Baton Rouge Bingo

by Greg Herren

  I wasn’t sure who the Goddess really was, I just knew the entity who sometimes spoke to me in dreams and visions was a strong feminine force.

  I held the deck in my hands and closed my eyes, focusing on the question, Who has my father, and will we be able to save him?

  I shuffled the deck, spread the cards out, and peered at them.

  A dangerous man from your past.

  Growth through effort and hard work.

  New conditions confront the seeker, courage and hard work are required to meet these new conditions.

  Unforeseen perils, deception.

  Love is always stronger than hate.

  I stared at the cards for another few moments. It wasn’t completely clear—it never really was, and sometimes it took the benefit of hindsight to understand the readings, but this seemed like a good one to me. Basically, the cards were telling me that as long as we met the challenge with courage, we would be able to overcome it.

  Feeling better, I swept them back into a pile, carefully wrapped them up in their blue silk, and slid the box back under the couch.

  I went into the kitchen and poured a glass of iced tea before walking back into the master bedroom. Frank was toweling off in the bathroom and smiled at me when I sat down on the edge of the bed. “Taylor’s a good kid, isn’t he?” Frank slid his underwear on and hung the towel over the shower curtain rod to dry. “I think it’s going to be good for him to be around us, don’t you?”

  You have no idea, I thought.

  “I didn’t tell him about Dad,” Frank went on. “I figured that could wait. What exactly happened?”

  I took a deep breath and filled him in on everything. The smile faded from his face as I spoke, and that muscle in his jaw started twitching the way it always did when Frank got angry.

  “We’re not going to sit still for this, are we?” Frank said, his voice disturbingly even—never a good sign. Frank always sounds calmer as he gets angrier.

  “Of course not—but we have to be careful,” I cautioned as Frank pulled on a pair of cargo shorts. Once he zipped them up and fastened them they slid down a bit so the waistband and about an inch of underwear showed. He pulled on a dark-green Archer T-shirt. “We don’t know who these people are, or how many of them there are.” I rubbed my eyes, suddenly very tired. “We don’t even know why they think we have this deduct box or can find it.”

  “You think they might have bugged the apartment, or Mom’s?” He sat down next to me and kissed me on the cheek, putting a strong arm around my shoulders. “They had plenty of time to get in here. Maybe we should get the scanner?”

  I knew immediately what he meant. Colin, being an international agent for hire, kept a shitload of what I always referred to as “superspy equipment” in one of the closets in the upstairs apartment. One of the first things he did when he got home from a job was use the scanner to check both apartments for listening devices—and he always checked every few days when he was here. I always thought it was a bit paranoid, but better safe than sorry. “Oh my God.” I stared at Frank. “We sent Taylor up there—”

  Frank shook his head. “He wouldn’t know what any of that stuff is, even if he finds it,” he pointed out. “And we keep the guns down here.” They were locked away in our bedroom closet.

  “Well, the scanner should be in the spare bedroom closet upstairs with everything else,” I said, keeping my voice down just in case the place was bugged. I stood up. “You finish getting dressed. I’ll go have a look.”

  I kissed the top of his head before heading up the stairs.

  Going up to the top floor of our building has never been one of my favorite things to do. I get vertigo sometimes—it’s nothing bad, and I have to be pretty high up for it to kick in. Usually when I climb the stairs up to our floor, I stick close to the inside railing and don’t look out much at the landings. They also aren’t out in the open—the only place where you can see out is at each floor. There’s a big landing outside each apartment door, and the wall is open at the end opposite the doors.

  But the steps up from our apartment to the top floor are completely open air. And no matter how many times I do it, I can’t help but glance out at the dizzying drop down to the courtyard below. There’s also a pretty great view out there of the Quarter—Colin and Frank both absolutely love to sit on the steps, smoking a joint and enjoying the view. Not me—I am safely inside our apartment on the third floor, more than happy to wait for them to stop being bored and come on down. Once you get up to the landing on the fourth floor, there’s also an iron ladder attached to the wall so you can climb up to the roof—something I’ve done only when forced, and I still sometimes have nightmares about the damned thing. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, my hand firmly on the inside rail as I climbed up. The weather had changed in the short time I’d been inside, the way it is wont to do in the late spring in New Orleans—the wind was picking up, dark clouds were coming in, and there was a damp chill to the air that meant a thunderstorm was going to hit at any moment. I hurried up the last few steps, not wanting to be outside when the sky opened.

  The door was unlocked—we always leave the door to the upper apartment unlocked—and I stepped in just as there was a crack of thunder in the distance and some raindrops started coming down. It was getting darker, and there were no lights on in the apartment. I didn’t hear anything, either, which was weird. “Taylor?” I called out tentatively, wondering where he was.

  I walked down the hall and was just outside the master bedroom when I heard the unmistakable sounds of a porn video coming from the television set inside the spare bedroom.

  Great, I thought, I’m going to interrupt him watching porn twice in less than an hour?

  I cleared my throat and called out, “Taylor? Everything okay?”

