The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: The Case of the Candy-Coated Dynamite, Part 2 of 6
The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: The Case of the Candy-Coated Dynamite, Part 2 of 6
Mickey Malloy is neck-deep down the rabbit hole in the search for a killer’s stolen dynamite. Stuck between the mafia and a legendary bandit, he might as well keep digging.
This story is featured in the anthology Bourbon, Bullets, Broads, and Bourbon, which is now available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, or as a DRM-free ePub.
This is Part 2 of The Case of the Candy-Coated Dynamite. If you’re just starting out, check out Part 1 before reading any further.
Content Warnings: Violence, Gun Violence, Mild Swearing, Alcohol Use, Tobacco Use, Creeps
THURSDAY AFTERNOON, FEBRUARY 19, 1942
ALINA'S FINE DINING
FRENCH QUARTER, NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA
“Patrick India?” the young punk chuckled. “P.I.? You jerking me around, guy?”
“Hey, nobody's paying you to be a wiseacre,” Mick said.
“Nobody's paying me a red cent,” the kid said, suddenly serious. “Whoever you're with, they got my pop over a barrel. He don't appreciate that, and neither do I.”
“And who'd your pop?” Mick asked. The kid puffed up.
“Silvestro Carollo,” he answered.
Mick knew the name. Just like Losa got a cut from every betting parlor, dope-runner, and cathouse on either of Florida's coasts, Silver Dollar Sam Carollo ran New Orleans. The guy was a maniac. They say he broke a Capone's fingers when he showed up looking for hooch, and had promised to do even worse to the Montuosos. Cops, street gangs, judges, all of 'em belonged to the New Orleans organization. If there was anywhere to look for a pallet of TNT, Carollo and his whelp would know where to start.
Mick leaned back in his chair and sized the kid up. He couldn't be more than eighteen or nineteen, but he had the my-dad-is-the-boss swagger. He had a little scruff on his lip masquerading as a mustache, but his hair, which so many other mafiosos wore in a perfectly moussed sculpt, had been buzzed down to his scalp.
“So that makes you...” Mick offered.
“Anthony Carollo,” the kid answered, declining to extend a hand. Fair enough, Mick wouldn't have wanted to shake it anyway. “Folks around here call me Little Tone. Pretty soon though, everybody'll known me as P-F-C Carollo, United States Army.”
“So what's where the fresh shearing comes from,” Mick said.
“Dames get pretty sweet on a hero, buddy,” Tone replied. “I don't got all day. My pop told me to get you whatever you need. So what is it? A fix, a loan, a broad?”
“Loans is what got me here, kid,” Mick sighed. “I need information.”
“You tell me what you're looking for, I tell you what we can do about it.”
Mick leaned back and studied his drink. A double bourbon, neat. Carollo had gone the other direction, some luminescent cocktail the color of Christmas with more cherries than a pineapple upside-down cake. Their food orders were just as disparate. Mick didn't trust anything so dissonant as Italian Creole and had opted for a burger, while Tone was tucking a napkin into his collar in anticipation of digging into a bowl of pasta and shellfish.
“I'm looking for a crew. Burglars.” Mick was careful with his words.
“Sure, I can get you some guys. Cat-style or smashers and grabbers? I got a couple stick-up men looking for gigs, too. How are you set for drivers?”
“Not for me,” Mick said. “They hit somebody I know and I tracked 'em here, then the trail went cold.”
“Well, ain't a crew that can come to this town without me hearing about it,” Tone said.
“These guys may not travel in your circles,” Mick said. “I'm looking for a Negro.”
“That sounds like the start to a bad joke,” Tone replied. He lined up his fork and knife in front of him just so.
“You haven't heard the funny part yet.” Mickey pulled a folded slip of paper from his jacket pocket. He was so damn hot that his perspiration had ironed its crease sharp. He flattened it out on the table and slid it to Tone. The kid took one look at what Mickey had scrawled on it and nearly spit.
“You think you're following Quijano Corbeau?”
“Quiet,” Mick hissed. He looked around, but no one had perked up at the mention of that name. It made sense: Corbeau was only still a folk hero to people a few hues darker than those allowed to work or eat at Alina's. To everyone else, the name was mud. Confident that no one was about to run out and tell Corbeau he had a P.I. on his tail, Mick sighed, then said:
“I think so.”
