The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: The Case of the Candy-Coated Dynamite, Part 3 of 6
The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: The Case of the Candy-Coated Dynamite, Part 3 of 6
Mickey Malloy thought he found the rat’s nest he was looking for, only to find a possum staring back out at him. Then, we learn that Mick ain’t the only one here whose hand has been forced.
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 3 of The Case of the Candy-Coated Dynamite. If you’re just starting out, check out Part 1 and Part 2 before reading any further.
Content Warnings: Threats Against Children, Mild Swearing, Alcohol Use, Tobacco Use, Nazis
SATURDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 21, 1942
THE ELYSIAN EMPRESS RIVERBOAT CASINO
LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN, NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA
Quijano Corbeau was sweating worse than a sword swallower with lockjaw. The men surrounding him were killers, or at least had the act down pat. Only a couple of his boys were in the knot of schemers with him, and the rest were the square-jawed chumps Mickey'd spotted upstairs, dead-eyed bruisers who either didn't know or didn't care to conceal their automatic pistols properly.
Corbeau rubbed the base of his skull, clearly not used to the close shave he'd gotten. The haircut reminded of his time in the Indian School. After he'd taken his leave from there he'd grown his hair out as long and as wild as it could go. Cutting his braids was more than he'd ever sacrificed of himself for a job, but it was an easy choice if it kept his people breathing.
“We got this whole scow locked down, boss,” Corbeau was saying.
Mick tucked himself tight into the shadows behind a knot of gnarled steam pipes. He could almost feel the groaning pressure pressing outward against the riveted brass. Mick's knees and hands were already starting to lock up. Moving stealthily always did a number on him, and staying still was even worse. He clenched his jaw and waited it out. He knew that in the next few minutes this joint would start screeching like a chicken coop caught on fire.
Corbeau cleared his throat and tapped his wrist watch.
“So where is the head honky?” he asked. “We wait too much longer and the bourbon's going to run out upstairs.”
“Bunch of ah-ah-animals up there. We're fixin' to have a ruh-ruh-riot on our hands,” Al Zano pointed out. The bruisers looked at each other but kept their traps shut.
“Yeah, yeah, the silent treatment,” Corbeau grumbled. “Y'all are real scary and mysterious, we understand.”
“They're not so bad,” a shadow purred. The goons jumped and parted. A slender young woman slipped between them. Her scarlet ringlets bounced with each step. She flashed a smile so brilliant that the brooding thugs shied another half-step backward and watched her set an alligator bag in the middle of the floor. It settled against the deck, heavier than it looked.
The woman stood back up, weightless after dropping off her burden. She flattened the wrinkles out of the front of her waitress uniform, catching one of the goons sneaking a peek at a revealed knee. She grinned again and reached out, pinching the man's cheek hard between her forefinger and thumb.
“They're just big old teddy bears, see?” she said in a mocking, childish voice. The lumbering man's face flushed red. He slapped her hand away with one hand and reached for his piece with the other.
“This one might have some fangs,” she mocked. The other goons grabbed their comrade and held him back, getting him back under control. Mickey watched the woman slide a slender blade back up her sleeve before any of the frazzled thugs noticed.
“Ruby!” Corbeau groaned, more exasperated than mad, “Don't agitate the help.”
Ruby smirked, then turned her attention back to the bag she'd brought. She undid the heavy golden zipper, allowing its overloaded contents to spill onto the floor in a clatter of shifting gunmetal. The pirates and the goons stared at one another across the pile of guns, unsure of who would pick up a piece first.
“Everything is in place, I see,” another man piped up. He'd been hiding in the bruisers' shadow, so well concealed that Mick had completely missed him. He might have been there the whole time, or he might have materialized out of the ether, just like Ruby, there was no way to say.
The hulking, silent men stood aside dutifully, allowing the speaker to step out into the single bulb's light. Mick recoiled like he'd nearly stepped on a particularly poisonous snake or a particularly fragrant turd.
The man was shorter than everyone save Ruby, but he moved like a cat, walking on the balls of his feet. His thinning brown hair was parted with what couldn't have been less than a fistful of pomade, and his glasses caught the bare yellow light and flashed it around the room as he studied the assembled crew. It wasn't the sheathed knife concealed in his waistband or the way the knuckle-draggers shied away from him that set Mickey off, it was his grin. The man had a maniac's smile, so wide that it would sprain a normal person's face after just a few seconds. On this man, it stayed in place, like two fish hooks had drawn the corners of his mouth wide open and pinned them back to his ears.
