CHAPTER 24

OCCASIONALLY SMACKING her lips over her broken yellow teeth, Francine led Carson and Michael through the restaurant, across a busy kitchen, into a storeroom, and up a set of steep stairs.

At the top were a deep landing and a blue door. Francine pressed a bell push beside the door, but there was no audible ring.

“Don’t give it away for free,” Francine advised Michael. “Lots of ladies would be happy to keep you in style.”

She glanced at Carson and snorted with disapproval.

“And stay away from this one,” Francine told Michael. “She’ll freeze your cojones off as sure as if you dipped them in liquid nitrogen.”

Then she left them on the landing and started unsteadily down the stairs.

“You could push her,” he told Carson, “but it would be wrong.”

“Actually,” Carson said, “if Lulana were here, even she’d agree, Jesus would be all right with it.”

The blue door was opened by a Star Wars kind of guy: as squat as R2-D2, as bald as Yoda, and as ugly as Jabba the Hutt.

“You been truly blood-sworn by Aubrey,” he said, “so I ain’t goin’ to take away dem kill-boys you carryin’ under your left arms, nor neither dat snub-nose you got snuggled on a belt clip just above your ass, missy.”

“And good afternoon to you, too,” Michael said.

“You follow me like baby ducks their mama, ’cause you make the wrongest move, you be six ways dead.”

The room beyond the blue door was furnished with only a pair of straight-backed chairs.

A shaved gorilla in black pants, suspenders, a white chambray shirt, and a porkpie hat sat in one of the chairs. On the floor next to his chair was a tented paperback—a Harry Potter novel—that he had evidently set aside when Francine had pressed the bell push.

Across his thighs lay a semi-auto 12-gauge, on which both his hands rested in the business position. He wasn’t aiming the shotgun at them, but he would be able to blow their guts out before their pistols cleared their holsters, and blast off their faces as an afterthought even before their bodies hit the floor.

Baby-duck walking, Carson and Michael obediently followed their squat leader through another door into a room with a cracked yellow linoleum floor, blue beadboard wainscoting, gray walls, and two poker tables.

Around the nearest table sat three men, one woman, and an Asian transvestite.

This sounded like the opening to a pretty good joke, but Michael couldn’t think of a punch line.

Two of the players were drinking Coke, two had cans of Dr Pepper, and at the transvestite’s place stood a cordial glass and a bottle of anisette.

None of the poker players seemed to have the slightest interest in Carson and Michael. Neither the woman nor the transvestite winked at him.

In the middle of the table were stacks of poker chips. If the greens were fifties and the blacks were hundreds, there was perhaps eighty thousand dollars riding on this hand.

Another shaved gorilla stood by a window. He carried his piece in a paddle holster at his hip, and he kept his hand on it as Carson and Michael passed through his duty station.

A third door led to a shabby conference room that smelled like lung cancer. Twelve chairs stood around a scarred table on which were fourteen ashtrays.

At the head of the table sat a man with a merry face, lively blue eyes, and a mustache. His Justin Wilson hat rested on the tops of his jug-handle ears.

He rose as they approached, revealing that he wore his pants above his waistline, between his navel and his breasts.

Their mama duck said, “Mr. Godot, though they smells like da worst kind of righteous, these here be da ones what were vouched by Aubrey, so don’t bust my stones if’n you got to gaff ’em like catfish ’fore dis be finished.”

To the right of the man with jug ears and slightly behind him stood Big Foot in a seersucker suit. He made the previous gorillas look like mere chimps.

Big Foot looked as if he would not only kill them but eat them at the smallest provocation.

Godot, on the other hand, was hospitable. He held out his right hand and said, “Any friend to Aubrey, he a friend to me, ’specially when he come with cash money.”

Shaking the offered hand, Michael said, “I expected we’d have to wait for you, Mr. Godot, not the other way around. I hope we’re not late.”

“Right on da minute,” Godot assured him. “And who might be dis charmin’ eyeful?”

“This charmin’ eyeful,” Carson said, “is the one with the cash money.”

“You done just got even prettier,” Godot told her.

As Carson withdrew two fat rolls of hundred-dollar bills from her jacket pockets, Godot picked up one of two suitcases from the floor beside his chair and put it on the table.

Big Foot kept both hands free.

Godot opened the case, revealing two Urban Sniper shotguns with sidesaddle shell carriers and three-way slings. The barrels had been cut down to fourteen inches. With the guns were four boxes of shells, slugs not buckshot, which was the only thing the Sniper fired.

Carson said, “You are a formidable resource, Mr. Godot.”

“Mama so wanted a preacher son, and Daddy, rest his soul, he set on me bein’ a welder like hisself, but I most truly rebelled against bein’ a poor Cajun, so I done found my bliss, and here I is.”

The second suitcase was smaller than the first. It contained two Desert Eagles in .50 Magnum with titanium gold finish. Packed beside the guns were the boxes of ammunition as requested and two spare magazines for each weapon.

“You for sure ready for what recoil dat monster pays you back?” Godot asked.

Wary of the big pistols, Michael said, “No, sir, I pretty much expect it to knock me on my ass.”

Amused, Godot said, “My concern be dis lady here, son, not your strappin’ self.”

“The Eagle has a smooth action,” Carson said, “less kick than you’d think. It slams back hard, sure, but so do I. From thirty feet, I could put all nine rounds in the magazine between your groin and your throat, not one higher, not one wide.”

This statement brought Big Foot forward, glowering.

“Rest yourself,” Godot told his bodyguard. “She done made no threat. Dat just braggin’.”

Closing the suitcase that contained the pistols, Carson said, “Are you going to count your money?”

“You da most tough I seen in a while, but you also gots some saint in you. I’d be so bad surprised did it turn out you thieved me even some littlest bit.”

Carson couldn’t suppress a smile. “Every dollar’s there.”

“Mr. Godot,” Michael said, “it’s been comfortable doing business with you, knowing we’re dealing with real human beings.”

“Dat’s most cordial of you to say,” Godot replied, “most cordial, and it sounds true from da heart.”

“It is,” Michael said. “It really is.”