What else was there?
To better read the spines of a flat stack, he knelt and turned his head sideways. Out of the corner of his eye, through the store's barred windows, he saw JoJo emerge and briskly walk down Conti, away from the river. Nick thanked the owner for the coffee, dumped it in the trash, and began pursuit.
Outside, the sounds of the Quarter rattled and drummed in a distant party. Even on a humid Sunday night, the conventioneers were going to get their money's worth.
JoJo wore a blue short-sleeved dress shirt and black pants, his grayed head like a big Q-Tip walking past the colonnades. He moved fast for an old man, and Nick had to keep his eyes trained through the milling crowd on Chartres not to lose him.
Where the hell was he headed?
JoJo stopped once to tie his shoe and talk to a bouncer at a bar near the marble Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Building, still an unfinished and vacant shell.
JoJo kept walking, passed Bourbon, and headed toward Rampart Street. Now Nick was clueless. There was nothing on Rampart except a few brave business owners, hoodoo parlors, illegal gambling dens, crack houses, fifteen-dollar-whore brothels, and stained-mattress flophouses.
Rampart was once a moat, a dug pit where French settlers put raw sewage and other crap to drive away Indians but instead attracted malaria-laced mosquitoes. Every time Nick passed the old street, he thought about what it was like when the asphalt was a brown bubbling pit of shit.
Not much had changed, he thought, passing a neon-lit liquor store where they sold Colt 45 in ice-filled trash cans. Back in the twenties and thirties, the place was a hotbed for jazz musicians. Now Rampart was better known for its crime--the northernmost point of the Quarter, where no one wants to be during the night.
JoJo passed Congo Square and the giant bronze statue of Louis Armstrong that played to an empty park, as Nick kept back two blocks from his friend. Nick's head was down and his feet shuffled slowly. Mannerisms tipped people off.
He was about thirty yards behind when JoJo opened a black iron gate and disappeared. Nick walked faster, head up now, hearing his own boots clop, until he passed a cinder-block wall topped with shards of multicolored glass. The gate swung back slowly to its latch.
Nick caught it. From inside a squat moss-covered shack came booming black voices. Friendly sounds. No windows, light coming from an open door. As he peeked inside, he understood--JoJo's cronies sitting on their old black asses passing around a bottle of Jack Daniel's.
Sun Droyton, a bear of a man with a copper complexion, sat with his ham-size arms crossed before him, straw Panama Jack hat on his head. He wore a sliver of mustache and a soul patch on his face. His eyes were hooded and sleepy as he watched JoJo pour a drink.
In another chair was Roland Gooddine, a wiry, scruffy man with skin as black as the baseball hat on his head. He had a hawk nose and small eyes, and his laughter was as constant as a nervous cough.
Nick liked both men very much. JoJo's regulars. Men who always made him feel welcome, yelling his name as soon as he entered the bar. Remembered every sack he had with the Saints. They were the ones who threw him a party that Monday night. Called him "an awright bastard" for knocking the coach down.
Nick thought about walking right in, but he didn't. He slid from view, sat on a pile of bricks, and listened.
"I gots my car stuck down on Esplanade. Y'all take me back? We need to find somewheres--" Roland began.
"We need to settle this shit," JoJo said.
"I say we kill that son of a bitch that messed with you," Sun said.
"There ain't a thing I can do but go to the police. And they ain't gonna do shit. If they do, those men'll mess with Henry," JoJo said.
"You send them to me, and I'll put a mother-fuckin' shotgun in their mouths," said a voice out of view.
"Where them
Playboys
at?" Roland asked.
"Hey, shut up," said Sun.
Nick yawned, brushed the dirt off his boots, and decided to walk inside. All the voices stopped and heads turned. He found a chipped ladder-back chair and sat down. "Yeah, where are all the
Playboys
?"
"Nick," JoJo said softly.
"Now I'm hurt," Nick said. "You fellas are having a party and didn't even tell me about it." He leaned back in the creaking chair and stared at dozens of water-stained centerfolds that decorated the ceiling. "Oh, there they are, like stars in the sky."