“The guy's dead. You read?” Tone said, smirking. “He got shot in the face and fell overboard. And all his gang worth a damn got killed with him, or is still locked up. My pops told me all about this guy. Thought he was Robin Hood, the King of the Mississippi. Even if he was alive, this is our town now. He pulls any kind of stunts, my dad would kill him on the spot.”
Mick did read. He knew all about the river pirate and his last job, now infamously known as the Emerald Peacock Massacre.
“So you know all about him?” Mick asked.
“For some, Corbeau's a legend around here. Bumping off riverboats, escaping into the bayou. Even his crew is famous: Banjo Tony, the Gator Bandit, Arsonist Al Zano, the Black Creole, Skinny Old Bear, and the rest. Corbeau even ran with a few broads, and folks say they were as mean as he was. You go into the right bars in the wrong end of town, you'll still see their pictures on the wall. Folks 'round here got long memories.”
“Yeah, they do. Especially for legends. I think that if Quijano Corbeau survived that Pinkerton lead in his face, he'd have enough friends left in New Orleans to lay low,” Mick told him.
“For what, ten years?” Tone asked. “Somebody would've blabbed.”
“Not ten years. I don't know where he was before, but I tracked his truck here. He arrived last Saturday. Then I lost him.”
“How do you know it's him?”
“Eyewitnesses saw a Black man, a Mexican, an Indian, two white men, one with a limp, and a curvy blonde rip off a warehouse and take off on a speed boat.”
“Plenty of Negros out there looking for a score,” Tone muttered.
“They loaded it into a flatbed truck and took off, heading this direction. I checked every filling station along the way, confirming every stop for gas and burgers. Their last stop was on the edge of town, where they abandoned the truck but not the cargo. It would've been far too much to move themselves. Which means they had local help.”
“Well we haven't seen any influx of heaters, dope, booze, or hemp come through. Our guys would've heard about that.”
“It ain't those. I don't think he wants to sell it. I think he wants to use it.”
“Well forgive me if I'm not especially worried about some ghost moving invisible cargo that ain't for sale into my backyard.”
“This is no ghost. It's him.”
“Bullshit, 'Pat.' You ain't showed me shit.”
“How about this?” Malloy grunted. He pulled another piece of paper out of his coat and presented it to the junior mafioso. It was a car registration. “The getaway truck was bought at auction in Miami last month. Look at the name our guy wrote on the registration.”
Tone took a peek and then groaned.
“Looks like you two have the same sense of humor, 'Pat.'”
“First of all, 'Patrick India' is a great name. Hilarious. Clever. Second, 'M. Earl Peacock' is too showy. Corbeau wants to get caught. Third, 'Patrick India' is my real name,” Mick said.
“Yeah, sure,” Tone said.
“It's too many coincidences,” Mick told him. Tone rolled his eyes and took a sip of his cocktail.
“Well, my pops says I'm here to indulge you, so that is what I will do. What do you need, Mister India?”
Mick was about the answer when the food arrived.
“Thanks, doll,” Tone said to the waitress with a wink. “This looks, ah, delizioso. They say an army moves on its stomach.”
“Always happy to support our troops,” the blonde replied, her smile beaming but artificial. She spun on her heel with military precision and double-timed it to her next table before Little Tone could say any more.
“Ah, she's a prude anyway,” Tone muttered. He scooped a forkful of noodles and jammed into into his mouth, then winced and pulled it away, wheezing: “Hot, hot.”
Mickey smirked. His burger looked thick, greasy, and perfect. It was the best slab of beef he'd seen in months. For whatever reason, the go-to spot for the New Orleans mob wasn't affected by war rationing like most restaurants were. Funny how that worked. Mick's gut growled, eager to get after his meal, but he needed to take care of business first.
“So you haven't heard of anything out of the ordinary showing up in town, at all?” Mick asked again. He didn't want to be the one to put it out on the street that a solid ton of TNT was loose in the wild, so he continued to dance around the subject.
“Like what?”
“Can you keep a secret?” Mick asked.
“That's not why I'm here.”
“That's what I figured. So nothing that stands out?”
“Nothing weirder than normal,” Tone said around a mouthful of saucy pasta. “My pop's made sure that everything would be quiet this week, so anything did happen to come up, it would be a big deal.”
“Why's that?”
