“Captain Kirk and Gandalf The Grey,” I shot back.
I looked down and gasped. Mika had climbed the first few feet of the faux spaceship’s ribbed side. She clung to a ledge and peered hard at a lanky, brownish-purple, lizard-alien who squatted there. The lizard looked back with soulful eyes.
“Leo!” she screamed.
The lizard sagged. “You have me confused with some other alien. I’m officially listed in the script as ‘the third alien from the left.’ I don’t have a name.”
She grabbed his scaly arm. “Leo.”
“No, I’m just another everyday mutant extraterrestrial—”
“Leo.” Her tone became gentle and sympathetic.
He sagged even more. “I didn’t want you to know. I’ve turned into the Creature From The Interstellar Lagoon.”
“Oh, Leo, I’m so sorry—”
“No, you were right. I’m not a brave man. I’m not even a brave lizard.”
“Come down,” a female security guard called. She grabbed Mika by one jeanned leg. Mika shrieked.
Leo got to his feet. Or his claws. Whatever they were. “Let her go. She’s with me.”
“Sorry, Leo. Your dad wants her and her aunt out of here.”
“I don’t care what he—”
“Leo, it’s all right.” Mika straightened. Her chin came up. Green-eyed girls with mocha skin learn early to pretend that nothing anyone says can hurt them. Her curls trembled, but the rest of her looked calm. “You have to do what your dad tells you to do. I understand.”
She climbed down and followed the security guard.
Leo moaned.
A few minutes later Mika and I found ourselves standing unceremoniously alone on a sunbaked curb. Behind us, the manicured palm trees and luxurious Art Deco facade of one of the world’s biggest movie studios formed a wall to keep us out. I paced. “I have to think of a new plan.”
“Whatever it is, count me in,” a voice said.
We turned. There stood Leo, holding his lizard head in his hands.
He smiled gamely at Mika. Latex and makeup ringed his eyes and mouth. His hair stood up in sweaty spikes. His goatee looked wilted. “Kiss me, elfin princess, and I’ll change from a lizard into the man you want me to be.”
She wrapped her arms around him. He wrapped his lizard limbs around her. They kissed and hugged.
They had faith. Ideals. All those youthful fantasies Harp and I had once shared. That I wanted to share again, with Boone.
Don’t give up, Boone. On yourself. On me.
Life blooms like a ladyslipper, when lost souls least expect a flower.
I suddenly had a plan. Not a good one, but a plan. “Leo. Mika. I want you two to hop on the next plane back to Georgia. Distract everyone. Tell them I disappeared at the airport and you didn’t even see which way I went. I’m heading for Louisiana. Tell G. Helen I’ve gone to do for Boone what I couldn’t do for Harp.”
“What is that?” Mika asked.
“Save his life, or die trying.”
“I’ve only got one thing to ask you one favor before you walk into this mess.” Roarke looked grimmer than usual as he swung the rental car down a long gravel road through pine woods.
I kept my focus on the deserted road, ready for the first glimpse of the abandoned warehouse where Armand had better be alive. “What’s that?”
Roarke stopped the car and turned to look at me. When I frowned at him he said quietly, “Let me take the money and go in there, instead of you.”
The old con always made me want to cry. Mon dieu, he had it down to an art. I coughed and swallowed. “It’s not enough that you gave me two million bucks? Now you want to risk your hide for me and my bro? Man, when God was handing out smarts, you went and stood in the other line. The one that said ‘Suckers.’”
Roarke smiled. “Yeah, well. Takes one to know one.”
“Forget it, Jack. He’s my brother, and I’ve gotta do this myself.” I paused, working on my throat, again. “But here’s what you can do for me. If you, uh, have to pass along any messages for me, as in, for some reason I’m not around to do it, myself. . .tell Grace I love her. Tell her I should have said so. Tell her . . . Harp was the luckiest man to ever love her, and I was happy to be the second-luckiest.”
