Moses & Curio & The Gauthieux Twins

MOSES AND CURIO AND THE GAUTHIEUX TWINS





         Marvin and Franklin Gauthieux rode together in a tricked out ’65 Impala down Alabama Hwy 79, heading south to Tarrant City, just north of Birmingham.  The men were identical twins, but tried most of their young lives to differentiate themselves until deciding around the time they graduated high school to play to the strength of two for one.  The classic Star Trek where the half-white half-black races killed each other off and the weird Siamese twins on the COBRA side on the G.I. Joe cartoons they watched in their youth provided them a glimpse of the possibilities that such a course of action might provide.

         Both were redbones, easy to rile and built like the gangly forwards they were on the basketball court back in the time of their dubiously innocent youth.

         Franklin, the older by five minutes of old-school c-section work by some old white doctor in Shreveport back in 1972, had his hair dyed blond on the left and red on the right.  His barber did as ordered one day and cut in a four-inch dollar sign on the blond side and an outline of Africa the Motherland on the other.

         Marvin had the exact style, only with the sides reversed.

         The men were dressed in black Malcolm X shirts, newly trendy after Denzel rocked the role in the movie.  The country, always eager for a trend, embraced the radical Black Muslim martyr again.  They wore matching red and white Air Jordan's, black Girbaud jeans and a single golden X earring on an ear.  The pair stopped at the Tarrant Popeye’s.  Their meals were near-about the only difference between them.  Marvin had the jambalaya on promotion.  Franklin had a three piece dark with red beans and rice.  Both enjoyed a Sunkist without fail when they ate.

         After the meal, they pulled off Tallapoosa on 47th street, driving through the ghetto neighborhoods until they reached the backside of the Birmingham airport.

         “We gotta be quick, bro.”  Marvin checked the clip of his new Glock 9mm, also the latest rage to hit the nation, as Franklin drove down through Inglenook.  “Shoot this muthafucka down and get the hell out of here.  Fast, fast, fast.”

         “I know, Marvin.  I muthafuckin' know.  Damn.  You just make sure you don’t chickenshit.  You seem all jumpy and shit.  Stop that shit!”  Franklin glared at the slightly more cautious version of himself next to him.  “Ain’t nuttin but a thang, dog.”  He patted Marvin reassuringly on the shoulder.  “Nigga ain’t knowing what hit him when we roll up.”

         “You are strapped, right?  It working all right?  You remember to put bullets in it?”

         “Yeah, it’s all good, bro.  Park up behind that load of pallets.  You see any niggas come up and try to steal our shit, you poppa’ cap.  I’ma take care of business and we’re gone.”

         The Impala stopped behind a large warehouse that the Stay-Clean Janitorial Supplies company was housed in before Tarrant went gangster and one theft too many ran the owners out to Adamsville.  It was an imposing structure, resembling an aircraft hanger like the ones sitting across the tall fence that separated it from the airport behind it.

         “Damn, that muthafucka beat us here.”  Franklin grunted. “Prompt ass nigga.”

         A shiny deep green Caprice sat, hunkered on low-rider struts, tucked in the very nook the men intended to park their ride.

         “Ain't no thang.  We pull up in front and take care of this bitch-ass nigga.  Then we straight in the game, my brotha.’  Get hype, ole boy!” 

         They saw a dapper-looking black man, wearing a white shirt and tie no less, standing by the rear of the Caprice, arms folded, wearing sunglasses that were austere and business-like.  His salt and pepper hair was buzzed tight to his scalp.  He was fit, lean.  Still blessed with a former tailback's build even at his age.  He was Fred Lemoine, a one-time All-American from Leesville, Louisiana who carried the rock very well for the Memphis Tigers in the early Seventies.  A random gunshot outside a West Memphis nightclub hit him in the ankle in '73 and ended any shot at the pros.

         Subsequently his life took a different tack.

         He was now in the employ of a man named Bertrand Fontenot.  Fred was in fact, a major distributor of fresh from the burro's back Bolivia's best blow.  He was the Cajun mobster, Bertrand Fontenot's, main man in Birmingham.  He was quick-witted, ruthless, and thorough.  Fred Lemoine was also affable, funny as hell, and one helluva good man to have a slot in a major market like Birmingham in his profession. 

         He stood in his well-groomed suit, awaiting a deal set up by friends of friends, everyone supposedly on the level.  Fred was being sold out for a pittance of his worth.

         Franklin nudged the big car forward, watching Lemoine with one eye and Marvin's hands with the other.

         “Alright, hit it, bro.”  Marvin steeled himself to pounce.  He gripped the door latch with one hand and the Glock with the other.  Franklin angled the car for the nose of the Caprice and gave it a steady flow of gas.  The Gauthieux twins pulled up in a hurry.

         “Now you hurry up, dumbass niggas.”  Fred Lemoine muttered to himself as the old Impala growled and jumped toward him.  Shaking his head, he folded his arms in disapproval.  He knew the pickup guys were young bucks, but he hoped they were at least smart young bucks.  The business was full of hotheads, hopheads and flat-out stupid motherfuckers and always had been.  He sighed to himself.  Maybe he was getting old, but the generation coming up was just not bright at all when it came to keeping themselves out of jail.  Their car was a rolling cop magnet.

         He focused his gaze on the silhouette of the driver.  The sun's glare on the windshield hid the passenger behind it.  Tinted windows were not a bad thing, but he would have liked to see what was going on inside long enough to make a forty-yard dash out of the line of danger.  As it turned out, he did not see the pistol in his killer's hands until the first two shots were already lodged in his belly.  He was already a goner by the time four more stitched him across the upper chest.

         “Move!  Move!  You slow-ass motherfucka!”  Marvin screamed at his brother as he closed on the fallen man, gun still outstretched.  Fred gave only a death rattle in response to his kicking.  Franklin Gauthieux jumped out from the driver's seat, forgetting to put the car in park, or at least neutral, in his haste.  The car rolled slowly forward in drive, powered by its big 350 motor as it idled unceasingly ahead.  It caught Marvin from behind, a “Golden BB” moment, to use a warrior vernacular.  The Golden BB was that one tiniest piece of random metal that against all odds managed to damage a man or machine, usually lethally. 

         The chrome bumper caught him just as he planted his feet.  It impacted his knee perfectly from the side, at an angle that hyper-extended the ligaments just enough to lame him.  Franklin managed to get a foot on the brake instead of the gas just before Marvin went down screaming and cursing.  Franklin was about to chide is brother for being a pussy.  The thump did not seem that impressive to him but the look of pain on his brother's face and the complete change in order of business he showed immediately gave him pause.

         “You a-ight?”

         “No!  I ain't a-ight, Franklin!  Fuck!  I felt something pop, man.  Damn!  I'm fucked up!”  Franklin rushed over, jumping the gap between the two cars.  With Marvin cussing his ineptitude with every fiber of his being, he helped him into the Impala.

         “Watch behind us!  I'ma gets the dope!”  Franklin tossed his twin into the cab and rushed to Fred Lemoine's bloody corpse.  He fumbled in his pockets until his found the car keys and got the trunk popped.  A single faux-leather carryall bag was inside the spotlessly kept trunk.  Eyes darting side to side, he unzipped the bag and verified there was ample reason inside the bag to have killed Fred Lemoine and disappear, as they intended to do.  He grabbed the bag, slammed the trunk, and kicked the dead man while listening for another faint groan.  He never heard one.  Quickly, he ran back and got the car out of the area before the first cruiser decided to see what the single call made to 9-11 regarding shots fired in a neighborhood was all about...twenty-three minutes later.

         For the gawkers at the scene and Channel 13’s viewing audience that evening, the scene was nothing more than the latest dope deal gone wrong in a city whose per capital murder rate was skyrocketing. 

         A minor blurb about the latest murder up near Inglenook ran the next day in the Birmingham News.  Mostly it touched on the man's lauded football endeavors some twenty-something years ago and how the sports business was a cruel one for many of those who never quite made it to the big leagues. 

         Soon, it would be an open murder case file in a town with many of those already.  It also left a brief vacuum in the drug network that would and could be filled easily enough.  The market was always rife with the candidates for “next man up.” The name Fred Lemoine definitely interested a few narcotics detectives across the area and they began running down leads immediately.  They would get nowhere beyond the usual suspects, none of whom were the Gauthieux twins.

         Omitted from all of the trivializing of another black on black crime was the fact that Fred Lemoine was a lieutenant, confidant, and very close friend of one Bertrand Fontenot.  Though the city of Birmingham shrugged off one more dope-dealing, dead black man thrust momentarily in its midst but soon forgotten, Grizzly Fontenot of faraway New Orleans did not take the death so lightly. 

         

         “Dem fuckin’ bastards!  I knew dey was some low shit.  I just shoulda known betta' how damned low they was.”  Bertrand Fontenot paced with the backs of his hands ground far into his hip bones.  His right leg was artificial and he limped as he struck out his right leg.  He was seething.  Losing his Birmingham distributor was bad.  Losing a personal friend was not something he took lightly at all.

         “It was a raw deal, Griz...”  Albie Aldridge shook his craggy face from side to side as he commiserated with his grieving boss.  He and the main figures that ran the crime syndicate known as the Atchafalaya Mudbugs sat around a pool table being used as a round table for the emergency meeting.  The five men sat on bar stools in a horseshoe around it. 

         Fontenot was the only one standing across the green field.  His face was beet red, a vicious glare most in the room had seen before spread across his face.  He was not a man easily stirred into rage.  When rage came, however, it was best to be silent and nod with a similarly vengeful sneer as the man vented.  Which the men did. 

         With his long black hair swaying behind him fiercely as he paced on the one leg, his lieutenants knew silence was probably best.  His occasional outbursts had brought casualties among them over the most trivial of transgressions.  Normally, he was an affable man.  He may order your death, but outwardly he was a happy guy.  When he was riled up, no one was immune from his ire and that ire could be indiscriminately lethal.

         “We already got a line on where they went.”  Henri Chellette cut into Albie's spiel.  The room was almost as mad about the results of Albie's latest crank binge as they were about losing Freddy Lemoine. “They ain't got long left on earth.”

         “They got longer than Fred does.”  Grizzly pointed at the ground with one finger.  “He deader than fried chicken on account of dem two motherfuckers.  I'm in on dis one dis time.  What's the great white hunter gotta’ say bout it?”  He looked at his brother, Pete.

         All three hundred and twenty pounds of Pete Fontenot quivered as he spoke.  “So far, we playin' with the idea that deez two done skipped out and hauled ass up to Tupelo afta' dey done did dis.  Newsome done talked to dey Mama yestidy...not so politely.”

         “She talk?  Cuz if she didn't, she’s fuckin’ gonna.”  Grizzly fumed.

         “Newsome handled it.  She talked.  Dey got kin up dat way.  She gave up the likeliest spots and kinfolk dey with up der.”

         “She nappin' after dat?”  Grizzly spoke to the wall, his back turned to them as he paused to listen perfectly to the answer.

         Pete shrugged while cutting his eyes at every single ranking member of the Mudbugs as they looked at him.

         “She nappin’ it out.  Yes, sir.  A long ass nap.”

         “Good.”  He sneered and turned his face toward his henchmen. “Henri?”