Tone leaned his head back and choked down his half-chewed mouthful, wiped the sauce off the corner of his mouth with his sleeve, then answered:
“The governor paid him to. Well, former governor. They're having a fundraiser this weekend. Big-wigs from Washington and all over. Pop's got the city on lockdown. No strikes, no robberies. The muggers are on warning and the call-girls are washed up and ready to pick up the phone.”
“What kind of fundraiser?” Mick asked, but Tone had already stuffed his face again. Mick sighed and wondered aloud to the puff-cheeked kid: “Anything a notorious river pirate might be interested in?”
Little Tone Carollo's eyes went wide and his mouth dropped open, sending a half-chewed clump of spaghetti and shrimp splashing back onto his plate.
“Actually...”
SATURDAY AFTERNOON, FEBRUARY 21, 1942
THE ELYSIAN EMPRESS RIVERBOAT CASINO
LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN, NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA
Little Tone had helped Mick secure his invitation to the First Annual Governor's Games on the Ponchartrain that very afternoon. A girl Tone knew was entertaining a visiting lobbyist, and one kick on the motel door and the flash of a camera bulb was all it took for the sobbing little man to give up his ticket. Tone had left Mick at the Hôtel Aigle et Lapin after that, presumably to tell his father that a dead man was in town and planning to knock over the biggest gambling event the city had hosted in decades.
Two days later, done up in a suit provided by Little Tone's recommended tailor, Mick was aboard the Elysian Empress, sweating his tail off and trying not piddle all of Losa's remaining petty cash away on the blackjack tables.
Because Mick knew who he was looking for, it didn't take him long to pick out the King of the Mississippi. Quijano Corbeau was doing his best to mix drinks and keep his head down. He'd grown a beard since his days raiding paddle wheelers, likely to cover up the Pinkerton buckshot that had chewed up his face during his last job. His hair was trimmed and slicked back, stylish and suave compared to his river days. This was probably the most clean-cut he'd been since grade school. A sprinkling of gray touched his temples that wasn't in any of the old mug shots. Mickey posted up at the opposite bar, on the port side of the gambling deck. He had a good view of Corbeau, but wasn't so close that he'd draw attention.
Corbeau moved from bourbon to rum to scotch with a hitch in his step. Not the kind from a bum leg, but the kind a man gets when he's got a couple pounds of awkward gunmetal jammed down his trousers.
“Not a guh-guh-gambler, sir?” Mick's bartender asked. He spun in his stool and came face-to-face with another mugshot he'd seen lined up next to Corbeau's in the paper. Al Zano grinned wide. He had six ounces of pomade in his hair, sculpting it into a formation that concealed the telltale scars worked into his scalp. Most folks wouldn't see it, but Mick knew to look. Between his hair and his bartender's outfit, with his little bowtie and suspenders, nobody'd expect this grinning, stuttering cocktail slinger to be a legendary outlaw and arsonist. Mick collected himself and answered:
“I've placed more bets than I can afford.”
He hoped his pause would come off as drunk rather than dumbstruck.
“Hey, I huh-huh-hear ya, pal,” Zano said. He plunked an empty tumbler on the bar, dropped a couple ice cubes in, and splashed bourbon over them. He slid it over and snatched Mick's empty away. “On the ha-ha-house. Sounds like you muh-muh-might need it.”
“Hey, I appreciate it, buddy,” Mick said. He took the freshly filled tumbler and turned around and leaned against the bar, his back to Zano. He wasn't so sure he could trust Zano not to plant a zesting knife in his neck, but he wanted a chance to examine his drink. He swirled it and couldn't spot any powders, and he sniffed it for the telltale cloying bite of ether. Satisfied, he took a long gulp and asked the bar tender over his shoulder:
“How long you been working this gig?”
“Just ah-ah-ah few weeks,” Zano answered. He took up a crystal champagne glass and began polishing water spots off of it with a white cloth. “This is muh-muh-my first big uh-uh-event, though.”
“Ever seen anything like it?” Mick asked, watching the drunken hogs wallow in their pen, plush as it may be. He felt like he was on safari, observing the interactions of warthogs and hyenas at a half-dry watering hole. Zano leaned over the bar and settled onto his elbows.
“I ain't new to ruh-ruh-riverboats, sir,” Zano said. “Folks like to cuh-cuh-cut loose a bit on the water.”
