The Marauders (12 page)

Grimes cleared his throat. Stood and hitched his pants. “Use your pisser?” he asked.

“Shit?” said the tattooed brother.

Grimes shook his head.

“Down the hall. Second on the right. Don’t even think about taking a shit.”

In the hallway bathroom Grimes cursed the brother while he pissed. Midstream he took the toothbrush from the porcelain holder next to the sink and whizzed on the bristles and then stuck the toothbrush back in its hole.

On the way back to the den Grimes passed an open bedroom door and glimpsed something that made him pause. A prosthetic arm sticking hand-up out of a widemouthed vase or umbrella stand in the corner.

I’ll be damned
, Grimes thought.

When Grimes returned, the tattooed brother was standing at the table and the paperwork was ripped to shreds, confetti strewn on the floor. The other brother, looking uneasy and embarrassed, was in the kitchen taking plates out of a dishwasher.

“That the kind of money you’re offering everyone?” the tattooed brother asked.

Grimes took his satchel and shouldered it. “Appreciate your time,” he said.

“Get the fuck out of here,” the tattooed brother said.

Grimes descended the steps swiftly, a chill at the base of his neck like it was in the crosshairs of a rifle scope.

The next day at dusk Grimes found Lindquist at the harbor and told him he had some important news to share.

Lindquist hobbled down the gangplank onto the rickety pier. Eyebrow cocked, he flicked the head of his Pez dispenser and popped a pill in his mouth and mashed it between his molars.

“Your arm,” said Grimes.

Lindquist’s bloodshot eyes bulged. “You find it?”

“Not sure if I’m at liberty to disclose. It’s a sensitive issue.”

Lindquist stepped beseechingly toward Grimes. “Mister,” he said, “you know how screwed I am without that arm?”

Grimes was quiet.

“I mean, look at this damn thing,” Lindquist said, jigging his hook arm.

They stood in the sweltering twilight next to Lindquist’s boat. Even the
Jean Lafitte
looked crazy to Grimes, its pureed pea green, its varnished wood warped and flaking.

“Let’s just say I’m pretty sure I found your arm,” Grimes told Lindquist. “But I have to be discreet.”

“We ain’t friends?”

This took Grimes aback. He’d been called all manner of things over the past several weeks, but friend was far away from any of them. “Sure we are,” said Grimes.

“Tell me,” Lindquist said.

Far out in the bay the red and green pilot lights of shrimp boats and oyster luggers glimmered. Most of them by now were working on behalf of the oil company as “Vessels of Opportunity.”

“I don’t want to start any trouble. For you, for me.”

“There won’t be no trouble.”

Mosquitoes hummed around them.

“Well, if we’re friends,” Grimes said, swatting, “let’s do each other both a favor.”

Lindquist pondered this. Then he said, “You mean those papers?”

Grimes nodded.

“Well, hell. Mister, I’ll sign those papers. Give me them. Sign those papers in my blood, me.”

“Promise you won’t say how you learned,” said Grimes.

“Swear on my life.”

“Might lead to a lot of trouble.”

“Swear to God.” Lindquist placed his hand flat on an invisible Bible.

“Well,” Grimes said, “let’s get this done.”

They walked the wobbly gangplank onto the
Jean Lafitte
. Grimes fished the papers out of his satchel and sat them on a wooden cutting board and handed his Mont Blanc pen to Lindquist. Lindquist signed quickly and gave the pen back.

“Those Toup twins,” Grimes said.

Lindquist looked stunned. Disbelieving.

“I saw it in their house,” Grimes said. “Sticking out of a vase. A spittoon or something. Like it was some kind of sick joke.”

Lindquist, already scheming, shunted his eyes back and forth.

“You promised,” Grimes said. “You didn’t hear it from me.”

It was dusk, bats flitting like flecks of ash above the massed trees, when through the front window the Toup twins saw Lindquist coming up the porch steps. Clutching single-handed onto the rail, he hoisted himself slowly, in place of his missing prosthetic an ill-fitting hook arm too small for his body. By the time Lindquist reached the raised porch Reginald and Victor were already waiting outside.

“I’m gonna ask you fellas right out,” Lindquist said. His face was red and shiny with sweat and his breathing was rough. “You seen my arm?”

The brothers glanced at each other.

“Matter of fact I have,” said Victor.

Lindquist waited, mouth slack, eyes darting. He wore an oversized white T-shirt, a captain’s cap, camouflage cargo pants.

“I saw it drinking at Sully’s,” Victor said. “Grabbing ass. Dancing around. Raising hell.”

The brothers laughed the same neighing horsey laughter.

Blood shot into Lindquist’s face. “I’ll call Villanova if I have to,” he said.

The brothers stopped laughing.

“You threatening us?” Reginald said.

“I just want my arm. Give me my arm.”

Victor crossed his arms over his chest. “You still going in the bayou?”

“That’s government water.”

“Ours.”

“I ain’t poaching. If that’s what you think.”

“What’re you doing out there?” Reginald asked.

Lindquist kept quiet, the muscles in his face twitching.

“What’re you doing out there, Lindquist?” Reginald asked again.

“Treasure hunting.”

The brothers neighed.

“Holy shit,” Victor said. “You got any idea how crazy you are?”

“Ain’t none your business.”

“Every bit my business,” said Victor.

“Well, hell. I find anything, I’ll give you some.”

“There isn’t shit out there,” Reginald said.

“That’s a thirty-thousand-dollar arm,” said Lindquist.

“Thirty thousand dollars, my ass,” Victor said. “What’s it, Gucci?”

