The Emerald Lizard

by Chris Wiltz

  Seemed like Bubba was determined to tell me as much about Jackie Silva's sex life as he could. He opened the refrigerator door and got out half a dozen eggs, three in each hand, and put them next to the bacon.

  “I thought Larry made an investment in a fishing boat. Isn't that making any money for him?” I asked.

  Bubba, getting out a box of grits, a loaf of bread and some pots and pans, explained things to me with a certain amount of condescension. “You make an investment in a fishing boat, you got to maintain your investment. It costs to keep a vessel like that going. You don't maintain it, you don't get paid forever.”

  “Thanks for the economics lesson.”

  “Sure.” Instructing me in the ways of big-business fishing put him in a better mood toward me.

  “While we're on the subject, I'll tell Jackie you agree to five hundred next Friday. After that we renegotiate.”

  Bubba was positively jovial. “No problem. You tell her. You tell Ms. Silva not to worry, she's got nothing to worry about at all.”

  “She's worried about that goon Godzilla. Get him and the whores out of the lounge.”

  Bubba's good mood disappeared like the sun blotted out by a rain cloud. His face became dark and threatening. “You said you came here to talk about money. We talked about it. Now get out.”

  “We're not finished. Godzilla goes. Consider it part of the renegotiation.”

  He stood with his fists balled up at the sides of his thighs. “Don't call him that.”

  “Okay. Nutley goes and takes the girls with him. And call off the Impastato twins. No more chicken drop contests at The Emerald Lizard.”

  He stared at me stupidly for a few seconds before his face fractured into a grin that exposed a lot of predatory teeth of a fuzzy dull white, the color of a dirty porcelain sink.

  “Chicken drop contests at The Emerald Lizard!” He pitched his voice high, like the scream of some swamp bird. He hit himself on the thigh, then pounded the counter with the bottom of his fist. The eggs shook and a toaster hopped toward the sink and got ready to take a dive. “God,” getting himself under control, “those Impastatos have got some imagination!”

  “Call ‘em off,” I repeated.

  “Yeah, okay.” He turned his back to me, put a fire under the frying pan, picked up an egg in each hand and cracked them into a bowl before picking up two more. “Chicken drop contests,” he crooned in a high voice, his falsetto cracking like the eggs with laughter, “at The Emerald Lizard.” Oblivious to my presence, unafraid with his back to me, the king of the trailer park got down to preparing his moveable feast.

  6

  Too Many Lovers

  I resisted an urge to brush myself off before I got in my car. The trailer wasn't dirty; Bubba himself was. Dirty, petty mind. There was no way I could help wondering what in the world Jackie was doing to ever get herself involved with someone like him.

  Bubba put on a good act, but all he'd really done was boast about how virile he was which meant he probably wasn't, though you wouldn't catch me asking Jackie about that. Otherwise, he'd been doing some form of appeasement, the way he'd said, “Yeah, okay,” and turned his back on me when I insisted he call off the Impastatos. I translated that as, “Yeah, okay, just get outta here.” He was the big fish in his pond, the bully on the block. There was no reason in the world to trust anything he said. Jackie would have to decide for herself whether she was in any danger from him.

  “Why don't you call the cops, press charges against the Impastatos for defacing your property, tell the Organized Crime Unit everything you know about Bubba's activities,” I suggested when I got back to The Emerald Lizard.

  It was about four-thirty in the afternoon and there were a few patrons in the Lizard, up on the higher intimate level above the dance floor. A spot lit up the numbered board.

  We were sitting at the bar alone. Jeffrey had just given me a Scotch and water and Jackie a bourbon on the rocks.

  “I already went and talked to a Westwego cop I know, Aubrey Wohl. But he's a wimp. He thinks chicken drops are an all-right way to make some money.”

  “Is this Aubrey aware of Bubba's criminal activities?”

  “He may be, but he can't prove it. Some guy's ex-wife claimed her husband put Bubba up to burning down her restaurant, and pimps don't usually get run in, the prostitutes do. Anyway, Godzilla would take that fall. I don't really know what Bubba does. I just hear things.”

