Big Stupid (POPCORN)

POPCORN VOL. 1

Cover art by
Angelo Bussacchini

Cover designed by
Enrico Bugin

POPCORN is directed by
Matteo Strukul

ISBN 9788868700058

Copyright © 2013 LA CASE

LA CASE Books

Los Angeles, CA 90093, USA

Big Stupid looks up from his X-Men funny book, slack-jawed, but eyes suddenly narrowing with focus, all the stupid leaking from his blue-black, clammy mug like coolant from a radiator with a rod through it. He stands up from the bench near the shop entrance, drops the funny book.

And right that second everything downshifts into slow motion.

The reason I notice Big Stupid is that he blocks out all the light in the front windows of the knick-knack shop, and I blink, look from him back to Little Duane who is still coming toward me, hand outstretched to shake mine, other hand low and behind his hip, his smile so white against his black skin it might be radioactive.

I’m trying to understand what is happening. Probably why my brain went into slow motion. Gives me time to think.

But it’s an illusion because Big Stupid is coming fast. He moves well for a big man. Moves well for a medieval castle on legs.

He’s clattering the floorboards, getting up a head of steam, the whole shop shaking each time a boot comes down, the ceramic alligators and pelicans and tourist bullshit clattering on the glass shelves like Mexican jumping beans.

Framed watercolor paintings flapping on the wall, even the lights blinking, and I think maybe the whole shop will shake apart, Big Stupid still coming like a huffing rhino.

The slow motion gets slower, my brain pulling together puzzle pieces from a dozen different directions. I realize there’s no way a ceramic knick-knack shop this close to the French Quarter stays in business no matter how many tourists come through.

It’s a front, of course, cash coming in the front door, smack and blow going out again, ceramic frogs filled with white powder or whatever the hell the dope of the day happened to be.

Not my concern, but interesting.

Little Duane catches on now, turns, his eyes bugging so big and white that if he’d been drawn that way in one of Big Stupid’s funny books, the artist would be called a racist.

Little Duane is little. Like a toothpick in a Saints tank-top with cornrows on top. If Big Stupid had been wearing a black robe and holding a scythe, Little Duane could not look more pants-shitting terrified.

The slow motion slows and slows and just flat out stops all together.

I’m looking at Big Stupid, a fist the size of a Virginia ham cocked back to his ear, aimed right at Little Duane. He’s frozen that way, so I can take a look. Have you seen a big animal up close? A Clydesdale or elephant at the zoo. All those big animal muscles. A wooly mammoth maybe, or a cave troll.

All Big Stupid’s muscles are bunched up and tight, trying to push their way up past the layers of fat.

I flash on a science lesson from grade school and try to remember the difference between potential energy and kinetic.

No time. Stop this!

I open my mouth to say
Don’t, Big Stupid! Don’t!
But all that comes out of my mouth is Charlie Brown teacher Bwah Bwah sounds.

My attempt to stop it all triggers time to crank up again, and Big Stupid’s fist heads for Little Duane’s head like it’s been launched from a silo.

There is a sickening
smack crack crunch
and Little Duane is air born, crashing into a shelf of knick-knacks, glass shattering and raining like a stampede of tambourines.

It was as if Big Stupid had taken all the nuts and bolts out of the skinny little dude, leaving a floppy bag of flesh with a bunch of jagged, loose parts inside. I’m there, my brother’s nickel .38 suddenly in my hand, standing over little Duane. He’s hard to look at.

His left foot twitches. I’m not sure if he’s dead, but he sure needs to be because there’s no coming back from what Big Stupid’s done to him. The jumble of shattered bone and cartilage under his face skin is lumpy and disarranged.

Eyes rolled up. I could have pulled up a chair and whacked at Duane’s face for an hour with a claw hammer and not quite get it to look like that.

I run to the back window. “Jesus, man, what did you just do?”

I check the alley and see that they’re already crowding in back there. I spot an AK-47 and a couple of shotguns. Little Duane’s cousins and all those Ninth Ward Boys. They’ll have the front covered too.

“You just killed us, Big Stupid. Son of a Bitch! You stupid motherfucker!”

He says nothing, stands there breathing out of his mouth.

The phone on the counter near the register rings, and I grab it. “Yeah?”

