by Chris Wiltz
Pascal stopped at the wide opening to the dining room and leaned against the wall with his arms folded. As Karen came up beside him, he tilted his head toward her, lifted his eyebrows and a shoulder, and resumed watching as Avery went straight up to the table where Solo, LaDonna, Jack and Ramon were sitting. Same as he’d practiced in front of his mirror, he said, “I want my fucking money, motherfucker.” His fists opened and closed at his sides; his body was wired to explode.
Solo stared at first. His face showed nothing, but the horror of Avery’s dermabrasion and the big fluffy eyebrows, showed on Jack, Ramon and LaDonna. When Solo stood up, the force sent his chair back so hard it fell over and skidded. “How dare you,” he said with quiet menace. “There is a lady present.”
In answer Avery bumped the table. All the champagne flutes toppled.
“Shit!” LaDonna, along with Jack and Ramon, jumped up. “Buddha!” she shrieked.
Karen started to turn, to get Buddha, when out of her peripheral vision Ernesto appeared, coming from the foyer. Avery saw him too. He pulled his gun. “Right there, bean breath,” he said. He backed away so he had all of them in sight.
Jack took a step away from the table. “Avery, Avery,” he said, a slight laugh in his voice, a grin on his face, “come on, man, let’s talk about this…”
He aimed at Jack and stopped him. “Nothin to talk about. I want my money right now.”
Jack held out his hands. “Man, nobody has any money here.”
“You stole my money and you gave it to this fuckin Cuban.”
Jack laughed. “Naw, man, nobody stole nothin…”
Avery moved the gun back to Ernesto and squinted one eye. “I can start by blowing off bean-breath’s knee caps.”
Pascal pushed himself away from the wall, his weight centered on both feet. Avery saw the movement and glanced at Pascal.
“Avery,” Pascal said, rather quietly, though clearly Avery heard him.
The music pounded in Karen’s ears. Hadn’t she turned it down?
“Okay,” Avery said, “this is what I want. I want one of you motherfucker’s to tell me where my money is. Then we can go get it.” The gun was still on Ernesto.
No one said anything. Karen could feel the bass thumping in her chest. She looked over at LaDonna for a second, catching her expression of wide-eyed terror before she turned her eyes back to Avery.
Avery lifted his gun arm, holding it out straight. His left hand came up to clasp his right wrist, to steady his gun hand. He squinted again. “I really would like to watch bean-breath after I shoot his knees out.”
Karen could hear every word though the music seemed to have gotten louder, throbbing against her eardrums. The sound of a chair scraping on the rough wood floor broke the tension. Ramon yelled, “The money’s upstairs—okay?—upstairs.”
Avery looked over at Ramon. Karen caught a glint coming off Ernesto as Pascal said, much louder than he had before, “Avery, the Cuban.”
Karen eyes shifted to Solo. Avery turned the gun. He fired at Solo then dropped the gun as if it had been shot out of his hand. He clutched his chest. The shiny black and silver handle of a knife stuck out of his breast bone. Ernesto was already running when Solo hit the floor. The whole building shook. Avery looked at Ernesto with total disbelief before he fell.
***
In the music room Buddha lifted the large ear phone away from his tiny ear. He’d been sweeping the stage, singing along with his favorite group of all time, the Supremes, volume up max. He turned Diana down and listened for a moment. Nothing but Brazilian Girls wailing out there but he’d heard something, or maybe he’d felt it more than heard it. Somebody must have dropped something heavy. He snapped the ear phone back in place and let the Supremes rip. He swept the little dirt pile into a dust pan, emptied it into the garbage can he’d brought in with him, and balanced the broom over the top of the can. He stepped down off the stage and walked over to the door, his eyes squeezed shut, his voice high-pitched and tinny as he sang into the handle of the dust pan, “Baby luh-uhve, my baby luh-uhve, I need your love, oh-oh I need your love…”
***
Ernesto knelt on one side of Solo’s body, Jack on the other. Ernesto was weeping and doing something that sounded like praying in Spanish. Jack was digging in Solo’s suit coat pockets.
