4 Shelter From The Storm (2 page)

Through the minivan’s windows Willie LaRue studied the waiting man without saying anything.

The fellow finally got his cigarette lit, tossed a wooden match in the direction of the blue water, and slowly ambled in their direction. Monk stuck his head out the side window.

“Get in the back and let’s talk,” he directed.

The skinny man struggled with the sliding door, but he finally gave it a great pull with both hands and got it open.

“No smoking in here,” LaRue ordered. He slid across the seat to make way for the newcomer.

The man was uncertain what to do with his cigarette. He took a big drag and laid his smoke carefully on the ground where he hoped to retrieve it later. Crouching low, he poked the top half of his torso into the dark hold and pulled his legs in after him.

“Yo,” he said to LaRue, who didn’t reply. With a sigh, he strained to slam the door shut behind him and get his long legs properly arranged.

“This is James,” Monk explained. “Security man at First Alluvial Bank. This is Big Top. This is Mr. Rue,” he indicated with his index finger. All four men nodded. LaRue continued to adjust the pistol on his belt.

“Who’s the other guy in your car?” Monk asked James, indicating the shadowy head in the Pontiac’s passenger seat.

“That’s Corelle,” James said, shifting his weight to one side and grabbing his left calf with both hands to make himself secure.

“Why’s he sitting out there instead of coming over to talk to us?”

“He wants me to do all the talking and work everything out,” James said. “He’s worried.”

The afternoon glare coming through the windshield was bothering Monk, so he put on his sunglasses. He twisted around in his seat.

“What about?” Big Top asked anxiously.

“He thinks something may go wrong.”

“Why don’t we deal with Mr. Corelle’s concerns later,” Monk interrupted smoothly. “This man here is the boss,” he said, indicating LaRue. “And he ain’t got time for a lot of trash. Explain the plan to him.”

“Sure. I work until two o’clock in the afternoon,” James said. “Bank closes at noon ’cause it’s the day before Mardi Gras. They’ll be closed all day Tuesday for Mardi Gras and won’t open up until Wednesday morning.”

“Right,” Monk said. “And we’re coming in with all our stuff at one o’clock tomorrow, right after lunchtime. Who’s going to be there?”

“Nobody,” James said with confidence. “All the secretaries and the bankers will be gone out of there before noon. Most of ’em don’t even come in tomorrow, and them that do it’s just to eat some King Cake and go home. It’s a real slow day. They lock up the bank itself at twelve o’clock sharp. As soon as they clear all the customers out, the guard in the lobby gets to go home, too. Then I’ll be all by myself.”

“And you’re going to get us into the vault?” Monk prompted.

“Not the vault, no, sir. Just the room with all the safe deposit boxes.”

“Well, that’s what I meant.” Monk looked at LaRue reassuringly. The boss flipped one of his earlobes back and forth with his fingertip and listened.

“Yes, sir,” James continued. “That’s my job. I sit in a little glass booth, see, right by where you go into the safe deposit room. I can see the vault, but it’s on a timer deal. I couldn’t open it even if I knew the combination, and only Mr. Duplantier knows that. But with my monitors on I can see what’s going on in the whole bank, upstairs, downstairs, and everywhere. I got keys to every door in the place. ’Cept the vault.”

“We ain’t interested in the vault,” LaRue said. It was the first time he had spoken. “Just the safe deposit boxes. And in not being disturbed.”

“You ain’t going to be disturbed while I’m there,” James said, turning to face LaRue. He did not like the man’s eyes and shifted his own to the straw hat. “Nobody’s allowed to come down to the basement after the bank is closed. I’ve got it all locked off, and nobody is coming downstairs but you.”

“We’re using that generator behind you for the drills,” Monk said. “It’s mighty loud though. Is anybody going to hear it?”

“If they did, I don’t believe anybody would care,” James said. “I’m telling you, they’re going home for Mardi Gras and they ain’t stoppin’ for nothin’.”

LaRue held up his palm to stop Monk’s interrogation. “You know the box number?” he asked James.

“Yes, sir.” James’ eyes were roaming all around the van, looking everywhere but at Rue, and he was sweating.

“Well, give it to me?”

James handed LaRue a crumpled up piece of paper that he had hidden in the cuff of his trousers. LaRue took it and stuck it in his own pocket. “What happens when you go off shift in the afternoon?” he asked James.

