Forget it, he told himself. And if you can’t forget it, be philosophical about it. You got no choice, really.
Last night, even as he laid his head on the Apostle Bar’s table, Rickey realized that he’d been here too many times already. He was tired of letting crises overwhelm him. He needed to be able to handle other people’s crises now, not to be floored by his own. The glamour of the emotional, screeching chef was just a cliché; it didn’t do anybody any good in real life.
He went over to the sauté station, where G-man was prepping tonight’s rabbit dish. “What’s up?” said G-man as he finished wrapping a sheet of pork fat around a rabbit saddle and secured it with a long piece of kitchen string. “How you doing?”
“I’m doing great,” said Rickey. “You know what?”
“What?”
“Fuck Mike. I’m not gonna waste any more time on him. So what if his stupid uncle got his stupid self killed in our walk-in? Fuck ’em both. I’m done with it.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“I mean it.”
“I believe you.” G-man stopped what he was doing and gave Rickey his full attention. “I know you can do anything you decide to do. I just been waiting for you to decide Mike wasn’t worth worrying about.”
“Well, I decided.”
Rickey turned away from the sauté station to go finish his mirepoix. “Hey,” said G-man.
“Yeah?”
“Good call. I’m proud of you.”
chapter 30
Three days ago, when Mike put his credit card into the ATM and asked for another cash advance, a message had popped up on the display screen informing him that he was over the limit. That phrase had been bouncing around in his head ever since. It seemed to sum up his life perfectly.
The people out East wouldn’t front him anything, even when he promised that he would get money from his father. He was afraid to go back to NuShawn; after all, NuShawn was Terrance’s cousin, and Terrance worked for Rickey now. Mike had driven as far as the corner of NuShawn’s block before turning around, certain that people would be there looking for him, just as they must have looked at his apartment. He tried not to imagine how bad the pain would be when they kneecapped him and shot him in the head like Uncle George.
Mike hadn’t had any cocaine for forty hours. He’d demolished his last bag over the course of a day, telling himself he was going to make it last, then breaking down and doing just one more line, and one more, and one more. When it was gone, he’d forced the tip of his tongue into the empty glassine bag, questing for stray crumbs of coke even though he knew they would produce no discernible effect.
An hour after that he had a full-blown panic attack. He pulled the covers off the bed, threw his toiletries across the bathroom, kicked at the walls until somebody in the next room yelled at him to shut up. He tried to smash the mirror over the sink, but only succeeded in bruising his hand. At last he took out his pistol, the one thing he’d never considered pawning, and sat on the edge of the bed with the barrel pressed to his forehead. Surely the time had come to go through with it. He had no home, no job, no more way to snowblind himself to his own wretchedness. He really thought he was ready to do it. His finger actually tightened on the trigger before he realized what had kept him from finishing it long ago: he hadn’t been alone in getting to this point, and it wasn’t fair that he should go out alone.
He laid the gun on the nightstand, stretched out on the bed, and thought about this for a long time. He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he almost forgot his clogged sinuses, his itching scalp, his sour stomach, and the longing for cocaine that lay behind it all.
After an hour, he got up, slid the gun into a vinyl portfolio, went to his car, and pulled out of the parking lot. That was the last he saw of the Paradise Motor Court.
He got on the I-10 and drove to Metairie. The hour was well past midnight, and when he parked in front of the house, all its elegant windows were dark. Mike kept his finger on the bell until he heard footsteps approaching the front door. Then it swung open, and Pinky Mouton was standing there in a pair of Jockey shorts and a hastily belted bathrobe that didn’t quite close around his ample gut. His face creased in surprise, then flushed with disgust. “What the hell are you doing here?” he said. Mike pulled the Luger out of the vinyl portfolio and shot him twice in the mouth.
The noise surprised him, as did the relatively small amount of blood. He’d rather hoped his father’s head would explode. But if it had, Mike would have missed one important fact: the expression in his eyes never changed. Even as he fell, even as he died, the contempt never left Pinky’s face.
