The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do (33 page)

On the third ring Shuggie reached to the end table and lifted the receiver. “Yeah,” he said. “What? When?” He listened for a few seconds, then said, “Keep the lid on and line up the employees. I’m not happy.” He hung up. He turned back to the TV and took a lingering look at the supernatural antics going on, then turned away and stood. He untied the robe and dropped it. He went into the bedroom to finish dressing. As he buttoned his shirt he shouted to his wife, “Hedda, get me that gun that’s downstairs behind the furnace!”

“Which gun?”

“The one I filed the serial numbers off!”

Fat Frank Pischelle sat on a barstool in The Rio, Rio holding a bloody towel to a long, vertical gash in his forehead. There were bloodstains on his shirt and on the floor near his feet. Above and behind him there was a huge, splintered hole in the lookout perch on the wall, and smeared, modernist trails of blood streaked down abstractly.

“For the tenth time, Shuggie,” Fat Frank said, “they was in the door and pullin’ triggers before we even seen ’em. The man with the shotgun, the son of a bitch who bashed my forehead, cut loose on Eddie Barnhill, up there on the wall,
immediately
. He seemed to know right where to shoot.” Fat Frank looked up shaking his head. “They wore masks, and like, you know, duck-hunting shirts or whatever. It made them look like they might be efficient or something. They were in charge from the get-go.”

Leon Roe came over with a handful of ice and handed it to Fat Frank. Fat Frank said “Thanks” and wrapped the ice in the towel. He leaned forward, gash on the ice, and said, “And like I said, Shug, there ain’t been nothin’ unusual today. The workmen is all.”

“Christ,” Shuggie said, slapping a palm against his forehead. “Who is it? Who the fuck are these guys? Hey, they
were
definitely white, right?”

“Yeah,” Fat Frank said. “They were white. Man,” he said and glanced up at the shotgun perch, “poor Eddie. Poor Eddie.”

Shuggie had already spoken to everyone who’d been there who hadn’t split, except for Leon Roe. Leon had been making himself useful, getting ice for Frank, a sloe gin fizz for Shuggie, and he’d helped a gambler named Ralph carry Eddie Barnhill’s body outside to a pickup truck.

When Shuggie approached, Leon was sitting by the jukebox, his eyes still expanded by the new sights he’d seen, his hands absently rubbing a wet rag on his red-spotted clothes.

Shuggie stood over him. He said, “I talked to Luscious Loni and Panting Patti, kid. They said Sinful Suzie told ’em you’d brought in a new girl today—I guess you forgot that.”

“New girl?” Leon said.

Crouching down so that he was eye to eye with Leon, Shuggie said, “So, kid, you ever seen a flick called
Rolling Thunder?
”

“No. No, sir.”

“That’s too bad. There’s some good torture scenes in it. So, kid, tell me about the gal who came in today. You bought her a beer. She’s a bricktop gal.”

“Bricktop?”

“A redhead.”

“Oh.”

From his barstool beneath the wall tapestried by gore, Fat Frank said, “Hey, that’s right. I forgot about that, Shuggie.”

“What’s her name, kid,” Shuggie said. “This is probably a coincidence, but tell me her name.”

“Her name? I think it was, I don’t know, Moaning Lisa.”

“That’s it,” Fat Frank said.

“No, no, no,” Shuggie said angrily. “Not her fuckin’ striptease name—her real name.”

“Her real name?” Leon looked down at the tips of his snakeskin boots. “She said it was Wanda.”

“Wanda? A bricktop named Wanda?” Shuggie sprang to his feet. “What’s the rest of her name?”

“I never knew,” Leon said. “I just seen her, you know, at the Kroger’s store in Frogtown, there, a few times. She was buying chickens and me, too. I tried to chat her up.”

“You know where she lives?”

“No. I guess over by Kroger’s.”

Shuggie paced up and down the room for a minute or two. He had his hands in his pockets and his head down. Finally he paused.

“This redhead—she about this tall? Big jugs? A few freckles buckshot across her face? She always have this sort of expression on her that says ‘Fuck me if you dare’? You know what I mean by that? Is that her?”

Fat Frank lowered the bloody towel from the split in his head, his fingers thoughtfully stretching his salt-and-pepper goatee.

“Oh,” he said, “you must know her.”

The living room was illuminated by the imageless screen of the television when Shuggie stomped in. The Frangelico bottle was nearly empty and Hedda was stretched out on the couch, facedown, snoring. Shuggie grasped the back of her robe and spun her onto the floor.

