The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do (31 page)

The Boylin’ Kettle was basically the living room of a three-room house, with two refrigerators for coolers and a flat piece of plywood laid over three flour hogsheads to make a bar. The walls were the same color of green that would have set in on yesterday’s fatally wounded, and there were half a dozen mounted fish on them gathering dust. A large upright radio quietly played some Belton Richard chanky-chank.

“Come on this side of the rail, Jethro,” Shade said to the bartender, who was an impressively moustached man, pushing seventy and slowly wasting. When he had joined the three patrons, Shade said, “Get on the floor, hands behind your heads.” The quartet of bossed boozers acted as if they might raise an objection to these proceedings, but this notion was promptly overruled when Shade bandied the shotgun about. “Facedown,” he said, and they silently obeyed.

Now in control of things, Shade scanned the room and the bar and noted that every one of these swamp rats had been drinking bottles of Michelob and that there were cases of the same stacked between the refrigerators. Instantly curious about this astonishing market penetration by such a Yupscale brew, Shade asked, “Y’all hijack a beer truck lately, or what?”

The answer came from Gillette, who said, “If we did it wasn’t in St. Bruno, man.”

This brought Shade to Shuggie’s side, and he nodded at his partner. “Ask him some pointed questions, Shug.”

“Were you in town yesterday, man-sewer?” Shuggie asked.

Gillette was doing a fair imitation of stone, and only his lips moved when he answered, “No, man. I been here, swillin’ the Michelob, all this time.”

Shuggie grabbed Gillette by the collar, then booted the chair from beneath him and pulled on the collar simultaneously, toppling him to the floor, jamming his face to the wood.

“Lie!” Shuggie said loudly, then fired a shot next to Gillette’s head, raising an energetic billow of dust. “A little birdie seen you, Bob. Little birdies don’t lie. They ain’t got it in ’em. You do.”

Gillette’s lips had split when his face met the floor and an elastic blood drool stretched down his chin and back to the ground. He shook his head groggily, whipping the bloodstrand like a lariat, and flinched when Shuggie blasted another round.

Shade turned to the cowering quartet and said, “I could grind all of y’all with one twitch, so stay down.” Then he leaned to Gillette. “See here, sport,” he said, “I don’t want to have to watch you stain this nice wood floor from wall to wall. Y’all got yourselves a sweet drinkin’ spot here and it’d be a shame if in years to come ol’ P’pere over there had to bore himself and every new patron with a long sad explanation for your stains, man. So answer up and I’ll hold Shuggie off you.”

With bright, glassy eyes Gillette turned and faced Shade, one hand on the floor, the other swatting at the elastic bloodstrand, strumming it like the E-string on an upright bass.

“You changed parts,” he said. “First he was Jeff and you was Mutt. Now he’s comin’ on Mutt and you get to be Jeff.” He laughed. “I seen this good man-bad man thing before.”

Shade stood tall and straight and kicked Gillette in the stomach. He then lifted his leg with his knee held out before him and jabbed his toes into Gillette’s chest.

“It’s Mutt and Mutt time, coonass!” he said.

Shuggie put some Italian shoe leather to work on Gillette’s back, and Shade flicked his toes into his belly, keeping up the thumping reel until the tush hog tuckered out and collapsed on his side, moaning bluesily and sucking for sweet air.

Shade took a glance at the four prone bystanders and said, “Y’all be still and mind your own business.” He then bent forward and leaned over Gillette. “We ain’t near tired yet, so you best tell us something secret that we really,
really
want to know.”

“Aw, man, I heard, I heard about it,” Gillette said. He held his hands to his belly and curled his legs up to block any further dance steps to his guts. His head was sideways to the floor and crimson slobber was smeared on his cheeks. “There ain’t no problem with my left tit,” he said and tapped some fingers to his heart. “My left tit ain’t got no dog in it, but I ain’t doin’ no more time for another crime I never even got the fun of pullin’.”

The radio crackled with D. L. Menard droning “The Back Door,” and a long beam of light from the sliding sun came through the southwest window and glinted off the cases of beer stacked between the refrigerators. The four men who stood a good chance of becoming possibly innocent victims, kept their hands on their heads and their noses to the wood and their opinions to themselves.

