Number Nine: Chapter 20

BONES AND THE MONK


FADE IN:

INT. – BURGANDY UNDERGROUND – NIGHT

A hazy-eyed Ruby on stage, clinging to a mike stand, sings a song never before heard, slow and sultry: TUESDAY BLUE.

Sunday intuition and I’m wishing not to care
Monday premonition in the air, it’s everywhere
Come Tuesday, I’ll be blue once again, my sad friend…

Lord, I’ll be Tuesday blue ‘til the end…

INT. – GREYHOUND BUS – DAY

Day turns to night as Jake gazes out the window of a Greyhound Bus heading south in a deep forest. He seems entranced, distracted, as if in a dream state.

INT. – BURGANDY UNDERGROUND – NIGHT

Ruby sings.

Now they’re saying I don’t care Lord
I don’t think they’re being fair
Well, I’ll leave it up to you Lord, for better or for worse,
It’s not that I don’t care Lord, I do but I come first…

CLOSE UP of Ruby’s tears as she struggles to remember loves lost.

EXT. – ATLANTIC OCEAN, ARIEL VIEW – DUSK

A hurricane grows stronger as it courses west across the Atlantic toward the Yucatan, Cuba and the Gulf of Mexico.

Number nine, Number nine, Number nine…


The rain came down like a runaway train and the skies stayed black all day, as if the sun was mourning, as if the sky could no longer hold its heavy burden. The rain came down, pounding the sidewalks, the cobbled roads and awnings overlooking storefronts and sidewalk cafes like drummers on a funeral march.

Jake deposited his bags in locker number 99, picked up an umbrella on the first corner and began walking every street and alley in and around the French Quarters. He located the alley where Pale Louie made his hidden descent and struck up a drunken conversation with the boys protecting the gateway. They were nervous and stone cold sober but not unfriendly.

He made a taxicab tour of the pump stations along the Industrial, 17th Street and London Avenue canals. All of them were underground, which did not bode well for a flood, but the Burgandy House underground could be reached through any of them if a man knew the way.

Everyone in the Quarters could be influenced by a bottle of whiskey and bought for the right amount of cash so Jake brought plenty of both wherever he went. A pump worker in Plaquemines Parrish sold him a sketched map of the water and sewer lines. A gypsy woman in Gentilly sold him her blessings. The cabbie sold him the name and location of a man in the Ninth Ward who could answer all his needs: a safe house, local connections and local knowledge.

As they pulled up at the bar where the Monk did business, the cabbie gave Jake a word of warning: “I like you, Mr. Jones. I like doing business with you. Like to do more of it. Everyone here has an affinity for the natives around here. Feel a connection. But they got a way of treating newcomers no matter what they skin color. You give him this card and tell him Bones sent you.”

Jake looked at the card: A simple skull and crossbones.

“One more thing. Monk will sell you what you want but you got to know: There’s a powerful storm coming in. We all know. Feel it in our blood. Going to make Betsy and Camille seem like child’s play. Not a real good time to be buying a house…or maybe it is. Just so you know.”

Jake thanked him and stepped from the cab where two large black men at the door of the bar looked him over, sniffing him like a dog to sense if there was fear in his heart or treachery in his mind.

“I’ll wait here for about twenty minutes. You don’t come out by then, you’re on your own,” said the cabbie.

Jake approached the men and asked to see the Monk.

“What’s your business?”

“Real estate.”

The men laughed and looked around for any unmarked cop cars or unknown bystanders.

“You got a weapon?”

Jake unstrapped his knife and handed it to the man who did the talking.

“Anything else?”

Jake had the foresight to leave Ruby’s derringer back at the locker. He raised his arms and allowed the silent one to pat him down.

They stepped aside and Jake walked in, followed by the talking man. He waited by the door for his eyes to adjust to bar light while the man walked to a back corner table, leaned over and whispered to a well-dressed man with a gray suit and a slick gray jazz hat. Like an owl in moonlight, Monk found Jake’s eyes and drilled into them like a surgeon with a scalpel.

The talking man delivered a message: “The Monk ain’t doing business today. Come back tomorrow.”

“I don’t have time,” said Jake as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of bills, handing it to the messenger.

The talking man waved the bills in the air and glanced back at the Monk who pretended not to notice.

“This is good,” said the man. “It’ll get you in the door tomorrow.”

“I don’t have time,” said Jake.