         Chellette lazily lit a Pall Mall.  It dangled from the corner of his lips as he shuffled papers calmly.  His thinning black hair was poofy up front in his bangs and drained down the rear of his white scalp into a dreamy mullet.  The overhang of hair caught the curl of the smoke and spun it in tiny whirls over his head.

         “Yeah, Griz.” He took a drag and looked away from the papers to Grizzly.  He was one of the Fontenot’s oldest cronies.  Chellette was the CFO of the firm.

         “I want you to get some funds set aside for something special.  Dey's two of deez bastards plus whoever dey got to hide with.  Might take a bit of doin' to get to them.”

         “Already done, Bossman.”  Chellette handled the cash bundles kept in various locations across the South.  When word of Lemoine's ambush reached him, he began working on getting funds readied immediately.  “How many you thinkin' you needin'?”

         Fontenot spun on his good heel.  “Just the one and mahsef.”  He raised a hand in Pete's direction, stifling the protest he knew was coming.  “Pete, I can handle it.  I'll be in da’ best hands.  You know dat.  I want you back down dis way making sure dey ain't more to dis den jess two lucky thievin' bastards.  If dey had the blessing of somebody, it won't shake out too quick without you pokin’ around.  But dem two trigger-happy sumbitches?  I gonna' be proud to make dem get the shakes and da lava shits 'fore dey get real quiet.  Ricky?”

         Richard Delarque, the main day-to-day muscle for south Louisiana leaned forward.  His heavily tattooed body resembled the scales of a dragon, right down to his bald head and shaved face with his hawk-like nose. Many times, he had only to make an appearance when a debtor needed a reminder about a balance due to get the debt settled satisfactorily. “Yeah, boss.” He jammed a huge wad of Levi Garrett into his cheek.

         “If sumthin' go bad up dat way, I want you to be raht behind me on it.  My man can handle bout most all of it dey throw, but shit happens and I don't run so good, you know.  You and yours, I'll have you set up somewheres close by.  He prolly gonna’ go to cussin’ and spittin’ about it if I tell him, so I ain’t gonna’ tell him.  It's how I want it and I ain't in no mood about it to hear him bitch.  I want  results.  You make plans to go to Tupelo, too.  Bien?”

         “Bien, Griz.  I got yo’ back.”  Ricky popped his knuckles.

         Albie nervously rubbed the back of neck, his eyes bulging a bit.  Ricky looked over at him and narrowed his eyes as the gaunt lieutenant twitched his hands in the air to punctuate his point. 

         “Griz, deez kinda’ fools, we know dey shoot first.  You sho’ our boy kin handle a crowd?”

         Grizzly looked hard at him.  “Albie, you fucked-up shit, you know I done seen him handle way more crowd than some gold tooth motherfuckers evah done thought ‘bout sending his way.  Him and me will do jess fine.”

         “Yeah, but what I mean is, it's one thing to be standing in a skirmish line full of Marines with M-60s.  It's another thing to kick in doors with a one-legged ole coonass raht behind him for cover.  Y'all getting long in da tooth to be runnin' and gunnin' down a ghetto crack shack somewheres.”

         “Then I guess you better get ready to run da whole show, Albie.  You ready and capable fo’ it, I’m sho.” 

         The other men chuckled.  Albie was on the way out.  Dope had burned his mind away a long time ago.

         “What's so funny?”  His mind was usually blank to the hints of his known incompetence.

         “You, Albie.  Don't sweat it.  Pete, give our man a holler for me.  Tell him I'm in need of his unique talents.”  Grizzly Fontenot pointed at his brother and touched a pinkie finger to his lips.  “Let me break it to him that I'm riding shotgun dis time.”

         “He ain't gonna like dat, Bertie.”  Pete exhaled a whistling breath through his nose.

         “Dis time, big brother, I give a shit what he thinks.  Jess you make dat call.”



         Curio Phelonie curled up close to Moses Holliday at the Watercrest Hotel in Panama City, Florida, her nose and lips pressed to his neck softly.  His long arms wrapped around her bare waist, rubbing his fingertips in the sheen of her sweat covering the small of her back.  Now and again, he would slowly glide his index finger around and around in the slickness of her skin.

         “Moses, you do know I love you for more than just your dick, right?”  Swooning slightly from the sheerly blissful mood in the room, she caressed her delicate fingers in his chest hair, outlining the tattoos on his chest from memory.  With her eyes closed, she inhaled his smell. 

         A Winston sat on the table next to the bed, burning slowly towards its end.  He took a drag now and again from it out of habit, not need.  The soothe of her against him was all the salve needed for his anxiety to allay.

         “I sincerely hope not, darlin'.  I ain't much more than cock and balls these days, I'm afraid.”  Moses stared at the ceiling.  It was painted eggshell white with a hint of gold sprinkles mixed into the paint some years before.

         “Dat's not true.  You smart as hell, baby.”  She nipped at his neck.  “Cute, too.”

         “Not so smart sometimes, though.  I think I need a hobby or something during the lean times.”

         “Such as?  We seem to have a lotta’ hobbies nowadays.”

         “You got hobbies.  I just hold the purse.” He chuckled. “I’m thinkin’ bird watching or maybe a little macramé.  It beats watchin’ your back while you stalk rock stars.”

         “A girl needs a little flavor added to her water ever so often.  Thank you for that, by the way.  That was fun.”

         “Yeah, but that kinda' flavor?  That sumbitch was just a stuck-up kid.”  He ground his teeth.  She was a kid.  It was only a few years difference between her and the young rock guitarist she had taken a shine to after a show in Biloxi.

         “He was twenty-two and a fucking rock star, old man.  And he was some kinda’ fine.  Forgive me, Daddy Grouch.  But somebody had to keep a budding artist striving for greater glory.”  She yawned and kissed him on his nipple.  “Why play rock and roll if not for dope and women?  It was my pleasure and his.  I didn't walk out empty-handed, that's for sure.”

         “No, you did not walk out empty-handed.  Or empty anywhere else.  I will say though, they pack around some good coke.  That’s one thing I gotta’ say for the kid.”  Moses took a final toke of the Winston and dropped it into a can of warm Schaefer’s.  “Was it worth seeing you catching it full throttle, though?  I think not.” He sighed.  “Wild child.”

         “I gotta' admit.  It wasn't bad.  You ain't really mad, are you?  You told me you understood.  You are pissed, aren't you?”

         “Nah, he is a rock star.  He's gone off to bust his greater glory nuts in some other city.  And you did manage to rip him off for an ounce of coke.  I doubt he'll be clingy for you.”  He pulled her over on top and she straddled him, her dark breasts perfect and sloped as pretty as a picture.  Per his request, she had not shaved and the Cajun linage bloomed on his belly.

         “So you ain't pissed?”  She smiled down at him, knowing the answer was no.  Moses begrudged her nothing.  Both of them stepped out from time to time.  Sometimes they even shared a woman together.  It was an approved lagniappe in her personal do-don't-do list.

         “He's a big rock star, baby.  If I had a crack at Madonna, you would not deny me or be pissed, right?

         “Don’t be so sure Madonna would take you over me.”

         “You might be right about that.  But, suffice to say, I love you, little darlin'.  I been around long enough to know happiness comes from a variety of sources.  I don't no more begrudge you not liking Willie Nelson than you begrudge me seeing Tonya now and again.  You and Tonya are light years apart…”

         “Well...yeah!”  Curio rolled her eyes.  Tonya Smith was a middle-aged black woman Moses met up with and had dinner and drinks every few months.  She was a former restaurant owner whose husband was killed in Hue during Vietnam.  She did not approve of Curio and Moses, but it was none of her business and left it at that.  Tonya did not know what Moses did for a living, but knew it was not to be known.  He was seeing her less and less frequently as he and Curio began working together non-stop.

         “What I mean is that you and someone may have something in common that I could give two shits about.  Like fucking a rock star, for example.  Likewise, you and I like a lot of different things.  We have we have and it works.”

         “It has to work, Moses Holliday.”  She leaned forward and they kissed softly.  When they parted she rubbed up his thigh and gripped him in her fist.  He was already dripping from inside her, but there was always room for more for the pair of them.  “I don't know what I would do without you now.”

         “Be a groupie is what you could do.”  He reached up and stroked her soft face.  She nibbled his thumb and began grinding her palm into his nipple.

         “If it meant good coke and more sex with a guitar player in a bad ass band, what the hell, why not?”

         “You just like me jealous so I’ll try to one-up him.” 

         “Trust me, Mister Jealousy.  You do that real easy.”

         They spent the remainder of the afternoon trying to outlast each other.  Moses won the contest.  So did Curio.

         They were having dinner at Joe's Crab Shack when Moses cursed suddenly in the middle of his crab cake and stood up to let his tight jeans slacken enough to withdraw a pager from his front pocket.  Curio looked up in astonishment; her fork held mid-bite with a jumbo shrimp skewered on its tines covered in white wine sauce.

         “Are you shitting me?”  She asked him, eyes wide.

         “You thought once this week was all it could be?  Welcome to my world, purty lady.  24-7.  365.”  Moses winked at her, snatched one of her shrimp from her plate and headed to the pay phones in the rear of the restaurant.  He dialed a number from memory and an elderly black man answered from the call forwarding service Grizzly Fontenot used to help mask their business.

         “Holliday for Pete.”  Moses sighed and stared at his lover as she propped her head on one hand and stabbed at her plate from afar.

         “Wait one, Moses.”  Earnest Granger flipped a few buttons at his desk in Winston-Salem, NC and immediately Pete Fontenot's hearty voice boomed in Moses' ear. 

         “Got a bad piece of news, Tex.”

         “You never call otherwise, Pete.  How goes it?”

         “Badly.  Real badly.  Bad enough Griz wants in on a piece a-work.  Need you up in Tupelo soonest possible you kin git der.”

         “Anything I need to know up front?  I got my gear still with me from before.”

         “Yeah.  I reckon so.  Sorry about the turnaround after dat piece of business da other day.  Griz lost a friend yestidday.  He all bent up.”

         “He ain't got many friends.  I reckon he is all bent up.”

         “Oui, oui, mon ami.  You raht about dat.  You still in the sand?  Drunk?”

         “Naw, not that drunk.  Gimmee a few days and I'll be there.”

         “You da man, Tex.  Talk 'atcha in two den.”

         “My pleasure is deep and my bill is steep.”  Moses chuckled.

         “You might goan' earn it dis time.  Au revoir.”  The phone clicked out.  Moses hung up the receiver and used his shirt to wipe it clean of prints.

         She sat with the nervous look of a virgin on prom night as he flopped into the booth.  He got the attention of their server.

         “What is it?”  Curio whispered, darting her eyes quickly all around them like a movie spy.  She was now the murderer of three people, but still a novice at discretion in public.  Having actual murders directly attributable to her directly made her paranoid.  She wondered how Moses functioned with all he had done.  He rarely even yawned about the potential death penalties he accrued over the years.

         “It's work, mon ami.”  Moses Holliday locked his fingers and popped his knuckles lazily.  “Good ole fashioned dollar bills...with dead men on them.  Dead men make the world go around.  Just the way it is.”

         “You going to sit this one out, baby doll.”  Her look went from caution to pissed off in an instant.  He frowned and held up his hand gently.  “I'm serious.  Grizzly is a-wanting to have a personal hand in a piece of work this time.”