Roarke hemmed, hawed, and scrubbed one hand over his face. I almost smiled. Got him back. He scowled like an old tiger then jabbed a finger at me. “You get your ass in that warehouse, and you sweet-talk those fuckers, and you do this deal right. I’ll be waiting for you, them, and Armand tomorrow morning in New Orleans, just like we planned it. If you don’t show up, I will hunt those fuckers down and . . . and get my money back. You understand?”
I nodded. Then, “You should’ve had a son. You’d have scared the shit out of him, but he would’ve loved you.”
Roarke looked at me like he was going to punch me in the face or hug me. Tears came into his eyes. I could almost see the weight of some old devil settle on him, squeezing the past out. I should have sensed it coming my way, but I never would’ve guessed the whole thing.
“I have three sons,” Roarke said quietly. “You, Armand, and Stone.”
To say I stood out in the congregation of Reverend McCarthy’s church is like saying a marshmallow is easy to spot in a box of chocolates. When I walked into his Wednesday evening service so many heads turned at once that the sanctuary threatened to rotate on its foundations. I didn’t like making a spectacle of myself in church, but I wanted Rev. McCarthy to know I was capable of it. Roarke had mentioned him as Boone’s contact in the Armand situation. That meant Rev. McCarthy knew where Boone had gone to meet the kidnappers. I intended to get that information.
At least three-hundred affluent black New Orleaneans tracked my white-redhead-in-jeans progress down a side aisle as the choir finished its opening hymn. Maybe it was the ten-dollar Goodwill blazer I’d bought on my taxi ride from the airport. I looked tacky in plaid.
“Here,” a stern looking woman said, standing. “You can sit right here beside me.” She was dressed in a beautiful lavender suit with a matching hat. A deaconess, or maybe head of the ladies’ auxiliary. At any rate, she appointed herself Keeper Of The Strange White Woman.
I slipped into the end seat of her pew.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “I’m here to talk to Rev. McCarthy after the service. A personal counseling issue.”
The matron gave me a look that wanted to roast my marshmallow over a slow fire. “Why don’t you tell me about your problem? I’m his mother-in-law.”
“I see we have a visitor!” Rev. McCarthy boomed from the altar. He looked petrified. In terms of being dogged by unwanted visitors, he’d had a bad week already. “Welcome, sister! Why don’t you introduce yourself?”
I stood. “Grace Bagshaw Vance, Reverend. A friend of Boone Noleene’s. He sends his kindest regards. I look forward to speaking with you regarding the road to spiritual enlightenment. I’m sure you can give me all the directions I need, just as you did for Mr. Noleene.”
I sat down.
The former Titter McCarthy, king of the New Orleans chop-shop thieves, now a highly respected citizen with a mother-in-law who looked capable of opening a can of heavenly whup-ass on him if she ever learned the truth, wiped a silk handkerchief across his forehead with a shaky hand. A whiff of Hell fire had heated his air. “The Lord helps those who help themselves, Miz Vance. I look forward to speakin’ with you. I’ll be glad to point you along the path you seek and send you on your way as quick as can be.”
I nodded and raised a hand high, palm out, in gospel affirmation. “Bless your heart.”
Armand had never been so mad at me in his life.
“I can’t believe you were stupid enough to come here and get yourself trapped!” he yelled, just about in tears. “Didn’t I teach you anything when we were kids? I sweated and slaved to teach you how to survive, but you still come here and do something too damned ignorant for words.” He grabbed me in a bear hug, and I hugged him
back, but then he shoved me away, and then he slammed a fist into the plaster wall of the tiny, hot, dim room we now shared. “If we get out of here alive I’ll kick Titter’s ass for giving you the message about me!”
“Titter’s got Jesus on his side. You best leave him alone and hope he’s prayin’ for us right now.”
Armand staggered and frowned at me. He was still wearing the cheap black slacks and white shirt he’d been given when he walked out of Angola on parole, but his pants were dusty and his shirt bore a big blood stain to match a nasty scrape on his cheekbone, courtesy of our hosts. He was gaunt and had a dark, four-day beard. “Jesus? Titter?” He muttered a long stream of bad things in French then finished up with “What the hell are you talkin’ about, Bro?”
