The Take (18 page)

“Because
if there weren’t a million bucks in that bag, everybody and their uncle wouldn’t
be gunning for us, that’s
why.”
She sipped her coffee and sighed, not having the energy to argue. “Shit, Linda,
you don’t know what I been through. I know you don’t like me, but I can’t let
that bother me right now. `Cause if we pull through this, Eddie and me, we’re
both home free, don’t you see? We’ll both have what we’ve always wanted. A real
chance at a better life. You know, if Eddie hadn’t taken this money, we’d have
never gotten that chance.”

“You
could’ve made your chances. So could he.”

“Bull-
shit
. I’d be back there right now
working at that dry cleaner’s, going home and sucking Val’s dick every night,
hoping he wouldn’t slap me around. And Eddie? He’d probably be in the hospital
right now because of what that loan shark would’ve done to him. You say we
could make our chances? Shit! We’d have been nothing. Just scramblers. Trying
to hustle up whatever we could just to get through another goddam day.”

“That’s
a crock of shit,” Linda said. “I started with nothing. I came from the same
background as Eddie, and I’ve done all right by myself with a lotta hard work
and —”

“
That ain’t the same!
” Felina said. “You
got talent! You got something real. Something you can take and lift yourself up
with. Make something out of your life. Me, I got nothing. Only my looks. And it
ain’t the same, `cause I know that looks like mine only bring out the worst in
other people. Men just wanna fuck me and women hate me. I’m never gonna get
their best. Never, you understand? And there’s nothing I can do about it. Not a
god-damned thing. How do you think that makes me feel?”

Linda
faltered for an answer, and Felina’s emotions stepped up
to the next rung.

“So
along comes Eddie,” she said, “with the break of a lifetime, and sure, I grab
for it. So did he, and I’m proud of him for that. `Cause if he didn’t, like I
said, we’d both be cranking out the days and nights of our miserable fucking
lives, until that big night when we close our eyes and never wake up!”

Linda
sat down at the table. Relaxing her shoulders and her wrists, she conceded
Felina’s point, while admiring her eloquence.

Her
voice marbled with concern. “Well, if you want to keep waking up each day, you
better be damn sure you go someplace where those Mess’cans can’t find you. They
won’t give up easy, you know. Not when there’s that kind of money involved.
They’ll be breathing down your necks for years. So you better be careful.”

“We
will.”

Her
tone toughened again. “I don’t ever want to find out that you fucked my brother
around, y’hear? `Cause you will live to regret it.” She rose and reached for
her coat. “I’m going down to the hotel right now on business. When Eddie gets
up, tell him y’all can get a used mattress over on Magazine Street. There’s a
lot of those type places over in there. I’ll be back in a little while.”

L
inda nodded a
hello to the desk clerk, as she walked through the lobby of the Louis Philippe.
Entering the dim, subdued world of the King’s Landing restaurant, she saw most
of the lunch business was over, with only a lingering table or two remaining.

As
usual, at that time of day, AJ Frechette was
having lunch at his corner table, beneath the hand-painted mural of
King Louis Philippe, after whose father the city of New Orleans had been named.
The royally-clad monarch held a bright blue umbrella at an odd angle in front
of fawning onlookers. AJ wielded his fork at about the same angle, wading
through his heaping plate of shrimp jambalaya.

“Why,
hel-lo, darlin’!” he exclaimed as Linda drew near.

She
bent down to hug him, returning the greeting, as she felt his pathetically thin
body, nearly all bones. She couldn’t help but wonder why he never gained any
weight, even though he seemed to do nothing but eat Creole food all day long.

He
could always be found at his table during the daylight hours, chowing down on
the five-bean-rated cuisine of the King’s Landing, long considered one of the
best in the city.

At
night, he moved over to the lounge. There he kept an eye on the girls, while
making sure everything ran smoothly as he nibbled cashews nonstop.

AJ was
actually the sole owner of the hotel, which served as a sort of presidential
palace. From there, he oversaw the rest of his domain, a polyglot of bars and restaurants
throughout the French Quarter. It was an empire built on the strength of his
personality and his sharp perception.

He
could tell the winners from the losers, the big shots from the nickel-dimers,
the heavy hitters from the bullshit artists. He could always tell, ever since
he was a young man. This uncanny insight never failed him, and because of it,
he reaped great wealth.

However,
he didn’t pursue just money itself. He wanted power. He knew that money was
only the key to acquiring it, nothing more.

Through
the years, he’d seen too many men
with fat bank accounts and little power. Men who’d earned high
salaries, or had inherited big money, but lacked the strength, the charisma, to
parlay that money into something more than just numbers on a bank statement. AJ
had no regard for such people, believing instead that the cardinal purpose of
money was to synchronize it with his personality, in order to make others
beholden to him.

He
lived in a world of dichotomies: you were either a general or a foot soldier,
at the top of the pyramid or scrounging to rise above its littered base, giving
the orders or taking them.

What
separated people in this pecking order of society was power.
And there was no greater symbol of power
in the French Quarter than the Louis Philippe Hotel.

It was
first-rate, with most of its clientele of wealthy businessmen and visiting
celebrities seeking the very expensive novelty of seclusion on Bourbon Street.
It was all done up right, so as a result, the businessmen returned often, while
the celebrities regularly mentioned the place on late- night talk shows. The
Louis Philippe grew famous. As long as the right palms downtown remained
greased, the local authorities tended to overlook its other activities.

