POPCORN

by Victor Gischler

  I heard the dogs barking, but they were still in the back yard. I went inside, closed the door behind me.

  I quickly circled the interior of the house. Nobody home. I pondered what that might mean. Think about it. You just got your ass kicked by Big Stupid, but you can’t call the police because you were just gang beating on some naked dude. Those guys had split, off somewhere licking their wounds.

  The lady of the house was a mystery too. Why had she called in the goon squad? I replayed walking into the Saber offices, talking to Prescott, inviting Sandy to lunch, arriving at her house the first time.

  I couldn’t figure anything I’d done or said to invite an ass-whupping.

  In the kitchen, I found my clothes on the floor. I scooped them up, checked the pockets of my jeans. My wallet and P.I. identification were still there. The relief that flooded me was so palpable I started giggling.

  Okay. You’re a private eye. You’re in the house of the woman who set you up for a beating. What do you do now?

  I poked around.

  Sandy was pretty normal. No dead bodies in the closet. No smoking gun in the kitchen junk draw. I checked the dresser in the master bedroom. Even her underwear was boring.

  I crossed the room to her little desk. A leather address book. I paged through it, phone numbers and the usual. I put it in my back pocket. Her phone had a display showing the incoming calls. I scrolled though her incoming calls for the last twenty-four hours, jotted the numbers down on a piece of scrap paper. Fourteen calls in all, eleven different numbers.

  I looked around the house one more time in case I’d missed a blinking neon sign that said CLUE. I hadn’t missed anything. Or maybe I just didn’t know what a clue looked like.

  There was a picture on her desk, her and some dude, arms around each other like boyfriend and girlfriend. He had the tattoo of a dragon under one ear, the dragon’s tail wrapping around under his throat.

  * * *

  I went back to the Humvee.

  Big Stupid sat there reading a copy of Avengers.

  “I like Bat Man,” I said.

  Big Stupid looked at me. “That’s DC.”

  “So?”

  He turned back to the Avengers. “I don’t read DC.”

  “You should broaden your horizons.”

  He said nothing.

  “You know why Bat Man is better?” I asked.

  He said more nothing.

  “Because Bat Man has no powers is why. He’s just a bad ass. Anyone could be a super hero with eyebeams or whatever. Bat Man is just smart and tough. That’s why he’s better. Just a regular guy, kicking butt and taking names.”

  “He’s rich.”

  “What?”

  “Bat Man is Bruce Wayne,” said Big Stupid. “And he’s a billionaire.”

  “Being a billionaire is not the same as having a super power.”

  “But it’s not the same as being a regular guy either.”

  “Just drive,” I told him.

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere.”

  He put the Humvee into gear and drove. I sulked in the passenger seat, thinking myself around in circles, trying to figure out what had happened and what should happen next.

  Eppert was not the inside guy. Sandy had somehow arranged the blame to be put on him to cover her ass.

  Five minutes later, Big Stupid said, “I don’t know where we’re going.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Why were those guys beating you up?”

  I sighed. “To find out if I told anyone about Sandy.”

  A long pause then he said, “What about her?”

  “That she was the inside person at Saber. She thought I was onto her.”

  “What now?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Think back through the events leading up to it,” Big Stupid suggested.

  “I did that already.”

  “Say it out loud,” he said. “It’s different when you say it out loud.”

  So I told him the story, starting with him pulling up in front of the Saber offices and ending with him jumping through Sandy’s living room window like the Merrill Lynch bull.

  “You were outside smoking with her?” Big Stupid asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “You shouldn’t smoke.”

  “Is that relevant?”

  “Then she went inside?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And she stayed inside a long time?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I thought maybe she was ditching me.”

  “How long?”

  “I didn’t have a stopwatch.”

  “Long enough to make a phone call?”

  “How the hell do I know?” I said. “Maybe she had to take a shit. Maybe she lost her car keys or—”

  I shut up. Things in my brain slid into place, clicked. “Yeah, she could have called somebody. Sure. That was when she arranged it.”

  “What did you say to her right before she went inside?” Big Stupid asked.

  I replayed the conversation in my brain very slowly this time. Sentence by sentence. Word by word.

  “I said I had a hunch that somebody besides Eppert might have been the inside guy for the armored car job.”

  “Yeah. She thought you suspected her. She took off.”

  I thought about that. Then I thought about it some more.

  “Pull over someplace,” I said. “Let’s get a beer.”

  Seven

  We sat at the bar at a place called Ivar’s, a sports pub nestled under the I-10 overpass. The jukebox played Garth Brooks.

  A sort of oddball mixed crowd, students skipping glass, ex-hippies, good old boys and a scattering of professionals.

  Attorneys on extended lunch breaks loudly played the Golden Tee machine behind us, ties pulled loose, fists filled with frosted mugs of yellow beer.

  I finished my own mug of yellow beer, and waved over the college kid behind the bar for a refill.

  Big Stupid was methodically making a plate of chicken tenders go away via a dipping bowl of honey mustard sauce.

  A glass of iced tea the size of the Stanley Cup was already half empty.

  “Hey,” I said.

