Gumbo Limbo (19 page)
Tazzy Gucci did not smile.
I said, “Back to Omar.”
“He worked here for two weeks in 1997. He made a move on Muffin and Ray threatened to kill him. My opinion was that Ray would die trying, so I gave Omar three thousand dollars and suggested he might want to seek employment closer to downtown. End of story. We done here?”
“If so,” I said, “you’ve confirmed my expectations.”
“Splendid. What’d you expect?”
“That you’d avoid facts. What’d you give me? Anecdotes and opinions.”
He looked me straight in the eye. “Ain’t that a shame. One man’s Shinola is another man’s shit.”
“What’d they call guys like you in jail? Wasn’t the term ‘one-way motherfucker’?”
“Never heard that one. They called me ‘stand-up.’ I never gave up a soul.”
“Makksy, you told me yourself, there’s a chance you started all this bullshit by running your mouth to what’s-his-name, the grandma stock swindler. Maybe you should come down to Key West and help put out the fire.”
“I’m pretty sure the house already burned right the fuck to the ground. Can we give you a ride back to the airport?”
“There’s a flight at three-thirty.”
He checked his watch. “We’ll get you there.”
Ernest Makksy was still a classy guy. He was wearing Gucci shoes and a Rolex watch. And he was letting me out alive.
“
I
’ll stay here on Veterans Boulevard. The stop-and-go’s quicker than I-10.” The driver—Wicker—spoke with a Midwest accent. The New Orleans twist had failed to migrate into at least one resident’s speech. “Boss man said, number-one, class-A treatment. Anything you need, you speak up, all right.” Wicker was in his mid-sixties, a full head of silver-gray hair, a beer guzzler’s paunch, his face doughy, probably from alcohol. He smelled like department-store cologne. But he drove smoothly, with foresight, confidence. A pro, an experienced chauffeur. The Buick Park Avenue had new-car smell and backseat amenities: the day’s
New York Times,
the
Times-Picayune,
a
USA Today.
A cooler stocked with bottled water, fruit juices, beer. A telephone. A Kleenex dispenser. A courtesy lamp. Tazzy Gucci ran a tight ship.
I
’ll stay here on Veterans Boulevard. The stop-and-go’s quicker than I-10.” The driver—Wicker—spoke with a Midwest accent. The New Orleans twist had failed to migrate into at least one resident’s speech. “Boss man said, number-one, class-A treatment. Anything you need, you speak up, all right.” Wicker was in his mid-sixties, a full head of silver-gray hair, a beer guzzler’s paunch, his face doughy, probably from alcohol. He smelled like department-store cologne. But he drove smoothly, with foresight, confidence. A pro, an experienced chauffeur. The Buick Park Avenue had new-car smell and backseat amenities: the day’s
New York Times,
the
Times-Picayune,
a
USA Today.
A cooler stocked with bottled water, fruit juices, beer. A telephone. A Kleenex dispenser. A courtesy lamp. Tazzy Gucci ran a tight ship.
I felt like I’d been running in tight circles, like a character in Hitchcock’s
The Birds,
being attacked from all sides and above by flapping wings and shrieks and beaks and talons. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
The Birds,
being attacked from all sides and above by flapping wings and shrieks and beaks and talons. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
Except for Teresa Barga, my sweet refuge, every person I’d dealt with, for four days and six hours, was connected to the craziness. In the background, because it could have been my imagination, was the stranger with the burned hand and shot shoulder. I also forced from my thoughts the momentary zing that my chauffeur was Omar Boudreau’s father or brother, that
he might turn the Buick into a swamp express. I flashed on that old song about the gators eating you and skeeters getting the leftovers. But the driver dutifully followed the signs, the pictures of airplanes and arrows that led to the airport.
he might turn the Buick into a swamp express. I flashed on that old song about the gators eating you and skeeters getting the leftovers. But the driver dutifully followed the signs, the pictures of airplanes and arrows that led to the airport.
