“Hello Missah Barker? This here Jean Deaucette, I reckon you-all remember me? Yessir, I’m in New York, and I wuz wonderin’ if I could come see you; yessir, it seems like I need to be here in New York fo’ while, and that bein’ so, I’d like to take you up on your kind offer sir, if it still open?”
*
Jerome Barker put down the handset and grinned happily.
“Good news?” smiled the tiny, pixy-ish girl sitting opposite him, and the pretty, dark haired girl sitting next to her cocked her head curiously at the expression on his face.
“Oh yes, Moon, very good news, very good news indeed! Kelly, an old friend’s coming to see you, all the way from New Orleans! Yes, my dear, Jean Deaucette’s going to be your new best friend, sweetheart, he’ll make sure you don’t get into any more little scrapes! I’m sure you two are going to be the best of friends, oh indeed yes!”
Moon glanced curiously at the half apprehensive, half worshipful expression on Kelly’s face, and cocked an eyebrow at Jerome.
“I take it this is a good thing?” she ventured, and Jerome Barker beamed at her.
“Oh yes, darling girl; you have Cloud and Tommy, now Kelly’s got Big Jean Deaucette, it’s all working out so well! I’d ask Cloud to make some coffee to celebrate, but I’m still recovering from the last time. Please…?”
He gazed at her imploringly and Moonbeam O’Shaughnessy, the world’s most sought-after teen-fashion model, grinned at her husband and brother Cloud’s injured expression as she began collecting and washing the used cups from the cluttered breakfast table.
*
Life in New York had, really speaking, been almost the way it was back in the Big Easy; same vermin, different accent, and the same temptations, vices, and squalid, furtive little dens to indulge same. The way John saw it, if he was to be any use as a trouble-shooter, it was down to him to learn the names, faces and hangouts where the stuff he was supposed to keep his charges away from was happening.
It soon became apparent to the specialists who preyed on his employers’ clients that there was a new gun in town, and it didn’t do to come to his attention; a couple of the more aggressive or reckless ones learned the hard way that while big John B might smile mildly and speak like a backwoods hick, he knew ways of dissuading them that made them wish real quick they’d kept down and stayed quiet.
His colleagues and fellow travellers, both within Baxter-Harkoff and the other specialist operators who did what he did, quickly learned that John Bastine might be a newbie, but he knew his stuff, and his instincts were more than a match for any of theirs when it came to reading the streets and sniffing out trouble before it began.
Within a very short while, word on the streets and around the clubs, hot bars, and VIP lounges had one thing to say about the newbie: John Bastine was bad news, and it paid to keep off his radar; his charges were in town to play, party, spend big, and go home safe, and he knew a thousand and one real painful ways of making sure things stayed that way.
At home, though, John was a different man entirely; mama-Jane needed her family to be united now, but most of all, she needed him to be his baby sister’s big brother, the older male presence and support she so badly needed, and so John quickly became what his family needed most. Jane knew what he did for a living, she didn’t like what he did, that world frightened her, and it dismayed her that he had to do such work, but she knew John needed to work, and she needed him to be at peace with his life if he was ever going to be part of his family again.
Watching him gently teasing his sister, or sitting with his arm around her, swaying as he sang softly in that beguiling, musical French dialect he’d grown-up speaking, or watching her face redden and her eyes water as she gamely ate her way through the red-hot shrimp etouffee she’d insisted on sharing with him, or frowning over her books as they tried to unravel an equation for her math homework, she felt happy and at peace, confident that her children were there for each other.
So she kept her peace and watched him flourish and grow, amazed at how easily the boy from the bayou managed to fit so completely into New York, and the speed with which he’d taken to the city, wearing it almost like a second skin.
Justine was enthralled by his life and the stories he’d tell her, after an afternoon of pestering, about which pop idol, fashion model, or movie star he’d spent the night watching and shadowing, begging him for autographs and mementoes, and Johnny, much as he disliked the idea, would oblige; Justine had asked him for something, he would get it for her; it was that simple. His charges, usually grateful for his pulling them out of their latest scrape, bout of unwelcome attention, or brush with the law, were only too happy to cooperate, and Justine, like any young teenage girl would, hero-worshipped the man who spent his life so close to the stars.
*
Jane’s death when it happened was as shocking as it was random; a simple accident, a misstep on a slippery, rain-slick sidewalk on her way back from the store on the corner, and a truck that had no time to avoid her as she fell into its path, and John and Justine were alone, fate taking their mother away just when Justine needed her most. It was only a week before Spring Break, and John, to treat his mother and kid sister, had bought a week at a resort on Nantucket Island, a quiet beach getaway for Jane and Justine to recharge and be alone together.