  Jeffrey, as usual, lurked close enough to hear our conversation.

  “Tell him about the Lizard getting broken into,” he said to Jackie, and added, “twice,” for my benefit.

  “That's true,” Jackie said, “but who can say that was Bubba. Mostly what they took was booze.”

  “But that was since your falling out with Brevna?” I thought that was a delicate way to put it. Jackie nodded.

  “I'll never get rid of Bubba,” she said. “If he can't possess you, then he wants revenge on you.”

  She began to get maudlin, crying into her drink that she'd never get out of debt to Bubba. I reminded her about Larry's court case, wondering if I should repeat what Bubba had told me, but before I could finish, she started berating Larry, calling him stupid.

  “If they award him anything at all,” she spit, “he'll give half of it back and the other half to his hokey church, the Universal Church of Love and Light, or whatever they're calling it these days. Every time one of their leaders absconds with the treasury, they hire a new minister and change the church's name. Whatever they do is fine with Larry, he keeps contributing. The man doesn't have a brain in his head about money.”

  Her anger was hard to take because even if it wasn't directed at you, you felt as if it were. But that was better than when she stopped being angry and became sullen and hopeless. No matter what I said, she said she was doomed, by Bubba Brevna.

  Maybe it was the booze. Jackie lifted the glass to her mouth and the last of the bourbon slithered around the rocks and down her throat.

  I tried one more time to get her to at least go talk to the OCU. She gazed at me out of already glazed eyes—it wasn't even the righteous cocktail hour by my watch—and smiled playfully, but when she spoke, her voice was as chilled down as the next bourbon Jeffrey put in front of her. “Once a cop, always a cop, huh, Neal?”

  That would do as a cue, I decided, not wanting to bother finishing off the Scotch before I left.

  At that moment, however, two men came in through the front door. They were arguing. I thought one of them was Larry Silva. My eyes went automatically to the backs of his hands. The tattoos were there, one a bird in flight, the other a large X filled with smaller x's.

  The other man was tall, extremely tall I thought until he got closer. He looked tall because he was walking next to Larry, who was short, about five-six, and also because he was extremely thin and accentuated his thinness by wearing very tight jeans and a cowboy shirt with a vest over it that didn't quite reach his waist. He wore brown lizard cowboy boots. I wouldn't say cowboys are prevalent on the West Bank, but there are a few of them around and Western wear is trendy. This cowboy, though, talked like a Texan.

  Wouldn't you know it—they were arguing about Jackie.

  “She don't want you around,” the cowboy drawled to Larry. He may also have slurred. Afternoon teas could have been more of a custom on the West Bank than I realized.

  Larry handled the cowboy's belligerence with humor. “Sure she does. The more men the merrier, right, Jackie?” he called.

  Bubba was right about Larry, he wasn't aging well. He wore a beard streaked with gray that covered most of his face, but he couldn't cover up all the wrinkles, especially around his eyes. His posture wasn't good either. And he, too, was too thin, not like the cowboy who was wiry and energetic, but more like Jeffrey, a sick look, bad diet or something. Lovesick was a definite possibility.

  “Jackie, honey, tell him to just run along now like a good little dogie.”

  I'm not kidding—the cowboy said that.
If we'd been in Burbank, California, I wouldn't have thought a thing of it.

  Jackie ignored him. She and I had turned around on our stools and now she put a hand on my thigh, which got the cowboy to notice me right away.

  “Larry, look who's here. You remember Neal Rafferty, don't you?”

  Larry did, I stood up, we shook hands and were cordial. I was remembering Jackie's parents’ reaction to her marrying him, her father so angry, her mother so heartbroken. He didn't seem like such a bad guy. Of course, maybe I was feeling sorry for him, not to mention that after I spent part of an afternoon with the likes of Bubba Brevna, anyone would look like a sterling piece of humanity.

