скачать книгу бесплатно
“Those old tubs are bleedin’ you.”
“Those ‘old tubs’ still top your catch any day of the week.”
Spoon stood and came around the six-foot cypress desk. Side by side, the top of his egg-shaped head didn’t reach Blu’s massive shoulder. “It ain’t the tubs, boy. Your nose is what’s gettin’ the job done. I’ve got the money and you’ve got the talent. Together we could go places. How about meetin’ me at Cruger’s in an hour and we’ll settle this once and for all?”
“Save your money and your jaw, Thompson. I’m not interested.”
“You’re a stubborn bastard, boy. Ornery as hell, just like your daddy was. But one of these days you’ll see I’m right.” That said, Spoon picked up the tally sheet and handed it over. “I’m gonna keep askin’.”
Blu eyed the tally, didn’t like the figures, but knew it was the best he was going to get. He shoved the paper in his back pocket, then left without another word. Outside, he started up Bay Street, considering Spoon’s offer, as he did at least once a week. He knew a number of independent fishermen who would jump at the chance to sell out to Spoon and go to work for him. And it would certainly lift a mountain of bills and worry from his shoulders if he did. But for thirty years the duFray Devils had been in business for themselves, and Blu couldn’t get past the feeling that selling out to Spoon wouldn’t only be selling out his father’s legacy, but his men and their pride and dignity, as well.
A block from the waterfront, Blu realized he was being followed. He wasn’t selling his fists to Patch Pollaro any longer, but the number of enemies he’d made working for the loanshark could easily explain the tail.
He picked up the pace and turned down Poke Alley—his limp always more pronounced at the end of a long day. He pulled the bandanna off his dark head and shoved it into his back pocket. His jeans were dirt-stained, his T-shirt a little better off since he’d worked most of the day shirtless. When he reached a deserted courtyard, he ducked inside. Minutes later, the tail crept past and Blu reached out and grabbed—his reputation for having the quickest hands in the fist business aiding him instinctively.
The scream that permeated the air jolted Blu’s senses. He’d been anticipating a man, but the scream was definitely feminine. He spun the figure around and promptly let go of the nun he’d seen hanging around the wharf an hour ago.
“What the hell are you after, church mouse?” Blu demanded, staring into a pair of wide eyes the color of brown sugar. To go along with her pretty eyes was a delicate nose and a rosebud mouth that was too sexy for the profession she’d chosen. She was, however, carrying the appropriate prop—a thick black Bible.
The nun quickly regained her bearings and took two giant steps backward. “I need to talk to you,” she said in a hushed tone. “I’m interested in… What I wanted from you was…”
Blu groaned, anticipating her request. “Save it, church mouse. I’m fresh out of cash, and my day’s catch has already been sold. You’re hitting on the wrong sucker.”
“I don’t want your money, or your catch,” she responded. “And I’m sure I have the right sucker…uh, I mean, the right man.”
“Don’t you people get tired of holding out your hands like beggars?”
Disgusted, Blu curled his lip and pierced her with his well-known devil’s stare—the one proven to make even the dockside roughnecks squirm—then turned away and started down the alley.
“Wait! Please, I—”
Dog-tired, his leg throbbing, Blu ignored her sudden pleading tone and kept walking.
“Hold it right there, Blu Devil.”
Her pleading tone was gone. And the fact that she called him by name alerted Blu that this wasn’t the normal charity harassment he’d grown accustomed to—most of the nuns he’d faced were shy and could barely look him in the eye. They had also addressed him as Mr. duFray, even though his devil reputation preceded him.
He turned just as she flipped open the fat black Bible and pulled out a small .22 derringer. Aiming it straight at him, she said, “I need your undivided attention. Do I have it?”
Blu stared down the barrel of the palm-size handgun. “You’ve got it, church mouse. What’s this about?”
“Not a handout,” she assured. “Information will do fine.”
“What kind of information?”
“How do you know Salvador Maland?”
The question wasn’t going to get an answer; Blu had never heard the name before. “I don’t know anyone named Salvador,” he admitted.
“Liar.” She stuck the neat little pearl-handled .22 farther out in front of her. “You have to know him. He knows you.”