         “What good is he?  You said he only got one leg, right?  I got two good legs!”  She slapped her thighs.  “With your favorite part sittin’ right smack in between dem.  What?  You and him got that part covered and you not tellin' me?  Go handle business wit da boss and run some hookers to celebrate.  Y'all do a lil' ass-slappin' in the showers after y'all play?”  She mimicked a baseball dugout pat.  “Good game, Tex?”  She pretended to reach around and cup his crotch.  “Oooo, really good game you got der, Big Tex.  That a bat in yo pocket or you just happy to see me?”

         “Griz and I ain't done much business together in a long time.  Best that way for reasons I expect you already know.  Pete said somethin' about him taking somethin’ personal.  Something about Griz taking it personal.”

         “When are you gonna tell him about me, Moses?”  She glared at him; the French pout he loved to see on her face made him smile.  She folded her arms.

         “Cain't rightly say for sure, Curio.  I'm not even sure how to tell him.  Me and Grizzly Fontenot go back a long way.  We know a lot about each other.  But I don't know everything about him and he really don't know everything about me.  Hell, I'm surprised I managed to keep you to myself as long as I have.  Not having Pete find out about you is quite a success.”

         “Moses, you can have a girlfriend.  I'm sure it's in the assassin handbook somewhere.”

          “Under ways to get caught or retired, dear.  Look, it's like this.” He lit a Winston and waved it in his hands as he spoke. 

“Guys like Griz, they got a hunnert ways to get themselves RICO-busted.  They got a dozen ways to get themselves killt.  I am one of those ways.  You are about five of those ways in his mind if he was to find out about you.  Now, me and him are friends but just that.  I work for him but I seen a lot of guys work for him that got early retirement for being one of those ways.  And for a lot less transgressions than bringing a young and very pretty girl along with him to commit a capital offense on his orders.”

         “But I'm super cool.  And I know the rules.”

         “Honey, the rule is the second you get arrested, another Moses is going to kill you and me both.  Bank on it.  I ain't tellin' you nothin' you ain't heard before but you better hear it good."  In Griz's head, no one is that fuckin cool.  One of the reasons I'm so gainfully employed is that he understood I got no one held over my head for a cop to bargain with.  He can't be allowed to know that situation has changed.”

         “You really think that?”  Curio glowed.  Understood finally was that Moses walked a tightrope willingly for her.  She was important enough to be held over his head.

         “I know that.  Baby, I love you dearly and the most.  I choose you over anyone else and that includes one Bertrand Fontenot and that rabble buncha' coonass half-breeds he makes money with.  I'd burn everyone of them alive if it meant saving you from an unnecessary tear.  And these are people I love like brothers and have loved them for years without even remotely thinking I could do that to them.  If Grizzly even had a hint that I felt that way about you, I become a threat and he starts second-guessin' me.  Trust me, it's best you stay my sexy little secret.”

         “If you say so.  I think you sell a man short though.”

         “You don't know him.  I'll give you an example.”  He pulled her chair around the table closer to him.  She pulled the margarita straw to her lips as he whispered into her ear.

         “Way back when I first started working for Griz, there was a big gang war goin' on in New Orleans.  Back in the early eighties.  Real mafia kinda stuff.  Ambushes in the street.  Shooting up guys asleep in bed with their wives kinda stuff.  Like in the Godfather at the end.  That kinda’ shit really happened.  Casualties on both sides.  Paranoia.  Guys got busted and then they end up killin’ themselves,” Moses drew quotes in the air, “in a parish jail.”

         “How gangster.”

         “Indeed.  I’m glad that shit is over with.  But Grizzly and Pete, them two had a brother that got his throat cut...it ain't somethin' they like to talk about but it happened.  It's part of the reason Griz and Pete look out for each other and kill a sumbitch they even suspect might be trouble.  One of their guys set Lil' Ray up.”

         “Why he do that?”  Curio listened.  Moses never discussed the workings of the machine he worked for.  His hushed demeanor was a rarity for her.  He was actually scared to bring it up.

         “Lil’ Ray screwed the man's wife.  A lot.”

         “Damn.  A fella takes exception to that, don’t he?”

         “Most do.  Unless they’re rock stars, right?”  He winked at her.  “Ray might have fathered a son by her.  I never found that out.  The guy was a fella named Marty Lacombe.  The late Marty Lacombe, of course.”

         “Of course.”

         “Anyhows, Marty supposedly dropped a dime on Lil’ Ray to the guys we were fightin' with and they snatched him up coming out of a strip joint out in Metairie.  The Fontenots, their Mama actually, gets a note about a week later...it was in August, I remember.  They go out in bumfuck Delacroix where the note says go.  And there's Ray after he's been dead in the sun a week.  They got him tied up to a kid's school desk, beat up all to hell and his throat's been cut.  And if that don't beat all, they got Marty's wife chained to it as well.”

         “No shit?”

         “All that week, she was chained up out there.  Without no food or water with his ass swellin' up in the sun.  Trust me, she wasn’t cut from no cloth that was anywhere near strong enough for a night in a pop-up camper, let alone chained up in the swamp like that.  She was lucky no gator come up smellin’ him and decided to have at the both of them.”

         “She still alive when they found her?”

         “She was alive until Pete shot her.”

         “Why he do that?  Damn.  Wasn't her fault.”

         “Because after that, she couldn't be trusted.  She was half-crazy, knowin' her old man set her up.  No options, half-crazy from sunstroke.  Uncontrollable.  You gotta know one thing.  Losing control of one cog makes the machine shake itself to death.  Now maybe Ray shouldn't have been fuckin Trixie Lacombe, and he got his for doin' it.  But she was a wreck and coulda been out in the wind.  Neither Marty nor Grizzly was gonna prop her up.  Witness protection's loving embrace is a choice outcome for a lady like that.  So she had to go.  They like a smooth machine.  Simple as that.”

         “Just because of the threat?  They could have taken her in or something.  Hell.”  Curio winced.

         “Well, baby.  I guess they're just big ole meanie-heads, now ain't they?  Not a lot of time back then to take in a screaming widow and believe me, the Fontenots only like their women in spurts.  She had it bad, being found with Ray all black and bloated and having to watch him rot day after day.  Even so, it was the middle of a gang war.  They weren't real concerned about her feelings at that particular moment.  Maybe today, things woulda' been done diffurnt.  But it is what it is.”

         “Yeah, I guess so.”  Curio felt a cold shudder and knew it was not due to the frozen margarita.

         “Put it to you another way.  Do you love me?  You want me around?”

         She kissed him.  “Dat's a dumb question, Moses.”

         “Then until I can best try to explain why I have a sexy nineteen-year-old girl riding shotgun...literally...with me on company business, you have to sit a few out from time to time.  It's for your own good and mine.”

         “I hear you, cowboy.”  She laid her head on his shoulders.  “So where you off to?”

         “Tupelo, Mississippi.”  He laid an arm around her shoulders.  “If you can behave, I'll take you up there and put you up in a nice place and we can stay there after I get done.  If we can, of course.”

          “A hotel doing what?  Laying around watching Maury or that cow Ricki Lake?  Twiddlin' my rubber dick around all worrying about you taking on someone hostile, with just a one-legged old cranky coonass for backup?  Ain't that why I started coming with you, Moses?  You know I don’t like waiting for you.”

         Moses was touched but firm.  “This time you will, mon cheri.  And I promise it'll be the last time.”

         “Is that one you can keep?”

         “Yeah.  I'll keep it.  Grizzly ain't got many friends left around to avenge anymore.  Merci a Deux for that, I guess.”

         “Your French is shitty by the way.”  She hugged him.  “But you can’t help bein’ from Texas.”

         “Blow me.”

         She did.



          Franklin Gauthieux finished counting the profits from the ambush-murder in his cousin Vonshay Webster's junky one-car garage in Saltillo, Mississippi.  His twin brother Marvin was on the john.  Vonshay sat in a folding lawn chair, swirling a basketball on his fingers and watching the bundles sorted and counted.

         “Dat's some jackpot, Frankie.  How you and Marvin gonna hide all dat cash?  You know you starts tah wavin' dat shit around muthafucka gonna acks where y’all got it from?”

         “I'ma tell whoever aks it ain’t none of their goddamned business!”  Franklin was already tired of his cousin's incessant questions after two days.  Vonshay was five years older than they.  Already he had the best of both educations, two years in Itawamba Community College and two years in the Pearl Correctional Community for armed burglary and resisting.  Armed thus, he felt the need to mentor his cousins at will.  He nearly had a heart attack when the pair came wheeling into his yard in a tricked out old Impala with a lift kit rocking it.  Then they showed him the cash and were not shy about explaining its origin.

         “We ganked a big-time dopeman down in Birmingham.  Set him up through a contact and took that shit.  Punk ass nigga trusted his man too much.  We paid him off with some dat dead nigga's cash and still got dis loot.  We in business now, my man!  We headin' up to Louisville next week and get set up with Carter.  Be rollin' in dat shit in a few months.”  Carter Gauthieux was a half-brother still blending bricks of weed into dime bags.  He was as anxious as they were to get some real dopeman cash-money shit going.

         “That's a lot of money, Frankie.  Somebody gonna be huntin' that money, nigga.”

         “Let 'em.  They don't know us and they don't know you.  By the time they figure it out, we gonna be longtime gone.  Leavin' dis shitass country behind.”

         Marvin hobbled in through the kitchen door, his lips wrapped around a huge spliff, freshly lit.  “Zup, Main?  Y'all got any shawties around here, Shay?  Not no chickenhead crackie bitches, neither.  We wants some real trim.  We got a lil’ loot to throw around for some lucky ho's.”  He grimaced as he struggled down the four stairs to the garage floor.  “Fuckin leg hurts like a motherfucker.”  He rubbed his swollen knee as he flopped in another lawn chair.

         “Yeah.  I know a nigga keep some escort ho's for dem white men that like to slap a ghetto girl on the ass every now and then.  They earn big though.  You really wanna spend high dollar on somethin' we can get down at the club for some weed and a few glasses of liquor?”

         “Live large, Cuz.”  Marvin handed the spliff to Vonshay, smiling with his big white teeth. “Don't need to show our faces at some bullshit club, listening to some dumbass girl's life story out here in Redneckville.  Besides, my knee is fucked up and I can't get my dance on.  We got cash.  Cash means dey keep dey mouth shut and my nuts on their chin.  Set it up, baby.  We ballin' this weekend and get our asses up Monday and go make us some real money!”

         “I feel you, baby.  Hey, you talked to Aunt 'Retta since you got here?”

         “Yeah, we talked to Mama.  Just before we got here.  She always wantin' to know where we be and shit.  I told her we up here.”

         Vonshay swallowed hard.  “Ain't they gonna know that now?  The kinda people you took that money from ain't afraid to make Aunt 'Retta tell all, you know.  That's a lotta' green, nigga.  I mean, shit, you had to leave some kinda trail behind.  Someone set up the meeting and all.”

         “Dumbass niggas don't do homework like that.”  Franklin took the spliff and zipped up the moneybag.  The smoke curled into his eye and he squinted as they watered.  “We long gone, baby.  Mama ain't gonna tell nobody shit.  Even if dey did figure out who we was and who she was.  Shit I still barely can find my way out here in the sticks and I been up here a hundred times.”

