They stop at a gas station in Gert Town. There’s a darkened church on the next lot. One of the neon cross arms is out, so it looks like a machine gun turned on its nose. Touché leaps out and disappears into the station. The station lights are painfully bright to Baby. He’s starting to think taking the van was not the greatest idea.
Touché sprints from the gas station, toting a bottle. He hands it to Baby; it’s a bottle of Goose.
“Should we go get Turtle?” Baby says.
“We don’t need no pussies in the way. We mad dogs tonight.”
Baby doesn’t let the vodka bottle touch his sore lips when he drinks. Tilting his head back makes him woozy, but he recovers as his insides swelter. He tastes ashes and rust and pours some onto the van floor.
“Why’d you do that for?” Touché says.
“That’s for Sanchez,” Baby says. “He’s going to need it.”
Touché chuckles and takes the bottle. “That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout.”
They drive to Sanchez’s garage and climb out. Touché and Baby slip white stockings over their heads. Baby’s hair makes the stocking pooch out so that he looks like a lightbulb. Baby immediately wants to tear the mask off. It mashes the swollen parts of his face and sandpapers the sweat-moistened stucco coating his skin.
It’s still early enough that Sanchez is bent under a hood like he’s praying to the engine. Water tings as it circulates in the van radiator.
“Yo, old man Sanchez! What’s up, amigo?” Touché calls out before they enter the wooden fence. Before Sanchez can see who’s coming. Touché says amigo wrong. Hi-meego, he says.
“Que pasa, ’migo?” says Sanchez, stuffing a rag into his overalls. He stops in place when Touché and Baby step into view. Baby figures Sanchez will take off running or go for a gun in his toolbox, but he doesn’t. He rakes a hand through his thin white hair. Baby keeps expecting the Pie Man to show up and slap Touché on the back and say they’ve had enough fun for one night. Instead, they stand in silence broken only by nature: crickets and toads rioting in the bushes.
Sanchez steps backward. He’s short. Not Baby short, but not much taller.
“Move.” Touché shoves Sanchez toward the van.
“You’re Reverend Goodman’s son?” Sanchez says to Touché. The stocking mask smushes Touché’s features. It flattens out his cheekbones and tweaks his nose downward. Like he’s wearing a mask under his mask.
“You don’t know me, niño,” Touché says.
“Ian?” Sanchez says to Baby, calling him by the name Baby’s mom only uses when she’s about to lay down the law. Sanchez can see Baby’s face through the mask. “Why are you here to do this?”
Touché cracks Sanchez in the back of the head with the shaft of his stick. Sanchez is out cold. Baby smells copper. Blood.
“It’s on and popping,” Touché laughs.
Baby thinks it’s over, that they’ll drive off and put this behind them, but Touché stoops and wraps twine around Sanchez’s wrists and ankles. Within minutes, they’re speeding toward the levee on the back side of City Park. When they reach the muddy access road that shadows the levee, Touché nearly rolls the van. Sanchez clutches his knees on the floor. A dark landscape whizzes by as Baby grips the metal handles in the van bay.
The van pitches when they scale the levee, causing a box of nails to fall on Sanchez. He yelps. Baby wants to catch the next box to fall, but doesn’t. He feels like he’s on a conveyer belt, heading toward an open furnace. Touché stops near the concrete floodwall, which sits atop the levee. He takes Sanchez’s ankles, Baby his armpits, and they haul him from the van. Sanchez is heavier than he looks. They drop him in the moist grass at the foot of the wall.
“Maybe we can just leave him,” Baby says.
Touché remains silent and switches on his video camera. The van’s headlights flood the scene so there’s no color. Sanchez prays into his bound hands.
“You first.” Touché hands his walking stick to Baby.
Baby steps toward Sanchez and water snakes in through the seams of his Chuck Taylors, sending a jolt up his spine. Sanchez looks up at him. The stick is covered with spikes. Touché added nails to it, Baby realizes.
“Take your shot, little man.”
Crooked nails glisten like fingers in the moonlight. Baby brings the stick up high above Sanchez’s head. Some of the nails are angled at the van. Others slant toward Touché, Sanchez, and the night sky. One points straight at Baby.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to all the writers who so kindly contributed excellent work, especially James Lee Burke and his team — the nice people at the Philip G. Spitzer Literary Agency, Simon & Schuster, and Pamala Burke — for making it possible to include “Jesus Out to Sea.”
Also to Johnny Temple and his incomparable staff for amazingly efficient work, as always; and a special shout-out to the scholars I consulted: Kenneth Holditch, who introduced me to “Desire and the Black Masseur,” and who reminded me of “Mussolini and the Axeman’s Jazz,” already a longtime favorite; and to Nancy Dixon, whose remarkable collection, N.O. Lit: 200 Years of New Orleans Literature, confirmed many of my choices and introduced me to others, notably Tom Dent’s Ritual Murder and the writers of Les Cenelles. Nancy, thanks for a lovely morning at the Fair Grinds, and for Armand Lanusse.
About the contributors
Ace Atkins is the New York Times best-selling author of seventeen novels, including the forthcoming The Redeemers and Robert B. Parker’s Kickback. He has been nominated for every major award in crime fiction, including the Edgar Award twice. A former newspaper reporter and SEC football player, Atkins also writes essays and investigative pieces for several national magazines including Outside and Garden & Gun. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his family.
Nevada Barr’s first novel, Bittersweet, was published in 1983. The first book in her Anna Pigeon series, Track of the Cat, was brought to light in 1993 and won both the Agatha and Anthony awards for best first mystery. In the years since, sixteen more Anna Pigeon novels have been published, twelve of them New York Times best sellers. At present Barr lives in New Orleans with her husband, four cats, and two dogs.
John Biguenet’s seven books include The Torturer’s Apprentice and Oyster, a novel. His work has appeared in the Atlantic, Granta, Esquire, Playboy, Storie (Rome), Tin House, Zoetrope, and many anthologies. He is the author of such award-winning plays as Wundmale, The Vulgar Soul, Rising Water, Shotgun, Mold, Broomstick, and Night Train. An O. Henry Award winner, he is currently the Robert Hunter Distinguished University Professor at Loyola University in New Orleans.
Poppy Z. Brite is the author of eight novels, several short story collections, and some nonfiction. Brite now goes by the name Billy Martin and lives in New Orleans with his partner, the artist Grey Cross.
James Lee Burke, a rare winner of two Edgar Awards, and named Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, is the author of more than thirty novels and two collections of short stories, including such New York Times best sellers as Light of the World, Creole Belle, Swan Peak, The Tin Roof Blowdown, and Feast Day of Fools. He lives in Missoula, Montana.