“Hey, cowboy,” she said.
“Ma’am,” I said, tipping my imaginary hat.
The girl behind the bar disappeared and I watched her jeans as she did. I took a sip of the burned coffee and watched the rain beat on the worn streets outside. The thunder growled in the distance as the naked woman sighed and disappeared. A moist print of her butt stayed on the vinyl seat after she was gone.
More Ann Peebles played on the jukebox. I sipped the coffee and watched some bikers play pool in a back cove. All but one stripper had stopped dancing and she seemed to be doing her act completely from a lone brass pole.
The woman inverted herself into a handstand against the pole and a couple businessmen clapped and high- fived each other.
As the rain drummed harder the coffee felt even more comforting in my hand.
I can’t stand the rain. Against my window. Bringin’ back sweet memories.
“He said give him a few minutes,” a voice called out.
I turned back to the bartender. She’d tied her undershirt up high on her stomach and was cleaning the bar again.
She wrung the cloth into the sink and soapy water twisted down her lean brown arms. For a moment I could feel my lungs tighten. She noticed my glance and smiled to herself and continued to wipe down the bar.
“I’m Nick,” I said when my voice came back.
“Good,” she said.
“You want to arm wrestle?” I asked. “You have great arms.”
“Nope,” she said, going back to twisting the dirty cloth. Some of the soap brushed across her stomach and she raised her tight shirt even more to wipe it away. Her abs were tight with a small waist and perfect rounded hips.
“I was wondering…,” I began.
The dancer with the pearl necklace walked behind the bar laughing to herself like drunk women sometimes do and latched her hands around the bartender. She kissed the nape of the woman’s neck and I felt my face flush with embarrassment.
“What were you wondering?” the bartender asked with a cocked eyebrow. The gesture sort of reminded me of my occasional girlfriend, Kate.
“Nothing,” I said, feeling for the warmth of the cup. “Nothing.”
A few seconds later, I heard a toilet flush over the slow, grinding funk coming from the jukebox and out walked a muscular man with gray hair holding a stack of newspapers. He looked to be in his fifties with the build of an avid weight lifter. His clothes were Italian and tight. Ribbed black T-shirt. Pleated trousers. Tassled loafers. He threw the papers onto the bar and took a seat next to me.
“What the fuck do you want?” he asked. His face was craggy with lines around his mouth. His teeth were yellowed and he wore thin oval glasses that were popular with effeminate yuppies back in New Orleans.
“You Cook?”
“No, I’m the fucking Easter bunny,” he said, shaking his head and watching one of the strippers in a Catholic school-girl outfit. “Hell, yes, I’m Cook. So what? April said you wanted to see me.”
“I want to talk to you about Bluff City Records.”
“Sold that in ‘seventy-four,” he said. “I guess you’re shit out of luck.”
The bartender had pried herself away from her friend and was running the blender in between eavesdropping. She poured a pink slushy mixture into a tall beer mug and laid down a handful of pills by Cook.
He swallowed them all and gulped down half the drink.
“Amino acids. Vitamin B, and yohimbi bark. You want the rest of my shake?”
I shook my head.
“April? April?” he yelled. “Shit, go get Lola, would you? Goddamn it. I left her back in my office and she’s probably shittin’ all over everything.”
“Women,” I said, shaking my head again and finishing the last of the coffee.
“So, you gonna tell me what the fuck you want?”
“I’m looking for Clyde James.”
Cook belched. “He’s dead. Shit out of luck again.” He smiled. “You’re oh for two, fella… What are you, one of those crazy collector types? Had this British guy come in here once and offer me two thousand dollars for some of our recording logs. Now, that’s just fucking sick. Or is it sad? April? Goddamn it.”
April walked back to the bar tugging on the leash of a Boston terrier wearing one of those inverted- lampshade looking things that kept them from licking themselves. Didn’t help the dog’s looks any. The dog was just plain ugly with a severe crooked underbite and low-hanging tits.
And damn if she didn’t smell funny when Cook plopped her on the bar and let her lick the glass of his protein shake. She smacked and licked, facing her butt to me until she finally gave a grunt and farted.
“Ain’t she a beaut?” Cook said.
The dog turned and gave a cross-eyed stare at me, waiting for an answer.
“I don’t thing I’ve ever seen a dog like her. Makes Lassie look like a skank.”
When Cook turned away I grimaced at April. She grinned.
“Listen,” I said, watching Cook push the sleeves higher on his Italian T-shirt to show the world his biceps. “I heard you found him.”
“C’mon, podna. What do you want to get into that mess for?”
“I work for Tulane University and I’m working on a project about the last of the soul singers.”
Cook turned back to me with a look like he was just starting to take this conversation seriously. He nodded and crossed his arms and then unfolded them and scratched his dog’s flank. The cross-eyed dog twisted her head when she heard a high-pitched woman begin to sing some tired-ass Chitlin’ Circuit soul ballad.
“He was good,” Cook said. “Best I ever heard.”
“You saw him dead?”
He nodded and cleaned off his glasses.
“When was that?”
“Oh, shit, I don’t know.”
“Months, years, what?”
“I don’t know. Four years maybe.”
“Where was he?”
“Why do you care? You work for who?”
“Tulane University.”
“He’s dead, what the fuck’s the difference?”
“I need to know when and where,” I said. “Did he shoot himself?”
“Goddamn,” Cook said. “Get out of here.”
“C’mon, man, these aren’t hard questions.”
“I said get the fuck out of here.”
“You know Loretta Jackson?”
“Hell, yeah, I do. So what?”
“She sent me.”
“Why don’t you make up your fuckin’ mind why you’re here.”
“She wants to know what happened to her brother.”
“He’s dead.”
“I need some help, man. Give me something.”
“Get out,” Cook said, rising to his feet and puffing up his chest. He was one of those men who believe weight lifting has made them invincible. They have so much testosterone pumping through their body that it messes up their perception of reality.
“Five minutes,” I said.
“Now,” Cook said, his face full of blood and anger.
April shrugged and turned back to her soap opera.
