Imogene in New Orleans Page 14

  “Where’d you get that tattoo?” Jackson asked, pointing to his arm.

  Buddy flexed his considerable biceps as he showed Jackson. “A little shop in the Quarter.”

  “Did Glenway draw the design?”

  Buddy shot his questioner a curt look. “How’d you know?”

  “It looks like a painting I saw in Glenway’s studio the day we found him dead.” Jackson watched for a reaction.

  “Oh.” Buddy glanced at the tattoo again. “I ain’t killed him, cuz.” The muscles in Buddy’s face tightened as he took a step toward Jackson.

  “You did have the means and opportunity. Weren’t you with him on Thursday, his last day alive?” Jackson stepped back into the grass of a cottage house.

  Buddy flicked his sweatshirt in the air. “Why would I hurt the only person who gave a shit about me?”

  “I don’t know. You tell me.” Jackson continued walking through the grass in the cottage’s yard, passing baskets filled with red begonias, which hung over a rickety fence.

  “I told you, cuz. I ain’t hurt Glenway. I…shoot…I didn’t kill him.” Buddy turned his head away from Jackson. He looked at the buildings across the river in New Orleans, which were small in the distance. They walked in silence for a few minutes until Buddy turned right on a quaint avenue with small homes, neat and tidy residences with porches and character.

  Jackson changed the subject. “Buddy, tell me, do you dance in the ballet?”

  The hustler cocked his head. “Hell no. I just go to watch them twinks.”

  “Twinks? I’ve never heard such a word.” Jackson relayed what Thurston had said about Buddy’s ballet attendance. “Yeah, I’ve met guys there.”

  Jackson asked, “Is that where you met Glenway?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I saw him at the bar for months and we started talking after New Year’s. He wanted me to sit for his paintings. First one we did was that one for the art thing in the Quarter.”

  Jackson removed the postcard advertising the art festival with Buddy as Bacchus and showed it to him.

  “Yeah, that’s the one. Whatchya think them stuffed shirts would say knowing a hustler was sittin’ on the poster for their muckety-muck party?”

  Jackson examined the postcard, thinking about Glenway. “That’s a great painting. I’ve seen the original. Such a talented man.” He ran his finger over it, tracing Buddy’s torso.

  Buddy crossed the street and walked into the yard of a little house with red shutters and a wraparound porch with ferns and flowing ivy growing around the banisters. It was much nicer than Jackson had expected. Buddy’s place stood on a street of historic houses with iron fences and furniture on the porches. Jackson had prepared himself for a cinder-block stoop and some tarpaulin windows, rather than the glass with linen drapes that he encountered.

  “Wow, this is something. This is so…well, nice.”

  “You did judge me, cuz. You expected me to live in the projects.” Buddy scowled at his visitor. “I come from the projects and I ain’t going back.” He pulled a key from his shoe. Jackson had expected him to jimmy the lock. The hustler opened the door and walked inside. He turned around for Jackson to follow. Jackson crept through the door, preparing to be jumped at any moment. He noticed a wooden hat rack with copper ends as he eased into the foyer with its auburn hardwood floors partially covered in a fine rug. Buddy’s place had Glenway’s paintings and aesthetic imprint all over it.

  “What were you doing today in the Quarter when you ran from us?” Jackson studied the magnificence of the interior.

  “Taking care of some business, cuz. Shoot, that old woman with y’all started staring at me and taking my damn picture and then you and your ‘partner’ came at me like I’d done wrong and I didn’t want no trouble. I still don’t want no trouble. I hope you ain’t here for some.”

  Jackson stepped back. “Oh, no. None from me. The feeling is quite mutual.” He walked over to a statue that looked similar to a figurine Glenway created. It was a rough young man bathing in a creek. Jackson noticed the dimple just like Buddy had and that strong, muscular face. Jackson stared at it and mumbled, “Buddy doesn’t have a car. He wears a wifebeater T-shirt and a thrift-store hoodie, and he’s sitting on art worth thousands of dollars.”

  “What was that, cuz?” Buddy said, leaning over him at the statue.

  Jackson flinched as he felt Buddy’s breath on his shoulder. He scooted over into the living room. “Oh…nothing…I’m just impressed with this place.”

