The Bayou Trilogy: Under the Bright Lights, Muscle for the Wing, and The Ones You Do (37 page)

Then he remembered having heard that Monsignor Escalera had erected the barrier a year ago to stop the traditional youth races.

The patrol car was squeezing down the alleyway behind them. Shade
opened the door and got out. He shoved the seat forward. “Beat it!” He pulled Wanda over Jadick, and out of the car. “Find a place to hide,” he said, but Wanda froze at his side, staring dumbly at the dark windshield of the St. Bruno patrol car. “Hide yourself in the goddamned church,” he said harshly, and her legs began moving away from the red light.

When the patrol car came to a halt Shuggie Zeck came springing out from the passenger side. Shade watched Zeck lumber up the church steps. Shade pulled his pistol and held it down near his thigh. He glanced into his car at Jadick, who still breathed though he might have preferred to be dead. The patrol car moved cautiously up to the rear bumper of the Nova. Shade approached the driver. A strange veil of calm had descended over him.

“You’re Mouton, right?” he said loudly. “I been lookin’ for you.”

Officer Tommy Mouton stepped out of the dark cab of the patrol car. He did not wear a hat and his hand rested on the butt of his pistol.

He said, “You been lookin’ for
me?
”

“Yeah,” Shade said. “I was hopin’ to find you before it was too late.” Shade planted his pistol inside of his waistband, then swept one hand over his bloody brow. “I got the son of a bitch. Come on, he’s in the car.”

There were a few cars pulling into the parking lot slightly in advance of the early mass, and Shade was gambling that Tommy Mouton wouldn’t back-shoot him when visible to them. At the Nova, Shade placed both hands on the window and looked into the backseat.

“I’d like to bust about three caps in his head right now, but Mr. B. doesn’t want it that way.”

Mouton looked in on the backseat, took in Leon’s body and Jadick. He said, “Who’s the other guy? There’s only supposed to be one more.”

“He was with them and he got in the way.”

Mouton stepped back and nodded slowly. “You
are
a brute.”

Shade kept his head down and said, “Mr. B. wants him alive. There was an inside man on this, and he wants to find out for sure who put the finger on the games.”

“The
girl
did that,” Mouton said, “and that’s why the girl and this cat have to go.”

“Shuggie tell you that?” Shade said swiftly. “I bet he did. Sure he did.
Shuggie
set the games up, sport. That’s why he don’t want nobody livin’ through this but
him
. He knows Mr. B.’s smart.”

Mouton said, “Are you shittin’ me? I think you’re shittin’ me.”

“Christ, why do you think he cut me out of this?” Shade said.

Mouton eyed him nervously. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know about this.”

“Shit you don’t know fills libraries, Mouton,” Shade said. “I just came from Beaurain’s this morning. You wanta be on the right side of the man, you listen to me. You wanta be on the wrong side of the man, you just keep thinkin’ you’re smart.”

“You don’t sound like you’re shittin’ me.”

“I’m not,” Shade said, taking a step back from the car. “Get the burned guy here over to the hospital quick. I’m gonna get in there after Shuggie before he has time to cap his secret squeeze.”

“This ain’t what Shuggie said.”

“I’m sure it ain’t,” Shade said. “Who do you think woulda been the last guy he had to waste, ya dumb fuck? He’s got you in way deep now.”

Mouton’s sharp presence seemed to dull upon hearing this, his feet shifted uncertainly.

“I wanna be on Mr. B.’s good side,” he said.

“Smart,” Shade answered, then turned his back on Mouton, walked up the alley and into the church.

A weak broth of light fell through the vaulted windows of St. Peter’s and spilled across the dark tiled floor. Shade edged along the near wall, then stood quietly. He took a step and his shoe squeaked, the sound echoing up to the Gothic ceiling. A permanent smell of incense wafted from the walls and pews, a sensual link to an older sensibility. A couple of tapers burned in front of an icon of the Virgin, the flames flickering with the currents of air. Perhaps some old woman had been here before dawn, or maybe even Wanda Bouvier had paused in her haste to light a candle before she hid.

Suddenly Shuggie was right beside him, loosely holding the sawed-off. He’d been standing in the shadow. Shuggie nodded at him knowingly.

“She’s a bad cookie, Rene, we both know that.” Car doors slammed outside the building, the sound muffled through the brick walls. “She’s
very
bad cookies now. She’s gotta go. Understand? I don’t want to have to kill you, but I will if you push it. This comes from high up.”

