by Tom Cooper
In the next few days of their community service Cosgrove and Hanson carried antique end tables and Tiffany lamps and boxes of baronet china right out the front door. Like professional movers. Nothing out of the ordinary here, folks.
A buddy of Hanson’s, a one-eyed waffle house cook named Greenfoot, came by each day with his flatbed truck and they filled the back. Greenfoot took the loot to a pawnshop in Mid-City and returned an hour or so later with fistfuls of cash. A hundred, sometimes two or three.
Twenty percent for Greenfoot, the rest for Cosgrove and Hanson.
Lagniappe.
One afternoon Greenfoot returned from the pawnshop with far more money than they expected. Five hundred. For the first time in years Cosgrove had a nest egg, two thousand dollars, squirreled away in his bank account. Not much compared with most guys his age, but a small fortune considering the pittance he’d arrived with in New Orleans. Cosgrove found himself in a near-exultant mood. And he felt healthier than he had in years. The work around the widow’s house had hardened the soft places on his body, tightened his gut.
Maybe he’d made the right decision, staying in New Orleans.
“Got something else for you guys,” Greenfoot told them with a sly one-sided grin.
Cosgrove and Hanson followed Greenfoot into the tin-roofed carport and Greenfoot took a ziplock bag from his pocket. Inside was a nugget of weed the size of a golf ball, pale green and shot through with tiny orange and purple hairs. The smell even through the sealed ziplock bag was overpowering, buzz-inducing.
“Smells like a mermaid’s pussy,” Hanson said, thumbs hooked on his canvas belt.
“Indeed,” said Greenfoot.
They sat on the concrete in the shade, and Greenfoot took out a green glass pipe and packed a nugget of weed into the bowl.
“Lemon,” Cosgrove said.
“You and Lemon,” said Hanson. “What’re you guys, fucking?”
Greenfoot held out the pipe to Cosgrove but Cosgrove shook his head. Greenfoot shrugged and gave the pipe to Hanson.
“Where’s it from?” Cosgrove asked, expecting Greenfoot to say California. Afghanistan. Mars.
“Where’d I buy it?”
“Grown.”
“Barataria,” said Greenfoot, his bloodshot eye fixed on Cosgrove. The glass eye, lighter brown, was always aimed in the same direction, slightly upward.
Hanson was blowing out a cloud of pungent smoke. He shook his head slowly back and forth, his ponytail swinging rhythmically. Every time Cosgrove thought Hanson was finished exhaling, smoke kept billowing out like some kind of Cheech and Chong gag.
“The what?” Cosgrove asked. He’d never heard of the Barataria.
“The swamp. Barataria Bay. Can’t be more than fifty miles from here. Homegrown shit, son.”
The cicadas shrilled in the oak trees and cars rattled down Napoleon.
Greenfoot sucked in smoke, held it, exhaled.
“Shit is loud,” said Hanson. He stared glassy-eyed and grinning at a rake propped in the corner of the carport. “Brain’s screaming at me. Freestylin’.”
“People grow weed in the swamp?” Cosgrove said.
“Indeed. Weed’s a weed, son,” said Greenfoot, professorial. “It’ll grow anywhere. Just got to know what you’re doing.”
“Give me that pipe,” Cosgrove said.
He took the pipe from Greenfoot and lit it. Drew in smoke, held it in his lungs, hacked it out.
“There you go, son,” said Greenfoot.
“I got the lungs of an elephant,” Hanson said. “I know every fuckin’ aspect of the universe.”
Soon Cosgrove’s head felt like a helium balloon drifting into the ether.
“Look at this motherfucker,” Hanson said, pointing his chin at Cosgrove. “He looks like a werewolf. Anybody ever tell you that? That fuckin’ beard growing into your eyes. A werewolf. Fuckin’ Sasquatch.”
Hanson and Greenfoot laughed. Then Cosgrove laughed with them. By God, he hadn’t felt this good in years. Maybe what women often told him was right, that he suffered from minor depression, should be on some kind of medication. He sat in a mellow trance, a wrecked grin on his face. Was this what people meant by peace?
“Best pot I ever smoked is Cali Gold,” Cosgrove heard Hanson saying.
“Sensi,” said Greenfoot.
