“Maybe that’s why I feel two pints low about now,” I said. “What happened to our unwanted visitor?”
“Oh, he’s dead. You put a lot of holes in him before you went down, that’s for sure. Found him hunched over in the brush just up the front.”
“Where is he now?”
“I dragged him out back, but I had to get rid of the body cuz it was festerin’, and Darla was startin’ to take a likin’ to it. Gators don’t normally like human meat, but if it rots out enough they might. I tethered the body to a chunk of wood, took him out in the boat, and tossed the body in some deep water. I don’t think it’ll float back up. If it does, don’t matter much out here. Folks here find bodies all the time, and some joke they cut them up and use it as bait.”
“Any idea who he was?” I asked.
“I recognized him soon as I saw him. His name was Delmon Porter. He’s a poacher that tries to sell off his illegal goods, but no one here dumb enough to do dealings with him.”
“He probably knew that Zella was here and that Mallon was goin’ through town lookin’ for her. I bet his plan was to come here and get her and sell her off to him.”
“What I was thinkin’,” JaRoux said. “He got what was comin’ to him.”
“I suppose,” I said.
Zella arrived with the cigarette. “Sorry took so long gettin’ you your cigarette. Aunt Betty was fussing again and I had to set her straight.”
“That’s okay. Setting Aunt Betty straight takes priority,” I said as she handed me the cigarette and lit it.
“How’re you feeling?” she asked.
“Weak.”
“Are you hungry? Dinner is nearly ready.”
“Yes, I think some grub would do me some good. But you need to stop with this pampering. I’ll live. Besides, if anyone needs it, it’s Aunt Betty.”
“She does not. She thinks she does, but she’s perfectly able bodied to do things herself,” Zella said. “And don’t tell me what I should or shouldn’t be doing. Smoke your cigarette and hush up. You’re no good to me laying there as weak as you are and I ain’t paying good money for an invalid.”
I didn’t have the strength to argue with her. Even if I did, I doubt I would have won.
* * *
Two days later, I could walk under my own steam. JaRoux made me a cane out of an etched piece of cypress. With cane in hand, I walked around the shack then outside to rid myself of the nausea.
JaRoux had organized a group of nearby Cajun friends to watch over the cottage for the next few days. A few of them were introduced to me: Severin Granger, a long-limbed fella that didn’t know a lick of English; Henri Louviere, a fleshy jovial character that had a hook for a right hand; and Don Breaux, who sat in the corner for most of the meeting whittling on a stick with a bowie knife that had a handle carved out of bone.
Zella gave me much strife upon hearing that I was leaving, which puzzled me. The morning JaRoux and me were to set out to the mainland, Zella advanced on me. She bludgeoned her lips into my face, while brandishing her claws into the back of my flesh, leaving slight battle scars. A real wildcat, she was.
It was over as soon as it happened. She pushed me away and said, “You best get on the boat,” and walked back toward the cabin.
JaRoux shook his head as we set off. “That the best you can do? A beautiful woman gives you a kiss and all you can do is stand there like a damn fool.”
“She caught me off guard is all,” I said.
“Sure, she did.”
“Why don’t you just shut up and steer the boat!”
“Sure thing, boss,” he said, still smiling.
It was not that I did not find Zella alluring, for she most certainly was. Yet I still clung to the belief that she was a beauty that came from ugliness and did not need to be tainted by the likes of me.
At the landing, I reclaimed my automobile from where it was hidden away in JaRoux’s shed and drove it to my apartment. I parked the machine in the garage and the attendant/handyman, who went by Ralph LaRue, approached me.
“Evening, sir, boy, am I mighty glad I caught you when I did. A couple of bad customers came in yesterday lookin’ for you. They haven’t left, and I reckon they up in your place now.”
“What do they look like?” I asked.
“They ain’t from around here, that’s for sure. Got expensive overcoats and clothes, and they talk real fast.”
