Black Hornet Read Free Page A

drawn out, New Orleans-style, to wuh.
    “Yes, sir.” My own r carefully sounded.
    “Don’t know what you’re missing.”
    He fingered a drumstick out of the tray. Bit into it, rotated, bit again. Put the bone with its cap of browned gristle back.
    “Best dam’ food ’n the world.”
    “You’ve got something for me, Mr. Frankie?”
    “Sure I do.” Shu-wuh. “I ever not had something for you?”
    “So: what? I have to guess? That it?”
    He grinned. “Two hundred a week.”
    “Okay. You got my attention.”
    “First week guaranteed, possible re-up for two more. Could be a lot longer.”
    “Mm- hm .”
    “Man called, tells me he needs a bodyguard. Says he’s heard good things about B&A, the service we provide, wonders if I might know someone could do the job.”
    “And it just happens you did.”
    “Yep.”
    “Me.”
    “You.” He picked a wing out of the carton, pulled off the skin and ate that, then nibbled away till bone was again glistening.
    “I wouldn’t even know how to start.”
    “What’s to know? You walk him aroun’. Swing your dick, give anyone the eye gets too close, pick up your money.”
    I could probably do that.
    “You know an easier way to bank a few hundred?”
    I didn’t know any other way at all.
    That first client was a local city councilman being groomed for national elections. Though he sat high on public-opinion polls, grievous differences between him and his wife’s family persisted. For one thing, that was where his money came from, and her old Creole family grieved at seeing Greatgranddaddy’s wad used to nurture unseemly liberal causes. Neither were they sympathetic to the mistress who’d been his student in Poly Sci at Loyola or the one who lived over Gladfellows Lounge with its neon martini glass (where she worked) on St. Charles.
    Threats had been voiced, more serious ones implied.
    Councilman Fontenot, as it turned out, made one of those clear choices he was always talking about in campaign speeches and took the Hollywood high road: true love over career. Two weeks after I joined the troupe he jumped ship and moved in with his coed.
    Fontenot had a passion for old black music and young white women. Two or three nights a week, myself in tow and doing my best to look suitably dangerous, he’d tour the Negro clubs along Dryades and Louisiana. He especially liked listening to Buster.
    So did I, and long after the councilman tucked himself away in his coed’s drawers, I went on showing up wherever Buster was playing. There wasn’t any work for a while, and since I was around every night, Buster and I started getting friendly. I’d sit sipping beers during his sets, then afterward we’d crack a bottle there at the club or back at Buster’s. He’d play and sing this incredible stuff I never even knew existed. Robert Johnson, Charlie Patton, Willie McTell, Sonny Boy Williamson.
    Eventually there was no reprieve from it, I had to get back to work. Off and on I’d still drop by clubs where Buster was playing, as I did that autumn night, but it was never the same. When’s it ever the same once you’ve left?
    The night I told Buster I wouldn’t be around anymore, we got so drunk that toward morning he fell out of his chair and smashed the big Gibson twelve-string he’d just bought. I woke up hours later on the levee, with my legs in the water. I remember raising my head and looking at them just kind of bobbing about down there in the wake from ferries and tugs, bobbing along with the candy wrappers, paper cups and other flotsam that had collected around them.

Chapter Three
    “ L EWIS. B EEN A WHILE. ” He was wiping his head and neck with a dish towel as he nodded. A quick, shallow nod you could miss if you weren’t ready for it. “Been a long while.” The barkeep slipped a tumbler of jug wine, three ice cubes, onto the bar in front of him. Buster nodded at him, too. “I’m in danger or what, get you out this time a night?”
    “We may all be.”
    “Not