Mississippi Roll

  He was balanced on the railing; the only things keeping him in place were the two goons with painful grips on his arms. If they let go, he’d fall.

  “Come on, guys. Let’s talk about this.” Maybe if he could hook his legs under the railing somehow. Maybe that would keep him from falling. “I mean, I couldn’t have hurt you too bad, you’re still here—”

  One of the goons said, “Funny, the more you talk the more I’m going to enjoy this.”

  The water below was black, foam-capped with a million whirlpools churned up by the waterwheel. Andrew wouldn’t get a chance to swim away because he’d be instantly sucked into its pull. He swallowed back bile and started to shake.

  The night seemed to grow more humid, the air sticky, stifling; he couldn’t breathe. So this was what impending death felt like: a broken sauna. One of the goons shivered. A warm fog settled … and more.

  It wasn’t his imagination. A mist coalesced. A ghostly figure, semiopaque, the color of dirty cotton, seemed to form right next to him. It moved closer to the three crooks.

  “What—” said one of the goons.

  The second one shook him. “I told you to stop that, we’re not falling for your stupid illusions!”

  “That’s not me!” Andrew yelled. “I swear to God I am not doing that!”

  The woman jumped back. “Jesus, did you just lick the back of my neck?”

  “Did I what?”

  The second guy jumped, too, and they both glared at each other. “Something touched me. I’m telling you, something touched me.”

  “Something kind of hot and wet?”

  “Yeah—”

  “It’s the fucking joker fox—”

  “No, it isn’t, his illusions can’t touch us. It’s … it’s…”

  They all stared at the fog, wide-eyed. Then, the cloud of steam disappeared.

  The first goon stiffened as if caught in a seizure, and grabbed Andrew’s shoulder and tail, yanking them back, hard. Andrew was sure this was it, he was done for—but instead of falling forward he fell back, slamming onto the deck. Wrenched his shoulder and backside, but he didn’t care, he was still on board. His shirt and tail were soaking wet.

  “What’re you doing!” Goon Two shouted at Goon One.

  The first goon heaved a stomachful of water onto the deck. His skin was flushed red, and he was panting. “I don’t know! Wasn’t me, I swear, it was like something … something else—”

  The steam returned, a sticky fog that coalesced, seeming to grow, stretching claws that reached toward the woman and her henchmen. They screamed. The woman ran, and the second goon started to. But the first, still writhing on the floor in obvious pain, grabbed his foot, almost bringing him down. The goon hauled up his buddy and the two managed to stumble off after the ringleader.

  The fog, pulling back into a human shape that was somehow even more disconcerting, seemed to gaze down at Andrew for a moment. Then, it vanished. Like, there one second and gone the next, and the night was the same warm Mississippi summer as before.

  Andrew lay on the deck, his tail kinked under him, gasping for breath, taking stock. Trying to figure out if he was still alive. Yeah, he was probably still alive.

  Squirming, he got his tail out of the way—it immediately hurt less, which meant it probably wasn’t broken, which was good. The fur on it was seriously wet and bedraggled, though. He’d have to blow-dry it before going onstage. Wriggling some more, he tried to see if he could get his hands free from the cord, maybe kick his feet loose.

  He was still struggling when he heard voices coming up the walkway.

  “Andrew!”

  “Sylvia!”

  She was at his side the next moment, along with Leo Storgman, the retired Jokertown cop. They were lifting him, cutting cords. Andrew only saw Sylvia and couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “Baby, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to miss the gig, I know you were looking for me but these guys they caught me and tied me up and I couldn’t call you and I couldn’t get to you and I’m so, so sorry—”

  She put her hands on his cheeks. “Honey, I know, it’s okay! Calm down!”

  “But, but—”

  “It’s okay,” she explained. She was smiling, and things couldn’t be so bad if she was smiling. “When I called you, the answer button on your phone must have gotten pushed because I heard the whole thing. Leo was right there, so I grabbed him and came to find you. And here we are!”

  “Hey, Leo.” Andrew tried to wave, but his hands were still half tied so it came out as a shrug.

  “Andrew,” Storgman answered wryly.

  “And what about the bad guys?” Andrew said.