  The sound stopped in mid-moan, and I heard some thumping around in the spare bedroom while I waited patiently in the hallway. After a few moments, he stuck his reddened face out of the door. “Hey,” he said, his voice cracking nervously.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I exhaled. “We’re going to have to come up with some protocols around here to protect your privacy, I think.” I gave him a halfhearted smile. “We’re used to running back and forth between the two apartments—but you need some privacy. You’ll have to forgive me, I’m not used to having you around yet.”

  “Do you want me to go?” His voice was so miserable that my heart broke just a little bit.

  He had his shirt off, and his shorts were hanging down low enough for me to tell he hadn’t bothered to put his underwear back on. His hair was messy, and his skin had that rosy glow I remembered from when I was his age (and liked to think mine still had). He was lean and defined, just like his uncle, but his muscles weren’t as thick and developed as Frank’s. There was a patch of dark blond hair in the center of his chest, and wiry hairs leading from his navel down to the thicker patch the low-slung shorts didn’t cover. He avoided my eyes as I walked into the bedroom, pulled out the rolling desk chair, and plopped down in it. I gestured for him to have a seat on the bed.

  Once he sat down, I said, in as kind a voice as I could muster, “First off, Taylor, I want you to know you’re welcome to stay with us as long as you want or need, okay? This is your home, and I mean that—you are always welcome here. That’s never going to change. Both your uncle and I are really glad you’re here, but this is kind of an awkward time for us.” I gestured toward the television. “Obviously, you need privacy—so from now on the rule is Frank and I will call before we come upstairs, and you can consider this apartment your apartment—which means you can lock the door, and we’ll always knock if the door is locked. I’m sorry to have caught you twice today—but no more in the living room downstairs. You’re more than welcome to watch porn DVDs or watch it online, anything you want—we aren’t going to judge you. Hell, it’s our porn you’ve been watching.” As the words left my mouth I remembered that we had actually recorded ourselves several times having sex, and made a
mental note to hide all the homemade porn in the house.

  Better safe than sorry is a mantra I fully believe in.

  He cleared his throat, his face reddening yet again. “Uncle Scotty—”

  “And none of that, just call me Scotty.” I went on, looking him directly in the eye. “If your uncle wants you to call him Uncle Frank, that’s between the two of you—but I’m not that formal, okay? You can also call my parents Mom and Dad, if you like—but that’s also up to them—you all can work that out amongst yourselves. But you’re part of the family now—” In spite of myself I started to choke up. The stress of everything was finally catching up to me. I took a deep breath and gathered myself. “I am also not one of those people who believe in lying to young people, so I’m always going to be honest with you. Right now, my father has been kidnapped, and we’re not entirely sure why.”

  The color faded from his face and his eyes widened. “Kidnapped?” He goggled at me. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously,” I replied. “How much do you know about your uncle and me? What we do?”

  “We-ell,” he paused, licking his bottom lip, “Rhonda told me that you actually have a third—Mom didn’t know about that.” He gave me a big smile at that, his eyes twinkling. “We might want to keep that from her, you know. She’s pretty uptight about sex—which is why the whole gay thing kind of threw her for a loop. She’s not a bad person,” he added quickly. “I mean, she goes to church and everything, but I don’t think she really believes everything she’s supposed to.” His face darkened. “Dad’s the one. He’s a true believer.”

  “I can’t even imagine what that must be like for you.” I closed my eyes and quickly said a prayer for my father. “My parents have always been really supportive. So what did else did Rain tell you about Colin?”

  “He works for some kind of international company, so he’s gone a lot—Colin. I know Uncle Frank is retired from the FBI, but other than that, not really a whole lot.”

  “That’s all true, to some degree or another.” I sighed. “But if you’re going to be around here, you might as well know everything. For one thing, Frank and I have our own business, we’re licensed private eyes.” I chose not to mention that we didn’t really get a lot of cases. Storm and some of his lawyer friends threw us some work every once in a while, but that had kind of dried up lately. Fortunately, between Frank’s FBI retirement and my trust fund, we pretty much had enough money to live comfortably anyway. “And yes, Colin works for an international company called Blackledge. Blackledge is kind of an independent version of the CIA.” As I spoke, his eyes got wider and wider and his smile grew wider in excitement. I gave him a quick overview of some of the cases we’d been involved in, and finished with Mom and I finding Veronica Porterie’s body. “So, that’s where we are right now, Taylor. Dad’s been taken—we’re not really sure why, so we have to find this deduct box in order to get him back. Don’t get me wrong—we’re also going to be trying to find Dad, but we don’t have any clues as to who took him or where they are keeping him, so we’re going to focus on the deduct box for now. Mom’s pretty shaken up, understandably. We can’t contact the authorities, but Colin has a lot of really great equipment here in the spare bedroom closet that we’re going to have to move if you’re going to use this room, but we’ll worry about that later. I’m going to scan both apartments for bugs, and then we’re going to head back over to my mom’s and do the same thing there. Once we know if they’re listening to us or not, we can make some plans about how to proceed.”

