“That’s the spirit.” He hit me on the back and got up from the stool. “If you want a little action, it’s on the house. Know what I’m saying?”
I watched him walk away, his shoulders humped, his hands knotting and unknotting. I finished my sandwich and ordered another
7Up. After her set, Bella Delahoussaye sat down next to me. “That guy who was here, you hang around wit’ him?” she said.
“I worked with him.”
Her gaze went away from me, then came back. “What do you mean, you did?”
“I’m suspended without pay. That means canned.”
“What for?”
“Screwing up,” I said. “You want a drink?”
“You shouldn’t be here, baby.”
“How am I going to listen to you sing?”
“You know what I mean. You ain’t supposed to be around the wrong kind of liquids.”
“What do you know about Frenchie Lautrec?”
She twisted a strand of hair around her finger. She touched the scar that circumscribed half her neck and looked down the row of faces at the bar. “Walls got ears.”
“What time you get off?” I said.
“Like you don’t know. I ain’t giving you an excuse to sit at a bar. Go home. Don’t get yourself in no trouble.”
I smiled at her. She squeezed my thigh and went back on the stage. She hung her guitar on her neck and gazed into the shadows. “Mean and lean, down and dirty, y’all. I’m talking about the blues.”
• • •
I KNOCKED ON HER door in St. Martinville at ten the next morning. She opened the door, a bandana on her head. “My favorite boogie-woogie man from la Louisiane.”
“Thought I’d take you to breakfast,” I said.
She looked out at the street. “Ain’t nobody followed you?”
“Why would anybody follow me?”
She pulled me inside and closed the door. “Frenchie Lautrec and Axel Devereaux was running the working girls. Now Devereaux is dead, and Frenchie got it all.”
“Prostitution?”
“Boy, you right on it.”
“It can’t be that big.”
“They got girls get five hundred a night, some up to a thousand. Most of the johns are in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Frenchie’s got a plane.”
Her living room was tiny, the doorways hung with beads, an ancient Victrola
against a wall, the couch and stuffed chairs maroon and purple and tasseled, incense burning in a cup on the coffee table. Bella wore sandals and jeans and an oversize Ragin’ Cajuns T-shirt and a gold chain around one ankle, a charm balanced on the top of her foot. I could smell ham and eggs cooking in the kitchen.
“Sit down. I got something to ax you,” she said.
“Sure.”