by Tony Dunbar
Tubby swatted an insect on his wrist.
“Maybe we should just stay out here and see what they do,” he suggested.
He swatted another one on his neck.
“You’re the boss,” Flowers conceded.
“But since I came this far I guess we’ll just crash the party.”
Quietly the two men tiptoed through the saw grass and around the scrub brush that covered the land side of the camp. The moon rose gradually above the horizon, casting sharp shadows across their path.
The rustic house was raised up on pilings, and a wide deck wrapped around it. Hiding under the creosoted poles, the two men caught their breath.
Suddenly, a pistol shot crashed through the air, and Flowers grabbed Tubby in a suffocating bear hug and wrestled him to the ground. Tubby struggled free and, sputtering, brushed the sand off his face.
“What the hell are you doing?” he hissed at Flowers.
“Protecting the boss, boss.”
“You almost broke my back. I’m going up there and look in the window.”
Tubby crept to the wind-beaten wooden steps and started up, trying not to make a sound.
Flowers came behind him. A light shown through a window on the porch, and Tubby cautiously peeked inside.
There was a body on the floor, almost centered on an oval rug. He recognized Norella Finn.
He yelped involuntarily when a hand grabbed his elbow, and Sapphire whispered. “What happened?” in his ear.
“What are you doing here?” Tubby gasped, but she ignored him.
Flowers signaled that he was going around to the back of the house, and he followed the porch around the corner.
Right away a loud grunt came from his general direction, followed by a thump.
Tubby and Sapphire exchanged glances, then watched as Lucky LaFrene— cotton-candy hair in place— stepped around the corner. He had a large pistol in his hand, and he wasn’t smiling.
“Kind of scared me, sneaking up like that,” he said. “I guess I’ll have to ask you to come inside.” He pointed the gun at Tubby’s middle.
“No problem here,” Tubby said, and Sapphire followed his lead.
They had to step over Flowers, who was spread-eagle on the deck.
“I had to tap him with my fish knocker,” LaFrene said, indicating a bat lying beside the door. “Shouldn’t surprise a man in the dark.”
When they walked into the house they got another surprise. Norella was sitting up on the rug glaring at them.
“You aren’t shot,” Tubby said, stating the obvious. “Mind telling me what’s going on?”
“I was practicing my own death,” Norella said crossly.
“I’m afraid you interrupted the ol’ gal’s suicide,” LaFrene said. “Why don’t you sit down where I can keep an eye on you. You, too, miss.”
Tubby and Sapphire squeezed together into a cheap plastic loveseat made for juvenile guests.
“Why are you committing suicide?” Sapphire was concerned.
“Who is she?” Norella asked.
“A friend of mine,” Tubby said. He was going to add, She’s a woman your husband hit on, but he didn’t know how that would go over. He listened hopefully for sounds that Flowers might be coming back to life.
“Because I want to disappear,” Norella said angrily.
“Already wrote the fare-thee-well note,” LaFrene added. He was the only one standing. “A note on the table, a gun with a bullet missing on the deck, and it looks like she fell into the water. The tide comes in and out, you know, and it’s hard to find a body out there. It’s the crème de la crime.”
“Why are you disappearing?” Tubby asked.
“We’re leaving here tonight on the speedboat,” LaFrene said thoughtfully. “It’s too hot to trot in this burg.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“The same man you are, pilgrim, Marcus Dementhe.”
“Yeah? Why?”
“That guy is the monster mash, I’m telling you. He’ll snap me in two like a fire pole. I know too much.”
“About what?” Tubby asked, watching the pistol droop in LaFrene’s palm.
“I’ll tell you a little something,” LaFrene said, “since we’re out here in the void of paradise. That crazy Dementhe killed Max Finn.”
Tubby forgot about escaping.
“How’s that?” He was all ears.
“I’ll tell it just like it was. I told him, it ain’t right. You owe me the money.”
***
“It ain’t right. You owe me the money!” Lucky LaFrene pleaded with Max Finn.
