Big Easy Bonanza

forth. Darryl checked in every five minutes or so when he saw something interesting. He pointed out a restaurant he said the Mafia owned, and when they drove through a swamp he told her to look out for alligators, you might see the car lights reflected in their eyes. He also asked if she saw anybody following them. She hadn’t really been paying any attention, but she told him no. After that she started checking her mirror, but she didn’t know how you could tell one pair of headlights from another.
    They drove through the town of Houma, on the bypass, and then turned left onto a narrow blacktop running in a direct line south, to the sea. It was dark, but Monique could tell that the land they were passing through was perfectly flat. Darryl told her it was nothing but rice fields and marshes. The flashing lights in the far distance could be oil rigs out on the Gulf, he said, or maybe power lines or boats. Finally he said he was pulling over, and in a minute she saw his lights off to the side. He was idling behind a trash Dumpster in what looked to be the middle of nowhere. She crushed onto the gravel and pulled in beside him.
    Darryl got out of the truck and came around, and she rolled down her window.
    “I’m going down about five miles,” he said. “You come to a place where this road makes a T almost. The main road hooks off to the right, and there’s another road that goes left. It’s gravel. It goes to some fishing camps, maybe two miles down the road. When I call you, just drive down there and meet me. Remember, straight to the fork. Turn off left. Come to me, two miles. When you leave, just go out the way you came in. You’re just bringing me the bag. Don’t hang around. Don’t get out of the car. Nobody needs to see you. I’ll call in about an hour. You got it? Can you wait that long?”
    Monique nodded. “I live for you,” she said.
    Darryl’s eyebrows seemed to pinch together, and his eyes twitched a little bit. “You’re the one, Monique,” he said, and kissed her. “Just do like I told you.”
    He winked at her and got back in the truck. She cut off her lights and engine. Darryl rolled off, and in a couple of minutes the sound of his motor disappeared. Monique was all alone on a slender bridge of asphalt in the center of a million miles of marsh grass, salt air, and the biggest, blackest sky she could ever remember seeing. There were some stars, but no moon. It was so quiet she became conscious of the sound of her own breathing. Then some night insects, or frogs, began croaking at one another, and a mosquito hummed into the car. Something rustled around in the Dumpster. Maybe a raccoon, she thought. It sounded bigger than a raccoon. She rolled up the window quickly, put Wynonna Judd on the Discman, and smoked. She kept checking her watch.
    Because she had the music on, Monique didn’t hear the car coming. It raced past with its headlights off, and scared the bejeezus out of her. Right behind it came two more cars, whoosh, whoosh, no lights. It was black as coal outside, but she thought she saw bubble-gum machines on top. She immediately killed the stereo and slumped down in the seat. The night swallowed the sounds of the car engines, and it became as quiet as the inside of a coffin. She chewed off most of her fingernails. The phone didn’t beep. She waited an hour, and then some. When she couldn’t stand it anymore she started the car up and backed out onto the roadway. She thought for a moment about going straight back to New Orleans, but she couldn’t just desert Darryl, so she turned to the right. She kept her lights off, too. Nobody was coming, and the road went straight as a bullet. After driving five minutes she reached the T and stopped to look around. Way down the gravel road she could see lights, flashing blue ones and one steady bright white one, like she had seen on a movie set once on Canal Street. They might have been a couple of miles away, but you didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what was going on.
    Monique jammed the shifter into the slot marked “R” and peeled out backwards. She pointed the Mazda due north and mashed the gas pedal down flat.
    She got back home in a lot less time than the trip out had taken. After riding around her block, looking for things suspicious, she parked the car and ran into her apartment carrying the blue bag, which she pushed under her bed. Then she sat in front of the TV, rocking back and forth with her arms tight