Moses & Curio & the Table for Four pt 2

“Mister Fontenot!” Holly the hostess exclaimed as Pete Fontenot walked into Emeril’s restaurant.  A hulking man with a constant tan, he looked every bit the hired muscle goon he was as he walked through the door.  He wore a tweed suit and sunglasses.  His dark hair was shaved close to his scalp and his jaw was perennially clenched shut.

         “Bon soire, Miss Holly.  Fat boy got you working hard at it tonight?”  Pete smiled at the statuesque hostess, who always wore dresses that clung to her like a glove. 

         “Yes, sir.  We got a crowd going tonight, that’s for sure.  Mister Bertrand is already seated.”

         Pete nodded and began looking across the crowd for familiar faces.  A well-dressed couple came in behind him and waited.  Holly motioned him toward the rear-left side on the dining room. 

         “He’s hiding back in your corner.” She smiled.

         “Thank you, Holly.  Give your best to you daddy.”

         “I sure will.  Enjoy your evening.”

         Pete raised an eyebrow.  “I hope I do.”  He said under his breath and walked by himself in the direction she indicated.

         His eyes looked across the darkened tables, seeking threats.

         “I’ll be damned.”  He found one.

         Sitting at a high cocktail table was Randall Jowanski, a Deputy U.S. Attorney with whom the Fontenots and their minions, a collection of assorted criminals known in the local press as the Atchafalaya Mudbugs, were all too familiar.

         Jowanski was sitting with Ellen Prudeaux, his girlfriend and a junior counsel on his staff.  He had obviously seen Pete before Pete saw him.  The couple glared at him as he crossed the room.  For his part, Pete did not look at them directly.  He did however; scratch his temple with his middle finger for them to notice without effort.

         He rounded the corner of a brick partition and there was Bertrand Fontenot seated in the corner next to the open entrance to the kitchen.  Certain he was out of Jowanski’s line of sight, he scooted quickly to Bertrand’s side.

         Bertrand “Grizzly” Fontenot was reading the novel “The Bonfire of the Vanities” while wearing headphones.  He cocked his head as he saw Pete’s expression.

         “What?”  He dropped the book on the table and instinctively scooted his chair back.

         “Fuckin’ Jowanski and his bitch are both sittin’ by da bar.  We gotta’ vamoose, Bertie.  Right damn now!”

         Bertrand nodded and stood up with the help of his cane.  He was missing his right leg from the knee down as a result of combat in Vietnam.

         What I wouldn’t give two have both-a dem legs I was born with raht around times like dis…

         Jamie, the gaunt waiter who had served Bertrand two scotches in ten minutes was by their side in an instant.  “Good evening, Mister Fontenot.  Is there a problem?”

         “We gotta’ get outta’ here, Jamie.”  Bertrand collected his things. “Tell Fat Boy back there to pop open the back door for us, would ‘ya?”  He peeled off two fast hundreds and jammed them in the waiter’s shirt pocket.  “Make it quick.  Tell him Grizzly Fontenot wishes to inspect the back dock and get yo’ ass back here.” 

Other patrons were nudging each other, staring and whispering.  Pete turned his back to his brother and stood staring back at them with his legs and arms slightly spread from his huge torso.  Bertrand fished a pair of sunglasses out of a pocket and got his eyes covered.

         “What time were they supposed to be here?  Nine, right?” He murmured to Pete.

         Pete looked over his shoulder and nodded.  “It was eight-forty when I left the car.”

         “He’s punctual.  We gotta’ git’ gone-a here.”



         “Shit, there’s Pete Fontenot!” Randall Jowanski said before hiding his face behind giant White Russian.  “I wonder where his asshole buddy brother is?”

         Ellen glared at the large man as he walked across the room.  “They’ve got a table for two in the asshole section in the back probably.”

         Randall saw Pete give him the finger.  “Yeah, fuck you, too, fat ass.  Your time’s coming.” He grumbled.

         “Speaking of.  You had any movement on the insider lately?” Ellen dipped a brie-covered bread stick in a ramekin of basil-chipotle oleo and chewed at it.

         “The tweaker?  He’s a pretty random dude.  I’ll be surprised if he drops anything significant.” Jowanski took a long drink of the cocktail. “But, you never know. He’s certainly in the position to get me something nice if he don’t get himself whacked in the process.  Them two bastards have been cleaning a lot of house lately.”

         “How exactly do they do that so much without someone squealing on them, I wonder?” Ellen said in a low voice, more to herself than him.  “Those little fishies they got running around have gotta’ know they’re only one finger snap away from disappearing.  Ii don’t see how they can willingly work like that.  Look at the boiler room bullshit we have to deal with from D.C. and all we have to worry about is getting fired.  They fuck up, they have got to know they’re walking a plank for that asshole.”

         “Those assholes pay pretty good and the guys they get to work for them nowadays pretty much always know the score.  It isn’t like they’re newcomers to the game around here, you know.  That family goes way back, to say the least.  People know who that prick is and they know what he does.”  He sighed as Pete disappeared from view around a corner. “This town doesn’t forget a personality like his much.  If Statley was half a prosecutor he woulda’ had them two taking the juice at Angola by now.  I’ll get them one damned day though.  Everybody fucks up some kind of way eventually.”