“Let me speak to Duane, cocksucker.”

“He’s busy.”

“What the fuck was that noise?”

“It’s nothing,” I say.

The phone clicks dead.

I swing open the revolver’s cylinder, check the load. My hands are shaking.

“Get ready,” I tell Big Stupid. “They’re coming.”

Shreveport, Louisiana

My brother Ray owned two of the three shops in the little strip mall. He owned the strip mall too. Fast Ray’s Bail Bonds right next to Fast Ray’s security. He rented out the third shop to a Vietnamese nail salon.

It was the sort of place that always had an empty parking lot. Not the best side of town. Not the worst. About the same way Ray was a brother. I went into the security office.

Security was a catchall word for surveillance, background checks, security systems and some stuff that sort of fell in between the cracks.

Like serving people subpoenas and telling dudes their wives were sleeping with other dudes. It was an outgrowth of the bail bond business which had been running for nine years.

Ray sat behind the front desk eating an egg salad sandwich. Loud Hawaiian shirt and an Atlanta Braves cap. He looked up, chewing, motioned for me to sit across from him.

A clunky, ancient fifteen-inch TV blared the Weather Channel at us. A late August hurricane had just plowed through the center of Cuba, had been downgraded to a tropical storm but was expected to puff back up again and make something of itself.

Ray turned the volume down. “What’s shaking, Payne?”

“You called me, Ray.”

He nodded, chewed egg salad and dabbed at his chin with a paper napkin. There was a glob of it on his ugly Hawaiian shirt, but I didn’t tell him.
Fuck your shirt.

“Yeah, yeah. What crawled up your butt crack?”

“Hungover,” I said.

“How’s your cash flow?”

“Save the sales pitch,” I said. “I’m not looking for odd jobs.”

“I drove by your lake cabin,” Ray said. “Roof ain’t looking too good. You running out of money?”

Dad had died almost three years ago. He’d been squirreling it away for decades, investing, life insurance, you name it. Working extra shifts for the petroleum company after mom died.

We buried dad, and the next day the lawyer showed us the portfolio. Older brother Ray took his half, bought the strip mall, paid off his house, put a bunch in a mutual fund. Responsible adult shit.

I bought a cabin on the lake, a bass boat and a shit load of rods and reels. And a sweet new tuck.

“You need to work,” Ray said. “It won’t last forever. Dad wouldn’t have approved.”

I almost told him to go fuck himself except he was right. Dad had believed in work. Idle hands were the devil’s whatever.

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re lazy.”

“Go fuck yourself.” I guess it just had to come out.

“Uh-huh.” Ray reached into the cooler under his desk and came out with two cans of Coors Light, handed me one. “Hair of the dog.”

I popped it, chugged half, felt a little better.

“I can set you up to be lazy a while longer,” Ray said. “A big score, then you’re back on your bass boat ignoring the world.”

The Evinrude on the back of my boat needed an overhaul. I was interested. Interested and curious. “Why don’t you put one of your goons on it?”

Ray pushed away from his desk, went to the front door, locked it, and returned to his seat. He opened his desk draw, fished out a manila folder and set it on the desk between us.

“Family only on this one.”

I eyed the folder. “Why?”

A gleam in Ray’s eyes. “Because I don’t trust any of my guys with four hundred and twenty-two thousand dollars.”

We sat there like wax figures, looking at each other a second.

“I’m waiting for the punch line.”

“The punch line is you get half,” Ray said.

“Who do you want killed?”

Ray grinned. “Nobody. I hope.”

He opened the folder, spread its contents out in front of me, newspaper clippings, mug shots and other photos, paperwork on Fast Ray’s Bail Bonds letterhead, a copy of a police report.

I picked up the mug shot, squinted at the front and side views of a tan man in his mid-thirties, shaved head, thick lips and sleepy eyes.

He looked like a KGB hit man from a cheap spy film, but the name at the bottom read Henry Cobb. A blue tattoo of a dragon under one of his ears, the tail wrapping around under his throat.

“You bail him out?”

“Yeah.” Ray sipped beer.

“What did he do?”

Ray took another tug at the beer, tapped one of the newspaper clippings. The headline read
ARMORED CAR ROBBERS NABBED IN SHREVEPORT.

“You bailed this fucker out?”