“You worked on other Gomorrahs?” Mick asked him. They stayed silent for a moment, watching one man, who was by day a judge known for Old Testament-style sentencing, paw at a waitress' derriere.
“A few times,” Zano replied. “Nuh-nuh-never one chained to the dock before.”
“I'm relieved this old girl can't run, I'd hate to see how rowdy these folks'd get if their wives were any further away than a long stroll down a narrow pier,” Mick chuckled.
“You'd be suh-suh-surprised, she's she might could hah-hah-have some life in her yet, tell you what,” Zano said. He thumped the bar with his fist, a long single piece of varnished and mirror-polished mahogany, with gleaming brass fittings. The sound was solid. He looked up, marveling at the Empress' internal architecture. Soaring beams criss-crossed overhead, every element exuding craftsmanship and pride. Even the screws were brass, with every exposed head turned just so, showing off exactly vertical slots. The electrical fixtures and chandeliers were no less impressive, and the only time he'd ever seen anything close to this fancy was when he was on a case, tailing businessmen and mistresses through exclusive restaurants and five-star hotels.
“Yeah, they don't make 'em like this anymore,” Mick observed.
Zano smirked. He was watching the way the afternoon light played through the faceted windows. None of the degenerates dropping dice and sweating through cards would ever notice, but the Elysian Empress was a work of art.
“She's a damn die-die-dinosaur. The folks what commissioned her wanted her to run foe-foe-forever. She lasted luh-luh-longer than they did. They ran out of cash in the last few months of cuh-cuh-construction. The Depression got 'em. Then the bank bought her chee-chee-cheap, finished her quick, and flipped her to the cuh-cuh-casino. She never had a chance to sail.”
“That's a shame,” Mick said.
“You're dah-dah-damn right it is. They may have rushed the finish, but she's got good buh-buh-bones. And she's the last of her kind. End of an era. The folks that kept her up these last years done so with pra-pra-pride, like they was preserving a legacy. She may be a Gomorrah right now, and a sad excuse for a casino, but she's still a hell of a buh-buh-boat. Let her off the leash, she'll run.”
“Huh,” Mick said. Zano was worked up. He wondered if it was a lifetime on the river that had the vein in his neck jumping like a spooked carp or something else. Zano took a deep breath and picked up a lemon. He began carving a twist out of its rind while he cooled off. Mick didn't want to press him. It'd be just his luck if he blew his cover while the closest knife for stabbing him was coated in lemon juice.
Mick filed his suspicions away and slid one of Lobo Losa's finskies across the bar. Zano gave him a nod and pocketed it. The detective lurched to his feet and ambled away, looking to keep a closer eye on the man of the hour.
Quijano Corbeau was still behind his own bar, minting juleps and bittering Manhattans. He was joking with a patron, a sweaty older man whose trousers had slipped further than his toupee. Not ten years back, Corbeau would've been more commonly seen with a buck knife at such a man's neck, but times change.
The band struck up a new tune with a blaring trumpet, jolting Mick like he'd been caught on an oversized fish hook. He kept most of his drink in its glass as he shot a poisonous glare at the over-loud musicians. On the small stage, bow-tied and porkpie-hatted, flanked by a stand-up bass, a gleaming trumpet, and a rattling drum set, Quijano Corbeau's right-hand-man was perched on a stool, winking at the closest dames and plucking a chrome and ivory banjo.
“This next little ditty is dedicated to all the ladies in here,” Antonio Roberts crooned. He favored his inebriated crowd with another wolfish wink, then launched into a fast New Orleans tune that wasn't fit for mixed company. A few of the waitresses blushed at the lyrics, which their red-nosed patrons took as an invitation to harangue them with more gusto.
Despite his rakish demeanor, Mickey knew that Banjo Tony was as vicious as river pirates came. He'd just as soon garrote a man with his banjo strings as he would pluck a tune on them. He'd been alongside Corbeau since before Corbeau was a headliner. Mick slurped his drink and stared. The man belting out songs in front of senators, wardens, and judges that were nothing but dirty limericks with a bassline was wanted for the murder of two Pinkertons.