“White Owl,” Hanson said.
“Lemon,” Cosgrove said.
“Lemon,” Hanson cackled. “Who the fuck is named Lemon?”
“Lemon and lime, partners in crime,” said Greenfoot.
“Remember that Lemon-lime guy?” Hanson said. “The black Lemon-lime guy? In the commercials?”
“Fuck you talking about?” Greenfoot said.
“I feel like I’ve been staring at this rake for a thousand years,” Hanson said.
They cackled together for about half a minute. Then they passed the smoke around again.
“Lemon-lime guy scared the fuck out of me when I was a kid,” Hanson said, indignant. “The 7-Up guy, man.”
“I need more of this shit,” said Cosgrove.
“The black Lemon-lime guy with the deep aspect to his voice.”
“It’s the best,” Greenfoot said.
“Dreadlocks growing out my ass,” Hanson said.
“The Barataria?” Cosgrove said.
“Two brothers got an island of the shit,” Greenfoot said. “That’s what they say on the boards. I belong to a forum. Ganjadude-dot-com. Had a boat? Go looking for it myself.”
“I need more,” Cosgrove said.
“Alaskan Thunderfuck,” Hanson said.
“Stuff’s a cross between Southern Puke and A Thousand Starfishes,” Greenfoot said. “Comes from a granddaddy plant thirty years old. Sticky as hell. They only use the top leaves. According to Ganjadude dot com.”
“Ganjadude dot com,” said Hanson. “Call me that from now on.”
“Know anybody with a boat?” Cosgrove asked.
“Those guys, shit,” Greenfoot said. “What I heard, they’ll cut your arms off. Crazy shit.”
“I’m gonna shit on Lemon’s shoes,” Hanson said.
“But a whole island,” Cosgrove said.
“Ever been out in the Barataria?” Greenfoot said. “You’ll never find that place. Might as well be Ponce de León looking for the Fountain of Youth.”
GRIMES
Lindquist: Grimes suspected the man a retard, at very least a mental case. Grimes knew from anecdote and hearsay that half the Barataria considered Lindquist harmless. A village idiot. The other half thought there was something seriously wrong with the guy, digging up dead people’s jewelry, brain-fried on pills.
Twice Grimes had visited Lindquist’s house meaning to get his signature and twice he’d left empty-handed. The man would not stop talking. Talking and joking and babbling about pirate treasure. It was obvious to Grimes that he was in a bad way, that his wife was gone—the metal detector parts and maritime maps all around, the dust along the baseboards and ceiling fan blades, the scummy plates and glasses stacked on top of the end tables and television.
Now Grimes was at Lindquist’s a third time, sitting at the paper-strewn dining room table while Lindquist told one of his dumb jokes. Something about a triple-dicked Weimaraner. Grimes wasn’t listening. He was thinking of his mother. That morning in the parking lot of the Magnolia Café he’d glimpsed her through a window sitting alone in her booth. He turned quickly around and got back in his car, drove away with his heart slamming and his palms sweating.
“And then?” said Lindquist. “And then, the Weimaraner says to the nun, ‘Dog’s got to bury his bone.’ ” He slapped his knee and leaned over the table and exploded in shrill laughter.
Grimes smiled stiffly at Lindquist, teeth clenched like he was biting through rope.
“You hear the one about the fat lady in the Thanksgiving parade, Mr. Grimes?” Lindquist asked.
“Mr. Lindquist,” Grimes said. “I’ve got an appointment coming up soon.”
&n
bsp; Lindquist made an exaggerated O with his mouth. The salt-and-pepper hair poking from under his yacht cap in greasy wings. He wore the same tent-like T-shirt and baggy camouflage pants as when Grimes saw him last. Maybe the man never changed his clothes, which wouldn’t surprise Grimes, given the state of the house.
“Come back later then,” Lindquist said. “I’ll be around same time tomorrow.”
“If you sign now, I won’t have to bother you again.”
“Oh, it’s no bother. You okay.”
Grimes straightened and took a breath. “My bosses?” He leaned forward, palms on the table. “Between us? They’re kind of assholes.”
Lindquist nodded. “Oh, yes sir. I know how that is, me.” Then, pouching out his lips, “But I wouldn’t want to rush into anything.”
