Page 8

CHAPTER EIGHT

S aint…

I gritted my teeth and glared daggers at Hex who had entirely too much of a bemused sparkle in his eyes for my taste.

Fuck yeah I knew the artist for a lot of the rattle-can art around here. I did most of it. It’d been a hobby of mine since I was a fuckin’ kid. Started out in dank abandoned places post-Katrina. Places where it’d be a while before they’d get to it, giving me the time to perfect my skills. The type of graffiti I was into wasn’t that low-brow tagging shit. I worked on art . Drawing on a lot of local color and flavor to do it.

Velina stopped next to me outside and shaded her eyes, looking up at the largest mural I’d done to date on the side of the warehouse we’d purchased next door. We rented it out, but we were looking at turning the space into the distillery, Hex was trying like hell to get the proper permits and shit for us to build.

“Who is that?” she asked, as her green eyes roved the face of Buddy “King” Bolden. “A young Louis Armstrong?”

I barked a laugh. “That ain’t even a trumpet,” I said.

“Looks like one,” she said.

“It’s a cornet,” I corrected. “Pretty fuckin’ similar, but not the same.”

“What’s the difference?” she asked.

“You’d have to ask Axeman,” he said. “He’s the jazz lover. I like it and all, but I don’t know a trumpet from a cornet until he corrected my ass when I was already partway through this beast.”

She froze and turned slowly. “You’re the artist?” she asked, her voice dripping with disbelief.

I sniffed. “Sometimes,” I said. “It’s really just a hobby, not like I do it for a living.”

“Why not?” she asked. “This is incredible!”

“Yeah?” I asked, genuinely surprised.

“Yeah!” she said. “Your stock just went up in my book. You went from Neanderthal to Cro Magnon.”

Her response caught me off guard and I laughed, like genuinely laughed.

“Yeah?” I nodded. “Alright. Okay.”

She smiled at me and wrinkled her nose in this impish way that was entirely too cute.

“As I was going to say,” I said. “That’s King Bolden, one of the grandfathers of jazz. He was popular in the early nineteen-hundreds when the genre was still in its infancy and was still called ‘ jass’ . Armstrong murals are a dime a dozen in this city, and I wanted to do something different, so I asked Axeman who he would like to see and this is the guy he picked. I had no idea who the fucker was before then. He’s a cool cat, though. Played a cornet, which is visually similar to a trumpet only with a mellower tone. Axe sat out here just a jabbering on about the guy while I sprayed, playin’ his music. It was some good shit.”

I held back the part about how Louie had hung back here with us, soaking up what Axe had to say about the guy like a sponge, getting me regular drinks and shit to keep me hydrated as I worked in the heat and under the sun.

Velina’s eyes wandered the image of Bolden, his sharp part in his slicked-down hair, and his even sharper and smarter suit. He dressed for success and was a born performer who lived up to his last name – bold and adventurous in his music. I tried to capture that in his eyes, the fire and the passion for his trade. I felt like I fell short, but hey – you are your own worst critic. You know how that shit goes.

“Did he watch you paint it?” she asked softly, and I nodded silently, unsure of what to say in the face of the utter defeat in her tone. I’d never heard someone so crestfallen.

“He was a genuinely good dude,” I said awkwardly, unsure what else to say.

“Look, I get it,” she said with a sigh finally. “I’m a civilian, or whatever, with a background in law enforcement in education if not in actual practice … but…” She struggled with the point she was trying to make and finally just closed her eyes and shook her head.

“You know what? Never mind.”

Her stock went up with me in that moment. Maybe from a… fuck, I don’t know. A fuckin Malibu Barbie to something more down to earth… like whatever the hell Barbie’s younger cousin or sister’s name was. Chipper or whatever. Not quite as bad or obnoxious as a Barbie, but still not great.

“Come on,” I said after a long, uncomfortable silence. I was done stewing out here, and she fell into step with me without protest or complaint when I started walking.

We went out the back lot and turned along the fence. I’d spraypainted all kinds of shit along the strapping out here. Decorated the fence all along the block on this side with a scene from a Mardi Gras parade, the float a representation of the Baron throwing out party favors to the crowd, beads mostly, some candy.

She slowed her walk, falling behind me, and let her eyes rove the street art slowly as if she was taking in some kind of masterpiece in a museum. I studied her face as she looked, fully absorbed in picking out the details in front of her. Her green eyes jumped from one thing to the next, filing things I couldn’t see or think of away as she looked.

“Louie looked at my pieces like that, too,” I said suddenly.

She jolted slightly and turned her attention back to me.

“Yeah?” she asked.

I nodded, slowly. “Yeah,” I said, but I didn’t elaborate more.

