by Chris Wiltz
“Jesus.” For Maurice to drive across the river, it must be an emergency. “Look, Pinkie, don't move. Stay right where you are until I get there. Is Mave there?” She said Mave was. “Tell her not to go anywhere either. I'm on my way.”
Only my car was downtown in the Père Marquette garage. Another delay. And again, as I called a taxi and scrounged around the apartment for a flashlight, I found myself blaming Diana, the same way Maurice had blamed her, except I'd taken her side then.
It wasn't until I was downstairs waiting for the taxi that I realized how cold it was getting. The wind picked up and I swear the temperature dropped a couple of degrees while I stood there. I still had on the same medium-weight suit I'd worn all day. I was about to head back upstairs and grab a coat, but the cab arrived and I blew it off.
Once I got to my car, I double-checked to make sure all cylinders of my revolver were loaded and put the speed loader with its extra five bullets in my coat pocket. All that was left now was to pray that the Mississippi River bridge wasn't backed up. I did. It wasn't.
The street in front of the Gemini was lined with cars. I had to park nearly a block away. Mave was doing a pretty big business for a Tuesday night. All the tables were filled, Ricky Skaggs was coming out of the jukebox at top volume, and the cowboys were rowdy. Mave drew another round of beer and they all started singing “Happy Birthday.” Pinkie had stumbled into a theme party.
She was easy enough to spot among the cowboys in their shit-kickers and their buxom girlfriends in their flounced denim skirts. She was sitting at the bar in Mave's shadow, I was glad to see, and the tiny ceiling spots made her blond hair seem like a wispy halo around her head. She also had on a jacket that shone, a silvery satin baseball jacket. She jumped up when she saw me and came toward me in baby blue high top sneakers.
She threw her arms around my neck. “God, I'm glad to see you.”
“Pinkie,” I said extricating myself, “why did you come over here?”
“I didn't know what else to do. Maurice told me to find you, but I couldn't. Then I thought about calling the police, but I didn't know what to tell them except that a hare-brained lawyer who doesn't know how to drive was out in a car trying to find his hare-brained girlfriend.”
“Followed by his hare-brained secretary.” She made a face at me. “What about this girl who got beat up?”
“Mave said she won't press charges. She won't even talk to the police.”
“That figures.”
We had to go around the cowboys and cowgirls who were paired off straight down the center of the lounge doing a synchronized dance in which they seemed to be lazily kicking cowpies out of the way. At least it gave Mave a break.
She was squirting mixers into six drinks lined up on the side of the bar. She glanced over at me. “I called you first, Rafferty,” she said in her Texas drawl.
A waitress took the drinks as she finished, then Mave moved in front of us, crossed her arms on the bar and leaned on them. Her large globes sort of cantilevered from the low-cut ruffled blouse she was wearing. She'd penciled in a beauty mark on the left one. It seemed to be on the verge of falling into her cleavage. She said, “I called the lawyer when I couldn't get you.”
I nodded. “Who's on a rampage?”
“Nutley.” I thought she was going to tell me it was Bubba. I felt a tiny burst of adrenaline hit my face. “The best I can understand it, one of the girls, Candy Malone, got upset because Rodney took all her money. Seems she threatened him and he beat her up.”
“She threatened him?” I asked, astounded. “What in the world could she threaten Nutley with?”
“She said she was going to the Wildlife and Fisheries.” Mave held both hands up to stop the question I was about to ask. “I don't know and I'll tell you what, Rafferty, I don't want to know. I like my job.”
“I hear you,” I said. “So what about Nita.”
“Well, Nita showed up at Candy's place while Rodney was—” She stopped to shake her had. “He hurt her bad.”
I panicked. “Nita?”
“No, no. The girl, Candy. He broke her jaw and she's got some head injuries. He knocked her unconscious, must have thought she was dead, she looked so bad. When she came around, he was gone and so was Nita. She called me and I took her over to JoEllen Smith hospital. That was about five. That's where I called you from. Then I had to get back here. I had this party.” She waved her hand in the direction of the shuffling cowpokes.
