​The writer proudly displays a trophy, a water-logged 4-wheeler extracted from the Pearl River, in a boat skippered by river-side resident Kyle Jeansonne. This was a small, though heroic, part of an amazingly large volunteer effort during one day in September to clear piles of litter and junk out of the four-hundred-and ninety mile stretch of the Pearl from Neshoba County, Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. It was put together through the collective efforts of a great organization, Pearl Riverkeeper. Everybody got muddy, even Tubby.

In Tony Dunbar’s books, New Orleans is The Big Sleazy squared. No one is safe, especially from their elected officials. Even if they are an elected official. So what if Judge Hughes shared a few special moments with Sultana Patel—why is this a matter of public interest? “The stench from that courthouse fills the city,” roars D.A. Marcus Dementhe. “Those hypocritical men and women who wear the robes are filthy with deception.” And Dementhe has a zany plan to snare them.

Hughes, happily, has had the good sense to hire epicurean lawyer Tubby Dubonnet, whose laconic air is belied by his zeal to protect his clients. And what a web they’re ensnared in! But no matter how dire things get, Dunbar never loses his sense of humor:


Chapter One

"I don't know why you have to be difficult," Raisin Partlow told his date. "You said you wanted to go on the town."

"This is not 'town.' This is crackville!" Her arms were crossed and she wouldn't get out of the car.

"This is the Irish Channel, honey. Forget about crackville. You're safe as can be," he coaxed.

She wasn't having it. "There's a sign right there on that house that says SLUM PROPERTY. Does that tell you anything?"

"That's some stupid thing the city bureaucrats put up. I've been coming to this bar all my life. Trust me. You'll like it."

The din inside was deafening. Men and women shouted and shoved, waving fistfuls of money in the air to get their bets down. Raisin pushed forward through the smoky haze until he reached the center of the action, trailing his reluctant companion behind him. A space had been cleared on the floor, brightly illuminated by a fluorescent light. You could barely hear the chicken clucking.

"Black Ten, Black Ten," he cried, trying to keep his grip on his girlfriend.

One hundred numbered squares were painted on the tavern's cement floor. Resting over them was a big wire cage, like a giant crab trap, inside of which a flustered chicken hopped about and scratched.

"This way, little darlin'!"

"Don't be shy!"

"Now, Now, Now!"

They pleaded with the bird and whooped and hollered. Somebody slammed into Raisin's back and gave him a drunken hug when he protested. A barmaid dispensing potions from her tray poked him in the side, elbowing her way through the excited throng. His date got lost for a moment. Raisin looked down and found her on the floor, trying to grab his lag, sputtering at him.

Laughing, Raisin pulled her up and tried to ignore her fist pounding on his chest.

Finally the fowl's gullet quivered. Her feathers shook politely, and she carefully shat.

"Red number eighty-two!" the master of the game proclaimed, unleashing a chorus of groans and threats upon the bird's life, but the proof was unmistakably there.

The proprietor's burly arm reached in and retrieved the bird, which he cradled protectively against his chest.

"Settle up at the bar," he called out to quiet the crowd. "Next drop in one hour."

At his signal a nephew tugged a rope and lifted the cage up to the ceiling. The chicken was carried to the back room, where her reward of fresh pellets and bread awaited.

Patrons walked over the game board to verify the result until the evidence was ground away by countless feet.

"That's certainly a rare form of entertainment," Raisin exulted. "You won't see that every day."

"You are too crude for words," his date said. "Take me home, and I mean it."

Outside, a dog barked on the quiet street and chemical tank cars on the New Orleans Public Belt Railroad clanked together and slowly started to roll.

Raisin crushed his cigarette on the broken pavement and held the car door open for the woman.

"I guess that was your first chicken drop," he said, trying to get a conversation going.

She slammed the door.

She's a moody one, Raisin thought.

***


"It's always like this when we work together," Johnny Vodka complained. "Your car breaks down and we're on the bus."

"Not every time. Last time we rode in a cab."

"We drove a cab. That was our cover. And you ran over a lady's Chihuahua."

"So? The department paid for it."

"You're always focusing on money. I'm talking loss of life."