  “Casino security caught them running down the deck, screaming like lunatics. They’re locked up in the captain’s office now. We’ll dock by morning and the Natchez cops are on their way.”

  And then Andrew’s hands were free, and the first thing he did was hug Sylvia. “I’m so happy to see you.”

  “What happened?” she asked. He wanted to cling to her forever, but she pulled back enough so she could look him over and check for wounds. “You’re soaking wet!”

  His memories of the last few minutes sorted themselves out, clarified. He still wasn’t sure he could explain it. He looked for fog, but there was nothing. Not so much as a low-hanging cloud. The sky was clear. A few stars twinkled.

  “I don’t know,” he said, shrugging because he knew the explanation was unsatisfactory. “They had me hanging over the railing. I should have fallen, except … it was like the fog grabbed me. Saved me.”

  “You know the boat’s supposed to be haunted,” Leo said.

  “That’s just stories,” Andrew said, but weakly. Unconvinced. “I don’t know what happened. I’m just glad it did.”

  “Come on, you,” Sylvia said, taking his arm and helping him to his feet. “I’ll give Caitlyn a call and let her know we’ll have to skip our set tonight. She’ll probably make us host sing-along bingo to make up for it—”

  “No,” Andrew said. “No canceling. I can do it. I want to do it.”

  “But baby, you still look like … well, you look like you saw a ghost.”

  He nodded firmly. “Doesn’t matter. The show must go on.”

  They spent a hurried fifteen minutes back in their cabin cleaning up and getting ready. The set might start late, but they’d be there. Andrew jumped out of the shower and buttoned up his shirt while Sylvia ran the blow-dryer over his tail to get the fur nice and fluffy.

  “I feel like an idiot,” he said, part of a running monologue that had been going on for a while. “I could have been killed. What the hell did I think I was doing? Never again. Never, never again.”

  He finished with the shirt and started on the bow tie. Sylvia put away the dryer and helped him with his jacket. She looked great, of course: she wore a black sequined dress and a big red hibiscus in her hair. She looked like a ’40s pinup. With cat ears.

  She straightened his tie. “Well then. Did you learn your lesson?”

  He nodded. “Heroing is for chumps.”

  “No, silly,” she said. Smiling, her whiskers twitching, she held his face in her hands and sang softly, “‘I love you just the way you are.’”

  As always she was right. The lesson: he was exactly where he was supposed to be, and there was a lot to be said for that.

  Just a few minutes later they were onstage at the Bayou Lounge, warming up the crowd, basking in the lights. The place was full tonight, and Andrew soaked it in.

  “Hey, Sylvia!”

  “Hey, Andrew!”

  “Can I ask you a question?” He started the sequence of illusions for this number. First, a cartoony yellow canary perched at the end of the keyboard, ruffling its wings.

  “Ask away, babe!” She started playing a vague little tune on the keys.

  A couple more birds, red and blue, one short and fat and one slender, appeared. One perched on the lights, the other fluttered from one side of the stage to the other.

>   “Sylvia, can you tell me…” Even more birds, some of them flapping over the audience so that people looked up to follow their flight, but most of them clustered around the keyboard, hopping on the cables, dancing under the stage lights. “Can you tell me … please tell me … why … do … birds—”

  And on the words “suddenly appear,” the half dozen birds exploded into a flock, a swarm. Dozens of birds tweeting and chirping all over the lounge, but most especially around Sylvia, and the whole audience gasped and oohed with delight. It was like they’d all landed inside a cartoon, which was just how Andrew planned it.

  The next morning, the picturesque town of Natchez spread out from the docks; behind them, the lacework of steel struts on the Natchez-Vidalia Bridge gleamed gold in the sun. The riverboat looked like a palace, and Andrew got to stand at the railing and watch the police lead a would-be rapist and the three members of what turned out to be a gang of grifters who’d thought working the boat would be easy pickings down the gangplank in handcuffs. Sayonara, losers, Andrew thought at them.

  Sylvia was with him, looking gorgeous in the morning light, wearing a billowy sundress, her hair flickering in a slight breeze. They were drinking mimosas in tall glasses. Made Andrew feel like a rock star.

  She raised hers in a toast. “It’s been a pretty good trip so far, don’t you think?”