Mickey Malloy knew that smile. He pulled his black bandanna up from where it had been hiding beneath his collar and tied it over his nose and mouth. The fetid air cleared. The pain pulsing through his knees, ankles, and hands subsided.
The Bastard knew that smile as well. He'd smacked it clean off this Nazi's rotten face before.
“Gentlemen, don't be shy. Take up your arms,” Eizhürst ordered. The Smiling Man was supposed to be in jail. He should have been buried so deep that he could never get out. He should have been chained to a post like a rabid dog.
Eizhürst's men, they had to be fascist spies and killers as well, each selected carbines and shotguns from the pile of weapons. It took a look to Corbeau and a near-invisible shake of his head to keep any of the Muddy Water crew grabbing a gun. Mick knew they were all packing already, though he wasn't sure if that was part of Eizhürst's plan or if Corbeau's people were improvising.
The Bastard felt naked. He didn't have his padded vest, not that it mattered though. At range, it was enough to stop buckshot. In the guts of the Elysian Empress, he'd be hamburgered, vest or not. And he knew that with the Nazi involved, so this wasn't a stick-up. Those guns were meant to go off. If Eizhürst was there, people were supposed to die.
“Max, floor team, take your places around the gambling deck. The cattle up there are likely to stampede when they realize what it happening. Keep them fat and happy,” Eizhürst said. The gleam in his eye matched his smile when he added: “Shoot a couple if you like, Max, if it seems befitting the mood up there.”
That set off a load of whispers among the pirates, whispers that were instantly silenced with one look from Corbeau.
“Yes, sir,” Max said for his men. They hefted their long guns and filed out of the engine room after him.
“William, is the pier team prepared?”
“Yes, sir,” yet another tow-headed linebacker replied, parroting the only words these collaborators seemed to know.
“You know the signal. Hold any Looky-Lous and Nosey-Nancies back however you can. Try not to shoot any too early, but as the police are the audience we want, start blasting if you have the ammo for it.”
“Yes, sir,” William said. The Bastard was near convinced that William's needle was skipping.
“Well, go on then,” Eizhürst urged. William and Max slipped out of the room, leaving the Nazi assassin alone with two of his men and the increasingly uneasy Muddy Water Gang.
“Mister Corbeau,” Eizhürst started, only to see scowls sprout across the faces of the assembled river pirates. He self corrected: “Captain, is you crew ready?”
“Ready as we're going to get, Schmidt,” Corbeau answered.
The Bastard considered the name Corbeau had used. Schmidt. The Muddy Water Gang might not even know they'd be contracted out by krauts. It was common knowledge that jerry wasn't as big a fan of folks that resembled most of the gang members. In the end, that didn't matter. Anyone furthering fascist aims didn't deserve any more or less that a skull fracture courtesy of a piano leg. Motivation didn't matter.
“Are you certain she'll sail?” Eizhürst pressed.
“Sail?” Banjo Tony blurted, almost spitting. Eizhürst looked like he wanted to split the man open on the spot, but Corbeau piped up before the Nazi could pull his knife.
“This boat ain't left this dock in ten years, not once,” Corbeau said. “If she's going to float long enough to ransom off those idiots up there, we've given you your best shot.”
“I'm sorry, I'm always compelled to, what's that phrase, 'cover all the bases.' I am sure your crew did a fantastic job preparing our vessel. I did not mean to slander their ability.”
“She'll fluh-fluh-float,” Al Zano snapped.
“Good! That's all we need, a little buoyancy and a bit of the old paddle-wheel to get her out to the middle of the lake, we collect off those corrupt cretins upstairs, then you're free to never see my smiling face again,” Eizhürst said.
“Sounds like the deal of a lifetime,” Corbeau drawled.
“Your men are ready with the engine?” Eizhürst asked.
“If anyone can get her humming, it’s my guys,” Corbeau confirmed.
“Philip, join them in the boiler room, assist however they need,” Eizhürst ordered.
“Yes, sir,” Philip grunted. He hefted his shotgun and went aft, moving just feet past the Bastard's spider hole.
“Andrew,” the Nazi purred, perking up the last of his square-jawed thugs.
“Yes, sir,” the goon said, a flutter of terror and excitement nearly cracking his voice.
“Go up front, check on our surprise,” Eizhürst ordered.
“Yes, sir.”
Andrew disappeared into the same shadows his comrades had.