They were in the main room of the boathouse, half den and half kitchen, divided by a bar. Max Finn was sitting on his stool, building a teepee with plastic forks. Lucky LaFrene alternately paced around the kitchen and plunked down next to Finn, trying to get his attention.
“This shouldn’t be hard to understand,” Lucky said. He was trying to be reasonable. “I lend money to you. My pal, and my palomino pays me back.”
Finn knocked his plastic forks into a heap and for entertainment began slapping his knees like bongo drums.
“Be serious for Chrissake,” LaFrene begged. “This is not funny.”
“Wrong. It’s very funny,” Finn told him.
“I want the papers on the boat,” LaFrene said. “Even with that you’ll still owe me more than twenty-five thousand.”
“Man, the boat is worth way more than I owe you. It’s a collector’s item. And you can’t have it, anyway.”
“No, sir, Max. I want the boat. Give me the papers. Afterwards, we get it appraised and we can work something out for the difference. You owe me.
Max grinned at him. “I can’t find the papers,” he said smugly.
LaFrene was out of patience.
“Max, I know it was you who sent those guys to talk to me, but I need my moola. I want that boat!” He slammed his fist down on the bar.
Finn reacted by bouncing off his stool and crashing around his boathouse. He started tearing pictures off the wall and kicking the Mexican statues and ashtrays off the tables.
“You want this, Shylock?” he screamed, smashing a candlestick onto the floor. “How about this?” He kicked the television.
LaFrene watched, speechless.
“You’re crazier than a kettle of radishes,” he whispered.
“You want this?” Finn held up a framed display of fifteen gold-plated gambling chips from a casino. LaFrene knew exactly what they were— thousand dollar chips for the “Fort Knox Megaslot Machine for the Twenty-First Century.” Lucky had been with Finn the night he won them. Since they also commemorated the fifteen ways Finn knew how to screw people, and since he had won plenty more that night, Finn had framed the chips and put them on the wall where he could tell people what a cool dude he was.
He slammed the case to the floor and jumped on it with both feet.
“Hell, yes, I want that,” LaFrene said, getting up. “That’s fifteen grand.”
“Well come and get them,” Finn invited coyly. He scooped the chips off the floor and shook off the glass. Then he placed them on his tongue, one by one.
“Tastes great.” Gulp.
“Like caviar, Lucky,” Gulp.
LaFrene sat down heavily on his stool.
“You’re a lunatic, Max,” he said sadly.
The doorbell rang.
Max swallowed his last chip and looked around at the mess he had made.
“I hope that’s the cleaning lady,” he said, and burped. Stepping around an overturned lamp he went to open the door.
“This is quite an honor.” He stood back to let the visitor enter.
Dementhe closed the door behind him and looked past Max to take in the room.
“Hello,” he said to Lucky, who nodded.
“Please get the obnoxious and disgusting grin off your face, Max,” he said to Finn.
Finn’s smile stayed put. Dementhe’s face turned red and he jabbed Finn in the stomach with two stiff fingers to make his po
int. When Max just opened his mouth, the man jabbed him again.
“Eeeee,” Finn wheezed. He clutched his throat.
“What’s wrong with this fool?” Dementhe asked LaFrene.
“He needs a head shrimper,” Lucky said, but by then it was too late for Finn.
He was twirling slowly, gasping loudly, and beating himself on the chest. He staggered toward the bar and pointed a finger at Lucky, then, with a mystified expression on his face, he pitched headfirst to the floor.
LaFrene held up his hands like he was under arrest.
“What did you do to him?” Dementhe demanded, checking for a pulse.
Neither one liked the odds, and they got out of there fast.
***
“I don’t know if that’s actually a murder,” Tubby said when he had listened to the story.
LaFrene shrugged. “In my opinion it was. He was desiring to kill poor Max, except Max died on his own. Give Dementhe time, and he’ll do the same to me and this little lady right here.” He pointed at Norella, who was checking her appearance in the chrome legs of the coffee table. “I’m doing this for love, doll,” he called, and blew her a kiss.
She checked the mole under her ear.
“Why would Dementhe want Max Finn dead?”