I thanked Ralph and tipped him. I opened the trunk to my car, where I rummaged around for a crate of tear gas. I got a hold of the stuff when a colored used-book store owner found a small army’s worth of illegal weapons inside his outside trash vault. He did not want the police finding the weapons in his place of business, in fear it would scare off what little business he had. So for a nice fee, I more than happily relocated the weapons to the bottom of the mighty Mississippi, after confiscating the tear gas and a few other toys for myself.
I looked into where the arsenal came from, and learned that another used-book store owner just up the street was selling illegal weapons on the side. It seems that he got a tip the police were about to raid him and must’ve thought it’d be a hoot to dump the stuff off on his colored competitor.
By the time the police did show up to search his business, the store owner redirected them to my client by telling them it was my client that was in fact selling the weapons, and that he’d seen him stashing them outside in his garbage vault.
Luckily, when the police got there, the weapons had been removed, by me, but that didn’t stop the police from handcuffing my client in front of his customers, taking him down to the station, and detaining him for a day.
I took one of the tube canisters out, and walked out to Royal. From the street, I glanced up into my own gallery. The inside was dark, but that didn’t mean anything. I pulled the fuse and sent the canister through the window. It took but a few seconds for the sound of yelling and stuff being knocked over to reach down into the street.
I rushed back through the main entrance gate and into the courtyard in time to see my front door ajar and two big men faltering out of it. When I saw their mugs, I recognized them as Buzz Martin, aka The Saw, and Tommy O’Cahan.
O’Cahan was a block of a man, with a raw jaw and dark slits for eyes. The last I heard of him was reading in the paper that he was serving ten to thirty for an armed robbery charge. He and a few other grafters tried to bust into a New York City bank. It was a well thought-out caper, except for the timing. The execution of the crime was around noon on a Friday. It just happened that the building was full of cops from the local precinct that had taken their lunch break to deposit their weekly paychecks.
Martin, a colossal slab of meat, was doing muscle work around the same time Storm and I were. Now, however, age had set in on him. His muscles were starting to go soft, and his unbaked face looked like dough that had lost its form.
He was working for a narcotics syndicate that was fronting as a pharmaceutical agency. The syndicate was gutted out by the police when they got so certain that they had paid off everyone that was potent enough to shut them down that they started putting wooden overcoats on undercover narcotics agents.
Martin got his alias from his notoriety for hacking off limbs of hopheads that didn’t pony up. Or maybe he just made the nickname up himself.
He dressed in a suit that had the appearance of not having been pressed in a while and a pair of immaculate galoshes.
They were both slashing at their eyes with the sleeves of their coats. I pulled the .45 out from my waistband and met them at the bottom of the stairs.
“If Mallon wants to talk to me, he can call me during regular hours. And next time you birds get to thinkin’ about bustin’ into my flat, just remember there’s more than tear gas I can toss through them windows.”
The reply I got back from them? A lot of blasphemy and threats. Nothing original, and mild compared to the vulgarity I’d get at a weigh-in when I squared off against a white opponent. Watching them leave, I
thought about shadowing them. I resolved that it would be a waste since these men were good enough to expect a tail job.
I took a handkerchief from my coat pocket, smothered my face, and went up into my room. There I tossed the empty canister in the outside trash bin and examined the front door lock. An easy pin and tumbler lock to pick for someone that knew what they were doing. A pick and a flathead screwdriver as a tension wrench were all that were required. Without Jenkins’s warning, I’d have never known the place had been broken into. I would’ve walked right in on their ambush.
When I turned the rest of the lights on, I came upon a disturbing sight. Carved into the wall above my couch were the words “ALL NIGGERS DIE!” I ignored the fumes and stood and stared at the vandalism. I kept staring. I couldn’t look away. Hearing such things out in the street or in public was one thing, but having it mounted inside my own home was another. Anger came to me. I tried to control it. Losing my head was not the answer. Experience taught me that. I released my clenched hands, and looked away.