Corbeau waited 'til the thug was out of earshot, then pointed out:
“You know, you didn't need actual TNT for this job. Believe me, the threat works just as well on its own, and there ain't any chance of blowing yourself up.”
“Or getting caught stealing it from the Cubans,” Wink muttered.
“Authenticity, Captain Corbeau, is the core characteristic of true art,” Eizhürst purred. He put his arm around the pirate's shoulders, close enough to slit the other man's throat before any of the crew could get a shot off. “Let's go upstairs and make sure our guests are ready for departure.”
The Bastard tucked himself even further back into the snarl of pipes as the small group broke up. They followed Eizhürst out and upward, ready to take the entire Old Boys Club hostage. It would be a hell of a take, if they could pull it off. Hell, if it had been just some shooter named 'Schmidt' working this job, the Bastard might've believed they would pull it off.
It wasn't, though. It was Eizhürst, a Nazi screw that the Bastard had watched casually slaughter a half-dozen men. This wasn't about money. The krauts didn't fight for anything so pure.
This was about their 'surprise.' This was about the dynamite.
Eizhürst didn't run jobs. He wasn't pulling off a heist, he was putting on a spectacle. He was going to murder enough of the southeastern United States' governors, senators, judges, sheriffs, and attorneys general to throw the whole country into a panic. All it take would be one fiery blast, and Eizhürst would make sure every cop, radio man, reporter, and rubbernecker within a hundred miles had time to line up along the shore of Lake Pontchartrain before he pushed the button.
The Bastard moved like a shadow, weightless, incorporeal. He felt hollow without his vest, his steel-toed boots, his guns, his gloves, his club. Without them, he felt like smoke, wafting between the pipes. He let the breeze of the hijackers' departure carry him forward, out of his hiding place. The voices drifted ahead of him, up the steep stairs to the gambling deck. The Bastard trailed in their wake.
A squeal of a long-sealed hatch cranking open stopped the Bastard before he got to the first stair. The strained sound careened off the bulkheads, beckoning the man in black into the deep shadows of the distant bow.
“Andrew,” the Bastard growled, his voice rolling like summer thunder. The surprise.
Golden-yellow light slithered under the door at the top of the stairs. The other side of that door promised free drinks, toe tapping, and fake laughs from real broads, punctuated by potential twelve-gauge execution and a definite, deafening flash, then nothing.
The Bastard eschewed the light. He drifted into darkness.
Andrew's trail was not hard to find. The Nazi-for-hire left every door open, like he was right at home. The Bastard could almost feel the warmth through the deck where Andrew's feet had fallen, like he was a pit viper stalking a desert rat.
The engineering sections opened up and immediately cramped back inward to a packed storage area. Stacked tables loomed over him, forming box canyons through the cavernous rooms. Towers of chafing trays, roulette wheels, and cases of unplayed cards were stuffed floor to ceiling, orderly and dense. It was organized like a library of everything one would need to make their own failed casino. A place for everything, all blanketed with a decade of dust.
Knobby, twisted shadows clawed at the Bastard's feet, pushing him back like a prodded serpent. Raw yellow light was filtering through the choked brambles of a hundred chairs, these piled chaotically, thrown together and shoved carelessly aside to make a large open space in the bow. The shadows twisted again as the light ahead moved. The Bastard could see it now, a small, military-style flashlight. A shadow crossed in front of it, muttering. Andrew.
The Bastard crept forward, tucked behind an outcropping of bar stools. Andrew's light illuminated the open space around him, where the chairs had been pushed aside. The walls on either side curved gently inward, forming the interior of the Elysian Empress' prow. Andrew paced behind the keel, whispering to himself. He crouched and shined his light on a neck-high stack of crates. His beam sparkled against the snarl of copper wires that webbed between the flat boxes.
“Good, real good,” Andrew mumbled. He tugged on one wire, then another, then inched his way around the strapped-down stack. The Bastard could see 'Davie Sugars and Sweets' stenciled on the crates. It was Losa's dynamite, Eizhürst's surprise.
Andrew squatted, clutching his flashlight under his chin and leaning against the inner hull. Some mechanism on the wired pallet of explosives had caught his attention. He was so entranced with whatever it was that he didn't even look up as the Bastard emerged from the gaggle of hoarded furniture.
The soft leather oxfords the Bastard was wearing practically slithered across the bare floor, without the apocalyptic pounding of his usual teeth-kickers. He'd palmed Andrew's skull before the man even knew what has happening and bounced his scalp off the inner hull like a blonde billiard ball. A knee in the chest and a one-two combo rocked Andrew again, and he went still.
