4 Shelter From The Storm (7 page)

“Mrs. Lostus?” he inquired.

“Yes?” she asked, as if surprised that someone knew her name in this store.

“I’m Tubby Dubonnet,” he explained.

“Oh, yes.” She extended her hand in his general direction. “You’re the lawyer I’ve come to see.”

“Good.” He smiled. He could appreciate a conversation like this. “Won’t you come back into my office?”

“If you’re ready for me,” she said politely.

Tubby stood aside to let her pass, and when she didn’t he said, “This way, Miss Lostus.”

Thus prompted, she plodded past him.

“Take this chair, please,” Tubby said. He put his hands on the back of one of the stuffed armchairs so that there would be no misunderstanding.

“Thank you,” she said.

He circled behind her and settled at his side of the desk. He rested his folded hands in front of his chest.

“I understand you’re having a problem with a time-share.” He nodded at her with encouragement.

“Well, yes,” she said, staring out the window. “It certainly does look like it’s going to rain.”

“I know,” Tubby said. “Something pretty big seems to be blowing in from the west. I didn’t hear anything about it on the weather report. You bought a time-share?”

“Yes. This very attractive young man stopped me on the street. By attractive, I mean he had very nice manners, though he was certainly good-looking, too. I was just walking along thinking about where to have lunch.”

“Right.” Tubby rearranged his hands and waited.

“He said, ‘Excuse me, ma’am, I have to give you a ticket.’”

Tubby raised his eyebrows.

“And I said, ‘What for?’ I was quite surprised.”

“And he said?” Tubby primed the pump.

“He said, ‘I have to give you a ticket for being happy,’ of all things. I wondered what he meant. But he said my ticket was a lunch ticket. I could use it to have a gourmet lunch at the Pirate Mansion. It would be Creole Shrimp Gumbo, he said. And, if I would watch a short video, I would also get a free VCR.”

“Such a deal,” Tubby commented.

“It sounded very nice,” she said. “They even had a shuttle bus right there to drive me to the mansion. I wouldn’t have gotten in, but there was this very sweet girl with him, and they had on these cute T-shirts that said ‘Pirate Mansion’ on them. It looked all right, and you just have to go with your instincts sometimes.”

She sat there and stared at the pictures of ducks behind Tubby’s head, lost in thought.

“Ahem,” he coughed presently.

“I was just thinking that they must be very clever,” she said.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?” Tubby asked. There must be some around here someplace.

“No, thank you. I’m on a diet.” She smiled.

“You rode in the shuttle bus,” he tried again.

“Yes, and we rode past all the famous places in the French Quarter, and the little girl told me all about the sights. Well, finally we got to the mansion and went inside. There was a couple there, the Murchisons, and they took me into one of the units with a nice balcony and explained how everything worked.”

“Did you get lunch?” Tubby asked.

“Yes, I did.”

“How was the gumbo?”

“I thought it was quite good. Not very spicy at all.”

“How nice.”

“And they showed me a film about the mansion, and I bought a week.”

Tubby nodded. He understood how it had happened.

Suddenly there was a loud crack of thunder, and a waterfall of rain slammed into the window. Both client and lawyer jumped.

“My, my,” she said. The city was no longer visible. “You certainly have odd weather here.”

“Very odd,” he agreed.

“Well,” she continued, returning her eyes to his, “we looked at my unit. It wasn’t the prettiest of course because those cost too much, but it was clean. They explained all the rules. About how I could actually own the apartment, just like a condominium back home, but only for one week a year. And that week would be mine, always.”

“You paid them?”

“I wrote a check for $15,000.” Her brow furrowed.

“Have you had second thoughts?”

“Yes,” she said regretfully. “I called my son as soon as I got back to my hotel room. You see, I had thought we could take vacations here together. But he got very upset. He looks after me. But it seems he does not want to vacation with me to New Orleans every year. I didn’t know what to do so I took a walk. And I got to talk to Mr. Haygood, the bellboy at the hotel. It seems funny to call him a bellboy because he’s a grown man. He told me that it is very hot here in New Orleans during the third week of August.”