"A Chihuahua is life?"

They were still debating this issue when the bus let them off at the end of the line. Aging brick apartment buildings arranged like orange boxes squatted on hard-packed earth, beaten flat by generations of little children and police car tires.

Johnny Vodka and his partner Frank Daneel walked across the first yard they came to, pool sticks in hand and duffel bags in the other. A couple of sharks coming for a private weekend in the super’s secret vice den -- that was the charade. They dumped it all in a heap in front of a featureless concrete facade while Daneel went to a door marked 3-G and knocked.

Johnny "V" stepped around the corner to light a cigarette out of the wind and to gaze upon the barren landscape, dotted with pockets of people, a group of children playing with a soccer ball, fat ladies clustered in a circle on folding chairs.

They were supposedly working undercover, but he could see that they stuck out like sore thumbs.

He looked over his shoulder and watched a scrawny female going through his luggage. It took him a moment to realize that she was brazenly stealing from him.

"Hey!" he yelled and tried to grab her.

Quick as a lizard,,he snagged a pool cue and darted away toward a playground where guys hustled chess and old men played bourré.

Instinctively, Johnny picked up the remaining stick and ran after her. His long strides gave him a chance, and he cornered her behind an overgrown bush.

The panting woman feinted one way and then the other, trying to get him off balance so she could run past him. She was twenty, maybe, pretty, and had wild black hair and a dress flecked with sweat.

Then they both jumped the same way. The policeman almost got a hand on her and then almost lost it when she swung her stick wickedly at his wrist.

Johnny raised his own cue in self-defense, and hers cracked down with a loud pop. To his amazement, she threw away her broken stick and had the gall to spit at him. Then she shot him a bird and tried to sprint away again.

Angry and flushed, Johnny whipped the pole across her butt and knocked her flat on the ground. When he reached for her ankle, she scrambled away like a crab and, holding her thigh in pain, she hissed at him.

"Get lost," Vodka cursed, giving it up.

While he dusted off his pants, she ran away down the sidewalk, gleeful in escape, until she almost collided with the glassy-eyed tall man. He beckoned her forward and grinned.

The girl froze, while Johnny watched out of curiosity. She backed up. The tall man took a step toward her, and that was all.

Like a dove flushed from cover, the woman raced back toward the policeman, arms waving madly in the air.

She jumped on him and gave him a hug so tight he could feel her breasts through his shirt and smell the French fries in her hair.

"Help me, please," she begged.

Johnny Vodka looked over her head, but the tall man was gone. He wished he had paid more attention to what the guy looked like.



***

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Thanks!
Tony

A New Orleans lawyer who'd rather eat, drink, and swap stories than get caught in court, Tubby Dubonnet can't forget the last words that escaped an old friend's lips, and he can't get out of the way of a political campaign that's turning rough. Obsessed with the idea that a shadowy crime boss may be pulling the strings that have cost good people their lives, Tubby is entering into a test of courage with the most violent men in New Orleans. And if that weren't dangerous enough, he’s just picked up the worst ally he could ever find: a beautiful prostitute gunning for revenge.


Chapter One

The red glow from the stoplight wrapped around Daisy like a bloody veil. She leaned against the crooked bus stop sign on Airline Highway, fighting the craving for a cigarette. Crimson nighttime mist swirled about her face. It was warm, almost midnight. She listened for the low mournful horns of the boats on the Mississippi River a mile away and traveled with them down a dark twisting channel in her mind. Her skirt was hiked up high on her thigh. She was working.

The headlamps of the cars driving out of New Orleans became visible when they were still a great distance away. Daisy watched them bear down and, if the light was green, roar past her. The four lane highway ran straight as an arrow pointed west. It shot past cheap motels and all-night gas stations, then sailed through open marsh and prairie all the way to Baton Rouge. Seeing the lights come, Daisy had time to imagine who might be behind the wheel of this car or that, compose her face, straighten her tired back, and cast what she believed was an inviting look at the dark windshields. She kept one leg forward, displayed on tip-toe, in the belief that that was where men's eyes focused first. Shadowy heads suddenly materialized behind the glass, and she caught glimpses of faces, but unless someone saw her look, pressed the brake pedal, and rolled the window down, the occupant could have been a movie star or a werewolf for all she knew.

