that he was the center of attention, Greene grinned mischievously, his eyes twinkling like a small child’s at a birthday party. When he could hold it in no longer, he blurted the secret. “I went through the back wall.”
Jones laughed in a disbelieving tone. “Who are you, the Kool-Aid guy? I don’t remember seeing any Negro-shaped holes in the back room.”
But Greene stuck by his story. “How hard did ya look?”
“Pretty damn hard.”
“Apparently not hard enough, because I got my ass out.”
Payne joined Greene in laughter. “He’s got you there, Sherlock. I guess you aren’t the infallible detective after all.”
Jones leaned forward to object. “Yeah, but—”
“Actually,” Payne interrupted, “why don’t you let him explain things? Maybe you can learn a thing or two from the big man.”
Jones rolled his eyes while he waited for Greene to begin.
“Thank you, Jon. I’d love to help him out. When I got into the back, I did as you asked. I looked for anything suspicious, but there was nothing there but a bathroom and a closet.”
“Right,” Jones blurted. “That’s what I found, too.”
“So, like I said, I went into the bathroom to take care of my business, and—boom! crash!—I heard a gunshot then glass breaking in the front. I wanted to come out to check on things, but my pants were around my ankles, and that slowed me down a bit.”
“I bet it did,” Jones muttered.
“By the time I got my pants up, I heard a number of shots. Glass was breaking, walls were shattering, chaos! At that point, I assumed you guys were dead. I mean, come on! How was I supposed to know that you were commandos in a former life? Anyway, I figured I needed to get out of the place without going out the front door, right? I remembered from when I walked into the shop that there was a historical landmark plaque on the front wall, and it said the building used to be a part of the Underground Railroad.”
“Seriously?” Jones asked.
Greene nodded. “Like I told you guys, I’ve been doing a lot of research on my hometown, and one of the things that fascinates me was New Orleans’ role in the slave trade. A number of ports on the Gulf of Mexico were notorious for bringing slaves into this country, but at the same time, a number of ports were used to smuggle slaves out. Shit, there was so much diversity in this city during the eighteen hundreds that people often confused slaves with their masters. In fact, there was one period, in 1803, when ownership of New Orleans passed from Spain to France to the United States in less than a month’s time. If a city doesn’t even know what country it belongs to, how’s it gonna keep track of the people?”
Jones tried to absorb all of the information. Historical facts and local folklore normally fascinated him, but in this case, he wanted to get to the important stuff. He wanted to know how Greene got out of the damn shop without being seen. “Levon, not to be rude, but—”
“I know, I know. You want to know how I did it. Fine, I’ll tell you. The landmark plaque clicked in my mind, and I remembered going on a tour or two where there was a trapdoor or a hidden set of steps that allowed fugitives to slip out of the place undetected. And guess what?”
Payne answered. “You found something.”
“Exactly! The rear wall of the closet was actually a door. A well-concealed door.”
“Once you got outside, did you try to get the shooter?”
“To be honest with you, no. My nickname is the Buffalo Soldier, but I don’t have much experience with killing people. And the truth is, I thought you guys were already dead.”
“We probably should’ve been,” Jones admitted. “A well-trained gunman would’ve picked us off clean. If that was his goal.”
Greene frowned. “What does that mean? You don’t think he was aiming for you?”
“At this point, we don’t know. What would be the purpose of killing Jon if he hasn’t paid a ransom yet? If the kidnappers want his millions, they better not kill him. Right?”
The comment took Greene by surprise. “You’ve got millions? I thought you were some kind of unemployed street baller. You really got that many bucks in the bank?”
“I have a nice nest egg, yeah.”
“I’ll be damned! A rich Rambo! What the hell did you do? Auction your soldiering skills to the highest bidder? Or did you just sell a stolen warhead?”