by Chris Wiltz
He stepped inside and turned toward the second truck, but it was gone. His reaction frightened me almost as much as the boat ride. With a high-pitched scream, he threw Pinkie away from him. She fell on the dirt floor, crying out, more frightened than hurt. I held my hand out to her, but I did that without taking my eyes off Nutley. I couldn't see his face very well, but the way he was moving around, a jerky start to where the truck had been, then a jerky turn toward us, to the truck behind us, I was certain he was unpleasantly surprised the truck was gone, that somehow this was not part of his game plan. His game plan, in fact, seemed to have fallen apart, what with Pinkie and me still to be dealt with and this truck gone. I couldn't tell if he was panicked or frustrated. Whatever it was, it scared me plenty.
He was grunting again, pushing on us, directing us to the back of the truck, then kicking at our feet to make us get up into it. The door was open, but the ramp wasn't there, so as fast as I could I raised myself onto the bed, quickly turning and lifting Pinkie so he wouldn't hurt her.
He slid the door down and clunked its bolt into place. The mind is a strange thing, because the sound of that sliding door rolling down and the bolt clunking into place made me think of the garage door at Diana's parents’ house rolling down and clunking into place. One roll, a clunk, and finis.
36
No Way to Die
It was pitch black, it stunk of fish, and we were locked inside. But it on was terra firma and Rodney Nutley wasn't locked inside with us.
Pinkie tripped and fell. I heard wood splintering.
“Are you all right?” I asked, groping in the dark for her. There were boxes everywhere.
“Yes. No.” Her voice cracked. “I don't know.” I found her and pulled her up.
Two soaked and dripping people hung on to each other. She was breathing deeply, trembling with cold, sniffling a bit.
“I'm not going to cry, Neal.”
Like a blind man, I felt her face, felt the wet hair on her forehead, pushed it back, felt the curve of her head. “It's okay,” I said. “Cry for both of us.”
I made a space for us on the floor of the truck so we could sit. In the quiet I could hear the wind outside and the rain now tapping lightly on the garage roof. All around us were those seafood crates, the kind I'd seen on the truck before. I reached out for the one closest to me. My fingers closed on it and contacted slime. The boxes hadn't been cleaned yet; the truck had returned too recently. I wiped my hand on my pants thinking it was probably Rodney Nutley's job to clean them, but he was busy at the moment.
Where the hell were the cops? It was well over an hour since we'd left the Gemini. Surely Mave had done as I asked and called Dietz. But what if she hadn't been able to get Dietz and hadn't told anyone else in his office what was going on? And what if Aubrey was out when she called and she was back at the Gemini calmly waiting for them to return her call? Even though I was cold and clammy I felt myself break into a sweat.
I knew Aubrey was around, working the nightshift somewhere in Westwego. It was still too early for him to have taken off to go shrimping, and I knew he would come immediately once he talked to Mave, even if Dietz didn't consider any of us worth his rushing to Lafitte.
And what if no one came, no one but Rodney Nutley? I picked up the seafood box and started feeling it all over, the slime be damned. As I felt it I began to get a much clearer image of what it looked like, how it was constructed. The sides were made of fairly sturdy wooden slats, the lightweight bottom a separate piece hooked to the sides with wire. I could feel wire running around the box itself, reinforcing it. I began to see it not as a box at all anymore, but as a weapon.
Beside me, Pinkie sat close and I could tell by the way tremors would hit her body now and again that she was either crying or trying awfully hard not to. Or maybe she was just cold, because when I stood up she said clearly, “What are you doing?”
“What I'm doing,” I said as I bent back the wire attaching the bottom of the box to the sides, “is giving us a chance against that goon when he comes back.”
She got up, too, and I could hear her sneakers bump along the truck bed as she pushed boxes away from her.
“Neal, Maurice was in that other truck.”
My head swung in the direction of her voice. “He was? How do you know?”
“I heard him. He called out when that guy hit you.”