         “I dunno, man.  You shoulda' told her you was somewhere's else.”

         “And have her catch us lyin' to her?”  Franklin laughed.

         “Yeah, Shay.  You might not wanna see Mama come up here and start whoopin' all our asses for lyin' to her.  She likes to know where her babies are.  She got heart problems.  She gets to worryin', she likely to have all dem heart pains and shit.  I ain't the one to be makin' my Mama have to go to the grave.”



         Moses looked around the lobby of the Tupelo Marriot and immediately spotted Pete Fontenot staring at him across the room, his eyes covered with his omnipresent black sunglasses.  Both men looked around for eyes noticing them a beat too long and found none.  Helping himself to a cup of coffee, Moses chuckled to himself about both their innate paranoia as he walked over and sat down across from Pete.

         “Good to see ya, Tex.”  Pete shook hands across the table.  “You lookin' fit as always.  Some cheri must be a-feedin' ya good.  Ain't no way you kept dat figure eatin' whiskey and saltines.”

         “I managed to get a can of ravioli opened a time or two this year.”  He nodded at Pete's belly.  “You must be keepin' the chef's down at Prudhomme's busy as hell.”

         Pete patted his sizable gut.  “Keeps me vigorous, Tex.  Someone gotta keep dat cattle market afloat or all your kin hafta' go on that Texas-size welfare teat.  Be a tragedy if all dem cowboys didn't have no cows to stump-train no mo.”  Pete laughed heartily.

         “You're a great American for that, Pete.  Texas thanks you.”

         “Jess doin' mah part, Mo.  You ever been up in deez parts?”  Pete's face continued to note the looks on every front desk clerk, passerby and mockingbird chirping outside the window that could see them together.  He drank from his own coffee cup.

         “Nope.  Never been up here.  Nice town.  Got some money in it.”

         “Dey do a lot of wholesale furnichah up dis way.  Big factory purchases.  Plus dey got dem useless colleges round here, too.  Ole Miss dat way,” he pointed west.  “Cow college dat way.”  South.  “Nice lil’ spot.  We may hafta’ look into it someday up here.  Dey got loot aplenty.”

         “How much of Grizzly's made it up here?”

         “A big chunk.  But day ain't da reason Bertrand wants in.  Deez two we want," Pete paused and sighed sadly, "dey shot Fred Lemoine down in cold blood.  Stole some product funds and hauled ass up dis way for some reason.”

         “Just two players?”

         “Two we want.  But Bertrand kinda on a warpath.  You know how he git.  We already done tied up a loose end or two back in Birmingham.  Freddy was a good man.  At least what passes for good around us anyway.  You know what I mean.”  He slurped his hot coffee.  “He was a friend and dis ain't the most gentlemanly bidness, but he never saw it comin' and he should have.”

         “He got lax.”

         “He got day-ed.  Deez two knuckleheads, dey don't know how high Fred was.  Or mebbe dey did and didn't give a flyin' fuck.  Can't say.  Deez young 'uns deez days ain't too easy to skeer like we was back a while back.  Dey into all dat gladiator respect-me bullshit.  Listenin' to all dat rap music, seeing sumbitches spray lead all up into houses and shit.  For all I know, dey figger dey git gone 'fo anybody gits winda' dem.  But, dey didn't figger on dey setup man knowin' exactly who Fred Lemoine worked fuh.  That little asshole gots da cold feet and dropped the dime to me when he realized what he done.  Lil’ shit was cryin' like a teethin' baby when I talked to him.  He a-sleepin' by the way.”  Pete took another swig of coffee.

         “What's the names?”

         “Dey twins, deez two.  Last name Gauthieux.  Marvin and Franklin.  Got kin down around Lafayette.  We had a talk wit dey mama.  She took some convincin' but she told us dey holing up dis way wit some useless cousin and maybe a few local friends.”

         “Shit, how many you talkin?”  Moses scowled.  Grizzly wanted vengeance but a houseful of armed and-or ass hauling black boys out in the Mississippi backwoods was problematic at best.  Deadly ignorant at worst.

         “Can't say really.  We gonna hafta’ find a way to look it over some.”

         “What if they're already gone?”

         “If dey gone, we all go home and I run dem down on my end.  Bertrand wants the two triggers, not some ignant' ass cousin dat don't know nothin'.  Of course, we make sure he don't know nothin' fust.”

         We should be so lucky...  Moses took a deep breath and rubbed a sore spot behind an eyebrow.

         “You think they're there, though.  Doncha?”

         “Yeah.  Dey think dey pulled off da great heist of 1992.  Books and movies will celebrate how dey pulled one over and got away with enough cash to wallow in.  But, dey forgot the part where dat big boss gits mad as hell and comes a-huntin' dey ass down.”

         “Sometimes they ambush that boss.  Last time I checked Griz ain't too quick to sprint for cover.  Why the fuck does he need to be here for this?  I could handle it without him.  You know that.”

         Pete Fontenot sighed and shrugged.  “Dis Grizzly Fontenot you askin' dis about, ya know?  Da boy ain't been raht since he come out backwards from our mama's womb.  But he da boss, Tex.  He wants some payback, he gits some.”



         As the sun held itself high in the sky, Curio Phelonie drove the tan Bronco up Euclatubba Road west of Saltillo, looking at the cream-colored one-story ranch style house where a pair of naughty twins marked for death were supposedly holed up for a weekend.  There were three cars parked in the yard, all some version of late model Chevy's that young blacks seemed to prefer.  She did not see the one car Moses made mention of, an old Impala, but she bet her bottom dollar that it was parked in the closed garage. 

         The road was rural.  The entire neighborhood was spread out, with mostly unused pasture land lying in two to five acre plots between lonely houses.  The residents looked to be black folks for the most part.  One old lady turned in front of her and pulled into a driveway next to the target house.

         Slowing down, she spot-checked as many initial features and tried to feel the house, as Moses had explained to her.  Her initial feeling was that in had been in a family a long time, but that whoever used to keep the house looking respectably neat was probably dead.  Some erstwhile son or grandson was letting it go to hell while he and his homies partied and remembered to cut the grass out by the road every once in a while. 

         She caught just a glimpse of a pit bull on a chain in the back yard of the target house before it passed from her line of sight.  Both yards appeared to be barren of grass close to the house and dusty.  No thought was given to it being summer and drought forced trees with shallow roots to plunder topsoil for every bit of water.  There was a huge maple tree in the front with another dog chain tied around it. 

         But no dog.

         A huge indention near the tree and giant dogshit piles sprinkled around indicated whatever was off the chain was no dachshund.

         Dogs!  Curio shook her head.  Moses hates dogs.

         There was a trailer for sale four houses down and on the opposite side of the road.  She looked at the high grass around it and saw the light meter had been pulled.

         Perfect!  She pulled in and parked at the edge of the driveway.  After a casual walk around the property with a notebook and a pen jotting nothing about the trailer, she opened the tailgate of the Bronco and sat down.

         Sipping from a bottle of cold Evian (naïve spelled backwards, sneered Moses every time she bought one) Curio stared at the house, mindful of the lack of neighbors milling about.  The road was a backwoods artery carrying rural folks back and forth from the outskirts of mutually incongruous towns of Guntown and Saltillo and also drained the earth of its salty yokels into Tupelo itself.  Now and again a car or old beat-up truck passed by, an old black farmhand or white-haired old hayseed lady behind the wheel.  It was high noon on a Friday and she patiently counted cars and watched.

         When an elderly back neighbor finally did stir from the house trailer across the street, she nearly cried as she watched him.  She was unseen, she was certain of that.  Old people tended to notice strangers and she, sitting at a house he probably knew was uninhabited and why, never got so much as a glance let alone a wave.  The old man was easily pushing eighty, stooped horribly from a humped back she figured had to be curved at least sixty degrees.  Undoubtedly, there was no hope for a day's letup from the constant pain it had to cause.

         He shuffled outside and took slow, deliberate steps down from the tiny five-by-five covered porch that probably gave him serious agony.  A tiny Scottie pup followed him on a leash, hopping happily in place and waving its paws in the air as it ventured out to pee.  He walked in a slow patrol around the front yard, stooping down an inch at a time to pick up a Bojangle’s bag full of the leftover boxes from some tossed-aside three-piece with mashed potatoes and gravy.  More bits of litter caught unseen breezes as he approached them, stifling his attempt to catch them mercifully quick.  Her eyes watered as he bravely collected every bit of rubbish.  Each stoop and slow ascent back from the crouch to his feet clearly was a feat of amazement.

           The dog, to its credit, did its business close to the road and far from his owner's immediate field of coiffed green glory.  Curio watched as he found a tall Budweiser can and shook it dry before cramming it into the Bojangle’s bag.

         His return trip to something resembling a human posture took a full half-minute after trapping a fluttering napkin under a foot.  For a moment, she thought he would collapse entirely.  It would have taken all she could muster to not go help him to his feet.  But she would not.  He would remember her and probably make small talk.  She would probably be a highlight to his week to be sexy and helpful in his time of need.  An angel he would think and maybe even say it to her.

         Curio Phelonie was observing the scene of an impending capital murder.  Being called an angel hours before maybe shooting a man in the head point-blank did not sit well with her.

         She mentally applauded as he rose back to his feet, cramming the napkin into the bag.  Getting a hold of his pain, he turned and looked across the road.

         His face grew to scowl she could recognize from space orbit if she was up there.  The gritted teeth, narrowed eyes and balled fists...all aimed silently at the target house.  She knew in an instant, if the old man could, he would have marched, upright and indignant like a malevolent drill sergeant, kicked the living shit out of any barking, shitty-pawed mutt that tried to intervene, and stomped a goddamned mud hole in every sorry sumbitch he could get a boot up against.

         But he was old, probably praying to join some wife long-lost to diabetes or lard-clogged veins in whatever version of heaven he imagined awaited to embrace him the instant the pain ceased in lieu of infinite freedom.  So the best he could do was toss the Bojangle’s bag into his own singular trash can and hobble with his dog back up each painful step and disappear back into his tidy and probably pressure-washed aluminum box to watch Judge Wapner and wait for the Lord to take his breath away.

         Curio reached behind her and pulled out a 4x rifle scope.  Slowly, she slid back into the rear of the Bronco and peered at the target house.

          There were three trashcans brimming with white bags crammed full of garbage.  In the scope's view, she could see most of the bags on top.  All of them were jammed full to the point of the white bag nearly rendered transparent.  Clearly, she could see a glut of beer cans and bottles straining the plastic.  One can was turned over and a dog, maybe some stray cur bold enough to not care about the pits attacking it- maybe smart enough to understand how much chain they had- or too hungry to care, had ransacked a bag and scattered trash a few feet around a leaning can.  Chicken boxes, burger wrappers, and wadded napkins were strewn around. 

         “Sorry motherfuckers.”  She muttered and took the scope away from her eye.

         Gritting her teeth, her pouting bottom lip swelling from rage, she looked again at the tidy yard of the old man and glowered at the obscenity of the lazy men, a third his age no less, letting their own filthiness and shiftless existence cause some poor old bastard living out his final months- stooped over like Atlas on a smoke break- to have to take even a minute of his day to so agonizingly bend down to clean up after their useless murdering asses.

