“Enough of this ‘Serpent and the Rainbow’ bullshit!” I said.
Marie said, “You don’t believe? You will — y’be doin’ m’biddin’ soon, Knight zombie.”
Now my entire back felt like a block of ice. Yet sweat beaded on my forehead and rolled down the sides of my face. My breathing became rapid and shallow, but my heart hammered inside my chest, and I could feel the strong pulse in my throat that slammed into my cranium. I became so nauseated I was sure I’d puke out everything from my scrotum up to my tonsils.
Legba jabbed the pin into the doll’s groin.
The worst pain I’d ever experienced racked my gut, and I doubled over in agony.
“How ‘bout a kidney stone,” DePue said. “Now y’know how I feel. Have ‘em all the time.”
* * *
As Legba jams the pin into the doll’s groin a second and third time, I fall to one knee in front of the gator, Bob Dylan. I know I’ll soon vomit. This time Legba keeps the pin in the doll, leaving me feeling as though a bayonet twists my intestines.
The gator opens its powerful jaws to growl. I let go of the two dozen Twinkies I’d binged while high on cannabis. Bob Dylan reels back and snaps at DePue.
“She-it!” DePue shouts.
In an explosive entrance, the front door falls flat, busting from its hinges, and Black Zack steps inside. He’s laughing, eyes bulging, squirting fire and bullets out of the Mach 10 like it is a plastic ketchup bottle.
I see Deputy Grover behind him, on the ground just outside the door. He’s laying oddly, twisted back like he’s sitting on his own head. Zack must have nearly broken the guy in half.
With Zack’s arrival, I find renewed energy and refocus. But I know the adrenaline boost won’t last long.
The lone sheriff’s deputy behind me is caught completely off guard. But he does get one wild shot off as I take his big wheel-gun away from him, easily pushing it inward toward his body. In less than a second the gun is turned back on him, and I shoot him in the center of the chest.
The bodyguards are reaching under their blazers, bringing their guns out when I shoot the white guy between the eyes. The second man ducks behind the red table cloth. I don’t wait for him to reveal himself, placing three shots in a downward pattern under the skirted table about thirty inches high and six inches apart, horizontally. I hear him collapse and conclude that probably two of the powerful .357 rounds have struck him in vital areas.
In the meantime, the unarmed Papa Legba leapt over his guard and goes through the back door. I notice an odd tattoo covering his back. It’s a large colorful rainbow with a black snake coiled around it. The head of the thing lies atop the rainbow, just below Legba’s neck.
Bob Dylan, obviously fearing the loud gunfire, scampers across the big black bodyguard as well, following his master to the door.
The least of my worries is the overweight, slow-talking Sheriff DePue. I figure him for being just as slow in his reaction time, and I’m proven correct.
As he stands and brings up his .357 to kill Zack, I take three long but quick strides to him, reach out and grab his wrist. After twisting his arm around, I slam the heel of my hand into his elbow, snapping it like I did his deputy’s. Then I side-kick into his knee, forcing it to bend backward, and he falls straight down.
He’ll be in too much pain to give us any trouble, and he certainly won’t be going anywhere unassisted.
“What was it you were going to do to me, DePue?” I grab his handgun from where it lay beside him on the floor.
The sheriff glares up at me, pain and anger filling his face, turning it bright red.
Zack has long since sprayed out all of his ammo, and Marie seems to think it’s a good time to attack.
She throws the python at him, but it falls short; the snake less than enthusiastic to be used as a weapon, anyway.
Marie snatches up the ritual dagger and leaps at Zack, but the big man blocks it away. She comes at him again. This time she’s struggling wildly, but he finds her weaponed hand and pushes the dagger between her ribs, stabbing her through the heart.
Her eyes bug in reaction as he lifts her completely from her feet by only the dagger in her chest.
“I’s wanta do this fo’long time, Marie — since you hexed my dear’st o’er forty years ‘go.” He lets her fall to the floor. “You’s great, great gran’ mammy’s ghost howlin’ ‘n the wind — ‘shamed a you an’ you usin’ ya black magic ‘gainst good folks.”