As she came awake he stuck two fingers in her mouth, causing her to choke, and said, “Spit it out! Spit it out!”

She slapped at his hands until he removed his fingers from her mouth. Her eyes were bleary but wide and her chins shook.

“What? Shuggie! What?”

“Spit out that bridge I paid eighteen hundred dollars on. I don’t want to break it, but I
am
goin’ to slap your face, Hedda.”

Liquored up and confused as she was, Hedda instinctively began to slide away across the carpet.

“Honey—what?”

“Put your bridge on the table!”

Hedda was trying to do a crab-slide around the coffee table. The TV glow seemed to throw a spotlight on her.

“What’d I do? Huh? What’d I do, honey?”

“Take your bridge out,” Shuggie said, then began to slap the back of her head. “Take”—slap—“your bridge”—slap—“out.”

“Okay, okay okay okay.” Hedda hunched forward and slid the bridge out. The bridge included her two front teeth and she set it in one of the empty dessert bowls. “Now what’d I do?”

He leaned over her, hands clasped behind his back, then his left palm came out of the darkness and slapped her across the mouth, and when she pulled away his right hand followed up and bloodied her nose.

“You got a man killed!” he yelled.

“What?” Her face reflected her terror. In fifteen years together Shuggie had never struck her and very rarely raised his voice to her. “I didn’t,” she said, baffled. “I didn’t—what? Kill? Me? No, no, no.”

“You been seein’ Wanda Bouvier, haven’t you? I told you never to talk to her or see her again, but you did, didn’t you? I sort of knew you were. I figured you were. I figured you were
despite
what I told you.”

Her head was shaking in the negative, blood drizzling down across her lips.

“Who said that? Honey, they’re lyin’. Who told you that? I mean…”

He backhanded her high on the cheek, and her left eye instantly began ballooning closed.

“It had to be her,” Shuggie said. “And that means it had to be
you
. You and your big, floppy-lipped mouth.” He collapsed onto the couch, sitting up. “The country club game, that was goin’ on for years, so everybody knew about it. Ronnie, too. But this game at Rio, Rio, why, only a few, only just a few knew about
it
.” He pointed at his wife’s head, his index finger and thumb making a pistol. “You saw her today, didn’t you baby? Huh, sugar plum? What was it, lunch, or just a beer? Tell me, sweet lambikins, you meet to eat or just to hoist a couple?”

“Both,” Hedda said, dully. The hot urges her husband felt had led to an ominous melt of his facial features, they sagged flat and mad. She was a bloodied heap on the floor. With one eye swollen shut she had to swing her head around to keep him in sight. “You knew all along how I feel about her. She’s a good kid, like the li’l sister I never did have. I love her.”

“Uh-huh,” Shuggie said. “I guess I should keep that in mind. Say, do you remember one time when you and me went to Miami with Eddie Barnhill and his wife—what was her name?”

“It’s Emily.”

“Yeah,” Shuggie said, nodding. “That’s it. Emily. Emily’s a widow now. As of a couple of hours ago. Eddie’s a fuckin’ design on the wall at The Rio, Rio and your
li’l
sister who you
love
did it!”

Hedda seemed dumbstruck, mouth open, eyes squinched. Her head shook and she had the look of a woman who had sunk chin-deep in the mire of unsuspected spousal dementia.

“What on earth are you talkin’ about? Wanda? Killing people?”

“Yeah,” Shuggie said. “She cased the place for a few tush hogs to knock over. My guess is that Ronnie made hisself some new friends in Braxton. Ol’
Ronnie’s
song is sung. Know what I mean? He’s a dead man but it might be awhile before his heart gets the news.”

Shuggie got up from the couch.

“Now, honey-bunchkins,” he said, “I want to know where she lives these days. I’m gonna
suggest
that you tell me, too,
right now
.”

“Oh, Shuggie, she never told me. Don’t hit me! She never told me, you see, ’cause she thinks maybe you’d, you know, make trouble for her. ’Cause of what Ronnie done.”

Shuggie stood between his wife and the illuminating TV, casting a huge shadow over her, his hands clasped behind his back.

“You seem like you expect me to believe that.”

“Oh, I wish you would!”

“Well, you know the truth about wishes, don’t you, sweet pea?” he said, and his hands flew.

Later he sat down and stared at his wife. She was curled in the fetal position. A few of her hairs had been pulled out and stuck to his hands. She whimpered and sobbed, her face to the carpet.