"Get this honky the fuck out of here," said an old man with gray eyes. Even had on the same brogan shoes and overalls. There was a small amoeba-shaped scar on his cheek.
"You have insurance, Mr. Snooks?" Nick asked, waving his orange cast.
"That ain't Snooks," Roland said as he took off his tattered baseball cap and wiped his brow. "That's just ole Henry."
"Thanks," Nick said.
Roland grinned and nodded.
"You owe me a Jeep, Henry," Nick said. "We'll forget the arm. I've broken it twice before, along with all my fingers. See how crooked they are?"
The old man thrust his hands deep in his overalls and spit on the floor.
"I don't owe you shit. You the one come 'round and started fuckin' everythin' up. You stupid white-bread--"
"Hold on, Henry," JoJo said.
"Can we please cut through this immense amount of horse shit? I want to help you guys," Nick said.
"Get him the fuck out of here," Henry said.
"You really make me feel welcome here in the Honeycomb Hideout. But I'm not leaving until you tell me what you guys are up to. Was Earl Snooks a friend of yours? Did he know something about Robert Johnson's death? Is that what this is about?"
"Nick, please," JoJo said. "We'll talk 'bout this later at the bar."
"JoJo, that would've been fine before I dragged my ass all around Mississippi and almost got killed by this crazy bastard in Algiers."
"You shouldn't be here," Henry said.
Nick put all four legs of the chair on the ground, took the bottle of whiskey from Sun, and smiled. "Like I said, I'm not leaving. Who wants to start a little group therapy?"
?
Two hours later, the Jack Daniel's bottle was almost empty, words slurred, and the walls crumbled. To breathe the hot air was like sticking your mouth on the end of a hair dryer, and Nick had to intermittently wipe the beads of perspiration from his brow. The inside of his cast felt like a wet sock. Outside, a car rambled down Rampart Street with rap music pounding from its speakers.
Buried secrets seemed out of place with the decade.
Roland made an announcement to everybody that he was leaving to piss and buy another bottle of booze. "Don't mix up the two," Sun said, as his buddy hit his head on a swinging yellow bulb.
"Y'all cough a little up for the fund," Roland said.
Nick gave him a ten.
Henry's eyelids drooped low, and he ran a hand over his craggy face as if to remember where he sat. He stared blankly at the mildewed walls of the cinder-block shack and then looked up at the naked women on the ceiling. His weathered face looked like deeply stained leather.
He had to be at least twenty years older than JoJo.
"Why'd you pay to have me killed, Henry?" Nick asked.
"Shit. If I wanted to kill you, you'd be livin' in a dirt-covered box."
"Why'd you try to kill me, Henry?"
"It's my fault, Nick," JoJo said. "I started askin' people about Earl Snooks for ya'."
"So?"
"Ole Henry thought you were like that friend of yours, Baker," Sun said. "Baker wanted to know about Snooks too."
"I'm proud to say, I'm nothing like Michael Baker," Nick said.
"Motherfucker sold me out," Henry said. "He said we was friends. Said he wouldn't tell nobody. Jes' like a priest, is what the man said. Said to get it all out about Snooks."
"Get what out, Henry?"
"I ain't fool enough to repeat myself."
"Son of a bitch." Nick stood up.
"Tell him, Henry," JoJo said.
"Fuck you, JoJo!"
"Henry. Goddamn it!" JoJo said.
"It was a mistake talkin' to that man Baker. Fuck it all," Henry said as he grabbed his coat and shuffled for the door.
"Did you tell him about Cracker and Johnson's lost records?" Nick asked.
"Bullshit," JoJo said.
Henry stopped and turned. "It ain't bullshit," he said as he ran a fist under his nose and sniffed, then looked at the faces surrounding him. "It ain't bullshit."
And then he hobbled out the door.
JoJo turned to Nick and said, "We just tryin' to protect him. Back in the Delta that man was like an uncle to us all. Used to take us around and introduce us to Sonny Boy and Little Walter. That's how I could get those heavyweights in when I started the bar."