“I heard today what happen last night,” Gillette said, “but day last I seen a man I know who whisper to me that a man he knows is in town who shouldn’t be.” Accompanied by a couple of convincing grimaces, Gillette sat up. “Oh, you town dudes—I don’t fuck with you. Believe you that. This man who is in the town was not so long ago in the federal place, eh? Braxton. What I am told is that he run with a prison clique calls itself The Wing.”

“Where’d your friend see this fella?” Shuggie asked.

“Buyin’ gin and lime juice at Langlois’ Liquor, there. In town.” Gillette spit a heavy globule of blood and saliva that spun through the air and hit the wall a good ten feet away. “He had a partner, and this clique is s’posed to be dangerous more than a little.”

“Are they the fellas we’re lookin’ for?” Shade asked.

“That I don’t know for positive,” Gillette said. “But they was in town, here, and they don’t belong here.”

Shade and Shuggie exchanged glances and with barely perceptible nods they agreed to several things: that Gillette’s info was interesting;
that he was probably not involved; and that they wouldn’t be capping anyone in The Boylin’ Kettle.

“You hear a name on the out-of-town dude?” Shuggie asked.

“Well,” Gillette said, “it was Cecil something.” Gillette kept his face down and used his fingers to swab at the blood drools on his face. “Don’t hit me no more, eh? Could be I don’t know nothin’ else.”

“Okay,” Shade said and walked over to the prone men. He stood near their feet with the shotgun loosely aimed at their backs. “Cough up all y’all’s car keys, hear me? One at a time you’re going to reach into your pockets and fish out your keys and toss ’em on the floor.” He nudged the man on the left with a foot to the ankle. “Startin’ with you, sport.”

While Shade did his forcible valet thing, Shuggie lifted the chair from the floor and said, “Have a seat, Bobby. You got lucky last time and I don’t believe you’d be stretchin’ your good gris-gris this tight again.” Gillette sat in the chair and slumped forward onto the table, a small afterflow of the crimson juice flecking the magazine he’d been reading peaceably when the day had so suddenly gone awful on him. Shuggie said, “But as you see we
can
find you, and if you bullshitted us we’ll be back,
Rowbear
. And prob’ly we’ll be all bummed out and hurt, too, hurt that a
confrère
like you would mislead us.”

“I didn’t, Zeck.”

Shade had scooped up all the keys except Gillette’s but the stomped man put his on the table without being asked. Shade stuffed all the keys into his pants pockets.

“I’ll drop ’em in the middle of the road just before the blacktop starts,” he said. He then rapped the sawed-off barrel on the tabletop, drawing Gillette’s eyes up to his. “Now don’t even think about loadin’ up and comin’ into Frogtown lookin’ for us, man, ’cause your luck might run out and you’d
find
us.”

With that the inquiring duo backed to the door where Shuggie paused and said, “This was only bizness, guys—no hard feelings, all right?”

From The Boylin’ Kettle to the paved road Shuggie’s El Dorado whipped up a dust trail and slalomed through the curves. He hit the
brakes when he sighted blacktop and Shade rolled his window down and tossed a jangling variety of car keys into the dust. Then Shuggie tromped on the gas and swung off the soft dirt and onto the hard road, and roared toward town, displaying a road-hog outlook by taking the middle of the blacktop for his lane.

“We done good,” he said to Shade. “You ever heard of this thing, this gang—The Wing?”

“No,” Shade said. The shotgun rested on the floorboard between his feet just in case the coonasses knew some secret shortcut and lay in wait, fomenting an unpleasant reunion. “There’s dozens of those prison cliques, Shuggie. The Wing I don’t know.”

“We’ll ask around,” Shuggie said. The pint of cherry vodka was on the front seat and he lifted it. “I gotta say, that was purty damn slick,” he said, laughing. When he saw that Shade was unsmiling, he added, “Cut the long-face phony thing, Rene—I know you. You were wired and primed back there, man. You had your rumble hat on and don’t bother tellin’ me I’m wrong.”

Shade did laugh and stretched his legs and leaned back in the soft plush seat.

“That business points up a po-lease man’s constant dilemma,” he said, laughing with a combination of relief and exhilaration. “Anybody who’s ever done any crime knows that it
can be
a fuckin’ hoot.”

“We both been knowin’
that
for a while,” Shuggie said. “Sometimes I recall things we done years ago, Rene, when we was a team and hungry.” He slowly shook his curlyhaired head. “I never feel ashamed
at all
.”

“I believe you,” Shade said, mirthlessly, staring out the window. “But sometimes
I
do.”