  What happened next is a little hazy in my mind, I guess because it happened so fast. The cowboy tried to go around Larry to get to Jackie, who was still sitting on the bar stool. Larry moved, taking a step backwards as he reacted with gratifying jocularity to something I'd just said. It didn't seem to me that he was deliberately trying to block the cowboy's path to Jackie, but the cowboy thought he was and turned mean, shoving Larry while he spewed and drawled at him to look where he was going. He almost knocked Larry down, and Larry was entirely too feeble to fight back. So I grabbed the cowboy at the shoulder by his vest and told him to back off. He was quick, and in the dim light of the lounge I almost didn't see his right hooking around toward my head. I moved so that he connected, but not very solidly, on my chin. I immediately delivered an uppercut to his ribs followed by a good punch in the eye as he came forward, and the cowboy went down.

  He stayed down, flat on his back, out. Yelling came from the level above the dance floor, two women standing in the intimate darkness cheering my KO. One of them was wearing a leather halter cut to the solar plexus and a below-the-belt (though not by much) skirt. The other one had on red crushed velvet. They had come down to the railing to see the action. Their dates stayed where they were, two faceless men shadowed the way they are on those news shows when someone wants to give an expose without being recognized. There was someone else, too, standing against the wall at the side of the bar where a small hallway led to Jackie's office. He was a regular dinosaur of a man, close to seven feet tall, and about twice as wide as Bubba Brevna. His head would be up in the tenting if he walked out on the dance floor. His face was a wedge of bone with a black beard. His hair hung in strings past his shoulders. His eyes were onyx slits under a brow like the blunt edge of an ax. He stood with his arms folded over a white T-shirt, and below that he wore jeans and black motorcycle boots. I hadn't been aware of him coming in, in fact, I was sure the door to the lounge hadn't opened, which meant he'd come in through the office. He took one step out from the wall, turned his face toward the girls, and they stopped cheering and went back to their dates.

  “Well, that'll show Clem Winkler a thing or two,” Jackie said, her eyes no longer glazed, some life back in her rich voice. “Another drink for our champion.”

  “You bet!” Jeffrey's attitude toward me had turned enthusiastic.

  “Thanks, but I've got to be going,” I said. “I've got an early dinner date.” Jeffrey liked me even better.

  Larry was the only one who was distressed. He was bent down over Winkler, pulling back one of his eyelids. Winkler began to snore. No one at all seemed to notice Godzilla up against the wall, whose eyes followed Jackie when she got up and limped behind the bar. The look on his face was malevolent, but there was nothing he could do about it, that's how he was put together. Hell, the way his eyes were glued on Jackie, for all I knew he was in love with her, too.

  Larry stood up. “I hate all this violence, Jackie. Every time I'm here a fight breaks out or a woman throws her drink in some guy's face and he slaps her, or something. Why do you let guys like this Winkler in here? He comes in looking for a fight.”

  “No, he doesn't,” Jackie snapped. “It's your timing that's bad.”

  Larry spoke to me, a small smile peeking out of his beard. “No matter what,” he said, “it's always my fault.”

  Before anything else happened, I wanted to leave. I gave Larry a light biff on the upper arm and told him I was glad to see him.

  The black glass door opened again and this time two young guys, not over twenty, came into the lounge. They had to be the Impastato twins. They were both small, they both had mustaches and dark brown limp hair they brushed straight back, except that the front hank of hair on each of them didn't want to stay put and fell forward onto their foreheads with the same twist. The only difference between them was that one was very sullen looking and the other smiled a lot. The smiley one was carrying a box with holes in it. From inside the box came some cackling sounds.

  He held up the box. “We got a new chicken, Miss Jackie, going to make lots of money for you tonight.”

  “Ugh,” Jackie said. “Put him in the back, will you? And then will you Imps come get Clem and put him on the sofa in the office?”

  “Sure, Miss Jackie. Mr. Clem, he never made it home last night or what?” Even the sullen twin grinned now, good-natured boys, polite, resourceful. I was confused. They were acting like they worked for Jackie. So was she.

  The Impastatos walked right past Godzilla without giving him a nod. As for the monster, he was still watching Jackie's every move.

  As the twins carried Winkler into the office, Jackie walked outside with me.

  “For a giant,” I said as the door closed behind us, “that Godzilla makes his appearances with very little fanfare.”