Mickey scanned the room. There were only a few folks out there that weren't tapping their toes, and each of them was looking more familiar the longer he looked. The big man glowering in the corner, pepper mill at the ready, was James 'Gator' Wayne. He spotted Jefferson Crépuscule, Corbeau's quick-draw arm-breaker, bussing tables, balancing a tray covered in crystal glasses and trying his best not to reveal the hooked knife in his waistband. Out in the middle of the floor, Wink Alderman kept his telltale facial tick concealed under a dealer's visor that he'd pulled low over his last good eye.
It was the throng of white men that circled the gambling floor like sharks who sparked Mick's interest the most. Each was tall and broad, and they performed their tasks with backs straight as ramrods, whether they were sweeping broken glass or making change for chips. They kept their faces poker straight, but each had darting, wolfish eyes, and none wandered too far from the exits.
At first Mickey pegged the odd phalanx as security, but he nixed that thought as quick as he'd come up with it. If they were Pinkertons or some of Silver Dollar Sam's boys, they would've gone undercover as gamblers. Neither private detectives nor gangsters would deign to do a minute's menial labor just on the off chance there might be trouble, not even as cover. Mick, with his bourbon and petty cash in hand, knew that for a fact.
Secondly, Quijano Corbeau was a smart man. After his last stint on the Mississippi River, he'd know how to spot a trap. He'd've gone over the side already if these boys weren't on his side. The Emerald Peacock had nearly cost him his life. He wouldn't risk it happening again. He couldn't.
The yellow rags that had piped Corbeau's name into every American household had turned on him even faster after Emerald Peacock stories started selling more copies than his old exploits. They'd made him a household hero, Old Man River's Robin Hood, and undone it all with a few typewriter strokes. They called it a Massacre, capital letters and all.
The public came to know him as a craven butcher who opened fire on women without provocation. The Peacock had been a sting to stop the brash pirate, the papers reported, and when cornered, Corbeau had snapped. Innocent people, brave security guards, and his own crew had died due to his cowardice and villainy.
While he trudged through all he knew about Captain Corbeau, Mick suddenly found himself staring across the gambling floor at an empty bar. He lurched to his feet so abruptly that his drink splashed onto the thick carpet. He twisted around, trying to play drunk so hard for anyone watching that he nearly tripped for real.
He caught sight of the back of Corbeau's scarlet vest disappearing down a long hallway, heading aft. One slurp finished his drink, and he was off, adjusting his waistband like he was just another amateur drunk who hadn't bothered to scout the restrooms before starting his bender.
Mick's theatrics set him back a few seconds, and Corbeau was out of sight by the time he reached the hallway. One of the bulky busboys looked up from gathering dirty glasses and moved to head him off. Mick pretended he didn't see him.
“Can I help you, sir?” the bruiser asked. Mick kept his eyes straight ahead.
“Hey!” the man shouted. He caught up to Mick and grabbed at his elbow. Mick wrenched his arm away.
“What?” Mick snapped, doing his best to unfocus his eyes. The busboy looked like he'd been cut from a magazine: six foot, blonde as a farm girl, with a square jaw and Gulf-blue eyes.
“Hold it,” the man demanded.
“I'll think I'll do that myself,” Mick slurred while pointing at his fly.
“What?” the man stammered, suddenly bashful.
“Clean your ears out, son, I said, 'where's the head?'” Mick grunted.
The hulking busboy took a step back and looked at someone over Mick's shoulder. Whatever confirmation he was looking for was given in less than a second.
“Fourth door on your right, sir,” he answered, indicating the hallway Corbeau had disappeared down. Mick flipped a nickel at him and staggered past, giving his lush act a little extra gusto.
He limped his way to the restroom and shoved the door open before he looked back. His act had worked, and the nosy busboy had turned his attention back to his duties. He let the bathroom door shut and he slunk on until he found a door marked 'No Entry.' It was unlocked and opened up to a staircase that descended so steeply into the ship's guts that it may as well have been a ladder.
One last check for eyes on him, then he slipped inside, taking the stairs down rung-by-rung. The door shut on its own, and darkness enveloped him. The stink of gamblers' whiskey breath and cigar smoke was replaced by the harsh rasp of coal exhaust and burnt oil fumes. Machinery roared so loud that it twisted the blackness around him into a palpable thing, a churning, steaming jet velvet blanket that pulled sweat out of him and weighed down his lungs.