Karen went up behind Jack and shook his shoulder. “What are you doing?” Solo’s blood was pooling in her direction. She stepped back. “Look,” she said, “you’re kneeling in his blood. Get up.”
Jack stuck his hand way down in Solo’s pants pocket.
“What are you doing?” Karen yelled.
He whipped his head around. “I gave him all the money. I’m going to get it.”
Ernesto looked up, tears smeared on his cheeks. His face twisted and he said something to Jack in Spanish that sounded quite vicious. When Jack didn’t stop looting Solo’s body, Ernesto pushed him.
Jack almost lost his balance. “You snot-nosed sniveling little bastard. Comemierda.” He pushed Ernesto.
Ernesto caught himself on one hand and started yelling at Jack. Karen shook Jack’s shoulder and kept shaking it. “Stop it, Jack. Have some fucking decency. Get up. Get up, goddamnit!”
LaDonna started yelling for Buddha, full-lung hysteria.
Buddha heard that as soon as he opened the door to the music room. He ripped his earphones off and charged like an elephant toward the dining room. He saw LaDonna, her hands at the sides of her face, taking in the scene over Solo’s body, screaming for him. He pushed Pascal, who was standing over Avery, kicked at Avery’s cowboy boots, shoved Karen to the side, grabbed Jack by the back of his shirt, threw him to the ground and sat on him. He still had his dust pan clutched in his hand.
***
By post-hurricane time standards the police arrived faster than a speeding bullet. Not until seven in the morning did they finish questioning everyone. The coroner’s staff took the bodies away but couldn’t tell Pascal or Ernesto where autopsies would be performed or when the bodies would be released. The coroner’s offices and labs had been flooded and bodies from the storm were still waiting at sites all across southern Louisiana. Jack got hauled off to University Hospital, where charity cases were being taken, to see how many of his ribs were cracked and if there were internal injuries.
Karen sat alone at the bar, drinking another Coke. She pushed it away. Her mouth tasted like stale sticky candy. LaDonna and Ramon had gone upstairs. Buddha left when LaDonna told him to. Pascal said a few words to one of the detectives then they left, taking Ernesto with them. She heard the front door close. Pascal came over and sat next to her.
“We can go,” he told her.
She nodded. “I’m not finding it in me to be sorry about your brother but then I don’t think you are either.”
“He wasn’t one of the good guys. Truth is, I didn’t know until tonight how dangerous he was.”
“Is that right?”
“Come on, let’s go.”
“I don’t think so.”
“What—why not?”
“I’m not sure what happened tonight but I guess I’m wondering how dangerous you are.”
Pascal smiled. “You’re kidding, right? I’m a little tired…”
“I’m not kidding. When Jack came in, I think you were looking for Avery to be right behind him. I think you expected him.”
“I did, sort of. He told me he was following Jack around looking for the Cuban.”
“Right. You told him last night the Cuban was his problem.”
“What’s your point, Karen?”
“I think what bothers me most is the way you cued him tonight.”
“What in fuck’s name are you talking about?”
“You saw the knife just like I did but that’s not where you wanted Avery to look. You said, ‘The Cuban.’”
Annoyed, Pascal said, “The thug isn’t Cuban?”
“Yeah, but he’s the thug, Solo’s the Cuban.”
“You th
ink I was telling him to kill the Cuban?”
“I don’t think you cared one way or the other. You just wanted his attention there, not on Ernesto.”
“I had no idea he was that good with a knife.”
Karen stared at him.
“Come on, Karen, what do you want me to say? I’m glad he’s dead? I’m not trying to hide that from you. Come home with me.”
She wanted to touch his face, as though what was troubling her could only be explained by feel. “What you did was risky; some of the good guys could have died too.”
“Like everyone in that room wasn’t already at risk?”
“It’s all about money, isn’t it? You wanted him out of your building, out of your finances.”
Pascal’s mouth tightened into a thin straight line then he nodded. “I did.”
“What did you say to him in the bathroom?”
