The Giant Smugglers (24 page)

“I'm not looking for fun,” said the man. “I'm looking for someone. And I suspect you might be able to help me find him.” He held out a business card featuring a green double helix in the shape of a leaf.

Accelerton.

 

33

“A little more to the right,” Charlie coached.

Bruce adjusted the position of twin court jesters, masked and wearing jingling fool's hats. He was trying to fasten them dead center on the front of a massive parade float.

“Yep, right there!”

Bruce lowered the two grinning clowns, and hooks caught the hard edge that rimmed the float, glittering in a garish array of gold and purple. The giant stood back to make sure the jokers hung straight. Then he turned back to Charlie, who had discovered Tim's cheap phone could take photos and even video. The boy was documenting the whole escape for history.

“Bruce, what you got there?”

“Ride,” the giant proclaimed, smiling broadly for the camera.

After allowing the guys to grab a few hours of sleep, Parran had roused them at an absurdly early hour to decorate the rolling spectacle. It was practically complete now, with room for an entire marching band to perform on its wide platforms. The words
King's Court
were emblazoned in dazzling gold on both sides of the float. Charlie still hadn't figured out where Bruce was going to ride without being seen.

Parran emerged from a room at the back of the hangar pulling a wagon full of green five-gallon buckets. “Looks good,” he called, though Charlie couldn't figure out how he knew that. “I took the liberty of getting lunch for us. Can't visit New Orleans without having red beans and rice. Personally I'm partial to a shrimp po-boy, but dat's impractical in this case.” He swung the wagon around, and Bruce rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

Without waiting for an invitation, he threw a bucketful of food into his mouth. The unfamiliar sting of Cajun spices lit up his face, and he squeezed his eyes shut. After an excruciating swallow, Bruce searched frantically for some water. Parran was in no hurry to help the giant. He had a pretty good idea about how the big guy's first taste of Cajun cooking was going to go.

“Thought you might need some water,” Parran chuckled.

Finally, Bruce, his big face red and sweaty, found an industrial spigot and swallowed a gallon of water. Then he rushed back for more food.

Parran helped himself to a slice of cornbread. “Bet you're busting at the seams to know how all dat going to work?”

Charlie tried a cautious spoonful of the sausage-filled rice. “Actually, I am. Where's Bruce going to sit?”

“Who said anything about sittin'?” Parran brushed cornbread crumbs from his hands and
tap-tap
ped his cane around to the front of the float. Reaching underneath a lip, he felt around until there was a loud
pop.

A hidden panel, disguised by white crepe paper, swung open, and a long, rectangular box emerged. Bruce stopped eating and joined Charlie to examine it. Parran flipped open the lid, revealing an interior lined with cushy blue foam. It gave Charlie a queasy feeling.

“Is that a coffin?”

Parran pulled his sunglasses down to the end of his nose, exposing his milky blue eyes. “Don't be morbid, boy.”

Charlie winced. The blind man's eyes looked like they hurt.

“Here's what's going down. Big fella, you'll take a load off right in there. Charlie, you'll be beside him the whole time.”

“We're both going to be inside the box?”

“See those two clowns?” deadpanned Parran, nodding to the jesters hanging above them. “Dat's you two. After we're finished eating, in you go.”

At the rate Bruce devoured the food, it didn't take long. Charlie finished off his meal in short order as well. Someone knocked on the big door at the front of the building.

“Just a minute,” Parran yelled. Then he got quiet and held the box lid open for Charlie and Bruce. “It's showtime. Get in there, get comfortable. I'll handle the rest.”

Bruce climbed into the box and stretched out. Charlie hopped in after him; there was just enough room along the giant's side to squeeze in. Parran closed the lid of the box, and the two friends were enveloped in darkness. Charlie thought about all the spicy food Bruce had just eaten and hoped the box was well ventilated.

“Too small,” the giant complained.

“Relax! Sorry the accommodations ain't first class!” Parran reached under the lip again, and the box sucked back into the float, which sealed up tight. “It ain't dat bad. See them air holes along the sides? You might even watch the city go by. Lots to see!”