         Shuddering angrily, she took out her notebook and began drawing pictures of the target house.

         

         Moses quickly shimmied down from his climbing tree stand, his ears listening to the sound of the baying pit bulls tied up in the back yard of the target house.  Dressed in a Ghili suit, he held fast to the large pine that provided him such a good vantage point.  The acres of pine that stretched in a seemingly endless line along the series of hills that cover northeast Mississippi once hid Rebel sharpshooters holding out against the Yankee army that won the blood day at Shiloh and nearby Corinth.  Now they formed a cover that Moses melted into without delay. 

         Moving effortlessly through the forest, he ran quickly to the dusty county road a few miles to the north of the target.  When he reached his pickup, he was twenty minutes early so he sipped from a whiskey flask and fired up a Winston.

         He hunkered down away from the road, concealed in a plush blackberry thicket, and smoked slowly. 

         “Dogs.”  He muttered to himself.  Closing his eyes, he inhaled his smoke and took a long swig of Rebel Yell.  It finished the flask and he resealed it and slid it back into his cargo pocket.

         When he and Grizzly first drove past the target house to get a quick look in the middle of the night, they were stifled by the lack of streetlights and cloudy night.  Moses noted the two pits on a chain in the front yard but could not get a look at the back due to the positions of cars and trees.  Not knowing the place or the area yet cognizant of time, he fumed at the variables unknown. 

         The area was sparsely populated but one look at the homes around the target immediately told him the houses and trailers within sound range it were probably aware of the habits of the young men living there.  And not happy about it.  Whereas all other homes were fairly well kept, the target was neglected and an eyesore.  Moreover, gunfire would bring sheriffs in a hurry since the neighbors had to assume they were dealing or buying at the house.

         Having Grizzly muttering in the driver's seat while he tried to seek a tactical advantage over an unknown number of dead men, or even civilians, he wondered about that...kids?, drove him nuts.  True, Bertrand Fontenot could handle himself if he did not have to do much running, but there was too much that was going to have to happen and in a hurry.  Pete was not much good with guns, fat, and never been in a military. 

         The best Moses could think to do was put them at the front yard to catch whomever he flushed out from the backside.  But he needed to know how much of a problem that may pose.          

         He opted to recon the place from the rear and had Grizzly drop him off at three a.m. in the very spot he rested near.  Glancing at his watch, he smiled.  Curio was at that moment checking out the front for him.  It was all he would allow her to do.  It gave him a subtle thrill for him to know she was only a few miles away.  He wondered if he was starting to actually get over having her taking to his life as she had.

         “Dogs, dogs, dogs.”  Stubbing out the butt against a tree, he chewed on his upper lip.  He counted seven pit bulldogs on chains in the backyard.  One more was a bitch with puppies that were big enough to scamper about and romp.  She rated a pen at least, but she was the only one caged.  The others roamed in circles around bare dirt perimeters. 

         A worn-out barbed wire fence bordered each side of the house.  There was unused pasture, overgrown for many years he figured, bordering the house approximately five hundred yards in each direction before meeting the fences of the adjacent neighbors.  With the woods behind them, the house was a decent place for an ambush, with the only exception being the neighbors. 

         “Silencers, of course.” He mused.  “Pop the mutts on my way in.  Breach the door, fuckin melee the place, maybe dress the part. Anyone rushes out the front gets caught naked and dropped.  Hardly a piece of cake but doable.”  He figured the house had to be worth a ruckus at least every other weekend so the noise at first would be ignored.

         “Maybe pull up with radio blaring to drown the fuckin screamin' out.”  Moses nodded to himself as he added the minor detail. 

         For all the hours, he spent sitting on his climber stand watching, he only saw one man.  It was not one of the twins. 

         “A scrawny fella.”  He recalled the gangly young man who came out at a little after nine to feed the dogs. “Not a PETA guy.” 

         The dogs' gleeful dancing at the edge of their chains was met with a hard slap of the snout as he struggled to get a few cups of cheap food into their bowls and the waters refilled.  He had not pet a single one, not even the mama bitch.  The pups were tossed aside with a swipe of the foot.  Moses placed him at early twenties, not educated, probably not a gangbanger and country-raised in the house.  Details were sketchy about who could be in the house.  The mother they used for intel did not know the conditions at her nephew's house.  Moses figured him for the nephew.

         “And he's nervous as hell.”  The man's eyes darted around constantly.  A passing car literally made him freeze every time one passed by.  “Either he's a crackie and jumpy.  Or he knows all about why his twin cousins made a beeline outta Birmingham.”  Moses suspected the latter.  The guy did not look like a crackhead.

         “Too bad you can't pick your family, Cuz.” Moses shrugged and stretched.

          Looking at his watch again, he stood up and shucked the camo suit, stuffing it into his pack.  Precisely on time, a black Suburban picked up a man toting a large backpack on the county road and drove away in less than five seconds.

         

         Curio watched as a procession of five young black men exploded from the front door, jovially bellowing curses and laughing loudly.

         “Dey just be ballin', dawg.” She sneered to herself.  Immediately, she spotted a pair of twins leading the rowdy procession.  Two others split off to their two cars; one stayed behind and locked up, then joined the twins as they jumped into the passenger seats of a late model grey Honda Accord.  She scribbled notes furiously.  Impressions, clothing worn, heights gauged relative to car height.  One twin had a pronounced limp, stiff knee maybe.

         Radios erupted as the ignitions cranked.  They paused and gave each other directions or bullshit for a moment and then the group all drove down the road away from her.  Through the rifle scope, she tried to write down plate numbers as best she could.  She got partials on the two early leavers, and got all of the Accord's.

         “Five in the house.  All headed down to town at…one oh five.” She scribbled as she spoke aloud.  “House secured, so five should be the magic asshole number.”

         She secured the rear of the Bronco and finished off the Evian.  For a long while, she eye-balled the empty trailer she sat in front of, trying to decipher if someone was still using it.  The missing power meter seemed proof enough.  A glance into the water meter showed it was turned off and tagged.  The tag was dated nearly five months prior.  Curio made one more circuit around the trailer, this time checking the bad door and windows.

         Satisfied she could get into it without much hassle and had a good place to stash the Bronco behind it, she made up her mind not to just sit on her ass in a motel and leave Moses to deal with five guys with a fat man and a cripple for backup. 

         “Baby,” she started the Bronco and backed out.  “If you don't need me ever again, it won't be because two useless coonasses got you killed.”

         She gunned the motor and sped back to Tupelo an hour before Moses was supposed to get back.



         “It's hammer and anvil, Griz.  Simple hammer and anvil.”  Moses rode shotgun as Bertrand Fontenot drove back to the hotel to prepare and rest for the planned night attack.  You and Pete stand out front.  I hit the rear and do it loudly.  Pitch and catch really.”

         “How many in der?”  Grizzly wondered.

         “No idea.  Only saw one head out back and feed the dogs.  Not one of our guys.  The cousin I reckon.  Jumpy fucker, too.  Bet he knows all about a pile of money those two peckers ain’t ever earned before.”

         “He bettah' be fuckin jumpy.  He sittin in der wit a piss-pile of my money and knows how dem two got it, he bettah' move in wit a whore friend-a his tonight or it's his ass, too.”

         “I heard three cars leaving about the time it was time for me to start making my way back.  Didn't have a shot on the front at all.  Too many trees and leaves out back.

         “How many dogs?  Dey all attack dogs?”

         “Seven on chains to deal with.  I'll take a .22 and knock them down easy and quiet.  Maybe leave the last one squawlin' to get Cousin Dumbshit to open up the door and see what the fuck is going on.  Switch off to Cletus and take down that shithouse real loud and vulgar.  Send them sumbitches running to you or knock down any Rambo's that might be in there.”

         “Hammer and anvil, eh, Tex?  You got a plan for if dey more nails in der than yo hamma' can hit?”

         A curious smile struck Moses.  Grizzly cocked his head, perplexed.

         “What you grinnin' about?”

         “I got me a sledgehammer if I need one.” He shrugged to himself and looked out the window.  “But I don't need one with you two fearless and virile warriors out front now, do I?”

         “You seen Pete befo', Tex.  He one fatass fuckin' anvil.  Ain't nobody gone git by his gut.”



         She watched them pull into the parking lot through a crack in the heavy curtains of the second floor hotel window.  Naked and wet, a white towel wrapped around her midriff, her black hair colored with streaks of red and soft purple, Curio peered at Moses and Grizzly as Pete Fontenot met them in the parking lot, his big head on a swivel the whole time until he shuttled his brother into a room.  They motioned for Moses to join them and she smiled as he gave them a halting motion and held his hands to his belly.  The brothers laughed at something and disappeared from her sight.  Moses slung his backpack around his shoulder and looked up at her room.  She stuck a dainty hand around the curtain and gave him a demure wave and then a slow come-hither bending of the finger. 

         Curio lost sight of him as he ascended the far stairwell but heard his feet as they clomped down the concrete.  She scurried, bubbly and effervescent, to her door and put her ear to it.  His door was only two feet from hers.  She heard a fingernail drag across it on the outside and then the click of the card popping his room open.  When he opened the door, she slipped out and into his room in under a second.  Easing the door shut as hers latched, she leaned momentarily against the door and placed a foot against it.

         “Excuse me, sir.  I seemed to have misplaced my key.”

         Moses tossed the backpack down beside the AC.  “No kidding?  And in just a towel?  What a pity.”  He stripped away his black t-shirt, smiling that cocky grin she loved on his face when he knew she was in need.          

         “Guess I'll have to strip naked so you won't feel out of place.”

             Her towel fell.  The key stuck to her damp flesh between her breasts before falling to the floor.

         “My goodness!  My ruse has failed.”  She walked to him, her hands grabbing him around his shoulders as he shook his trousers down.  After that, he had ample help with helping her feel not so out of place.

         

         The phone rang forty minutes later and he grabbed it on the second ring.  He grunted a few replies while Curio darted next door in his shirt and her towel covering her.  She retrieved her notebook and came back.  The towel came undone as she flopped on her belly between his knees and presented her findings.  Moses finished his speech to assuage Pete and hung up.

         “I always hate getting dinner before I go to work like this.”  He sighed and leaned against the headboard.  He looked over her work as she propped her head across her fists and watched his mind work.

         “Five guys.  Three cars though.”

         “The twins left with one guy and the other had a car apiece.  The last one locked up tight.”

         “One more dog up front.  How many fucking dogs does one guy need?  Damn.”

         “I saw one dog.  There was another chain though.”

         “Food bill must be a fucker.  The twins look like I heard?” 

         “Tall lanky-ass basketball types.  One guy had a bad leg.  He limped real bad, too.”

         “Guns?”

         “Didn't see none but I was far.  And of course if they had a gat it would be hid.”

         “It all works out.”

         “How y’all gonna do it?  Grizzly Fontenot a-gonna march in da place and do his one-legged pirate impression?”  She closed one eye and limped with her finger pointed like a pistol.  “Yaaargh, ye niggers!  Shiver me timbers!”