  Andrew grinned, clinking his glass to hers. “The best, babe. The best.”

  In the Shadow of Tall Stacks

  Part 4

  WILBUR WAS FEELING RATHER smug about having saved the illusionist from being tossed overboard. Helping rid his boat of thieves left a glow on his attitude, and watching the police escort the criminals down the gangway to the waiting police cars was a delight. If he’d solid hands with which to do so, he would have applauded their departure.

  The pleasure that Wilbur felt, looking out over the town of Natchez—the city after which Thomas Leathers had named all his steamboats—wasn’t destined to last long. The Natchez had berthed at Natchez Under-the-Hill along Silver Street, the historic district, with the steep green river bluff (and the ruins of Fort Rosalie in the city park there) rising behind the buildings. Just upriver the Magnolia Bluffs Casino extended out over the river’s shore—a stark reminder to Wilbur of the Natchez’s own possible fate.

  Natchez was also a sanctuary city, and the first stop where a few of the Kazakhs were to depart the boat, as Wilbur knew from Jeremiah and from listening to conversations between JoHanna, Jack, and Captain Montaigne. That would be another pleasure, seeing at least a few of them leaving the boat toward a more hopeful future.

  Wilbur was watching the activity from the bow of the main deck. Now that the cops had done their work (the passengers crowding the boiler deck to gawk at the arrests), many of those aboard were making their way down to the main deck, ready to leave the boat to savor what Natchez had to offer. Captain Montaigne stood at the head of the gangway, presumably to supervise the roustabouts, while JoHanna and the bartender Jack stood nearby. On the dock, five people waited to board. One was a massive man in an expensive suit, sitting in an equally massive electric wheelchair and fanning himself against the heat and sunlight. Behind him, a large van with a wheelchair lift waited. Wilbur estimated that the man must weigh in excess of five hundred pounds and doubted that he could manage to stand on his own. Wilbur knew who he was from what he’d overheard: a Southern Baptist preacher by the name of Reverend Thaddeus Wintergreen, also known as the ace Holy Roller—and the JADL contact for the Kazakhs who would be disembarking here in Natchez.

  The other quartet, three men and a woman, were dressed in dark suits, all of them with eyes concealed behind dark sunglasses. The leader of the four appeared to be a tall, thin black man, whose appearance screamed “cop” to Wilbur. The man gestured to his companions before the gangway was entirely lashed down and before the reverend could start his wheelchair rolling. Following behind, the four strode up and onto the boat, the leader’s right hand fishing out an ID from his suit jacket to flash at the captain; Wilbur slid closer to the trio in time to hear the man’s first words. “Martin Lowell,” he said. “ICE. These other three agents are with me.” He put his ID back and pulled out another sheet of paper, handing it to Captain Montaigne, who glanced at it quizzically. “That is a federal warrant giving us the right to search your boat before anyone else leaves or”—glancing back at Reverend Wintergreen—“anyone else comes aboard.”

  Captain Montaigne pointedly didn’t look at either JoHanna or Jack. “What exactly are you looking for, Agent Lowell?”

  Lowell didn’t answer directly. “I’ve a copy of your passenger manifest, and there are a few rooms I wish to inspect. I assume you have master keys to all the staterooms?”

  “My head clerk does. JoHanna, would you bring me the keys?”

  JoHanna took a step forward and glowered at Lowell. Then, with a sniff, she turned and went toward her office near the boiler room. Lowell nodded to one of his men, who took up a station at the top of the gangway; Captain Montaigne went to the bottom of the stairs leading up to the boiler deck and opened a compartment in the wall there, taking out a handset. Her voice crackled over the boat’s loudspeakers. “There will be a short delay before passengers can disembark. In the meantime, please enjoy a complimentary beverage in any of the bars or dining rooms on the boiler deck. We thank you for your patience and indulgence.” There was some grumbling from those on the main deck, but most of the passengers were already heading toward the boiler deck. She hung up the handset and closed and locked the compartment. “I hope this won’t take long, Agent Lowell,” she said on her return.

  Her only answer was a quick twitch of his lips. “I’d like to start with the boiler and engine rooms,” he said. “Do we need keys for that?”

