The door was open but the place was obviously closed. Hannibal and Ray walked into a dark cavern filled with dancing shadows bounced off the long mirror behind the bar. Chairs were turned up on tables, their legs thrust toward the ceiling. The odor of stale beer rose from the tables, the chairs, the floor itself.
Quick footsteps violated the silence of the sleeping club. The man stalking toward them wore a plaid jacket and pants that, incredibly, did not match. Wire framed aviator style glasses shielded his eyes. Even in the dark, Hannibal could see the blond thatch on his head was not all his own hair. The man was two or three inches shorter than Hannibal, but he looked his visitors up and down with a hard eye.
“Sunglasses, as dark as it is in here?” the man said. “You the police or the mob? Don’t matter. Got no use for either of you. Get the hell out.”
“Not a cop,” Hannibal said, offering his card. “Not the mob. Name’s Hannibal Jones. You the owner?”
“Quentin Moon,” the man said, examining the card closely as if he expected it to yield additional information, some deeper meaning. “Yeah, I’m the owner. I’m also the manager, part time bartender, clean up boy, bouncer, chief cook and bottle washer.”
“Mister Moon, I just need five minutes of your time.”
“I’m kind of busy,” Moon said, tucking Hannibal’s card into his shirt pocket. “Hit the road, Jack.”
Before he could say anything else, Hannibal felt a hand on his arm, then heard the door open and close behind him. He imagined Moon had a woman meeting him, which would explain his inhospitable welcome. But it was a man who brushed past Hannibal on his way in. A man who Hannibal thought looked like an eerie, white fun house mirror image of himself. He was taller and broader than Hannibal, and wore cheap sunglasses with his black suit. And, of course, Hannibal had a neck.
Never willing to miss a possible conflict, Hannibal followed the bigger man into the club, with Ray at his side. The new man glanced at Hannibal, then removed his own glasses and focused on Moon.
“You know why I’m here,” the newcomer said. “You ain’t paid.”
“And I ain’t going to,” Moon bellowed back. “You think you scare me? You don’t scare me. I been hustled by experts.”
“Uh-huh.” No Neck threw a hand around Moon’s neck and put his weight behind a right hook into Moon’s belly. Moon doubled into a ball and dropped to the floor. Hannibal looked back at the door, to see No Neck’s backup grinning there, no gun drawn.
“Wait a minute man,” Hannibal said, smiling like an old friend. “You going to shake the man down with me standing here?”
“You a cop?”
“No,” Hannibal said, hands stretched wide.
“Then piss off.” No Neck stiff-armed Hannibal hard enough to send him into the bar.
“You getting to be a problem, Moon,” No Neck said, kicking Moon in the chest. “Last guy had this beat was too easy, but I ain’t allowing no exceptions.”
“Maybe just this one.” Hannibal’s words made No Neck turn. Hannibal’s gloved fist raked across his jaw.
No Neck shook his head to clear it, and his lips spread into a broad grin. “You ain’t got enough ass, stud.”
No Neck raised his fists like a seasoned boxer and bounced a couple of crisp jabs off Hannibal’s forearms. As he stepped in to deliver an overhand right, Hannibal sidestepped and whipped a front snap kick into his gut. His enemy grunted, so Hannibal kicked him again. Backup Man had not drawn yet. Good.
No Neck lowered his guard and Hannibal jerked the man’s head back with a straight left. Dazed, No Neck charged, but Hannibal easily moved aside, pounding the back of his head as he went by. When No Neck wheeled around, Hannibal put an uppercut through his guard. It put the mob man on his butt.
Now Backup Man reached to his waistband, but Hannibal filled his own left fist with automatic first. “Don’t,” he said. “I’d have to kill you, then your partner. Why don’t you just come help him to his feet?”
When Backup Man came near, Ray slapped his head and took his gun. Then Hannibal motioned to him to help No Neck up.
“Now, I don’t know either of you, and I don’t want to know you,” Hannibal said. “But I want you to know me. Call your friends down in DC and ask them who Hannibal Jones is. Then cross this place off your list, understand? Because, my friend, if I have to come all the way back up here to talk to you, I will seriously fuck you up. Understand?”
The action had taken less than two minutes. Hannibal was not even breathing hard. After the two shakedown artists backed out of the room, Hannibal put his gun away. Moon regained his feet, using the bar for balance. His breathing was deep but ragged.
“Now, five minutes of your time?” Hannibal asked as if the unpleasant interruption had not happened.
“You kidding? After that, you can have all the time you want. Come back to my office.”
Quentin Moon’s office was brightly lit and colorfully decorated. Money was scattered across his desk, mixed in with cash register receipts and small notes, probably IOU’s. Moon lurched to his chair and waved Hannibal and Ray to two others.
“Those bent nose types been hassling me since I opened the place twenty years ago,” Moon said. “They come around every so often to slap me around. I learned long ago that if you say no and stick to it, they eventually decide you ain’t worth the hassle. But thanks for saving me some lumps.”
“My pleasure,” Hannibal said, his eyes following Moon across the floor. “So this was your place from the beginning?”
“You got it,” Moon said, returning with three beers and glasses. He handed Samuel Addams bottles to his guests, keeping a Miller Lite for himself.
Hannibal shared a smile with Ray while they opened and poured their brews. “So, Quentin, do you remember a kid named Bobby Newton?”