“Because they was cooked up together in some crazy scheme. I don’t know the details. It had to do with Max’s call girls and how they was going to frame all the judges. Something screwed up, is all I know.”
“I guess it did,” Sapphire said, jaw squared.
“What’s your pointed view, little damsel?” LaFrene asked.
“I’m just one of the call girls, mister, if you must know. Just one of the chicks who flittered into his tree.”
Intrigued, LaFrene said, “It’s bees who flitter through the trees, doll. Have you got a stinger or are you a humdinger?”
“I can hum, and I can sing too. Despite what Max Finn did to me.”
“He was a crooked pot of piss, that’s no lie.”
“To me he’s like rain in the sky, but he’ll be gone by and by.”
Tubby’s head had been snapping back and forth, trying to follow this exchange, but, hopelessly puzzled, he interrupted.
“What’s Dementhe got against judges?” he asked. “Do you know?”
“Who the hell knows?” LaFrene spread his hands. “He’s just a nasty man. Some people are like that. I knew him from grade school. Before he got religion he was a good guy. But I didn’t get to be a lucky man waiting for the knife to fall. We’re clearing out. Norella, are all your bagatelles packed?”
“They’re all in the boat,” she said, avoiding Tubby’s eyes.
“Okay, you go first out the door, and be careful that fellow out there is still sleeping. You should drop your good-bye note on the coffee table on the way.”
Norella placed a folded piece of paper under an ashtray. She passed Tubby and Sapphire without looking at them and slipped out the door.
“Exactly where is everybody going?” Tubby asked, making conversation.
“We’re going to make an island off Texas,” LaFrene explained. “It’s a real nice place to stay for a while, where nobody bothers you. Kind of romantic, I thought. A lovely spot for me and my Queen of Denial. Now the plan has to change.”
“Are you going to kill us?” Sapphire asked.
LaFrene tugged on his earlobe like he was giving the matter some thought.
Tubby’s eyes did not leave the gun.
“It’s up to you. I ain’t a bad rapper. I’ll take you along if you want, my dear. I’ll even take your attorney and counselor-at-law buddy. It would be a vacation,” he said, warming to the subject. “Like de owl and de putty-tat, we’ll sail away for a year and a day. Of course, if you don’t want to go, it’s hello fishies for you.”
Sapphire nodded. A vacation sounded good to her.
“I would love a trip myself,” Tubby assured him. “What about my man out on the deck? Can we take him too?”
“I think we ought to.” LaFrene’s eyes wiggled. “If you can lift him into the boat. But if you try anything funny, I’ll plug all three of you to the kingdom of zydeco.”
With LaFrene behind them, they went out onto the deck. The black sky was full of stars. There was a breeze, but the moon had hidden behind a cloud. LaFrene showed them the narrow steps that led down to the long speedboat moored below.
“We’re going to have company,” LaFrene called to Norella. “When they see how much fun we’re having, they’ll never want to leave us.”
Tubby bent down to check on Flowers, who was breathing softly, and he motioned for Sapphire to help him.
“I think he’s going to shoot us once we’re out in the Gulf,” he whispered to the girl.
“His aura is green,” she agreed.
“Grab your buddy and let’s move it quick,” LaFrene instructed.
“And I mean real quick,” he said much louder. Cars with blue lights flashing were bounding down the driveway toward the camp. Overhead, a helicopter approached at high speed, raking the ground with a spotlight.
“Jump in!” LaFrene commanded, pushing the gun into Tubby’s face but watching the sky. “That bastard Dementhe will surely kill us all.”
Tubby put a hand on Sapphire and flung her down the steps toward the boat.
“Leave him. Leave him,” he told Tubby, and pushed him away from Flowers.
He jumped into the boat, where Norella was huddled with her hands over her ears. LaFrene threw off the ropes and jumped in beside them. Tubby had a chance to take him then, but tripped over Sapphire’s foot and sprawled onto the fiberglass deck. LaFrene ignored the commotion and dashed to the controls. The twin gasoline engines exploded into life, and with a great swerve that threw all three passengers into a heap, the OmniMach HydroRocket roared away from the dock. Loud voices, footsteps and gunshots punctuated their departure. The helicopter in the black sky wheeled about and pursued them.