Shade smiled at him then.

“Don’t count on it,” he said.

“Rene, you’re buckin’ the big boys on this. You ain’t slappin’ the shit outta some coonass like Gillette. This is Mr. B. You’re gonna get hurt bad.”

Shade held his hands spread wide, laid his head onto one shoulder, smiling, and said, “Ain’t that the point?”

“Jerk.”

“Where is she?”

Shuggie shrugged. “Somewhere in here. I laid on the floor and looked under the pews. I can’t see her.”

Shade said, “You don’t want to kill a cop, Shuggie. I’ll find her.”

Shuggie snorted at him and the sound expanded with resonance.

“Be smart,” he said.

“Be smart? Smart like you?” Shade punched a forefinger at Shuggie’s chest. “I saw what you did to Hedda. I was over there. Yeah. You fuckin’ punk.
I ain’t Hedda.
” Shade grasped but did not pull the pistol in his waistband. Shuggie blanched. He looked away. His mouth opened wide and he rocked his head back on his neck.

“I didn’t want to do that. I wish I didn’t, but I had to. Her talkin’ was out of control.”

Shade spit onto Shuggie’s pant leg. “Take off, sport. Just go. I wanta see that fat ass of yours framed in that doorway, going out.”

Shuggie took a few paces backward. The shotgun was aimed down and it wavered in his hand.

“I don’t know if you can back that shit up, Rene. I could kill you.”

“You reckon?” Shade answered.

“Well,” Shuggie said, smiling almost wistfully. “We always wondered about this, ain’t we?”

Shade nodded and turned sideways to Shuggie.

“I guess so.”

They stared from shadow to shadow, then Shuggie turned away.

“Fuck this. I’m goin’. We can take care of her anytime.”

As Shuggie walked away, Shade sat on the last pew and used the polished wood seatback for a gun rest. He cocked his pistol and took aim at the center of Shuggie’s back.

“I know you’re going to go for it, Shuggie.”

“You think I’m a fool? I heard that pistol cock.”

“I think you’re gonna go for it, Shug,” Shade said and put both hands onto his pistol. “Whatever that means.”

Shuggie’s laughter resounded throughout the cavernous room and Shade watched with a sense of incredulity as Shuggie walked to the door and out.

For a moment Shade just sat there breathing deeply, his hands clenching.

From beneath the altar came a low, scuffling noise. Then he heard Wanda’s voice as she said, “Oh, man—what now?”

He heard the explosion then, a single shot fired in the alley. He went quickly to the door and cracked it open, pistol at the ready, then he swung the door wide and stepped out, looking down on Shuggie. There below him, belly to the asphalt, Zeck lay already dead, a fist-sized piece of his skull swinging open as if hinged, a rush of blood and brains running down his back.

Officer Tommy Mouton stood a few feet away. He jerked his thumb to his chest, his face clutched in a terrible sneer.

“
I’m
the iceman, now,” he said. “Put me right with Mr. B., Shade, don’t you take credit for it. Don’t try that.
I’m
the iceman now.”

Shade was choking on his own breath. He raised his face straight up, and there, at a dominating height above them all, he saw the first light of the new day glinting from the cross atop the steeple. And as he followed the trajectory from that shimmering point to the bloody asphalt
below, it seemed that Shuggie had been spit from precisely there, to come to rest, inevitably, just like this.

And in the next instant Wanda Bone Bouvier, bloodstained and otherwise soiled, pulled at his shoulders, gasped at the body, and said, “Oh, thank you, Jesus, just this once.”

THE ONES YOU DO

For Katie and Leigh

“If it weren’t for the rocks in its bed, the stream would have no song.”

—C
ARL
P
ERKINS

Part I

Criminentlies

(cry-men-ent-lees)

1

A
FTER HIS
wife stole the gangster’s money and split on him, she wanted to rub his nose in her deed, so she sent him a note. John X. Shade was sitting on a stool behind the bar in the main room of Enoch’s Ribs and Lounge, his gray head bowed, his lean shaky fingers massaging his temples. The safe gaped open and empty behind him, and a bottle of Maker’s Mark, sour mash salvation, sat sealed and full on the bar top before him.