  Once I finished talking, the enormity of it all overwhelmed me, and I felt really tired. I was tired. I don’t sleep well in beds other than my own, so the last few nights I’d been restless and hadn’t gotten much sleep. What I really wanted to do was curl up in bed with Frank and sleep for at least a week. But with Dad in danger, I wasn’t going to be able to do that any time soon.

  Not that I’d be able to sleep all that well under the circumstances anyway.

  “What can I do?” Taylor asked. “I want to help. I mean, you’ve taken me in and given me a place to stay. It’s the least I can do, right? There has to be something I can do.”

  I looked back at him. His eyes were dancing with excitement. “Taylor—just stay here until your uncle and I get back from my mom’s.” I got up and walked over to the closet. I opened the door and smiled to myself. I’d never had to come into Colin’s equipment closet before, but should have known that it would be organized to within an inch of its life. Everything was in a box, and each box was carefully labeled in a very neat script. A quick glance showed that they were all organized alphabetically. I could hear Colin saying in my head, “Organization is the key. The last thing you want to waste time doing when an assignment goes bad or your cover is blown is to try to find some piece of equipment you need because you didn’t organize everything properly. That’s a good way to get yourself killed.”

  I found the scanner and removed the box. I opened the box and lifted it out. It was small, had a handle that fit easily into my hand, and looked kind of like a price gun. There was a little screen on the top. I remembered seeing Colin use it—you just turned it on and made large sweeping motions throughout the entire area being searched. I switched it on—it had a rechargeable battery, and the charging cord was looped into a figure 8, with twist ties keeping it in that shape so it wouldn’t tangle. “We’re definitely going to have do something about this closet if this is going to be your room.” Another thought came to me. “And you need to stay out of this closet until we move this stuff out of here. These aren’t toys—it’s dangerous and expensive equipment, and Colin wouldn’t be too thrilled to need something and have it be broken.” As soon as I said it, I could have slapped myself senseless. I’d pretty much guaranteed Taylor was going to go through everything in the closet by saying that—telling a teenager not to do something was like waving a red flag in front of a bull.

  The first minute he was alone, he was getting in there.

  As though he could read my mind, he said, “Of course not. No worries.”

  I made a mental note to get everything out of the closet as soon as possible.

  “Want to see how this works?” I asked.

  If his eyes opened any farther, they’d pop right out of their sockets. He nodded excitedly.

  “Come on downstairs with me, then.”

  He followed me down the hall. I opened the outside door. The air was even thicker and heavier, and it had gotten even darker. The air was so damp it might as well be raining already. I mumbled a little prayer to the Goddess and stepped outside. I took a deep breath and grabbed the railing, starting down. Taylor, of course, was completely fearless and went clattering down the stairs so quickly he was down to the landing in a matter of seconds, smiling up at me expectantly. I resisted the urge to slap the grin right off his face, and focused on making it down to the landing and around the second flight to the third floor. I breathed a sigh of relief when I was finally standing in front of my apartment door. I opened it and stood aside so he could go inside first. I shut the door just as the rain started coming down. There was a flash of lightning followed by an immediate clap of thunder so loud and close the entire building shook.

  Thank you, Goddess, for letting me get down the stairs before THAT happened.

  I locked the dead bolt and smiled at Taylor. I switched the scanner on and passed it to him. “You want to do the honors?” I asked with a big grin.

  “Oh hell to the yes!” He grabbed it out of my hands and stared at it. “What do I do?”

  “You hear that beeping?” It was low and regular, with maybe a three-second interval between beeps.

  “Yeah.” He nodded vigorously.

  “That’s a normal reading. It’ll beep a lot louder and a lot faster when it finds something it deems not normal,” I said. “The easiest way to use it is to go along the walls in a general sweeping motion, like this.” I demonstrated, moving about five feet and then going down the wall in a wavi
ng motion. “Generally, it can be assumed bugs wouldn’t be planted on an open wall like this—they usually try to hide them on picture frames or on lampshades—somewhere no one would notice it right away. That way they aren’t readily noticeable.”

  We were finished with the hallway and were working on the cabinets in the kitchen when Frank came out of the bedroom and frowned. “What the hell?” He gave me a weird look. “What’s going on here?”

  Taylor’s frown of concentration turned into a grin as he stopped what he was doing. “Scotty told me about Colin and his dad and everything!” He turned back to the open cabinet and started working his way back through the kitchen.

  Frank grabbed me by the arm and dragged me into the living room. “Are you insane?” he hissed through clenched teeth.

  “Sorry, we kind of told him to use the spare room upstairs, didn’t we?” I whispered back. “And that’s where Colin stores his equipment—in the spare room closet. Didn’t have much choice, did I? Besides, it’s not fair to him not to let him know what’s going on. He’s pretty bright—he’d figure it out for himself something was going on. And I don’t want him to think he’s the problem. Do you?”

  Frank smacked his palm on his forehead. “Christ.”

  “Rain already kind of told him what we do—I don’t see any reason to lie about what Colin does.” I shook my head. “Who knows when Colin will be back, and I don’t like the idea of lying to him, do you?”