“That’s the week you bought?” Tubby chuckled.

“Yes,” she said defensively.

He composed his face. “It is indeed warm here at that time of the year. Do you want to get out of the contract?”

“Yes, I do,” she said. “I promised my girlfriend, Sophie, that we would go to Las Vegas together next Christmas, and I realize now that I’ve just spent all my money.”

“Okay, let’s see how much of it we can get back.”

“I hate to be this way. The Murchisons were so nice.”

“They’ll get over it, Miss Lostus. Did you happen to get their first names?”

* * *

Collette’s friend Leila had a car, a really funky Mazda, and picked her up at around two o’clock. When they got to Norene’s house they found a backyard full of kids. A couple of the boys were even swimming, and some others had stripped down to bathing suits and were showing off their wintertime tans. It was actually getting cloudy, however, and the main action was around the blue and white Igloo full of Bud Lite.

Norene jumped up and hugged Collette and Leila when they came through the gate in the wooden fence.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” she said. “We desperately need more girls. Come on and I’ll introduce you to some of the guys. They go to Tulane.”

“Ooooh,” Collette said. Tulane. Big Deal. She rolled her eyes.

So she met Bradley, who was not too tall but was really cute. He had black hair and about two day’s worth of whiskers on his chin,

“Hey,” he said, smiling to show off his white teeth. “You wanna sit down?” He patted the empty part of the vinyl recliner he was resting on.

“I’d like a beer first,” she said.

He asked her to bring him one, too.

After she fished two dripping bottles from the ice chest, she consented to rejoin him. At least he twisted off the cap for her.

“Where are you in school?” he asked while running his fingers through his hair.

“At Newman,” she said. “I graduate in May.” That was stretching the truth by about two years.

“Going to college?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said. “Somewhere away from here.”

“What’s wrong with here?” he asked.

He turned out to be nice, though conceited, and he won points by telling his friends to quit splashing water on her.

It would have been really pleasant except that it started to rain, and they all had to go inside.

Norene tried to get everybody to play Pictionary, which was fun, but a couple of the boys were really drunk and started tearing up Norene’s parents’ den. They were throwing the couch pillows around causing the lamps to rock back and forth, and they broke some kind of souvenir glass. It got too loud for Collette and she went looking for Leila to see if she was ready to go home. Unfortunately, Leila had already left without telling her, which was typical.

Collette plopped down angrily next to Bradley. He was telling jokes with one of his friends. He noticed her sour expression and offered his services. She said she was ready to leave, and he said sure, he would drive her.

One step out the front door, however, their plans changed.

It was pouring down rain, and the wind was whipping the trees around in a frightening way. There was water in the street, and they watched a car move through it slowly, pushing out a wake. Bradley’s Nissan was parked in a low spot by the curb, and he ran screaming across the lawn to find that there was already water over his floorboards. After he got done cursing and hopping around, he got his frat brothers to help him push the crippled car into the driveway. When he inspected the saturated carpets he almost broke into tears.

In the meantime, the water rose another inch in the street, and Bradley began to fret that the slight elevation of the driveway might not save his car much longer. He ran inside dripping and told Collette, who had been watching stoically from the window, that he would call a cab and try to get them both home. He knew a guy with some kind of a tow truck who he could get to come after his car, if they hurried.

He got busy signals at two cab companies before he finally got lucky.

Before the lights went out, things were going very smoothly in the vault. Blotting out the drone of the generator with earplugs, Big Top methodically applied the business end of the big Hilti drill to the locks of the safe deposit boxes, grinding them to oblivion. He moved slowly along the wall, beginning at the top of each row and working downward to the floor, while Monk and LaRue ransacked each box and put everything they judged to be of value into a pair of canvass mail sacks. Mostly they were finding jewelry, cash, and rare coins.

“Here’s a bottle of pills,” Monk yelled, holding up an unlabeled brown plastic vial.

LaRue pointed to the bag, and in it went.

Most of what got left behind were papers, though LaRue scanned them all, and he kept a few.