The Bastard had knocked out enough folks to know that they either woke up in thirty seconds or never. He could tell this was a rung bell rather than a new halo, so he clamped his hand around Andrew's collar and dragged him over to the chairs. He used a couple bar rags to bind Andrew's hands behind his back and stuffed a two-deck-tall stack of playing cards in his mouth.
Just as the goon was starting to come to, the Bastard kicked the bottom chair out of a stack and sent them all crashing down on top of him. Andrew groaned and fought it, but when the dust cleared he wasn't visible, despite squirming beneath the pile.
“Let's see what we're working with,” the Bastard grunted. He picked up Andrew's shotgun and racked the pump until the last shell plunked against the deck, then slung it over his shoulder.
The Nazi's flashlight revealed that the dynamite was wired up like a switchboard. The Bastard pulled down his bandanna and took a breath of warm, musty air.
Mickey groaned. His knees hurt from even that minimal amount of running, and his shoulder was sore from pummeling Andrew. He took a knee and examined Eizhürst's surprise.
He swore he'd seen carpet looms less confusing. Copper wires ran out of it at every angle, like some Metropolis robot in desperate need of a shearing. A quick eyeballing told him that there were seven flat crates per layer and the stack was seven layers tall, with one loose box ratchet-strapped to the top, just for fun. The whole pile was pressed up tight against inner bow, and every wire seemed to run into a metal mechanism that rested between the explosives and the hull.
“Shit,” Mick grumbled. He'd seen the inside of a landmine, what, thirty years ago? He remembered enough to know he was as likely to set the thing off as he was to defuse it. Still, how hard could it be? There were springs, ignition plungers, pressure plates, more wires than he cared to count. He patted down his pockets in search of a cigarette, considered the implications of lighting a match in a room with two-thousand pounds of wired dynamite, and thought better of it.
“This is out of my league,” he muttered. Andrew groaned weakly from beneath his chairs. Mickey grunted back: “You said it.”
He stood back and dug the switchblade out of his sock and considered where to start cutting. If even one stick stayed wired, he was looking at the whole stack of ‘em going sky high. He grasped a handful of copper in one mitt and prepared to start sawing. Better to neuter the krauts' plan now and deal with them later. He gritted his teeth. This was going to ruin his blade, but not more than an explosion would.
Mickey's hands shook. The wires rattled against one another in his grip. He could feel sweat collecting under his too-tight collar. Mick leaned forward and squinted, peering through the drilled holes the wires emerged from. Sparkling light caught his eye in the darkness, and he dropped everything: flashlight, wires, knife. He stumbled a few paces back and stared. Wherever the light slipped into one of the holes, he could see glass glittering.
It wasn't just impatient sticks of dynamite waiting in there.
He ran down the list of things he thought it could be and wasn't pleased: bottled acid, a vacuum tube sparker, some kind of magnesium flare. Triggers to prevent tampering, one and all. Mickey's hands were shaking like he was caught in a blizzard. He was sure his fingers would snap right off at any moment.
This was not in his wheel house. This wasn't bashing heads and this wasn't sneaking around. He'd have to find someone to do the technical work. Losa had to have someone, it was his dynamite, after all. Silver Dollar Sal wouldn't mind a couple Cubans coming to town if it meant all the fat cats upstairs didn't get turned into high-velocity soup. The alternative was the biggest investigation in American history landing in his back yard.
Yeah, the Cubans, they were Mick's best bet. He could try the Italians, or the Office, but either of them would have a glut of questions afterward then go walking with his TNT. He didn't leave Tampa just to go home deeper in debt than he started.
Besides, if the Office had managed to keep a hold on the Smiling Man in the first place, he wouldn't be in this mess. He couldn't expect them to resolve a damn thing here.
The Elysian Empress was moored to the pier with concrete pilings. That hooked it into city water, electric, and phone. He just had to find an open line and make his call. If he knew Losa, the man would put more than one dog on a scent. There had to be someone the Cubans actually trusted close enough to make a difference.
Mick made up his mind. He had found the goods. That was his job. Lobo Losa could handle the rest. If there were any arguments on the matter, he could take them up with Suero and Losa from the comfort of his own office. Or he could get his full Bastard get-up on and discuss it on his time.
There was probably a phone in the manager's office, and wherever the pit boss hung out. There had to be one on the bridge, too, just for old times' sake. The bridge overlooked the gambling floor, so Mick knew that was exactly where Eizhürst would be, and the last place Mick wanted to go. He'd find something, and he'd find it quick.