“You had a fine visit with us in the Crescent City, sir?”
I ignored him. My focus: Samantha Burch’s father had been in prison since she’d been in elementary school. She’d been putting herself though college by schlepping at a Benihana in Gainesville. The rich mommy story was bogus. Her first charter with Sam had coincided with Cahill’s call from Sloppy Joe’s. It had been no coincidence.
How many questions could I ask, sure to miss the most important and not have answers, anyway? Had “Muffin du Jour” Best—who, for some reason, I had not met at her father’s office—told Samantha about the trust agreement? Had Samantha been on the boat with Sam Wheeler when Omar was killed? Or when Jesse’s place was tossed? I knew two things with certainty: Sam would have recognized undue nosiness—no way he’d have discussed my dilemma with his client—and she was a player, friend or foe. That knowledge, alone, was worth the trip.
“Any chance we could pull over?” I said. “Need to use a coin phone.”
“We’re already here, sir. Dozens of pay phones inside the building.”
A sweeping ramp led into the airport. Sedans hogged lanes, pushed for position, raced for unseen off-loading space, rental return line advantage. The closer we got to Departures, the more frenzied the traffic, the more at ease I became. The chauffeur asked which airline I was flying.
“ComAir.”
He said, “Con Air. That’s fine, that’s fine. Good outfit.”
I envisioned Nicolas Cage landing the plane on Caroline Street.
I also pictured some kind of last-minute trick, a sudden right turn into an unmarked quonset hut, the Buick’s rear door locks failing to release. But the driver steered toward a parking sliver. A policeman, somehow recognizing the car as a limousine, stopped a van and waved us to the curb. I checked my back pocket for my wallet, held tight to the carry-on bag. The driver shifted into Park and started to get out.
“You’re okay. I got the door.” I handed him a ten.
“Good flight, sir.”
The Buick eased back into traffic. I stood a moment to get my bearings, then started past the redcap line at a curbside checkin counter. I could taste the beer I’d drink on my way to the gate. On second thought, rum and Coke.
Someone nudged me. “That’s my getaway car.” A Southern accent, sharp with menace. “I could shoot you right now and get away with it.”
I turned my head, looked into the man’s eyes. Beyond contempt I couldn’t read a thing. I hadn’t seen Scotry Auguie in almost twenty years. He poked a finger at my face, then swiveled his hand so it pointed at a black taxi. “All the safeguards inside that building ain’t shit. Bang, bang. They don’t stop nobody out here.”
The shiny Chevy had silver tips on its twin exhaust pipes, a silver chain around its rear license tag, a white sign on the roof. Its rear door swung open.
“Get in there.”
Auguie was right. He probably could shoot me and get away with it. He wanted information, or I’d have been dead already. I got in and slid across the seat. As Auguie got in, he made sure I saw the pistol in his hand. A risky call for an ex-felon, holding a piece. As if kidnapping were a walk on the beach.
The driver, a huge black man with a roll of skin above his shirt collar, had the cab in gear. He lifted his foot from the brake. The Monte Carlo accelerated into middle-lane flow. The driver’s
neck was as big around as my waist. The bulk of his upper arms looked like a normal man’s thighs. After a moment I noticed Jesse Spence in the front passenger seat. Stone-jawed, displeased, no longer the lost-looking friend who, three days earlier, had stumbled into my living room, distressed at having found solid proof that his house had been creeped.
neck was as big around as my waist. The bulk of his upper arms looked like a normal man’s thighs. After a moment I noticed Jesse Spence in the front passenger seat. Stone-jawed, displeased, no longer the lost-looking friend who, three days earlier, had stumbled into my living room, distressed at having found solid proof that his house had been creeped.
A half-sized compact disc and six pounds of Mardi Gras beads hung from the phony taxi’s rearview mirror. No legit cab company would allow a view-obstructing safety hazard. The meter wasn’t even bolted to the dashboard. But the driver wasn’t stupid ; he kept his speed below thirty on the airport exit road. In a one-mile stretch, passing again billboards for the House of Blues and Bubba Gump Restaurant, we passed three cars that had been pulled over for speeding.
