The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do (20 page)

He raised his pistol with a slack arm and fired the three SOS shots of one in distress, into the sinkhole tangle of the Marais du Croche.

The Coming Days

T
HE HEAT
hung around until it was no longer mentioned as weather but only as some cosmic revenge. The big brown garbage scow of a river began to steam with malodorous ferment, and one Nelda Lomeli, who had just the week before dredged out a channel cat with whiskers that would shame a weeping willow, and that dressed out to a grand eighty-four shit-fattened pounds, returned to the same spot. She cast into the water and when she began to reel in, found that she was snagged. Then she thought that perhaps it was another monster cat, and pulled hand over hand on the thick-twine line. Whatever it was lifted off the bottom and rode with the current and she stepped into the flow to grapple with it. She did not scream when the head and shoulders appeared, for she was a longtime river woman, but she didn’t want to touch it.

Finally she dragged the bloated body to the lip of the sandbar, and Duncan Cobb, with a whole lot of extra mouth where his throat used to be, was found.

Alvin Rankin was now dead to the withered-wreath stage, and downtown, in the white stone City Hall, Eddie Barclay, a terra-cotta runner-up, was sworn in as his replacement. Mayor Crawford proclaimed it a continuation of Rankin’s good work, and Barclay, as his first official act, gave the Music Center contract to Dineen Construction of Hawthorne Hills and was instantly free of debt.

Over where the windows had bars and shoestrings were considered to be a temptation to take the easy way out, Jewel Cobb sat awaiting trial. He knew nothing, everyone he could finger was dead, and his
ignorance was so convincing and total that he had little to bargain with. So he was pleaded guilty but not special, although he knew that a jury of his peers, even selected by the random dozen, would recognize the punch line way before the end of
that
joke.

And the baffling events of summer had another daffy moment when Steve Roque carried his trash to the curbside bins but found the twist tops of the garbage bags to be undone and paused to tie them, only to be shot for it under the arm, in the side, and just above the knee by some invisibles, who remained so. He would live, but never talk, and it was considered to be injury by misadventure.

But the town went on, Saint Bruno sucked up and staggered tall, for there were regular worries more pressing—like the floods that would come as they always had, and those pushed out by the rising tide would once more be driven before it, forced to connive toward all those higher grounds…

On a Sunday of continuing punishment, Rene Shade, out for a peaceful drive, passed the Catfish Bar and saw his brother in the doorway. He pulled into the lot and let himself in. Tip was sweeping the floor, all alone.

“I’ve been wanting to see you,” Shade said.

Tip paused with the broom in his hand, then dropped it.

“You’ve had plenty of time. Haven’t seen you in weeks. I’ve been expectin’ you.”

“Fix me a drink.”

“Why not.”

When Tip went behind the bar, Shade followed. He leaned against the cooler and watched Tip lift a bottle of rum.

“I had to kill a man because you lied to me, Tip.”

“Don’t lay that off on me, li’l blood. That’s your job. You picked it.”

“Cobb was right there in your kitchen and you didn’t tell me.”

Tip scooted the rum along the bar.

“I didn’t really know what was goin’ on, man.”

“You could be busted for that.”

“Bullshit. It’d never stick and you know it. How’s your drink?”

“I’m very angry.”

“Nothin’ you can do about it. Now drink your drink and get—”

Shade’s right hand banged the heavy whiskey glass on his brother’s jaw. The big man was stunned but managed to throw a windy left that spun him when it missed, and Shade stepped in with a pop to the mouth and a quick knee to the groin. As Tip began to slide down Shade dropped the glass, then threw an overhand right at his dodgeless brother, and knocked him cold.

He stood there over the sack of flesh that was related to him in too many ways and began to shake. Blood was flooding from his brother’s mouth and his eyeballs shuddered behind their lids.

He shoved open the cooler and grabbed a handful of ice, then knelt to Tip. He cradled his head in his lap and held the ice to the torn mouth.

“You dumb bastard,” he said, his eyes blinking rapidly, “I love you.”