The
lounge had been known for its prostitution long before AJ took over. It was the
kind of place where fat cats from all over the world came whenever they hit
town. Some men had first come in as teenagers, brought in by their fathers for
their first lay, and then they, in turn, brought their sons in. This gave the
place a sort of family-tradition feel.

In
fact, it was a goldmine, with truckloads of money flooding into the place on a
continuous basis. This was reflected in AJ’s
wardrobe. He seldom wore less than five thousand dollars worth of
clothing at any given time, not counting his jewelry.

“How’s
my best gal?” he asked with a big smile as she sat
with him. He always said that to each of
his female employees, even the hookers.

“Good,
AJ. Real good. Had a good night off and looking forward to a real good week.”

Linda
slipped out of her coat without getting up, wondering why he had summoned her.

He
buried the tines of his fork in the pile of rice in front of him, then
carefully set the handle against the rim of the plate. He was preparing to
speak, but looked as though he wanted a heaping forkful ready for him when he
resumed eating. Removing the napkin from the collar of his Charvet shirt, he
dabbed at his lips, and lightly set his elbows on the table. He was now in
speaking position.

“You
hear about this guy from Houston got killed over there in front of your
apartment on Friday night?”

“Yeah,
I heard. There were cops all over the place. I saw from my window.”

“They
talk to you about it yet?”

“No … no.”
The second no was a more assertive one, like “why would they talk to me?” It
didn’t quite score.

“Well,
they talked to me.” He was not pleased. “Seems the guy had a hotel matchbook on
him, so the cops come nosing around, and they find out that he had dinner here
that night with two other people and then they all went into the club
afterwards.”

“So?”

“So I
ask around and find out that one of the girls saw this guy in there with his
two friends. She remembers doing the guy some time back. Seems you were talking
with him and his two friends during your breaks.”

“AJ, I
talk with a lot of people every night. I don’t —”

“It
also seems they stayed till you quit, and then you left with the lot of them.
Looked like you were getting pret-ty chummy with this fella.”

She
knew where this was going.

“No AJ,
you’re poking around in the wrong cupboard. It’s not the way it was.”

“I
think you ought to know that I didn’t tell the cops you left with him, or that
he got it right in front of your apartment. That’d put your pretty little ass
at the top of their suspect list. You realize that, don’t you?”

“Oh
shit, AJ, I didn’t have nothing to do with
¾
”

”Who
was he, Linda?”
She was trying to remain matter-of-fact.

“AJ, I
swear to
you, I wasn’t —”

”Linda,
what is rule number one for the piano player?” A
chill covered his voice.

”D-don’t
hustle any of the customers.”

”Do you
know why that is rule number one?”

She
swallowed. This was not the type of chat you wanted to have with AJ Frechette.

“Because
that’s-that’s what the —”

“—
what the girls are there for.” He finished the sentence in unison with her.

“Now, I
repeat,” he said. “Who — was — he?”

”He-he
was just a guy!”

”Just a
guy who was ready to pay for a piece of ass in my hotel, and winds up leavin’
with you to get it for free.”

“AJ, I
swear to you, I wouldn’t try to cut you out of any action. He was just —”

AJ
reached across the table and seized her hand. Although his own hand was slight,
it was powerful. He squeezed her fingers hard, until she winced in pain.

He
poured it on, then whispered, “Now listen to me. I’m running a business here.
It’s a very good business. I don’t ever like to lose money. But when my piano
player starts dishin’ out free pussy to my customers, then she is stealing my
money.”

“AJ,
please. You’re hurting me. Please.”

She was
on the edge of a scream, the pain was so severe, but screaming was not
something you did in the King’s Landing. Not even when AJ was about to break
your piano-playing fingers.

“Stealing
my money,” he repeated in his furious whisper.

Sugary
violin music wafted down into the room from ceiling-mounted speakers. The final
lunch guests were downing the last of their demitasse and asking for their
check. No one else in the restaurant, except for the hawk-eyed maitre d’, had
any idea that punishment was being administered at the corner table.

AJ
said, “Just who the fuck did you think you were fooling, pulling that shit? You
make off with one of my girls’ regulars, he gets his ass popped, and next thing
I know, there’s heat all over the goddamn place.” He squeezed even harder. “Now
you tell me what the fuck’s going on here. Now.”

Shit, don’t scream! No matter how much it
hurts, don’t scream! The pain — hurts — so. I’ve got to —
can’t help it — the scream —

“He was
my brother!” she blurted out.

The
scream pulled back from her throat, sliding back down inside her somewhere.

AJ
released her hand immediately, almost in surprise. She pulled it to her breast.

“Your
brother? Your
brother
?”

The
pain was still all over her. She was preoccupied with reviving her hand.

“Y-yeah.
My kid brother.”

“You
mean, that was your brother got knifed? I didn’t know — you never told me
you had a brother.”

Now the
pain subsided enough to the point where she could merely cry. Through the
tears, she said, “He came over here from Houston to see me. I hadn’t seen him
in so long. He came with a couple of friends. H-he —”

She
sobbed quietly and reached for the artfully-folded linen napkin in front of
her.
AJ put a comforting hand
on her shoulder.

“That’s
all right, darlin’. Go ahead and cry. Just let it all out.”

She did
just that, though she was crying from the pain that still raked her hand.

After a
few more sobs and sniffles, AJ said, “What happened? Did you see it happen?”

Linda
nodded. “Some guy came up to us as we were getting out of the car. He had a
knife and said to give him all our money. Eddie — that’s my brother —
gave him his first, then lunged for the knife. They struggled and — and …
Oh, AJ, he just fell. Then he was dead.”