The guard shuffled to reposition himself in the cramped back seat and grabbed his other leg.

“That’s when Corelle comes on. He works from when I get off until ten o’clock at night, and after he leaves there won’t be a soul around the place until Wednesday morning.”

“The idea is,” Monk explained, “we got all of tomorrow night and Tuesday to work. When we leave, we tie Corelle up to his chair and leave him there. His story will be that we broke in on him someway. If he gets fired, he is still sitting pretty because we can get him a new job with the city, plus he gets his fifty thousand.”

“So why’s he waiting out there in the car?” LaRue asked.

James rocked back and forth uneasily. Big Top, watching him, was getting dizzy.

“He says you guys are all getting away, and nobody knows I’m the one let you in, so I get away. He’s the only one left behind for everybody to point at.”

“His story,” Monk said, “will be that he saw us beating on the bank’s doors when he was making his rounds. He can make up any old thing. Like I was bleeding and begging him to help us. He can just say he opened the door a crack and we forced our way in.”

“They’ll fire him sure for that,” James said.

Monk shrugged. “It’s not much of a job, is it James? What you get? Eight or nine dollars an hour? Twenty thousand a year? If the job was so great you wouldn’t be a part of this either.”

“That’s a fact,” James agreed. “But I aim to keep the job anyway. Corelle is bound to lose his. I believe what’s bothering him most, however, is he’ll be tied up all Mardi Gras Day and he’ll miss the parades and parties and what-not.” James laughed nervously, but nobody joined him.

LaRue looked sternly at Monk. “I thought all the details had already been worked out,” he said quietly.

“Me, too,” Monk said. “It’s too damn late for Corelle to be backing out,” he told James.

Big Top reached around his seat and gave James’ jumpy knee a squeeze. He popped his gum. “What the dude means,” he said, “is you should go talk to your podner.”

“Okay,” James nodded, in a hurry to free his thigh from Big Top’s rather personal grip. More proficiently than the first time, he got the door opened.

“Don’t close it,” LaRue ordered.

James’ chin dribbled up and down like a basketball, and he walked quickly away. LaRue watched a family of ducks paddling contentedly along the edge of the water, bobbing after cigarette filters and items unimportant to humans.

“There’s no way to do this without that asshole, Corelle, is there?” LaRue asked.

“Somebody’s got to explain to the security company why the monitors aren’t working,” Monk replied, brow wrinkled in thought. “If there’s no guard in the booth to call them, they’ll send the police over for sure. We need a live body in that booth.”

“And he already knows the plan,” LaRue stated flatly.

Big Top spat out the window. He left the planning to the smart people. His buddy Monk had kept him out of trouble when they were cellmates at Atmore, and he wouldn’t let him down now.

There were drumbeats in the distance. Somewhere a parade was rolling.

“Here he comes,” Monk announced, scanning his mirror.

In a second James stuck his head inside the passenger window.

“I didn’t do so good,” he reported sadly. “Corelle wants to forget the whole thing. He’s got a chance to ride in Zulu on Mardi Gras morning.” James wagged his head, ready to be scolded.

“I’ll try to explain the situation to him,” LaRue said and disembarked from the van. He straightened his tan polyester jacket over his sidearm, adjusted his turquoise and silver belt buckle, and walked back to the Pontiac.

Big Top stuck his head out the window to watch and started whistling a tune. Monk fixed the side mirror to keep the action in view. Outside, James kneeled down to try to find the cigarette he had dropped earlier.

They saw Rue somehow entice a fat brown-skinned man out of the car, and watched the two of them step into the shade of the tree to powwow.

It was a short conversation. Without fanfare, Rue pulled his pistol out an stuck the barrel in the vicinity of Corelle’s nose. The stocky guard began to raise his plump hands in supplication, but Rue slapped them away. He patted Corelle down efficiently with his left hand, confiscated a small pistol from the man’s back pants pocket, and lowered his own to Corelle’s ample midriff where it might look less interesting to passing motorists or canoers on the bayou.

He escorted the big man back to the van and pointed him inside.

“What you got to say now?” Corelle grunted at James, who held his hands out, palms up in apology, and otherwise looked helpless.

“Inside.” LaRue prodded and pushed the fat man through the door.

“Put your cuffs on him,” he instructed James.

“Now, now.” James hesitated.