Spence said to the driver, “How we doing?”
The black man checked his mirror. “Way back there.”
No one spoke, then, for almost five minutes. The cab headed east on 1-10, toward the city, then exited on Clearview and went south past a mall. Besides the portable fare meter, the dash was dolled up with religious figurines, icons, miniature photos of unidentifiable deities, two or three voodoo items.
Spence said to the driver, “How we doing, now?”
“Dat gentleman’s long gone, that’s right.” The man lifted a tall bottle of Budweiser from his lap, took a quick swig, then replaced it.
Spence turned. “If you think you still got your baby-sitter with you, your boy with the broken wrist, he got hung up in traffic leaving the airport.”
Auguie said, “He’ll probably give up and catch a plane home to Key West. Get somebody to saw off his fake cast.”
“Anybody want to tell me why I’m suddenly the enemy?”
“That’s the part you explain,” said Spence.
I looked down at the pistol that Auguie still aimed at my belly. “Why don’t you put that son of a bitch away?” I said. “I
was about to get on an airplane. I sure as hell don’t have a weapon in my pocket.”
was about to get on an airplane. I sure as hell don’t have a weapon in my pocket.”
“I’ll keep it where it is. I might want to shoot you.”
For the second time in a half-hour I was in a movie. This one B-grade and surreal. Clearview turned into a secondary through a combination storefront and middle-class residential neighborhood. I wasn’t riding a swamp express, but this buggy ride promised worse.
We crossed a strange-looking bridge. My first time on the Huey P. Long. I hoped there would be a return trip to the airport, but from the looks of the bridge’s condition, I didn’t want to trust the structure again. On the south side of the Mississippi the car hurried through a roundabout. We were fewer than eight minutes from I-10, three minutes from the residential area, but we had entered an undeveloped tract of sparse woods and overgrown open land. Less than a minute later, we rolled into a low-rent business strip that would make any abductee wish for swamp.
Not a boulevard. Two one-way streets a quarter-mile apart. A “no-man’s-land” median—crabgrass, tailpipes, rain-sogged cardboard boxes. Two-bit seafood shacks, radiator shops, people alongside the road pouring gas into their tanks. Pawnshops, empty buildings, storage-shed complexes. Wholesale tires, psychic readers and advisers, alarm companies. What the media would call a neighborhood in decline. The local currency likely to be amphetamines and tire irons.
The Monte Carlo slowed, turned right into an unpaved, rutted expanse that surrounded a concrete-block building. No identifying signs on the building. A FOR LEASE placard at a thirty-degree angle in a wide mud puddle.
Why had Auguie and Spence automatically classified me as a rip-off artist? They were on offense. I had no defense. If I could swing the momentum, there was a gap in their armor. They had spotted the burned-hand man. But they hadn’t done all their
homework: Scotty had screwed up when he’d guessed that the man’s cast was fake. He had screwed up by glomming on to me and letting the other boy go free.
homework: Scotty had screwed up when he’d guessed that the man’s cast was fake. He had screwed up by glomming on to me and letting the other boy go free.
It’s hard to formulate a sales pitch in front of a firing squad.
Auguie took my carry-on bag, yanked me out of the car, and pushed me ahead of him. This was a new, updated version of the man nicknamed “Cool” Auguie in college because nothing ever bothered him. Spence led us inside through a rear door. The black man carried his beer, the fake fare meter, and the rooftop lighting assembly.
Long ago it had been a nightclub. At best, a puke-and-razor joint. There were Jax and Schlitz and Pabst signs; no ads for O‘Douls or Sharps or Beck’s. A row of shelves and a crippled metal sink outlined the section where the bar used to be. A pile of splintered stools lay in a rear corner. The odors of urine and mildewed rats’ nests commanded a physical presence. With each step, my shoes stuck to the floor.