They allowed James to go home at the end of his shift, after making Corelle clock in. To be sure that the SecureGuard headquarters was still cool about the cameras going on and off, they got Corelle to report in. LaRue sat next to him in the booth while he made the call, his handgun pointed at Corelle’s crotch.

“These TVs is going nuts again,” Corelle told the base.

“No wonder,” the guy at headquarters said. “We’ve got a downpour here you wouldn’t believe. Lights are going off all around town.”

Corelle condensed that message when he hung up.

“He ain’t worried. It’s raining,” he told LaRue.

The trio had completed most of one whole wall. Just three more to go. Corelle watched them sullenly from the floor where he had been told to sit and be quiet. The bags were bulging with goodies, and all three burglars were feeling the constant adrenaline rush of an excellent score when the lights went out.

Big Top looked up but kept on drilling with the power from the generator. LaRue tapped on Monk’s shoulder and told him to keep filling the bags while he pushed Corelle back to the dark booth.

Inside, all the TVs were dead though a couple of green and red lights glowed on the alarm system’s control panel.

“Call in,” LaRue insisted to the guard.

Corelle picked up the phone and pressed the number.

“Line’s dead,” he said and shrugged.

“Your new job is holding the flashlight,” LaRue told him. “Looks like the weather is on our side.” He allowed himself a thin-lipped smile. He was thinking they could spend the night cleaning out all of the boxes and maybe even take a crack at the vault just for the hell of it on the way out.

He was wrong, as they found out twenty-five minutes later. It came to Big Top’s attention that there was water on the floor when he set the drill down for a second and got knocked for a somersault by some unseen powerful numbing force. He came back alive with Monk shaking him. LaRue was trying to get the damn generator turned off without electrocuting himself in the process.

Corelle, the security guard, was face down where he had fallen. He had made an abortive attempt to bolt the room in the confusion, and LaRue had clubbed him with the butt of his pistol. The water was now about an inch deep and rising fast to cover Corelle’s ears.

“Mama,” Big Top moaned, shaking his head, then his fingers.

“You stopped breathing there for a minute,” Monk informed him.

“Whoa,” Big Top crooned.

LaRue kicked a switch with his boot heel, and the roaring machine shuttered and died. They were left in a sudden silence, until the sound of trickling water got their attention.

“We’ve got what we came for,” LaRue said. “Looks like the party’s over.”

“Can you walk?” Monk asked Big Top.

“I think so,” Big Top said. He tentatively rose to his feet and leaned on the wall.

“Let’s get all our stuff out of here,” LaRue said.

“What about the guard?” Monk asked, indicating the limp wad on the floor.

“Leave him,” LaRue said.

“He’ll drown, if he ain’t already,” Monk observed.

LaRue splashed over to the fallen security man and pressed his wet boot squarely on the man’s neck. He gave a quick jump that produced a brutal snapping sound on the floor.

“I guess we leave him,” Monk said, wiping water from his eyes. “He’ll be a hero now.”

So far Bourbon Street had been a bummer. Marguerite had started out with high expectations on Sunday night. She showered off all the grubbiness from her taxi ride. After putting on a white cotton outfit she had bought for this trip she ascended to the hotel’s open-air rooftop bar. She climbed onto a tall stool, allowing the hem of her dress to rise and show off her two best features, ordered a Tequila Sunrise and watched a handsome executive-type man swim. But he toweled off and left. So she allowed herself to get into a long conversation with a salesman from Michigan who finally moved to the stool next to hers. He ordered them both pink rum drinks in tall glasses. Together they soaked up the humid evening breeze, a wall of clouds moving in, ships moving slowly up the river, and the strings of lights flickering on the bridges.

He had an unusually strong chin, a roving Adam’s apple, and slightly wild eyes, but he might do. The good-looking swimmer returned, dressed in beige slacks and a blue cotton blazer and went to sit at the other end of the bar with a woman who had obviously been waiting a long time for him, so he was off the list. Marguerite ordered another of the syrupy rum drinks.

At a table near the pool, two men in business suits were talking seriously.

“It’s the deal of a lifetime,” she heard one say. “The oil’s ready to come gushing out of the ground. If you can just make it all legal.”