Pascal straightened his shirt and tightened the knot on his tie. He brushed his hair back with one hand and paused to smile gently at Gibby. The moment caught her by surprise and she blinked. He touched her cheek with the back of his hand and delicately stroked her soft flesh.
She said hoarsely, “Burt Elder is here again.”
Pascal looked behind her but his office door was closed. His hand lowered to his side. “What does he want?”
“He didn’t have the handcuffs out,” Gibby said wryly. “Also he didn’t mention why he was here.”
Pascal shrugged. It wasn’t like he could go out the windows. He glanced out and saw that someone had put plywood up over them. Occupied with the business of attempting to be a nobler man, he hadn’t noticed. “What the hell is up with that?” He pointed at the windows.
Gibby shook her head. “I think we’re expecting bad weather.”
Pascal set his shoulders and said, “Are you ready, Gibby? I’ll say you had nothing to do with it. You didn’t know anything. Will you wait for me to get out of prison? And visit me with cartons of Marlboros?”
“You don’t smoke,” Gibby said. “Just open the door.”
Burt was waiting but impatiently. The second Pascal opened the door, the police chief said urgently, “Have you called the governor yet, Pascal?”
“The governor?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, man,” Burt exclaimed. “We’re going to need to put the emergency evacuation plan into effect. We’re going to need the governor to activate the National Guard so we can have them taking care of things before it gets worse. I would have called you, but the phones at the station have gone straight down the crapper.”
Pascal wanted to walk back into his office, back into the little bathroom, and ask his reflection if it had ever had a moment where it had felt like it was suddenly the stupidest man on the face of the planet. It was like leaving a whodunit movie to take a pee and coming back to find the credits rolling. It was like coming home at the end of the day and finding that your fly has been open for hours with a long streamer of toilet paper hanging down and not one person mentioned it.
Burt’s face, normally affable and kindly natured, turned the color of a beet’s boiled butt.
Pascal spared a perplexed glance at Gibby who returned his confused look in spades.
“Um, Burt,” Pascal ventured. “Not quite sure why we need to call the governor about the situation. Seems to be like we should be calling Jerry Springer or maybe Entertainment Tonight. The View maybe?” He scratched his head and added, “What does Bayou Billy have to do with an emergency evacuation plan?”
Burt stared. “Have you been drinking again, Pascal? Good God, I know you like your alcohol, but this is an emergency situation.”
“I know that,” Pascal soothed. “We’re all upset about the loss of Billy’s body, but I don’t see how-”
“IT’S A FUCKING HURRICANE!” Burt yelled. “It came on shore today. It fragged Houston like it was a group of pissed-off, toked out privates and Houston was a West Point captain with a corncob up his butt and the Weather Channel says it’s about to smear us because although it’s slowed down overland, it ain’t that slow and we am done smack dab in the middle of it! Are you out of your ever-loving, flipping, farking, half-baked mind?”
Pascal looked at the boarded up windows and said mildly, “Oh, that really explains a lot of things.”
Gibby nodded understandingly. “Oh, yeah.”
Burt gawked at both of them. “Never mind,” he said abruptly. “I’ll call the governor. You do whatever it is you need to do.”
“Gibby,” Pascal said calmly and precisely, ignoring Burt. “Call the governor. Let everyone know in the building to head for higher ground. I’ll get the evac plan started and then we can roll. We’ll call the local unit of the National Guard and break out the sandbags. Let’s focus on the places that need our help more than anything, the hospital, the clinics, the old folk’s homes, and the hospice. We’ll use the high school as a base of operations and we need to start having officers patrolling with bull horns announcing that folks who stayed can go there for assistance. Also we need to reinstate the nine-one-one lines so that we can keep on top of emergencies. I’ll call the telephone companies and blister their asses until they make it right. Does that about cover everything, Burt?”
The normally genially appearing police chief froze for a moment, startled by the sudden shift in Pascal’s demeanor. Then Burt nodded. “You can still reach me on my cell phone, Pascal,” he said. “And after you’re done with your calls, you should get the hell out, man. The Sabine River’s close to overflowing the levees and the east side already has some breaks. Heavy rain from the upper bands of the hurricane is already moving into the area and there’s been a crapload of tornados reported south of us. It’s going to rip the holy living diddly squat out of us.” He nodded shortly and disappeared out the door.