“Do I?” Moon pulled an Alka Seltzer packet out of his desk drawer and dropped the tablets into his beer. “That kid made me more money than anybody I ever had in the club, before or since. Everybody was looking for the new Al Green, and I had him right here in my place, three times a week for eight months. He had the soul, man, but when he wanted to, he could turn around and be as funky as Sly.”
Moon’s eyes drifted into the past while his beer threatened to boil over. The fizzing sound dominated the room for a moment. Abruptly he grabbed his glass and swallowed half its contents. Hannibal turned his head to hide his disgust.
“I know it’s been a long time, but his family’s lost track of him and I’m trying to find him. Did you know him well enough to have an idea where he went?”
“Hey, I knew Bobby pretty well,” Moon said, starting to search through a set of cabinets on the far side of his office. “Went over to his pad lots of times. Sat and listened to records and got high with him and his wife.”
“Wife?” Hannibal and Ray exchanged another stunned look. “Camille?”
“Who?” Moon asked. “No, her name was Barbie. Here, check this out.” He produced a rolled up poster. When he spread it against the closed cabinet door it revealed a four foot tall photo of “Bobby Newton”, now playing at the Moonglow. He looked so happy, so free, Hannibal understood why he chose to leave the life his father provided to make one for himself.
“Barbie was half black, half Latin?” Hannibal asked.
“Yeah, that’s the girl,” Moon said, laying the poster on his desk. “She really loved him. Never missed a show at the club.”
It made sense, Hannibal thought. A guy who would call himself Bobby Newton would call a girl named Barbie by the nickname Dolly. He was getting a picture of this kid as a sharp, rebellious, witty, talented guy. He could go anywhere.
“Did they ever talk about moving on to bigger things?”
“Not seriously,” Moon said, pouring the rest of his beer into his glass. “I don’t think fame and fortune was his thing. Bobby already had money from somewhere. More than I could pay him, that’s for sure. Besides, they were having too much fun here. I tell you, Barbie loved to watch him work on stage. They even hired a maid. The theory was, she would clean and help out while Barbie was pregnant, but after little Angela was born, she took care of her so Barbie could be here at the club when he was on.”
Hannibal emptied his glass and leaned forward in his chair to watch Moon’s eyes closely. “And where is Mister Bobby Newton now?”
Moon tipped his glass up too, then thumped it down on his desk. “Damned if I know. One night he just didn’t show up. The crowd was pretty pissed off, I’ll tell you. No call or anything. So I jumped in the jalopy and got on over there. Gone, the whole lot of them. Landlord, neighbors, nobody knew nothing.” Moon’s cheerful demeanor dipped then, his eyes cast down at the poster’s face. “You know, I thought we were friends. I mean, I know it was a tough time for the black white thing, but I thought we were friends. But he never said a word. Just vanished without a trace.”
Hannibal stood. “Nobody vanishes without a trace, Mister Moon. Everybody has to be somewhere. Laws of physics. If I can find some old neighbors or the landlord, there’s still a chance. Think you can find his old address?”
Moon appeared near tears as he pulled a note pad and pencil from under the traitorous poster. “I don’t need to find it. I know it like my own address. Here, and good luck. And if you find him,” Moon looked up with reddened eyes, “would you tell him some of his old friends would like to hear from him?”
The afternoon sun stabbed Hannibal’s eyes as they drove west down Orleans Street. They had the windows down to take advantage of the Spring breeze. The light wind carried with it the sounds of a series of boom boxes they passed. The effect was like being in a car with a driver who constantly changes the radio station. It also brought the intriguing smells of an endless series of dinners being started. Southern food, soul food, fried food and, once in a while, the tangy scent of barbecue.
“You sure you don’t need a map?” Hannibal asked from the back seat.
“Hannibal, I been driving a cab in this area for years. I know Baltimore as well as I know Washington. It ain’t far.”
“Okay,” Hannibal said, clenching his teeth against the thump of a pothole every bit as deep as any in DC. “I guess I expected him to be a bit more upscale.”
“Sorry,” Ray called from the front, lighting another smoke. “Once you pass Johns Hopkins it’s downhill from there. I don’t know, makes sense to me. The kid wanted to get as far away from his father’s world as he could, right? Join the revolution, get with the real people. He’d go looking for a real neighborhood.”
It made sense to Hannibal too. And unless much had changed in eighteen years, Jacob Mortimer had found what he was looking for. Hannibal could almost hear the income level drop as Orleans became Franklin Street. By the time Franklin turned into Edmonson, he felt right at home. This could be Anacostia, his neighborhood. Same people, same buildings, same sparse trees trying to survive at the edge of the sidewalk.
Ray turned a corner, then another, and Hannibal watched a kid exchange money for drugs with an even younger boy. Now every face he saw was darker than his own and the limo was getting hard looks from some of the passersby.
“Uh Oh,” Ray said, and Hannibal sat forward, looking around for trouble. He did not see anyone nearby who looked like a threat, so he checked the dashboard. Plenty of gas. No warning lights. But Ray was pulling over to the curb so maybe something was happening to the car.
“What is it?”
“Nothing wrong up here,” Ray said, “But I think you got a problem. We’re here.”
Hannibal checked the street number against the piece of paper he got from Moon. This was Jake Mortimer’s last known address. A four-story apartment building in the middle of a block of row houses. He had lived on the first, which was now the only floor completely intact. The place was unoccupied. Large signs on the door and the boards over the front windows declared this building condemned.