  Buddy snorted. “I guess you know Glenway decided to give it to me. Is that why you’re here, cuz?” Buddy rubbed his arm right below the teeth on his tattoo. “It’s the cheapest house on the street, but it’ll do.”

  “I didn’t know that, Buddy. Unbelievable. Glenway gave away everything he had, didn’t he? He didn’t care who got what.” Jackson felt frustrated. He knew four people who would profit from Glenway’s death: Lena, Neil, Allen, and now Buddy. Buddy lived well with Glenway alive, but he could do just as well with Glenway gone.

  “Yeah, but he didn’t tell your friend Allen, because—” Buddy stopped short.

  Jackson looked sideways at him. “How do you know Allen’s my friend?”

  “Shoot, we got a picture of y’all, man. You and Billy with Neil and Allen. All of you. Glenway told me about you.” Buddy led Jackson to the back of the house, which opened up onto a spacious sunroom with beach windows and bright yellow paint. Jackson saw an easel and an unfinished painting on it, a scene from Jackson Square in the French Quarter. A man who looked like Thurston, bald-headed and wearing one of his signature loud shirts, sat in the same place where Jackson found him, near the oak trees in the corner across from Café du Monde. The painting’s model was reading a book in the sunshine just like Thurston had been reading.

  Buddy fumbled through some sketches on a workstation. He removed one of them and said, “Here it is. That’s you, ain’t it?”

  Jackson looked at the sketch of him and Billy sitting on the porch at Neil and Allen’s house at night. Jackson rested against the columns on the house. Billy had his head against the wall, sitting in a lawn chair with his eyes closed. Jackson recognized the pose as his partner’s blood-pressure checking pose. Allen held the end of a jasmine stem, smelling it, as Neil talked.

  “Yeah, that’s us. I’ve never seen this one. We’ve visited Neil and Allen a lot down here. They’ve been good to us.” Jackson felt bad about his suspicion toward Neil and Allen. He remembered Glenway saying he wanted to capture those long hours of enjoyment the boys had on Neil and Allen’s front porch. The light from the moon created a haze around the scene, giving it the quality of magic.

  Buddy slipped out of Jackson’s periphery. “Buddy, what did Glenway say about us?” Jackson turned around quickly to keep Buddy in full view.

  Buddy dug in his pockets. His eyes darted around the room. “Aww, he said he liked you. He liked that old woman too. Said your partner’s got some sort of health hang-up. Checks his pulse a lot or something.” Buddy inspected the back fence, scrutinizing it from the window. He turned his head, but Jackson crept forward, trying to figure out what the hustler was doing and why he was acting so shifty. Wisteria and bougainvillea covered the entire fence, running along the property line. However, some plants were conspicuously absent in the back corner. It looked like someone had cut them down. Buddy peered in that direction.

  “Yeah, Billy likes to keep an eye on his vital signs. So, tell me, what did Glenway think about Neil and Allen?” He viewed their likenesses in Glenway’s porch scene.

  “Allen fixed his money and he stayed on Glenway about buying too much. Glenway liked to spend money, but, man, he could make it too, cuz. Loads of cash. I didn’t let him tell Allen everything he brought in. They bought whatever he put out there. I never seen nothing like it. It’d take me a year in the street to earn the coin he could make in a weekend. That’s how come he wouldn’t let me ‘work’ anymore. He really saved me from that life.” Buddy avoided eye co
ntact with Jackson. He stared out into the backyard. “Everybody in New Awluns, it seemed, wanted something from Glenway, cuz.”

  Jackson felt a sudden wave of sympathy, but Buddy was such a violent individual that he didn’t dare tell him. “What about Neil? What’d Neil want from Glenway?”

  “I ain’t sure what he wanted except to tell him who to be with. All this time, these last six months, he kept telling Glenway about somebody he’d found for Glenway to date. He’d come over here and want to speak with Glenway alone.”

  Jackson put the sketch back on the worktable. “Did he come over a lot?”

