One Blood

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Friday

Just outside Lake City

 “Where are you holed up these days, Snake?” Randy Lafitte asked in his typical “I’m the boss of you” voice.

Snake Roberts stared at the traffic trickling past him as he sat on the roadside shoulder. “Yuh know me, Boss. If I can think, that means I need a drink.” He took a generous gulp of Snapple fruit juice and forced a belch. “Now, what’s this yuh say about a hefty payout? What’s the job?” 

Snake sensed Randy’s hesitation, which was unexpected because Randy never hesitated when it came to his needs. It had always been that way. Even fifteen years back in that piece of shit bar in Cameron, where they’d met.

* * * * *

Snake had been sitting at his usual table in the quietest corner of the room, farthest from the door. A shot of Jamesons, one pint of Guinness, and one snifter of Bailey’s Irish cream sat on the table before him, beside a weathered copy of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake—what he thought of as his Irish quadruple mind fuck. The door opened, allowing enough sunlight inside to obliterate the bar’s number one feature besides the cheap liquor—ambient dimness. Snake was not a fan of daylight; it gave him headaches and irritated his freckled white skin.

The bastard in the doorway clearly held sunlight in high regard; he had the nerve to keep the door open longer than necessary as he tried to penetrate the dim.

“Who you looking for, boy?” the barmaid, Gertrude, asked the intruder. “Think you might be in the wrong place…”

Snake doubted this because you had to go way out of your way down a less trodden tributary off the beaten path to find this hellhole. The visitor’s eyes scanned the room as he ignored Gertrude’s welcome, eventually coming to rest on Snake and his Irish posse. Blessedly, the man closed the door, then strode across the room to Snake’s corner.

It took Snake’s eyes a moment to adjust, but he finally got a look at the fellow when he sat down—directly across from him. Gertrude’s description was on the money as usual. He had the height, build, and manner of a disciplined man, but at the same time he wore the face of a boy, and a privileged boy at that. But the eyes…the eyes were those of a man who’d seen a particular brand of darkness.

Those eyes reminded Snake of his fellow Vietnam vets—men whose innocence was scrubbed away so thoroughly that only the sinewy layer of skin between air and taut muscle remained. But Snake knew that was the toughest layer the same way he knew the man before him had never seen a real war. He was too cloaked in indignant self-righteousness for that.

“You’re a hard man to track down, Mr. Roberts.” The man-boy’s voice was a brilliant instrument, relaying all the right pitches of assertiveness, pleasantry, humor, and grit.

If he wasn’t a politician, Snake would eagerly gobble down his own shirt. Then it came to him in a flash of insight. He’d seen this man-boy before, as recently as a few weeks back, and much to the delight of his shirt-phobic stomach, he was a politician. Having placed the face, Snake reached for the name.

“To what do I owe the pleasure, Mr…”

“My name isn’t important, but the work I’m offering you could be. I was told you were a man who could get tough jobs done, discretely. I’ve got such a job…”

* * * * *

Fifteen years later, Snake was still cleaning up Lafitte’s messes.

“I need you to find someone for me, Snake,” Lafitte said after a short pause.

 “And what do I do once I find this upstanding gentleman?” Snake replied, taking another sip of juice. Reminiscing was thirsty work.

“It’s a woman. Her name is Desiree Deveaux. She was once a fortune teller calling herself Madame Deveaux, last known to live in New Orleans. I need you to find her by no later than tomorrow night and bring her to me.”

“That it?”

Another uncustomary pause. Maybe the instrument needed warming these days, the way an old car did. As if to confirm this, Lafitte cleared his throat. “Snake,” he said. “Someone took my daughter today.”

So it begins.

Snake had known this moment was rapidly approaching, but now that it was here, he almost felt bad…almost. “I’m sorry to hear that, Boss.”

“I can’t have the police or Feds involved in this.”

“Of course not. Who needs ‘em.”

“I’m speaking to the kidnappers in about two and a half hours. Once I know their demands, I’ll call you back so we can put together our game plan.”

“What if they don’t have any?”

“Excuse me?”

“Demands, I mean. What makes yuh think they’ve got demands?”

“Everyone wants something, Snake.”

“But what if yuh don’t have what they want or can’t get it in time?”

“I’m paying you a lot of money to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Lafitte hung up.

Snake placed the cell phone in the cup holder. The square green sign just beyond his windshield announced Lake City’s municipal boundary. Snake had chosen his parking spot carefully, so he could remain within the city limits of Iowa (pronounced eye-a-way in Louisiana). He hated Lake City almost as much as he hated the sun.

Everything about the city bothered him. How drivers were forced to take the Interstate just to get anywhere; the billboards advertising casinos where all they did was take his money; the Super Walmarts on every corner. The whole city smelled like a chemistry experiment gone bad because of the throng of chemical plants down by Lake Francis, and it was downright insufferable. People couldn’t even go to Prien Pines Beach anymore because of all the chemicals they dumped in the water. But most of all, he detested the fifty-five mile per hour speed limit.

Who the fuck could get anywhere driving fifty-five?

Snake dialed another number.

“Well, Jhonnette, the Governor went for it, just like you said he would,” Snake said after his lover’s greeting.

“Did you ever doubt me?” Jhonnette replied in that sexy, all-knowing way of hers.

Snake quelled the desire to proclaim his undying love. There would be plenty of time for that once this was finished. “Never that, my love. I’m putting everything in motion now. See you in a couple of days.” Snake hung up and exhaled.

 It was amazing how the world worked. A year ago he’d been lost. His gambling debts were sky high. Doctors had diagnosed him with chronic hepatitis and advanced cirrhosis. They told him that without a liver transplant, he’d be dead within a year.

Then he’d met Jhonnette Deveaux at an old Blues bar in the French Quarter. After six months with her, Snake’s liver exams had returned to normal, he’d paid off his gambling debts, and had fallen madly in love. At first, Snake tried to manipulate Jhonnette as he did most women. But it was pointless. Jhonnette saw his every deception birthing. She saw everything—a gift from her mother. One night after lovemaking, she revealed his fortune.

“You will be a millionaire in one year’s time.”

He was now three days away from realizing Jhonnette’s prophesy. Whenever Snake found himself doubting the course they’d laid out together, he remembered that everything Jhonnette predicted had come to pass. Every single thing. And though he’d never admit it to another soul, Snake knew when Jhonnette put her hands on him during those long gone days of sickness, she’d healed him. 

Certain of his future for the first time in recent memory, Snake cranked up the stereo, rolled the windows down, and fed his rented Mustang some gas. It was going to be a historic weekend.

Lake City, here I come.