There were echoes of him written all over her, and it was strange. Knowing that they had never met and that it was likely all genetics… well, maybe not all genetics.

Louie had grown up rough , and I do mean rougher than most. Pimped out by his mamma in order for her to score, the sexual abuse he suffered was just the tip of the fuckin’ iceberg when it came down to it.

It was low-key a miracle he hadn’t been more fucked up.

All of us sort of had that going for us in some regard. I certainly wasn’t immune to a rough past. My mother never acknowledged what happened to me, though. I was pretty certain it would destroy her now if we got back into it.

She’d been a single mother, too – after a fashion. My daddy was a drunk and away more often than he was home, out on the oil rigs out in the Gulf. Still, she’d done everything right according to the Southern Italian mamma traditions.

Church every Sunday, and sometimes mass on Wednesdays, too.

I still went, despite having been an altar boy and despite Father Daniels and his… perversions.

I was bigger, tougher, now, and was pretty good pals with Father Castelucci, who would never . How did I know? We’d grown up together and had suffered side by side in some ways. It was a bond forged in a different sort of fire but stronger than iron all the same.

“Tell me?” she asked, and her voice was beseeching. I wanted nothing more in that moment to spill my guts and tell her everything about Louie – but it just couldn’t work that way.

“I believe when we last left off in our tit-for-tat, it was my question,” I said, but truthfully, I couldn’t honestly remember if it’d been my turn or hers.

“Fair,” she said, but she looked unhappy about it.

“What’d Louie tell you about us? ” I asked, deciding to cut right to the point, but trying to do it in such a way she didn’t know I was fishing for some really specific information out of her on the subject.

Her light green eyes searched mine, and she swallowed hard.

“Not a lot,” she admitted nervously, and I could taste the lie as soon as it was off her lips. “Said that Bennie was a war hero, and LaCroix gave everybody the heebs. But that LaCroix, while scary, was evenhanded and fair. Said that you had to watch out with Hex. That he’s smart, and always six steps ahead of you whether you knew it or not.”

I nodded slowly, feeling like now we were getting somewhere.

“All true,” I said.

“Said that Axeman loved jazz and was a wealth of knowledge and that he got his name from some infamous New Orleans serial killer who loved jazz, too, and who was never caught. We went down that rabbit hole for a few days,” she said, slowly walking forward. We just sort of naturally fell into a slow stroll along the fence as she spoke.

“A few days, huh?” I asked.

“He ended up sending me a book,” she said.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Yeah, he started writing letters. Old-fashioned, you know? Through the mail, even though we still primarily kept up through text and email.”

You smart motherfucker, I thought to myself. Emails and texts you could track. Old-fashioned snail mail, not so much.

“What was in his letters?” I tried to slide in casually, but she was stubborn and shook her head.

“My question, if we’re heading there,” she said.

“My bad, my bad,” I said and gave a low chuckle.

“Hey, you made the rules. I’m just following them,” she said with a smirk that’d like to have me pin her to the fence if we were on closer terms, but we were definitely not that. Also, no. That was Louie’s sister and I hadn’t felt even so much as a pang about anyone in that direction in a minute. It was a “ what the fuck?” kind of moment, even if it was just a fleeting one.

“You were saying…” I said.

“Give me a minute. You guys are like some kind of demented Snow White and the Seven Dwarves .”

I barked a laugh outright.

“How’s that?” I asked.

“Can you name all those little bastards?” she demanded.

“Dopey, Happy, Grumpy, Doc, uh… Bashful, Sleepy, and… fuck. You got me?—”

She bit her bottom lip to keep from laughing, but her wide grin gave her away.

“What?” I demanded.

“Sneezy,” she finished for me. “But I’m impressed!”

“I have a goddaughter,” I said defensively. “She’s seven.”

She stopped walking and genuinely looked surprised.

“Seriously?” she asked.

“Her name is Hazel,” I said. “And she’s so happy and plucky I call her ‘Yayzel.’”

She blinked, and I could almost see in real-time her opinion of me somehow unmaking and remaking itself behind her eyes.

“Careful,” she intoned. “Your image of badass biker is cracking.”

I chuckled and it was a mirthless thing. “I don’t honestly give a fuck what anyone thinks about me, princess. I just want to live my life, make some art, and be left the fuck alone for the most part.”

“Garnett said that about you,” she said.

My eyebrows went up in silent question.

“That you were the most extroverted loaner in need to be around people that he’d ever met, which is why the club life suited you so well.”

I turned that over in my head and nodded slowly.

“Perceptive little bastard, after all, wasn’t he?” I said almost to myself.

She snorted. “Definitely my question now. What do you mean by that?”

