The Shoal of Time

by J. M. Redmann

  The saddest thing is I only knew the wrong answer, not the right one. Maybe if I’d been there, maybe if I’d pushed her to talk more and knew her despair better, maybe…but I needed to work for the money to cover our expenses. She had enough to get good medical care, but much of what she’d inherited had been locked away in the foundation she started to support a clinic for those who needed care. As the months dragged on, complications, different treatments, had soaked up money like a black sponge. I took over the mortgage, all the bills, cable, power, food, the trips there we’d formerly split.

  I poured myself another inch of Scotch.

  Maybe if we had talked more…

  But that was hard when she wasn’t feeling well, nauseated and weak from the chemo. I tried to keep it cheerful, with funny pictures and videos of the cats, updates on friends. Had I shut her out instead? Made it too difficult to talk about the hard things? I don’t know that I ever mentioned my work covering as much of the bills as it had to. I didn’t want her to worry when she had so much to worry about and endure.

  The choices I made were the wrong ones. Maybe the other choices were just as wrong. Maybe there were no right ones. I wanted so desperately to have been a better person. Even now, when I didn’t matter, I wanted that. But I didn’t know how.

  Except maybe not drinking my life away.

  I took another sip, let the smooth burn glide down my throat, as if an essential warmth could be found in the amber liquid.

  Then I put the glass down and picked up my phone.

  I dialed Ashley.

  She answered on the second ring. Maybe she was hoping I’d call.

  “Wanted to check on you and see if you survived your meetings.”

  She laughed. “I seem to have. The real challenge was to not die of boredom.”

  “That’s always the challenge.”

  “True. Look I was about to call you. I wanted to update you on a few things and…schedule a time for us to go out. If you still want to.”

  I heard the hesitation in her voice, as if scared I might say no. “Yes, I’d like that very much,” I reassured her.

  “Oh, good. That makes me happy.”

  Me, too. I said, “Yes, how about tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow would be great, but I can’t. How about later this week? Friday? I can pretty much promise that will be free for me. Plus I don’t have anything on Saturday, so we can stay out as late as we want.”

  “Sounds perfect.”

  “Meet me at my hotel at around seven? Dress for a night on the town.”

  “Still sounds perfect.”

  She laughed again, a deep throaty laugh, one of anticipation. “Now that we have the important things settled, how about some updates?”

  “Sure, what do you have for me? Did you get access to the ledger I found?”

  “Yes, we did. The locals have been pretty cooperative. Oh, and you did a good job. They’re totally convinced the only people there were the meth heads.”

  “Good to know. Much as I like you, I don’t think I’d want to end up in jail for you.”

  “Not going to let that happen.”

  “What about the message? Did you crack it?”

  “My team is still working on it, but like I said before, our best guess is a code, the words are meaningless.”

  “Okay, that’s your specialty, not mine. What about the murdered women?”

  “What about them? I mean, in what way?”

  “Are they connected?”

  “You’re asking the tough questions, aren’t you?”

  “Sorry, it’s an occupational hazard.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s probably the same for you. Much of what I do is seek information, and I get a lot of it by asking questions, until I find what I need to know. Guess it’s a habit.”

  “It’s not one you have to have with me. Look, I have to finish another report. We can chat some tomorrow, maybe around lunch. And see each other on Friday.”

  “Don’t work too hard.”

  “I’ll make up for it when we go out.”

  We hung up.

  I picked up my Scotch and bargained with myself—I wasn’t ready to give up alcohol yet, but I would cut back and buy one really good bottle at a time. The price would be enough to make me slow down.

  I went back to my cubby of a home office, taking the final few sips in the glass with me. I didn’t want to think anymore, at least not about my life. I needed to do something with the photos I had emailed to myself, the ones I assured Ashley I’d deleted.

  I wasn’t quite ready to get rid of them. But I could obscure where I got them. I downloaded the photos, deleted the emails I’d sent from my phone, emptied my deleted file, and defragmented my computer. While that was running in the background I stared at the photos, especially the one Ashley said was a code.

  Eula May, 9 at 11 on 18 down the bayou by the germans.

  Maybe it was a code, but it seemed more like a straightforward message to me. Why code something in a book when you’re supposed to be the only one looking at it? It wasn’t meant as a message that could be intercepted. But maybe Ashley was right, it was disguised to look like a message so no one would think it was a code, thereby making them try to understand the message and not decode it.

  That sounded way too Cold War spy for an operation that so far hadn’t impressed me with its brains and sophistication.

  Down the Bayou Road.

  A childhood memory. Driving with my dad to look at a boat. Him commenting, “This is one of the most imaginative road names ever. Down the Bayou Road.” We’d both laughed and then come up with other names—The Road Here Road, The Road There Street, Going Home Road, Road That Doesn’t Lead Much Anywhere Road.

  There was really a road—at least there had been—named Down the Bayou.

  The Germans. Des Allemands.

