Shauna wanted to argue back, to plead her case. Something in her gut was telling her to pay attention to what Gris Gris had to say. But Danyon was already in motion, his mind evidently made up that they had to get to Banjo first.
With little choice but to follow, Shauna squeezed
through the crowds after him. She had a sneaking suspicion that Gris Gris was somehow involved with the were deaths, and she planned to find out why, how, and with whom.
And she’d do it with or without Danyon’s help.
S
hauna wound up clinging to the back of Danyon’s shirt as they made their way down Bourbon. He had been right about the crowd getting worse as it got later. Even now, they weren’t able to walk side by side, so she had to trail behind him.
From the safety of Danyon’s height and width, she saw men and women hanging off of balconies on the second floors of restaurants and bars, most of them dangling Mardi Gras beads of different shapes and colors over the railing, offering them as prizes to anyone on the street below brave enough to show a little skin. The alcohol flowed, breasts were bared, pants were yanked down, offering a full moon view to whoever had the biggest, brightest beads. Some people were dressed in costumes that ranged from cartoon characters to horror
movie headliners like Freddy Kruger, Jason in the infamous hockey mask and, of course, Leatherface, only this one carried a plastic chainsaw. Some were dressed in street clothes, others barely wore clothes at all. Many wore Mardi Gras masks that were decorated with purple plumage and sprinkled with green and gold glitter.
To many people, New Orleans was the party capital of the world. They loved coming to the city because they knew she would open her arms wide, no matter their race, sexual preference, or political beliefs. Most of the tourists who came for Nuit du Dommage and Mardi Gras loved wearing the costumes and masks because it gave them an outlet to shed their inhibitions and do things they normally wouldn’t do. Shauna saw the city in a slightly different light. To her, New Orleans was a safe haven—a mother, a lover, a friend, one who would accept you without judgment when you removed the mask you wore in everyday life. People love New Orleans for different reasons, and although she welcomes all who come to her door, there are only a few that she truly loves back. Shauna could always spot those fortunate people. They were the ones who saw beyond the booze and glitz and free-for-alls. They truly
got
her.
It seemed to be taking forever for them to cover the two blocks needed to reach the Rush club. They had been inching along so slowly, that it took Shauna a few minutes to realize they had come to a dead stop.
She tugged on Danyon’s shirt, and he leaned toward her.
“Why did we stop?” she asked.
“Best I can tell, the police are breaking up a fight up ahead.”
“This is ridiculous,” Shauna said. “We’re not making any progress. Let’s go back to where Gris Gris and Trish were. I just know there’s something going on there.”
He shook his head. “It’ll be even more difficult going back than it is going forward. And we can’t be everywhere at once. Besides, you only heard bits and pieces of their conversation. If we took that trail instead of the one we’re on with Banjo, we might be led down a never ending rabbit hole. You heard Banjo clearly. You said he talked about no teeth and no big fingernails—I want to start where I think we’ll have a decent shot of at least getting more information. We can get to the snake man later. He’s not going anywhere. A four-hundred pound man who uses a boa constrictor as an accessory can’t have that many places to hide.”
“Maybe not, but—Hey…that’s him! There he is!”
Danyon snapped to attention. “Who? Where?”
“Banjo. Over there in the orange shirt!” She pointed ahead and to the right. It was by chance she had caught sight of him. Out the corner of her eye, she had spotted something orange popping in and out of view. It caught her attention long enough for her to see that it was a person with a pointed head and long, greasy, brown hair and was wearing a bright orange shirt. The person appeared to be jumping up and down, like they were spring-loaded, and it wasn’t until the person turned slightly that she saw Banjo’s face just as he jumped on the upswing.
A couple of seconds after she pointed him out to
Danyon, Banjo was no longer jumping in and out of view. Fearing he had spotted her, as well, Shauna pushed aggressively through the crowd, trying to reach the spot where she had seen him. But the more she pushed and shoved, the tighter the crowds wrapped around her.
“I think we lost him,” Shauna shouted to Danyon.
“No, we didn’t,” he said, then grabbed her hand and forged ahead. “I saw him run into Opal’s bar.”
Shauna soon found herself trotting to keep up with Danyon. He didn’t have to push anyone out of the way. People saw him charging ahead, and they simply parted to make way.
In a matter of minutes, Danyon veered left, still pulling her along, then crossed the open doorway into Opal’s.