It was an underrated talent, she thought, being able to pose like this in cowgirl boots, big hair in place, smelling good, lipstick fresh, unaffected by semis grinding through their gears and the toot-toot of strangers' horns. Daisy never had to wait long.

Shortly, some pipeline worker or shipfitter would slow down. The car or the pickup truck would swerve a little bit to check her out in the headlights. She might hear the motor purring and the tires squeak. There would be that moment of suspense, while those ship horns sounded in the distance, until the passenger window slid away, when she could finally see who was in there, who was sizing her up.

Then with a shrug of her bare shoulders, she would push off the bus stop sign, take a step forward, and bend down to show what cleavage she could compress out of her purple vest embroidered with black cats and blue moons.

"How ya doin'?" was Daisy's icebreaker, if the guy was grinning or drooling too much to think of anything to say. They could usually take it from there. Drive around the block and park. Twenty minutes later, or an hour, depending, she'd be back at the bus stop again.

Daisy felt the wind blow around her legs and lift her skirt. A pickup truck with chrome pipes sticking out above the cab raced by. The boys inside screamed naughty words at her as the engine backfired. She had seen them drive by before— they were too chicken to stop. Daisy flipped them the bird, which they probably couldn't see. Anybody got too fresh, she kept a can of Mace in her boot, the working girl's friend.

The lights from a shopping center blazed in the distance. Crickets chirped lazily in the weeds that fought for life through the holes in the sidewalk. On other nights, when it wasn't so foggy, she could see the glow of downtown New Orleans in the east— somewhere above the point where the black highway met the night sky.

A car shot by like a jet taking off, and she had to reach up with both hands to hold her hair.

"Damn," she fussed, and almost failed to notice the pickup truck cruising slowly, real close to the curb, until it was almost upon her.


***

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Thanks!
Tony

To out-of-town kingpin Willie LaRue, Mardi Gras seems the perfect time for a New Orleans heist--nobody, but nobody will be thinking about a single other thing. Parties, parades, chaos, alcohol--who could be concerned about a little thing like a bank job? Indeed, all might have gone well except for an out-of-season frog-flogger that threatens to flood the French Quarter--something even Hurricane Katrina couldn't do. Next thing you know the survivors--thieves and revelers alike--find themselves marooned together. As the LaRue gang plans its watery escape, raffish lawyer Tubby Dubonnet is obliged to take time out from his customary eating and loafing to thwart their murderous intentions. The body count rises as the tempest subsides, and Tubby finds himself fighting not only for his life, but (it seems to him) the very city itself.


Chapter One

"They had this place tore up the last time I was here," Monk griped to Big Top as he drove under the rectangular green sign that said New Orleans International Airport. "And they still got it tore up. No telling which way we're supposed to go." A cement truck rumbled past them on the right, raining gravel on the windshield of their Chevy Astro minivan.

Big Top jerked his freckled elbow inside for protection, concerned about the cars madly crisscrossing lanes around them. Riding in the high-up front seat made all other other cars look much closer.

He saw some instructions ahead.

"Arriving Flights," Big Top said helpfully, pointing. An old Chrysler with dented tail fins narrowly missed the front bumper and swerved into the next lane.

"Jesus of Nazareth!" Monk hollered and banged his fist on the horn.

The Chrysler careened off into Short-Term Parking. A skinny white man came over the roof and shot them the bird.

Monk gunned the van's engine malevolently and rolled down into the dark bowels of the lower-level baggage claim area.

A big cop in a rumpled blue uniform screamed, "SLOW IT DOWN!" in Monk's face, and he obediently hit the brakes. Big Top had to grab the dashboard to keep from going through the glass. He and Monk exhaled in unison as the van crawled through teh snarl of cabs, limousines and cars meeting passengers.

"See him?" Big  Top asked. "I ain't never met Rue."

"No, I don't," Monk said, fighting for a spot at the curb. He had met Rue and was afraid of him. "He's a little guy though," Monk said, "and mean as a snake," as if you could spot the meanness in somebody.