Instead, he’d had the nightmarish task of calling her out of her class, breaking the news to her, then taking the grief-stricken, hysterical girl home to calm her and try and help her past the huge, unbearable loss they had to endure.
Justine was just sixteen when Jane died and it fell to John now to be her parent, guardian, guide, and everything else Jane had been. The prospect frightened him; coming to New York to be the man of the family had been enough of a wrench. It had frightened him, but, in a manner so typical of him, he’d pushed the fear down inside and stepped-up. Now the fear was back, even bigger than before; how the hell was he supposed to be a parent when he’d only just learned how to be a big brother?
They stumbled along together, making mistakes, making them right, growing together, and growing apart as well as the inevitable changes happened. John wasn’t at all happy about her dating, and made no secret of the fact, while Justine in turn went out of her way to show him she was an adult, and just as cool and capable as he. Their battles were epic, and usually one-sided; when push came to shove, Johnny fought her all the way, but eventually conceded, because he loved his baby sister and only wanted her to be happy.
One boy in particular made John’s radar stand up and twitch: Giancarlo Pellini. All her other boyfriends had been three-date wonders, but this guy was different; he kept coming back, and something about his smug, entitled behaviour rubbed raw edges on every one of John’s instincts. The son of her father’s business associate and boyhood friend, he was a bad one through and through, spoiled, wilful, and arrogant, and he was no good for her, so when she came to John and told him that when she graduated high school she was marrying Giancarlo, he reacted predictably enough.
Justine gave him time and room to get used to the idea, but he didn’t, he just couldn’t. The situation wasn’t helped when he took Carlo aside while Justine was having her dress fitting with her girlfriends and Carlo’s mother, and told him that the day he hurt Justine was the day they were going to find him head-down inside a Louisiana bull ‘gator, and if he thought he was just blowing smoke, he was welcome to try him.
Justine found out about the conversation and tore into him, while Carlo stood by and smirked, until John grinned at him over Justine’s head, casually scratched the side of his left eye, and winked at him; Carlo stopped smirking and went ashen-pale; he knew full well Big John B had just told him that next time he tried to set Justine against him, it was going to cost him an eye. Any further attempts by Carlo Pellini to make John look bad in front of his sister died unborn; Carlo knew Johnny Deaucette didn’t make idle threats.
Time passed, Justine forgave him, things calmed down, but John never managed to lose or allay his misgivings when it came to Carlo Pellini; he just didn’t like or trust him, and lived on tenterhooks, waiting for the call telling him the marriage was set to crash and burn, and the inevitable fallout from Justine.
*
As Johnny sang, he felt Justine slowly loosening up, easing her death-grip on his arm, her hand instead lightly tapping his arm in time with his. John smiled gently, a faraway look on his face as he remembered Justine as a young teen crouching behind him on the couch, swaying and beating time on his back and shoulders as he sang this same song to their mother.
When he got to the end of the song, he looked down, to see her looking back up at him instead of burying her head against his chest and turning her face away from him. John smiled and started another song, a softer, simpler tune he’d learned as a lullaby to put his little cousin Renee to sleep, one he used to sing to Justine too, and he saw the corners of her lips quirk in a fleeting smile before she clouded-up again. John stopped singing and shook his head, before smoothing her hair away from her eyes and tapping her lip gently with his forefinger.
“Justy, baby-girl, it’s OK, it’s me, you don’t ever have to hide nuthin’ from me, ever; you my boo’sha’, I love you most of all, and I ain’t never gonna think bad o’ you, so whyn’t you gimme that smile again?”
Justine grinned weakly at his put-on accent, and relaxed even further; now she was curled into his arm, not huddled into a tense, tight ball, and John could hug her properly at last. They sat like that for a few minutes, Justine relaxed but unmoving, and showing no sign of wanting to get off him, and John waited, her slight weight troubling him not at all, knowing that when she was ready, she’d start telling him what was going on with her.
The silence built, until it was almost tangible, a huge, soft weight pressing down on both of them. Johnny had just about decided she was going to lie there like that all morning, when the slightest noise, the soft sound of her indrawn breath, focused him on her again.
“Do you hate me, Johnny B? Do I make you sick? I must be sick, doing what I was doing, do you think I’m sick, or wrong in the head?” she murmured, her tone fearful and guilty.