"What'd he tell Baker?" Nick asked.
"Henry say Earl Snooks the one who killed Robert Johnson."
Chapter 41
Nick couldn't sleep that night. He was so close to finding another facet of Robert Johnson's life, a discovery that could make a career. It was selfish, he knew, to think in those terms, but it was true. To a blues historian, this was one of those gems only a few had ever found. This was something for Alan Lomax or Samuel Charters, not him.
Those pioneers of blues history were his heroes, etched into Nick's brain from constant readings of their works. They grabbed quotes from the source, not from another's interpretation. Now that most of the original bluesmen were gone, younger historians owed a great deal to those who collected stories at a time when talking to a black man could get your ass kicked.
He removed the coffee from the burner and poured a cup. The sun crept through the high industrial windows and across the wood floors. There was a rustle of sheets as Virginia stirred in bed.
"Are you okay?" she asked, pulling the red hair from her eyes.
"Can I trust you?"
"Well, yeah, of course," she said as she stretched and yawned. "What's wrong?"
"You're not going to turn on me, be someone else, and stab me in the back?"
"Why don't you come back to sleep, Nick?"
"'Cause I'm not so sure about this unknown relationship. Why'd you pick me out in that bar in Greenwood?"
She tucked a pillow under her head and said, "It was really complicated. Every man that I'd met in the Delta was a married farmer. You didn't look like you drove a John Deere."
"What do you know about Robert Johnson?"
She shook her head. "Really, Nick, come back to bed. I think that wreck scrambled your brain more than you thought."
"Do you know why those men were killed in Mississippi?"
"Something to do with that guy you were looking for?"
"No. Listen, I don't want any more secrets. I've had enough force-fed to me lately that I feel like I'm gonna throw up," Nick said, fiddling with the coffee mug. "There might be some unreleased Robert Johnson recordings. Apparently, the man I told you about, Michael Baker, knew about them. Last night, I tried to get his source to talk to me, and he shut me out. And I was just worried."
"Worried that I was after the records too?"
Nick looked down at the sun-painted floor and squinted. "Yeah."
"I love Robert Johnson," she said. "The way he could turn a verse into something so beautiful and tight was wonderful. I really appreciate the man for all that talk about the devil and knobs turning in the middle of the night. But if you did find missing records, you know it could be more of the same. He could've just redone his basics. You're the one who told me that he liked to play songs the same way over and over again, to get it right. I'm not trying to make you back down, 'cause I know you're the kind of man that's gonna do what he wants. But do you want to get killed for this?"
"Do you know anything about his last recording session in Dallas when he laid down "Hell Hound" and "Me and the Devil"?
"No," she said, putting her feet on the ground. Her Scooby-Doo T-shirt was wrinkled and one tube sock stretched almost off her foot.
"When he came back to record a second time, he played differently," Nick said. "It was more intense and eerie, almost like he knew he was going to die soon. There are stories they cut the records in the upstairs of a Buick showroom. The producer said it was so hot in Dallas that June they recorded shirtless and had fans blowing on cakes of ice."
Virginia came over and wrapped an arm around Nick's neck and kissed him on his neck. "What's your point?"
"It's eavesdropping. Pure and simple. A record is the only true connection to him. It's his sound trapped in time. And yeah, I guess I'll do what it takes to let it out. To hear some kind of background noise or, God willing, a new song that could tell us something about his mind-set and music before he died."
"Can I help?" she asked, tousling his black hair.
"Do you like to read?"
?
Randy stared at Virginia for a moment, his mouth wide open. Then he shook his head for his gawking and invited them into his office. For some reason, he wore a long African shirt and leather sandals. His curly hair and wide-eyed smile, combined with the clothes, reminded Nick of a child in a school play.
"Kunta Kinte, I presume?" Nick asked.
"Very funny. Actually it was a gift from a visiting professor during our African Roots series. You don't like it?"