“Screw you guys,” Lindquist said. He turned and began to waddle down the steps like a geriatric, again clutching the rail one-handed.

“Got any jokes for us, Lindquist?” Victor said to his back. “Tell us a joke.”

Yes, Reginald and Victor had taken the arm. At first they considered keeping the arm as leverage, possibly returning it if Lindquist forswore searching further in the Barataria. But then that nosy prick from the oil company saw the prosthetic. The look on his face when he returned from the bathroom to the den, no doubt about it. And a few hours later when Lindquist showed up demanding his arm and making threats about Villanova, they knew what had to be done. That night when they boated into the Barataria, Victor tossed the prosthetic into the bay where no one would ever find it.

Next morning there was a knock on the door and Reginald looked out the peephole and saw Sheriff Villanova standing on the porch with his hat in his hands, his gourd-shaped face flushed from the heat.

“Got a minute?” he asked when Reginald answered the door. Reginald knew from the grave steadiness of his eyes that he’d come about Lindquist. Reginald always suspected that Villanova knew exactly what he and his brother were up to in the Barataria, just as he suspected Villanova didn’t much care as long as it wasn’t meth or gun-related. As long as it didn’t get him into any trouble. Surprising, how a few thousand dollars dropped in the proverbial coffer could loosen a man’s mores. Especially if the man had a nasty video poker habit and a mistress in New Orleans.

Reginald led the sheriff inside to the dining room table, where Victor was playing a game on his cell phone. “Heya, Sheriff,” he said, putting down his cell phone and standing. He shook Villanova’s hand and sat back with his arms folded across his chest.

“Coffee?” Reginald said.

Villanova shook his head and sat, leaned back with his hat balanced on his knee and his legs in chocolate ostrich-skinned boots crossed. With his thumb and forefinger he stroked his pencil mustache. “You two know I been okay to you.”

“Sure,” said Reginald, sitting.

“And you been okay to me.”

“Hope.”

“So, let’s have right out with this.”

The twin brothers waited.

“Lindquist,” Villanova said.

“Yeah?” said Reginald.

“Know him?”

“Sure,” Victor said.

“Somebody’s messing with him,” Villanova said.

“Us, you think?” said Reginald.

Villanova hesitated a judicious beat, peered about. Through the pristine windows was the shimmering jade of morning, the stout pines and oaks. The house was barren and tidy, African violets on the shelves and sills.

“No, I don’t,” Villanova said, “but he thinks.”

“Guy’s a basket case,” Victor said.

“You know who he is,” Villanova said.

“Yeah,” Victor said. “One-armed asshole. With the metal detector.”

“You guys steal his arm?” Villanova asked.

Victor brayed laughter.

“I don’t even know what to say,” Reginald said.

Villanova looked down at the table with his eyebrows raised. “It’s crazy, I know. But he thinks you two had something to do with it.”

“Guy’s a pill head,” Victor said.

“How you know that?” Villanova asked.

“Everybody knows,” said Victor.

“Stole his arm?” Reginald said incredulously.

“Yeah,” Victor said. “Why’d we want to mess with a cripple?”

“Maybe he was metal detecting in the wrong place.”

“That’s what he does,” Victor said. “Digs holes in all the wrong places.”

Villanova mulled this over.

“He’s pissed off lots of people with that metal detector,” Reginald said. “Especially after the storm.”

Villanova shunted his eyes back and forth between the brothers. “Maybe you’re right,” he allowed, “but I doubt they’d steal the guy’s arm.”

“We didn’t either,” Reginald said.

“Figured as much,” Villanova said, and stood. One-handed, he jammed his hat down on his head. “Favor, though? Best don’t even look at him the wrong way. Guy’s a little unhinged.”

Shrimping with one arm was harder than Lindquist recalled.

When Dixon didn’t show up that afternoon Lindquist sailed alone on the
Jean Lafitte
into the Barataria. Every hour proved a greater farce than the last. Lindquist would lower the booms, scramble up the wheelhouse ladder, steer the boat, scramble down the ladder, lift the booms. Then he’d haul the catch from the nets to the sorting box.

Sorting: that was the hardest part of all. Picking one-handed through the teeming hill of sea life, blinking the sting of sweat from his eyes. The catfish with their whipping whisker-barbs, the sting-a-rees with their switching razor-tails. Within minutes his fingers were raw and bloody and his hand felt like a block of wood. All for a measly twenty or thirty pounds of shrimp, hardly enough to pay for the diesel. Hardly enough left over for a pack of gum.

Then he’d do it all over again like a Keystone Cop. Down with the booms, up the ladder, down the ladder, up with the booms.

Every so often he looked at the sky imploringly, half hoping that lightning would strike him dead and put him out of his misery. If he stopped to think how tired he was he’d probably collapse. The endless sweatbox nights and afternoons. His shirt was glued with sweat to his back, and his legs and arm ached and his eyes stung with salt and fatigue.
Worse, this hellish heat would not abate until October at the earliest. If he was lucky.

Pills: he lost count of how many pills he took. They seemed to work less and less these days. It took two to feel only half as good as he used to feel after taking one.

His second day alone in the Barataria he was sorting through his first haul when a giant blue crab seized the forefinger of his hand. Even through the glove he felt the angry bite of its claw. He flapped his hand and it clung onto his finger and he flapped his hand more and still it clung on. He chopped his arm down and slammed the crab against the gunwale and then he jackknifed his arm. The crab went flipping wildly into the water.

A tranquil rage possessed Lindquist. There was something liberating, almost soothing, about surrendering to the fact you were fucked.