Robert didn’t need to look at his injury. The severity of his pain let him know that something was seriously wrong. “How are you supposed to fix it?”
Tonya gulped before answering. “The guard told me if you want the bone to heal properly, I need to . . . um . . . straighten it out.”
He was going to ask how she was going to do that, but he knew the answer. She had to twist his foot until everything was aligned in his leg. “Do you trust his advice?”
She nodded. “Remember when I slipped on the ice and broke my finger two years ago? The first thing the doctor did was pop it back into place. That way, it was able to grow back together.” She bent her right index finger back and forth. “And see? It turned out just fine.”
Robert agreed with her logic. If he wanted the ability to walk without a limp, he knew that something needed to be done immediately. “Do you think you can handle this? I know how squeamish you can be.”
“Yeah, I can handle it,” she said, smiling. It was a smile that said,
Robert appreciated the sentiment. “I want you to promise me something, though. When you do this, do it quick, like removing a Band-Aid. Just make one decisive move and get it over with, okay?”
“You got it.” Tonya stared at him, wanting to say something to her husband, but the appropriate words escaped her. “Are you ready?”
“Not really.” He laughed through gritted teeth, “but I have a feeling I could never be ready.”
She grinned, admiring his courageous sense of humor. “I think this will be easier if we did it on the flat ground. That way, I’ll be able to anchor your upper leg with my body weight.”
Robert closed his eyes as his wife lifted his swollen limb off of the bench and lowered it to the cabin’s dirt floor. He winced as she placed it on the hard ground, but the pain wasn’t nearly as bad as he had expected. “So far, so good.”
Tonya leaned forward and gently kissed her husband on his forehead. After whispering soft words of encouragement, she turned away from him, resting her weight on his left knee, anchoring his upper leg in place. Without stopping to think, she leaned toward his broken limb and grabbed his foot. Then, with a quick burst, she rotated his foot to the left. The violent twist filled the cabin with a series of sounds-first the grotesque snap of his leg as his bones shifted back into place, then the heart-stopping shriek of a man in agony.
It was a sound that would be repeated by several prisoners in the coming days.
CHAPTER 18
THE
last thing on Payne’s mind was dinner, but Greene insisted that they stop for something to eat. They had to, he said. His stomach demanded it. As a compromise, Payne pulled into the first drive-through he could find and ordered several ham and cheese po’boys, a local specialty.
“So,” said Payne as they waited for their food, “where to next?”
Greene thought about it for several seconds. “The first thing we’re gonna have to do is talk to some of my boys from the Quarter. They’d be more aware of things on the street than me.”
“What kind of things?” Jones asked.
“Everything. If it happens in the city, they’ll know about it. They’ll be able to fill you in on the tattoo you’re looking for. Plus, if you’re lucky, they might be able to tell you something about the kidnapping. Of course, since that didn’t happen down here, details might be limited.”
Payne considered Greene’s words carefully. “Will your friends be willing to talk to us?”
Greene shrugged. “That’s something I don’t know. Most of the time, they’re pretty receptive about helping me, but in your case, I don’t know. You have two things working against you.”
“And those are?”
“You’re white, and you’re from the North. Some people down here don’t take kindly to those two things.”
Payne nodded. “I can understand that, and I figured as much. But at the same time, I have two things that will help my cause.”
“Like what?” Greene asked.
“First of all, I have you guys on my side, and since both of you are black, that might help us with some of the bigger racists we come across.”
“That’s true, but it might not be enough.”
“And secondly,” he said as he laid a thick wad of cash on the dashboard, “I’m willing to spend my entire fortune if it helps get Ariane back.”
Greene eyed the stack of bills that sat before him and grinned. “You know, I think you’ll get along with my boys just fine!”
“I had a feeling I would.”
“But before we go anywhere, there are still a few ground rules I’m gonna have to insist on before we meet my people.”
Payne scooped up his money and nodded. “I’m listening.”
“This is my hometown, the place I’ve chosen to live for the rest of my life. So I don’t want you doing anything that’s going to hurt me after you guys leave. That means I don’t want you roughing up any of my contacts, and I don’t want you making me look bad in any way. I have a reputation to uphold in this city, and I don’t want it tarnished. Okay?”
Payne and Jones agreed to his conditions.
“And finally, if I’m going to help you out, you need to promise me one more thing: absolutely no police involvement of any kind.”
“Why not?” Jones asked, slightly suspicious.
“The people that we’ll be dealing with aren’t exactly friends of the law, and if word gets out that I’m teaming up with the local authorities, then my sources will dry up. And trust me, that won’t help you find the girl, and it won’t help me after you’ve left.”
“No cops, no problem,” replied Payne, who was willing to agree to just about anything. “Now, unless there’s something else, can we get this show on the road?”
AFTER arranging a meeting with his best source, Greene directed his friends through the narrow streets of the Vieux Carre, the historic neighborhood also known as the French Quarter.
“Some people get confused when they come down here because the term French Quarter is misleading,” Greene said. “Most of the architecture around here is Spanish in design, built in the eighteenth century. Most of the original French settlement was burned during a rebellion a little more than two hundred years ago. And thankfully, much of it survived Katrina.”
From the backseat, Jones glanced at the buildings and noticed nothing but bars, strip clubs, and T-shirt shops, and none of them looked very old. “Levon? Are you telling me that Spain had nude dancing back in the seventeen hundreds?”
Greene laughed. “If they did, I doubt the conquistadors would’ve ever left. No, this is the one part of the French Quarter that has been ruined by modern-day greed. If you want to experience the true character of this area, you need to explore the side streets. That’s where you’ll find the flavor of the early settlers.”
Payne suddenly looked at Greene in a whole new light. He always knew that Greene was intelligent, but he never realized the ex-linebacker had a passion for history. In the past, their playground conversations never got beyond street basketball and life in the NFL. “I have to admit, Levon, I’m kind of surprised. You never seemed to be the type of person who cared about the events of early America. Now you sound like a tour guide.”
“I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be a compliment or not.”
“Yes,” he assured Greene, “it’s a compliment.”
“Thanks. I guess ever since I hurt my knee I’ve had the opportunity to do a lot of things that I wouldn’t have done earlier in my career. One of those things is historical research. I’ve been reading a lot of books on the past, trying to picture what life used to be like down here before the nineteen hundreds. As you can imagine, it was a much different place.”
Payne nodded as they pulled up in front of the Fishing Hole, a nightclub where the marquee boasted “the