The day had zipped by Shade, lulled as he was by fatigue, propelled as he was by speed, and as the sun dove behind the tall marsh trees and the shadows loomed long and deep across the road he traveled down, he retreated once again into memory. It was the day of Shuggie’s wedding to his astutely chosen bride, and St. Peter’s was SRO, for the Langlois clan was large and widespread with kin in every quarter of the city, and the Zecks had a few friends, too. Shade had been put into a
tux as a groomsman, along with Rudy Regot and Kenny Poncelet, while Shuggie’s older brother Bill had been best man. That had been the last time Shade and Shuggie had been close, and after Father Marty Perroni had legally linked Zeck to Langlois, they’d all gone to a reception in The Huey Long Room of The St. Bruno Hotel and everyone was there: Auguste Beaurain sipped a glass of Champale while his then chief lieutenant, Denis Figg, who was soon to disappear during the unpleasantness with the upriver dagos, hovered nearby; and old Mayor Atlee Yarborough had acted real “just folks” and goosed a teenaged bridesmaid, repeatedly, to her consternation and the voters’ joy; and Shade and Shuggie and Kenny Poncelet who died at Quong Tri and Tip and How Blanchette and the whole cast from the melodrama of childhood, had put Cold Duck away until the cows came home and the groom had required pouring into a rented black sedan, and Hedda had driven off toward a supposed honeymoon at Panama Beach.

Now, straddling that little white line toward Frogtown, Shade said, “You ever tell your father-in-law about all the times we ripped him off?”

“No, I never did.”

“You don’t think he’d find it enlightening? Or funny?”

Shuggie grunted, smiling.

“Actually, Daddy Langlois has bitched about the neighborhood thieves plenty, but I never say anything, although Hedda knows. I thought it might seem endearing, you know, like an old movie, so I told her one time.” Shuggie took a sip of cherry vodka. “She’s been holdin’ it over my head ever since.”

“I haven’t seen Hedda to talk to in years,” Shade said. “She always says, ‘Hi, Rene,’ and keeps going when I run into her.”

“What’d you expect? You’re a cop. Nobody likes cops. Cops cause nothin’ but trouble.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Shade said lightly, “but how
is
Hedda?”

“Fine, fine. She still likes to grease up and sit on the hog of an evenin’, but we been married forever it seems like, man.”

“Since what? Nineteen?”

“Yeah. Since the fun old days.”

Soon they were within the city limits, back in Frogtown, rumbling over those thumpety-thumpety bricks that had been laid down so long ago, and Shuggie said, “Someday you’re goin’ to explain to me why you’re a cop. Why that is, is because I can still remember when you and me plotted and plotted in our kid way, you know, dreamin’ of growin’ up and shovin’ Mr. B. and Steve Roque and all those bossmen out of the boat and into the river.”

“And we’d be top dogs,” Shade said. “I remember when we dreamed that trash.”

There were a couple of inches of sweetish booze left in the bottle and Shuggie held it in his hand.

“We figured we could outsmart ’em and take ’em off once we got seasoned.”

Shade nodded and said, “I know we did.”

After a swallow Shuggie held the bottle toward Shade.

“We still could,” he said.

Smiling tightly, Shade looked out the window, then turned to Shuggie, who watched him intently. Then both men laughed and Shade wordlessly took the bottle, raised it and drained it, dropping the dead soldier to the floorboard where it slid with a ding into the sawed-off shotgun, and laid there.

12

M
OTHER
N
ATURE
was laying down some Law out there in the bayou night, and as befits the order of things, large feathered creatures dove off high branches, swooped low and stuck talons in smaller furry meals, and bandit-eyed coons came stealthily out of hollow logs and glommed finned, scaly chow from the still, brackish shallows, while all those things that slither waited, coiled, for the passing appearance of any prey absentminded, and where the bayou waters butted against land and a screened porch overlooked the boggy stage for these food-chain theatricals, Emil Jadick sat on the arm of the couch and wrapped up a lecture that had been real Type A in tone and content.

He said, “And if either of you fucks up because you ain’t been listenin’ to me, I’ll take you off the calendar myself, understood?”

Dean Pugh and Cecil Byrne sat on the couch, forearms on knees, heads down, sullenly nodding.

“We listened, Jadick,” Dean said, raising his head. “And we been here before, Mr. Boss Hoss.”

“You got caught before,” Jadick said. “I’d like to avoid that—so don’t fuck up.”