  “You don’t. Knock, and ask for Chief Engineer Cottle,” Captain Montaigne answered, gesturing to the doors to the main deck saloon. “He can show you the area. I’ll wait here for JoHanna.”

  Wilbur didn’t wait to hear more; he was already following the crowd up the stairs, continuing on past the boiler deck and through the chained-off stairs to the texas deck to stateroom 3. They’d been lucky: the refugees housed on the main deck had been escorted earlier by Jack up to the texas deck so they could say their farewells to those who were supposed to leave here in Natchez—the ICE agents would find none of them there. Wilbur slid quickly into the room and willed himself to become visible at the same time, not certain what he could do but knowing he had to do something. Two were standing near the door with Jyrgal, their belongings at their feet: the two who Reverend Wintergreen was to take.

  “There’s a problem.” Wilbur mouthed the words desperately to Jyrgal, waving steamy arms. “You all need to leave this room.”

  Jyrgal was shaking his head. “I don’t understand,” he said in his ponderous English. Wilbur looked around, ready to sink into someone’s body to allow him to talk, but another of the refugees, Nurassyl—Jyrgal’s son—was already moving toward Wilbur, slithering across the floor on legs that ended not in feet but in tentacles, his flesh glistening like that of some pale, oozing jellyfish. The young man reached out to Wilbur with arms that, like his feet, ended in a mass of wriggling tentacles. The boy reached up to place those hands into Wilbur’s steamy chest near his throat, hissing as he felt the heat. Nurassyl quickly withdrew his arms, pressing them close to his chest as he looked at Wilbur. And Wilbur …

  Wilbur felt a tingling spreading out from where Nurassyl had touched him, a strangely comforting sensation. “What did you—?” he started to ask, but stopped.

  He heard his voice. Sibilant. Breathy. Steamy. Certainly not the voice he’d once had, but one that was audible and understandable. Wilbur’s hands went to his throat, marveling. He stared at Nurassyl, who had moved back near his father.

  “My son has a gift,” Jyrgal said. He smiled. “What were you trying to tell us?”

  The question brought Wilbur back to the moment, though he continued to watch N
urassyl. “There are men aboard, from the government. They’ve come to search the ship. If they find you, they’ll take you all away and deport you. You have to leave this room. Now.”

  “Where will we go?”

  Good question, Wilbur thought. Where could they go? He had no idea which rooms the ICE agents intended to search; he was only certain that this would be one of them. He saw the door to the adjoining room. “Everyone needs to go in there,” he said, pointing. “Take everything out of this room except the furniture and take it with you; it has to look like no one has been living here. Do that, then close and lock the door. As soon as it’s safe, I’ll come back and tell you. Hurry!”

  With that, Wilbur turned to leave, but he stopped. He looked again to Nurassyl. “Thank you,” he said. “I don’t know how you did that, but … thank you.” He hoped Nurassyl could see the steamy smile that spread across his face as he slipped through the wall and outside again.

  He went in search of the captain and the ICE agents.

  He found the captain rather quickly, waiting for the agents to emerge from the boiler room corridor. Her foot tapped the deck, betraying her anxiety. He could see the worry in her face, her jaw muscles bunched below her ears. The ring of master keys to the staterooms was clutched in her tight fingers. Making certain he wasn’t visible, he put himself alongside Montaigne. He put his mouth next to her ear, speaking in a steamy whisper. “Captain, listen to me.” She jerked away at the words, swiping at her ear, and Wilbur saw water on her fingers. She saw it as well, and wiped her hand on her uniform.

  “What?” he heard her say in a stage whisper while staring at the door leading to the crew quarters and the boiler and engine rooms.

  Wilbur leaned in again. “If they go to the stateroom on the texas deck, tell them you’ve closed it because of a steam leak. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  She gave him the faintest of nods, then moved forward as the door to the crew area opened and Agent Lowell, followed by the other agents, emerged. Lowell was talking into a Bluetooth earpiece stuffed in his left ear. “We’ve checked the main deck, Evangelique, and we’re about to check the staterooms you’ve marked. Don’t worry; I’ve got this handled. I’ll let you know what we find.” He touched the earpiece as Captain Montaigne lifted the key ring.