Mississippi Rose | Book 1 | Into Darkness

by Lopez, Rob

  “You deserved to be inside, Eric, and if you didn’t learn nothing from that you never will.”

  Eric’s face turned to granite. “At least I didn’t kill a kid.”

  Darla gasped. “Don’t you lay that on me!”

  Eric walked slowly toward her. “Drunken whore all alone. Baby gets annoying. Debts mounting up.”

  Darla backed away. “Stay away from me,” she said shakily.

  Eric moved to the door, blocking her escape. “Makes sense to get rid of the baby. What did you do? Smother her?”

  “No.”

  “You did, didn’t you?”

  “No!”

  “Ain’t no other reason for a baby that isn’t sick to die. Admit it.”

  “I don’t know why she died.”

  “Yes you do. You killed her you baby-murdering whore.”

  Darla slapped him hard across the face. Eric simply smiled.

  “That felt like guilt,” he said.

  “Get away from me. I don’t want you in my life.”

  Eric tossed the picture onto the bed. “Too late for that. You got me and I got you.”

  “You got nothing.”

  “But you got a boat.”

  There was a pause as the realization sank in, and Darla started kicking and punching Eric. He responded by slamming her against the wall and pinning her there.

  “I thought about you every day in the joint,” he hissed, “thinking about how you betrayed me and left me to rot. Then I found out you bought a boat and I had to wonder how you got the money. Who’d you do a deal with to get that? Was that a deal to make sure I went to prison?”

  Darla struggled against his grip. “Get your hands off me!”

  Eric held her easily and brought his fist up in front of her face.

  “The way I see it, I got a rightful share of that boat. I paid for that boat with every day I sweated inside. Seems like today is a good time to cash in on that investment. World’s gone to shit but the Mississippi provides, as they say. Now you can make this easy or you can make it hard but you are never going to cheat me again.”

  “Help,” cried Darla.

  Eric closed his hand over her mouth.

  “Shut it, and shut it good,” he said.

  There was a knock on the apartment front door. Eric increased the pressure on Darla’s mouth, crushing her head against the wall, and he narrowed his eyes as he looked at the door.

  The knock came again.

  “We’re okay here,” called Eric. “Just had a scare is all. All good now.”

  There was a pause, then a heavy thud against the door that caused it to shake.

  Eric pulled a switchblade from his back pocket. “Hey, we’re trying to sleep here,” he shouted.

  The door smashed open, wood splintering from around the lock. Jacques stepped into the room, holding a chef knife in each hand. In the gloom he looked like the angel of death.

  Eric released Darla and backed away, holding his own knife out. “She’s okay,” he said, holding his other hand up.

  Jacques’ eyes bored into him.

  “Get out,” he said.

  Eric appeared to consider his options and Jacques circled around the room, keeping his distance and leaving a path open to the door. Eric sidestepped toward the exit, always watching Jacques, and at one point feinted toward Jacques, as if testing him. Jacques didn’t flinch, but his blades glinted in the candlelight as he turned them slowly. Eric gave him a nervous smile but continued to the door. As soon as he was close enough, he ran through and disappeared down the stairwell.

  Darla waited for her heartbeat to slow down.

  “I don’t know how you came to be here,” she said, “but I’m sure glad to see you.”

  12

  Darla packed as much as she could carry from her apartment. Jacques didn’t say another word and she didn’t press him. The journey back to the boat went without incident. Back within the protected compound, Darla retired to her cabin. She couldn’t sleep, but there was a quarter bottle of bourbon in a drawer. That helped.

  In the morning when she woke the sun was already high in the sky. The firebox had been cleaned out and relit, and the boiler brought up to operating pressure. Zack was out sweeping the deck and the saloon smelled of fresh bread. Jacques emerged from the galley.

  “Sit,” he instructed her.

  Still a little dazed, Darla took a seat in the empty saloon. Jacques brought her coffee, bread, preserves and a napkin.

  “How did you come to be at my apartment last night?” asked Darla.

