POPCORN

by Victor Gischler

  A fair question. Amy didn’t want my help. Didn’t want to see me.

  But I wanted to see her.

  I kept walking. More rain drops. The wind picked up. I wondered how Big Stupid was making out in the Ninth Ward. The whole place had been flooded during Katrina.

  They’d claimed to have fortified the levies, but there was so much corruption, who knew what they’d really spent the money on.

  I looked up and found I’d arrived. The apartment above the tattoo parlor looked shabbier than I remembered it.

  There was usually a mob of half-assed bohemians milling about the place, coming and going from the saloon two doors down and popping into the tattoo joint for bad, drunken decisions in the wee hours of the morning.

  Neon blinked in the otherwise darkened tattoo parlor. In the window above, a small light glowed. I climbed the stairs. I knocked.

  The door creaked open.

  She saw me, stuck the joint in her mouth. Sucked hard and let out a long gray stream of smoke.

  “You fucking asshole,” she said.

  * * *

  I sipped bourbon from a juice glass and looked at her.

  “What are you doing here, dick?”

  “Hey, I was worried about you,” I said.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You got your hurricane supplies?”

  She sucked on the joint again, nodding, and crooked a finger at me, meaning I should follow. Her apartment wasn’t much. A threadbare couch and a cinderblock–n-plank bookshelf and a six hundred year old TV filled the tiny living room.

  I glanced into the tiny bedroom as we passed, a single unmade bed and a beat up dresser with a fake antique lamp on top.

  I went with her into the kitchen. She gestured at the kitchen counter: canned goods and a pack of batteries and two jugs of water.

  “How you gonna cook any of that when the power goes out?” I asked.

  “I got a Webber grill on the patio,” Amy said.

  She leaned back against the counter, arms half crossed under heavy breasts. She pinched what was left of the joint, holding it to her mouth and trying to suck in the last of it.

  I took a good look at her. She still looked just fine. She wore a white tank top, and cut off jeans. Barefoot. She had long legs and a thin waist that made her tits look bigger than they actually were. Glossy black hair.

  A thin gold ring in her nose. Butterfly tattoo on her ankle. High cheekbones and thick naturally pouty lips.

  I remembered what those lips could do and felt something stir.

  “I always liked that butterfly tattoo,” I said. “You got any new ones.”

  She grinned, turned around and lifted the bottom of a tank top, showing me the top half of a blue tattoo that disappeared down into her cutoffs.

  “I can’t see it all,” I told her.

  She looked back at me and I saw that expression on her face I’d seen a thousand times before, Mona Lisa smile, playful eyebrow raised. She reached down between her legs, unbuttoned and unzipped, wiggled her ass until the cutoffs fell down around her ankles.

  Her ass was round and white and smooth. She wore a hot pink thong that wouldn’t even have made a decent length of dental floss.

  I went the rest of the way stiff in a tenth of a second.

  I saw now that the tattoo on her lower back was a big Chinese symbol.

  “It means Triumph,” she said.

  It could have meant chow mein for all she knew, but I didn’t say that.

  I ran two fingers over the skin of her tattoo and saw gooseflesh rise up on her. The skin around the tattoo felt scabby, a bit of peeling. “This is still pretty fresh, huh?”

  “About three days ago.” She wriggled her ass at me. “What do you need, an engraved invitation?”

  I stuck the .38 in the front pocket of my jeans so it would fall out when I pulled my pants down.

  I unzipped, dropped my pants and boxers, my erection springing out and swatting her left ass cheek.

  She hissed in a sharp breath. “Come on. For old time’s sake.”

  I pulled the thong aside and pushed against her. She spread her legs, bent her knees a little. I got past the initial resistance and eased in.

  She gasped.

  I started slow but soon picked up the pace. I was eager and needy. She held onto the counter, grunting with each thrust.

  The wind picked up outside, and the windows rattled. Gertrude was coming.

