House of Blues (10 page)

The auditorium was on the edge of the neighborhood,
just across Rampart Street from the French Quarter, and the real
estate agents all predicted the casino would vastly alter the
character of the Quarter near Rampart. It already had, to some
extent. Even without it, merely in anticipation, property values had
shot through the roof. A healthy Hollywood community had settled in,
and almost none of the old Creole town houses were still on the
market, having been snapped up by investors and speculators. On one
side of the street prosperity had already arrived.

But no one thought the Treme would change. Broken
windows were common here. Paint peeled. Wood rotted. Formosan
termites chewed.

On another case, Skip had met a prostitute who lived
in the French Quarter at the time, had since moved to the Iberville
Project to be with a man, and now lived in Treme. She was a sometime
informant; though, if the truth were told, she didn't really know
much.

But she had a daughter, and Skip felt sorry for her,
gave her little cash gifts now and then. She hadn't heard from her in
six or eight months, had simply one day found a note with the
prostitute's new address on her desk—Jeweldean kept in touch. She
might not know how to find Delavon the dealer, but she was a
perfectly good place to start.

Skip found her building, a once-proud Italianate town
house that didn't look too bad now—a ten-thousand-dollar paint job,
a few little repairs, and new plumbing would probably have made it
close to livable.

She rang the bell and a woman came out on the
balcony.

"
Who's down there?"

"Hey, Jeweldean. It's Skip Langdon."

"
Langdon. What you want, girl?"

"Let me in, would you?" Skip was starting
to feel conspicuous—as if she had on one of those jackets with
Ponca in two-foot yellow letters on the back.

Jeweldean's little girl was lying on the living room
sofa, watching television, covered with a cotton blanket and looking
far too sad for a child not yet in school. Skip hadn't actually met
her before, her dealings with Jeweldean usually taking place on the
phone or after the girl was asleep.

"This is Tynette," Jeweldean said. "Say
hello, baby."

The child complied, seeming barely able to get the
word out.

"Le's go in the kitchen." When they were
out of earshot, she said, "We went over by my mama's for Easter
and Tynette got shot."

"Shot? That little girl?" Skip knew it
happened all the time, but this girl was so small it shocked
her—small and the child of someone she knew.

"We moved out of the projects 'cause of all that
mess, but we had to go see my mama. She live over in St.
Thomas"—another project—"and Tynette was playin'
jump-rope. The shootin' started and she didn't know what to do. The
other kids run away, but Tynette too scared. Poor little baby, you
should have seen her lyin' in the courtyard, still wearin' her Easter
dress, blood all over that pretty yellow skirt, on her white shoes,
little legs and everything. Her grandrnama bought her that dress."
Jeweldean's face was stoic, her voice steady.

Her life is so different from mine. She's been
living with this for so long, she can't even cry anymore.

"How badly was she hurt?"

"Bad." Jeweldean nodded, as if trying to
convince herself. "Pretty bad. She's gon' be okay though."
She nodded some more. "She can walk, and tha's more than my
cousin's baby can. He was shot when he was twelve years old; he
seventeen now and he ain' never walked another step. Tynette can
walk. She be fine."

"How do you get her to the doctor?"

"Biggie take us sometime. Man I been seein'. We
manage." She flung her head back, proud; not wanting to say
more. Holding something back.

But that was what Skip wanted. It gave her an
opening. "You might need to take a taxi sometime," she
said, and pulled a couple of twenties out of her purse, half of what
she had at the moment. "Better be prepared."

"
I sure do thank you," Jeweldean said.

Skip thought she heard a slight sigh behind the
words, which came out low and slow, not the way Jeweldean talked at
all. She was embarrassed, which in turn embarrassed Skip. "I
need some information. "

"I thought maybe you did."

"
But the money's not for that. That's just for
Tynette."

Jeweldean looked unbelieving, but expectant.

"
Is there any heroin around?"

"Well, I sure don't know. Why you think I'd
know?"

"You know a guy named Delavon?"

Jeweldean's pupils dilated. "Oh, Delavon. Well,
if anybody'd have any, it'd be him."

"Where can I find him?"

"You crazy, girl? You go mess with Delavon, you
get yourself killed."

"
Dangerous character, huh?"

"He as soon cut you up as say hello."

Skip shrugged. "I'll chance it. I've got to ask
him something."

"Ax him? Oh, ax him. Honey, you don't ax
Delavon. Delavon ax you. He like a king, you know? He don' answer to
nobody."

"Well, I'll be sure to say ‘your majesty. "

For some reason, Jeweldean got tickled. "Girl,
girl. You're somethin' else, you know that?"

Oh, can it. I'm a cop.
She
waited for the giggles to subside.

"You ser'ous about this?" said Jeweldean.

Skip nodded.

"Well, maybe Biggie do somethin'." She
paused hardly a second and hollered, "Biggie! Biggie, come on
out."

In a moment, a wiry little dude snaked out of the
hallway, someone whose nickname was clearly ironic. He was about
five-feet-six and may have weighed 13o pounds with his shoes on. He
wore running shorts and matching tank top, in black and violet. His
athletic shoes were open, with their tongues hanging out, laces
dragging.

"Biggie, this Detective Langdon; Ms. Skip
Langdon. You know her?"

He nodded. "I heard about you." He meant
from Jeweldean.

"
She need to find Delavon."

"Delavon! You don't want to mess with no
Delavon."

"Sho' she does," said Jeweldean. "And
you gon' help her find him. And you gon' stay with her, make sure she
all right." She turned to Skip and held out her hand. "But
you give the money to me."

She held out her hand for it. But Skip said, "I
don't think we should do it that way. It's too dangerous for Biggie."