  “Shoot, too much, far’s I’m concerned. I wouldn’t leave the house neither, even if Neil wanted me to leave. I’d just sit in my room and watch TV. But believe me, cuz, I kept my ear on what he was saying. It was like he wanted to drag Glenway back across the river all the time, and I ain’t ever did nothing to him. Naw, I didn’t like his friends. I liked Glenway, but I didn’t care nothing for them friends of his. He’d want me to go to his shows and all that, especially that one he had with my picture on the advertisement you got.” Buddy reached in Jackson’s pocket and grabbed the postcard. Jackson squirmed.

  “This one. But I didn’t go. Ain’t nobody gonna go where they ain’t wanted. You can feel that shit, man. People ain’t gotta say they don’t want you, cuz. You’ll know by how they look and how they act. That’s how come me and Glenway fought. That’s all we fought about really. You gotta understand. I’ve been with men since I was sixteen years old. Some was rich and some was poor and some was regular. Matter of fact, I’ve been with some who knew Glenway and bought his work and kissed his ass at them art shows. Nobody was like Glenway Gilbert, cuz. I never met another one, not in the ten years I been livin’ this life on the streets.”

  Buddy went to the kitchen and grabbed a Louisiana beer from the fridge. He offered one to Jackson, and when he refused, Buddy shrugged and put it on the table. As he opened the bottle, Jackson saw the wolf tattoo’s teeth flare up at him. Jackson took a quick back step. The teeth moved again as Buddy’s muscle rippled.

  “You’re not living on the street anymore, though.” Jackson gawked at the wolf’s perfectly round eyes, which followed his every move. He fell for the illusion and couldn’t quit staring.

  “I will be eventually, cuz. I ain’t got enough not to. Ain’t you here to see how I could’ve killed him? Why would I kill the only thing keeping me out of the bars every night, with a half dozen johns night and day?” Buddy took a big pull from his beer.

  Jackson thought it best not to remind the hustler of all the art surrounding him. “What do you mean? You have this nice house that Glenway left you. You could live comfortably for several years if you’re smart.”

  Buddy stepped in Jackson’s face. “You need to mind your own business. You don’t worry about my smarts.”

  Buddy’s mention of the extra money Glenway kept from Allen was an added incentive to knock off Glenway. But Jackson had felt Buddy’s fury already, and he didn’t want to arouse it again. “I’m just saying that you can make it, Buddy.”

  A shelf in the corner of the room caught Jackson’s eye. There were more than a dozen of the finest figurines he’d yet seen, sitting there in plain sight. Dust surrounded the precious stone carvings.

  Buddy pointed at a particular piece. “Hey, cuz, that parade set is forty thousand dollars. Glenway said the stone he used is somethin’ called lapis lazuli. Check out that blue color.”

  Jackson held the set in the palm of his hands. It was carved into a parade float with sparkling blue people throwing beads at Carnival. He held it up to the light pouring through the sunroom. “Incredible.”

  He put it down and picked up a light green carving that looked like a courtesan. She had a wide grin on her face and a string of pearls leading down to her ample chest. She waved a fan in her face. Jackson wrapped his fingers around the piece.

  Buddy said, “Hey, man, I need to change real quick.” He scooted out of the room.

  Jackson waited a few moments and then placed the courtesan in his pocket and crept toward the bedroom, which had heavy curtains closing out the light. Buddy pulled his jeans off, revealing his ripped muscles in the dim light. Jackson’s cell phone dropped from Buddy’s jeans.

  Jackson tiptoed back into the sunroom and grabbed four more figurines from the shelf and jammed them in his shorts. He arranged the others on the shelf so to hide the theft. The figures felt like boulders as he walked. He worried about Buddy reaching in his pockets, as he had done several times, but he had to take the chance. He wanted to use the pieces to help find Glenway’s killer.

  Jackson hurried back to the bedroom and heard the familiar ring on his cell phone. “Hey, do you mind if I answer that?”

  Buddy silenced the noise and said, “Yeah, I do mind. What else do you want from me? Or from Glenway?”

  “I want to know who killed him,” Jackson tried to look as sincere as possible.

  “Yeah, well, why you think I was in the Quarter this morning? That’s the business I wanna know myself.” His arm quivered. Jackson stepped back, afraid of being accosted again. Buddy stepped toward him and Jackson retreated until his head bumped against a painting. “I tell you, cuz, I think the man who killed Glenway is a regular at the ballet.” Buddy put his hand on Jackson’s shoulder, immediately causing a fierce twitching sensation.