The note that was meant to make him feel pitiful as well as endangered was delivered by his ten-year-old daughter, Etta. She came in the side door and through the sea shell and driftwood decor of the lounge where her mother had been the musical entertainment before taking up thievery, carrying a small pink vinyl suitcase that had a picture of Joan Jett embossed on the lid. The girl had thick black hair cut in a fashion her mother, Randi Tripp, considered hip, this being a feminine sort of flattop with long rat-tail tresses dangling down the back of her neck. She wore a green T-shirt that was pro-manatee and raggedy jeans that were hacked off just below the knees. A black plastic crucifix hung lightly from her right ear. Her actual name was Rosetta Tripp Shade, but she preferred to be called Etta.

“Mail call,” she said and tossed the envelope onto the bar beneath John X.’s chin. She climbed up onto a stool across the rail. “She said you should read it pronto.”

Enoch’s wasn’t a popular spot until late at night when last-call
Lotharios from along the Redneck Riviera would fill it up, rooting around after pert and democratic Yankee tourists whose off-season dream vacations had yet to be consummated. It was not open at all this early in the day, so the two were alone. Hot Gulf Coast sun beat in through the smoked windows, warming the joint. On the walls there were community bulletins announcing upcoming fish frys, Gospel shows, ten-K runs for various Mobile charities, and several large, glamorous glossies of Randi Tripp, the ’Bama Butterfly.

John X. started to rip the envelope, then saw the sweat on his daughter’s face and felt a trickle stream down his own temples. He shoved the shiny beverage cooler open and said, “I ain’t King Farouk, kid, but I’ll spot you a bottle of RC.”

Etta grinned and grabbed the cold bottle of Royal Crown Cola that he slid to her.

“Well, I ain’t Madonna, neither,” she said, “but I could drink one.”

He opened the envelope and unfolded the letter. It was on yellow paper scented with lilac, and he spread it flat on the bar to read.

John X. (no dear for you),

You are not a clean fit with my future. I have made a choice and it was in favor of following my dream as you by now know. I leave special Etta with you on account of my dreams, for it is a lonely road I must travel to the top. Here I am always Enoch Tripp’s daughter and many say that’s why I am always featured singer here. I have talent! My voice fills a room to capacity with any advertizing at all. Motherhood is one thing but what is that compared to the many gifts of song! You know this too. The money I have borrowed for good to invest in my dreams was only a killer’s loot. What good fine thing would he ever do with it? Europe loves ballads of amore and shitty luck and am I ever the thrush for them! I realize Lunch will think the money is still his but having it is nine-tenths of the law and all of spending it. You have a silver tongue, shine it up and maybe Lunch will believe your tale of innocence. Many is the time I have. Enoch is on those sad last legs and I have told him ciao.

Randi

P.S. I have a sense of my own destiny now. My sense of my own destiny is that you’re not anywhere in it. I was young and married old, a classic story. But Etta will fit in with me down the road—I’ll have my Lear jet fetch her to me where the nights are sweeter than sweet and full of music and could be she’ll like it like me someday.

John X. wadded the letter into a ball and pitched it at a photo of the ’Bama Butterfly. Great lakes were being formed on his white shirt by flop sweat.

“Did I have this comin’?” he asked.

Etta retrieved the letter, then lit a match and set it afire. She dropped the flaming ball into an ashtray, and watched the flame rise before returning to her stool.

John X. looked at her sadly, then raised the bottle, cracked the red wax seal, and filled a juice glass with whisky.

“Criminentlies,” he said, “but your ma is some gal, kid.”

“I reckon,” Etta said. “She put me off at Shivers Street and told me to walk here. That gives her time to get gone, huh, Dad?” She held the soda bottle with both hands, her body hunched over the bar, eyes down, like a precociously forlorn honky-tonker. Cosmetics were not foreign to her young face, and turquoise was the lip color of the day. “Mom let me pack first, at the trailer.”

“What a gal,” John X. said.

He pulled the tumbler of whisky close and Etta watched the glass, then said, “She predicted you’d do that.”

“Do what?”

“Pour a giant whisky and have at it.”

“Oh,” he said. “That didn’t call for no crystal ball.” He raised the glass and put the bourbon down in one constant swallow. “And after a drink what’m I goin’ to do?”

“She figured we’d go runnin’ to the hospital’n see Grampa Enoch.”

As he poured himself another dollop John X. nodded and said, “Then what?”