“Rot in hell, you old bastard,” Mike said.
Glancing around, he saw lights coming on in the surrounding houses. People in this neighborhood weren’t accustomed to late-night gunshots. Mike ran to his car and headed back toward the city. He felt better than he had in days. It was almost like being high again.
He exited the highway at Claiborne Avenue, cut over to Broad, and pulled up behind Liquor. The restaurant looked closed, but there were still a few cars in the lot. Mike approached the back door. Just as he was about to ring the bell, he heard somebody whack the pressure bar on the other side of the door. A young black man came out carrying two bags of garbage: the night porter. Perfect. Mike stepped forward and pointed the gun at the man’s head.
The porter froze, his face expressionless. “I ain’t got nothin,” he said through lips that barely moved.
“I don’t want money,” said Mike. “I want information.”
The porter didn’t say anything. Tears sparkled at the corners of his eyes.
“You’re closed, right? Who all’s still in there?”
“Terrance,” said the porter. “Big motherfucker. You don’t wanna mess with him.”
“I don’t care about Terrance. Who else? Where are they?”
“Terrance … G-man … Tanker. The bartender … I forgot her name. Tanker’s lady. They up in the bar. And Rickey …”
“Rickey,” Mike breathed. “Where’s Rickey?”
“Last I seen, he in the kitchen somewhere.”
“Good. Now get the fuck out of here.”
Mike gestured with the gun’s barrel. The porter dropped the two bags of garbage and took off running across the parking lot. Mike tracked him with the gun for a few seconds, then lost interest as the young man disappeared down Toulouse.
He went through the back door into the restaurant.
Three in the morning and Rickey was sitting in the walk-in on an empty tomato box, enjoying the refrigerated air after hours of kitchen heat. He rested his clipboard on his knees, checking off items on the order sheet according to whether he needed them or not. Until recently he would have done this standing up, but as the weeks accumulated, he was learning to rest his feet whenever he got the chance. Eventually he hoped to be able to leave Tanker or Shake in charge of the kitchen sometimes, but he didn’t feel comfortable with that yet, so he and G-man were still working sixteen to twenty hours a day. When they did get home, Rickey fell into bed and spent a few hours dreaming about the restaurant.
He stretched his legs and took stock of his condition. His feet felt sledgehammered; his leg muscles were watery with exhaustion; his lower back felt like someone had driven a couple of nails into it. He’d been working sauté this week, letting G-man expedite, and a fresh burn on his wrist was just beginning to scab over. For all that, he felt pretty good. He was pleased with the way things were going. They’d set a record last Saturday, serving a hundred and thirty-eight diners. The food was getting better and better as the crew learned what Rickey wanted from them. Because the stakes were so high, Rickey was willing himself to become a better cook too, and he thought it was working; tonight’s marrow-mushroom sauce was one of the best things he’d ever made. Chase Haricot would certainly review them in another month or two, and Rickey had no fear. He wanted at least four beans and he was pretty sure he would get them.
Fifteen minutes
ago, G-man had finished his own closing duties and gone up to the bar where the others were drinking. Rickey intended to join them as soon as he left his orders on the purveyors’ answering machines. As he reached for the cell phone in the side pocket of his checks, the walk-in door swung open. Rickey looked up, figuring G-man had come back to see what was keeping him.
But it wasn’t G-man at the door. It was Mike Mouton, sweaty, pasty-skinned, and sick-looking. His eyes were like pinholes in a dirty sheet of paper. His hair looked as if it hadn’t been washed in weeks. His clothes gave off an aroma of stale sweat. The front of his shirt was flecked with something that looked very much like blood. Rickey noticed all this in the couple of seconds it took him to realize that Mike was holding a gun. The hole at the end of the barrel appeared impossibly huge, but Rickey supposed that was because he was looking straight into it. Instinctively, he dropped the cell phone and put his hands where Mike could see them.
“I know about everything you’ve done to me,” Mike said. “Your friends can’t help you now. Get on your knees, Rickey.”