  A small fishing town about an hour from New Orleans. It was named for the German immigrants who lived there, part of the German coast. Des Allemands, French—or Cajun—for “the Germans.”

  What was the likelihood that a coded message could actually hit on actual places that made sense as a straightforward message?

  I pulled up a map on the computer to see if my memory was right.

  Down the Bayou Road, just off Highway 90 in Des Allemands. It ran, as its name implied, right next to the bayou. It was a small fishing town, probably hit hard by the recession and the BP oil spill. It also fit in with the warehouse we’d found. These were locations known by someone who was from here and knew the ins and outs of the bayou country. For a fisherman who knew his—or her—way, it would be easy to get from there to the Gulf. Meet a boat out there at night, transfer the cargo, come in through the back way bayous and bang, you’re on the old state highway that leads directly into New Orleans.

  It made too much sense for me to ignore.

  I picked up my phone and dialed Ashley.

  “Hey, what’s up?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but I was thinking”—caught myself from saying “looking at”—“about that message I saw in the ledger.”

  “The one in code?”

  “I don’t think it’s code. There is a town called Des Allemands—The Germans, and it has a street named Down the Bayou Road.”

  “That…sounds weird.”

  “Think about it. A boat named Eula May will deliver nine women at eleven o’clock—probably at night, otherwise it’s too obvious—on the eighteenth of the month. Tomorrow. It makes too much sense to ignore.”

  “That’s clever, but you’ve got to be wrong. Our info indicates they’re coming in by truck on the interstates.”

  “The warehouse. Someone has to know the area to think to put it out there. We’re dealing with someone local, someone who knows the bayous. There are no state troopers back in the bayous, no one to stop you if your boat has a missing starboard light.”

  “Hey, look, Micky, I appreciate you thinking about this, especially after all t
he trouble we’ve put you through, but this seems unlikely. Like I said, our info is that it’s an overland route being used. The back waterways are too risky. Only a few people would know how to navigate them. These organizations survive by having disposable people. Anyone can drive a rental truck. It makes them easy to replace. But someone who has a boat and knows the back channels? That’s not a safe person to have around.”

  “But they’ve clearly got someone like that. No outsider could have come up with where to put that warehouse.”

  “All right, I see your point. This is the kind of stuff you don’t want to get involved in. It gets dangerous. Let us handle it.”

  “Isn’t it as dangerous for you as it is for me?”

  “Yes. I mean, no. I have a whole team for backup, big guys with guns. You’re one lone private eye. Big difference.”

  She had a point. “Will you at least consider it?”

  “I’ll pass it on. But I really think, while it sounds good, it’s not the right message. Maybe meant to lead us astray.”

  “Okay, I’ll trust you on this one. But please, at least consider it. I grew up out in the bayous. It’s a hard time out there now. Hard times open a lot of doors.”

  “Yeah, hard times do. Listen, thanks for passing this on. But please, stay out of trouble until I see you for our night out, okay?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  She put down the phone. I heard it click off.

  Perhaps she was right. It’s easy to see the world through what we know. I’m familiar with the bayous, lived there until I was ten. My ego wanted to be smart enough to figure out what was stumping the federal boys—I didn’t want to be Robin; I wanted to be Batman.

  I took another sip of Scotch. My last one. I got up to refill it, then remembered my bargain with myself. I put the glass down.

  Then I buried the pictures deep among boring photos of the last renovation of the kitchen.

  I was tired. Another day with nothing solved, nothing changed, and all I could do was think about it tomorrow, the day that never came.

  Chapter Seventeen

  By the second cup of coffee, I again found myself looking at the maps. The morning only made me more certain that I was right. Why would someone scribble down a coded message in an offhand scrawl like that? It seemed more like what you’d do when taking down notes while talking on the phone.

  Maybe I was right, but Ashley was telling me I wasn’t because that was one of those areas she couldn’t talk about with me.

  This was frustrating.

  I could call Emily and see what she thought. Except how would I explain seeing the message without coming up with an explanation even less believable than needing to pee and wandering off in the woods?

  Or I could contact Madame Celeste and ask her to pass it on to her contacts. She might listen. But it was too early to call or drop by her place. I wondered what official whorehouse hours were. “Please press one for information. We’re open from twelve noon for the lunchtime quickie until four a.m. for all your evening’s pleasures.” Or maybe customers had to schedule in advance.

  I again filled the travel mug full of coffee, telling myself I was headed down to my office.

  Instead I crossed the bridge over the river and caught Highway 90. It can’t hurt to look around, I told myself. It would just be coincidence that I’d be there around eleven in the morning.

  The day was cool and crisp. A perfect day for smuggling. I shuddered at the thought. What would it be like? Promised a decent job and instead forced on a terrifying journey? There would be no escape from the boat, no chance to jump out at a gas station. Just miles of green water winding into swamps, tight bayous edged with thick brush. No sign of humans save for your captors on the boat. Even at your destination, it would be desolate, a small insular town, one that would believe a local boy over women babbling in a strange accent.