Even though it was plenty dark, Charlie saw what Parran meant. The walls of the box had perforations at regular intervals that coincided with lookout points on the float. Charlie and Bruce found the ones closest to their heads and peeked out at the hangar. Charlie found his phone and pointed it at Bruce. The picture was dark and fuzzy, but that made it look cool.

“This is the part,” he whispered, “where the heroes escape!”

“Yep!”

“Let us venture forth,” Parran cried. The boys heard the sliding front doors to the building open.

Charlie couldn't believe what he was seeing through the peephole: at least thirty people, dressed in eggplant-colored coats with gold trim. Matching hats sat atop their heads. They all carried instruments—tubas and trombones, snare drums and saxophones. A few others twirled ornate umbrellas. A big truck crept along behind them.

“Good afternoon, everyone,” bellowed Parran. He pushed his hat back higher on his head. “And thank you for coming.”

One man at the front of the line twirled his parasol and frowned. His salt-and-pepper goatee scrunched up at the corners as he looked dubiously at the massive float. “What kind of job is this, Parran?”

“We having a short parade up to Woldenberg Park,” replied Parran. “Climb aboard.”

Several of the musicians stormed their way up onto the float. Inside the box, it sounded like a particularly nasty hailstorm. Charlie and Bruce rocked back and forth.

“Crazy,” whispered the giant.

“My man, Parran,” came the voice of the fellow with the parasol. “What are we doing here? Some kind of new holiday or something?”

Parran motioned for the truck to back up and hitch to the float. “As if the Big Easy needs a reason to have a parade! But if you must have one, think of it as a celebration of our rich heritage. And in case anyone is wondering, your friend Parran does have a permit. Dis is a legal parade sanctioned by the proper authorities.”

The man with the parasol laughed. “That must have been one serious bribe.”

“Well, we are in New Orleans. Now, if the truck is in place? Music, please!”

The musicians raised their instruments and played a soulful tune. Some marched alongside the float, while another bunch played up on the platform. Parran pulled on a colorful hat and twirled his walking cane like a baton. The truck pulled the Trojan horse of a float slowly out of the building and through an exit reserved for rail yard workers.

Across the yard, the Accelerton man turned his head in the direction of the brassy music. He squinted at the strange spectacle, then switched to another app on his phone. A bizarre float wasn't an unusual sight in New Orleans, but he snapped pictures just in case and sent them along to his superiors.

The float moved down the streets of the city. Inside the box, Bruce mugged for Charlie's camera, bopping his head side to side in time to the Dixieland beat.

Even with their limited view, there was so much to see: The buildings of New Orleans were as colorful and unique as the float itself. Colorfully dressed onlookers waved white handkerchiefs and danced alongside the float. A red streetcar rolled past, clanging its bell in time to the music. The tombs in a neighborhood graveyard jutted above the ground as if the dead were buried that way in case they wanted to rise up and join the party. Charlie couldn't think of a city less like Richland Center.

“Crazy,” whispered Bruce.

“I'll say.”

Finally they reached Woldenberg Park, full of joggers, rollerbladers, and people posing as living statues, trying to coax coins from tourists. The muddy Mississippi River ran alongside the procession. Parran sniffed the air.

“You see a hovercraft nearby?” he asked a trombone player.

“Yes, sir, there's one tethered to the pier up ahead.”

“Outstanding! Dat's our destination.”

The float turned in the direction of the pier to the strains of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Soon the brassy procession was at the pier, with a beat-up hovercraft moored at its end.

Charlie peeked out the viewing hole. Onboard the hovercraft, he saw four unsavory-looking characters, two older and two younger.
Fathers and sons?
wondered Charlie. All of them had goatees and wore sleeveless shirts over their ample bellies. Gnarly alligators were tattooed on the younger men's sunburned biceps.

One of the fathers, squinting beneath a camouflage baseball hat, raised his arm and shouted over the music. “Heyo, Parran!”

“Benoit,” Parran hollered back. “Good to hear your voice!”

“Charlie?” The giant kept a wary eye on a peephole.