  “You should not have gone into the city alone,” said Jacques. “Manny warned you.”

  “Did he put you up to that? Did he tell you to follow me?”

  Jacques placed a sugar bowl next to the coffee.

  “Do you know Eric?” she asked him baldly.

  Jacques unwrapped the napkin with a flourish and laid it on Darla’s lap. “I saw him talking to you the day before yesterday. He did not look like a good person.”

  “And that was the first time you ever saw him?”

  “Eat,” said Jacques. “We have another long day ahead.”

  “For once in your life, give me a straight answer.”

  Jacques walked away. Darla felt like throwing the bread at him, but it smelled too damn good.

  On the wharf, there was a growing crowd of people at the dock gates, being held back by National Guardsmen. Ms. Roberts, looking just as prim and clean as the day before, but in a different suit, consulted with the chief of police while pointing to things on a clipboard. The chief rubbed his chin and nodded.

  Captain Hartfield stood on the dock in front of the Pride of Orleans, looking like a groom waiting for the bride. Next to him, some musicians set up some stools and adjusted or tuned their instruments.

  “What’s happening?” she asked him.

  “Getting ready to board the evacuees,” he said, barely able to contain his excitement. “When New Orleans calls, the Pride answers.”

  “It does, does it?”

  “How many are you taking?”

  Darla wasn’t aware she was taking any, but it made sense. “A hundred and twenty,” she said, giving out the regulated maximum for her boat.

  “Four hundred and fifty,” said Hartfield proudly. “Would have been a round five hundred if the Coast Guard hadn’t downgraded her.”

  “Gee, that’s tough,” said Darla. “Where are we taking them?”

  “If you hadn’t slept through the meeting, you’d know.”

  “Give me a break, Gene. We were sailing through the night.”

  “Oh, I know. I’m just pulling your leg. They’re setting up a transit camp at Point Clair. Say, is it true the reactor might blow?”

  “That’s what they said.”

  “All the more reason to get these people to safety. Well, we’ll have the band playing. That should calm folks down. Puts some spirit into them.”

  “I find opening the bar works, but you might not want that kind of spirit.”

  “No,” said Hartfield seriously. “That’s under lock and key. Noticed the new face on your boat. You been hiring?”

  “Oh, no. That’s Zack. He offered to help out.”

  “Could do with some help. Some of my crew haven’t reported in and I’m short handed.”

  “Try hiring sailors instead of musicians.”

  “Do I detect a hint of jealousy?”

  “Of you? Hell, no. My boat can run rings around yours all day long.”

  Hartfield scoffed. “Like at the last race? Of course. I nearly had my engineer fit me a rearview mirror so I could keep an eye on you without having to turn around all the time. Made my neck hurt.”

  Darla shot back. “Fat tub like that running downstream with the current? No surprise you were fast. I call that an assist.”

  “You want an upstream race? Okay, how about to Point Clair?”

  Darla opened and shut her mouth. She pictured the route in her mind, with all the bends that favore
d her more maneuverable vessel, and did some rough calculations of how low in the water each of their boats would be when fully laden with passengers. “You’re on,” she said finally.

  “You sure? There’s still time to back out.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “As a gentleman, it is only fair that I give you the opportunity to withdraw with your dignity intact.”

  “Save your manners for when you congratulate me at the end.”

  “It’s a deal, then.”

  Ms. Roberts approached the two with her clipboard. “We’ll begin loading the passengers now,” she said. “I trust you are ready?”

  “Absolutely,” said Darla. “Get them on as fast as you want. You can start with my boat first.”

  “I think that with our more spacious, modern facilities,” countered Hartfield, “they can board mine first. I can guarantee their comfort better.”

  Ms. Roberts looked from one captain to the other, suspicious of their motives. “They can board both at the same time,” she said slowly.

  “Great,” said Darla. “Bring them on.”

  Without waiting for confirmation she dashed back to her boat.

  “Listen up,” she shouted in the saloon. “Passengers will be coming aboard soon. I want you to get them seated on the center line of the boat. Keep them close together and do not let them wander out to the rail.”