  Little grunting groans were coming out of her between clenched teeth. This wasn’t going to be a world record endurance run for either of us.

  She went rigid in my grasp. “Oh.”

  I slammed into her, flesh slapping on flesh.

  The wind outside howled.

  “Oh.” She said. “Oh, oh, oh.”

  I felt her clench around me. “Yes!” Her whole body shook.”

  I pulled out and came on the floor.

  She wilted against the kitchen counter.

  “That doesn’t mean we’re back together,” she said breathlessly. “Just saying, you know?”

  “You get that tattoo downstairs,” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “You think they’re open?”

  “With the hurricane coming? No. But Rico lives behind the shop. You could try knocking.”

  “Thanks.”

  * * *

  When the guy who owns the tattoo shop is named Rico, I guess you’d pretty much expect a big guy with a beard and muscles in an AC/DC T-shirt or something, but that wasn’t this Rico.

  He was nerd thin with wire glasses and ushered me in out of the bluster of Gertrude. The short sleeve button up shirt made him look like some IT guy come to install my printer.

  I told him about the dragon tattoo and his eyes lit up.

  “Hold on,” he said. “Be right back.”

  He returned and showed me a photo of the exact tattoo I’d described. It was close up, so you didn’t get a look at the face of the owner.

  “You keep names and contact info of your clients?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Rico said. “It’s part of the release I make them sign. That way I can post picture of them and their tats on the website. I also send out an email newsletter that helps drum up return business.”

  “Can I get the name and phone number and address for the dragon guy?”

  Rico’s eyes narrowed. “Are you a cop?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe I’d better not.”

  “How about fifty bucks?”

  “Oh.” Rico brightened. “Yeah, okay. Hang on, I’ll get it for you.”

  He disappeared into the back room again.

  My cell phone rang. I flipped it open. “Hello?”

  “It’s me.” Big Stupid’s voice was so deep I thought it would vibrate my cheap cell phone apart. “Get a pencil and write down this address.”

  Nine

  It was a little farther than I wanted to walk, but I had as much chance getting a taxi with a hurricane on the way as I did flagging down a ride on a Space Shuttle.

  I alternated between a slow jog and a fast walk. Rain bands came in waves, lashing me with stinging droops.

  The sun would poke out one second then everything would go dark the next. All the French Quarter’s bright debris flew along like a parade trying to escape on a mighty wind.

  When I got there, Big Stupid’s Humvee was already parked across the street from the knick-knack shop. He climbed out to meet me, his own mountainous build anchoring him against the hurricane blow down.

  “Little Duane says he’ll meet you inside.”

  “Right. Let’s do this.”

  We went inside.

  * * *

  Well, this is where we all came in, isn’t it?

  Big Stupid leapt up.

  Little Duane had a gun.

  Big Stupid punched Little Duane so hard his whole family tree died back to the Middle Ages.

  I checked the window again. A bunch of them with guns already at the back door. My
guess was they’d have the front covered too.

  Little Duane was going to shoot me. Of course he was. You don’t just waltz in asking about somebody’s secret operation.

  “We need a way out,” I told Big Stupid. “Fast.”

  Ten

  In the back room. A ladder up to a hatch that led to the roof.

  But the padlock was a problem.

  I came down the ladder. Big Stupid went up. He grabbed the padlock and gave it a jerk. Wood splintered and cracked.

  The padlock held fast, but the screws holding the latch in place in the hatch’s frame might as well have been screwed into a stick of butter. He dropped the latch and lock and pushed open the hatch and went out.

  I followed him up there, rain coming down through the hatch.

  Out on the roof, I almost fell the first ten seconds I was up there. Spanish roof tiles slick with rain. My feet went out from under me, and I would have gone flying except Big Stupid snatched me out of mid-air, one enormous hand under my left arm.

  I dangle from his grasped, glanced back at the hatch. The head of a guy poked up, a black dude in a Saints cap.