Mick slunk forward between walls of throbbing steam pipes arrayed and woven together like the nest of an insane bird. His eyes adjusted and he found gentle red lights illuminating the darkness between pipes and conduits like bloody foxfire, seeming to dangle in the void, attached to nothing.
He acclimated quickly. He'd been in worse places, darker and louder and redder places. He inched forward, his eyes on the razored shadows in front, behind, around him.
Beneath the heartbeat rhythms of the Empress' churning but impotent engines, close by, Mick could hear low voices speaking in a tone he know all too well: scheming.
Mickey hated scheming, it made him anxious. He hated schemers, and their plans and their unseen tacks and their unknown goals. They reminded him of jugglers.
Mickey'd snuck into the circus once as a kid. Juggling had looked easy enough, but when he tried it himself he broke three dinner plates and earned himself a welt for each. He hadn't been able to keep track of everything, much less catch it, and now he had a pallet full of TNT and a gaggle of wanted killers in the air.
FRIDAY EVENING, JANUARY 8, 1937
THE EMERALD PEACOCK CRUISING CASINO
SIX MILES NORTH OF BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA
Jimmy Pepper had barely started his stick-'em-up speech before he'd been perforated a dozen times over. The barrage was so wild that the piano player behind Jimmy had caught one in the back of the head that sprayed red all over his ivories.
Then everyone opened up. Pinkertons didn't give a damn about who got in the way. Folk didn't hire Pinks to protect people or secure their money, they hired Pinks to kill folks, and kill folks they did. Splinters rained down on Banjo Tony's head as another Pinkerton barrage chewed away at the waist-high wall he was hiding behind.
“It was supposed to be easy,” he grunted at no one in particular.
If not for the gunfight, the Peacock would have been a sweet score, too. It was supposed to be loaded with high rollers and fat cats. Instead, the casino had packed it full of armed Pinks.
Tony and the rest of the Muddy Water Gang could handle guards and cops, but Pinks were another breed altogether. The problem with Pinkertons is that, while they may cash their checks for dollars, they're working for the thrill of it. Shooting at someone, beating the snot out of them, shoving old ladies, they got a kick out of it, it's why the took the job.
The Muddy Water Gang had come upon the lumbering Emerald Peacock at the cusp of midnight, slipping through the water beneath its sparkling lights and mortar-launched fireworks. The usual plan always worked: let the gamblers get nice and tipsy, then to show up and yell in their faces. This was enough to get their winnings and whatever else they thought was worth enough to save their hides.
The Peacock hadn't worked out that way.
“That's not how this works!” the skip, Quijano Corbeau, shouted from the middle of the firefight. Even with blood spraying and bottles exploding left, right, and center, the skip and his swinging braids managed to stand out.
Tony risked a peek over the sill. The skip was hunched behind an overturned roulette table. Medium-Rare Perry was laid out on his back next to him. The waxy steam burns on his face were twisted up in pain. He was clutching his gut, with scarlet leaking between his fingers.
The Pinkertons had a bead on the skip, sending geysers of felt and oak flying around his head. The unsuspecting gamblers and staff were stampeding to the Peacock's port side, terrified that they'd end up like the piano player. One Pinkerton let loose with a Thompson, stitching his way through the crowd to find the one Muddy Water target among them, Mama Niisa, an old-school stick-up gal. Most of their bullets found the surging crowd, but a couple drilled Mama right through the legs. She dropped on the spot, crumpling onto a pile of waiters' and gamblers' bodies. She reached for a snubnose in her boot only for the offending Pink to nearly saw her in half with another burst.
They had to go.
“Skip!” Tony shouted.
Corbeau looked up just as a shotgun blast holed his flipped table near the middle. The skip grunted and fell to the carpeted deck, clutching his face with both hands as red leaked between his fingers.
“No!” Polecat yelled. He leaped over bleeding bodies and rushed towards the skip.
“Wait!” Tony cried, but it was a too late. The Pinks greeted Polecat with a wall of buckshot, clotheslining him at full speed. His legs kicked out from under him and he landed heavy on his back. He coughed blood and squirmed where he lay.
“Was that Darren Hammler?” one Pink shouted from behind cover.
“Hell yeah, two hundred fifty smackers right there!” another answered.
“Hell yeah!”