Forty years? Marie doesn’t look over twenty-five — even with the dark makeup — granted, she looks a very dead twenty-five, now.
I notice the sheriff is more of a man than I’d thought. The old fat boy’s managed to crawl to the open side door where Legba exited. I don’t bother to stop him, remembering I’d wired the gate latch shut from the outside. Legba probably scaled the six-foot fencing easily and has probably left in his limo — but his alligator won’t be able to escape the courtyard. From first impressions, I don’t think Bob Dylan and DePue get along that well.
I go to the side door as the fat sheriff realizes his mistake. He’s trying to crayfish back in.
“Shoot the gator!” he cries. “Shoot the damn gator!”
“Domino’s delivery!” I say, giving his big ass a boot to clear the doorway. I slam the door shut, leaving DePue outside with the twelve-foot, toothy reptile, Bob Dylan.
Blood curdling screams and pleading comes from the other side of the door, but I don’t feel a thing. Sounds like ol’ Bob Dylan’s getting all “Tangled Up in Blue” — parish sheriff Blue.
A noisy two-cycle engine accelerates from the front of the cabin, and I run past Zack to the front door. I find the strangest sight in memory: A man wearing a leopard skin skirt in a top hat decorated with chicken feathers, teeth and bones — giving a little 49cc moped as much gas as it can take.
But he pulls to the side of the narrow road ahead, and I hear why. The roar of semi-truck engines comes our way. Those container trucks are arriving with dozens of Legba’s men.
CHAPTER 15
Goin’ Muddin’
We needed help. It was time to regroup and rethink. No matter how high I was, I knew we had no chance against an armed force of at least three dozen. I hated the idea of retreating, but too many lives were in the balance to let the little macho man whispering inside my head take over in a suicidal killing rampage. It didn’t matter how despicable these assholes were.
We went for the side door. But on the way I snatched up the little Voodoo doll that had caused me so much pain. I was uncomfortable leaving that damn hoodoo weapon laying around for anyone to mess with. Being a bit weary of the pins, unsure of what removing them might do to me in my current drugged up, mental state, I left them in and carefully stuffed my poor cloth and hair likeness into my back pocket.
When we slipped out, Bob Dylan had his mouth full of DePue pork chop and paid no attention.
As I helped Zack over the fence, he said, “She-it! That there’s Ol’ Yellah! Damn thin’ give me them nigh’mares, ‘gain!”
I shoved a final time, and the big man slipped over to the other side of the fence. He landed remarkably well, and I vaulted over the fence after him.
More semi-trucks pulled in.
I told Zack, “We’ve got a plenty to give us nightmares, already.”
After a wave to the strange guard behind the cabin, we headed back the same way we’d come.
Within twenty minutes, we were back to our newly purchased Jeep and hauling ass back to the Big Easy. Zack said he had an ally who could help us; the girl in Billy’s photo, undercover FBI Special Agent Pooh Dooley.
Zack explained Poodoo had been working the streets deep undercover as a hooker. She’d take in her Johns, let’s say hand selecting them as possible connections to the case. Then she’d lead them on long enough to get them naked. After drugging them up with a roofie, sodium pentothal and versed cocktail she’d gotten from a CIA friend, she’d tie them to her bed. When she had extracted all the
info from them she could, she let them pass out and then dump them in an alley. They wouldn’t remember a thing.
She was obviously working a little toward the rogue side of the law.
Evidently, as deep as she’d gotten, her bosses felt they couldn’t pull her out without jeopardizing dozens of lives and an investigation that had been going on for over a year. She had single handedly taken a case started from rumors and superstitions, and she’d cracked this hard-shelled nut wide open.
“You’s gonna love ‘er,” Zack said. “She be crazy — jus’ like you.”
Within a mile from the little bayou bait shop, we found our troubles were far from over.
Three all-terrain vehicles with some serious hardware mounted on top cut us off.
I cut the wheel sharply to the right, narrowly avoiding a collision with the two ATVs blocking the road.
We bounced through the thick vegetation, and down a steep sloped ravine. The engine of the third patrol vehicle sounded close. They’d followed us in, and the other two would not be far behind.