***

Willie LaRue, or "Rue," as he liked to be called, walked a straight path from Delta's Gate 31 on Concourse A all the way through the maelstrom of congested humanity to the main terminal. Though his eyes darted constantly from side to side, his head barely seemed to move, and he avoided collisions with the people hurrying toward the restrooms and parents herding children mainly by suddenly slowing down or speeding up his pace. He wore a brown straw cowboy hat, brim turned down, with a green headband, and he had pink ears that stuck straight out like wings on a chicken. He had on a tan leisure suit, with dark brown trim, and looked like lots of other Texas tourists getting off the Southwest Airlines flight.

LaRue carried a dull burgundy overnight bag in his left hand. That was all the luggage he needed. Everything else was supposed to be in the van, unless Monk or his hillbilly partner from Mississippi had forgotten to bring it.

New Orleans music seeped out of the intercom. At the moment it was Fats Domino singing "I am the sheik of Araby. Your love belongs to me." The chipper melody did not add any bounce to Rue's steps. His was a rigid composure that wouldn't crack. A kid on a leash dashed out in front of the tall man, lollipop embedded in wet purple lips. LaRue snarled and stepped over him.

His flight from Houston had been on time. He was right on schedule. Now, if the turnips from the boonies were where they were supposed to be, everything would be fine.

 ***

Marguerite Patino checked her straw-colored hair carefully in the noisy ladies room on Concourse B. She finished by giving herself a big wink with her long black eyelashes and stepped briskly into the bright corridor teaming with people. Trailing a red plastic suitcase that rolled erratically on its tiny wheels, she promenaded toward the terminal, demurely deflecting the glances of all sorts of guys headed toward the planes.

She looked sharp. Her hair was permed into a reckless swirl of ringlets that Don, before he socked her for sixty dollars, had told her were just the thing for "down South." Her coral-pink suit came with the shortest skirt she owned and hung tightly on a body trimmed of most of its excess fat by three miserable weeks of fasting and aerobic agony. She was ready to get on with her first real vacation since a high-octane trip to Cancun two years ago with her ex-boyfriend Romney.

Her only regret was that her soul mate, Rondelle, was not along. Rondelle had come up with the idea of going to Mardi Gras in the first place. "Just the girls," she said, and she had even made the reservations. Then Rondelle had chickened out. They had had a big argument. Marguerite's lips turned down in a pout when she thought about it. Rondelle just could not seem to take the big leap. So she was stuck back in Chicago scraping ice off her Geo and Marguerite was here in New Orleans, ready to party down on Bourbon Street at the Mardi Gras. Only thing was, she had had to lie to her mother about traveling alone.

What's done is done. I'm thirty-one. Whoopee. She passed by the line of people trudging through the metal detector and entered the main terminal. Anticipating bacchanalia, she was immediately disappointed that it looked pretty much like a miniature version of the airport back home. The sight of something called an oyster bar and a tough-looking female concessionaire in fishnet stockings pushing a rolling wagon of whiskey bottles gave her some reassurance.

Past the baggage claim she stepped through the sliding glass doors into the Big Easy and immediately needed oxygen. Hot wet air wrapped around her like the steam of a sauna. Gasping, momentarily dizzy, she reached for a grimy concrete pillar for support.

"Taxi, ma'am? Right here."  The short Lebanese had her elbow and was directing her, with charming courtesy, toward his vast cab labeled, in flowing gold script, the White Cloud. His purple shirt was half untucked from his tight black slacks, and his mustache was ragged. He looked very much like the cabby who had dropped her off at O'Hare about three hours earlier.

Disoriented, Marguerite let herself be led away.

***

"That's our man." Monk pointed his chin at the tall figure with big ears emerging from the baggage area.

"Guess he knows us," Big Top mumbled as Willie LaRue, guided by some internal radar, stepped off the curb and pointed himself unerringly at the van.

"Skinny feller," Big Top said.

"He's a dangerous little prick. He's named for some damn cowboy, and he acts like it," Monk said, but he rolled down his window and called, "Hey brother, join the party."