Auguie shoved me toward a decrepit card table and upended my carry-on bag. My point-and-shoot camera thunked on the table, yesterday’s skivvies tangled in its strap. “Empty your pockets.”
My wallet. My house keys. The mini-roll of five hundred-dollar bills.
“Lookie here,” said Auguie. “Party time. Crisp new ones.”
I pulled out—oh, shit, the Ziploc with two telephone bugs—the one from Spence’s phone, and the one I’d found outside my broken window.
A poisonous look in Spence’s eyes. The extra transmitter irrefutable proof that I had tumbled his apartment. He palmed the camera, toggled the flash, took my picture, pocketed the camera. Then he picked up the hundreds and went for the door. “Let’s go buy me a new TV.”
Auguie showed the black man an evil grin, then swiveled his
head toward me. “Our survival program. You just won yourself a free one-hour sample.”
head toward me. “Our survival program. You just won yourself a free one-hour sample.”
“they, Spence,” I said. “Chloe Tucker’s dead. They’re looking for you.”
His facial muscles tightened. He looked around to face me, paused a beat. “Give me one thing that’ll make me stop this.”
“The man with the cast was shot by my neighbor, trying to break into my place. He got away, but he dropped that other bug. He’s one of the bad guys.”
“Gimme one more.”
“Samantha Burch has been in Key West all week. I didn’t know who she was until I saw her picture on Makksy’s desk.”
Spence nudged Auguie. They walked out. The door slammed.
The black man said, “Go stand over there.” He motioned me toward a side wall. He began to mumble, an intense ramble about “loyal friends” and “judgment.” I took a few steps backward, wondered if he’d pull out the pistol with his left hand or his right hand. I caught something about “pro football,” and “Jacksonville.” I glanced behind myself, and stopped eight feet from a plain concrete-block wall. A waist-level bar rail was bolted along its length. The big man drained a Bud bottle—a fresh one, because it was almost full-and threw it past my head. It shattered against the wall. He moved toward me, his arms and hands low, his face almost happy, his eyes glossy, lustful. It crossed my mind that he was about to hug me. Oh, no …
He stopped twelve inches from me, put his hands on his hips, sized me up and down like a candidate for his favors. He licked his lips, then enunciated: “You ever met Flipper?”
I wanted to know nothing about his “Flipper.”
He leaned toward me. Suddenly, one of his elbows shot forward, caught me at the belt buckle, and launched me against the wall. The only pain I felt was in my lower back, where the oak bar rail cracked into my spine and lower ribs. I didn’t feel my
head hit the wall, but heard it as if standing aside as a spectator. The sound reminded me of a goofy game my brothers and I had invented late one summer when the honeydews had come in season. We had carried an arsenal of overripe melons to the garage roof, then, one by one, dropped them on the driveway. We had joked about the “splat” sound they’d made as they split and blew apart. We called them Victor Charlies. We had splatted two dozen before our mother saw the mess from the kitchen window. I remembered the exact yellow of the warm sunlight as we scrubbed concrete rectangles, with the sounds of a pickup baseball game coming from down the block, a game we’d been forbidden to join.
head hit the wall, but heard it as if standing aside as a spectator. The sound reminded me of a goofy game my brothers and I had invented late one summer when the honeydews had come in season. We had carried an arsenal of overripe melons to the garage roof, then, one by one, dropped them on the driveway. We had joked about the “splat” sound they’d made as they split and blew apart. We called them Victor Charlies. We had splatted two dozen before our mother saw the mess from the kitchen window. I remembered the exact yellow of the warm sunlight as we scrubbed concrete rectangles, with the sounds of a pickup baseball game coming from down the block, a game we’d been forbidden to join.
“Oh, what a shame,” said the black man.
His voice jerked me back. The nightclub’s floor tasted like everyday dirt. Nothing exotic, no regional flavors. It felt like a layer of sawdust had caked on one side of my mouth and one eyelid. I felt glass imbedded in my face.
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