Before Mick could move, two quick booms shook the whole boat, almost sending Mickey tripping over his own feet.
The Empress stretched and groaned, suddenly free from her imprisonment.
The deck shifted beneath his feet, rocking from side to side. Lake water cradled it now, and the boat that hadn't floated on its own in years whined as its weight spread across its hull. Mick took a couple steps to catch himself, leaning against the dynamite. He was careful not to get tangled in the wires, but the instant he put any weight against it, the entire stack lurched forward.
The unexpected give shocked him so much that he just let gravity and the leaning floor have its way with him. He landed heavily on his stomach.
Mick heard a wheeze, not quite a cough, rhythmic and continuous. The pile of chairs shifted atop Andrew. The goon was laughing under there.
“Ah, cram it,” Mick grunted at the pinned Nazi. He pushed himself off his gut and onto his knees. The boat shifted beneath him again, and the dynamite lurched again. Mick rolled to the side and laid flat on his back as the stack of explosives stopped hard again with a loud clang. The wires rattled for a long second while Mickey caught his breath.
Mick could hear muffled screams through the ceiling above. Eizhürst was making his play. The armed Nazis and pirates would be taking their places, turning the tables on the fat cats up above. It was only a matter of time before some judge or industrialist talked themselves into a belly full of buckshot. In Mick's experience, the folks that get the mouthiest when they taste an unexpected boot are the ones who are most comfortable standing on someone else's neck.
Andrew started laughing again. He had a good view of Mickey flopped out like a fish from where he was, bound and pinned under dozens of chairs. Mick let out an exasperated sigh and rolled over so he wouldn't have to look at the chortling goon. Some underneath the wired dynamite caught his eye.
“What is that?” Mick muttered to himself. He found his and let its beam crawl across the base of the gigantic bomb. The whole thing was on rollers, built into rails lined up with the ship's keel. It wouldn't take much to send it pitching forward or back. Mick hauled himself back to his feet and went to check the mechanism on the front of the bomb.
Sure enough, it was a series of heavy plates connected to steel springs and electric ignition plungers. The damn dynamite was rigged to pop when the ship put on the brakes. Or if it hit something in its newly mobile state.
“Ah, hell,” Mick said.
Andrew guffawed around his gag.
“Okay, wiseacre,” Mick growled. He hauled himself to his feet, picked the emptied shotgun, then slammed it back down as hard as he could. Andrew yelped and the gun broke into pieces, leaving Mick with its heavy hardwood butt stock in his hand.
“This is more like it,” he grunted. He tested the stock’s weight and balance. “Yeah, this will work.”
The bird's nest of wires, igniters, booby traps, and triggers was beyond him. There were jobs he didn't know how to do, that didn't bother him. What he could do was find someone to handle this kind of work, untangling all that copper spaghetti, and distract the Nazi goons while they did it. That was absolutely a job that he could handle, so long as he had the right tools.
Mick twirled the butt stock around, then, satisfied with its clobbering potential, pulled his bandanna back up over his face.
The Bastard melted back into the blackness. His first priority was to make contact with folks who knew their way around bombs, and the best place to do that was through a phone a deck or two up. The thrumming gambling floor waited, along with the pirates, the Nazis, and the Smiling Man.
MONDAY MORNING, JANUARY 25, 1942
BILLIOT FAMILY PROPERTY
SULPHUR, LOUISIANA
Quijano Corbeau was knee-deep in mud, crawdad traps in each hand, when the littlest Billiot girl, he called her Tadpole, she called him Key, came and found him. Even though she wasn't crying, he knew something was dead wrong to get her out in the water that early. Him and Cyrille caught the mud bugs, and the girls washed and bagged them. The usually girls slept in, and didn't get the bone-deep dirty Corbeau did.
He didn't mind though. It was numbing work, which was more than he deserved. He didn't make much money at it, neither, but it was quiet and none of his friends got shot over it. It wasn't his land, and it wasn't his crawdad business, those belonged to someone else, but his days were his, and his future was his.
Corbeau wiped his hands clean and followed the girl back to the family house. He never came up here 'cept for mandatory Sunday dinner, and Sunday was a long week of trapping away. The cars parking in Cyrille's truck were clean and looked like they'd start up on the first try. He'd have high-tailed it at the sight of them,were it not for the white men they'd brought, and the blades those men held to the girls' and their mother's necks.
