“I saw you over on Ursulines Street. You were coming out of a house between Dauphine and Burgundy. Is that where you live?”
“Hardly. That’s Rosemary’s house.” He barked out a laugh. “I wish. That place is gorgeous. Someday I’m going to have a house like that, though. I’m going to be somebody.” He sighed. “But for now, no, I live with three other guys in this dump in the Marigny.” He started blowing smoke rings. “Half the time we don’t even have hot water, and the roaches-“ he shuddered. “They’re everywhere. It’s disgusting. It’s living like an animals.”
“How did you meet Rosemary?”
“I sat down on her stoop one day to have a smoke.” He picked his head up and frowned. “She came out and started talking to me. She said I reminded her of someone she used to know. I was hungry, and didn’t have any money. I asked for a couple of bucks. She said she was going to go run some errands, but if I carried some stuff for her, she’d buy me something to eat. I mean, it was a free meal, so why not, right?”
“Yeah.” The statement was so incredibly sad, I didn’t know what else to say.
“So we went to the Clover Grill after we did the errands, and she told me she’d pay me to do some errands for her from time to time…mostly it was picking up her dry-cleaning every Wednesday.” He laughed. “She sure went through some clothes every week! I’d pick up the clean stuff at the Quarter Laundrette, bring it by and pick up the next week’s load.” He shrugged. “Sometimes she had other stuff for me to do.”
“What about this last Wednesday night?”
“I went by there like usual.” He shrugged. “It was really weird, but hey, you know, money’s money, you know? And I was broke. So I showed up, like usual, and she let me in for just a second. She took the cleaning from me, but said she didn’t have anything to go back out this time. That was a first. And usually she would make me a sandwich or something to eat, and we’d hang in the kitchen for a while. This time, though, she didn’t want to hang around. She looked out the curtains one time, and told me I had to go. She really rushed me out, you know. I was kind of pissed, to tell you the truth. I saw someone across the street when I came out-and I slammed the door to let her know I was pissed.” He shrugged. “And that was you, right? And now you’ve found me.” He sounded delighted.
“Don’t you watch the news?” I asked. It was getting uncomfortably warm.
“Nah, I don’t watch that shit. It’s depressing.” He shrugged.
“Did you hear about the actress who got killed?”
“Do I look like I’m deaf?” He dropped his cigarette on the floor. “Everybody’s heard about that.”
“She was killed in that house.” I replied. “It wasn’t Rosemary’s house, it was hers. Rosemary worked for her. That’s whose drycleaning you were picking up. And you were there, inside the house, the night Glynis Parrish was murdered.”
“Dude.” He whispered. “No way.”
“You have to talk to the police, Joey. You have to tell them you were there.”
“No, I am not talking to the police.” He started to get up, but I grabbed his arm and pulled him back down. “Man, that hurt.” He rubbed his arm. “I can’t talk to the police. I got a warrant.” His voice got whiny. “They’ll put me in jail.”
“I have friends in the department, Joey. I won’t let that happen.” I didn’t know how much pull I had, but I’d do what I could. “You have to. If they find you on their own-and if I found you, the police can-it’ll be much harder on you. With a warrant and all.”
“Jesus.” He got up. “I have to get back to work.” He adjusted his underwear. He leaned down and brushed his lips against my cheek again. “I really do like you,” he said softly. “That’s not a part of my act, either. I really really like you. And you’ll help me out? You aren’t just saying that?””
I dug a twenty out of my wallet and handed it to him. “I’d like to spend some more time with you. Can I get your number? I’ll take you out to lunch tomorrow if you’d like.”
“You got your cell handy?”
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and programmed the number in as he gave it to me. “My last name’s Rutledge. You didn’t tell me yours.”
“Chanse. Chanse MacLeod.”
“Take a chance?” He giggled, and kissed my cheek again. “You better call me, man. Don’t make me come looking for you.”
“You won’t blow me off?”
“I never turn down a free meal. And I want to get to know you better, too, big man. You’re exactly what I look for in a man.” He walked out of the back room and into the dressing room. The door shut behind him.
I slowly got up and pushed through the crowd. Three different boys were dancing on the bar. A Kylie Minogue song was playing. Adonis was one of the boys up on the bar, and when I passed him he stuck his tongue out at me. I had to get out of the bar.
I took a deep breath when I got outside, and leaned against the wall.
I felt sorry for him. His life was about to explode, but he wanted to be famous. He was about to get his chance. Maybe he could use the notoriety to improve his lot. The guy whose wife cut his dick off-Bobbitt? He’d made a couple of porn movies. Joey had the body for it. Maybe that would be his way out. Maybe he could make some money, get to make a fresh start somewhere.
I felt almost paternal towards him, and that was weird. He wasn’t all that much younger than me. I started walking to my car.
I never pass up a free meal.
I shook my head and started walking faster until I reached my car. I got in and sat there for a moment, waiting for my heart to stop beating so fast.
Maybe I should wait for him to get off work, take him back to my place, make him something to eat…
…and what? Turn him over to Venus? I’d call her after I talked to him, have her meet us wherever we decided on for lunch.
Yeah. It was best to just drive home and call it a night. Go to bed by myself, and call him in the morning. It wasn’t an act-there was no need for him to put on an act for me. He just thought I was some hot guy who was into him, who just happened to see him the night he’d made a hundred bucks for doing Rosemary a favor.
She was setting Freddy up.
The trick was going to be finding out why she was doing it.
I started the car, and pulled out onto Burgundy Street.
Paige was going to just fucking love this.
Chapter Fourteen
When I got home, I couldn’t get Joey Rutledge out of my head.
While sitting on my couch, listening to Amy Winehouse, I couldn’t help but think, there but for the grace of football, go I. Had I not found football and used that to escape from Cottonwood Wells, I could have just as easily wound up a lost boy in the Quarter, dancing at the Brass Rail and whoring myself out to older men for dollar bills. How different would my life be had football not paid my way through LSU? It was the kind of thing I generally preferred not to think about-how one small thing can change the rest of your life. Had one of my coaches not been roommates in college with an assistant coach at LSU, it stands to reason I would never have been offered a scholarship there. LSU wasn’t the only place that offered me one-SMU, Rice and Ole Miss had also come knocking on my door-but I wanted out of Texas, and the proximity to New Orleans had been the true deciding factor in making my decision to go to school in Baton Rouge.
I didn’t even want to think about what might have happened to me had football not provided me a way out of Cottonwood Wells. Would I have wound up stuck in that dreary little town, a gay man longing for the bright lights of the big city? Working in the oil fields with my father and hating every minute of every day of my life-or would I have managed to somehow escape? Joey had struck a chord in me. When I managed to go to bed finally, I wondered how much money he’d made tonight.