  He ignored me, chewed chicken tender.

  “Hey,” I said again with a little more gusto.

  He froze in mid-chew, his eyes sliding sideways to look at me without turning his head.

  “Have a real drink, man. Come on. I’m buying.”

  “I have to drive.”

  Whatever.

  I pulled Sandy’s address book out of my pocket. Also the scrap paper with the names and numbers I’d written down. I set them side by side on the bar. I sipped beer.

  I compared the numbers on the scrap paper to the numbers in the book. I sipped more beer.

  It didn’t take long to develop a little system. Cross out obvious numbers that were definitely not clues. The hairdresser. The veterinarian. Put a question mark by first names. If she only write the first name, then that meant she was familiar. Phil, Susan, Monica. Brother, sister, cousin, high school pal? Then sip some more beer. Keep the creative juices flowing.

  First and last names together implied a more formal relationship. Boss, doctor, accountant. I circled those names. I wasn’t getting this system out of any shamus handbook. Just seemed to make sense.

  The bartender brought me a fresh mug of beer.

  Big Stupid had started on a plate of onion rings.

  “Look it.” I showed Big Stupid what I’d accomplished on the scrap paper.

  He leaned toward the paper, looked at it from under heavy eyelids. “What is it?”

  “That’s detective work, hombre.”

  He nodded, didn’t ask for details.

  I told him anyway.

  “What are you going to do with those names now?”

  “Find out if the circled ones are important,” I said.

  “How?”

  “That’s a fuh—” I belched beer fumes through my nose, waved them
away. “A fucking good question.”

  I kept drinking beer. Stupid washed down onion rings with iced tea. I remember making a trip to the jukebox and playing that Chumbawumba “I get knocked down” real loud.

  I remember telling Stupid about my bass boat, being pleasantly surprised that he fished, talked lures. I remember a very dorky esoteric argument about the differences between The Submariner and Aqua Man.

  I don’t remember much after that.

  * * *

  I awoke with a stiff neck on a short couch. I sat up, rubbed my head. A beer hangover wasn’t so bad. I felt bloated, head a little fuzzy. No nausea like after a big bourbon night.

  My shoes were on the floor next to the couch.

  My head did a slow swivel as I took in my surrounding.

  A small living room. Mismatched cheap furniture. A rag rug on a rough wooden floor.

  An easy chair with duck tape on the arms. An old, small TV in the corner. A poor house but clean. Gray early morning light seeped in through the blinds.

  A little black girl came in from the hallway. She had tentacles of hair sticking every direction out of her head.

  Like a big hairy tarantula. She was maybe nine and clutched a white Barbie Doll to her chest.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey,” she said back.

  “This your house?”

  She nodded.

  “Thanks for the couch.”

  She said, “Mama wants to know if you want eggs.”

  “Okay.”

  “Scrambled?”

  “Okay.”

  She ran back down the hall, and I could hear her yelling “Mamaaaaaaaa! He wants scraaaaambled!” like some kind of shrill tornado siren.

  I put on my shoes.

  I headed down the hall, passed bedrooms. Through one open door I saw pink walls and rumpled Princess & The Frog sheets. The little girl’s room, I presumed.

  I followed the hall to the kitchen.

  Small. All the appliances looked maybe five hundred years old. But neat and clean. No clutter.

  A formica topped table and chairs had been shoved him against the window. The bacon smell was every bit as intoxicating as last night’s beer.

  The little girl sat on one side of the table eating bacon with her hands. Big Stupid sat across from her, shoveling eggs into his maw and reading an issue of Captain America.

  The little girl motioned to a seat between her and Big Stupid, and I sat. “Bacon smells good.”

  She grinned. “It is good.”

  I heard somebody come into the kitchen behind me, turned to see a haggard, middle-aged woman in blue hospital scrubs circling the kitchen with a pot of coffee.

  “Good Morning, Mr. Payne.”

  “Good morning.”

  “You slept okay?”

  No. “Yes ma’am.”

  “Coffee?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  She filled a mug that had Baton Rouge General written on the side of it. I took the mug, sniffed it, sipped. Some chicory. It was good and strong.

  “Are you a nurse?”

  “Nurse assistant,” she said.

  There was a thin bottle of Louisiana Hot Sauce on the table. I grabbed it, splashed the eggs until they turned orange.

  I took a bite, could feel the hot sauce in my nose. Good stuff.

  I looked at the little girl and nodded at Big Stupid. “Is that your Daddy?”

  She dropped her fork and erupted with giggles, slender hands coming up to cover her mouth. “That’s my brother.”

  I smiled. “My bad.”

  “So you boys were out and about last night,” said the nurse assistant.

  “Yes, ma’am. He’s sort of showing me around. Big Stupid’s been taking real good care of me.”

  “Excuse me!”

  A forkful of eggs froze halfway to my mouth. The assistant nurse had a fist on a hip as she struck an indignant pose, eyes slicing through me like lasers. “Ma’am?”

  “That’s not his name.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. That’s just what I heard everyone else call him.”