         “Funny.  I'm goin' in through the back and taking care of things.  They cover the front in case someone bolts before I clear it.  Got a clear killing zone out front and they ain't getting through me.  Five shouldn't be a problem.  Especially when I get one of them to open the door for me.”  He motioned for her to come to him and they kissed a while. 

         “How you gonna get someone to open the back door for you?” She kissed his chest, lingering on his scars tenderly.

         “Shoot a dog in the belly.”

         Curio jolted.  “Do what?”  Her shock was surprising.  He only shrugged.

         “I'm taking the .22 with that silencer I got for it last fall.  And I'm gonna shoot them all in the head one by one until I get to the last one.  Then I'll gut shoot it and be waiting for whoever comes to see what happened.”

         “That's mean, Moses!  That's way fucking mean!”

         “Just a dog, baby.  I can't have a half a dozen dogs breaking chains trying to get to me.  They're pit bulls, Curio.  Trust me, their reputation as mean motherfuckers is well deserved.”  He stroked her hair, noting the dye job she had done before they rode to Tupelo. “They fight those dogs, baby.  They throw them in a fightin' pit and they fight to the death while the guys make bets.  It ain't pretty.”

         “I just never knew you to do things like that.”

         Moses chuckled.  “Baby, you gave a sumbitch both barrels of a twelve gauge point-blank to the ribs a while ago.  Hell, you stabbed a guy in the neck not so long ago.  Took a while for that dude to go quietly to the light as I recall.”

         “He tried to kill you.”

         “I warn't there for tea and crumpets, baby.  It’s only fair.”

         “Yeah.”

         “The dog will be put down as soon as I take down whoever opens up the door.  I promise.  I ain't much for lettin' a mutt suffer.  Man or mutt for that matter, Miss 'It fucking stings, don't it asshole?'”

         “I was mad.  He tried to shoot you.”  She shrugged and rolled over on her side next to him.

         “It's done now and the check cleared, baby.”  He lit a Winston.  “What's the sexy Miss Curio gonna do with her time?”

         “Bathe you out of me first.  Maybe order a pizza.  This town sell booze?”

         “Until midnight.”

         “Maybe get a bottle of wine instead then.  That way I won't be laying around chewing my new nails down to the quick worrying if this was the last time me and you bumped nasties and went squish.”

         “They got a mall up here.  I'm riding with the brothers.  You'll have the ride.  Why don't you make a friend?  There's a decent patio bar not too far from here.  Go make the locals lust after you until they gotta go home and give their wives a lil' extry juice.  You be doing their marriages a favor.  Hell for that matter, there's all kinda jocks with money around here.  Ole Miss and Mississippi State are both only an hour away.  Friday night around here probably a blast if you know where to go.”

         “Maybe.  I dunno.  We still meet up back in Memphis if you don't make it back here, right?”

         “Unless our names make the news.”

         “I hate when you say that.”

         She kissed him goodbye and left him, studying her sketches naked on the bed, rubbing his chin as a curl of the smoldering Winston rose and kissed the globed lamp jutting from the wall.

         “I love you, Tex.”  She blew him a kiss.

         “I love you, Curio.  Don't sweat it.  Five dudes and a few mutts, hell.  You could handle this.”

         She smiled and closed the door.

         Whispering, “I'll take you up on that, baby,” she slid into her room and set about her own plans for the evening.  They did not involve flirting with some pack of frat-fucks from that cow college down the road or even worse, getting drink and ending up jawing down some Colonel Reb-loving faghags at some Mississippi whore-corral.

         “Geaux Tigers, bitches.”  She murmured to herself as slid the slide back on her .380 pistol and jammed it into her shoulder holster.

         “I sure as fuck ain't here to be making no friends in this shitpoke town.”

         

         The Fontenots dropped Moses at the same spot as before at ten that evening.  Dressed in skin-tight black-knit clothes, he looked like a slinky Spiderman as he followed his trail of bioluminescent tape. 

         A Spiderman with loaded guns instead of prissy silk.

         He hit the edge of the tree line and made his way across the east barbed wire out into the pasture where he could signal the brothers as they made a pass.  The trio made a recon run before they circled around to the desolate county road.  There were only two cars in the front.  One was the Accord and the other was a Chevy Caprice Curio had described. 

         What Moses could not know and had no way to see was the two more cars now parked on the western side of the house.  It made have made no difference to him, but later he would reflect it would have been kinda nice to know.

         He saw the Suburban pass on schedule, the window rolled down to display a flashlight with a blue filter.  He flashed a red laser pointer and the flashlight flashed twice as the Suburban sped off.

         “It's on...”  He exhaled and moved as silently as he could through the high grass and nettles of the untended pasture until he had a clear line of sight on the backyard. 

         The clouds of the night before were gone and a brilliant half moon lit up the area.  He could hear bass lines rumbling from within the house as he neared to fifty meters.  A few of the dogs were milling about on their tethers.  Moses could see their silhouettes easily enough.  A back door light flipped on and then right back off as someone hit the wrong switch.  It was enough to mess up his night eyes, though.

         “Fuckin A.”  His teeth grit as he closed his eyes for a few minutes to let the fresh view in when he reopened them.  When he did open them, any renewed night vision was further ruined.  Someone turned on the light again.  A pair of arms gave a heave of scraps out to the dog closest to the door.  The dogs all rose up, tails wagging and a few barking.  The door closed but the light stayed on.

         He shook his head and crouched up beside a fence post at the barbed wire barrier.  His eyes could still make out most of the dogs so he set to work.  Sighting in on the farthest one from the house, he squinted in on it just as it sat upright and provided a perfect profile.

         With the little breakdown .22, he squeezed off the shot. 

         Pfft! The dog crumpled without a sound.  The one next to it cocked its head at a sound behind it on the opposite side of Moses.  He dropped it.  The third was sitting and finished with a stretch and a yawn when the Stinger hit it.  Four was curling up to sleep when Moses got him mid-circle.  Five was before six due to six disappearing into a shadow briefly.  He hit it low under the ear and it yelped and started flailing.  Its hind legs started to falter before Moses had another shot. 

         Five was now alerted and rushed to the edge of the chain barking wildly.  The bitch in the kennel started up as well as number seven dog.  The pups started up then.

         He shot five in the head and it turned a complete flip before being still.  Then broke apart the .22 into its three pieces and dumped them into his duffel bag.  Quickly, he got the gun into its zippered compartment and zipped in.  Moses slung the duffel bag on his back and cinched it tightly.  Barely two minutes passed before the Suburban rolled up in front of the pasture and pulled over.  Moses watched as Pete lumbered out of the passenger's seat and ran as fast as his big legs would carry him to the far side of the house.  Grizzly Fontenot crawled out of the driver's seat and killed the interior light.  He hunkered behind the driver door and laid a long gun across the open windowsill.          “Fuckin cavalry.”  Moses flipped Cletus, his trusted Bushmaster .223, over his shoulder and popped his neck.  Running full speed, he held the rifle at his hip ready to fire and aimed red light toward Grizzly.  The blue flash from his longtime friend caught his eye just as he put the house between them.  Dog number seven heard him coming and bawled as it fought its chain.  Moses brought Cletus to bear on it just as it reared up on its hind legs, pawing at him, choking grunts on its chain. 

         Pfft! Moses shot it just at the head of its pecker.  The bullet knocked the dog backwards three feet and it howled in agony.  Moses slung Cletus around his shoulder again and grabbed his Army Colt .45 as he flattened against the wall at the foot of the three stairs leading to the door.  The dog turned somersaults, writhing and screaming as it snapped at its wound.

         “Hurry up, fuckers!  Put down the goddamned weed and check your dog...”  He actually felt bad for the dog.  Until he heard at least four more barking at the door in solidarity for their wounded brother. 

         Motherfucker!  He mouthed to himself and holstered the pistol.  With Cletus, he shot the wounded dog dead.  The dogs inside were clawing at the door wildly.  Finally, the music cut off completely and he could hear male voices...and female voices...approaching the door.  Cursing, a man tried to corral the dogs, cursing them and handing them off to others he could hear offering to collar them.

         When Moses heard the lock click and saw the doorknob turn, he started shooting full auto through the flimsy particle board door.  He swept in low angles...where he hoped the dogs and someone's knees ought to be.



         Bertrand Fontenot laid his silenced AR-15 across the door of the SUV and watched his brother start to stab tires on the parked cars.  He did not make it far before the music stopped abruptly.

         “What the fuck!”  He waved at Pete in the moonlight.  Pete backed away and put his AR-15 across the trunk of the car he last deflated.  He also pulled out a Beretta 10mm pistol and laid it next to the rifle.  Closer to the house, he could hear a commotion at the rear of the house.  That was anticipated.  The sound of dogs yelping in pain was not.

         “What the fuck!”  He echoed his baby brother.  Pandemonium came spilling out the door soon.

         

         “Hold up, nigga!  Turn da shit off!”  Vonshay Webster came running down the hallway, trying to hold up his saggy pants.  His hooker peered out down the hall from his bedroom.  Marvin Gauthieux took his arm away from inside the shirt of his girl for the night and pushed the power button. 

         The four girls, their pimp and his “associate,” a giant white man with the long greasy ponytail of an old biker who sat bored in a corner Ottoman, had arrived only fifteen minutes before.  Vonshay left with one for the immediate intimacy of his bedroom.  Franklin Gauthieux was in the spare room that previously belonged to Vonshay's late mother.

         Demetrius Freeman and Marvin had their girls sitting on their laps on the long couch, waiting for a bed.  The pimp, an all-business old white man locally called Mister Sherman but actually named Henry Germano, sat next to the bodyguard.  He was coked up but mellow in a polo shirt and chinos.

         “Somethin' fucked yo dog up out back, Shay!”  Demetrius squinted toward the kitchen door at the rear of the house.  The dog wailed in pain.

         “Oh my God!  What happened to it?”  Trina, Marvin's girl in her booty shorts and tight cleavage-cut Hooter's blouse, put her hands to her mouth and stood up as Marvin slapped her on the thigh softly.

         The bodyguard, Harvey Ballbanger, as he was known, spoke in his guttural voice, “You got a coyote back there, man?”

         “Something fuckin that dog up!”  The friend Demetrius could care less at first but an explosion of four wild dogs stampeding through the house forced him and everyone else into action.  The four pit bulls, the cream of the fighting crop, earned their place as house dogs.  The brutes verbally attacked the back door, clawing and scratching each other and the door itself as the dog outside continued wailing.

         Vonshay came into the living room.  The pimp and the bodyguard stood motionless near the front door. 

         “Grab the dogs, nigga!”  He waded into the dogs and grabbed two collars.  Dragging them back, he switched off one's collar over to Demetrius.  Marvin grabbed another.

         A subtle pop sounded off outside.  The dog went silent.

         Everyone but the dogs froze, startled for a moment.  The pair by the front door could not hear the pop. 

         “What the fuck was that?”  Vonshay turned the latch on the deadbolt and turned the doorknob.

         Splinters exploded from the door.  Screams erupted.

         

         Curio tried her damnedest to get Moses' night vision goggles to work as she crouched behind a tree up the road from the target house. 

         “Work, you piece of shit!”  She cursed the mechanism but realized soon enough it was the user not the equipment.  The house was soon lit in a ghost-green hue.  She had to be mindful of the lights of far off homes and the house itself.  The enhanced glare was blinding in the goggles.