Near the bow of the boat, the gunfight continued. Skinny Old Bear and Jefferson Crépuscule were pinned behind the bar, while Penny Vergane was tending to Bradley Alderman's bleeding face. Smokey Doris and Chucky Two-Fingers were already dead, and Tony hadn't seen Mangler Hobbes or Gator since the shooting had started. There was a smear of crimson across a felt table near the last place Tony'd seen Cajun Philippe, and two Pinks were dragging off Haitian Phillipe, though they'd left his arm where it had landed.
“You sons of bitches!” the skip yelled. He rolled onto his side and, still with one hand clamping his shredded face shut, fired his pistol through the hole the shotgun had left in the roulette table.
“Corbeau's still kicking!” one Pink yelled as another got dropped.
Tony spat, then inched to his feet, keeping his head below the low wall. He crept around, trying to get an angle to cover the skip. The Pinks saw him on the move.
“Tony Roberts, four hundred clams!” one shouted. Their bullets converged on him, forcing him to duck lower behind the wall as he scrambled. Tony lifted his shotgun over his head and let both barrels fly. He wasn't sure if he'd hit anyone, but it felt good to fight back even a little. Still, their eyes were on Corbeau.
“Big money over here!” Tony shouted at the Pinks.
He plucked the two spent shells out of his shotgun and slid in fresh ones, counted to three, and popped up long enough to get a bead on one mustachioed, trigger-happy goon who seemed to be having far too good a time unloading a drum of .45's into Polecat's still body. Tony's shot flew true and caught the maniac in the shoulder, sending him spinning to the carpeted deck, spewing crimson.
His other shell blew out the dangling green and gold beads of the massive chandelier, showering the whole gambling deck down with slivers and sparks that no one could ignore. He dropped and slithered behind a faux-granite sculpture's heavy base before every Pink Thompson, peppergun, and pistol aboard roared his way, pelting him with glass, felt, and plaster-coated pine. He tucked into a tight little ball like a pillbug and hoped that the barrage would wash over him.
“Go!” Tony roared to the skip.
Corbeau got the idea. He vaulted out of cover and leaped over bodies and furniture like an arrowed mule deer. He didn't look back as he vaulted over the rail and splashed down in the brown Mississippi.
“That's our meal ticket running off!” a Pinkerton yelled. He stood up to chase the skip only to catch one of Penny Vergane's slugs in his chest. She whooped and turned her gun on another button man, only for it to click empty. She dropped the pistol and went for her knife, but the Pink who'd been in her sights still had some heat in his chamber. Three blasts sent her flopping to the deck, boneless as a catfish fillet.
“Damn,” Tony grunted.
“Burn them all!” Alderman shouted. His face was twisted up in pain, and the blood pouring out of his eye had stained his blue shirt crimson.
“Yuh-yuh-yuh!” Al Zano called back, shouting gibberish as red pumped out of a wound on the side of his head. Whatever he was saying, the firebug needed no excuse to light the place up. A thump and a screech shook the Peacock's bow, and a mortar shell firework lanced into the knot of Pinkertons and burst in a searing flash. Whatever windows and mirrors had survived the firefight gave way with the blast.
Stars of every color danced behind Tony's eyelids. While the Pinks burned and screamed and the Peacock's lush carpets and ostentatious drapes lapped up the fire like thirsty cats, he ran. He bolted along the guard rail and grabbed Alderman by his suspenders. He didn't have time to worry on the other man's wounds, he just pulled with all his might and heaved him overboard.
The Mississippi swallowed Tony whole, and it was cold. Folks forget that the river starts high in the mountains, with the snow and ice. The temperature shocked Alderman enough that he went wild and started thrashing, and Tony had to slosh on over and calm him down before he slipped under.
There was no sign of the skip in the brown water, and Tony didn't care: Alderman was enough to deal with. A deep, sucking current tugged at his boots, and Tony swam as hard as he could. He couldn't see Corbeau, he couldn't see the shore, he could barely see his own hands, or Alderman.
Behind him, the lights adorning the Emerald Peacock blinked once then went dark, raising cries from the huddled passengers crowded onto the port side of the ship. The glow of spreading flames grew until it was brighter than the moon. The panic rose another octave aboard the Peacock as she floundered and crackled.
Banjo Tony put it behind him and swam, dragging Alderman and trailing red until he couldn't hear the screams anymore.
Like what you read? Buy me a beer or @ me about it.
Copyright © 2022 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.
Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Tyrelle Smith.