I held out both hands. “You think I’d just walk away and let you get killed over a lousy couple million in gambling money?”
“If these assholes hadn’t caught me before I got on a plane, I’d be somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico right now writin’ you a postcard that said, ‘Dear Boone: You don’t have to worry about me, anymore. Don’t even try to find me, because I’ll make sure you never do. Go and have yourself a nice life.”
“You were gonna disappear and not tell me where?”
“I said I planned to send you a postcard.”
Armand wobbled on his feet, looking like hell. But when I tried to put an arm around him he shoved me away. “Little brother, I’m the reason you spent ten years in prison. You think I can ever forgive myself for that? No way. But I can make sure I don’t ruin the rest of your life. So I was goin’ to high-tail it to some Caribbean island and vanish, okay? Do a little gambling, work the docks, hire on as a fisherman, whatever it took to earn a living. As long as you couldn’t find me and try to rehabilitate me. I’m not cut out to be a movie star’s babysitter, Bro. I just didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t want to bust your bubble.”
“No bubble left to bust,” I said grimly.
He grabbed me in another hug. We held onto each other like girls, then slapped each other on the back a lot, then wiped our faces and restored some dignity. We had plenty of time to chit-chat. The four ball-wagging, gun-waving blowhards who’d shoved me into the makeshift cell had left us there to stew in our own bad luck. They were none to happy to hear I only brought half-a-million collars in my big leather duffel. They were even less happy when I told ‘em they wouldn’t get the rest of their two million unless they drove me and Armand to New Orleans in the morning and met my ‘associate’ on a corner in the French Quarter.
So suddenly, the issue became a whole ‘nother issue. “Our boss wants the money your brother stashed in the Caribbean,” they kept sayin’. ‘Not this money. That money.”
Their point was so damned stupid I tried to ignore it. Like a good politician, I decided to just stay on point.
“All you guys have to do is take me and my brother to the French Quarter and we’ll all stand on the sidewalk like nice tourists tomorrow mornin’ until my associate drives up. Then we’ll stroll to the nearest hotel room, go through a couple of big suitcases he’ll bring along, and you can count the rest of your money. Then we’ll wave goodbye as you tote the money out the door. That’s just smart business, okay? No bullshit, no hidden crap. But you’ll get the rest of your boss’s money in a public place, where my brother and I can walk out without little pointy bullets stuck in the back parts of our brains.”
“You don’t understand, asshole. We want your brother’s money,” they kept sayin’.
“Money’s money, so what difference does it make?” They looked none too bright, but even morons should be able to understand a simple pay-off.
They didn’t.
So now Armand and I had time to visit while our hosts thought things through using fewer IQ points amongst the four of them than Forrest Gump, total.
Armand aimed a fist at the wall, again. “If it weren’t for me—”
“I wouldn’t have grown up with a brother who tried his best to keep me safe when nobody else gave a damn.” I grabbed his fist and wrestled him until he calmed down. “Now I’m here to take care of you, and there’s nothing you can do about it, so get used to the idea.”
“I tried to just disappear—”
“Yeah, well, you should’ve just told me you had a debt to pay off. Where’d you stash this two million you skimmed off the top of your gambling enterprises for the Dixie mob?”
“Nowhere. It doesn’t exist.”
I stared at him. “You didn’t steal the money?”
“Hell, yes, I stole it. But I didn’t squirrel it away in a Caribbean bank. I gave it away. To charity.”
“Armand—”
“I’m serious. I considered that two million to be my financial penance for a life of crime. I sent it to good causes. Churches, shelters, orphanages, save-the-whales—”
“You sent stolen mob money to the whales?”
“Sure. I like whales.”
“All right. So there’s no stash of cash. Did you tell these goons that?”
“Of course I did. But they don’t believe me. Look, they’re knee breakers, not geniuses. They were told to get the money I hid off-shore. They want that money. They can’t wrap their little brains around any change in plans. But maybe we’ll get lucky once they think it over and talk to the people who sent them.”