  “Is this my house?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “We don’t call people names in my house.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “That boy’s name is Walter.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “His momma name him Walter and that’s what he’s called.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Okay then.” She refilled my coffee.

  I glanced at Big Stupid – Walter. He hadn’t budged during the entire exchange, his eyes glued to Captain America.

  The Nurse Assistant kissed Big Stupid on the cheek. “Walter, take Sissy to grandma’s, will you?”

  “Okay, Mama.”

  “That’s my boy.” She grabbed her purse and keys off the counter. “Sissy, you listen to Grandma. You boys have a good day.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  She left.

  I ate eggs and sipped coffee.

  Sissy combed Barbie’s hair.

  When Big Stupid finished reading Captain America, he stood up from the table and said, “Let’s go.”

  The neighborhood outside Mama Stupid’s house was the exact opposite of the inside.

  The yards were overgrown, junk cars in driveways, ugly iron bars covering windows and doors. Three out of four houses were peeling paint badly.

  We piled into the Humvee and eased out of the neighborhood.

  Sissy leaned in between us from the backseat. She started singing high pitched as loud as she could. “Scooby Dooby Doo took a poo, and Shaggy thought it was chocolate.”

  You don’t want to hear the rest of that song. Trust me. I endured two more verses, right in my left ear. If I’d had a full tilt bourbon hangover, it would have killed me.

  We pulled into a shabby apartment complex. Window unit air conditioners provided a constant humming racket. The parking lot was a mine field of bottle caps and broken glass.

  “Mama pick you up after work, Sissy,” Big Stupid said.

  “Okay, bye.” She waved at me. “Bye, Mr. Payne.”

  “Bye, Sissy.”

  She hopped out of the Humvee, slammed the door behind her. She knocked at the first apartment. The door creaked open and a woman about a million years old came out, blue wig, glasses with thick lenses.

  She waved a gnarled hand at Big Stupid, then put an arm around Sissy and ushered her inside. The door closed.

  Big Stupid shifted into reverse and we were on our way.

  On our way where I had no idea.

  Big Stupid reached into his shirt pocket and fished out a wad of papers. Handing them to me.

  “What’s this?”

  “Phone numbers.”

  I squinted at the list and paged through Sandy’s notebook. Big Stupid had highlighted in yellow a few of them. “What’s five-oh-four area code?”

  “New Orleans.”

  “You know any of these numbers?”

  “Little Duane.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Fat Otis does business with him,” Big Stupid said. “Little Duane hides stuff.”

  “Why does he do that?”

  “Like if somebody steals something but it has to cool off before they can fence it,” Big Stupid explained.

  “Or if something needs to be missing for a while, so somebody can collect insurance.”

  I scratched my chin. So maybe Little Duane was sitting on top of the armored car money. Can’t just stash four hundred grand in a coffee can. Cops will search your house. Can’t put it in the bank. But then you’ve got to trust Little Duane, right?

  Unless Little Duane didn’t know what he was hiding.

  “You want us to drive down to New Orleans?”

  I thought about that. “Maybe.”

  “Better decide quick. Contraflow starts soon.”

  “What’s that?”

  “All the lanes of the interstates go out of town. Nobody goes in.”
<
br />   Aw, shit. That could only mean one thing.

  Big Stupid went ahead and said it out loud. “Hurricane’s coming.”

  Eight

  We’re turned off Interstate-10 into the French Quarter fifteen minutes ahead of contraflow. Black clouds crowded the sky.

  The Quarter seemed almost like a ghost town, diehards here and there drifting in and out of the bars. Every third place was closed, none of the gaudy souvenir places selling off-color T-shirts or NOLA shot glasses.

  There was an eerie tension in the air like an argument you knew you were going to have with your girlfriend that hadn’t started yet.

  “Take me to Little Duane,” I said.

  “Can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re white.”

  Shit.

  “I can go find him,” Big Stupid said. “Ninth Ward. Set up a meeting if you want to talk.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m supposed to help you.”

  I gave him my cell number, and he pulled over on Decatur and dropped me off. I watched him drive away then looked around. Nobody in sight. A gust of wind sent a half crushed beer can clattering down the sidewalk.

  The weight of the .38 tucked in my pants at the small of my back should have been some comfort, but it wasn’t. You can’t shoot a hurricane.

  I walked past a bar that was closed, the windows taped up. The next one was open, and I ducked inside.

  Three guys sat at the bar sat smoking cigarettes and nursing beers. They glanced at me a split second before turning back to the TV which showed the cloudy swirl of a hurricane in the gulf.

  The scroll along the bottom of the screen read Gertrude now Cat 3 hurricane.

  I sat at the bar and ordered a Coors Light.

  Amy’s apartment was on Elysian Fields, a short walk. I wondered if I should look in on her. Her family live in Seattle, and it would be just like her not to evacuate. What kind of dumbass hangs around when there’s a hurricane coming?

  Me. That kind of dumbass.

  I paid for my beer and headed for Elysian Fields.

  In just the time I’d been in the bar, the sky had gone two shades darker.

  A single drop of rain hit my forehead so hard and so cold it made me stop walking. Like God flicking me in the face. Where do you think you’re going, dipshit?