         “Shitfire, he is a fat one!”  Pete Fontenot was illuminated perfectly.  She made him out as quite a distance, his back to her as he sighted in on the front door with a rifle.

         Something she could hear was happening inside the house.  She watched Pete tense in expectation.  Looking over at the Suburban, she saw Grizzly motionless, barely noticeable except for a long black barrel steady on the door.

         The door popped open and both men fired.  She saw the muzzle flashes and winced in the goggles.  There was no sound.  The rifles were silenced.  She could barely make out a person's silhouette in the door for a moment and then it was flung backwards.

         It's on!  Oh shit.  Be careful, baby!  She fumed at being a mute witness.  For two hours she sat in the Bronco behind the empty trailer, watching the target and wondering what, if anything, she could do to help without tipping their hand to the boss.  Curio knew the fury of Moses Holliday.  She was worried sick, of course. 

         But the man was a wrecking crew when it was needed. 

         Whatever the hell is happening in da house, it's probably fuckin awesome.

         Moses emptied the thirty-round clip through the door and changed it out immediately.  Kicking in the door, he studied the effects of his first strike.

         Two dogs barked in another room.  Blood and brains splattered the oven and cabinets to his left.  A dog's, its head shattered atop its body, back legs twitching reflexively.  Another dog was shot through the hindquarters.  It was bawling and dragging itself toward the sink to his right.

         The man he saw feeding the dogs was lying dead at his feet.  He caught the brunt of the .223 burst before Moses swept the barrel side to side.  He was a gory mess from top to bottom.

         One of the target twins was lying moaning, gut-shot and in shock.  His eyes were fixed in horror.  A pit bull was panting and coughing bloody foam next to him.  The twin's hand was wrapped in the collar.  Moses shot the dog and then shot the twin through the kneecap.  It snapped him out of his shock and he started screaming.  Moses looked around and jammed a dishrag in Marvin's mouth.

         “You can apply pressure on that bleeder and live or use your hands to pull it out, scream some more and die.  However you use your hands goes a long way, dickhead.”  He pointed the barrel into the living room.

         Two women was screaming and lying on the floor in the living room.  One was holding a calf that was hanging onto her knee by a few bloody threads. The other saw him with terrorized eyes.  Saw the man in a skin-tight black nylon with guns hanging all over him.  His face was encased in a form-fitting skullcap that his all but a mere slit for his eyes.  She stood up to run and he shot her dead.  Without an answer to her screams for mercy, Moses then turned and delivered a kill shot to the leg-wound girl. 

         He stepped forward two steps to the threshold between the kitchen and the living room.  Two white guys, he was shocked to see them, made a bolt for the door.  He drew on them and sensed motion close to his left. 

         Yeah, you two head on out...  He turned to face the closer threat.

         A man was standing in the corner, holding his bleeding arm and an apparently unharmed dog's collar.  His eyes widened as he saw Moses.  The hand released the dog and it leapt at Moses.

         Quick as a whip he turned Cletus sideways into a port arms stance.  The dog's mouth clamped on the fore grip, shaking it head with a violence that Moses found stunning.  He knew the power of big dogs yet it still awed him how much ferocity a big pit bull could levy against an object of its ire.  The guy made a rush for the front door, eager to escape with the two white men.  He took two steps before both men's heads exploded just as they hit the doorway.

         “What the fuck!”  Demetrius froze, unsure how he had gotten himself in such a mess.  Suddenly he looked down the hall.  His eyes widened.  Moses saw it and lithely took two steps backward, curling the dog upward like a furry barbell as it hung onto the rifle with its clenched jaws.  For an instant, the dog’s snout was level with his face.

         Franklin Gauthieux started shooting a 9mm at him from down the hall.  The dog was hit in the chest and let go.

         “Motherfucker's crazy!”  Demetrius screamed and charged Moses, trying to close the gap before he could get Cletus back in the fight.  He was a short man, but solid built, a tailback that never made the grades for colleges to look at him.  Everything his offensive coordinator ever told him about making a flawless take down block come seamlessly in his moment of succinct panic.  He arm-tackled Moses.  The two men crashed against the counter, stumbling and stomping on Marvin as he tried to shield himself and scream through the dishtowel.

         “Fuck!”  Moses felt the edge of the counter top as it drove into his back.  He winced and cleared it from his mind.  The short man tussled with the rifle.  He was too fixated on it to comprehend how much easier it would have been to just pull out the K-bar knife on his hip or the .45 under Moses' shoulder.  They were eye-to-eye, panic registering plainly in the short man.  Moses brought up his knee to the man's groin hard.  Adrenaline had set in. Even a nut hit did not get him to back off.  He burrowed in.  The two men wrestling for life. 

         Franklin Gauthieux fired a few shots at the man in black, naked except for the blue jeans he managed to get pulled up.  His woman curled up in bed, pulling the covers up to her neck, crying.  They could hear Vonshay's consort scurrying against the metal frame of the bed in the room across the hall. 

         He took one look at Moses and the visible blood he could see from down the hall.  Firing a few shots, he managed to hit only Vonshay's stud dog, Bo.

         “Fuck this shit!”  He jammed his feet into his boat shoes and snatched up his keys and the duffel bag containing the stolen money.

         “Don't leave me here, nigga!”  His whore yelled at him.

         “Bitch.  I don't know you.”  He threw open the bedroom window.  “You better run!”  He dove out.

         

         Grizzly heard unsilenced shots from inside the house and swore aloud.

         “Pete!  Mount up!”  Gunshots would mean cops.  He watched the front door as his brother ran over and jumped into the passenger seat.  Pete threw his rifle into the back seat and turned on his police scanner to listen for the call.  Grizzly watched for any sign of motion.

         “Come on, Mo.  Bring yo ass on.”  He murmured behind the iron sights.

         Moses raised his leg and kicked Demetrius squarely in the left kneecap.  The leg snapped and he went down screaming but still holding Cletus with both hands.  Moses' right hand was clenching the receiver portion of the weapon and while they tussled, he managed to get a thumb on the safety and push it over to 'safe.'  When he felt the selector rotate to safe, he let go of the rifle.  The letup of tension sent Demetrius stumbling, falling backwards across Marvin, who moaned in distress.  He turned the rifle around and started wildly pulling the trigger as Moses drew his .45.

         “Safety's on, nut munch.”  He shot Demetrius in the eye and picked up the rifle.  He looked at the blood seeping from Marvin's gut wound.

         “You're getting off light, fuckhead.”  There was no time for Grizzly to come get his jollies.  So he shot Marvin between the eyes with Cletus and walked down the hall to where that other bastard was hiding with the pistol.

         

         Curio watched Pete ran to the SUV, paranoia setting in when she did not see Moses after a few tense minutes.  The brothers sat in the vehicle waiting.  A porch light came on at a house far down the road.  She looked at the trailer with the old man in it and could not see any motion.  Grizzly retreated to the driver's seat; his weapon no longer visible.  She heard the motor crank.

         “He had to hear that shit, though.”  She could picture him and his neighbors dialing up 911 repeatedly, not getting a signal and clicking the receiver.  One contribution she figured she could make while she waited in the dark for the show to start was to sneak up and down the road within acceptable earshot and cut the phone lines.  It bought them time.  A few people probably had those fancy new portable cellular telephones, but she bet they were many subscribers living out in rural Mississippi able to even get a signal out there.

         She waited and watched.  Briefly, she thought she saw a figure at the back of the house, just behind the garage.  Hard to tell though, the goggles lost a lot of detail in exchange for their illumination.

         Suddenly, an explosion blew open the garage door.  She was transfixed as the Impala came roaring through the thin door.  It hit hard enough to knock the Accord aside enough to make a crease it could fit through.  She saw the two brothers fumbling for guns and trying to figure out what the hell to do.  And the Impala roared past them, a few gunshots fired at the SUV to keep them down.  Tires smoking and screaming, it hauled ass up the road and passed her.

         “Oh shit!”  She figured any man that got behind a wheel with a gun coming out of that house must have hit Moses some kinda way.

         That pissed her off.  She ran for the Bronco.

         Franklin Gauthieux gunned the motor as he fired at the black Suburban parked just down the road from Vonshay's house.  Panicking, he nearly ran off the road as the rear end slipped from side to side on the slick street.  The big Chevy mounted a 350 short block and though it looked like some show-ride, it was a solid Detroit standard, fast and solid.  He crouched down, expecting return fire as he drove away.  He rounded a curve and realized he now had separation.  Flipping on the headlights, he hauled ass north toward Guntown.

         Moses heard the car burst through the garage door and only glared at the prostitute huddled up in the bed.

         “Lucky day, whore.  Get a better job.”  He sneered and pulled out his two canteens.  Walking fast up the hallway, he splashed one canteen of kerosene along the wall and carpet and poured the rest on the couch.  The other he tossed around on the bodies in the kitchen.  With brute force, he manhandled the stove from the wall and tossed it forward against the counter across from it.  Immediately, he smelled gas.  He walked out the front door, lighting a Winston with his Zippo and then touching it to kerosene soaked couch as he exited the house.  At a dead run, he crossed the yard, hearing the distant sound of the Impala fading away into the country darkness. 

         He stopped abruptly, hearing another engine.  He stripped off the balaclava mask and looked up the road.  He knew that sound and he knew where it was coming from before he even knew he knew it.  In shock, he ran to the SUV just as the trio heard a fresh set of tires squalling on the faded asphalt. 

         “Dat yo ride, ain't it, Tex?”  Grizzly was dumbfounded.

         “Move, Griz.  Get in the back!”  Moses threw open the door and half-slung his employer out of the driver's seat.

         “What da hell?”  Griz opened the rear door and hopped in, bruising himself up as Moses stomped the gas.  Griz was churned in the backseat with their two rifles and cursed.

         “Pete.  You got any cop chatter?”  Moses maneuvered Cletus from his side and handed it behind him to Grizzly as the boss got himself upright.  He slid the pack's straps from his shoulders.

         “Not a peep.  Damnedest thing.  Dey usually light up wit da chatta' out here in da boonies when dey finally somethin' ta do.”

         “Seatbelts, gentlemen.  Griz, pull this fuckin pack back there with you.” Moses leaned forward and the pack was away from him.

         “Who da fuck is in yo truck, Moses?”  Grizzly yelled right beside his ear.

         “A sledgehammer, Griz.  The sexiest fuckin sledgehammer you two coonasses ever met.  Now would be a good time for me to tell y’all, I got a pahdnah.”



         Curio cinched her seatbelt tight across her petite frame.  Jamming the .380 between her thighs, she laid her sawed-off double-barreled twenty-gauge Moses named Maude next to her on the bench seat.  She drove fast.  Her reflexes were sharp, mind alert, feeling the road.  Her sole look at the Impala told her the ass-end of it was crushed in to the point where something in the rear end should give out quickly if he tried to push it on the curvy back road at high speed.  The Bronco was fast, but not as fast as the Impala she figured.  And it could not corner too well.

         “There's a reason the roll bar's up there, sexy.”  Moses once had nearly flipped them drunkenly mud riding out in Calcasieu once.

         She set her mind to the task of catching whoever it was fleeing the scene.  There was no doubt in her mind he somehow got the drop on Moses. 

