4 Shelter From The Storm (8 page)

“I don’t think that will present much of a problem,” the other man, hair streaked with silver, replied.

By then it was completely dark, and Marguerite was thinking of dinner by candle light. But the man with the wild eyes got weepy and started confessing about his wife back home. Off balance and frustrated, Marguerite stomped back to her room and ordered a pizza. The bellhop, Dan, recommended that she call Mama Rosa’s, and he was the one who brought it to her door.

She tipped the friendly fellow a dollar and got a courtly bow in return. With David Letterman for company, Marguerite ate as much as she possibly could. It was self-destructive, she knew, but she was feeling blue. She also raided the mini-bar in her room for wine coolers and vodka and cranberry juice.

She fell asleep with a glass in her hand.

The next morning, Marguerite woke up late, with a large headache, all alone, and the weather was crummy. At least it was so cloudy and gray that it might as well have been raining. She took a quick angry look outside and jerked the curtains shut. She ordered room service for breakfast, and it was not very good.

But the big pot of coffee they left with her restored her a little, and after she pushed the tray away she decided she might as well check out her very own second-floor balcony. As soon as she stepped outside and leaned over the rail, things started to get more interesting.

Attracted by her red silk bathrobe, some passersby below tried to engage her in conversation. Her spirits brightened when he suggested she take it off. She twitched her hips experimentally, and he left laughing. After a while someone tossed a string of beads at her, and she put them on, working the plastic clasp under her hair. A little later she took them off and threw them across the street at a man looking at the pictures of strippers on the wall outside the cabaret. Bombed him right in the back of the head. This became a game.

There sure were plenty of weirdoes walking around down there. Africans in tribal dress. Weight lifters in tutus. Kids tap dancing on the sidewalk, until the hotel staff ran them off. Girls with earrings all over their faces.

But then it started to rain for real, and she had to run back inside to her dull room.

* * *

Two men scampered back to their lodgings from the Lundi Gras pageant by the river which had been interrupted by the sudden rain. They were leaping over puddles in the streets of Paris. That’s how they felt, weaving and laughing down the cobblestoned alleyways of the French Quarter. Edward and Wendell had had a lunch of raw oysters for breakfast and after-dinner drinks for lunch. The stock market had become a foreign concept. The important issue was where to dine later— whether to eat
haute
at Arnaud’s or
bas
at The Acme. But now was a good time to head home and be dry, back for a couple of hours of vigorous rest at the grotto, as they referred to their mysterious apartment at the Lafitte’s Lair.

* * *

The world that Willie LaRue found when he splashed his way to the brass and glass exit of the First Alluvial Bank was not the same one he had left four hours earlier. Monk and Big Top were pushing the generator and tool chest through the elevator lobby behind him, making gentle waves through the half inch or so of brown water that was pooling in lazy swirls atop the marble floor and draining musically down the steps to the basement and into the deeper crevasses hidden by the elevator doors.

Everything that LaRue could see was wet. The street had become a canal, its shores marked by the rows of beached cars with water lapping their hubcaps. The sidewalk was submerged in most places. When a UPS truck driver, frantic to escape the flood, blew a futile horn and slalomed through the intersection, sending a wave splashing over the doorsills of the storefronts facing the street.

LaRue unlocked the bank’s solid doors with the key he had taken from Corelle. He wasn’t worried about setting off any alarm. He doubted if anybody would respond, even if the damn things were working.

“What happened?” Big Top asked in awe, staring at the curtain of rain falling straight down from heaven. Grape-sized water bullets rebounded six inches when they hit, making the murky brown sea froth and boil.

“I don’t know,” LaRue said, finding himself disturbed at some deep primal level.

“Let’s run for the van,” Monk suggested. “This is just one of them crazy New Orleans downpours. It’ll let up in half an hour.”

“We sure as hell can’t stay here,” LaRue said and set his jaw. He stepped out into the torrent, hugging the side of the building and dragging a heavy canvas sack full of loot.