“Plenty of people know me, fille, that doesn’t mean I know them.” Blu studied the gun, the petite young girl, then the gun again. “Is that thing loaded?”
“It wouldn’t do me much good if it wasn’t. Does the name Kristen Harris mean anything to you?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Does she know me, too?”
Her hand started to shake, confirming she wasn’t as tough as she was trying to make him believe. Suddenly her shoulders slumped and she let go of the Bible. When it hit the ground it made a wood-splitting noise and it was then that Blu realized it wasn’t a Bible at all. It was a wooden box meant to look like one.
The nun dug a picture out from the folds of her skirt. “This is you, right?”
Blu took a step forward.
She shook the gun at him. “Stay where you are!”
Blu stopped, squinted at the picture. He decided it was definitely him. He was putting a hydraulic winch back together. He’d gotten good at repairing engines, too. And it took hours to repair nets and busted rigging, but his jack-of-all-trades ability was why he was still in business. “I guess that’s me,” he told the nun.
“I doubt there’s two of you,” she offered. “Besides, your name is on the back. And Sister Marian confirmed it’s you.” Her gaze followed his tall, broad frame up then down. “You don’t exactly blend into a crowd, and everyone I talked to knew right where to find you.”
No surprise there, Blu thought. He’d lived in Algiers all of his life. For the past twenty-five years his parents had owned duFray Fish, the fresh-fish market on Front Street. Then there was his stint with Patch Pollaro as hired muscle, not to mention last year’s “heroic deed” that had gained him an altogether new fan base. Hell, yes, people knew him for one reason or another.
“Now what?” Blu forced his attention away from her sexy mouth. “What’s next? You going to shoot me?”
“Not unless you do something stupid.” She slipped the photo back into her pocket. “Show me your left hand.”
The request had Blu arching his heavy black brows. “My hand?”
“Do it!” She motioned with the gun to encourage him.
Blu raised his hand for her to inspect.
“Turn it over.”
He rolled it palm-side up.
“Nothing,” she whispered, and a little sigh of relief followed. Then she closed her eyes and lowered the gun.
Surprised, but never one to let that cloud his judgement, Blu jumped at the opportunity to disarm her. He surged forward, but his boots scraping over the brick courtyard gave away his intentions. She blinked open her eyes, shook off whatever had come over her and quickly raised the derringer. “Get back!”
“Take it easy.” Blu raised his hands. “Put the damn gun down, church mouse, before you drill me without meaning to. That thing wasn’t meant to be waved around like a flyswatter. They usually have a hair trigger.”
“Then I suggest you tell me what you know about Salvador Maland, or you just might end up a dead fly and tomorrow’s news.”
“I already told you, I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“How can you not know someone who has a ten-by-twelve of you in his office?”
Blu shrugged. “Maybe he likes my face.”
“I don’t think you understand. I’m talking ten feet by twelve feet. Your face covers the entire wall in Salva’s office.”
That was the weirdest thing Blu had heard in a long time. So weird, in fact, he sifted the man’s name through his memory bank once more. But it still didn’t produce a familiar face. There was a chance he’d dealt with the man indirectly while working for Patch, but to chase down the name he would have to pay his old boss a visit.
“This picture of me, the one on this guy’s wall, is it recent?”
“It’s the same one I showed you.” She eyed his shaggy black hair, which was a couple inches shorter, but still past his collar. “Please, this is very important.”
“Can you refresh my memory?” Maybe it was the desperate look she was giving him that had made him ask. But more likely it was that damn mouth of hers—she had the sweetest little lips he’d ever seen. “How about telling me how this guy and I might have met?”
His innocent question upset her. She waved the gun at him again. “Refresh your memory? Ha! How can I do that when I can’t even refresh my own? You’re the one who’s supposed to be filling in the blanks here, not me. I traveled all the way from…” She clamped her mouth shut, aware she was on the verge of revealing too much.
“From where?” Blu prompted.
She wiped at the corner of one of her big brown eyes. “Never mind where.”
Blu realized she was fighting tears. “Listen, fille, maybe if you put the gun down we could talk this over.”
“There’s nothing to talk over if you don’t know Salva or…Kristen Harris.” She swore softly. “This has all been for nothing. How could I have been so stupid?”