  He saw me, and I saw him.

  I reached for the .38 at my back, pulled it out, thumbing back the hammer. I tried to aim, swinging there in the wind, Big Stupid holding me up. I aimed square for his chest and squeezed the trigger.

  The pistol bucked in my hand, and the shot went high, hitting him in the throat. Blood sprayed, and more blood and bone and flesh shot out the back of his neck.

  His hands came up to paw at the wound, and he fell back down the ladder. I heard him crashing into his buddies below over the racket of the hurricane.

  “Set me down, man!”

  Big Stupid set me down in front of him. I baby step-duck walked across the roof to the next building.

  The roof of the next building was flat and an easy two-foot jump. I skipped over and looking back at Big Stupid, signaling him to follow.

  I saw some of those Ninth Ward guys rise up behind him, one pointing a Glock.

  “Look out!” I yelled.

  Big Stupid jumped, and the Glock spat fire. Blood sprayed from the meat of Big Stupid’s shoulder and he landed on the roof next to me like God had let a dump truck fall out of His pocket.

  I aimed sloppy and fast, squeezing the trigger three times. One of the shot’s caught the Glock guy in the side of the head, spinning him around. He went down, slid down the tiles and into the alley.

  A bunch more were coming up the ladder and more shots followed.

  Big Stupid grabbed my arm and pulled me along. “Come on!”

  We crossed two more roofs before finding metal stairs down to the alley. If Big Stupid knew he’d been shot, he wasn’t letting on.

  We peeked around the corner, looking back down the street at Big Stupid’s Humvee. Rain flew hard and sideways.

  We were almost out of daylight. A stop light at the intersection flapped in the wind like a used tissue, blinking red and bathing the wet street in hellish light.

  I couldn’t think of anything to do but make a break for it. “Can you run?”

  “I can run.”

  “Okay. Fast.”

  I ran for the Humvee, each footfall splashing, Big Stupid thundering behind me. We reached the Humvee and climbed in, and every second I thought I’d hear a shot and feel a bullet in the back but it didn’t happen.

  Big Stupid cranked the Humvee, shifted into gear and pulled out.

  Through the rainy blur of the windshield, I saw a figure step into the street. When the windshield wiper cleared the view, I saw it was the guy with the AK-47.

  He lifted the rifle and blazed away at us, the tap-dance patter flashing and metallic tunks along the hood and the windshield sprouting holes up the middle.

  “Shit!” I ducked under the dashboard.

  Instead of veering away, Big Stupid stomped the gas. A split second later I heard and felt the squish-crunch sound of flesh and bones under the tires of the Humvee. Big Stupid was still accelerating.

  He looked down at me a few seconds later. “It’s okay. We’re safe now.”

  Eleven

  The streets of New Orleans were deserted. The sun had gone down, and when Gertrude stole the electricity away – which it certainly would eventually – the city would go from eerie to full blown terrifying.

  The Humvee plowed down Canal Street, the water halfway up the wheels.

  I was going over my list of phone numbers. I wanted to confirm something, so I could feel better about my half-assed detective work. The number Rico had given me matched one of the numbers on the list.

  I showed Big Stupid the piece of paper that had cost me fifty bucks at the tattoo parlor. “Can you drive to that address?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let’s go then.”

  He turned the Humvee onto St. Charles, and we left the French Quarter. In the Garden District, we had to maneuver around some fallen trees before we found the right address. I told Big Stupid to park at the end of the street.

  “Okay,” I said. “Now call this number.”

  I told him the number and told him what to say.

  He dialed the phone and put it up to his ear. It looked like a toy phone next to his giant head. Big Stupid’s face was so blank, he might have been ordering a pizza or calling in an air strike.

  Finally he said, “Cobb there?”

  A pause.

  “Well, tell him this is a message from Little Duane. He’s got to go fetch his stash. We’re closing up shop because of the hurricane and getting out.”