It was difficult making any headway. The little wheels of the tool chest, with the second bag of booty riding on top, kept getting hung up on things hiding under the water. The three men, despite the limited protection of the tall buildings, were taking a pounding from the relentless rain. Their mission became manifestly senseless when they rounded the corner and saw that their van was gone. What they would never learn is that it had been towed for the difficult-to-foresee offense of parking on a parade route two hours before a parade. The robbers, however, had no idea whether their getaway vehicle had been stolen or had washed into Lake Pontchartrain, but it was gone.

LaRue looked helplessly at the sodden office workers who had waited too long to go home and were now huddled for shelter in doorways up and down the street. Some pointed and laughed at them, amused by the idiocy of moving machinery and packages in a deluge. Two young guys and a girl, pants rolled up above the knees, splashed happily down the middle of the street. All of the traffic lights were red. The robbers were calf-deep in water, and the heavens were wide open, joining earth, sky, and the nearby Gulf of Mexico into ecstatic congress.

A stubby pirogue piloted by a bare-chested man with a gray beard sailed past them, navigating the center of Carondelet Street. He waved at them amicably, paddling with graceful strokes.

“Let’s get the hell out of here. Screw the generator and the tools,” LaRue shouted. “Help me carry this bag.”

Big Top helped and ended up with the whole sack on his shoulders. Monk got the other one off the tool chest. “I sure do hate to leave the tools here,” he said.

“You can buy plenty more tools once you get back to the sticks,” LaRue told him angrily. “Let’s go.”

Safari-like, the party sloshed off down the street.

“Here comes another boat,” Big Top pointed behind them.

Two college boys in bathing suits were zipping down the street in a shiny aluminum canoe. They were doing acrobatics with their paddles and yodeling with their mouths open to drink in the rain. They had a case of Abita Beer between them, and they were looking for adventures and girls to save.

“Don’t lose the damn bags,” LaRue screamed and left Big Top and Monk on the sidewalk. He struggled into the current and waved his arms like a windmill at the canoe. Obligingly the boys steered at him and dug in their paddles to come alongside.

“Need help?” the one in front called.

LaRue didn’t answer. He just grabbed the boy’s ears and hair and pulled him headfirst into the water.

“Steal the boat!” he yelled at his cohorts. While they splashed into the deep water to comply and to stow their treasure aboard, LaRue advanced on the boy in the canoe’s stern. Alarmed by the loss of his mate, the young man raised his paddle in defense. LaRue grabbed it and yanked hard and tumbled the boy over the side.

The dethroned sailors struggled to regain their footing while Big Top and Monk clambered aboard. LaRue whacked at the bare-backed youths with the flat of the paddle until he had driven them to the sidewalk. Then he jumped in gasping and started stroking. Helplessly, the boys watched their vessel disappear toward Canal Street.

Hossein heard the call on his radio. He was parked in the K & B lot on Napoleon trying to decide if he should just quit for the day and try to get home to Harahan or whether he should roll down his window and acknowledge the fat lady with a plastic bag on her head who was thumping on the glass demanding that he give her a ride. He didn’t want anyone that wet getting into his cab, especially because he thought she was probably only going a block or two anyway. Cab needed on Versailles Boulevard, his radio informed him, and he snatched the microphone.

“Three-two-oh. I can do the pick-up on Versailles in five minutes.”

“It’s all yours three-two-oh,” the dispatcher replied.

It could be a trip to the airport. Rich people lived on Versailles Boulevard.

He gunned the engine, impervious to the woman angrily pounding on his hood and splashed through a shallow lake in the parking lot. The rain was coming down in sheets and drumming on his roof. Hossein had to cut off a bus to make a U-turn, and his White Cloud Caddy did a wide slide on the slick asphalt and sent a monster wave over a dog and his master on the sidewalk. Praise Allah, this was a lot of rain.

It took more than the promised five minutes to get there because all of the cars on Claiborne Avenue were crawling along, intimidated by the rising tide that was obliterating the curbside lanes. Hoss tried switching his lights on and off and blowing his horn, but nobody would move out of his way.

At last he reached Versailles, which was entirely covered by water. He shot up it like a speedboat on the lake, wake arching behind him, looking for the address. Stopping in the center of the street, he blew his horn.