Like any other bar on Bourbon on a busy night, Opal’s was dark, save for the neon beer sign over the bar and a couple of blue and red spotlights that showcased a blues band playing in one corner. The small joint smelled of booze, sweat and cigarette smoke, and was as packed as the street outside. The loud thump of music, glasses clinking, people laughing and talking, the noise was almost more than Shauna could bear.
Still holding her hand in a vice grip, Danyon led her to the long stretch of bar on the left.
The bartender was a short, sweaty man wearing a bad hairpiece. He was running from one end of the bar to the other, replacing empty beer bottles with fresh cold ones and pouring shots of bourbon, vodka, and tequila. Danyon signaled him over.
“Get to ya when I get to ya, Bubba,” the bartender said as he rushed past Danyon to deliver a drink to a woman sitting at the other end of the bar. As he raced back in the opposite direction, Danyon leaned over the bar, grabbed him by the shirt tail and pulled him up close.
“Hey, man! Get your hands off me. What the hell you…” It was about this time that the bartender appeared to get a really good look at who he was talking to and the size of the hand that held on to him. “Yeah, okay, whatever. What you gonna have, man?”
“Nothing,” Danyon said. “Have you seen a guy running through here? Bright orange shirt, long hair, skinny?”
The bartender shook his head. “Dude, you’re talking about half the drunks in the city right now.”
Danyon pulled him up a bit closer. “Do I look like a dude to you?”
“Uh…no. No, man, no. I’m just saying. Shit, I’m just doing my job. There’re so many people in and out of here, everybody starts looking the same after a while. I don’t know if the guy you’re looking for has even been in here. Look, help yourself—look around the joint if you want. Maybe he’s out back or something. You a cop are what?”
“Or what,” Danyon said, then pointed to an open door on the other side of the bar. “What’s back there?”
“Bathroom, storage space, that’s it. Hey, uh…you mind letting go of my shirt?”
Danyon gave him a hard look before releasing his hold on him. “Got a back door?”
“Naw, man it’s an old building. No place for a back-door.”
“What happens if a fire starts in here?” Shauna asked. “How do people get out?”
The bartender shrugged. “Some do, some don’t.”
While Danyon and the bartender continued their little “tete-a-tete,” Shauna glanced about, searching through the crowd for Banjo. A flash of orange suddenly darted in front of the bandstand, then it wiggled through the crowd and slipped between the wall and the door jam, like a cockroach running for cover under a baseboard.
“Over there!” Shauna shouted, then pulled out of Danyon’s grip and took off after Banjo. Fortunately, Danyon didn’t waste time by stopping her to ask for clarification. Within seconds, he was beside her and forcing a path through the throng of people.
As soon as they got outside, Danyon asked, “Which way?”
Shauna looked from left to right. “I’m not sure. I saw him slip out the door on the left, so…maybe this way?” She pointed left.
“No, right there!” Danyon grabbed her hand again and took off running.
Before Shauna knew it, they were barreling into “Barely, Barely, Barely,” one of the many strip clubs on Bourbon that redefined the term, “adult entertainment.”
The place was much bigger than Opal’s, with three circular stages in the main room. A metal pole rose from the center of each stage, and attached to each pole was a gyrating woman wearing nothing but a glittering
G-string and stilettos. Shauna was surprised that she wasn’t undone with embarrassment, especially with Danyon beside her. She couldn’t help but watch the women, fascinated by how effortlessly they stretched, climbed and wrapped their bodies around the poles.
As the woman in the middle finished her routine, she slid down her pole, slowly winding her body around it as she lowered herself. When her stilettos hit the platform, Shauna spotted Banjo on the opposite side of her stage. His body was pressed against it, and his arms were spread out wide. It took a second or two for Shauna to realize that Banjo was dry humping the stage.
Taking advantage of Banjo’s preoccupation, Shauna tapped Danyon on the arm and pointed him out as inconspicuously as possible. She felt his body tense, as though ready to spring into action. She signaled for Danyon to lower his head so she wouldn’t have to yell to be heard and possibly risk alerting Banjo again.
“We’re going to have to sneak up on him,” Shauna said, when he lowered an ear to her. “If we try to charge him, he’ll see us and take off again for sure. You stay here in case he goes for the front door. I’m going to slip around the stages and see if I can come up from behind him.”