“So this Candy Malone has no idea where Nita is, where Nutley would take her,” I said.
“Nope, no idea.”
I cursed. “What about Maurice?”
“I told him what I told you and I told him where Bubba keeps the boat.”
“And Where's Bubba?” I asked.
“Out on the boat, I guess.”
Whenever you need them they've gone fishing. I could hear Pam's strident voice.
“Great,” I said. I drummed with three fingers on the bar.
Mave stuck out a hand and put it on my drumming fingers, to make them stop.
“See,” she said, “the reason I called, it's hard to say what Rodney might do. He's scared to death of Bubba.”
35
Marshland Terror
Either the rumors Jackie had told me about Nutley had come true or he was doing a repeat performance, leaving the unconscious girl for dead. Candy Malone, the girl with the death wish, Nita had told me. And if Nutley thought Nita had witnessed a murder and he was trying to cover everything before Bubba got back . . .
“Call Delbert Dietz,” I told Mave. “I'm going to Lafitte.” I turned to leave but had another thought. “And call Aubrey Wohl, too. Tell him what's going on. Tell him,” I added grimly, “I'm ready to go fishing. He'll know what I mean.”
Pinkie followed me outside. We stood between two cars in the parking space in front of the Gemini.
“Go on home,” I told her. “I'll call you after I find them.”
“No way. I'm going with you.”
“The hell you are!”
“The hell I'm not!” she fired right back at me. “Look, Neal, you can pull the you're-just-a-kid routine and try to leave me here. I'll just get in my car and follow you.”
“How about the you're-a-pain-in-the-ass routine?”
“You're a pain in the ass, too!”
A couple decked in Western garb on the way to the party heard this exchange—the prostitutes down at the corner probably heard it as well—and snickered at us. For all they knew, I was a father come to rescue his rebellious daughter from the clutches of pimps and horny cowboys.
“Come on.” I slid my hand across her slick jacket and tightened my fingers around the base of her neck. She swung her arm up and caught me on the bicep, flinging my hand away from her.
I walked the block to the Thunderbird at a furious clip, Pinkie's legs moving that much faster to keep up with me. She got in the car and nearly created sparks as she slammed the two pieces of the seat belt together.
We drove to Lafitte in silence. By the time we got to the Intracoastal Canal Bridge, a fine mist was gathering on the windshield. For about three minutes on the Lafitte LaRose Highway rain teemed, and then the wind seemed to blow it away, back to a fine mist.
A half-moon showed sporadically through the heavy low-hanging clouds being pushed along by the wind. At the moment, though, it was obscured by a large mass so that I was having trouble locating the turnoff to Bubba's dock. All of a sudden we came upon the tail end of a dark-colored Mercedes-Benz.
“Neal!” Pinkie spotted it at the same time I did, and with a reflex reaction, reached over to grab my arm.
“I see it,” I said.
The car might have been abandoned in a hurry. It was pulled off to the side, just barely, nosed down a grassy slope, all there was of any kind of shoulder. The way it looked, Maurice might have been run off the road, but more likely it was his idea of a park job.
It was a good hundred feet ahead to the turnoff. I slowed
down to a crawl to look for him, but it was so late I knew the chances of finding him meandering along the road were remote.
It could have meant anything, but with the couple of hours lead time he'd had, the car still being there seemed like a bad sign. I knew Pinkie was thinking the same thing from the way her body tensed, her hands clutching the dash.
I thought about parking away from the turnoff and approaching on foot, but the rain had started again, not pouring, but heavy enough to get us soaked if we walked too far. Instead I went past the turnoff and past the driveway leading to the garage where the refrigerated trucks were kept. I turned onto grass, bringing the car behind the oaks lining the driveway, hoping I wouldn't get stuck in mud. I drove until I was close enough to the water that I could see Bubba's dock. My New Flame was gone. This could have been cause for relief, but that's not what I felt.