         Or maybe he was hiding and just got away when he heard the commotion.            She liked that thought better.  It certainly felt better to think it.  She floored the pedal on the straight-aways, trying to get a feel for the road.  Soon enough there was a single taillight weaving the curves.

           Hot damn!  A passenger tail light!  You so dead, bitch. So dead!  Clyde fucking Barrow gonna look upon you from hell and say 'Goddammit, boy...you sho nuff dead.'

         Scowling, she lifted the night vision goggles to her face and killed the lights.  The road was visible. 

         “Fuck yeah!”  She strapped it to her head and punched the gas again as she laid Maude across her lap.  And patted her softly.

         

         “So you trust dis cheri?!”  Moses could not tell who was more upset, Pete or Bertrand.  Griz sulked in the rear seat, a scowl Moses had seen ending up killing many a man.  Pete shook his head and looked out the window in between bursts of pointed questions.

         “Look, we catch up to her, pop this fucker and get clear.  We all sit down and get shit-faced about it.  But what's done is done.  I love her, gentlemen.  It's how it is.  She's in on the life I lead.  She's been in on contracts.  She was supposed to be sittin her wild ass at the hotel while we worked this over since I knew you two would be acting exactly like this if you met her.  Complacency ain't one of Miss Curio's strong suits.”

         “And you know how that shit can end up, Mo.”  Grizzly sighed.  It was a total mindfuck to the man who had known Moses since they were both young Marines in Vietnam.  He didn't know Moses had it in him to get himself strung on a woman. 

         Let alone a girl barely old enough to piss a hole in the ground.

         “Let it go fo now, Pete.” Grizzly patted Moses on the shoulder. “If this old warhorse done found hissef a lil' cheri that can stand his ass for mo den the time it takes his peckah to salute and execute, she must be some kinda weird.”

         “Bertie, this ain't cool.  Moses fuckin knows it ain't cool or he wouldn't have been hidin' dis girl.  For God's sake, Tex?  Taking her out on hits?  What kinda fucked up pillow talk you two sumbitches have at night?  What the fuck you thinkin'?”

         Moses looked over and winked at Pete.  “We don't talk much in bed, big boy.”

         “She young though, Moses.”  Pete shook his head.  “Dey all wild when dey young.  But what happens in two years and she start wantin' babies and looking through dem bridal magazines?  You tell her you gonna get dat dog and two point seven kids fer her?  Dey prone to spats, dem young girls.  Wild off the chain kinda mean spats.  You got a plan fer dat?  I sure do.”

         “Lay it off, Pete.  It's cool or I wouldn't be in it with her.  She's like no one I've ever known.  She has it.  Whatever the fuck it is.  As cold with a scattergun in her hand as she is hot with my dick in it.  She developed a lil’ taste for the job.  Took to it like a duck to water.  Getting to be a pleasure working with her.  Certainly, it makes the downtime a lot more fun.  She a good learner and she respects the rules...”  He squinted ahead.

         “Taillight ahead.  Just one.  He ducked around the curve.”

         Grizzly snickered in the back seat.  “Yo girl done been gave da slip.  She directionally challenged, Tex?  We ain't made a turn yet.”

         “She ain't directionally challenged when it comes to finding blood, Boss.  She's right ahead of us.  See?”  He pointed at the glimmer of the Bronco in the moonlit night.  The brake lights flickered as she rounded the curve.

         “Dumbass ain't got sense to flip on dem lights at night?  No wonder she don't mind getting da sex from you at night.  She can keep dem lights off and not have to see you.”

         “She likes my purty face just fine, dick.”  Moses smirked. “She's running with night vision goggles.”

         “Dat's crazy!”  Pete shook with laughter.

         “That's my baby.”

                   

         Franklin came up to a stop sign suddenly and stomped on the brakes.  The Impala came to a screeching halt.  He peered outside, trying to make out the green road sign atop the red octagon.  Something in his rearview mirror caught his eye for a split second before the Bronco rammed his ass.

         “Shit!”  He never saw the lights. “Drunk motherfucker!  Turn your lights on!”  The Ford backed away.  Then it gassed up and rammed him again.

         “Fuck!”  He stomped the gas and the car replied with a horrendous screeching sound and heavy, acrid smoke as the left-rear tire ground itself apart on the frame punched in by his escape and the fresh impact.  The tire exploded as he tried to power out of the situation.  The Bronco backed away again.  His efforts only caused the Impala to smoke further and spin in a sparking circle at the desolate intersection.

         He gave up.  The Impala's lift kit popped loose on the damaged side.  The big car cocked to one side, tilted toward the driver's side.  Grabbing his gun and the moneybag, he rolled out of the passenger door to put the car between himself and whoever was in the truck.  A shotgun blast tore through the interior as he fell to the ground.  One pellet ricocheted off of the doorframe and hit him in the cheek.

         He tried to ignore the burning and jumped up, laying the 9mm across the top of his car and unloading wildly.  One shot went through the Bronco's windshield.  To his horror, he saw headlights coming up the road from where he came.  It was a big black Suburban that he had seen outside of Vonshay's home as he hauled ass away.  The ride behind him was not a Suburban. 

         “Who the fuck...?”  He pulled the trigger again and heard the horrible sound of a dry fire.

         “Ooops, asshole!”  A young girl's voice spoke to him before he felt bullets hitting his thighs.

         Curio moved up to the driver's door silently as the Impala stopped its attempt to flee.  She looked at the crumpled towing cable assembly and winced.

         Sorry, Mo.

         She could see the guy crawling out of the far side of the car and sent a load of number three buckshot through the interior.  Saving the other barrel in case she needed it, she hunkered up against his car and pulled off the night vision system.  The fool emptied his clip at phantoms.  Hearing a telltale click, she smiled.

         “Oops!”  Curio jumped up, firing her .380 through his open door.  She put two apiece in his thighs and he went down screaming.

         The sound of a giant SUV roaring up to a screeching stop made her stiffen.

         Looking over her shoulder, her tiny pistol firm in her grip, she saw the faces of three angry old men suddenly show up in the interior light.

         “Oh shit...”



         “They're shootin' it out!  Goddammit, Curio!” Moses floored the pedal when he saw the twinkles of muzzle flashes ahead after a wild spark spray from the spinning Impala.  The men were punched back in their seat as he accelerated wildly and then jumped on the brakes to screech perfectly alongside the Bronco.

         And there she was in an instant, bracketed by high beams.  Gun cupped in a two-hand grip, short hair falling forward as she looked at the ground and away from the blinding lights framing her pale face.  She was wearing her blackout suit, skintight like Moses.  A short double barrel hung on its strap beside her waist, swaying slightly.  Curio dropped the gun to her side as Moses opened the door.

         They said nothing as they got out of the SUV.  Moses took a few steps toward her and saw her arms twitch slightly toward the Fontenots.  His eyes widened when he saw the look of paranoid savagery on her face.  He could not blame her after all he had told her about the boss.

         “Mistah Fontenot, I presume?”  She yelled.  Moses smiled and cocked his head around to the SUV.

         “Yes.”  Both men answered in unison.  A man with a limp stepped forward.

         “I'm Bertrand Fontenot, mon cheri.  You be Moses' deepest, cutest secret I take it.  Miss Curio?”  He folded his arms.

         “Dat's me, Sir.  I got one man down on the other side of this puke-green piece a-shit nigger mobile.  I understand you been lookin' for him.”

         “He kinda on my to-do list, you may say.”

         “He got four in his legs.  I winged him on purpose when I seen your lights comin’ up fast.  Moses told me you wanted a few minutes with him.  You can have dem minutes now.”

         “Dat a fact?  Well, ain't you just fuckin Saint Nick all done come early!”  He started limping toward her, drawing his handgun.

         “We friendly?”  She tensed up as he approached.

         “We friendly, mon cheri.  Ain't yo fault yo old man a raving lunatic.”  He hobbled around the car, Pete right behind him.

         Moses walked up to her and wrapped his arm around his waist.  She was trembling horribly.

         “It's okay.  They know.  I had a heart to heart.”

         “Heart to heart with the heartless?”

         “Kinda sorta'.  Anyhow, they know.”

         “They know…but do they accept?”

         “Not tonight.  But they'll have to.”

         “Do they, Moses?”  She looked as Grizzly turned his menacing glance from her to the twin on the far side of the Impala.

         “Yeah, baby.  They seriously do.”  Moses said, with a familiar finality that everyone had heard before and knew he meant it when uttered thus.

         “Where you crawling off to, you low-ass piece of shit?”  Grizzly walked up to Franklin Gauthieux, straddling him on the side of the dark road.

         “Please, man.  I ain't done nothin'.  They started shootin' up the place and shit.  I got scared and I made a fuckin' run for it.  That's all I did, man.  I swear!”  He lay on the ground with his arms up.  The moneybag was beside him.

         “Made a run for it, okay.  I would buy dat, but I see you made sho you run with my money.”

         “Yo money?  Don't know about that.  These two niggas had the loot with them when they got up this way.  If it's yours, take it.”

         “Mighty generous.  So which one is you?  Franklin or Marvin?”

         “Who are they?”

         “Da same person, I suppose.  Since twins start out as one and all.  Don't really matter, though, I guess.  Say good night, motherfucka.”  He was about to fire his pistol when Curio halted him.

         “Hey boss!  Whoa!”

         “What!”  He glared at her.

         “I still got a barrel left full in dis here shotgun.  Make a little better statement, doncha think?”

         Grizzly looked at her and then looked down at the look of shock on Franklin's face.

         “Yeah, lil’ Curio.  I suppose you raht.”  She unslung the shotgun and rolled it across the top of the car to him.  Pete smiled smugly at her and Moses.  Moses met his face and shrugged.

         “Man, who the fuck is she!  Please, boss!”

         “She my new employee apparently, you dipshit.  And ain't it da truth when dey say da last piece of pussy you ever git is the one dat's fucks you forevah?”  He pulled back both hammers and pointed the shotgun at Franklin's tear-stained face.

         “Dis is fo mah friend.  Fred Lemoine.”  He fired.  Spitting on the corpse, he handed the gun to Pete and limped around the Impala back to the SUV.  “Let's go, folks.  Dem shitbird cops ‘round nyah gotta’ be woke up by now.” 

         Pete stooped down and grabbed the moneybag.

         Moses and Curio walked arm in arm back to the Bronco.  Pete passed them as he hurried to take his position.  Leering at her, he handed the sawed-off to Curio as he passed.  He shot a look of casual antagonism to Moses and shook his head.

         “I get you need to fill out your W-4 as soon as I can dig up dem forms.” He paused and looked her up and down.  “You raht, Tex.  She sho’ nuff one purty gal.”  Pete jumped in the SUV and Grizzly gave a tiny wave as he pulled out and turned right.  It was a brush-off, not a fond farewell.

         “Well, that went well.”  Moses shook his head somberly.

         “They really got a tax form?”  Curio kissed him on the cheek, walking back to the Bronco with a shotgun in one hand and her pistol in the other.

         “Sure.  Tons of ‘em, baby.”  Moses listened to the Fontenots as they roared into the distance.  He shook his head and forced a smile

         “And wouldn't the IRS like to get their hands on it.”  They jumped into the Bronco and rolled away into the moonlit Mississippi night.   

         



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