  The voice on the other end didn’t like that, screeched into Big Stupid’s ear.

  “It’s on you now. We’re out.” Big Stupid hung up the phone.

  The absolute very second he hung up, I realized how bullshit my plan was. Cobb had jumped bail and could be anywhere. Phone numbers were not so much attached to addresses anymore.

  Call a number with a New Orleans area code, and the guy could be answering his cell in Vegas.

  In the file Ray had given me, Cobb’s home address was different than the one Rico had given me. Maybe the local address was where he sacked out with friends when he was in town.

  Who could say? It was a shot in the dark, and the longer I sat there with the rain coming down –

  A group of them emerged from the house and ran for one of the cars parked on the street. From this distance, I had trouble seeing around some hedges and other parked cars, so I couldn’t tell for sure if it was three or four of them, and I didn’t see any faces. But they were coming out of the right house, so I figured the game was on.

  “Follow them, but stay back a ways,” I told Big Stupid. “And keep the headlights off.”

  If it hadn’t been for their taillights we’d have lost them in ten seconds. Wind and rain seemed to hammer us from every direction, tree branches bouncing off the Humvee.

  I really thought one of the big oaks would topple any minute and flatten us.

  This was some fucking bullshit. I was going to kick Ray’s ass when I got home for getting me into this.

  We circled back south until the neighborhood got kind of iffy. The car ahead of us stopped at a big two-story house. It looked like it might have been a big fancy plantation style number back in the day, but she’d fallen on hard times, the paint peeling and creeper vines crawling up the sides.

  All the windows around the first floor were boarded up. It looked like the sort of place low-budget horror filmmakers went to in order to make clichés out of themselves.

  We parked down the street and watched the five of them dash from their car and into the house, all of them bent against the brute force of the hurricane as they ran.

  Big Stupid and I sat in the Humvee, every inch of it vibrating in the savage wind.

  “Turn on the radio,” I said.

  He did it.

  The guy on the radio said that Gertrude hit the coast as a Category Four hurricane but had immediately been downgraded to Category Three
as it moved over land. Everyone on the coast was fucked.

  The levies were expected to be fucked. Soon the storm surge would fuck a bunch of people inland.

  “We’re going to need to find some high ground after this,” I said.

  “And some food,” Big Stupid said.

  I reloaded my .38 and then asked Big Stupid, “You got a gun?”

  “No guns.”

  I rolled my eyes. “These guys don’t fuck around, man.”

  “No guns.”

  “Well, fucking shit, you got some kind of weapon or not?”

  Big Stupid reached into the backseat and came out with a crowbar.

  Good enough.

  “Okay. You ready?”

  “Let’s wait until it lets up.”

  I blinked at him.

  “That was a joke.”

  “Hey, you sure you even want to do this? Not like you’re obligated.”

  “I said I’d stay with you. I do what I say.”

  Well, I’ll be damned. “Okay then. Come on. Around the back.”

  We left the Humvee and bolted toward the house. We went around the side toward the back, but pulled up short when we discovered a side door. I tried it. Locked.

  I put my mouth close to Big Stupid’s ear. “Use the crowbar. They won’t hear it over the storm.”

  He cracked it open in like three seconds, the sound of the splintering door jamb lost in the wind. We wiped rain from our eyes and went inside.

  A kitchen. All kinds of appliances still in the boxes piled everyone, in the corners, on the counters. New stuff. Stolen off trucks maybe.

  I motioned Big Stupid forward with the .38.

  The next room was probably meant to be a dining room this close to the kitchen, but it was full of vintage clothing and furs and boxes of jewelry on the table.

  The house had been turned into a big storage facility. Just like Big Stupid had said, a huge place to hide shit.

  I looked around. A stack of blue ray players. A brand new set of tires. Stacks of DVDs and boxes of iPods and smart phones.

  If we were going to find the armored car cash in all this mess, then the only way to do it was follow the people who knew where it was.