a dirty strip of scrapyards, body shops, and lopsided tenement buildings, the wood rotting off them. The Wank, people called it. Barone understood why. The smell was something else. A couple of refineries fired night and day, a burning funk that stuck to your clothes and skin. Ships dumped their garbage on the New Orleans side, and it washed up here. Dead fish, too, the ones even the gulls wouldn’t touch.
He pulled off the main road and guided the Impala down a narrow track of oyster-shell gravel that ran parallel to the train tracks. Tires crunching, headlights bouncing over rows of busted windshields and caved-in grills. A stack of chrome bumpers ten feet high.
It was after midnight, but the lights in the office were still on. Barone knew they would be. A man gets in a certain habit, he stays there.
Armand’s office was just a shack, four walls and a corrugated tin roof. The front room had a desk, a sofa with one arm sawed off so it would fit, and a camp stove that Armand used to boil coffee. The back room was behind a door that looked like any other door. Solid steel. Try to kick that in and walk with a limp for the rest of your life.
Armand gave Barone a big smile. He was happy to see Barone. Why not? Barone shopped the top-shelf merchandise and never dickered too much.
“What’s doing, baby?” Armand said. “Where you been at? How long since the last time you come round to see me? Three months?”
“Two,” Barone said.
“You want something to drink? Look at you. Nice and trim. That ain’t me, baby. Man, I just peek round the corner at a plate of beans and rice, I get fatter.” He grabbed his belly with both hands and jiggled it for Barone. “See that? So where you staying at these days? Still over there by Burgundy Street?”
“No.”
“What you think ’bout all that business up there in Dallas? Awful shame, ain’t it? You ask me, it was the Russians behind it. One hundred percent. You just wait and see. The Russians.”
“I’ve got a new piece of work,” Barone said.
Armand laughed. “Down to business. Every time.”
“I need something tonight.”
“What you looking for?”
“Tell me what you have.”
Armand took out his ring of keys. “Well, snubbies, take your pick, two-inch or four-inch. Clean, guaranteed. Or you want something with a little more gris-gris, I got another .22 Magnum, cut down to the stock.”
“How much for the .22?” Barone said.
“Cost me a nickel more than the last one did.”
Barone doubted it. “Clean?”
“Guaranteed.”
“I’m not paying an extra nickel.”
“Oh, baby, you gonna put me outta business.”
“Let’s see it,” Barone said.
Armand unlocked the door to the back room. It was half the size of the front room, just enough space for a few boxes and a steamer trunk. He squatted down to unlock the steamer trunk. The effort made him groan.
“How’s LaBruzzo and them?” Armand said. “You know who I run across the other day? That big ugly rumpkin from Curley’s Gym. You remember him, muscles all over. I know you remember him. Guess who he works for now. I’ll tell you who. He …”
Armand glanced over and saw the gun in Barone’s hand. A .357 Blackhawk.
It took a beat for the gun to register. Then Armand’s face went flat, like a mask coming off. He stood back up.
“I sold you that,” Armand said. “Didn’t I? Threw in a box of .38 Short Colts.”
“A couple of years ago,” Barone said.
There were no cars on the road this time of night, and the shack was a long way from the next yard over. But Barone never took chances, not if he could help it. He decided to wait for a barge to pass and blow its horn.
“Just listen to me now, baby,” Armand said. “You barking up the wrong tree. Carlos is. I ain’t have no idea what this all about.”
He had one hand at his side and the other one on his belly, making slow circles. Barone wasn’t worried. Armand never carried a gun. The guns in the trunk were never loaded.
“Please,” Armand said. “I ain’t sold nothing to nobody. Whatever happened up there in Dallas, I ain’t got the first idea. Put me in front of Jesus Christ himself and I’ll swear it.”
So Armand did have an idea what this was about after all. Barone wasn’t surprised.
“Please, baby, you know I know how to keep my mouth shut,” Armand said. “Always have, always will. Let me talk to Carlos. Let me straighten him out.”
“You remember that big Christmas party at Mandina’s?” Barone said. “A couple of years after the war.”
“Yeah, sure,” Armand said. He couldn’t figure out why Barone was asking about a long-ago Christmas party. He couldn’t figure out why Barone hadn’t shot him yet. He was starting to think that he might have a chance. “Sure. Sure, I remember that party.”
Winter of ’46 or ’47. Barone had just gone to work for Carlos. He was living in a cold-water flat down the street from the Roosevelt Hotel.
“There was a piano player,” Barone said. He wondered if that Christmas party at Mandina’s was when he heard “’Round Midnight” the first time. “A piano player with a top hat.”
“And there was a Christmas tree,” Armand said. Nodding and grinning and finally giving in to hope, the sweet embrace of it. “That’s right. A big old Christmas tree with an angel on top.”
Barone thought about the old colored man playing “’Round Midnight” on his alto sax earlier, his fingers flying over the keys. Some people were born with a gift.
Finally a barge blew its horn, so loud and low that Barone felt the throb in his back teeth. He pulled the trigger.
A quarter of a mile east of Armand’s scrapyard, driving back to the bridge, Barone saw a car coming on, headed in the opposite direction. An old Hudson Commodore with a sunshade like the brim of a baseball cap.
Behind the wheel a woman. Barone’s headlights lit up her face as they passed. Her headlights lit up his.
He tapped the brakes and swung around. When he caught the Commodore, he flashed his headlights. The Commodore pulled onto the shoulder. Barone parked behind it. On his way to the driver’s window, he popped his switchblade and gave the back tire a quick jab.
“Damn it to hell, you scared me to death.” The woman had her hair up in curlers. Who was she? Why was she out here this time of night? Barone supposed it didn’t matter, the who or the why. “I thought you was the damn cops.”
“No,” he said.
She