Pascal sighed. “Let’s get to work, Gibby.”
•
Having done everything in their power to do, they finished an hour later, and Pascal austerely handed the keys to the Expedition to Gibby.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Take the Ford, keep it in four-wheel high, and drive due west or due east until it stops raining,” he instructed.
“What are you going to do?”
“Find Bayou Billy,” Pascal said. “The logo on the truck, Jones Construction, probably belongs to one of Lucy Jones’ children. She’s got two. Lucy’s Billy’s step-daughter and I imagine that Billy pretty well abused her good will over the years just about like everyone else’s.”
Gibby frowned. “You’re going to go over there and demand Billy’s body back?”
“Not sure exactly.”
“How do you know about Lucy Jones?” Gibby asked slowly.
Pascal scowled. “Used to go drinking with her.” He gauged her expression and added, “Oh, I never slept with her. We just used to go drinking together. It’s what drunks do sometimes. We find other drunks who like to drink with us and we go drinking. We get blitzed, complain about life’s foibles, and how we’re really getting screwed, and then sometimes we puke up our guts together.”
Gibby’s mouth opened and then shut.
“I thought you should know,” Pascal admitted. “I have a little-no, strike that. I have a drinking problem. It don’t get much more alcoholic than me. Right now my hands are quaking, I’m sweating like a pig, and I keep seeing black things moving out of the sides of my vision that look suspiciously like mutant tarantulas on crack. So I need to do what I need doing before it gets worse.”
Gibby jingled the keys. “I’ll drive.”
•
The rain was coming down like a sonuvabitch. Gibby drove carefully through two sections of running water where running water wasn’t supposed to be and finally reached the trailer park where Lucy Jones lived. As they pulled into the park, she said, “So you came over here and drank with her, too?”
Pascal tried not to wince. He heard the question in her voice. “Drinking, Gibby. Only drinking. Lucy makes a mean Hot Maple Moo.” Gibby glanced at him and Pascal explained hastily, “Bourbon, milk, and maple syrup.” His mouth watered again and he shooed a rather large black snake that he’d seen from the corner of his right eye.
Gibby halted the Ford suddenly. “They’re there,” she hissed. “And look, they’re loading the freezer into the back of the truck. That’s got to be the freezer, right?”
They were a young man and a young woman. Both were getting soaked as they levered the chest freezer into the back of a pick-up truck, oblivious to them or the rain or to anything else. Gibby quickly pulled into an empty parking slot in what appeared to be a very nearly empty trailer park and turned off the engine.
“That’s not Lucy,” Pascal said. “Neither one.”
“The truck says Jones Construction,” Gibby added. “Maybe her children?”
Pascal shrugged. The man closed the truck’s gate
and off they went. The Expedition followed like a champ. They crossed over the bridge that gapped Sawdust City to Albie and Gibby said nervously, “The water’s cresting the bridge, Pascal.”
“Follow that freezer,” Pascal said firmly. As they drove over the bridge, the water sloshed its way up to the bottom of the vehicle and once the tires ominously started to slip. However, they made the other side and it was Gibby’s hands that were shaking.
Ten minutes later, they watched from a distance as the pair tried to make a trade-off with Ophelia Rector.
“Son of fucking, whore, bitch, prick, shit head,” Pascal swore violently.
“Well, you said they would take it to Ophelia Rector,” Gibby said.
“It’s not that,” Pascal said. “I think a foot long millipede with purple antennas just climbed up my shorts and licked my balls.”
Gibby patted his knee. “It’s D.T.’s, Pascal. Pretend it’s fondling you.”
“Wow,” Pascal said, unexpectedly distracted. “Ophelia’s shooting at them with what looks like a hand cannon.”
“Maybe it’s a good thing you didn’t go down there,” Gibby said. “Look, now she’s firing at the chest freezer.”