  “Do you mean the ballet as in that bar the Tool Belt?”

  “Yep.” The hustler squeezed his neck.

  “You think he’s there right now?” Jackson squirmed out from under him.

  “Naw, it’s closed now, cuz. That’s a late-night place. What I’m sayin’ is whoever killed Glenway is a regular at the ballet. That was one of his favorite places. I got sick of that place. The night he was killed, me and him fought ’cause he wanted to go. You probably won’t believe me, but I didn’t wanna go. Reminds me too much of that shit life. I said no, but he went by himself, the fool. And look what happened to him.”

  A car honked outside and Buddy ran to the window in his room. When Jackson heard Buddy slam a closet door, he shifted forward and then backward, like a car stuck in a muddy ditch. He followed Buddy to the bedroom and spotted his cell phone on the night table, right beside where Buddy rummaged for something in the closet. As Jackson knelt down to swipe his phone, two of the figurines dropped from his pocket, the light green courtesan with the fan and a darker green piece of jade carved in the shape of a trumpeter. Buddy saw them shining on the floor. Jackson grabbed them and his phone and ran for the door.

  “Sonuvabitch, cuz. Hey, get back here.”

  Jackson galloped toward the front of the house and hit the statue beside the mirror, causing it to rock back and forth. He grabbed it with both hands. The honking outside continued.

  Buddy started slamming doors in his room. “You better be fast, cuz. You think you gonna come in my house and steal shit…”

  Jackson had to unlatch the locks on the front door. It seemed the locks had multiplied. Buddy’s voice boomed from the back of the house. “I’ll teach your ass for sure, you sonuvabitch.”

  Jackson fumbled with the chain on the latch as he heard Buddy storming toward the door, screaming. Jackson couldn’t make his fingers work fast enough. His sunglasses fell to his eyes, and all of a sudden, everything was four shades darker than usual. “Come on. Come on…” He looked out the front window and saw Neil’s car passing by the house, honking. He flung the door open and took two steps forward when he heard the explosion of a shotgun firing above his head, hitting the fan and porch light above him. He felt shards from the multicolored, Tiffany-inspired glass raining down on his curly hair.

  Seventeen

  “Buddy, stop. Don’t shoot. You’ll kill me. My God.” Jackson shuffled around on the porch, hoping that Buddy couldn’t hit a moving target. As he bounced from side to side, pieces of stained glass fell off his clothes and clattered onto the floor.

  Buddy charged forward with the gun pointe
d at Jackson. “Cuz, give back what you took. You should’ve known better than to steal from me.” He held one hand outstretched and the other on his gun, which swung around unsteadily.

  “Buddy, those figurines aren’t yours—” Another shot fired just above Jackson’s head. Neil’s car vanished around the corner. “Okay, okay. I’m not stealing them from Glenway…or from you. I just need to borrow them.”

  Buddy shook his head. His muscles looked twice as large with his arm wrapped around the shotgun. “You’re not taking shit from this house.”

  Jackson caught sight of Neil speeding toward the house, the car filled with Imogene, Lena Ward, Billy, and Goose all piled on top of one another.

  “What are you looking at, cuz?” As Buddy turned, Jackson ran to the end of the porch and jumped over the railing. Buddy fired off a shot, the bullet sending a piece of wood trim and several shavings into the air next to Jackson’s ear. Jackson landed in a flower bed and kicked up mulch as he dug in to run. Neil honked his horn and Jackson saw the car heading in his direction. Jackson clutched the figurines in his pocket and ran.

  He had to cut a trail through the azaleas and rosebushes separating Buddy’s yard from the neighbor’s. He saw Neil’s car and skipped over a fountain and through a Japanese rock garden next door. Shotgun pellets sprayed the trunk of a magnolia tree beside his head and he ducked. He pumped his arms. His phone rang, but he couldn’t check it. He ran through another yard and another until he saw the road where Neil had turned. He heard Buddy shout, “You ain’t getting away from me.”

  He jumped out in the middle of the road and began flailing his arms in the air. He saw Neil circling the block and then accelerating toward him. Billy swung open the car door and shouted for Neil to stop.