“Mr. Lindquist. Friend to friend? Look at that number in the third paragraph.”
“Come back later. After I talk to my lawyer.”
“You’ve got a lawyer?”
“Well, I gotta find one.”
Grimes took a deep breath. “Mind if I ask you a personal question, Mr. Lindquist?”
Lindquist flicked his hand: go right ahead.
“Where’s your arm?”
Grimes asked because he already knew the answer. A few days ago, at Magnolia Café, he’d overheard about Lindquist’s stolen arm. Two oil rig workers were joking about it at the counter. “Thing’s probably getting more pussy than Lindquist ever did,” one of them said.
Lindquist shook his head somberly. “Stolen,” he said.
“You’re kidding.”
Lindquist shook his head again.
“I have a sister. Regina. Without a leg. Lost it in a water-skiing accident on Lake Heron. If some guy stole her leg? I don’t know what I’d do. Probably kill the guy.”
Grimes had no siblings. Sometimes he wondered if he would have turned out any differently if he had a brother or sister.
“What happened?” Lindquist asked.
“Right into a buoy. Bam. Good-bye leg. Spring break.”
“Well, hell. She live around here? One leg don’t bother me.”
Grimes couldn’t tell if Lindquist was joking. “We’d like to replace that arm,” he said. “The company and me.”
“That arm, I don’t know. Irreplaceable.”
“We’ll buy you a better one.”
“Thirty-thousand-dollar arm.”
A thirty-thousand-dollar arm. Grimes had never heard of such a thing. On top of everything else, Lindquist was an extortionist. “I’ll see what I can arrange,” Grimes said.
“It was the only one I was ever comfortable with. Others made me itch or feel funny.”
“If you sign this, we’ll get you a new one. A better one.”
“I want one exactly like the old.”
“Of course,” said Grimes, thinking, Kill this motherfucker.
The Toup house was within shouting distance of the harbor, a mint-green prefab sitting on two-story stilts far back on a pine-crowded tract of land. White shutters and trim, a front yard full of gargantuan banana trees, a wrought iron bench before an adobe hearth. One of the brothers, huge-shouldered in a Guy Harvey T-shirt, stood on the welcome mat as Grimes mounted the stairs. He visored his eyes against the ten o’clock sun and listened with a put-on expression while Grimes stated his business. Grimes was surprised when the man gestured him into the house. He expected more resistance given the rumors about the brothers he’d heard.
In the den the other brother sat in a leather armchair eating a bowl of cornflakes. He scowled at Grimes, a fat drop of milk hanging from his bottom lip, then looked at his brother for an explanation.
The first twin told the other that Grimes was from the oil company, that he’d come to offer a settlement.
They sat at the dining room table and Grimes rolled up his shirtsleeves three times apiece like a stumping politician. He snapped open his satchel and withdrew an inch-thick sheaf of papers.
The surly brother’s eyes flared in disbelief. “Great goddamn,” he said. “Paperwork up the ass. Get rid of some and then a motherfucker drops off twice as much five minutes later.”
Grimes did not take kindly to being called a motherfucker, especially by a tattoed coon-ass. But he knew saying anything wouldn’t work in his favor. Swampfucks, thinking they were tough. He’d like to see them in New York. In Boston or Chicago. They wouldn’t survive a day without getting fucked a thousand different ways.
“Well, sit,” the surly brother told Grimes.
The first twin began to thumb through the papers. He’d finish one page and then hand it to his brother and then move on to the next.
“Kill you guys to write plain English?” said the brother with the tattoos. A spiderweb. A trident. A Great White shark.
“Hey, I don’t write them,” said Grimes. “I were the one to write it, I’d say this is a good deal. Sign here. Short and sweet.”
The brothers kept reading, the only sounds the ticking of the kitchen wall clock, the sigh of the air-conditioning. Grimes looked around. The house was clean and well lit and airy, solidly middle-class. The furniture was heavy and dark, cherrywood and African mahogany, not the cheap pressed-wood stuff Grimes saw in living rooms and kitchens throughout the Barataria. Hell, there were even African violets on the windowsill, a ficus tree in the corner.
Grimes watched the brothers. Uncanny, the resemblance. “I’ve got a twin brother,” he said.