At the bottom, we hit water. Within seconds, we were sitting in water with the jeep up past its hood in the swamp. I was thankful then for the snorkel. But the old jeep wouldn’t go much deeper without drowning out. And there was at least a half dozen other concerns that could make this old Marine vehicle stall on us.
A little water wouldn’t stop the patrol vehicles, either. But the four-foot deep stuff did. And we had the advantage of cover from the thick bayou vegetation.
About two hundred feet in, the motor died.
Lucky that the swampland kept Legba’s patrol vehicles back, it did little about shielding us from their bullets. With an M-60 mounted on the back of each ATV, when they opened up on us, I felt as if I were back in Iraq.
Limbs snapped off from overhead and water spouted up around us like geysers as they threw their 7.62 mm rounds blindly in our direction, but at a collective rate of 30-rounds-per-second.
I found myself instinctively lying over Black Zack’s big body. His Brennan laugh acknowledged my protective measure along with the bullets snapping and splashing around us.
The firing had cut through the foliage enough for me to make out the guns through the swamp grass. They could surely begin to see us, as well, as was soon to become obvious.
The bullets struck our stalled jeep. We were out of options — we’d have to jump into the swamp.
CHAPTER 16
Hoodoo with Poodoo
With a flare of whining aircraft engine and wind like a hurricane, an airboat hit a mud bar about fifteen yards in front of us, vaulted ten feet overhead and landed on harm’s side.
A fifty-caliber machine gun makes a distinctive, sharp hammering, a bit slower but louder than an M-60. It’s a big dog among Chihuahuas. The airboat’s machine gunner threw fiery Hell back at Legba’s men.
Zack moved me aside and looked. “It’s Poodoo!”
“What?”
“Poodoo! She done rescued us! I calt her when you was in LaLa Land on my shop floor. Checked you’s billfold. Seed who ya was. She’d been spectin’ ya. Tol’ her where we be headed. Poodoo’s the one calt the Feds to save that lady — Billy’s momma.”
In between us and Legba’s henchmen, the airboat made slow but noisy circles. In the operator’s seat, leaning against the rudder stick to make the loops, a redheaded woman was firing a squad assault weapon, a.k.a. SAW. Wearing a red leisure suit on the bow, a skinny black man held onto the big fifty-caliber machinegun with both hands, while throwing back eight, half-inch-diameter, full-metal-jacket slugs per second.
The redhead firing the SAW knew what she was doing, the assault weapon spitting out fifteen 5.56 mm rounds per second on its own, sounding much like its name, a Husqvarna chainsaw. The only time they let up was when the prop end of their boat moved into their line of fire while circling.
One of Legba’s ATVs exploded, throwing both driver and gunner into the swamp. The second vehicle rolled into the water smoking, its occupants’ bloodied bodies slipping into the alligator infested wetland. The third escaped, but with driver only and two flattened tires.
The redhead guided the airplane-propeller-driven boat around to the side of our stalled jeep and shouted, “Get in!”
She was beautiful. In the old days, my testosterone level may have been too high to admit being saved by a woman, but I had no problem now, especially after getting a good look at her.
Zack climbed in first. “This ‘ere’s Poodoo!” he said.
“Special Agent Pooh Dooley, FBI,” she told me with a mock finger salute. “At your service.”
Seeing her beautiful but wind-blown, long red hair, big green eyes, luscious full lips and wet t-shirt covering the clichéd ample breasts, all I could think of was “I wish!”
The past twenty-four hours had been a nightmare, but the sight of this lovely lady put my brain back in the land of lollipops and cotton candy.
I shook my head with an ironic smile. “I’m E Z.”
“I can tell,” she said. “Goes along with what I’ve heard about you.”
I feared we were getting off on the wrong foot. That was strike one.
“This is Goofy.” She nodded to the thin black man wearing a bright floral shirt and red leisure suit. “He’s my pimp.”
“But of course he is.” I smiled.
The dark man’s thin face split open, exposing huge front teeth, and he laughed ... dare I say, like ... Goofy.
CHAPTER 17
Hot Child in the City
With Poodoo at the rudder and accelerator, the trip across Honey Island Swamp to her SUV was more exciting than a US Marine beach landing in a hovercraft. We covered five miles within about five, knuckle-whitening minutes.