LaRue came alongside and lifted his sunglasses to examine the occupants of the van. His eyes were squinty and green and matched the band of his hat.

"You're Monk," he said by way of greeting.

"Right. We met before. This here is Big Top."

"Pleased to make your acquaintance," Big Top said.

LaRue made slits out of his eyes and nodded. Then he pulled the van's side door open loudly and vaulted himself into the back seat.

"Let's ride, boys," he said.

Monk pushed the buttons that rolled up the windows and hit the air.

He steered around a party of locals carrying parkas and lugging their skis into the terminal, anxious to get out of town, and snaked through the traffic in the direction of daylight.

LaRue mopped his forehead with a handkerchief and turned around in his seat to inspect the van's cargo.

A brand-new turquoise five-horsepower Makita generator took up a lot of space in the rear and a handsome gray steel tool chest with enameled red drawers took up the rest.

"You got everything?" he asked doubtfully.

"The whole shopping list," Monk said, pointing the van toward the interstate. "You just gotta watch out the darkies don't steal everything out of it."

LaRue looked suspiciously at Monk, who was black as a buffalo horn, but he didn't say anything.

Big Top, who had a wave of unruly red hair over a face filled with freckles, giggled uncontrollably.

LaRue thought they were both idiots. He knew they lived in a house trailer way back in the pine trees somewhere in Mississippi, and he didn't care for that arrangement. Monk could pass for a college boy singing in a church choir, and he was said to be reliable, but his selection of Big Top, who resembled LaRue's own inbred cousins, was a major demerit.

"What you got for me?" he asked impatiently.

Big Top bent over to fish around under his seat and came up with a gun in a compact black nylon holster. He handed it butt-first over his shoulder to LaRue, who peeled back the Velcro strap and shook the weapon out for closer inspection.

"Forty-five caliber," Monk explained.

LaRue did not comment on the obvious but went to work figuring out how to fasten the holster to his belt.

"You don't worry someone will see that under your coat?" Big Top asked. "I keep mine in my boot."

"No," Rue replied. "I've been here before. Anyone sees a white man with a pistol on his belt in New Orleans, they figure him for a policeman."

Monk laughed. Big Top chewed gum.

 ***

At Metairie Road Monk flipped on the blinker and cruised off the exit ramp. He turned left into a cloud of black exhaust from a city bus.

"We'd better go by the back roads," he said as he set off on an erratic route through pot-holed residential streets in the direction of Bayou St. John.

"You worried about a tail?"  LaRue was tense.

"No, man," Monk said. "Damn parades are everywhere. They got 'em all over on Veterans this evening, and one of 'em goes down Canal Street this afternoon. Last week when I came down to look around I got stuck for an hour just trying to get across downtown. I could have locked up the van and parked in the middle of the street, but, you know, I didn't want to chance getting towed. So...," he swerved down a tree-lined street of two-story shotgun houses, white paint fading behind crooked iron fences, "We stick to the ol' hoods."

Some boys playing soccer with a beach ball jumped out of their path.

Abruptly, the narrow street joined a wide boulevard. They careened around a statue of Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard, whose horse wore a bright bridle of plastic beads, and drove beside a wide sluggish stream of water that had once provided passage to the tribes of Indians who traded with Frenchmen before being exterminated by them. A gentle grassy bank separated the roadway from the edge of the bayou. It being Sunday, solitary fishermen and urban picnickers claimed most of the shady spots along the shoreline. The setting was picturesque, and the people who lived in the expensive homes on the opposite bank had a relaxing view of tides rippling gently in and out, marred only by the occasional drunk or fleeing felon who missed a curve, went airborne, and ended up nose down in the ancient green muck.

"That's him," Monk said, pointing ahead to a smoky gray Pontiac parked beneath a spreading oak tree at water's edge. A tall and extremely thin dark-skinned man was leaning against the passenger door watching them approach. He fumbled around in the pocket of his khaki uniform shirt for a cigarette as the van crawled slowly past him on the jagged asphalt-and-clamshell shoulder and came to a halt in the grass.

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.

***

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Thanks!
Tony