“You trap that wild thing from the back, and you’re going to have a hell of a fight on your hands,” Danyon said. “I’ll get behind him.”
“No way,” Shauna said. “You’re too tall. He’ll be able to see you coming from a mile away.”
“And you’re short?”
“No, but I’m shorter than you.”
With that, Shauna made her way stoop-shouldered through the male dominated crowd, then took her time going around the stages until she was directly behind the center platform. Banjo was still preoccupied, evidently determined to impregnate the stage.
The crowd that stood between him and Shauna was at least four rows deep. She sneaked past the back two rows without anyone taking notice, then braved the third. Most of the men in the place appeared singularly focused, their eyes locked on the swaying breasts and gyrating hips. No one paid any attention to her, and she wanted it to stay that way. She continued to inch forward, keeping an eye on Banjo. The last thing she wanted was to lose sight of him again. She didn’t even bother looking for Danyon to make certain he was standing guard at the door in case Banjo bolted. She simply trusted that he was where he needed to be.
By the time Shauna reached the last row of men, the one closest to the stage and the only obstacle left between her and Banjo, she was holding her breath.
So close now…
All she had to do was duck around the last row of men, and she would be home free. She was determined to get hold of Banjo, even if it meant taking him down with a flying tackle. But she had to get close enough to him to make that happen.
She turned sideways and gently pushed past two men who stood gaping at the live version of what had probably been their greatest sexual fantasy since puberty. Her
right foot had barely touched the open space between the stage and those men, when she heard the whistling and catcalls begin.
“That’s right, girl! Go on up there and show them how to work it!”
The place erupted with whooping and hollering, cheering and clapping.
“Take them clothes off, girly!”
Worrying that Danyon had heard that last request and might come storming through, looking for blood, Shauna shot through the last row of men and took off for Banjo.
She wasn’t two feet past the starting line, when Banjo spun around, spotted her, and bolted for the front door of the club. Shauna ran after him and saw Danyon standing in the doorway like a linebacker, arms outstretched and ready to catch the slippery little worm.
Banjo evidently noticed Danyon, as well, because he darted left, then right, then left again, like he was trying to come up with an escape strategy.
Shauna raced past the first two dance platforms and the cat calls grew louder. The noise sent Banjo whirling about, and when he saw how close she was, he began to serpentine right, then left, circling, circling. She heard him laugh, that horrible, twittering sound that hammered on her nerves, and gritted her teeth.
Still laughing, Banjo darted hard to the left, then dove into the crowd that had gathered to watch.
Fearing they might lose him, Shauna raised a hand over her head and signaled Danyon to Banjo’s location.
Obviously understanding what she meant, Danyon sprinted in the direction she had indicated. Seconds later, when Shauna came to a stumbling stop beside Danyon— Banjo was no longer in sight.
“No way!” Danyon said, incredulously. “Where in the hell did he go?”
“Over there!” a man standing in the doorway shouted. He pointed outside and to the left.
“There! He ran that way!” a handful of men yelled, all of them pointing in the same direction as the man before them. They were obviously anxious to see this ordeal through to its conclusion.
When Shauna and Danyon reached the street, a tall guy wearing a new Orleans Saints’ ball cap and a Dallas Cowboys jersey was standing on the sidewalk, pointing and yelling. “He ran inside the Lightning! Over in the Lightning!”
Puzzled, because she didn’t know of any bar or restaurant in the area with that name, Shauna shouted over at the guy in the ball cap. “Where’s the Lightning?”
The man raised both hands over his head and pointed adamantly to his left. “There—there!”
Concerned that she might be dealing with another drunk who didn’t know his rear end from a hole in the ground, Shauna scanned the street as best she could with so many people in the way, to see if any of the blinking, multi-colored business signs on either side of Bourbon read Lightning. As far as she could tell, none did.
“Got it,” Danyon suddenly shouted, then grabbed
Shauna by the hand and pulled her along as he pushed forward.
Half a block down, he pointed to a small swinging sign that hung over the threshold of a narrow entryway. The sign read,
UNDER the STAIRS,
and the logo beside it was a yellow lightning bolt. As soon as Shauna read it, she recognized the name. It was one of the dives Lurnell had told them that Banjo frequented. Shauna let go of Danyon’s hand and quickly took the lead through the entryway.