  It took me a little under an hour to get there. The town seemed to have changed little from my memory of it. Maybe older, showing its years and the wear of a life lived clinging to what could be taken from the water.

  I drove around, found Down the Bayou Road. It became Up the Bayou Road on the other side of 90. It was, as I remembered, next to the water. While some of the houses on the side across from the bayou looked cared for, there were several that weren’t in good shape, possibly abandoned. Two of them were next to each other near the end of the road. Rusted chain-link fence corralled the front yard of each. And each place was guarded by a large dog. The dogs prowled the fence, pacing me as I drove by.

  I wondered what they were protecting.

  I drove back into town and found the one place that seemed to be the local gathering spot.

  Time for more coffee. And a bathroom.

  “You’re not from around here, are you?” was my greeting as I settled at a small table in the corner.

  “New Orleans now,” I answered. “But I grew up in Bayou St. Jack.”

  She nodded. Set a coffee cup in front of me without even asking and poured. It looked black enough to put tar on my tongue. I took a sip. Smiled and nodded. You don’t get information when you dis the coffee.

  “You the owner of this place?” I asked her.

  She looked around mid-sixties, but could have been younger and lived in the sun and the salt for many years. Her hair was still mostly black and she had a face that had softened around her lines, like dough with creases in it. She was stout, with muscled forearms from lifting heavy coffeepots all day.

  “Naw, just work here. Married to the brother-in-law of the owner.”

  I ordered a shrimp po-boy. It was on the early side for lunch, but that seemed the safest choice in a place like this, even though I hadn’t had breakfast yet and this wasn’t my morning meal of choice. I doubted this place did brunch.

  “What brings you here?” she asked after taking my order. Strangers are fair game.

  “I’m looking for someone my family used to know. My dad ran a shipyard in Bayou St. Jack and we had a friend of the family who owned a boat called the Eula May.”

  She made a face.

  “You know the family?”

  “Not much of a family, if you ask me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She refilled my coffee up without my asking. I do coffee black, but I usually don’t do tar-paper black. “Probably not the people you’re thinking of. Just moved here not that long ago.”

  “About how far back?”

  “Hard to remember. No more ’an ten years. Bought the boat with cash. Then a year or two later couldn’t pay the bills. Two brothers, near as we can figure.”

  Ten years was a short time around here. It usually took about two generations to be considered not recent arrivals. “They married? Have wives?”

  She cleared her throat in a dismissive manner. “Wives, no. Women around ’em, yeah. Seems a new one every time we see ’em. Which ain’t much, let me tell you.”

  “Why not? Where else do they go besides your place?”

  “They ain’t real welcome here. That couldn’t pay their bills thing. They don’t much hang with folks from here. Heard they grew up around Lake Charles. Not very friendly. The rumor is they make their money running drugs.”

  “Really?”

  She poured more coffee and went to the kitchen to fetch my po-boy.

  She returned and plopped it in front of me. I wasn’t sure I could do this much fried with the coffee toxic sludge in my stomach.

  “Really,” she continued. “Know they don’t do much shrimping ’cause they only occasionally show up with anything. Not enough to make ends meet, even if they don’t pay regular. But they both have nice new trucks. How do you get those if you always have the smallest haul?”

  “Doesn’t make sense to me.” I took a bite. The shrimp was good. It would be a war with the coffee in my stomach. I hoped the bread would be my secret weapon. “Anyone see them do anything bad?”

  “You know how rumors work. It’s more what we don’t see
. New trucks and no shrimp is what we do see. Plus they’re not nice people.”

  “Not nice how?” I took another bite. So far things were at a standoff.

  “Not friendly. Just packed up their stuff and got the hell out when Isaac headed this way. Didn’t bother to offer to help anyone else. Drove right by a boat in trouble, like they didn’t see ’em.”

  “You seen them lately?”

  She started to pour the coffee and I waved her off. “A few days ago, heard they loaded up that boat of theirs and took off early in the morning. Not in good weather, so it doesn’t make sense they’re out there.”

  I took another bite. The coffee fired the first warning shot.

  “What kind of boat do they have?”

  “Shrimp boat.”

  “I know that. What kind of shrimp boat? Is it fairly large? Painted white with blue trim?”

  “Pretty big boat. Made it all the more funny they paid in cash. White with red-and-black trim.”

  “You’re right, that’s not the same people—well, the same boat—we used to know. What’s their name? Do you know?”

  “The Guidry brothers. One is Sam, I think, and don’t know the other one. You sure you don’t want any more coffee?”

  “I’m sure. Doctor told me to watch my caffeine intake. But it sure is good.” I chewed down a hunk of bread to appease the coffee. “How long have they been gone?”

  “’Bout three, four days now. Why you so interested?”

  “Sound like the kind of people to avoid. Have to know about them enough so if I see them coming I can get out of the way. Like knowing what snakes to watch for.”

  “Yeah, they’re like snakes, all right. They mostly stay away from us as well. Look for tattoos. They’re covered in ’em.”