Wardell, the night porter, finally stopped running six blocks away from the restaurant. He didn’t want to stop, but a stitch in his side forced him to. He sank down on the stoop of a gutted house and tried to catch his breath.
He wished he hadn’t run off like that. Rickey and G-man were the best bosses he’d ever had. He hated to think of that crazy-looking man with the gun doing anything to them, or to Terrance or Tanker, or especially to the pretty bartender. But in his eighteen years, Wardell had seen his uncle, his big brother, and two friends shot to death. He knew heroics were useless when somebody pointed a gun at you. It wasn’t even the thought of dying that bothered him so much as the knowledge of what it would do to his mother.
Wardell knew he should try to find a pay phone and call the police. He could report the incident at Liquor without giving his name. But then he started thinking he might get blamed for whatever the gunman was going to do. He’d let the man into the restaurant, hadn’t he? The cops would figure he had something to do with it. His ass would end up in Orleans Parish Prison, maybe for murder.
His feet sore and his heart heavy, Wardell pushed himself up from the stoop to begin the long walk home.
“The fuck I will,” said Rickey. “You want to do something, let’s see you do it.”
He felt as if he’d been expecting something like this to happen, but perhaps that was just a side effect of sudden terror. He’d seen a few guns before, but nobody had ever actually pointed one at him. There was a weird high buzzing sound in his skull. Though he knew he should try to tear his eyes away from the gun’s barrel, try to look at Mike’s face and read his intentions, Rickey couldn’t make himself do it.
“You better listen to me,” said Mike. “I saw those people up in the bar. Your buddy and Terrance and the others. They didn’t see me, but I saw them. I’ll go back up there. If you won’t deal with me, I’ll deal with them.”
“Don’t do that,” Rickey said quickly. “Come in here. Let’s talk about it.”
Mike stepped all the way into the walk-in and pulled the door shut behind him. As it closed, Rickey caught a glimpse of the kitchen over Mike’s shoulder. The line was deserted, the sinks empty, the surfaces clean. Rickey wondered if he had just seen his kitchen for the last time, and he felt a sudden crushing loneliness.
“So, uh, have a seat, Mike.” Rickey nodded at a box that had held artichokes. Mike’s eyes never left Rickey: his gun hand never wavered. But as he settled himself on the box, Rickey saw that Mike’s knees were trembling. Mike was in bad shape, no doubt, but Rickey didn’t know how he could use that to his advantage.
“What is it you think I did to you?” he asked. He thought it might be harder for Mike to shoot him if they were talking.
“You know what you did.”
“Well, I’m just trying to narrow it down.”
“You cost me my job,” Mike said. “You turned people against me. You murdered Rondo Johnson. You opened your stupid restaurant right here where my uncle died. You made me kill my father.”
The first glimpse of the gun hadn’t scared Rickey as much as those last six words did. He looked more closely at Mike. Yes, those were tiny spots of blood on his shirtfront, the kind he might have received if he’d shot somebody at close range. They weren’t even dry yet.
Rickey thought longingly of his knife bag, but it was in the office. The only tools he had on him were a little plastic-handled vegetable peeler and the pen he’d been using to mark off his order sheet, both clipped into the front of his jacket. The peeler had a sharp tip for gouging out potato eyes, but it wouldn’t be any good against a gun. Maybe there was something else.
He almost glanced at the cell phone on the floor beside him where he’d dropped it, half hidden by the box he was sitting on, then forced himself not to. Instead he said as casually as he could, “Why’d you want to kill your father? I thought he looked out for you.”
“He never fucking looked out for me,” Mike said. “He was the meanest, crookedest bastard I ever knew. He hated me. He thought I was a loser. He thought more of you than he did of me, and you never even met him. Or did you?”