It had been all over the news three weeks ago, the bloody shootout on Interstate 49, traffic backed up both ways for miles and miles. Three dead State Troopers and a wounded Sheriff’s Deputy.

Two million one hundred and ten thousand bucks in cash. I didn’t see how it was possible any of these shit bags could make bail. Ray was reading my mind.

“Cobb is the only one of the four guys who didn’t kill anyone in the shootout,” Ray said. “Didn’t even pull a weapon. So he made bail. Barely. The other three guys, no chance.”

“I still don’t see how he made bail.”

Ray made one of those half-shrugs as he reached under the desk for more beer. He set a can in front of me, popped his. “Maybe I helped this along a bit.”

“How so?”

“He’s got a sister who put up a house as collateral.” He paused to chug beer. “Piece of shit shack out in the woods. Probably worth more if you bulldozed the house and just sold the lot. But I pretended it was worth enough to cover the bond when I was filling out the paperwork.”

I scrunched up my face, brain trying to work out why my penny-pinching brother would do that. “You wanted him out?”

“When they caught Cobb and the others, they’d already stashed the money and dumped the truck,” Ray told me. “One of the reasons they went a little easy with Cobb’s bail is that he coughed up where he’d stashed the stuff. Turns out it was short.”

I grabbed the new beer, rubbed the cold wet can against my forehead. The hangover hadn’t decided if it was coming or going. “Four hundred grand short. And change.”

“Right. The exact amount of his share and the inside man’s share if you divide it five ways.”

“What do you mean inside man?” I cracked open the beer, took this one slower.

“My guy with Shreveport PD says the scuttlebutt is there had to be an inside guy to finger which truck was loaded, the schedules, who the guards were and how they were armed. Whatever a professional armored car bandit needs to know, I guess.”

“You’re going to have to connect the dots for me, Ray.”

“I got to paint you a fucking picture? I make sure Cobb gets sprung from lockup. He skips bail, and I tail him to where the money is and get it.”

“Get it, huh?”

He waved his hand at me, irritated. “I’m working out some details. It’s an evolving plan.”

I sipped beer, smacked my lips. “So you get this armored car heist money. Evolve it from there.”

“That’s why I need you,” Ray said. “I’m going to stay here and sniff around Shreveport, try to smoke him out.”

“Uh... wait a minute.” I was still missing something.

Ray kept going. “You need to get down to Baton Rouge and New Orleans. That’s the other places he could’ve gone. Most likely.”

Then I figured it out. “You lost him, didn’t you?”

“I don’t have time to rehash every little detail of the—”

I grabbed my belly and laughed. “You were going to tail him, but you lost him and now you want me to help you find the guy. That’s it, isn’t it?” I laughed again hard, hiccoughing, wiping my eyes.

“You want a punch in the mouth?”

I tried to pour beer into my mouth, hiccoughed and dribbled down the front of my black T-shirt, got some on my jeans too and the floor.

“Would you get your shit together please,” Ray said. “Yeah, I lost him. So I’m not Mike fucking Hammer. Now I’m on the hook for the bond, just in case you needed another reason we need to get the guy back.”

I wiped my chin with my shirt sleeve. “What happened?”

“I waited outside the courthouse. I figured somebody would pick him up and I’d follow and it would be pretty easy. Just stay a few cars back.”

“Like in the movies.”

Ray nodded. “Like in the movies.”

“But?”

“But nobody picked him up. He walked across the street into that sandwich place. He didn’t come out ten minutes later and then he didn’t come out again twenty minutes after that and I started feeling stupid.”

“I already know how this ends.”

“Right. Back door of the sandwich shops goes out into the alley,” Ray said. “I don’t know of the bastard had somebody waiting back there to pick him up or if he just took off on foot or what. But we’ve got to get after him pretty fucking quick, and I can’t do it by myself.”

He drained the beer can, crumpled it and tossed it into the trashcan next to the desk. “So are you my brother or not, Payne?”

I sipped beer, shaking my head. Shit. “Okay. Yeah.”

A smile flashed across his face, half relief. He opened the top draw of the filing cabinet behind him, and came out with a red gym bag and set it on the desk between us with a heavy thunk.

“I figured I could count on you, so I put this together.”