“All right,” he said, “maybe you
don’t
know where she’s stayin’ anymore. That might make sense. To her it might make sense. But you do have a phone number—right?”

Though this comment was a relief, Hedda suddenly shrieked louder, and slapped her fists against the floor.

“Hush up, honey. I got to think. I got to make a phone call. I got to figure things out.” He reached over to the end table and lifted the phone. He dialed a number. “Hello,” he said, “Karl? Shuggie. I know, I know, I’m sorry to wake you. Are you awake enough now for me to tell you something? Uh-huh, we did. Yeah. No, we ain’t got them yet but I got a lead. Look, Karl, that’s what I’m callin’ about. I don’t think Shade is the man we want on this. Just a sense I have. It’s goin’ to get nasty. Hear what I’m sayin’? Yeah. Shade might get in the way. You better get me Tommy Mouton. He’ll do whatever it takes. Okay. Yeah. And Karl, have him come in a squad car, all right?”

Shuggie hung up the phone. Hedda was still sobbing into the deep shag carpet. There was an inch or two of liqueur left in the Frangelico bottle that they’d shared earlier while watching Red Skelton and the Cubano zombies. He raised the bottle and had a sip.

“Hedda, honey,” he said softly. “I’m goin’ to tell you what to say, then you’re goin’ to give Wanda a call. When you give her this call you know what it is you’re goin’ to do?”

Hedda raised her upper body from the carpet and quickly turned toward her husband, her expression fearful, her face colorized by red smears, lumpy white swells, and blue bruises. She said, “Whatever you tell me, Shug.”

14

W
ANDA
B
ONE
Bouvier was being caressed and cuddled on the mottled pink mattress in her bedroom. She was having to endure Emil Jadick’s oversqueezing of her ribs and the quick darts of his tongue into her ear. He was talkin’ all kinds of trash to her. He was trying to insinuate himself into her future via an interesting cross of sweet syntax and menacing pillow talk. He was giving her the old “I been there and I been here and I been here and there and nowhere did I meet a gal who loves me like you do, so strong and tasty and smart, and if you don’t be my lovin’ woman from now on out I’ll
hurt
somebody
bad
.”

The candle was lit and flickering in front of the mirror. Wanda wore a red wraparound skirt and one of Ronnie’s black T-shirts that stretched down to her knees and said Jack Daniel’s Field Tester on it. Emil was curled next to her, still in camouflage. The St. Bruno High Pirates gym bag was at the foot of the bed, open, drooling dollar bills.

“I don’t know about hearin’ that kind of talk,” she said. “I love Ronnie true, Emil. That’s a big deal to me.”

“You can still love him,” Jadick said, his lips skimming along her neck. “You can still love him but second instead of first.”

“Uh-huh. You’d be first?”

“Sounds good don’t it.”

When it came to men Wanda felt like she was basically a highly prized household convenience. Oh, they birddogged her sweet and
breathy with promises and presents, but only Ronnie stayed sweet after he’d had her awhile.

“I think Ronnie might object to that,” she said.

“Not if he was gone.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, pun-kin, when Ronnie gets home he could be out here on this river, breathin’ free air again, and have himself a fishing accident—couldn’t he?”

“I don’t think so.” Wanda squirmed out of Emil’s arms and got off the bed. “I don’t believe he could have a fishin’ accident—he’s strictly a meat-eatin’ man.”

Wanda started toward the kitchen and Jadick rolled off the bed and followed her.

“You ever seen that much money?” he asked her. “You ever seen the kind of dough The Wing brings in?”

“No, Emil,” she said. In the kitchen she opened the cupboards and shoved the yellow-labeled cans of generic soups around, rooting for a snack. “I’m nervous but I’m hungry.”

Emil corralled her from behind and bumped his groin to her ass.

“Hungry, huh?” he said. “What are you hungry for?”

She shook free of his arms, went to the fridge. When she opened the door the light flashed in her eyes. She said, “Would a tiny taste of
everything good
be out of the question?”

Though she had her head in the brightly lit fridge he smiled at her. He bobbed his chin. He said, “You weren’t actually talkin’ to
me
there, were you, pun-kin?”

She closed the fridge door.

“You’re right,” she said.

“You were talkin’ to whatever it is I talk to whenever I say, ‘
Why me?
’ Weren’t you?”

“I suppose so,” she said.

“And you never get no answers do you, Wanda?”

“No,” she said. She sat at the table and braced her chin in her hands. “But I think that might be just as well.”