What I was feeling was hard to define. Call it extreme uneasiness. Everything was contributing to a scenario that didn't promise to play well. The rain was coming down steadily now, the wind was up high enough to whistle faintly through the twisted oaks, their trunks tortured into those oddly writhing forms from weather exactly like this—good shrimping weather.
I surveyed the wooded area between us and the garage as best I could through the rain, in the dark. If there was anything out there, it was lurking in the dense shadows. I got the gun out of the glove compartment, the flashlight out of the compartment in the center console.
“There's a garage behind those trees,” I said to Pinkie. “That's where we're going. Stay close. And don't talk.”
We got out of the car and I waited until she came around the front of it before I started moving. She held on to the back of my jacket and, as fast as I could, training the flashlight on the ground and memorizing several feet ahead at a time before directing the beam into the trees and shrubs at the sides, I headed for the garage.
We stayed fairly dry because of the tree cover, and as it turned out it was the driest and warmest we'd be for quite a while. Because when we walked out into the clearing in front of the garage, one of the double doors was slightly ajar, and from inside I thought I could hear a drone, like a small motor makes, behind the sound of the rain on the corrugated metal of the garage. It made more sense to get wet than to dash into the garage. And then I realized what I was hearing was probably the refrigerator motor on one of the trucks.
I had to pull the door open a little wider to get in. I turned off the flashlight and crouched down; Pinkie, still clinging to my coat tail, followed me inside.
Once we were in I stopped to get my bearings and adjust to less light than there'd been outside, which hadn't been much. Finally more or less in front of us I could see the shape of a truck which had been backed into the garage, but the droning was coming from the left. Both trucks were there. I approached the nearest one and immediately could feel heat coming from the hood. I reached out—it was wet from the rain, but still warm enough that I knew it couldn't have been there very long.
Pinkie was tugging on my coat. I turned around and she slipped her arm around my waist. She was shaking, either from being chilled by the rain or from fright. Either would do. I stuck the flashlight in my coat pocket and held her close while I waited and listened and tried to feel if there was anyone else in there with us.
The rain beat on the tin roof. The motor droned. The longer we stood there, the noisier it got. The rain was picking up even more. There was no way of hearing anything or feeling anything with it clamoring on the rooftop and driving against the metal sides of the garage. All I felt was a desire to get to the truck to the left with its refrigeration turned on.
I patted Pinkie's shoulder and moved her arm, putting her hand back at the bottom of my jacket to let her know we would be moving again. I took out the flashlight, my gun in my other hand aimed straight ahead, but before I turned it on, I took a couple of steps to the left and stopped. Still nothing. Another couple of steps would put us in the space between the two trucks. I started and as I went I snapped on the flashlight. The moment I did I caught a movement to my right just before a tremendous weight hit my gun hand and then my head. I heard Pinkie call out my name and I thought I saw the gun sliding under the truck behind me, and then I was swimming at the edge of unconsciousness, coming up for a moment, going down again.
The next thing I was aware of was someone pulling on me, dragging me, and my legs trying to move. I'd try to stand and get dragged down again. And then I felt the freezing rain on my face and it started snapping me to, so that I knew I was being dragged by the collars of my shirt and coat. I finally stopped trying to stand up and just let him drag me all the way down to the pier. By that time I was soaked to the bone.
As soon as he stopped I stood on legs that were shaking but gaining strength by the second from a hearty dose of adrenaline. Godzilla loomed above me, watching as I got up, one of his massive hands around Pinkie's throat. I knew with one quick movement he could break her neck.
I didn't know whether I should try to talk to him or not, but before I could make up my mind, he was shoving me toward a flatboat that was tied to the dock. That's when it dawned that we were on the rickety pier behind the garage, not on Bubba's dock. I think I would have given anything at that moment to see Bubba coming at us with his bullwhip.
Rodney let go of Pinkie and pushed her down in the boat on the middle seat. Then he practically threw me down next to her. There was no way to fight him; to try would be suicide. Rodney had no idea of his own strength or he would have killed Bubba by now.