Maryanne stood resilient. Her eyes looked ready to cry but had yet to let a tear escape. She was strong for her daughters. Behind those restrained tears, Corbeau saw accusation, and hate. Familiar looks. Tadpole took her place next to her ma and stood stock still as a Bowie knife settled across her throat.
Cyrille was on his knees in front of his own porch, blood leaking from his eyebrow. His family was arrayed before him, a stone-faced goon with a knife for each of them. Corbeau could see the outlines of pistols tucked into each of their waistbands. Cyrille stayed silent, as did Corbeau. Sudden movement would beget sudden movement here, and even an inch of motion would cost them too much.
The man in charge pushed himself up and out of Cyrille's favorite rocking chair with an aging man's groan, then introduced himself as Schmidt. The freakish grin never wavered on his pale, contorted face. He never gave names for his boys. Their knives never wavered from the girls’ necks.
“I have a problem only a ghost can solve,” Schmidt told him.
“I can make you a ghost, if that would help,” Corbeau snapped.
“The help I need is that of a river man who isn't afraid of real work,” the grinning creature hissed. “Your wit can remain behind.”
“That's fine, I don't need wit to cut out your stringy heart,” Corbeau snarled.
The Billiots' eyes went wide all at once. They suddenly understood why these people were there.
“What?” Cyrille sputtered. He surged to his feet, his fury suddenly and wholly aimed at the man he'd taken in, the reason his family was at risk. Before his calloused hands could encircle Corbeau's throat, a gunshot dropped him into the dirt. The girls cried out. Maryanne's jaw tensed and a vein pulsed in her forehead.
“Let him have the little one,” Schmidt said as he holstered his pistol. His man pulled his knife away from Tadpole's neck and she dashed to her Cyrille’s side. She had her dress balled up and was pressing it hard against the gushing wound in her father's thigh. The family business had raised the Billiot girls to deal with injury, and even their youngest had sewn up a laceration or two. Cyrille groaned, but held it together the best he could.
Corbeau was suddenly glad Patrice had volunteered for the war. If Cyrille's hot-headed son had been anywhere close, these animals would've surely plugged him.
“I'm sorry,” Corbeau managed. The look in Cyrille's unswollen eye was damning.
“Hush, hush, hush,” Schmidt whispered. This set off another round of sobs from the restrained girls. Schmidt's smile twisted, becoming even more grotesque. He leaned in, prompting his men to press their knives a little tighter to the girls' necks. “Be quiet, or be quieted.”
The sobbing Billiots managed to get it together. Schmidt turned his attention back to the man he'd come so far to see.
“It would be a shame if a sword such as yours was hammered into a plow,” he said. His eyes were squinted, as if studying the mud-caked man before him.
“What the hell does that mean?” Corbeau demanded.
“It is a poetic way of saying that your skills are wasted hauling crayfish pots,” Schmidt replied. He sat down on the top step of the porch and looked Corbeau in the eye. “I simply want help that I know you can provide. You can come with me or not, you're free to make any decision you see fit.”
The gleaming Bowie knives told Corbeau what kind of choice he was expected to make. People around these parts never had a choice when a white man came asking. It was put up and shut up here. He avoided looking at any of the Billiots when he spoke:
“I would be happy to help.”
He didn't know who Schmidt was, but he knew that if he was going to jail, there'd have been blue lights and flash bulbs, not skinning knives and sobbing women. Whoever had tracked him through bayou and back country didn't want him for anything that looked like justice.
TUESDAY NIGHT, FEBRUARY 3, 1942
DAVIE SUGARS AND SWEETS
DAVIE, FLORIDA
“They're what?” Quijano Corbeau hissed. Florida was a strange locale, but he could not have been hearing Al Zano right, even if he hadn't been stuttering.
“At the rodeo,” Banjo Tony explained before Al could get to stammering again. “Most folks in town are at the rodeo tonight.”
“That's lucky for us, then,” Corbeau said. He kept his voice even. Banjo used to call him 'Skip,' but those days were a long ways back. They had too much past.
“These folks have a rodeo every Tuesday,” Banjo scoffed. “That's why we're here tonight.”
“Keep it down,” Ruby hissed from the doorway. She was keeping watch. Just because most of the people around town were watching a rodeo, with horses and cows, in Florida, didn't mean there weren't eyes around.
“Where is this stuff?” Wink wondered.