“I ain’t going to tell you again.”

He waited, smiled, shook his head and walked to the bar as another man, a black man with all the signs of a seasoned prize fighter, puffy eyes, cauliflower ears and a broad flattened nose, walked out of the shadows as if on cue.

“They a problem here?”

“I don’t have time.”

“The Monk done spoke,” said the fighter. “The only choice you got, mister, is whether you going to leave standing or the other way.”

“I don’t have time.”

The fighter threw a punch quicker than a coiled snake but Jake caught it and deflected it away from its target.

Jake lowered his center as the fighter circled, throwing soft jabs to test his opponent’s reactions, and circling back with harder shots that Jake easily deflected. The bartender let a bottle of beer drop to the floor as the fighter unleashed a torrid combination ending with a right cross that caught Jake square on the jaw, sending him stumbling back.

The fighter closed in for a knock out but Jake felt his breath, his pulse, his approaching heartbeat, and planted an elbow in his gut, spinning and connecting his heel to the fighter’s jaw. The blow would have knocked down a horse but the fighter kept his feet beneath him as he wobbled back and back and back.

Anger flared in his eyes as he finally moved forward but the talking man intervened, placing himself between Jake and the raging bull.

“That’s enough.”

The fighter looked back to the Monk who nodded and he returned to his appointed seat where a couple of fine looking women bathed him with tender affection.

“Monk will see you now,” said the man.

Jake took a breath and walked over to the corner table where Monk did not look up from his accounts before he spoke.

“Never seen anyone put the fear in Beau outside the ring. You a fighter?”

“I’m a ghost,” replied Jake. “Kachina magic.”

Monk looked up with a broad smile, exposing a full set of perfect, pearly white teeth.

“Anywhere else they’d mark you a fool. Around here, we got lots of magic.”

“Where I come from,” replied Jake, “a man without magic has nothing.”

“I believe you,” said Monk.

Jake placed the card the cabbie gave him on the table.

“Friend of Bones, are you?”

“He sent me here to see you.”

“Well, Bones wouldn’t send nobody he didn’t trust like a brother. What can I do for you, Mr. Jones?”

Jake did not wonder how the Monk knew his name. He would be surprised if he did not know everything Bones knew and maybe a little more. He figured the Monk was not the kind of man you kept in the dark so he decided to lay it all on the line.

He needed a safe house in the Ninth Ward and its numbers had to add to the number nine. He needed nine men and women – at least two women – reliable and trustworthy. He needed a presentable suit and an invitation to the Burgandy underground. He had cash and he was willing to spend whatever it took.

Monk skipped the usual foreplay, called on a woman to bring him a listing for the lower Ninth, called on another to take measurements, and drew up a list of names he handed to a third. He pointed a finger to a listing for a house and circled it.

“There it is, Mr. Jones. As it happens, we got a storm sale going on. Does ninety nine grand sound about right?”

Jake nodded and extended his hand.

“One more thing before we seal this deal. Who’s the mark?”

“Pale Louie.”

Monk smiled to appreciate the moment. No one had the balls to take on Pale Louie, certainly no one who was in town less than twenty-four hours.

“Some say you can’t kill Louie. Others say it ain’t worth it for all the voodoo curses be hanging around your neck.”

“I don’t plan to kill him.”

“What do you plan to do: Put him to sleep?”

“He has something doesn’t belong to him.”

“Something or someone?”

“Someone.”

“The white woman.”

Jake took a step back. How could he know unless he had seen her and if he had, was he connected to the underground? Were they all connected?

“You know about Ruby.”

“Shit man, everyone knows about Ruby Daulton.”

He snapped his fingers and Ruby’s voice filled the bar, singing Bessie’s Backwater Blues like no one ever did since the late great diva of blues herself.

When it rains five days and the skies turn dark as night
When it rains five days and the skies turn dark as night
Then trouble’s takin’ place in the lowlands at night…

“This is a bootleg recording. It’s all over town. We all got a soft spot for the lady and some of us know about the man she left behind.”

He looked at Jake with renewed interest.

“You the man she be singing about?”

“I plan to get her out,” replied Jake.

They shook hands and Monk gave instructions to the talking man to fetch Bones.

“We going to have us a real toast on this deal,” he announced.

Ruby sang:

When it thunders and lightning and the wind begins to blow
When it thunders and lightning and the wind begins to blow
There’s thousands of people ain’t got no place to go…