  “You worried they might fall overboard?” said Zack. “I can watch for that.”

  “No,” said Darla. “I just don’t want them upsetting the trim of the boat. I want to win this race.”

  Manny emerged from the boiler room. “What race?”

  “We’re going up against the Pride of Orleans. First boat to Point Clair proves what I’ve always known: that this boat is the fastest.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “I want you to give me full power from the get-go.”

  “You strain the engines like that and she’ll be popping rivets and blowing steam from every pipe joint. What’s got into you?”

  “Don’t argue with me. Zack, as soon as we get under way I want you at the bow with the lead line. We’re going to be skimming the shallows.”

  “I don’t feel so confident doing that,” said Zack. “I told you I can’t swim.”

  “Tie yourself to the rail, I don’t care.”

  The port gates were opened and the city’s citizens poured through. The Pride of Orleans, being by far the biggest boat, dominated their vision, and they flocked toward it. Hartfield had two stages out, and the people funneled into two lines and filed aboard. The band started to play an upbeat tune, hoping to maintain a pleasant atmosphere, but the prevailing mood bordered on panic. Darla watched the chaos from the pilothouse as people got their elbows out and tried cutting in past others. Cops and the National Guard were soon yelling, trying to corral citizens and push them back before someone slipped off the dock. Darla called out to divert some people to her boat, but nobody heard her above the jazz and the cries.

  Leaning out of the pilothouse, she shouted down to Jacques on the main deck. “Get ashore and get some of those people on here!”

  Jacques gave her a frown. Walking the stage onto the dock, he waved once to the crowd to come on over. A mother with her children, having been pushed out by the mob, took one look at Jacques’ pugnacious features, then at Zack’s brooding visage. Grabbing her two kids she immediately fought her way back into line for the Pride of Orleans.

  In an exasperated huff, Darla left the pilothouse and strode onto the dock.

  “Get back in the kitchen,” she told Jacques. Catching the attention of a cop, she pointed at her own boat and mimed the idea that maybe he could direct folks her way. The cop took the hint and peeled off a new line, pointing his baton in the direction they needed to go. Darla waved them on board with a gracious fake smile then dashed back onto the boat.

  “One twenty,” she told Zack. “Count them on and let me know as soon as we hit the magic number. And smile for God’s sake.”

  The boarding took longer than Darla would have liked. Everybody seemed to want to get onto the bigger, grander boat and the multiple decks of the Pride of Orleans were already teeming with people by the time the Mississippi Rose was full. Darla wasted no further time, casting off and pulling away.

  The boat felt sluggish with all the extra passengers — far more than Darla was used to carrying, and it took a while to get up to speed. Zack stood uncertainly at the bow, gripping the rail hard. Darla called for Half Ahead, confident she’d got the jump on Hartfield. Didn’t seem any point in straining the engines yet.

  It was a beautiful sunny day and from her vantage point Darla could see people moving on the roads and bridges, leaving New Orleans. Baby strollers, wheelbarrows and bikes were loaded with provisions, pushed by owners with bowed backs. It was like watching a scene from an old news reel, but in vivid color. Darla felt a little guilty at the ease with which she passed them. They had a long road ahead of them, and it wasn’t clear where they were going to go. It was bad enough before Katrina, and they had working transport back then. Folks ended up as far afield as Texas, Alabama and Georgia, but asking them to walk that far was like asking them to walk to the moon. The enormity of the humanitarian disaster about to unfold sank in for Darla when she realized she and Hartfield were the only Federal aid these people could turn to, but two boats were not enough to evacuate an entire city.

  And all you care about is winning a boat race.

  To Darla that sounded like her sister’s voice, constantly scratching at the stone wall of her conscience. It was a thick wall, though, and Darla shrugged off the reminder. None of this was her fault, and she was helping out now.

  Only under the threat of having your boat taken from you.