Switching the fan on, I left my apartment with the door open. I asked Jenkins to watch the place as I strode my way to a nearby diner and used the phone to ring up Brawley.
His Russian princess wife answered the call in an unpleasant mood before she handed the phone off to him.
“You are breaking the rules, Fletcher,” he grumbled.
“How so?”
“When a colored isn’t heard from in a week, around here, it means they are dead. You don’t sound very dead to me.”
“A few inches in the wrong direction and I might’ve been. What’s been happening?”
“The usual. Mallon’s heavies are running around town like they own the place, looking for that dame and us having to sit around looking like we don’t know our asses from our elbows.”
“Have you been able to locate where Mallon is?” I asked.
“Nope. We can’t even drag his boyfriends in for questioning. We try tailing them, but they go in circles like it’s a merry-go-round. We had a good tail that showed promise, followed one of their cars out on River Road, but lost them in all that country.”
I hung up after we finished and went back to my place. The fumes were still too strong to occupy the place without being irritated by the toxin, nor did I want to sleep there until I had the words on the wall removed. Ralph offered me a cot in the back service room, and there I slept next to the thudding washing machine until early the next morning.
CHAPTER 15
I woke up, bought a cup of coffee, and went back up to my flat. The evening breeze had fumigated the inside. I called for maintenance to see about fixing the window, and informed them that I would cover the charge. Then for the next hour I puttied and repainted the wall, covering up all traces of defacement.
When I finished, I did not bother to shower, but rummaged through my closet for a pair of overalls, workman’s boots, and a straw hat.
I dressed myself in the attire and drove out to a service station just outside of the Quarter. Roy, my mechanic, was up early, bending over a gutted V-8 engine when I pulled onto the lot.
Roy was a short colored man, with bowed legs and an elongated stomach. His oval shaped head was fattish, and balanced on a meaty axis of a neck.
I descended upon him and he stood up from the engine and greeted me with a firm handshake.
“Morning, Mr. Fletcher. Does your machine need some fixin’?”
“Probably, but we’ll take care of that later. I came to take that Model A truck off your hands for a bit. I’ll gladly pay for its use.”
Roy swooshed a hand. “Aw, don’t worry about it, Mr. Fletcher. She’s running good, and got a full tank. Take her as long as you like.”
“Thanks, Roy. All right if I borrow that pickax of yours?”
“Sure thing, boss. It’s in the shop. You doin’ some farmwork on the side or somethin’?”
“Something like that,” I said.
I retrieved the ax, tossed it into the back of the truck, and set off toward River Road, a seventy-mile corridor that snaked along the Mississippi. I took the road past antebellum plantations and through the surviving farms. These were not the most prosperous years for the agricultural industry, and it was surprising they managed to get anything to grow out of the ground.
The air smelled of manure and smoke as I passed fields where laborers were hard at work burning post-harvest sugarcane. I stopped and spoke with some of the laborers along the way.
A lot of them had noticed fancy cars had been trafficking down the main road, who they had figured were nothing but motor gypsies. The farther up into Valerie, the more details I got, until one worker informed me that he saw one of the cars coming out of the De Ponts’ plantation up the road.
The house was done in Greek Revival style—fifty feet tall, with porches on all sides. The locals told me that the De Pont family was scarcely able to make it in the sugar business when large sugar factories had run most small mills out. Despite that, they had been able to get by until recently, when the spread of mosaic disease in the crops had been too much and the family abandoned the house a few years back.
I tugged the hayburner past the entrance and up the street, where I parked it to the side of the road. With the straw hat firmly pulled over my head, I stepped out, and retrieved the pickax from out of the back.
The next few hours I picked at the dirt in the roadside ditch for no apparent reason, while I whistled old blues songs I tried to remember. When dusk came, I saw movement on the property for the first time.
