“I’m sure.”
“The night he disappeared?”
“He told me he was going down to the market, pick up a six-pack. He’d been drinking more, too, since he got back. That was around seven p.m. Ten or so, I tried to call him and he didn’t answer.”
“Were you worried? ”
“It’d happened a couple of times recently. So, no. I wasn’t happy, but I wasn’t worried. Figured he was on the corner, hanging out. Watching dice get rolled. When midnight came and he didn’t come home, I decided to see for myself. So, I put my shoes on and I slipped my little.22 in my purse—”
“You have a gun—”
“Mr. Wells, you think those bangers out there care about Mace?” She laughed, her voice losing an octave and filling the room. “Mace? This is New Orleans. Mace? Anyway, I went out there, and Harvey, who runs the market, he said he hadn’t seen Jerry in a few hours, said he had himself a quart of Budweiser and went off to the Pearl, a few blocks away.”
“The Pearl?”
“The real name is, I believe, Minnie’s Black Pearl. But everyone just calls it the Pearl. A high-class establishment. Get shot in there for wearing the wrong hat. I was in no mood to visit the Pearl, so I went home. I figured Jerry would get home eventually and we would have it out, say some things that needed saying. Like my daddy said, sometimes a big storm clears the air. Though my daddy was full of it.”
“But Jerry never came home.”
“He did not. And the next morning, soon as the Pearl opened at eleven, I went over there, showed them the picture, asked if they knew him, and that S-A-N bartender, he started in with, ‘We don’t snitch around here.’ I said, ‘I’m not the cops, I’m the man’s wife,’ and you know what he said. He said, ‘That might be worse.’ So I said, ‘Look, my husband didn’t get home last night, and if you don’t tell me what you know, I will stand outside your bar tonight shouting about Jesus and sinners until you’re the one calling the cops to get rid of me.’ And so I found out what they knew, which was hardly worth the trouble. Jerry drank until eleven, by himself. And then he left. Said he was going home. And that was it. He left the Pearl and turned to smoke.”
“So, you called the cops?”
“They said Jerry was a grown man and that if he didn’t turn up in a couple of days I could file a missing-persons report. Which I did, soon as I was allowed. The detectives talked to the bartender down there for about five minutes and then forgot it. I begged The Times-Picayune to write something, and after a month they finally did, some little thing that didn’t even have his picture.”
“Too bad he wasn’t an eighteen-year-old girl.”
“You mean a white girl. With blond hair and a big smile. CNN would have been all over it then. But I don’t think it matters, Mr. Wells. I think he died that night.”
“Why?”
“My husband, you know how big he was. I don’t think anybody would take a chance keeping him alive. Too easy for him to mess you up.”
Wells couldn’t disagree.
“Something else, too,” she said. “I think he knew whoever did this. I don’t think it was Al Qaeda or any of them rats.”
“Why?”
“Nobody would go at him straight up, see? Look at the man. And Jerry wouldn’t just be getting in a car. Come on, even little kids know better. So, no, it had to be somebody he knew, make him drop his guard.”
“The others, they were shot with a silencer,” Wells said, thinking out loud. “Somebody could have done it on the street and then taken his body. Not a lot of lights out there.”
“They were killed all different ways, though. The woman, the doctor, somebody snuck into her house, made it look like a suicide,” Noemie said. “Somebody been creeping.”
“Last question.”
“You already got your last question.”
“I promise. I don’t want to upset you again, but—” Wells hesitated. She nodded to him. “Is there any chance that Jerry’s the one behind this? That he’s faked his own death. You said he was upset—”
“I said he was in a mood. Come on, Mr. Wells. You knew my husband. You cannot be serious. He was angry that he didn’t get a promotion, angry that they made him retire. He wasn’t a killer.”
You’re wrong, Wells didn’t say. He was a soldier. A Ranger. He was nothing more or less than a trained, professional killer.
Just like me.
“And now I have to put this boy in his bed,” Noemie said. She picked up Jeffrey, put him over her shoulder. His eyes blinked open, and he looked suspiciously at Wells.
“Thank you, Noemie. If I have more questions, can I call you?”
“Uh-huh. And if you check out the Pearl, keep your back to the wall. They don’t like white people much in there.”
“I don’t blame them.”
THE PEARL WAS CHEAP and flashy, Hennessy posters on the walls, faded red vinyl booths, and a half-dozen Mercedes hood ornaments hanging from the ceiling. Wells didn’t get any smiles when he walked in. Not from the bartender, a tall, skinny man with a Saints cap pulled low on his forehead. Not from the three boys in the corner booth who wore identical gold studs. Not from the two old heads deep in conversation at the bar. And not from the woman in the silver bikini dancing listlessly on the back counter to the heavy slow sounds of rap that sounded like it was being played at half speed.
Whatever had happened in Poland had upset Jerry Williams more than a bit, Wells thought. The Pearl wasn’t a place Jerry would have favored when Wells knew him. Wells debated staying, forcing the issue, maybe taking a seat with the boys in the booth. But what was he trying to prove? He would come back tomorrow and get the same stiff non-answers about Jerry Williams as the New Orleans cops.
“You lost?”the bartender said.
Wells shook his head. “Thanks.”
“Thanks for what?” the bartender said. Then, under his breath, “Dummy.”
Wells knew he ought to walk away. But after Cairo, he was in no mood to get pushed around. “I’ll take a Bud,” he said.
“We’re all out.”
“Miller.”
“Out of that, too.”
“Then a gin and tonic. Tanqueray.” A half-full bottle of Tanqueray sat on the back counter directly across from Wells.
The bartender turned down the music. “You dumb or just playing that way?”
“There’s no call for this.”
“Go back to the Quarter where you belong.” He took two steps toward Wells, his hands loose at his sides.
Wells turned toward the door, as if he were leaving. Then he spun back and with his right hand grabbed the bartender’s skinny left arm and pulled him down onto the scarred wood of the bar and knocked off his glasses. Wells stepped forward and with his left hand reached down the bartender’s back for the pistol that he knew would be tucked into the man’s jeans. He grabbed the pistol, a Beretta knockoff that fit snugly in his hand. Still holding the bartender down, he turned to cover the room. The action had taken less than three seconds, and the kids in the corner hadn’t moved. Yet.