He made us sit with our backs to him, so that when he started the boat we were facing into the wind and rain. He steered out into the marsh. Pinkie put her head down on her knees. I covered my face with my hands, but as the boat gathered speed I tried my best to see in front of us, the cold rain driving into my face like thin, sharp nails. First we seemed headed straight at one grassy bank, then he'd slice the boat away and seem to head into the other. I could feel panic deep within my chest, but it was nothing to what I felt when Nutley opened up the throttle and we rocketed through the dark narrow waterways, turning so fast from one cut into another that I thought Pinkie and I would be thrown from the boat. She had grabbed one of my legs, and I grabbed the seat of the boat. Every now and again we would emerge into an open pond where the water would be extremely choppy. As tight as I held on, I couldn't stop my body from lifting and slamming down on the metal seat, my spine hammering into my head with each slam. As painful as it was, I was much more concerned about us hitting something in the water. I found myself praying that the rain would stop and the cloud cover would break so the moon would come out. As if my seeing where we were going would make any difference.
Rodney twisted and turned and ran the boat through the marshy maze for what seemed like an eternity, but was actually only a quarter of an hour. I think I have never been so terrified in my entire life, going deeper and deeper into the marsh, knowing exactly what Nutley had in mind—to leave us in that place where everything looks the same, to kill us, drown us maybe, to let us die at the very edge of the earth.
He slowed the boat and maneuvered it up against the grass of a lump of mud that might not even be there after some big blow, maybe this one. Only I thought that and then realized that the rain had slackened, and although there was still a lot of wind, it wasn't as high as it had been. My ears were aching with cold.
Nutley stood up in the boat as though he were on concrete. He made a grunting sound and pushed on my back. Pinkie started to sit up, but he shoved her down. I assumed he wanted me to stand, so I did, but I wasn't up all the way before he chopped down on my shoulder to make me sit again. It felt as if I'd been hit with a piece of pipe.
I turned slightly to look up at him. He had his head cocked, his hair a wild black mass around it, his wedge-of-bone forehead so low over his eyes I couldn't see them. And then I heard it, too. The sound of another boat, a steady buzz getting deeper and louder as it came toward us.
Wi
th another grunt, Nutley sat in the back of the flat boat and we were moving again.
It was the shrimpers. The rain was being blown away, so the shrimpers were heading out into the channels and bays and passes to haul in the shrimp that would be swept along as the tide began to fall. I found myself thanking God for shrimpers.
But not for long because Nutley opened up again and my heart rose to my throat, threatening to choke me as we zoomed through the dark, speeding around curves, almost turned on our side, zephyring down the waterways. It wasn't until I saw the pier and the garage coming up fast in front of us that I was aware of the moon trying to peek from behind the clouds. I felt a great sense of relief, as though the moon were a friend, the pier and garage home.
The pier lurched strangely as I stepped up on it, but it was only my legs trying to believe they were on a surface that wasn't moving. I helped Pinkie up, her eyes gigantic in her small face, her body feeling small and too easily breakable in my arms as she grabbed me, hiding her face against my chest.
I was beginning to feel stable enough and strong enough after the blow to my head to think about trying to get Nutley. Only trying wouldn't be good enough. I would have one chance, just one, and if it didn't work, I'd be dead. And so would Pinkie, and then I cringed, wondering where Maurice and Nita were, hoping like hell they were sitting out on some mud lump, soon to be rescued by a shrimper, knowing full well the odds were against Nutley leaving them out there alive.
Nutley let us know with his all too articulate body language, in this case a rough shove on the back of my head, that he wanted us to walk. With periodic jabs to my back, he propelled us to the entrance of the garage and made a harsh sound in his throat that I knew with certainty meant he wanted me to open the door.
As soon as I did he thrust us inside. I pretended to lose my balance, and fell in front of the truck I thought my gun was under. It was, of course, hopeless that I would see it in the dark, but it was worth a try. Except when I got up, Nutley was in the doorway, holding Pinkie by the throat again. I lifted my hands to show I wasn't going to do anything.