“I didn’t tell him to go out and kill the Cuban, if that’s what you think.”
“But you saw the chance and you took it. You know, I thought I knew something about risk. I don’t. Or not enough. Or I never thought it all the way to the end, when somebody gets killed.”
“We’re too tired to have this conversation. We can talk about it tomorrow. Today. Later today.”
“I’m not ready to talk about it. I want you to go home now.”
He stood up. Karen thought he might be struggling between anger and something else. Finally, he put his hand around the back of her neck. “Will you call me? Soon?”
“I’ll call you when I’m poor again and when I’m ready to tell you why that’s a good thing. And when I think there’s a rat’s-ass chance you might understand.”
Twenty-five
Raynie Johnpier sat on the silk-covered sofa in the living room of the St. Charles Avenue mansion. Her home. Except Jimmy was right—the place was more of a museum than a home. The only rooms she felt comfortable in were the bedroom and sitting room upstairs. She loved the kitchen and had cooked almost every night since they’d returned from their quick honeymoon. And she loved the summer house.
Her eyes moved from one beautiful object to the next but she wasn’t really seeing them. Karen had been right—she’d gotten bit on the ass, and they’d only been married a week yesterday, but it wasn’t the way Karen meant. Or she didn’t think so. It wasn’t Jimmy. She liked Jimmy; maybe she loved him. She definitely thought she could. She didn’t want to walk away from the marriage. But she missed her old life, missed it badly. It had all started when she heard about the shooting at La Costa Brava. Okay, strange, but she wished she’d been there. She missed the action in the restaurant, goofing around with Harley, living with Karen, keeping up with LaDonna and Ramon, and the Quarter and all the characters. She thought about Luc the bartender, maybe too much. She missed Jimmy coming to Le Tripot to see her.
That morning Jimmy had left for Houston, not sure for how long. Maybe she’d go downtown and see everyone, see if she really missed it all. Maybe she’d just go out to the summer house and think about all the things life with Jimmy offered her. It popped into her brain, another one of Uncle Dudley’s old saws: It’s hard to see sometimes when you have a seat in the front row.
She sighed as the doorbell rang. She looked out the front door to see the postman waving what appeared to be a manila envelope. “Registered mail,” he called to her.
She went down the marble steps and around the old Cadillac sitting in the curved driveway. Jimmy had told her Pascal bet him the car she wouldn’t marry him. Too bad for Pascal; she loved the car. Maybe she’d take a spin around the park later.
The postman handed her the form through the iron fence. She signed it and took the envelope, surprised to see her name on it. The return address was Le Tripot, but that was Jimmy’s handwriting, wasn’t it? Her heart began to race.
She stood in the foyer and ripped open the envelope. There were several sheets, the first a handwritten letter.
Dearest Raynie,
You need an explanation from me for everything that’s going to happen.
It all started when the big C decided to settle in my nether regions. I suppose you could say I went a little insane. I’ll spare you the boring details and give you the outlandish highlights.
First, I stopped paying taxes. I never liked paying them anyway so I used Uncle Sam’s cut to help buy myself a mansion and an airplane, and I used the airplane to run around the world buying up as much art as I could to fill the mansion. It was a glorious time. I stopped paying attention to business and spent the short time I thought I had left to surround myself with beauty. All my life I have craved things of beauty and refinement. More on that in a moment.
They have caught up with me. My becoming a pauper is not enough for them. I am going to be indicted and they are going to send me to jail.
If I had met you a few years earlier perhaps I wouldn’t have been such a foolish man. That I have had the astounding luck to meet you at all and have you agree to be my wife, short time though it must be, will fill me with joy for whatever time I have left in this world. You are the ultimate in beauty and refinement, dear Raynie. Your sweetness and kindness are not qualities I’ve seen much of in the world I inhabit. It would be a further crime for you to have ever been married to a felon.
