Thomas Adcock - New Orleans Noir

“Smart,” Sonny’d said, and then he’d grinned at her. “Be sure to move slowly, old woman. That way you’ll give an old man the time that he needs.”

Now, as he slipped quietly into the water, Sonny murmured another prayer to the Virgin. He apologized to her for previous transgressions, then asked her to intervene on his behalf. To ask the Lord’s forgiveness for what he was about to do.

“Ban cung sinh dao tac,” he said finally. (“Necessity knows no laws.”) And he hoped that the old adage was respected in heaven, too.

Then he made sure his grasp was firm around the razor-sharp filleting knife he’d taken from his tackle box when he’d briefly returned to his little house. And he moved forward, only his nose and eyes above the water’s surface, the top of his head camouflaged by a small, leafy branch. When he’d tested it, Nga had assured him that it looked as if the branch were merely floating loose on the water.

Sonny had already checked his route, knew exactly where the obstacles lay between him and the porch. He moved forward quickly, detouring when he needed to, half-swimming, half-gliding through the water. Recalling how he’d once crossed rivers in just this way, intent on an enemy.

The man who’d been left behind was entertaining himself by terrorizing the children. He had retrieved his gun and, with his free hand, was leaning on the raft, pushing it downward against the water’s pressure, then releasing it abruptly. He was laughing at the children’s muffled cries.

Sonny emerged from the water directly behind him. He wrapped one arm around the young man’s shoulders as he slid the blade firmly across his throat. Just as he’d been taught back in Vietnam. Then he held the body for a moment, waiting for it to hang limp before lowering it slowly into the water.

The gun sank before he could retrieve it, but that didn’t matter.

He smiled at the children and touched his fingers to his lips. But he left them taped up and gagged. Impossible to trust ones so young to the silence that was essential to saving their lives. He pushed the raft back down the street, moving as quickly as he could, finally beaching it on his own tiny side porch.

He took the children up into the attic.

“Stay here,” he said in Vietnamese, and then again in English. “Your grandmother and I will be back soon.”

He tossed them a package of cookies, then wedged the attic door shut from the outside so that they couldn’t follow him. They would die slowly, he knew, if he did not succeed. If he did not return.

He went back to the Pham house.

Just inside the living room, he stood on his tiptoes to reach past the ornate façade at the top of a mahogany display case. His shotgun, fetched from his attic hours earlier, was exactly where he’d placed it. Ready to use.

He followed the angry voices. And the high-pitched wavering voice of a woman. One who Sonny knew was far too brave to be as panicked as she sounded. He crept up the stairs, now too busy concentrating to be praying. Then he swung around the corner into the master bedroom.

Nga had backed away from the men, left them standing before the small wall safe. When she saw Sonny, she dove for cover behind the bed. Just as they’d agreed.

“Drop your weapons,” Sonny said in Vietnamese, making the effort to keep his voice low and absolutely steady. “Or you’re dead men.”

The two did as he said, turning to face his shotgun. Impossible to read the expressions on the faces beneath the masks. But Sonny didn’t much care what they thought. He marched them down the stairs at gunpoint. Into the water of the first floor. Past the place where Charlie’s body had been before he and Nga dragged it up to the second floor, placed it in the bathtub, gently wrapped it with a sheet.

He showed them to the front door.

“Your friend is dead,” he said. “But I was able to take back the children without killing you. Say your prayers tonight and thank God and the Virgin for your worthless lives.”

Sonny stood on the porch, gun leveled in their direction, watching as they waded out into the deeper water.

Nga had come downstairs, too, and stood just behind him.

“The children are safe,” he murmured.

“Kam ouen,” she replied quietly. (“Thank you.”)

Sonny would have smiled, but just then one of the men stopped moving. He turned to face the porch, and his friend followed his lead.

“As long as the water is high,” he shouted, “we own Village de l’Est! And we’ll be back. Perhaps we’ll take the woman next time.”

The other kidnapper laughed, nodded.

“Don’t sleep, old man. Because when you do—”

Sonny begged for the Virgin’s understanding as he shot them both.

Their bodies sank beneath the muddy water.

Gentilly

I hope that the one of my relations who come across this gift find a very exlent use for it since the old bag I hereby confess to steal it from was a lowdown evil person who actually deserve what I imagine they going to do to me up to Angola after they catch up to me, which is stick me with the ugly needle and put me down like a cat...

Maybe there was ten thousand dollars’ worth of “gift” slipping around in my hands, maybe twenty. A sheaf of beautiful green-gray bills fluttered to the floor, along with Frank’s last letter to anybody. I stared at etchings of dead presidents on paper money. But all I could see, really, was the memory of my brother’s face, how it so often wore the expression of a mutt dog expecting to be cuffed.

My brother wrote letters practically every day of his life, always on lined paper torn from the Big Chief notebooks he bought from Bynum’s Pharmacy. Frank bought Big Chiefs like other people buy newspapers and chewing gum.

I picked up his letter from the floor.

Probly you going to come across this here loot, Wussy Wally. You being the onlyest one of our so-called family ever care to be buzzing around my bizness...

He always wrote in jet-black Sheaffer Skrip fountain pen ink. His handwriting was strangely elegant; surely that would seem most odd to those who didn’t care to know anything about Frank besides the worst thing about his record in life.

He called me “Wussy Wally” only when it was just the two of us. I imagine Frank believed his little brother would be embarrassed otherwise. So I was properly Walter, or sometimes Walt, when anybody else was around.

I considered the private name a gesture of my brother’s affection and gentleness. For indeed, I did care to know about the thoughtful dimensions of an angry man’s life.

Frank was right. Nobody else cared anything about him beyond keeping him far away. All our uncles and aunts and cousins kept their doors shut to Frank — and, by extension, to me too. This was due to Frank’s light fingers. As Aunt-tee Viola said for the whole bunch of our relations, “That boy Frank, he’d steal anything but a red-hot stove.”

But he was more than a thief, of course. Just as surely as crooks in high places got where they are because of doing some good things for people now and then. A man’s life is not so petty it can be measured up at the end as all good or all bad. Frank was plus and minus like anybody else, except for cheap schooling and black skin, which of course magnifies all minuses.

When I recollect his plus side, I would describe Frank as a philosopher. The things he said!

Such as things he’d whisper in the dark of night when we were boys in a shared room, me in one twin bed drifting off to sleep, Frank in his — only I can’t recall ever seeing him sleep. Frank would be sitting up, sounding out important thoughts before scratching them into a Big Chief by the light of a radio dial.