Dark End Of The Street

Chapter 44

I heard the sirens about halfway across Canal Street while I walked toward Royal and back into the Quarter. I’d left Abby at my warehouse, locked up tight and watching reruns of Josie and the Pussycats, after I got the call from Loretta that she was closing up. I’d hopped a streetcar and was even planning on seeing if Loretta wanted to get a cup of cafe au lait down at DuMonde – it was that kind of cool night – and talk about the things that we couldn’t discuss around JoJo. But as soon as I rounded the turn in a swift jog down Conti and saw the smoke surging above the high rooftops, I felt my stomach drop from me and my throat clench. I broke into a full run down the crooked sidewalk and past the all-night bars and executive strip clubs.

Outside, there were two fire trucks and an ambulance. Two hulking firemen were lashing their hoses to a hydrant when I yelled that there was someone inside. I didn’t even see their reaction as I kicked in the two big Creole doors, the battered wood breaking away as if paper, and running inside. The smoke was so thick and bulging, blackened and coiled, that I dropped to my knees and squinted into the room lit by the orange flames eating away the walls and crawling live and blue on the brick in a crisscrossed scrawl.

I saw a hand.

I crawled for her, almost touching her fingers, when three men pulled me away. I saw two others picking up Loretta and dragging her from the building. She wasn’t moving.

In the clearing of tearing eyes, ragged and stinging, I saw the blood across her dress.

I crawled away from the men trying to give me oxygen and ran to her as they loaded her into the ambulance and sped away. I ran after the ambulance for a few blocks, coughing in spasms, until I bent over and tried to steady my breathing with my hands on my knees.

The ambulance screamed, lights twirling and scattering on the old buildings, all the way to Decatur and heading to Charity.

I ran back to JoJo’s and a fireman confirmed that’s where they’d taken her.

I stood at the bar for a moment watching the smoke pouring from the broken plate glass window and snaking from the broken twin doors. Dozens of firefighters held firm, washing the fire down as it continued to eat away the chairs, tables, jukebox, bar, and vintage photographs and posters. All that heat. The heat felt like a sunburn across my face where I held myself. Paralyzed.

The sound of cracking. Brick buckling.

I turned to find a phone.

But he was already there.

JoJo watched his business of thirty-five years curl and bend with that pressure and heat. His expression dropped and froze as I watched someone that he didn’t know tell him about Loretta. As I walked to him, he saw me.

JoJo turned his back and got into his Cadillac, speeding away.

A bby and I found JoJo a little after 3:00 A.M.. at Charity Hospital. I’d picked her up, worried they’d head over to the warehouse next. He sat in an anonymous room full of dozens of vending machines and scattered tables and chairs sipping coffee from a paper cup with an old teammate of mine, Teddy Paris, and his brother Malcolm. They owned a small rap label called Ninth Ward Records and were a hell of a nice couple of guys. But lately they’d been making quite a chunk of change. So much that I overheard 300-pound Teddy telling JoJo he’d pop a cap in the bastard who torched JoJo’s bar and shot Loretta. “Just a word,” Teddy said. “And it gets done.”

Teddy was no gangster. But it was that kind of night.

Abby and I joined JoJo.

The Paris brothers politely left, swearing their return.

“Teddy shoot himself if he tried to use a gun,” JoJo said, lazy and unfocused to no one in particular.

“I don’t know who called him.”

JoJo nodded.

I felt raw and beaten. I’d had to wake up Abby from the couch where she’d fallen asleep. Her eyes were dazed and unfocused. But she seemed determined to go with me the same way victims of crimes want to help others to ease their own pain.

I got a cup of coffee. Abby just sat there and tried to smile at JoJo.

JoJo watched the wall.

“Heard the surgery went fine,” I said.

He nodded.

JoJo had on a gray cardigan over a black golf shirt. As I reached for his shoulder, I noticed he was still wearing bedroom slippers.

My hand weight felt dead and useless. He wouldn’t look at me. Hadn’t looked at me since I’d walked in.

A cleaning crew of three men in gray coveralls propped open the doors to the cafeteria and began swishing their mops all around us. They worked as if we lived on this tiny island and were forbidden to move.

I leaned back into my chair and smiled at Abby.

I hated hospitals. I hated their smells and sounds. They reminded me of spending the night in one when I was twelve. My mother had shot herself and I’d spent five hours in a waiting room alone while my father disappeared to drink himself into a world of shit. I had to be told my mother was dead by an arrogant surgeon who felt himself morally above anyone who would end her own life.

I asked JoJo if he needed anything.

For a while he didn’t answer.

The cleaning crew soon left, the floor wet and shining like glass but smelling putrid.

“Why you bring these people in our lives?” JoJo asked. He slumped forward and folded his thick, scarred hands together. He stared up at me with such an intensity that I felt bumps form on the back of my neck. “Why, Nick?”

I opened my mouth but words wouldn’t form.

“That detective said you knew who did this. Said you tole him they were folks from Memphis following you.”

I wanted to tell him about Clyde and the men who had harassed Loretta before I’d even agreed to help. But it didn’t seem appropriate. It was a deal I’d made with Loretta, and although I didn’t see how it could possibly cause anymore pain to JoJo, I just nodded with him.

“Loretta’s gonna live,” JoJo said. “Has to. Don’t nothin’ work without her. Understand?” He raised his voice. “I said, do you understand, boy?”

“Yes, sir.”

It was me that couldn’t look at him now.

“I worked my whole life to own that bar. Been open since nineteen sixty-five. Do you know what it means to pour your soul into something and see it disappear?”

I watched the toe of my boot.

He knocked the coffee away with his hand. Some of the brown mess scattered across my face and poured toward Abby’s lap. She stood quickly and walked into the hall to leave us alone.

“I want you to stay away from my family,” JoJo said. “We didn’t do nothin’ but open up to you. Give you a place to be. That old woman, tubes coming out of her lungs, love you, man. Love you like her child.”

I watched him. “You have no idea how sorry I am.”

He reached out and grabbed the front of my blue jean jacket, twisting the cotton into his hands, and pulled me close to his face.

JoJo loosened his grip and broke from his flash of anger, pushing me away with disgust and pointing his finger. He yelled: “Stay out of our lives!”

I told him I was sorry again.

The sound of his breathing matched my own blood before I got up and walked from the room. I knew it was the only thing that would help him tonight. And I hated that. I hated myself for not being more observant if someone was following us or for not arriving five minutes earlier.

Out in the hall, I grabbed Abby’s hand and dragged her down a linoleum hallway to the elevator. “I want you to pack your things,” I said. All the different rooms and hallways made me feel dizzy and small. A rock formed behind my voice box.

“What about-?”

“We’re going back to Memphis.”