MUSCLE FOR THE WING

“Why, a human being should be the most fabulous creature of all, which is the way the Man Upstairs intended when He put the show on the road in the first place. But what happens is, one human gets to plotting with another human and maybe another and another, and after a while they all decide to be generals. So right away they form a combine in order to get the Hungarian lock on the mooches and the suckers, and that kind of action touches off all the war jolts from here to Zanzibar. That’s human endeavor for you.
”

—M
INNESOTA
F
ATS

1

W
ISHING TO
avoid any risk of a snub at The Hushed Hill Country Club, the first thing Emil Jadick shoved through the door was double-barreled and loaded. He and the other two Wingmen were inappropriately attired in camouflage shirts and ski masks, but the gusto with which they flaunted their firearms squelched any snide comments from the guests seated around the poker table.

Jadick took charge of the rip-off by placing both cool barrels against the neck of a finely coiffed, silver-haired gent, and saying loudly, “Do I have your attention? We’re robbin’ you assholes—any objections?”

The table was a swank walnut octagon, with drink wells and stacks of the ready green on a blue felt top. The gentlemen who had assembled around it for an evening of high-stakes Hold ’Em were well dressed, well fed, and well heeled, but now their mouths hung loose and their poolside tans paled.

“Hands on the table, guys,” Jadick said. “And don’t any of you act one-armed.” A short man with an air of compact power, Jadick moved with brisk precision and spoke calmly. He pulled back the hammers on his archaic but awesome weapon and said, “Scoop the fuckin’ manna, boys.”

“Check,” said Dean Pugh. He and Cecil Byrne, his fellow Wingman, went slowly around the table shoving wads of cash into a gym bag that had St. Bruno High Pirates stenciled on the side.

Twelve hands were palm-down on the blue felt. Manicured fingers
twitched in obvious attempts to covertly twist wedding bands and pinkie rings so that the flashy side was down.

Jadick watched the fingers and rings business until two or three had indeed been twisted into seeming insignificance, and the owners began to relax. He then said, “Get all the jewelry, too.”

“Check,” said Pugh, a daffy man who oddly relished the orderliness of military jargon.

Pugh and Byrne both carried darkly stylish pistols, and as they went around the table they pressed them to the ears of the players. While they raked up the money and jerked fine gems from plump fingers, Jadick scanned the room, nodding his head at how closely it resembled what he had expected. Tournament trophies and low-round medals were enclosed in a huge glass case, along with antique wooden-shafted clubs and other golfing memorabilia. A long horseshoe bar of richly hued wood halved the room and several conference tables were dotted about the other side. Just beyond the poker table, nailed at a dominating height on the wall, there were scads of stern portraits, presumably of the exclusionary but sporty founders.

“Hah!” Jadick snorted. Some long-festering desire took hold of him and he shoved the shotgun against the neck of the privileged man before him until he was rudely rubbing an upscale face against the tabletop. “I bet all of you sell city real estate to niggers and live in the ’burbs—am I right?”

One of the wide-eyed, harkening faces turned to Jadick. This man was younger than the other players, with a big bottle of Rebel Yell in front of him and an empty spot where his small heap of money had been. His hair was closely cropped and blond and his cheeks were full and flushed.

“Your accent,” he said, “it ain’t from around here. It’s northern. That’s why you don’t know you’re makin’ a mistake, man—this is a protected game.”

“Really?” Jadick said. “If this is ‘
protected
,’ I’m goin’ to get over real good down here.”

Despite the low hum of air-conditioning, the victims sweated gushingly
and shook with concern, for, not only were they being shorn of their gambling money, but history was staggering and order decaying before their eyes. The swinging side of the St. Bruno night world had been run as smoothly and nearly as openly as a pizza franchise for most of a decade and now these tourists from the wrong side of the road somewhere else were demonstrating the folly of such complacence. Auguste Beaurain, the wizened little genius of regional adoration, had run the upriver dagos, the downriver riffraff, the homegrown Carpenter brothers, and the out-of-state Dixie Mafia from this town and all its profitable games in such an efficient and terrifying manner that no one had truly believed he would ever again be tested this side of the pearly gates.

But here and now these strangers, too ignorant of local folklore to know how much danger they were in, were taking the test and deciding on their own grades.

“I think we should make ’em drop trou,” Pugh said. He widened an eyehole in his ski mask with a finger from his gun-free hand. “These are the sort of hick sharpies who figure money belts are real nifty.”

Jadick nodded and stepped back so that he had a clear shot at all concerned.