I massaged a temple. The hangover was hanging on. I lifted my chin at the gym bag. “So what’s that?”

“That’s your instant detective kit,” my brother told me with a straight face.

I’d laughed so hard about Ray losing Cobb because my brother was just so damn perfect, you know? Well, okay, not perfect, but he almost always did things right.

Paid his bills on time, made sure his lawn was mowed, refinanced his house at the right time, smart investments, changed the oil in his car at three thousand miles on the dot, all that.

He made smart plans that worked. This scheme was a little too fancy, and it backed up on him. It’s why I generally avoided ambition at all costs.

He’d handed me the gym bag with my detective kit, a quick half-assed explanation and gave me the bum’s rush out the door. He wanted me on the road to Baton Rouge.

Every second delayed was another mile Henry Cobb hauled ass in the direction of his choice.

I sat behind the wheel of my three-year-old Chevy Silverado pickup and blazed south on 49, sipping Starbuck’s and blasting Drive-By Truckers through the factory speakers.

The gym bag sat in the passenger seat, and I reached in to check out my new gear. The little flip-open wallet thing was my Louisiana State issued private investigator’s license.

The picture was from an expired passport. Giving Ray a key to my place “for emergencies” worked out to “please come in any time and rummage through my shit” apparently.

In order to be a licensed P.I. in Louisiana you had to have yadda yadda years of appropriate yadda yadda experience. Ray had backdated a bunch of paperwork to say I’d worked for his bail bonding crew for the last ten years and had rammed the application through the governing agency.

People owed Ray favors all over the place. Whatever Jindal had promised about cleaning up corruption in the state, it hadn’t reached the Louisiana State Board of Private Investigator Examiners.

Anyway, Ray wanted me to be official. It helped keep the cops off your back. Sometimes.

The gym bag also contained copies of all the junk Ray’d showed me in the manila folder, names and addresses to check out.

The last item was the nickel S&W .38 police special. I thought about Henry Cobb’s mug shot and was glad Ray was thinking ahead although it was also a reminder I was poking my nose into trouble that was likely to poke back.

Ray thought of everything. His good planning skills on the mend. Yeah, he was the smart one.

Which made me wonder about all the puzzle pieces missing from this picture.

How’d he lose Cobb so easily? And what exactly did he plan to say to Cobb or do to him to make him hand over Four hundred grand? It was all too messy and bone-headed to be Ray’s handy work, but I’d arrived at these questions too slowly to ask them back at the office.

But sooner or later I would ask. Damn straight.

I made a stop to put gas in and let piss out. Back on the road. Kept south until I hit Interstate 10 at Lafayette and turned east.

Ray’d told me he was going to set me up with some help. A guy named Fat Otis ran a crew in North Baton Rouge and he owed Ray a favor.

So I hopped off the interstate at the Acadian Throughway, got lost briefly, found myself on Florida Boulevard and turned north on Foster until I found myself in the crap side of town above Evangeline.

It was the kind of neighborhood you generally stumbled into by accident and then got the hell out again as fast as you could. When a town passes New Orleans for murder rate, you take that shit seriously.

I parked in front of a check cashing place which was a front for all kinds of shit Ray said I didn’t want to know about. He was right. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to be here at all.

I wanted to be on my bass boat with a six-pack not even caring if I caught any fish. Ray said I spent too much time by myself, out on the lake, up late watching DVDs, whatever.

He said I needed to be around more. Come over for Sunday dinners and all that down home crap. Connect with family and community.

Fuck that. People disappointed you. People looked out for themselves, and fuck you if you got in the way. Ray must have known this on some level since he called in his brother and didn’t trust his own guys on this one. Blood is different. Sure.

I got out of the truck and went into the check cashing place to ask for the man in charge.

Fat Otis sat behind his desk, a pork sandwich in one hand and my new P.I. identification in the other, chewing slowly, looking back and forth between the I.D. and my face.

He was black, mid-fifties, bags under his eyes, and fat.

“This you?” he asked.

“It’s an old picture,” I said. “Could you not get grease on that please?”

He scowled at me, tossed the I.D. on the desk in front of him. “I told Ray I could hook you up with one of my boys. Sort of act as tour guide. Back you up. This ain’t your town, so you don’t know all the dark holes. I owe Ray.”