“When was this?”
“Few days before he died.”
I took a deep breath, and my fist tightened on top of the bar.
Tom Cat was passed out on his sofa when I kicked in the door to his apartment. Little multicolored Christmas lights had fallen on his body and face, and it gave him a festive, embalmed look. I grabbed him by a dirty Converse high top and yanked him off the sofa. His eyes sprung awake.
“Who killed him?”
“Nick, man. Merry Christmas to you too. Hey, I—”
“Who killed him?”
“You trippin’, man.”
I yanked him to his knees and punched him hard in the stomach. He doubled over weakly.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were sleeping with her?”
“I wasn’t.”
“The pimp didn’t kill Sarah, did he? He had no reason. You did. You loved her.”
“Fuck you.”
I kicked him hard in the side with my boot. I didn’t enjoy it. It didn’t make me feel like a man. I just did it.
“It was a mistake. Fats shouldn’t been a part of it.”
“Part of what?”
He rolled to his side and wiped his tears with a ragged flannel shirtsleeve. Pushing his long greasy hair, he told me.
I did not interrupt.
It was blackmail. Sarah and Tom Cat had worked out a scam on a local trial lawyer. But he wasn’t just any lawyer. He was Spencer Faircloth, lawyer to the New Orleans mob. An all-star backslapper among criminals.
Their plan included a sick little videotape. Maybe it included a burro. I don’t know what was on it, didn’t want to know, but I took it with me.
I let Tom Cat go, drove to a nearby K&B Drugstore, and looked through a waterlogged phone book. Some of the pages were so stuck together that the book felt like papier-mâché.
There was no listing. I called information and was told he had an unpublished number.
I called a 250-pound bail bondsman I know named Tiny. He asked for the pay phone’s number.
He called me back in five minutes with the address.
Faircloth lived in an ivy-covered brick mansion with a spiked iron fence and stained-glass windows. When I pulled up near the address on St. Charles, dozens of finely dressed men and women were drinking in Faircloth’s hospitality.
I could see them all, like fish in an aquarium, through the tall windows. I lit a cigarette, smoked it into a nub, and then decided to go in.
Most of the men I passed were in winter wool suits, accented with the occasional silly holiday tie. Candy canes, reindeer, and elves.
I was dressed in blue jeans, boots, and a jean jacket.
I wasn’t accepted.
“Sir?” a large black man asked me.
“Sí.”
“Can I have your invitation?”
“I’m here to see Mr. Faircloth.”
“Mr. Faircloth is spending time with his guests. Can I help you?”
The man’s hair was Jheri-curled, and he wore a finely trimmed mustache.
“Aren’t you Billy Dee Williams?”
He made a move toward me.
“Tell him that a friend of Sarah’s is here.”
He looked down at me, and then left.
I walked over to the buffet line and ate three very tiny turkey sandwiches. I didn’t see any tiny quiches.
A few minutes later, a young man in his twenties walked over to me. I didn’t recognize him at first. His hair seemed slicker tonight. His movements were more polished.
“Can I help you?”
“Are you Spencer Faircloth?”
“No.”
“Then you can’t. I’ll just stay here, continue to eat, and thumb my nose at the conventions of the rich.”
“I’ll have you removed.”
“You do and I’ll propose a toast to Sarah. The finest whore that Faircloth ever had killed.”
“You’re insane.”
“Perhaps.”
Then I remembered him, the younger man from the hotel where I first met Sarah. The one who’d backed up the older man. I looked for him.
I saw the gray-headed gent laughing it up with a group of his ilk near the French doors.
I jumped upon the top of the linen buffet table, my dirty buckskin boots soiling the whiteness. I grabbed a glass and spoon and clinked the two together loudly.
“I would like to propose a toast to the hostess with the mostest. Spence Faircloth.”
The party hesitatingly clapped. A drunk elderly man hooted his approval.
“Thank you, grandpa,” I announced to the old man. “But right now, I would like to offer Mr. Faircloth a deal.”
They were silent.
The two men were whispering to Faircloth, who had his arms tightly wrapped around himself.
“You might call it the last fair deal gone down, like my old friend Fats used to say. The deal, Mr. Faircloth, is that you join me on this table and announce to the party that you are a gutless turd who had a friend of mine killed.”
The crowd stayed silent. A wrinkled old woman with huge breasts shook her head and breathed loudly out her nose.
“But where is the deal, you ask?” I said, reaching deep into the inner layer of my denim jacket and pulling out the videotape.
I held it high over my head like a Bourbon Street preacher does a Bible. I mimed my hands to pretend I was weighing the two.
Billy Dee Williams was trying to approach me from behind.
“What’ll it be, Spence?”
Faircloth shook his head, turned on his heel like a spoiled child, and walked away.
I put the videotape back in my jacket and hopped off the table.
Just like with any other unwanted guest, no one tried to stop me as I left. I think they were waiting for me to pull a red bandanna up over my nose and ask for their jewels.
I got in my Jeep and headed back to the Warehouse District, my hands shaking on the wheel.
I returned to my warehouse only long enough to grab a fresh set of clothes, binoculars, a six-pack of Abita, a frozen quart of Loretta’s jambalaya, my Browning, and Sam’s Christmas present — a 1930s Art Deco watch that I bought on Royal Street a few weeks ago.
It was so silent in my darkened space that I could hear the watch’s soft ticks as late-day orange light retreated through the industrial windows.
I tucked everything in a tattered army duffel bag and put it outside my door.
I used only the small lock near the doorknob, leaving the dead bolt open.
Walking across Julia Street, I felt a cold December wind coming from the Mississippi. It smelled stagnant and stale. I could almost taste its polluted, muddy water.
In the warehouse opposite mine, Sam slid back the door with a scowl on her face. Her short blond hair was tousled, and she was wearing an old gray Tulane sweatshirt of mine that hung below her knees.
“You’re scowling.”
“You left me wandering around the Quarter. What the hell is the matter with you?”
“I’m sorry.”
She let me in and I followed her to the second floor of her warehouse that looked down on a dance studio. The lights were dimmed on the floor below, and a stereo softly played Otis Redding.
“I’m still mad.”
“I know.”
She reheated the jambalaya in a black skillet, and we shared the six-pack of Abita. I told her about Tom Cat and about Spencer Faircloth’s dinner party. She shook her head and tried not to laugh. When I told her I had my gun, she didn’t like that at all, and walked out of the kitchen. One of her cats trailed her.
But she warmed up after a few more of Otis’s ballads and a few more Abitas.
Later, we made love in her antique iron bed, Christmas lights strung over her headboard. The beer, food, and music blended into a fine holiday mood.