“Give me any crap,” LaRue spat, “and I’ll cut out your fucking tongue and feed it to the fish.”

James got the point and with shaking hands quickly dug his silver handcuffs out of his pocket.

Corelle glared at his co-worker while his meaty wrists were secured behind his back.

LaRue holstered his gun and held out his hand. James gave him the key to the cuffs.

“We’ll see you tomorrow at the bank at one o’clock, just as planned,” LaRue told James, climbing into the van. He slammed the door home with a clang.

“Don’t worry ’bout a thang,” Big Top said, spitting his gum out the window.

Monk started the motor and slowly rolled the van back onto the boulevard.

“Damn,” James whispered, sulking and trying not to show it. He patted his pockets for his cigarettes and lighter. “Damn,” he said again.

Marguerite learned a lot of odd information about New Orleans on her cab ride into the city.

“See, right now you’re in Jefferson Parish,” her tea-skinned driver explained. His slender head covered by a thin coating of enameled black hair barely cleared the headrest. “It’s the longest parish in the world, being more than two hundred miles from end to end. My name is Hossein. You may call me Hoss.”

“We’re crossing over Veterans Boulevard,” he said. You see all the traffic? That’s because they have lotsa big Mardi Gras parades here tonight. It’s a very long street.”

“I thought the parades were just on Mardi Gras Day,” Marguerite said gazing at a landscape of shopping malls reminiscent of some of the more out-of-control suburbs of Gary.

“Oh no, madam. They have parades all the time. They have even more on Mardi Gras Day. You won’t be able to get around anywhere.” Hossein (“call me Hoss”) cut off a station wagon and ignored the blast from its horn. “And this is the Causeway,” he said, “the longest bridge in the world. It was built by Governor Huey P. Long.”

“A lot of things here are the longest,” she commented.

“Yes, indeed. You see these cemeteries?” Automatically Marguerite crossed herself. “It’s how they bury people, on top of the ground. You got to keep the dead people in these concrete boxes or else they float away when it rains.”

Really? Now that was something different. She began to think that maybe this trip would be worthwhile after all.

“And it rains a lot here, too,” the cab driver added. “Where are you from?”

“Chicago,” she said.

“Now I was there a long time ago,” he said, blowing his horn and changing lanes with the flip of one finger. “Back when it was a better place,” he added enigmatically. “They surely have some wonderful smoked sausage up there, what they call it?”

“Kielbasa?”

“Yes, ma’am. We got a sausage like that here and everybody eats it with their red beans. You been here before?”

“No.”

“You will really enjoy Mardi Gras. Everybody drink, drink, drink. It’s lots of fun, if it doesn’t rain, of course.”

“Is it supposed to?” she asked worriedly.

“They say it might. Big storm out West. But everybody drink, drink, drink anyway. You have to watch out for the blacks though.”

“What for?”

“They might steal your purse or your camera. I’m very prejudiced.”

“Oh,” she said.

“And they talk all this trash.”

“Is it very dangerous here?”

“You must know where it’s okay to go. Are you all by yourself?”

“Oh, no,” she lied. “I’m meeting my boyfriend.”

“Okay. Well, maybe you won’t have any problem.” He cut across three lanes and zipped off an exit marked Claiborne Avenue. “We got to take a screwy way to get to your hotel or else we get caught in traffic.”

Their route took them around the giant white oyster shell of the Super Dome, which she recognized from pictures in the travel brochure.

“It’s the largest stadium in the whole world,” Hoss said with great satisfaction. “Now we’re crossing Canal Street. You will notice how wide it is. In fact, it is the widest street in the world.”

They bounced through a housing project, and Marguerite saw some black babies scampering over a hard packed dirt yard chasing a blue basketball.

“Where are we?” she asked anxiously.

“This is nowhere, madam,” Hoss replied carelessly, shooting across Basin Street.

“Now you are in the famous French Quarter,” he exclaimed. “It is the oldest French Quarter in the world.”

Old and quaint it was, the narrow streets crowded by brick structures, mortar flaking away, punctuated here and there by an iron gate that exposed a courtyard full of flowers or a hidden fountain. She had some pretty good views since the traffic slowed to a crawl.

Hoss rolled down his window and waved frantically at the line of cars progressing fitfully ahead of them, and Marguerite understood again that it was awfully warm here. When she had left Chicago there had been two feet of snow on the ground and more on the way.