I hadn’t known Zack long, but I’d seen him crazy high, I’d seen him happy, I’d seen him mad and I’d seen him sad. In all those times, I’d never seen his eyes get so big.
On the way back to New Orleans in her SUV, I told FBI SA Dooley, a.k.a. Poodoo, that I thought Billy White Cloud had been tied up and was being held with the children behind Legba’s cabin. We were both sure the whole mess of them had been cleared out by now, but she called in FBI SWAT to check it out and gather evidence.
There was more to report, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember. I racked my brains, but my mind was like shifting sands in a sirocco. I remembered only that it had something to do with Legba’s conversation with Sheriff DePue. Marie’s dust was sure to have contained some very potent drugs — probably pufferfish poison. Although it had yet to turn me into a zombie, it had already made pudding out of my memory.
By the time we got to within three blocks of Bourbon Street, night had fallen and Mardi Gras was in full swing.
We went on foot, searching through the gyrating crowd for Poodoo’s contact, an anonymous woman who’d called in a tip. Given the code name “Call Girl,” she’d assured Poodoo that she would tell her who Legba really was. But the informant insisted on meeting her in person first, and to receive witness protection. Poodoo’s only clue to identify Call Girl was that she would be topless and wearing a white mask.
I couldn’t wait — white masks turn me on.
As we hit Interstate 59 South heading in, Poodoo’s cell phone rang. “Special Agent Dooley.”
After a couple seconds, she held her hand over the microphone and said to me, “It’s the SWAT team. They’ve confirmed our suspicions. No one’s left at Legba’s cabin — not even any bodies.”
She went back to her phone. Another couple of seconds of listening and she asked me, “You know anything about a fat, twenty-foot-long alligator?”
“Oops,” I said and looked at Zack in the back seat. His eyebrows were raised, as well. “Ol’ Bob Dylan’s grown,” I said knowing that I would have probably exaggerated its size had I run face to face into the big reptile, as well. “Anybody get hurt?”
“Bob Dylan?” she asked, frowned at me and returned to her phone call. With a few words of thanks, she hung
up. “Nobody got hurt. I guess they filled that poet gator of yours full of holes when the first SWAT member stumbled over him in the dark. They said that if we needed them, they’d be cleaning up at the cabin and grilling the thing for supper. A couple of those SWAT boys are Cajun and love alligator tail.”
“They done finally kilt Ol’ Yellah,” Zack said. “An’ now they’s eatin’ ‘im.”
“How fitting,” I said, “Law eating law.”
“What?” Poodoo asked.
“Bob Dylan ate Sheriff DePue. He was probably fed as many of the dead bodies we left in our wake that he could stomach, as well.”
Zack began his Brennan laugh, accompanied by Goofy’s comic chuckle.
“Won’t tell ‘em a word,” Poodoo said to more of Zack and Goofy’s chortling.
I turned to Poodoo’s pimp in the back seat. “I can’t imagine why they call you Goofy.” This time, they both busted out in even louder, wild guffaws.
* * *
I’d never been to NOLA during Mardi Gras — never thought it sounded that fun.
I hadn’t realized what I’d been missing all these years.
The street writhed with partiers, everyone going absolutely nuts. But they were all happy—even the plethora of cops who mingled within. A tangible feeling of joy and merriment hung in the air, and it began to rub off on me.
Men, young and old, hung out of balconies begging young women to bare their chests for strings of the purple, gold and green beads.
Women were hanging out of other balconies, many of them with several strands of beads around their necks and topless. Fireworks popped and whirled, topless girls screamed in merriment, painted girls danced, topless girls giggled wearing wild masks and beads — and ... did I mention: there were topless girls?
Within a few yards afoot on Bourbon Street, we were dancing and shouting along with the crowd. Poodoo and I made our way down the crowded street managing a sort of salsa dance in between all the writhing bodies that turned into the tango in the shoulder to shoulder throng, and we ended up doing a very sexy bump with some grinding for good measure. Every time she smiled at me, I felt my heart melt.
KNIGHT'S REPORTS: 3 Book Set Page 9