“Well, hasty pudding drops,” he said. “The freezer didn’t do anything to her.”
When Ophelia Rector was done firing at the freezer, she got back into her BMW and drove off, leaving the freezer sitting in the mud.
Pascal and Gibby both found out why a few minutes later as they peered into the open appliance. “Gibby,” Pascal said grimly. “Ophelia killed an unarmed and helpless bag of fertilizer.”
Chapter Twenty–Six
From an article in The National Quidnunc, dated February 6, 1990:
Bayou Billy Murdered by Aliens!
His Remains Kept on Ice by Feds!
William McCall, AKA “Bayou Billy” by fans and federal officials alike, was abducted by aliens early in January, 1990. Neighbors testified that the elderly man, 89, was absent for two weeks before he was reported as missing from his Sawdust City, Texas home. Gracie T. Marcus, a neighbor, stated that she saw glowing lights circling over Bayou Billy’s home on the night he vanished. “They were red, and blue, and white, and it looked like a whirling lollipop,” she said. An anonymous source reported that Federal officials, still interested in the location of Bayou Billy’s loot, the loot he stole from dozens of trains and one river boat, were looking into the mysterious disappearance. One unidentified federal agent stated, “We’ve been watching Billy since before there was an FBI and before Hoover took over the Bureau of Investigation. He has always been a person of interest, especially considering his questionable pardon by a past President.”
Days after the reported absence of the infamous outlaw, the same unidentified Federal agent stated, “Through close watch on the east Texas area we were able to ascertain that Billy was unequivocally abducted by beings of questionable origin and the ensuing examination caused the elderly man to have a heart attack. His remains were secretly located by Federal officials and are, even now, being closely scrutinized by forensic experts in order to determine the entire story.”
There were no comments from Billy’s close relatives except, “The old bastard’s probably on a bender,” from his nephew, Harrison Lansky, 59, of Austin, Texas. Sawdust City Police authorities refused to return phone calls from this reporter and even the local news are interested in the whereabouts of the iniquitous Bayou Billy.
The Present
Friday, July 21st
Albie, Louisiana
Life was a miserable, nostril-offending carbuncle on the posterior of homeless wretch awash in a bath of his own excrement. Life was a revolting, despoiled amalgamation of dross, idiocy, and anarchism. Life was a petty, all befouling, onanistic cesspool of feculent caustic, effluence.
Ophelia Rector wanted to scream it to the world for all to hear and to see that she was not about to take life’s bitter lessons lying down. She was a RECTOR. The name, Rector, had meaning and influence. There was magnificent clout in the family surname and there was the pride of being part of a long and outstanding tradition that impacted hundreds, if not thousands, of people living and dying in this part of Louisiana. Her life’s works WERE NOT about to come crashing down with all of the power of a dinosaur bellowing its last, defiant but futile roar as it suffocated in the oppressive heat and smoke of a massive meteor’s wake.
And her sons. Her so-called sons. They were useless lumps of obtuse ignoramuses who were frightful personifications of the argument for having one’s fallopian tubes surgically cauterized closed. Two had attempted to talk her into leaving her home for the remainder of the passing hurricane. One had fled to the sanctuary of a church on higher ground. Another was stockpiling supplies in the attic like a fanatical squirrel foreseeing a long and cold winter. The remaining two were ensuring that the boards covering the windows were well secured and would protect them.
All of this was being done instead of protecting Ophelia’s interests. If the nonsensical ransomers didn’t have William Douglas McCall’s blessed vestiges, then someone else had to have them. And if Long Dong Silver had alluded that he had first contacted Pascal Waterford for a ransom on Mr. McCall’s timeless ruins then it was possible that the kidnappers had made an earlier trade with Pascal and believed that they could fool a simple woman.
Ophelia was not fooled, nor was she simple.
After all, why would a man asking for fifty thousand dollars not bring the item to be exchanged, unless he didn’t have it? Obviously, Long had had the pearly deceased one at one point in time. There had been the picture transmitted via the Internet. But Long had been surprised to see that the chest freezer had not contained what he was presenting to Ophelia. As a matter of fact, Long had been eager to show Ophelia the ephemeral transience of Mr. McCall. Long had truly expected that Mr. McCall would be inside the appliance.