“Did you hear Nita?”
“No.”
“Well, let's hope she was in there with him.” At least they weren't out in the marsh somewhere. “My guess is Rodney doesn't know where they are as long as they're in that truck.”
I went back to work. I turned the box upside down and stepped on the bottom with my foot. It made a harsh grating sound.
“What was that?” Pinkie asked.
“That was the bottom of the box coming out.”
I lifted out my foot and went to pick up the box. It collapsed. I thought I'd broken it, but it had just folded up the way it was supposed to without the bottom in it.
Folded like that it was maybe a foot and a half by two and a half feet of wire-reinforced wooden slats. I began to take each slat and fold it up on the one ahead of it, then the two of them back on the third one and so on, accordion-like.
“Okay, Pinkie, see if you can stack the boxes up, starting about four feet from the door. Make a wall with them.”
“Are we going to hide behind them?”
“That's what I want him to think.”
I kept folding while Pinkie started stacking the boxes. Within minutes I had a pretty formidable club. I peeled wire off another box and wound it tight around the club to make sure it wouldn't come apart when I swung it. I struck the floor with it. It was solid.
The truck was six, maybe eight feet wide. I helped Pinkie with the boxes, our hands full of slime, our noses full of the stink of dead fish. We worked fast, stacking the boxes so there was a small opening on each side. Finished, the wall was three boxes high by three boxes deep. I took some more and stacked them to one side of the door, up to the roof of the truck, to give me something to hide behind when Nutley slid the door up. We made an identical stack on the other side. I counted on this order within the truck to give him a moment's worth of confusion.
Pinkie and I wedged ourselves between the wall of boxes and a stack next to the door, me cradling the club on my lap. I felt inside my coat pocket, took Pinkie's hand, and put the speedloader in it. With the bullets in, it had some weight to it. Then I told her what I wanted her to do.
That's when I heard the voice.
“Don't do that, Rodney,” is what I thought I heard.
I strained to listen, wondering if I was hearing things through the wind and the flurries of rain like drum rolls now and again over the roof of the garage.
“Please don't do that.” It was Nita. “You're hurting me, Rodney.”
A terrible moment of silence, then Nita again—"Stop!”
There was some scuffling. I jumped up, nearly upsetting the stack of boxes at the side of the sliding door.
Nita let out a piercing “No!” I heard Nutley grunt.
More scuffling, a crash against the side of the garage, and the sounds began to come too fast—Nita's screams, Nutley's grunts, and my own voice yelling at Nutley to stop, my fists pounding the side of the truck, my feet kicking it, the whole truck rocking, and through it all those horrible, regular grunts, animal grunts, and then Nita wasn't screaming anymore, and beside me I heard a soft breathless humming.
Pinkie was rocking back and forth, humming tunelessly to herself, and when I bent down to her, I found her arms wrapped over her head, covering her ears. Humming and covering her ears so she wouldn't hear it.
There was nothing more to hear.
“Pinkie,” I whispered and took her arms, moving them so she would hear me. She kept rocking. I shook her. “Pinkie!” I whispered again.
Outside the truck I heard Nutley moving around. I heard him at the back now, and I knew he was attachin
g the ramp, getting ready to open the truck door.
“He's coming!” I said urgently, trying to make Pinkie move, not sure if she could, but then she was getting to her feet, stumbling against me, finally standing up. I directed her across the truck, to her position, having no idea if she could follow through on our plan.
The truck shook as he stepped on the ramp. I went back to my side.
The club. Where the hell was the club? In my kicking and pounding I must have dropped it. I fell to my knees, feeling frantically along the floor, knocking the wall of boxes. One of the top boxes fell.
The bolt thunked. My hand found the club, and the jagged end of a piece of wire ripped one of my fingers to the bone. I hardly felt it.
Somehow I was standing where I was supposed to be, using the stack of seafood boxes as cover, club ready, as the door began its upward slide. I watched at the bottom and clearly saw Nutley's legs; it had been so pitch black inside the truck that even the dark garage was light.