“A fine notion,” he said. He raised the barrel up and down. “You heard him, dudes—stand up and strip.” Jadick added scornfully, “Don’t be shy.”

At this coupling of humiliation with monetary loss, there were some sighs and whimpers. But all of the men stood and unbuckled their pants; then, five of the six dropped them to their ankles.

“What’d I say?” Pugh said. “There’s a money belt.” Pugh advanced on the man with the thick white money belt and pulled on it and it stretched like a big fish story. “What the hell?”

“Man,” said the shamefaced tubby, as the released elastic snapped back, “man, it’s a corset. Over the winter I got fat.”

“Shit,” Pugh said, then noticed that the blond man who’d earlier yammered about “protected games” had yet to bare his butt to financial scrutiny. “Say, Jim,” he said harshly, “take ’em down!”

“Come on,” Cecil said, “I got the dough—let’s cut.”

“Not ’til this guy does what I said. He’s holdin’ out.”

The blond man’s face was red and wet. Fear was wringing his features like a sink-washed sock. He was too jammed up to make a definite response: he looked from one face to another; studied his feet; blinked rapidly; then said: “This is a protected game. I’m telling you all…”

“Shut up, Gerry,” the corseted man said. “If you’d been at the door like…”

Jadick rapped the shotgun barrel on the table.

“He’s the guard,” he said. “Get his piece.”

But as that final sentence was still being uttered, the blond, with one hand holding his unbuckled trousers, slid the other hand behind his back where holsters clipped on, and began to spin away, grunting and sucking for air.

Pugh screamed, “Yeah, right!,” then cut him down before his pistol cleared his shirttails, spotting his shots, tearing the man open in the belly, the thigh, one wrist and, finally, just above the left ear.

The body slumped against the wall in an acutely angled posture that nothing alive could withstand. Blood pumped up out of the wrist onto the wall, and instantly washed down in a wide smear.

“Anybody else?” Pugh asked, expecting, as a response, silence, which he received. The Jockey-shorted high rollers were immobilized by the noise, the blood, and the lingering scent of gunfire.

“Hit the door,” Jadick said gruffly. He used the gun barrel to point the way. “Let’s go.” He was not upset that murder had been required, for, in the short run, the only run that really mattered, it might set a useful precedent. Yeah, the hicks will know that some new rough element has dropped in on their town. “I’ll be right behind.”

Pugh and Byrne backed through the door while Jadick acted as rear guard. He looked out of the Chinese-shaped eyeholes and saw so many of the things he’d never liked reflected in these tony, awestruck, half-dressed money-bag types that he couldn’t pass up a chance at scot-free revenge.

*     *     *

The silver-haired man whose neck he’d used for a gun rest was at a handy remove so he hopped forward and chopped blue steel across his fine, blue-chip nose, heard the crack and quash and knew the gent would now have a common Twelfth Street beak he would be ribbed about on the nineteenth hole from here ’til the grave. With considerable satisfaction he watched the dude sink to his knees, torrents of red ruining his tasteful silk knit ensemble. He did a little swivel, flourishing that ominous piece, and all of the men went belly-down on the carpet with their hands uselessly over their heads, and Jadick, as a signature of his scorn, blasted the fancy tabletop, scattering cards and whiskey-sour glasses, a liter of Rebel Yell, a pint of Maalox, and the thoughts of all those prone below him. The blue felt was tufted and ripped and unsuitable for any more games, and Jadick, as he left, said, “The universe owes me plenty, motherfuckers, and I aim to collect!”

2

P
ARADISE MIGHT
be a setup like this, Shade thought as he swiveled on his barstool. That is, if paradise turned out to be a long, narrow tavern on the near northside of a grumpy downriver town, that attracted a primarily female clientele who packed the joint to drink and gossip, smoke and be seen but not picked up. The place never echoed with come-on lines, and unescorted males were not encouraged to hang around. Beauticians, secretaries, a lawyer or two, frazzled housewives, and sorefooted hustling gals sat on the stuffed chairs and bamboo thrones lined along the walls, their drinks on small white side tables. Many thumbed through copies of
Vogue, True Romance, Sports Illustrated
, and
People
that were left in stacks on the corners of the black bar. A sign above the pyramid of wineglasses behind the counter said,
MAGGIE’S KEYHOLE, LADIES WELCOME
.