  “Hey, it’s good enough,” she snapped before realizing she’d spoken out loud. She looked around to make sure no one had come up to the pilothouse to hear her. “Jeez, sis,” she murmured. “I’m arguing with you even when you’re not here.”

  They passed the nuclear plant. One of the pumps was still working but the second one was being dismantled. Either something had broken or it was being cleaned out from having ingested a load of crap from the river. Darla sounded the whistle and the two engineers working on the pump gave her a half-hearted wave. That didn’t bode well.

  Darla rounded Thirtyfive Mile Point. As she did so she turned around and caught a glimpse of the Pride of Orleans coming out of the bend at Good Hope, a tiny white blob with smokeless stacks framed against the backdrop of a dark refinery.

  That didn’t bode well, either. Hartfield had gotten away quicker than Darla anticipated and was only three miles behind. Darla rang Full Ahead and focused on the way ahead.

  The Mississippi Rose plowed through the brown waters, black smoke streaming from her stacks. Skirting the shallows, the thrashing paddles left a wake of sediment. Darla steered the vessel as close as she dared to the jetties that emerged from chemical plants, sugar refineries and oil terminals and caught every patch of slack water she could see in front of jutting promontories and large anchored ships, swinging out at the last minute and checking behind her. In spite of everything she couldn’t prevent the Pride of Orleans drawing closer in the slow-motion race that began in the morning and crept into the afternoon. Little by little the other vessel took shape, first its outlines becoming clear, then the figures on its deck, and finally the golden antlers on its pilothouse shining in the sun. Behind its large rear paddle wheel, a huge white wake frothed up.

  Darla called into the voice pipe. “Manny, give me everything she’s got.”

  There was a pause, then, “Ain’t no way I’m blowing this boiler up. She’s at maximum now.”

  “I need more power!”

  “Well yo ain’t gonna get it. Not without breaking this boat.”

  “Dammit, Manny, you’re fired.”

  “And I quit! How’d you like that?”

  Sparks flew from the stacks. Darla slammed the brass cover o
f the voice pipe down in frustration and gripped the helm as if she could propel the boat faster by sheer force of will.

  “Mark twain,” shouted Zack from the forecastle.

  They were coursing through the shallows in an attempt to cut a bend, and Darla knew that the channel swung wide at this point. If Zack was measuring two fathoms, however, then she knew she was cutting it too close. Using the lead line at the speed they were doing was going to lead to inaccurate results as the line was dragged backwards. So if they were measuring two fathoms, the chances were it was actually less, and with a full load, Darla was about to rip the bottom off the boat. With a curse she swung the boat away from the shore, sediment billowing up and turning their wake brown.

  The Pride of Orleans inched past, following the bend of the channel, her 3000 horsepower engines rhythmically thrusting the great iron pistons that turned the big wheel. Hartfield waved and smiled. He couldn’t have looked more smug if he tried. The larger boat’s shadow passed across the Mississippi Rose, and the passengers on the decks all gawked at the little steamer puffing out great plumes of smoke, some wrinkling their noses at the smell as it drifted near them. Darla didn’t want to look across at them; didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of seeing her defeated face. With her chin high and her jaw set, she focused on steering the bend as the Pride of Orleans extended in her peripheral vision, continually creeping ahead. A solitary figure twirling a lead stood in the bow of the Pride of Orleans. Rather than looking ahead and doing his job, he was gazing at the Mississippi Rose. Darla glanced once at him — it just looked like someone showing off, keeping his balance on the forecastle as the Pride of Orleans leaned slightly into the bend without having to grip the rail like Zack.

  That was Darla’s first thought, anyway. Her second thought forced her to look again, recognizing exactly who that person was.

  It was Eric Whelan, and he comfortably outdid Hartfield in the smugness stakes.

  Darla stared, mouth open. She lifted the voice tube lid to shout something down to the boiler room, but Manny was still ranting, unaware that she hadn’t been able to hear him.

  Darla closed the lid again and watched the Pride of Orleans draw away. If she could, she would have spun the boat around and gone the other way.