I know it was a matter of a second or two, but the door lifting seemed to take forever. I wondered if Pinkie was going to be able to throw the speed loader.
The door was up and one of his big booted feet thudded on the floor of the truck. And the other one was coming up behind it. He hesitated. I was about to give up on Pinkie and swing the club when the speed loader hit Nutley in the face. He jerked his head in Pinkie's direction and I swung the club. It contacted just below his knees. The best I can remember, the sound that came out of him was halfway between a groan and a grunt. His body went forward, his face turned toward me. I raised the club and with every ounce of strength I had, I brought it down on his head. Then I hit him again.
He didn't utter a sound. He stayed upright for a second before he fell off to the left, away from me, his enormous hulk glancing off the side of the truck, then falling out. When he hit the ground the truck shook as hard as it had when he stepped into it.
Quickly, in case he was only stunned, I jumped off the truck after him, ready to hit him again and again, as many times as it took. But he wasn't moving. I knelt next to him and with a reticent hand I felt his throat for a pulse.
Pinkie came out from behind the wall inside the truck. “Is he dead?” she asked calmly, too calmly.
“Yes. He's dead.”
“That's good,” she said. I told her to wait in the truck. I stood up and as I moved to go around him, I stepped on one of Nutley's feet. The way it felt in its leather boot, the leather twisting around it under my foot, made me feel sick.
But that was nothing, nothing. I would have done a balancing act on his dead booted feet for two days if I hadn't had to find Nita.
She wasn't hard to find. She was over in a corner of the garage, and her pale skin in the little bit of moonlight seeping through the garage doors was like a beacon. She was lying there, her jeans around her ankles, her head thrown back as though she'd been gasping for air, and my guess was they'd find her trachea had been crushed, too.
This screaming siren sound was going off in my head. It went off until through it I heard Pinkie calling me, and then I wasn't sure if it had been in my head or if it was that bastard Dietz finally arriving. I found myself wanting to kill him—with my bare hands.
But there weren't any sirens. Everything was deathly quiet except for Pinkie calling my name out of the blackness on the other side of the garage.
“Just a minute,” I heard myself say and my voice was normal even though my face was wet from tears. I didn't know if I was going to be able to stop them.
I took off my heavy sodden jacket and covered Nita's exposed body with it. I had to pull myself together, for Pinkie's sake, so I stood there drying my face with a wet shirt sleeve before going back to the truck to get her.
“Watch it,” I told her, a strange thing to tell someone in the dark, and lifted her from the ramp, away from Nutley. I put my arm around her, keeping her on the side away from Nita. I just didn't want her to know yet.
“Where's Nita?” she asked.
“We have to go get help,” I said, moving her toward the garage doors.
Outside I realized I was walking in the wrong direction, thinking the car was parked where it had been that first time I'd been here, but as I started to turn us around, I heard a noise. Someone was on the other side of the garage, the side closest to Bubba's dock. I put my hand over Pinkie's mouth, lightly, to let her know something was up, then I began to go forward again, alone.
If I'd heard him moving, then he'd heard me. I thought about my gun under the truck, but it was too late.
Aubrey and I practically ran each other down coming around the side of the garage.
He stepped back quickly, his gun aimed at me. Mine would have been aimed at him if I'd had it.
I held my hands palms up at my sides. I hardly knew what to say to him. “It's all over, Aubrey,” is what I said.
He stared at me, at the pain that must have been showing on my face. The wind was blowing his hair around a bit, and felt as if it were going past my thin wet shirt straight through me. My body began to shake the same way the leaves on the oaks around us were shaking in that wind.
You would have thought Aubrey would have stopped pointing his gun at me by now, but he didn't.
“She accused me of burning down the Lizard, Neal.”
For a split second I had no earthly idea what he was talking about. I said nothing.
“She thought I'd done it because I did the restaurant the same way. She was going to tell the organized crime people in the morning.”