“Keep it down,” Charlie whispered back. “We're almost there.”

“Charlie!”

The giant pointed out the viewing space at the end of the float. Weaving in and out of traffic, and moving dangerously close, was an Accelerton security van.

“Oh man.” Charlie tried not to panic, but fear and the stuffy air inside the box made him feel claustrophobic. “How are we going to tell Parran?”

Charlie watched the van pull over to the side of the road, and two guys with dark glasses and green Accelerton jackets hopped out. One produced a phone, letting someone know that they were getting close. A phone! Was Tim smart enough to…? Charlie checked the contacts in the one that his brother had left him.
Parran!
He punched the name and waited impatiently for the blind man to answer.

“Who dat?”

“Charlie! There's bad guys right on our tail!”

“Band!” Parran pocketed his cell, spun on his heel, and addressed the musicians with a toothy smile. “Please retire to the rear of the float and play ‘Bon Ton Roulet'! With feeling, boys!”

A slew of bodies marched into place, blocking the peepholes at the end of the float. Many were band members, but overweight tourists in shorts and sandals also joined them, attracted to the jazzy music. The Accelerton men tried to push their way through the party, but no matter which way they turned, swaying sousaphones pushed them backward.

“Yeah!” shouted Bruce, laughing as a trombone slide poked one of the Accelerton guys in the side of the head.

At the front of the
King's Court
float, Parran popped the panel and the box rolled forward. Wheels folded out from beneath the crate, and the container rolled out onto the pier and aboard the hovercraft. Now that they were outside the float, Charlie got a real sense of how loud the music was. The band was blasting its Dixieland sound right at the Accelerton security guys, who couldn't make their way through the throng of dancing sightseers and high-stepping musicians. As far as Charlie could tell, they couldn't even see the Cajuns sliding the box onto the hovercraft.

“Parran is the man!” he said to Bruce and started filming the next leg of their journey.

“Yep!”

When the case was secured onboard, Parran waved a handful of crisp twenty-dollar bills to the band members. The man with the parasol ran to the end of the pier, retrieved the cash, and raised it triumphantly to the musicians. A joyous cheer erupted, and the band rocked even harder. When the Accelerton security men finally broke through the multitude and sprinted down the pier, the hovercraft had already slipped away down the Mississippi.

 

34

The hovercraft hummed through the water at a good clip, but Charlie and Bruce were getting pretty sick of lying inside the box. In the giant's case, that sickness was literal. The cramped space, the lack of fresh air, and the stale smell of swamp water combined to make his face turn green. He wasn't used to traveling by boat, and the rocking waves were playing havoc with his stomach, full of red beans and rice.

“We deserve all the gold after this,” Charlie griped.

Bruce just moaned.

Parran was at the front of the hovercraft with the two older guys, sharing a bottle of something that sounded, from all the hooting and back slapping, like it was full of good mood. The men leaned back in canvas lawn chairs, watching the sun turn orange as it touched the horizon.

“Mighty appreciative dat you boys could help me out on short notice,” Parran said.

“Yep yep!” said the second man, Lambert, cracking back the pop-top on an aluminum can.

“We can put down the gaff hook anytime for the kind of money you talkin',” laughed Benoit. “Plus we're outta gator tags as it is. And nothing worse than goin' back to fishin'.”

“True dat. Alligator season should be longer,” agreed Parran. “A man can always use a new pair of boots.”

“Yep yep!”

“Those dummies that run the show are blinder than you, Parran. Gators everywhere in Louisiana!” Benoit raised his bottle. “Here's to new boots!”

From the holes in their box, Charlie and Bruce watched the two younger guys futz with fishing equipment—beat-up poles of all sizes, ratty-looking nets, and dangerous hooked sticks that Charlie surmised were used to land fish that were too big to get aboard any other way. The two had plenty of arguments about what line should go where, and they weren't afraid of yelling and shoving to make their points.

That's why they didn't notice the first time Bruce pushed up on the top of the box, anxious for a gulp or two of fresh air. Charlie punched him in the arm.