You will find a suitcase on the top shelf of your closet with $150,000 in it. Enclosed with this letter is a copy of LaDonna Johnson’s note. Which is worth more than $50,000 with interest, another item I released from Pascal’s possession. That should pay your rent for a few years. My lawyer has the original. Keep in touch with him in case there is anything left after the jackals finish with our possessions. Don’t remove anything other than your personal belongings, the money and your car from the house. And don’t tell anyone, including the lawyer, about the money. The contents of the house have already been inventoried and if you take even one item, they will have an excuse to hound you.
The names and particulars of my law and accounting firms, along with a few suggestions about the money, are on the next page. With this, my darling girl, I set you free. Leave quickly, don’t look back, have no remorse. Your presence in my life has changed me into a better man. Ah, and in such a short time…
I hope I have insured that you never have to cook frog legs again as long as you live, unless you want to, of course.
With my undying love,
Your frog prince,
Jimmy
She was stunned then her eyes filled and her brain went into rapid-fire confusion. What did he mean, it would be a crime for her to be married to a felon? Where had he said he was staying? The Hyatt? Curse the man for refusing to carry a cell phone. She went to the kitchen to call, waiting for the number and the phone to ring at the front desk at the Hyatt, barely keeping herself from getting frantic.
When the young woman answered, she asked for his room. “This is his wife,” she said, “and it’s urgent.”
“Oh, Mrs. Johnpier, just a moment…”
The man who came on wasn’t Jimmy. He was with the Houston Police Department. Were they arresting him already? “Mrs. Johnpier,” he said, “I’m very sorry to inform you that your husband checked into the hotel a little while ago. Then he went up to the roof. I’m sorry, Mrs. Johnpier. He jumped.”
Raynie clutched her stomach; she felt sick. A voice rang in her ears, Judy Honeycutt saying, “Think about money and it will come.” All she’d done was think about her old life and she had it back. She ran for the bathroom.
***
On a balmy Saturday afternoon Peewee Meeker strolled along Park Avenue in downtown Eunice, on his way to the tuxedo rental place. His wedding was in three weeks and every few days Alice Roy gave him a list of things he needed to do. Then in the evenings he’d go over to the Pendergast’s house and Alice Roy would check off what he’d done on her master list and tell him what she’d done, and they’d microwave popcorn and watch a movie until her parents went to bed. After that they’d neck for a while and Peewee would feel her up an
d kiss the baby through her tight smooth abdomen, but Alice Roy had decided no more sex until after the wedding. He could hardly wait for the wedding.
Guitar riffs filled his head so he didn’t notice the pickup truck pulling up almost next to him. The tuxedo store was two doors away when a large hand clamped down on his shoulder and he heard a voice he’d hoped never to hear again in his life say, “Hear you gittin hitched, penis.”
Raymond Dick stood there grinning at him, with the Hulk’s vice grip on his clavicle. He expected to be lifted and tossed down the street any second.
“Uh, yeah,” he said trying to laugh.
“Does that hurt?” With his thumb Raymond pressed into the hollow at the base of Peewee’s throat.
Peewee coughed and choked on, “Yes.”
“Cut it out, Raymond.”
Someone had come up on his other side. Peewee turned only his eyes, finding Earlene’s boyfriend Daniel. He coughed again.
“Let him go.”
“Don’t want the little penis to run off, do we?” Raymond said but he let go, his hand resting on Peewee’s shoulder.
“I’m not going to run off.”
Daniel took his other shoulder and turned Peewee toward him. “Just tell us where Earlene is, Peewee. You told everyone at Savoy’s you went fishing at David Pecot’s camp in Venice…”
“But guess who we just happened to talk to?” Raymond’s grin was turning dangerous. He always grinned like that before he beat someone up. “Everyone knows David Pecot but David Pecot doesn’t know you.”
Daniel said, “I need to know where she is, Peewee, that she’s safe.”
Peewee could see the pain in Daniel’s eyes. Daniel was okay except he was friends with Raymond. He wanted to tell him; he thought Earlene had let this go way too far, but she was his friend.
“She’s safe, Daniel, I promise.”
“I guess that means you know where she is.” Raymond’s thumb found the hollow and gently stroked it.