“Put the gun down.”
Blu watched as she lowered the gun. Then, just as quickly, she raised it again. “I put the gun down and then we both walk away, right?”
Blu’s answer didn’t come quick enough.
“That’s what I thought. You’re not going to let me walk away, are you? Another big man with a big ego. How could I be so lucky?”
“Put the gun down,” Blu growled in a bigger voice than before.
Defiantly she gripped the gun in both hands and took aim at his head. “I don’t think so. I think you should strip, Blu Devil.”
“What?” Blu was sure he hadn’t heard her right.
“I said, take off your clothes.”
“A nun demanding I get naked? That’s a first.”
“It’s not for the reason you think. I’m not dying to get a look at…at Harvey, or whatever you’ve named it. That look you gave me a minute ago suggests I won’t get a block before you come after me. So I’m taking your clothes for insurance.”
She was right about him going after her. No one pulled a gun on the Blu Devil, then walked without paying for the privilege.
“Start with your boots.”
“Or you’ll shoot me?”
She smiled then, a sexy little smile that showed off pearly white teeth. “At this close range, I think I can hit what I’m aiming at. Don’t you?” She took aim at Harvey. “How much do you enjoy being a man, Blu Devil?”
Not as coolly as he would have liked, Blu said, “No complaints.”
“Then I suggest you protect your assets by pulling off your boots.” To prove she meant business, she tugged back the hammer.
“Bon Dieu, fille. You don’t want to do this,” Blu warned. “I never forget a wrong. Never.”
“I believe you’re a man who means what he says, but I don’t have a choice. Your boots, Blu Devil.”
Swearing, Blu leaned against the brick wall and removed his left boot. Next, he pulled the right one. But just as he was setting it down, he dropped to his knees and hurled the number twelve at the nun’s outstretched arm. The gun discharged as it hit the concrete, the bullet ricocheting off the bricks in the narrow courtyard like a Ping-Pong ball. On instinct he drove forward, snagged the nun by her long black skirt and dragged her down.
It was all over within a few hairy seconds, or so Blu thought until the church mouse hefted the boot that lay within arm’s reach and clouted him alongside the temple with enough force to cause him to see stars.
Chapter 3
“You say she was wearing nun’s clothes, but you don’t think she was a nun?”
Blu turned from the window in the New Orleans Police Department and gazed at Ryland Archard, one of the NOPD’s most respected homicide detectives. “I don’t think too many nuns pack heat, do you, Ry?”
“She had a gun?”
“A fancy little .22 derringer. A specialty piece with a pearl handle.”
“A nun with a gut warmer. That’s a first for me.”
“For me, too.”
Blu saw the amusement in his brother-in-law’s eyes. He knew how ridiculous it all sounded. He also knew what a slim chance he had of finding the gutsy little fille. But he was determined to try. He’d wrestled with the idea the entire night. Those damn eyes and her dainty pink mouth had kept him awake; that, and the headache she’d given him by crashing his own damn boot into his skull.
True, he was curious as to why Salvador Maland had put his face on an entire wall in his office, but that wasn’t the primary reason why he’d shown up in Ry’s office first thing this morning. Something important was driving that fille, something powerful enough to make her dress up in nun’s garb and pull a gun on him. She’d been scared to death, and still she’d stood her ground.
Blu wanted to know why.
“I want you to help me find her.” There, he’d said it. He’d asked his brother-in-law for help.
“Did I hear right? You want my help?”
The smug look on Ry’s face was followed by an open-faced grin. Blu swore crudely. “Oui, you heard me. I’ve already cleared it with Brodie. I’m taking time off work and he’s agreed to do double duty until I get back.”
Ry’s grin faded. “You’ve never taken a day off in your life. Well, not willingly anyway. Speaking of time off, Margo and I are headed for Texas for two weeks. She wants to meet my parents and brother.”
“When?”
“We leave tomorrow.”
“Your timing stinks.” Blu saw the way Ry’s brow arched. “Okay, so I was expecting more than just a little help. I know this isn’t your field of expertise, but I really need to find this girl.”
“If it’s that important, I’ll get in touch with Jackson. He can follow it up on this end.”