Biggie cocked his head. "You ain' worried 'bout
me. You white police."

Jeweldean raised a hand as if to hit him. "Biggie!
Don't you talk that way to her."

Skip shrugged. "Jeweldean says he'd as soon cut
you up as say hello."

Biggie was nodding to himself, tiny little nods,
sizing her up. Finally, he said, "I'm gon' make a phone call,
see if we can work it."

Ten minutes later Skip and Biggie were outside,
walking down the street, looking fairly conspicuous, a six-foot white
female, dressed for business, and a kid-sized black dude, now in a
pair of baggy pants, but still wearing the tank top, cool as you
please. Almost immediately Skip heard gunfire—two shots, that was
all. She jerked her head around; it had come from a falling-down
brick apartment building from which screams were now emanating.
Automatically she crouched, reaching for her radio. She called in a
1o-28 for emergency clearance and quickly gave the location of the
gunshots. "Stay here," she said to Biggie, and broke into a
run.

"Hey!" He sounded outraged. "You can't
go in there. Hey!" He ran after her and grabbed her arm. "You
crazy, you know that? Hey, white po-lice, you crazy!"

He wouldn't have grabbed her if she'd been a man, she
was pretty sure of it. She shook him off and kept running, uncertain
whether to bang on the door or slither to the side and try for the
back. But the problem was solved when a kid about seven came running
out the door, and she caught it before it closed. She raced up the
first flight of stairs, hearing commotion just above her.

She reached the second landing, gun drawn, to find a
young man, about seventeen probably, down and bleeding, people
gathered around, someone working on his leg.

"Police! Who shot him?"

Silence.

She sighed, lowered her gun, and once again delved in
her purse for her radio.

A half-dozen cars converged in minutes, with lots of
officers to deploy, but she had no description of the shooter. He was
just "some dude" that, oddly enough, no one had seen and no
one knew. It was an hour before she had the scene cleaned up, and
when she emerged from the building, she harbored a dim, distant hope
that Biggie would still be waiting for her.

But of course he wasn't. Nobody was on the street
except some gangster leaning against a fire hydrant.

There was nothing to do but go back to Jeweldean's
and start over. She waved good-bye to the driver as the last police
car left. The leaner caught her eye. "I hear you lookin' for
Delavon."

"Yeah. I am."

"I take you to him."

No way she was going off with a strange man without
backup.

"But you gotta be blindfolded," the man
said. She was struggling not to laugh when she felt her elbows
grabbed, her purse ripped off her shoulder. She was cursing herself
for an idiot, getting her purse snatched like some tourist, when
someone slipped a blindfold over her eyes. She was being held tightly
now, unable to kick or struggle, and she realized that it had taken
at least four strong men to immobilize her.

The three she never saw had been soundless. There
wasn't a thing she could have done.

Somehow, the knowledge that she hadn't done anything
wrong, that her predicament wasn't her fault, calmed her. Curiously,
they hadn't gagged her. And why should they? If the spectacle of a
blindfolded woman being dragged down the street didn't elicit
anyone's sympathy, cries for help weren't going to either.

"Where are we going?" she said.

"
You be quiet now," someone answered. She
thought she might as well.

They put her in a car, in the backseat, one on either
side of her, each holding an arm. The air was thick with the smell of
sweat. And fear. Hers.

Her legs were free, but she couldn't see the point of
struggling now; at the other end was soon enough.

They drove for a long time, and she talked to
herself, told herself silent stories about curious ways to get to
interviews—anything to avoid thinking like a victim.

When they stopped, someone said, "We at
Delavon's. You be quiet now."

The psyching-up had worked—she had an odd feeling,
almost of trust. This thing was so preposterous she felt it had to be
merely a show of force, a posturing and flexing of muscles; that they
wouldn't harm her.

She heard a metal door clang, and they walked her up
two flights of metal steps. When they opened another door and took
her blindfold off, it was as if she'd come by magic carpet, so exotic
was the scene.

She had thought she was in one of the projects or
maybe one of the scruffy apartment complexes that dotted certain
areas, New Orleans East in particular. They were nasty slums on
streets with names like Parc Brittany or Poplar Lane; brick
fourplexes, some of them, some made out of wood, with porch roofs
falling off, everything falling off.

But she was in a room too big for a place like that,
unless someone had knocked a few walls down. And the furnishings were
wrong. There were Oriental rugs everywhere, good ones, she thought,
though she couldn't be sure, overlapping so that every inch of floor
was covered. The walls were hung with fabric—a heavy, dark brocade
with plenty of gold in it. A different fabric covered the ceiling in
poufs, the way kids like to hang parachutes—something shiny, a
taffeta perhaps, in deep burgundy woven with gold.

There were no windows that Skip could see—presumably
they had been covered as well.

Near the back of the room was a sort of raised
platform, on which a large chair had been mounted. The wall fabric,
the dark brocade, had been draped over platform and chair. A man sat
on the chair, a smallish, wiry black man who exuded energy as
exuberantly as a stage actor. He had on a skullcap, loose-fitting
shirt, and harem pants of gold-woven taffeta, a lot like the ceiling
fabric, except that it was purple, yellow, and bronze.

Continuing the harem motif, no fewer than three
sinuous young women lounged on the floor, all black, all sporting
long, Egyptian-style ponytails, and all wearing halters and harem
pants, clearly run up by the same mad designer who'd contrived the
man's outfit.

Skip would have laughed if she hadn't been so busy
trying to keep her jaw from dropping. And if there hadn't been
something sad about it all.

She couldn't shake the feeling that if she pulled up
the gorgeous carpets, she'd find a plywood floor, maybe covered with
linoleum. That if she looked in the women's eyes, she'd see despair.