And because the domestic device was empty Long had fled without even thinking to grab the money from a simple, older woman with an obvious cast on one injured hand and blackened rings under her eyes. Well, the Magnum .44 might have been a slight motivation in his flight.
What did that say to Ophelia?
Pascal Waterford. Somehow, someway, Pascal must have gotten to the pair of inept, would be criminals and absconded with the goods, leaving a bag of mildewing fertilizer in Mr. McCall’s place.
Pascal, again. He is the bane of my existence. He is the reason I will not succeed. He is the one who preempts my every move. Far from the lackadaisical dullard she had imagined the mayor to be, he was her antithesis, and her demon crept up from hell to impede each of her actions.
Ophelia considered for a moment. If only my sons were more like Pascal.
•
A restless night had been spent listening to the wind and rain battering at the boards that covered the windows. Ophelia knew that she needed sleep in order to think properly, but sleep eluded her just as surely as Mr. McCall’s mortal essence. Regardless of her obvious fatigue, she had a plan when she ultimately woke from a fitful doze.
Her first move was to ignore the ardent pleas of her useless sons. She donned thigh-high rubber boots over sturdy jeans and a sweat shirt and covered herself with a rain slicker. The boots and slicker had been used by the late Mr. Albert Johns in his attempts to escape the Rector lifestyle in the form of fly fishing. To Ophelia’s knowledge Albert had gone fly fishing all of twice but she certainly appreciated her own foresight in keeping her late husband’s gear.
Next she located Oakley, her second eldest son, and demanded the keys to his Chevy Suburban. “What’s wrong with the Beamer, Mama?” he asked sarcastically and backed away before she could grab some part of his anatomy.
“A tree fell on it,” Ophelia said. Then she displayed the Magnum .44 stuck, muzzle down in her belt, wordlessly threatening him as surely as if she had spoken the words.
Oakley handed the keys over with an aggravated sigh. “You’re going to drown yourself, Ma,” he said. “
The hurricane is just about right over us and I saw a car roll down the street by itself a half hour ago. The phones are out and I’m pretty sure we’re going to go to Oz via the same way as Dorothy and Toto. We’re camping out in the basement until it fills up with water. You should, too.”
“Go have a drink, Oakley,” Ophelia sneered and went outside to claim possession of the Suburban.
The second part of her plan involved checking on her beloved cemetery and she was utterly dismayed to see that the levees had further broken down and that the Sabine River was making a new course through the center of Albie Cemetery. Furthermore, she could see no evidence that the National Guard or anyone else was working to emplace sandbags or shore up the levees in order to protect the once gracious memorial garden.
Gravestones were beginning to lean over in waterlogged ground. The waters had toppled two mausoleums and were working their way around Pauper’s acre, washing away every inch of topsoil before cutting valleys into the deeper earth. She could see coffins becoming visible to the air again. A marble, Italian bust on a prominent, 19th century, Creole businesswoman was tilted over and would certainly fall within the hour as the waters ate away at its foundations. The WWII veteran’s monument had been carried away by the inevitability of Mother Nature’s fury in all its supremacy and no remainder was discernible.
It was horrifying. Absolutely, undeniably, categorically God awful. Ophelia gasped with the sheer futility that she felt at witnessing the fall of her creation.
So she drove the Suburban to the National Guard unit one mile outside of Albie in order to require their immediate presence at the cemetery. There were only two people inside the building. One was a harried private who was relaying calls through a single cell phone. The other was Colonel Delvin P. Overstreet.
The colonel was organizing man-power to various points of the city and up and down the Sabine River all the way to where the river became Toledo Bend Reservoir. He paused in his activity to stare intently at Ophelia. Finally, he said, “Good Lord, you look like you’ve been in a fight, Ophelia, I know it’s been a long time, dear. I hope you’ll understand if I don’t stop to chat, but I’m-”
Life and Death of Bayou Billy Page 33
