Excerpt: The Big Easy

¬ It was during the last few years of the jazz clubs and speakeasies when Louis died. He’d led a good life, or as good a life as anyone could lead when they were half-drunk most days and not much more sober the rest of it. He ran one of the barbershops that acted as one of the covers for Laud, since the place was so big it sat underneath half the street, and there were at least a half dozen ways to get in, if you knew how to ask. It was the best and worst kept secret in the city, and none of us were half surprised when it got shut down, but it had lasted quite a bit longer than many of the others. Beaker’s, The Trombone Club, and Duke’s had all been closed down the year before, and it was only by the grace of God, or rather, his counterpart, that kept Laud going for as long as it did.
But that’s ancient history. What really matters, or rather, what matters in particular, is the fact that Louis lived during and right there, and died, the day before the cops flooded the hallowed halls of his favorite spot to get liquored up. Some say it was the heartbreak of it. After all, he’d met Maybelle there, and after her death, Laud was just about all that kept the old man going. Others chalked it up to the more probable, but much less romantic notion of the old man’s organs dying on him, and thus taking the rest with him.
All in all, the fact was that he died. Just fell asleep one night and never woke up, and people said that if that wasn’t the damn near best way to go, if you had to go at all, then they didn’t know what was. And that was fine for him, but the curse of it all was the fact that old Louis was the last of the Jean family, even if they didn’t want to acknowledge him as a son of the family anymore. He’d gone and run off as a child, never looking back, and the family had written him off as a lazy no-good, assuming he’d be dead within the week. He was only 8, after all.
But Louis made it another forty or so years, until all the other Jeans had died, and the same fate finally came upon him. So, people assumed that the dubious half-truths of the family, much including a hefty amount of scandal were finally at an end. Old women spat, and old men crossed themselves, and thanked the lord the bastard family was gone.
And that would have been all fine and good, except that one of the bastards, it turned out, was still alive.