“Row six, space three,” Corbeau said. His whisper carried in the silent warehouse. The building was dark, and the only signs of life they'd seen so far was more than a few skulking tomcats. The green-eyed creatures stalked his every move, irreverent to the clandestine work being conducted. Everywhere he looked, there was another one. To be fair, Corbeau hadn't seen so much as a nibble taken out of the corner of a sugar bag.
They wheeled a flatbed cart down a couple rows and took a right, between towers of commercial-sized sugar bags stacked like cement. The pallets in space three looked like any of the others, but Corbeau's blackmailer assured him that what they needed was there.
“You got a blade?” Corbeau asked his guys.
“Ruh-ruh-right here,” Al said as he produced a switchblade from his pocket. Corbeau winced again at the stammer. He hadn't heard it before today, but Al had been afflicted by it since that night on the Peacock. An inch to the right and bullet've missed completely, an inch to the left and Al's melon would've been scooped right out. As it stood, the lead to the brain had made talking a burden to Al. No one blamed Corbeau for it out loud, but they didn't have to. The scars buried under his beard twitched and ached.
Corbeau took the knife and flipped it open. He dragged its edge from the top corner of the piled sugar bags down and across. White crystals spilled all over his hands and feet.
“You're gonna be popular with the flies tonight,” Tony pointed out.
“Thuh-thuh-that is how you get ants,” Al added.
“Yeah, yeah,” Corbeau grunted. He peeled back the cascading bags, revealing them to be nothing but a facade over a core of flat wooden crates. Tony lifted his flashlight to read the words stenciled on their lids.
“'T-N-T.' What in the hell have you dragged us into?” he demanded.
“I don't know,” Corbeau admitted.
“Those cracker sons of bitches kicked in my front door. They put a gun in my wife’s face,” Tony continued.
“I understand,” Corbeau muttered.
“Do you?” Tony snapped.
“Hush, y'all,” Ruby hissed. Corbeau'd wanted to leave her behind to keep working on the Empress, but the blonde had too much of her pa in her, and Polecat'd never shied away from a job.
“Dynamite ain't our kind of job, Corbeau,” Tony whispered. “Dynamite is trouble. Hostage takin' don't need real dynamite is all I'm saying.”
“Ain't up to me,” Corbeau told him. Tony tried to object again, but Corbeau cut him off: “You ain't the only one that got his back up to the wall.”
“You're the only one I seen high-tail it when the water gets choppy,” Tony muttered.
“I tried tellin' you,” Corbeau objected.
“Too late to tell me anything but bullshit,” Tony said.
“Yuh-yuh-you left us swuh-swuh-swingin', Skip,” Al managed to stammer. He wouldn't meet Corbeau's eyes.
“You put our faces on every paper then run off,” Tony snarled.
“I got cut off from you boys, with a hole the size in my neck big enough to plug with a baseball,” Corbeau tried. “And that water got in it and swelled it up so infected that it about closed itself. I got blind with fever. Woke up three weeks later at my uncle's place. No idea how I got there to this day.”
Banjo Tony could not have cared less.
“You know what we did on the east bank while you buzzed off to the other side of the river? We had the privilege of being Pinkerton target practice. They shot Ut and Cincy for fun. On land it weren't much better. Friday got run down by dogs. He tried fighting back and the cops let them tear him to pieces like a stray cat. Jefferson and Old Bear got the shit kicked out of them on their way to getting arrested. They're on chain gangs 'til they die. Me? I ran and ran and never looked back. Left it all behind. I finally get settled, just to have six white boys come knocking at my door with your name in their mouths.”
“This ain't the time,” Ruby said. She took out her little oil can, gave their cart’s axles an extra squirt of grease and tested how they rolled. She whispered to herself: “Quiet as the breeze and smooth as silk.”
“I don't know what devil you owe a debt to, but I ain't like to pay it for you,” Tony concluded.
Corbeau didn't know how to answer. He had no idea how Schmidt had found him, or how he'd tracked down every living, free member of his gang. Even their kin was fair game. Schmidt did not play by the rules, and this ransom scheme was more than he let on, Tony was right about that.
“No choice in the matter,” Corbeau said. On that they could all agree.
The flat crates were heavier than they looked, but he and the boys made short work of stacking the whole pallet of them onto their carts.
Before they could set off with their haul, Corbeau spoke up:
“This ain't what we do, you hear me? We're here as a distraction, nothin' more. They don't need us for this, and if we play it any way but straight, we'd be better off saving these crackers a bullet and shooting ourselves, understand?”
No one said anything, but he knew Schmidt had given them all the same offer he'd had: knives on the necks of people they cared for.