As if they were smart enough to be psychic, or even eavesdrop, the Gump Squad pounded on the door then banged it open. The leader stepped in with the other three crowded around him, pointing guns at us.
The head Gump shook a fist at Armand. “All right, Noleene, here’s my final offer, you shit-for-brain Cajun. You sit here tonight with your brother and you decide how much y’all want to live, you shit-for-brains. ‘Cause by six a.m. tomorrow mornin’ either you give me the account number and the password for that Caribbean bank of yours, or I’ll keep the half-a-million your bro brought and I’ll kill both of you shit-for-brains. Deal?”
“Man, I’m tellin’ you, there isn’t any Caribbean bank account.”
“Stop lying, shit-for-brains!”
I stepped in front of Armand. “Look, I’m kinda confused, here. I said you can have the rest of your money in the morning. I’ve got it. Waitin’ in New Orleans. With my associate.”
“No, we want his money.” Head Gump gestured furiously at Armand, again.
“Money is money.”
“We’re pissed now. It’s a matter of pride. We want him to confess.”
“This isn’t an episode of Law and Order. You want the rest of the two million dollars? In cash? Gimme my cell phone back and I’ll make a call and we can settle this tonight. See? I’m willin’ to compromise. All you have to do is meet me halfway. Capice?”
“Capice?” Armand whispered. “When did you become Italian?”
“It works for Stone.”
The head Gump shook his head. “I want the two million from the Caribbean bank. I’ll be damned if this fuckin’ bro of yours is gonna walk outta here and go live on some island with my money to back him. I want that money.” He scowled at Armand. “All you gotta do is call your fuckin’ bank.”
Armand sighed. “I’m tellin’ you, I’m swearin’ on my mother’s name, that I gave the money away to good causes and it’s not in any bank, anywhere. Take my bro’s money, man. Tell your boss it came from the Caribbean. Hell, we can spray some pineapple scent on it, if you want to.”
That idea confused the dummy for a second, and he stood there frowning and thinking. Then he went right back to his simple-minded argument. “You got until 6 a.m. tomorrow morning to call your fuckin’ bank. Or else we kill ya. We take the money your bro bought as a payment, and the boss writes off his losses, and then we fuckin’ blow your brains out and use you for gator bait. End of story. End of deal. End of fuckin’ Noleenes.”
He and the other Gumps backed out of the room and slammed the door.
Armand and I sat down side-by-side along a dusty wall with peeling paint, our knees drawn up
and our arms propped on them. Armand looked at me wearily. “Who’s this ‘associate’ you told them about. Anybody I know? Think he’ll come through?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“So tell me about him.”
I sat there a minute, thinking. There was no easy way to drop a bombshell like Jack Roarke. I waded in slowly. “He’s somebody who cares about us. Somebody we haven’t seen in a long time. Somebody we never thought we’d see again. Somebody who’s been keepin’ track of us from a distance but didn’t want to tell us he cared. He figured either we didn’t need him or might hate him for being away so long. He’s somebody you remember but I never got a chance to know. He wasn’t much more than twenty when he did hard time up north for robbery.
“Up there, he had a baby son and a wife. The wife divorced him and never told the son his papa ended up in prison. The son thought his papa had just disappeared and died somewhere. Then, some years later, the papa—the robber con—tried to go straight and got married again—in, hmmm, another part of the country, under a new name—and he did fine for a few years, respectable citizen and all, and he had himself another couple of sons with the second wife. But he just couldn’t keep his old ways behind him, so he knocked over a few banks, and eventually he got caught. Sentenced to fifteen years.
“He begged his wife never to tell his boys he was in the slammer, and she gave him her word. So he had two sons down South who didn’t know what became of him—and one up in New Jersey. By the time he got of prison, his second wife was dead and her two boys were wild-eyed teenagers, out on their own. He tried but he couldn’t even find ‘em. His older son, up north, was grown and in the army. That son seemed to be doing fine, do the ex-con stayed away from him. But the con cursed himself for losing two good women and three sons, and he vowed to make something of himself and find a way to make it all up to his sons, one day. He’s spent the twenty years since then working toward that goal.”