As Mike spoke, Rickey let his arm slide off his lap and dangle at the side of the tomato box. His fingertips connected with the phone. He could feel that he’d managed to open the plastic cover before dropping it, and he began to think there might be a way out of here. Carefully, his eyes still fixed on Mike, his head nodding slightly in feigned agreement, Rickey ran his finger along the line of speed-dial buttons and pressed the top one.
G-man was telling Tanker the story of his aunt Charmaine, the one who wasn’t going to smoke pot any more, when he heard his cell phone ringing in his knife bag. He almost let it go, but it was 3:30 in the morning and his folks had this number; maybe it was something important. He pulled it out of the bag, flipped it open, and said, “Hello?”
At first it didn’t sound as if anybody was there. He was about to hang up when he thought he heard Rickey’s voice. He put a finger in his other ear and turned away from the others, trying to listen.
“I’M SORRY YOU SHOT YOUR DAD, MIKE,” Rickey said, enunciating each word very clearly. “BUT WHAT ARE WE DOING IN THE WALK-IN?”
“You know what the fuck we’re doing here,” said another muffled voice, and G-man’s heart went cold.
“What? He’s where?” said Lenny. The phone had awakened him from a sound sleep.
“Some crazy guy!” said Tanker, sounding as agitated as Lenny had ever heard him. “He, like, kidnapped Rickey! G-man says they’re in the walk-in! With a gun, maybe!”
The words crazy guy, kidnapped, and gun made Lenny’s brain snap into focus. “Mike Mouton?” he said.
“I don’t know, man! I think you better get down here!”
“Did you call the cops?”
“Yes! They’re on their way!”
“Where’s G-man?”
“He and Terrance went running back there …” Tanker paused for breath and came back sounding marginally calmer. “Terrance was trying to catch him, but G just took off for the kitchen.”
“Who else is there?”
“Just me and Mo.”
“OK. Get out of there. Go outside and wait for the cops. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“But—”
Lenny hung up the phone and started getting dressed.
“What’s wrong?” said the big-haired young woman on the other side of the bed.
“Bad news, baby,” said Lenny. “Maybe the worst I ever heard.”
Terrance had already grabbed G-man once at the pass and once by the sauté station, but G-man had gotten away from him both times. The second time, he’d jammed his knee sharply into Terrance’s thigh, and the muscle cramped up when Terrance tried to run. He never would have thought such a skinny guy could be so strong.
“Leave it!” he yelled as he saw G-man sprinting toward the walk-in. “You want him to kill you both???
?
He threw himself forward and managed to snag a handful of G-man’s jacket. G-man tried to pull away again, but Terrance wrapped a meaty arm around his chest. “Police gonna be here soon,” he said.
“I don’t give a fuck! I’m going in there!” Terrance felt G-man straining against his arm with a trapped, terrified strength.
“What if you scare Mike?” Terrance said into G-man’s ear. “What if he’s just talking to Rickey, and you make him shoot?”
G-man hesitated, then lunged against Terrance’s arm again. Terrance almost lost him, hung on, overbalanced. They both stumbled backward and crashed into the steel countertop. Terrance smacked his head on one of the heavy pots that hung above the line. His grip on G-man loosened. G-man tore himself away and made for the walk-in.
“So I just shot him,” Mike said. “Right in the face. He can’t talk any more shit to me. He can’t ever look at me again.”
Rickey, who had been staring at Mike, looked away. Then he looked back, because he was scared not to.
“You got any blow?” said Mike, suddenly hopeful.
“No, man. Sorry.”
“I haven’t had any for … I can’t remember how long. Did you talk to those people out East? Did you tell them not to sell to me?”
“No. I think they should’ve sold you whatever you wanted.” And wasn’t that the truth, Rickey thought.
“You say that,” Mike whispered, “but you lie. You always did lie. You and Pinky both. Did he hire you? Did he send you to Escargot’s? I know he had Uncle George killed. Did he want it to happen to me too?” Mike’s voice broke. “Did he have little cameras there? Was he watching when you told me other people had lives, but I didn’t? Did he see you knee me in the nuts and slam me against the walk-in? He did, didn’t he?”