“Yeah?” said the first twin.
“Pretty much the end of the story,” he said.
“We some kind of soul mates ’cause you got a twin?” said the second.
Grimes cleared his throat. Stood and hitched his pants. “Use your pisser?” he asked.
“Shit?” said the tattooed brother.
Grimes shook his head.
“Down the hall. Second on the right. Don’t even think about taking a shit.”
In the hallway bathroom Grimes cursed the brother while he pissed. Midstream he took the toothbrush from the porcelain holder next to the sink and whizzed on the bristles and then stuck the toothbrush back in its hole.
On the way back to the den Grimes passed an open bedroom door and glimpsed something that made him pause. A prosthetic arm sticking hand-up out of a widemouthed vase or umbrella stand in the corner.
I’ll be damned, Grimes thought.
When Grimes returned, the tattooed brother was standing at the table and the paperwork was ripped to shreds, confetti strewn on the floor. The other brother, looking uneasy and embarrassed, was in the kitchen taking plates out of a dishwasher.
“That the kind of money you’re offering everyone?” the tattooed brother asked.
Grimes took his satchel and shouldered it. “Appreciate your time,” he said.
“Get the fuck out of here,” the tattooed brother said.
Grimes descended the steps swiftly, a chill at the base of his neck like it was in the crosshairs of a rifle scope.
The next day at dusk Grimes found Lindquist at the harbor and told him he had some important news to share.
Lindquist hobbled down the gangplank onto the rickety pier. Eyebrow cocked, he flicked the head of his Pez dispenser and popped a pill in his mouth and mashed it between his molars.
“Your arm,” said Grimes.
Lindquist’s bloodshot eyes bulged. “You find it?”
“Not sure if I’m at liberty to disclose. It’s a sensitive issue.”
Lindquist stepped beseechingly toward Grimes. “Mister,” he said, “you know how screwed I am without that arm?”
Grimes was quiet.
“I mean, look at this damn thing,” Lindquist said, jigging his hook arm.
They stood in the sweltering twilight next to Lindquist’s boat. Even the Jean Lafitte looked crazy to Grimes, its pureed pea green, its varnished wood warped and flaking.
“Let’s just say I’m pretty sure I found your arm,” Grimes told Lindquist. “But I have to be discreet.”
“We a
in’t friends?”
This took Grimes aback. He’d been called all manner of things over the past several weeks, but friend was far away from any of them. “Sure we are,” said Grimes.
“Tell me,” Lindquist said.
Far out in the bay the red and green pilot lights of shrimp boats and oyster luggers glimmered. Most of them by now were working on behalf of the oil company as “Vessels of Opportunity.”
“I don’t want to start any trouble. For you, for me.”
“There won’t be no trouble.”
Mosquitoes hummed around them.
“Well, if we’re friends,” Grimes said, swatting, “let’s do each other both a favor.”
Lindquist pondered this. Then he said, “You mean those papers?”
Grimes nodded.
“Well, hell. Mister, I’ll sign those papers. Give me them. Sign those papers in my blood, me.”
“Promise you won’t say how you learned,” said Grimes.
“Swear on my life.”
“Might lead to a lot of trouble.”
“Swear to God.” Lindquist placed his hand flat on an invisible Bible.
“Well,” Grimes said, “let’s get this done.”
They walked the wobbly gangplank onto the Jean Lafitte. Grimes fished the papers out of his satchel and sat them on a wooden cutting board and handed his Mont Blanc pen to Lindquist. Lindquist signed quickly and gave the pen back.
“Those Toup twins,” Grimes said.
Lindquist looked stunned. Disbelieving.
“I saw it in their house,” Grimes said. “Sticking out of a vase. A spittoon or something. Like it was some kind of sick joke.”
Lindquist, already scheming, shunted his eyes back and forth.
“You promised,” Grimes said. “You didn’t hear it from me.”
THE TOUP BROTHERS
It was dusk, bats flitting like flecks of ash above the massed trees, when through the front window the Toup twins saw Lindquist coming up the porch steps. Clutching single-handed onto the rail, he hoisted himself slowly, in place of his missing prosthetic an ill-fitting hook arm too small for his body. By the time Lindquist reached the raised porch Reginald and Victor were already waiting outside.