For his shrimp boat. He'd done the restaurant job for his shrimp boat.
“I didn't mean to hit her. She got wild.”
She was going to throw him to the OCU to get Bubba, I was thinking. And then I was thinking everything at once—Mave's message that I was ready to go fishing had made Aubrey think I'd found him out, that I'd finally put it all together—his return to the scene of the crime, his intimacy with Jackie's house, his wanting to know if I was intimate with Jackie, if I knew where the bedroom was. Everybody loved Jackie.
He was saying, “She said Bubba always had to have a cop in his pocket. That's true. But it's not me anymore.”
I spoke to him very softly, just so he could hear me above the wind. “So what are you going to do, Aubrey? Shoot me?”
“No, I guess not.” He lowered his gun.
Right then a gunshot ripped through the sound of the wind and blew the side of Aubrey's face off.
I spun around. “Dietz!” I screamed. “Dietz, you son of a bitch!”
37
The Other Truck
Pinkie and I were speeding along the highway. I'd held the speedometer at a hundred or better ever since we'd gotten out of town and hit the wide open and empty interstate. We went out of Louisiana, through Missis- sippi, and were nearly out of Alabama into Florida when I spotted the other truck.
I edged alongside of it, dangerously close, shouting, “Pull over,” through the open window, showing Clem Winkler my gun.
He slowed down and stopped on the highway's shoulder. I jumped out of the car and flung open the truck door, and held the gun on him.
“Wha’ the . . .”he started.
“Get out,” I told him and he knew I meant business. “Unlock that back door.”
He scrambled around for the keys and went around to the back of the truck. As soon as he had the lock undone, I grabbed it, tossed it to the side, slid the bolt and threw up the back door.
It was icy outside but a blast of freezing air came from inside the truck. Maurice was curled on his side, his hands tucked inside his sleeves, out cold.
“Wha’ the . . .” Winkler started again.
“Shut up!” I yelled at him.
I gave Pinkie the gun and jumped into the truck and went to work bringing Maurice around. His eyes fluttered a bit. It was as if he were doped from the cold. I talked to him and rubbed his face and got him sitting up.
“I'm never going to eat redfish again, Neal,”
he told me.
I told him I never was either.
He was standing outside, the crates of redfish in the truck behind him, focusing on my face. That's when he asked what I knew he would finally have to ask.
My face began to fall apart. He looked at Pinkie. Then he closed his eyes, his head lifted toward the nighttime sky, and his voice rose above the wind, crying out her name in two long, plaintive syllables that will play in my mind until I die.
38
Epilogue
It was while dawn was breaking that I noticed the lacy foliage of the cypress trees down the river had turned brown, died. It had happened overnight, the result of that first frost a few days earlier, and it seemed to say it all.
But of course it didn't say it all. Nothing can. I can tell you, though, how at the inquiry it came down to my word against Dietz's that Aubrey Wohl was going to kill me. No, I said, Aubrey Wohl was going to expose Delbert Dietz and Bubba Brevna too, so Dietz murdered him. Internal Affairs, the OCU and anybody else who thought they had to said they'd look into all that.
I believe it was Diana who'd said maybe Brevna was fishing for something other than shrimp. And Larry Silva had said more than he realized when he told me that even the IRS couldn't audit fish. They couldn't count all the dead redfish either, the ones that got captured in the purse seine, but were too much for Brevna's boat, the ones that washed belly up on the barrier islands.
A few weeks later, after the killings were no longer headlines, there was a small article buried in the back of the paper. The headline read, REDFISH TRANSPORTING CASE DROPPED. No, believe it. A Florida court ruled against a state law that prohibited possession, selling, or shipping into Florida any food fish caught with a purse seine no matter where it was caught. The Florida court decided this law against purse seines was unconstitutional, so the Feds dropped their case against Brevna until the decision could be appealed. Tell that to all those white-bellied fish. Talk about that when you talk about national crazes for blackened redfish.