         “For a big city, the world sure don’t grow much around here.  That’s for darn sure.”

         “In their circles and ours, it doesn’t.  For a big city, this place can be a very small place at times if you don’t spread yourself beyond the office and the house.  One thing that guy does is dip his fingers into a lot of spaces and slaps a lot of backs in circles you wouldn’t think he’d be interested in.  This town has always had diversity in its blood.  Maybe that’s why we don’t get anywhere with it around here.  We’re too bland.”

         Ellen forced herself to stab at a spinach salad, smiling at her boyfriend.  He was an ambitious man.  Working with him on the stacks of cases the recently departed U.S. Attorney left behind for the next man up was taking its toll on her physically as of late.  She ate very little, drank too much, and was forced to dote on the pretentious federal prosecutor’s whims on command.  He was a rising star in the Justice Department and the newly inaugurated Administration was already knocking on his door with inquiries about his intentions.

The word on Ellen Prudeaux spread rapidly around the office.  She was an ice queen who carried Jowanski’s water for him in the vainglorious expectation of attaining a position of importance at some point sooner rather than later.  She could hide nothing about their relationship from the sharp eyes and ears of the ladies in the office.  The secret was a poorly kept one eventually.  As a result, the women scorned subtly and the men ignored her since she was taken.  Aside from Randall and her extended family, she had very little life beyond the office. 

Once she was a rising prosecutor in her own right in Tangipahoa Parish.  A foolish, drunken, and very public spectacle had forced her resignation.  At a mixer for Tulane graduates, she met Randall.  He was there as a sympathy date for a fellow alum and he slipped her his number after a few coy words at the buffet table.  Through their independent channels, she checked into him and he checked into her.  Her channels told her she should hook up with him because he was a go-getter.  His channels told him he should date her because she was a come-get-her.  The acquaintance was further made and for four years, they kept a relationship publicly platonic at work and deviant as hell away from prying eyes.

Randall maintained a fit physique.  He played racquetball, softball, and golfed with the other members of his clique.  He was a well-tanned schmoozer, a fearless debater, and a raffish eye-winker to all the ladies who knew him.  She was beginning to show the puffy face of a drinker and middle-age was spreading its frump across her body.  Terrified she was running out of time with him, she was on a crash diet of raw greens, Jane Fonda workouts, and vodka stirred into her green tea. 

That night they were having a quiet dinner after an unusually contentious meeting with two FBI agents who botched a forced-entry narcotics arrest some three years before.  The Fifth Circuit was due to rule on an appeal from the man convicted after the arrest.  New evidence revealed by a surprise witness cast some doubt on the agents’ stories and generally made a mess of the conviction.  Though Jowanski had not brought the case before the court, he was tasked with saving the conviction.  He was certain he had failed to do so.

“I wonder what them two talk about.” Randall slurped again.  “This place ain’t some Gambino pizzeria for them to be talking code words.”

“Get a wiretap and find out.” Ellen shrugged smugly.  Getting an eavesdropping bug near the Fontenots had been an exercise in futility for months.  Occasionally an informant had been found amongst the syndicate known as the Atchafalaya Mudbugs.  A few usable tidbits of information had been gleaned from the turncoats.  Most of the information had only pointed them at people who dealt with the Fontenots, never at the Fontenots themselves. 

Twice, it was discovered that the information was leaked deliberately to Jowanski to be used to take out Grizzly Fontenot’s enemies.  More ominously, one rat disappeared soon after he spoke to them only once about a purported Jamaican cocaine connection.

“One day.  One day.  One day.” Slumping in his seat, Randall stared through the restaurant’s boisterous crowd at the brick wall that obscured his sight of the Fontenot brothers.  “If only I could see behind that damned wall.”  A whimsical notion hit him and he jumped from his chair.  Ellen looked at him strangely.

“You sit on a nail?”

“I’m just wondering if they’ve got someone we need to see behind that wall.”  He wiped his mouth with his napkin and strode toward them.  “Sit tight, baby.”

Ellen watched him, laughing at his moxie.  He could be incredibly spontaneous.

Randall made his way through the maze of diners and servers and slipped around the corner.  There was no one sitting there.  A thin waiter was placing an empty cocktail glass on a tray.  He nodded as Randall walked up to him.

“Good evening, Mister Jowanski.”

Randall squinted at him.  “Do I know you?”

“No sir.  But Mister Fontenot said you would probably come to see him and he begs your pardon.” The waiter produced a folded slip of paper.  Jowanski noticed it had been ripped from the server’s pad from which he used to write down orders.  “He asked that I give you this.  I hasten to say what he told me to tell you, though.”

Randall Jowanski laughed to himself.  “It won’t offend me.  Go ahead.”

“He said, and I quote, ‘Your bitch adds a new dimension to the term service animal and you should get one of those harnesses blind people use to lead her around on when you go out to eat in a public place.’”  The server gulped and looked nervously.

“He’s a hoot, ain’t he?” Chuckling, Jowanski opened the paper.  Two outlines of hands flipping him the bird had been hastily sketched. 

“I guess one fuck off wasn’t enough was it?” was written under it.