I shrugged a little lamely and said, “Louie was young, yet. He made a bunch of dumbass mistakes and didn’t always think shit all the way through.” I sniffed. “We all knew he’d grow out of it, eventually, but he sure took his sweet time doing it.”

Velina smiled faintly and nodded. “He said you all thought he was some kind of a dumbass.”

“Sometimes,” I agreed carefully. “But he was also a lot of other things. Funny, loyal, and kind, I guess. Always there, willing to lend a hand. A real give you the shirt off of his own back type. He had his dumbassed moments, sure, but he more than made up for it in other areas.”

“A good soldier,” she said quietly to herself.

I frowned. “What was that?”

She stared at me for several moments and finally came to some kind of a decision because she said clearly, “He said you all described him as a good soldier behind his back. He heard you, you know. When you were discussing whether or not to patch him in, or whatever you call it. He heard everything you all said about him. The good, the bad, and the indifferent.”

“Guess we can add ‘crafty’ to that list,” I said, and I was duly impressed. I guess I hadn’t thought Louie had it in him to listen in, because I remembered Bennie saying that about him during our deliberations. Ol’ Louie must have been listening at the proverbial keyhole or some shit.

I filed the information away to let Hex know later. Louie shouldn’t have known a thing about what we discussed inside the chapel while he’d been a prospect.

If he’d talked out of turn about that , what other information had he inadvertently or purposely passed along?

It was enough to make me worry, and I could tell by the bold look in Velina’s eyes that dead or not – she would protect her brother and his secrets to her dying breath, which was a good thing. It gave her a chance. Still, all of it bore further exploration, so the tit-for-tat continued.

“What else did he have to say about us?” I asked, bringing us full circle and back around to Louie and his mouth.

She smiled and said, “Whatever he said, he said in confidence, and I wouldn’t tell another soul. You know that, right?”

Guess we could tick the crafty box on big sister, Velina, too. She wasn’t stupid – that was for sure, which was surprising given she was a California girl. Guess the stereotypes weren’t all true.

Low-key, she reminded me of Cutter’s Hope out there in Florida. She was originally a California girl, too.

“Doesn’t matter if it wasn’t something he was supposed to say in the first place,” I said, and I tried to be gentle about it. “If he wasn’t supposed to be talking, he wasn’t supposed to be talking, period .”

“What are you going to do?” she asked, eyebrows raised. “Spank him?”

I snorted a laugh at that one as she drew up and stopped at the corner before we had to turn right to walk along the front of the club.

“Touché,” I said.

She sighed and said, “You don’t have anything to worry about. He loved you, all of you. You were the closest thing to family he had right up until I showed up, and nothing was going to alter that for him.”

The look on her face changed, the lines of her expression deepening with something that looked like it weighed her down. It was a bone-deep weary in her eyes and the set of her mouth that I recognized. One of those deep tireds that wouldn’t or couldn’t be remedied by sleep. It made me less curious about Louie and what he may have told her out of turn and piqued my interest in just her.”

What’d put that tired on her soul?

That wasn’t a level of exhaustion you found from work or the daily grind. That was a grind that was put on you by other people. Louie had that look, too, sometimes. When he didn’t think we noticed. When his memories of his life before club life hooked their demon’s claws through his ribcage and drew him down, down, down, and down, into the depths of his own personal hell.

We all had that haunted look for one reason or another, and I wondered, what was Velina’s reason?

It was food for thought. Serious food for thought.

Citizen or not – maybe we were a lot more alike than either of us gave each other credit for.

“Appreciate you saying so,” I said gruffly as I made the turn around the corner of the fence. She moved with me, and we turned it just in time for Collier to crank her car and for it to start up.

“Guess that’s my cue to go, right?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“Not if you’re not done talking,” I said.

She looked at me. “You’re not?” she asked.

Again, I shook my head.

“No.”

“Interesting…” she said in a pondering tone.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “Right up until a few minutes ago, it felt like you couldn’t wait to get rid of me, and now?”

I laughed a little. “Now, I think you’re interesting,” I said. “Besides, they just got it started. Now they got to properly diagnose your AC issue and see if they can get that fixed.”

“You know I can’t afford that, right?”

“Part of this life is your family gets taken care of long after you’re gone,” I said.

“Just like that?” she asked.

“Just like that,” I answered. “It’s just how it works.”

“I don’t understand that,” she said.

“Spoken like a true citizen,” I said back.

“What was the art piece in the room with the long table?” she asked, and it threw me for a second.

“Come on,” I said. “I’ll show you, but put your hands in your pockets and keep ‘em there.”

She raised her eyebrows but stuffed her hands into what passed for pockets on women’s jeans and threw me some chin to indicate I should lead the way.

I maybe liked that she could follow orders so cleanly, just a little too much.