“Follow my lead and we may just walk out the other side of this with our heads, then you don't ever have to lay eyes on my sorry hide again,” Corbeau said.
“Hear, hear,” Banjo muttered. The rest agreed.
Ruby directed them quickly but circuitously out of the huge warehouse, weaving between the guard patrols they'd clocked for the last couple nights. The men who walked this facility were lazy and predictable, dressed in undershirts and slacks rather than uniforms. They weren't guards for a confectionary, that was certain. At the same time, these jokers carried hardware no sugar salesman should have access to, heaters a Pinkerton would've drooled over. All signs pointed to the folks behind Davie Sugars and Sweets being people that'd be best to stay on the good side of. They weren't folks you knock over if on had anything resembling sense or a choice.
The thieves exited the warehouse under a good chunk of a full moon. Corbeau's heart stopped dead in his chest when the carts hit the dock. The warped planks rattled them like an earthquake. It was too late to turn back.
“What took ya'?” Alderman called from the boat. His scar-contorted face and glass eye made Corbeau's own old wounds tingle again. He looked over their ride. It was the last thing he'd ever want to put a pallet of dynamite in, a flat-bottom skiff with an engine that had to have been nicked off a shrimper. It would be louder'n hell, run hot, and be choppy as riding a paint-mixer, and it would have to do.
“Got somethin' better?” Alderman snapped, feeling Corbeau's apprehension. He'd been the one to procure the ride.
“Can it and take this,” Corbeau said. He grunted and handed the first long crate down to him. Al hopped down into the boat and worked alongside Alderman, taking crate after crate from Tony. They'd almost emptied both carts when Ruby spoke up.
“Hoof it, boys,” she said. “The bulls are awake.”
“Ah, hell,” Corbeau grunted. “Al, light 'em up.”
“Cuh-cuh-can do,” Zano said. He unbuckled a canvas bag and hauled out the largest firework rocket Corbeau had ever seen.
“Eyes on the prize,” Ruby urged. The rest of them continued to load the skiff.
Down at the end of the long dock, in the bramble of warehouses and sugar refineries, Corbeau spotted flashlights. A glow lit the far side of the compound that couldn't be any less than the headlights of a half-dozen big trucks. The real security was incoming, and they knew exactly what the trespassers were there for. They wouldn't keep that kind of heat on call for taffy thieves.
“Al!” Corbeau urged and he handed down the last long crate. The lights were getting closer, and these jokers were packing more than enough heat to sink their little boat.
“Don't look ruh-ruh-right at it,” Al advised, then struck a match against the dock. He had propped the rocket up on a pail, aimed back at the warehouses and the oncoming goons. He touched the match to its fuse and watched it chase itself into the rocket's rear end. Al shoved past Corbeau and jumped into the skiff.
The rocket hissed then vomited smoke and shot off of its perch. Stinging sulphur rolled over the little boat, forcing the gang's eyes shut. It arced low, shrieking as it flew. Just as the shouting guards rounded the last warehouse and started for the pier, it burst barely fifty feet over their heads.
The rocket ignited in a flash so bright that the guards fell back, cowering and holding their arms up, over their faces. The entire sky lit up like a summer noon. One of the approaching trucks, driver blind, reeled hard to the right and crashed into a silo. Brown crystals poured across its hood.
Searing stars showered down over the guards, a million arc lamps of sizzling silver and magnesium cascading down to Earth.
“That's our cue!” Ruby shouted. Alderman didn't wait for word from Corbeau, he cranked the engine and started the boat with a diesel roar and rooster tail plume. Corbeau tumbled backward, tripping over Banjo. Old reflexes and a strong grip were the only things that kept him from rolling off the stern.
The stunned guards recovered quickly, faster than any warehouse hack Corbeau'd ever ripped off before. Half went to work putting out the few little fires the rocket had started, while the rest opened up on the retreating boat.
Corbeau heard the familiar little snaps of pistols, the deep barks of shotguns, the bang of rifles, and the stuttering staccato of Thompsons. These boys suddenly didn't seem to much care about recovering their goods. Now all they wanted was to kill the folks who'd steal from them, whether it be by setting off an ungodly amount of TNT with stray lead or just plugging the fools who'd pinched it.
After a few seconds of heavy revving on the old motor they were out of range.
“Now what?” Banjo shouted over the roaring wind and diesel. Corbeau shoved his wild hair and beard aside and shouted back:
“Now we all get haircuts.”
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Copyright © 2022 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.
Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Tyrelle Smith.