“Now we’re cruising,” LaFrene screamed as the mighty boat planed out and flew across the Intracoastal Waterway toward Lake Borgne.
“Holy shit, this thing can fly,” Tubby exclaimed, disentangling himself from Norella. He slid beside Sapphire and together they got on their knees and raised their heads high enough to see the water flashing by.
The shoreline whipped past, and in the distance was a beacon that Tubby judged to be the lighthouse at the Rigolets. The helicopter passed low overhead, and they were momentarily caught in its beam.
“Surrender, or we shoot you out of the water!” boomed a voice from a bullhorn. The voice could belong to the district attorney himself.
“Catch us if you can, big guy!” LaFrene cried, having a great time. The craft accelerated.
Up ahead, other boats appeared, red lights flashing over the water.
“They’re blocking the way,” Tubby yelled into Sapphire’s ear. He stumbled forward and shook LaFrene’s shoulder, pointing at the blockade ahead.
“You’ll have to stop,” he screamed.
“In a pig’s ear!” LaFrene cried. He was grinning as wide as a mouth can grin, and the two boats converging across their bow were getting closer quick.
Tubby turned around and fell back on Sapphire. Unaccountably, she was laughing too. “He’s nuts,” Tubby told her.
“This is really fast.” Her teeth chattered.
Flashes from the helicopter above indicated that someone was shooting at them.
Rigid by LaFrene’s knees, Norella caught her lawyer’s eye and made the sign of the cross.
“Can you swim?” Tubby shouted at Sapphire.
“Not well!”
“You want to get shot at anymore?”
“Not much!”
“Hold on to me!”
She nodded her head vigorously, and arm in arm they got to their feet and jumped over the side of the boat.
The water hurt when they hit it and slid along it, and for a minute they were separated and both lost in the wake and froth churned up
by the fleeing speedboat.
“Here I am,” Sapphire sputtered, and Tubby dog-paddled over to her. To keep from sinking, he kicked off his ninety-dollar sneakers.
“This way,” he gurgled, and they swam toward the dark marsh a hundred yards away. It took a long time to get there, and they floated on their backs, looking at the moon. About the time they reached the grass, a great explosion ripped the sky— the lights coming before the sound. The crack was followed by several smaller booms, but Sapphire and Tubby could not see what had happened.
They felt mud underfoot. It was thick and deep, and for half an hour that seemed like forever they crawled and swam and dragged themselves through the grass and gook until, miraculously, they came upon earth solid enough to support their weight.
Exhausted, Tubby lay in the weeds, looking at the stars. Sapphire fell down beside him. They were too tired to talk.
Finally, Tubby got up and scouted around. He found an old-fashioned rabbit trap made out of a wooden box, so he figured their little island in the marsh might be attached to dry land, at least in the morning at low tide. He also found a rude lean-to made of rusty sheet metal, perhaps a car hood or the hull of a sunken boat, and the remains of a campfire. He reported back to Sapphire and helped her limp to the shelter he had found.
“Too bad we don’t have matches for a fire,” he said.
“What about this?” she asked, producing a disposable lighter from her jeans. She flicked it, and it worked.
They couldn’t find much to burn, just a few twigs and a couple of broken planks and the rabbit trap, but the small fire they made was very cheerful. It also illuminated them enough so that they could see how much mud was caked on their bodies. Feet to the blaze, they settled down on grass pillows, spirits improving.
“You picked the wrong night to get all revved up,” Tubby said, picking the mud off his cheek.
“It’s not so bad,” she replied. “Do you think tomorrow we’ll be able to find food?”
“I’m dreaming about a thick steak,” he said.
“Who is this Dementhe person Lucky was talking about?”
“He’s your district attorney, Sapphire. Don’t you follow politics?”
“Oh, yeah, I think I heard of him.” She paused. “Actually, politics don’t make much of a difference to me.”
“A friend of mine says New Orleans politics are too dirty for Tide.”