The door of the two-story brick home flew open and his two fares, towels covering their heads, ran toward him on the slate walkway. They had no luggage, meaning no airport trip, but anyone in this neighborhood ought to be a good tipper.

Collette and Bradley vaulted the last big puddle and fell into the back seat of the Cadillac. She was laughing. He was miserable.

“Wheee!” she screamed, flinging water everywhere.

“Where to, sir?” Hossein asked the young man.

“We’re just trying to get home,” Bradley said. “My car’s flooded and I’m going after a tow truck. But I guess we’ll take her home first.” He glanced at Collette with some annoyance, which she failed to notice.

She gave the cabdriver her address.

“That’s not very far,” Hossein commented.

Bradley told him that he lived out by the Lake.

“That’s a little better,” the driver said, only partly mollified.

“This sure is some rain,” Bradley said.

“Yes, sir. I have not seen much worse. It may be a flood.”

Indeed, a car up ahead had its emergency flashers on and was refusing to cross a particularly long pool.

“Sissies,” Hossein spat. He turned off onto a side street. “I do not think this will make for a good Mardi Gras,” he said. His taxi was fishtailing on the narrow street, almost colliding with the rows of cars parked along the sides. Collette grabbed the strap above the door for security.

“I bet you guys are really busy,” Bradley called to the front seat. “I couldn’t even get through on the phone to the other companies.”

“Very busy, sir. Everybody wants to ride a taxi when it rains. You must be very careful whom you pick up though.”

“What do you mean?”

“People want rides into the projects where they rob you. You can’t pick up everybody.”

“How do you know we won’t rob you?” Collette asked, holding tightly to the strap.

“Oh, miss, I know,” Hossein laughed. “I can look at you.”

“What he means,” Bradley explained to the dummy, “is he doesn’t pick up black people, isn’t that right?”

“That’s right, sir. Very seldom. One must be practical.”

“I can’t believe I heard that,” Collette cried. “You don’t pick up black people? I’m sure that’s illegal.”

“Well!” Hossein clamped his jaw shut and shook his head.

“C’mon, Collette,” Bradley said. “Get real. Once you let somebody in your cab you’re at their mercy. He’s right to be careful.”

“Of course you should be careful,” she said angrily, “but you can’t judge whether someone is dangerous by the color of their skin.”

“I bet you can ninety-nine percent of the time,” Bradley said.

“I can’t believe you’re saying this,” Collette shrieked. Didn’t these people know what century this was? And Bradley was supposedly from Ohio.

“I must say he’s quite right, ma’am,” Hossein chimed in. “Colored people are not at all to be trusted.”

Collette refused to look at either one of them. Seething, she stared out the steamy window at the rain pouring down. “You’re both idiots,” she whispered.

“No, we are the wise ones,” Hossein said, gunning his engine to plow through a long lake that stretched the length of the block.

A huge wave washed over the windows, frightening Collette so much she almost jumped across the seat into Bradley’s arms. She caught herself just in time.

“Whoa,” Hossein cried when he realized that his front wheels were not responding to the steering wheel.

Like an old expiring beast, the engine coughed, bucked, sputtered and died. The Cadillac floated on a few feet and stopped.

“Oh, no,” Hossein moaned.

“Are we stuck?” Bradley asked.

Collette wiped the fog off the glass to try to figure out where they were.

“I think this is Calhoun Street,” she announced.

It was a residential block crowded with shotgun houses built close to the sidewalk. People were hanging out on the porches of some of them watching it rain. Now they were watching the stranded White Cloud Cadillac.

Hossein tried the ignition but got no more than a red light on the dashboard.

“Oh, no, very bad,” he crooned again.

“Wow, this looks like a really crummy neighborhood,” Bradley reported. “What the hell are we gonna do?”

“Look!” Collette exclaimed, pointing to their feet where the blue carpet was being stained a deep indigo by water seeping in from below.

“There’s like two feet of water out there,” Bradley estimated.

Hossein looked forlornly at the brown faces watching them from the porches.

“Oh, no,” he groaned miserably and pounded his fists on the steering wheel. His banging was drowned out by the din the rain made beating down on the car’s roof.