Two figures were walking to a shed adjacent to the house. One of them stood in front of the shed and pushed back the sliding door. The darkness made it hard to see what was inside, until the front lights of a coupe lit up. I saw a machine pull out of the shed, where it stopped and waited for the other man to slide the door back into place and lock it. Once the man got into the passenger side, the car kicked up dust as it roared out of the lot and onto the main road. It didn’t even stop to notice me as it sped off.
I waited a bit longer once the car had left before I tossed the ax in the cab and steered the truck back onto the road.
At the nearest call box, I phoned Brawley. Still doing late paperwork at the station, he said, “You know the police motto, ‘If it ain’t written down, it didn’t happen.’”
“Well, if you want some more stuff to write up, meet me at my place as soon as you can break free. I might have found where Mallon is.”
The rest of the drive into town after I had hung up, I thought over a possible fight plan. I sorted all of Mallon’s faults and temperament. His greatest weakness was his one-track mind-set fueled by emotion rather than any sort of rational thinking. This was an amateur trait, and made him easy to be systematically picked apart. All it would require would be to dangle Mallon’s current object of obsession in front of him, leaving him wide open.
I found Roy still messing with the engine when I dropped the truck off at the garage and took my lift to the apartment.
Brawley sat propped in a reclining chair in the courtyard when I arrived. He followed me up to the room, took a cigarette that I offered him out of a lacquered pine box, and glanced over an area map I folded out in front of him.
“That’s where he’s nested at, huh? No doubt that place is stock full of his plug-uglies armed for bear.”
“I would think so. But Mallon is a fish out of water here. He thinks he’s still in the big city. If we could divert his muscle into town, he’d be vulnerable.”
“What are you thinking here?” Brawley questioned.
“A basic diversion. He ain’t thinking straight with his hard-on for the girl. He’d send all the gorillas he has to go get her if he had the opportunity.”
“You want to use the broad as bait?”
“I don’t think we have to,” I said. “You think you can get a go-ahead from the station?”
“I don’t know. Getting something with a judge’s handwriting on it might be hard. The chief definite
ly will go for it. He’s been puffin’ ever since Mallon’s hoods bumped off Flori. It ain’t even about jurisdiction. I know the sheriff that works the St. James Parish, and he knows he didn’t stay elected because of his looks.”
“You get it squared away on your end, and tomorrow I’ll see what kind of trouble I can stir up,” I said.
After Brawley left, I spent the remainder of the evening cleaning the Colt. It had collected a significant amount of dirt in the barrel after I had dropped it upon being shot. Prior to me meeting Brawley, my knowledge of guns was at best sketchy. Brawley would take me on his days off out into the country and had me shoot at an assortment of targets until my marksmanship got to be mildly competent. He also showed me how to field strip the Colt for cleaning.
“Goddamn, you best start learnin’ how to take care of your gun,” he told me. “In this humidity you need to be cleanin’ it all the time or you’re going to find that when you need it, the only thing you’ll be lucky enough to get coming out of its barrel is a pile full of rust.”
I removed the slide lock, spring, barrel bushing, and barrel, and cleaned the powder and dirt out using a combination of a wire brush, toothbrush, and cotton swabs. I gave the parts a good but not excessive oiling, reassembled it and wiped it down with a coarse cloth.
Satisfied with my work, I put the gun away, and lit a cigarette out on the gallery. My barometer showed the air pressure dropping, but the night remained clear, with only a mild wind that came from the northeast.
If things went well, by the end of tomorrow Zella would not need any more protection. That was my only interest in the matter. It was not my job to catch or punish bad guys. That was for the boys in blue. Yet there would be some personal satisfaction that went with seeing Mallon taken care of. His childish threats, insults, and ear-banging were nothing but annoyances. But having a cigar burned into my hand, and “ALL NIGGERS DIE” being carved into the wall of my home were more than that. And I’d be damned if Mallon got the best of me.
The Red Storm Page 14