  “Creepy, isn't it? It's always like that. You don't even notice it, then all of a sudden he's there. I really don't like him being around.”

  “I don't know. The way he was looking at you, I bet he would have moved Winkler for you if you'd just asked.”

  “I don't say anything to him. I just smile at him every now and then so he'll think I'm friendly.”

  “Well, that explains it. The giant has fallen for your lopsided smile, Jackie.”

  We were standing next to my car. I reached into my pocket for the keys. Jackie stepped closer, her head tilted up at me, trying to put me under her smile's spell.

  “Why don't you stick around, Neal? Let's get to know each other again.”

  “Oh, I don't think so, Jackie.” I looked up at the darkening sky. “It would make me feel like part of a side show"—I gestured at an invisible marquee—“‘The Suitors of Jackie Silva.’”

  “Married women don't have suitors.”

  “Not usually,” I agreed, “but there's nothing usual about your life as far as I can see.”

  “It's a life, all right.” She gave me an intense look, then she reached out and touched my scar. I tried not to, but I flinched and she withdrew her hand. “Looks like we've both done some pretty hard living,” she said.

  “Somehow I think you're going to make all of it work for you, even Bubba Brevna,” I told her.

  “Maybe.” She stood on her toes and gave me a peck on the cheek. I think I patted her on the shoulder.

  I watched for a moment as she limped back into The Emerald Lizard. The limp didn't do to me what it once did. I unlocked the car and got inside.

  Just as I was getting ready to start it up, I saw something moving on the other side. Through the window I could see Godzilla's torso. He was so tall I couldn't see his head or shoulders. His arms were still folded over the white T-shirt. He stepped up and butted the car with his enormous gut. The car shook violently.

  A couple of months before, I'd finally retired my old car, which was so beat-up that when it died it was pronounced generic. I'd bought a brand new Thunderbird, the first new car I'd ever owned. I was in hock up to my eyeballs, but I didn't care—the car was beautiful, a smokey gray with a razor-thin maroon racing stripe, the windows tinted a gray almost as deep as the color of the car. I was extremely fond of it. I didn't like Godzilla abusing it. He reared back and rammed it again.

  “Hey!” I yelled. “Cut it out!”

  He paid no attention to me, and slammed into the car once more, so hard that I was actual
ly afraid he might turn it over. I turned the key and laid rubber backing up. Godzilla moved in front of me, almost daring me to try to run him down, his arms still folded, the expression on his face exactly the same as it had been inside, malevolent. I wondered if Brevna had called him and told him to let me know my visit hadn't been welcomed, or if Godzilla had taken it upon himself to let me know he didn't want me fooling around with Jackie. Either way, I was all for getting out of there, out of Westwego.

  7

  The Mean and the Hungry

  It had been a complete waste of an afternoon. I got off the Mississippi River Bridge in New Orleans where it is too crowded, too dirty, too expensive, and too scary, glad to be back. To be honest, I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to live in a place like Westwego. I realized, though, that it suited Jackie perfectly. Just as Bubba was a big fish in the pond, so was she. She seemed to have the market on men pretty well cornered. I'd almost asked her why she didn't sell The Emerald Lizard and move back to New Orleans, but I knew why. She had a place where she could hold court with her lounge lizards, do her flirting, and if she didn't like the way someone flirted back, she could have her bouncer toss them out. Or Godzilla. Somehow I felt sure he would be glad to accommodate her. If only she would ask.

  The more I thought about it, the more I saw Jackie and Bubba being a lot alike. Both of them were selfish and ruthless in their own ways. It was no wonder they were adversaries, probably good adversaries. They'd keep each other's life from getting too boring. When I'd said that about Jackie making everything work for her, I'd said it for something to say, but I believed it was true. I bet I could look her up in a couple of months and find out that she and Brevna had worked out a peaceable solution with, of course, a show of forces now and then to keep things interesting. Godzilla would be the new bouncer, the Impastatos would have cowboys, bikers, and Johns gambling on their newest craze, maybe bear wrestling contests, and Jackie's clientele and list of suitors would have substantially enlarged.