Big Stupid (POPCORN) (5 page)

Small. All the appliances looked maybe five hundred years old. But neat and clean. No clutter.

A formica topped table and chairs had been shoved him against the window. The bacon smell was every bit as intoxicating as last night’s beer.

The little girl sat on one side of the table eating bacon with her hands. Big Stupid sat across from her, shoveling eggs into his maw and reading an issue of
Captain America
.

The little girl motioned to a seat between her and Big Stupid, and I sat. “Bacon smells good.”

She grinned. “It
is
good.”

I heard somebody come into the kitchen behind me, turned to see a haggard, middle-aged woman in blue hospital scrubs circling the kitchen with a pot of coffee.

“Good Morning, Mr. Payne.”

“Good morning.”

“You slept okay?”

No. “Yes ma’am.”

“Coffee?”

“Yes ma’am.”

She filled a mug that had Baton Rouge General written on the side of it. I took the mug, sniffed it, sipped. Some chicory. It was good and strong.

“Are you a nurse?”

“Nurse assistant,” she said.

There was a thin bottle of Louisiana Hot Sauce on the table. I grabbed it, splashed the eggs until they turned orange.

I took a bite, could feel the hot sauce in my nose. Good stuff.

I looked at the little girl and nodded at Big Stupid. “Is that your Daddy?”

She dropped her fork and erupted with giggles, slender hands coming up to cover her mouth. “That’s my
brother
.”

I smiled. “My bad.”

“So you boys were out and about last night,” said the nurse assistant.

“Yes, ma’am. He’s sort of showing me around. Big Stupid’s been taking real good care of me.”

“
Excuse
me!”

A forkful of eggs froze halfway to my mouth. The assistant nurse had a fist on a hip as she struck an indignant pose, eyes slicing through me like lasers. “Ma’am?”

“That’s not his name.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. That’s just what I heard everyone else call him.”

“Is this my house?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“We don’t call people names in my house.”

“No, ma’am.”

“That boy’s name is Walter.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“His momma name him Walter and that’s what he’s called.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Okay then.” She refilled my coffee.

I glanced at Big Stupid –
Walter
. He hadn’t budged during the entire exchange, his eyes glued to
Captain America.

The Nurse Assistant kissed Big Stupid on the cheek. “Walter, take Sissy to grandma’s, will you?”

“Okay, Mama.”

“That’s my boy.” She grabbed her purse and keys off the counter. “Sissy, you listen to Grandma. You boys have a good day.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

She left.

I ate eggs and sipped coffee.

Sissy combed Barbie’s hair.

When Big Stupid finished reading
Captain America,
he stood up from the table and said, “Let’s go.”

The neighborhood outside Mama Stupid’s house was the exact opposite of the inside.

The yards were overgrown, junk cars in driveways, ugly iron bars covering windows and doors. Three out of four houses were peeling paint badly.

We piled into the Humvee and eased out of the neighborhood.

Sissy leaned in between us from the backseat. She started singing high pitched as loud as she could. “Scooby Dooby Doo took a poo, and Shaggy thought it was chocolate.”

You don’t want to hear the rest of that song. Trust me. I endured two more verses, right in my left ear. If I’d had a full tilt bourbon hangover, it would have killed me.

We pulled into a shabby apartment complex. Window unit air conditioners provided a constant humming racket. The parking lot was a mine field of bottle caps and broken glass.

“Mama pick you up after work, Sissy,” Big Stupid said.

“Okay, bye.” She waved at me. “Bye, Mr. Payne.”

“Bye, Sissy.”

She hopped out of the Humvee, slammed the door behind her. She knocked at the first apartment. The door creaked open and a woman about a million years old came out, blue wig, glasses with thick lenses.

She waved a gnarled hand at Big Stupid, then put an arm around Sissy and ushered her inside. The door closed.

Big Stupid shifted into reverse and we were on our way.

On our way where I had no idea.

Big Stupid reached into his shirt pocket and fished out a wad of papers. Handing them to me.

“What’s this?”

“Phone numbers.”

I squinted at the list and paged through Sandy’s notebook. Big Stupid had highlighted in yellow a few of them. “What’s five-oh-four area code?”

“New Orleans.”

“You know any of these numbers?”

“Little Duane.”

“Who’s that?”

“Fat Otis does business with him,” Big Stupid said. “Little Duane hides stuff.”

“Why does he do that?”

“Like if somebody steals something but it has to cool off before they can fence it,” Big Stupid explained.

“Or if something needs to be missing for a while, so somebody can collect insurance.”

I scratched my chin. So maybe Little Duane was sitting on top of the armored car money. Can’t just stash four hundred grand in a coffee can. Cops will search your house. Can’t put it in the bank. But then you’ve got to trust Little Duane, right?

Unless Little Duane didn’t know what he was hiding.

“You want us to drive down to New Orleans?”

I thought about that. “Maybe.”

“Better decide quick. Contraflow starts soon.”

“What’s that?”

“All the lanes of the interstates go out of town. Nobody goes in.”

Aw, shit. That could only mean one thing.

Big Stupid went ahead and said it out loud. “Hurricane’s coming.”

We’re turned off Interstate-10 into the French Quarter fifteen minutes ahead of contraflow. Black clouds crowded the sky.

The Quarter seemed almost like a ghost town, diehards here and there drifting in and out of the bars. Every third place was closed, none of the gaudy souvenir places selling off-color T-shirts or NOLA shot glasses.

There was an eerie tension in the air like an argument you knew you were going to have with your girlfriend that hadn’t started yet.

“Take me to Little Duane,” I said.

“Can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“You’re white.”

Shit.

“I can go find him,” Big Stupid said. “Ninth Ward. Set up a meeting if you want to talk.”

“You sure?”

“I’m supposed to help you.”

I gave him my cell number, and he pulled over on Decatur and dropped me off. I watched him drive away then looked around. Nobody in sight. A gust of wind sent a half crushed beer can clattering down the sidewalk.

The weight of the .38 tucked in my pants at the small of my back should have been some comfort, but it wasn’t. You can’t shoot a hurricane.

I walked past a bar that was closed, the windows taped up. The next one was open, and I ducked inside.

Three guys sat at the bar sat smoking cigarettes and nursing beers. They glanced at me a split second before turning back to the TV which showed the cloudy swirl of a hurricane in the gulf.

The scroll along the bottom of the screen read
Gertrude now Cat 3 hurricane.

I sat at the bar and ordered a Coors Light.

Amy’s apartment was on Elysian Fields, a short walk. I wondered if I should look in on her. Her family live in Seattle, and it would be just like her not to evacuate. What kind of dumbass hangs around when there’s a hurricane coming?

Me. That kind of dumbass.

I paid for my beer and headed for Elysian Fields.

In just the time I’d been in the bar, the sky had gone two shades darker.

A single drop of rain hit my forehead so hard and so cold it made me stop walking. Like God flicking me in the face.
Where do you think you’re going, dipshit?

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?”