Big Easy Bonanza

up on the chair for a little nap, and before she fell asleep she prayed that Darryl would never find out what she had done.
    On Mondays, Champs was closed until late in the afternoon to permit a crew to come in and clean the place and give it some air. They usually finished at around noon, and the doors opened to the public at four o’clock. Darryl was there all day. Monique did some laundry in the morning and then came over on her bicycle to keep him company.
    They were sitting at the empty bar, listening to a Neville Brothers tape on the sound system while they talked about this and that and watched the boats out on the lake. Darryl asked her to go upstairs and get the cash register keys. She was in the office when she heard a loud crash. Her eyes jumped to the console that monitored the downstairs area, and she saw two men, one tall and one short and broad, advancing through the front door they had just smashed open. They had some kind of guns in their hands. Her eyes went to the other monitor. Darryl had noticed something. He was standing up and reaching under the counter.
    Before the men had even located Darryl, she saw him grab for the Beretta 9 he kept beneath the register. The short man saw him move and opened fire, shattering glass all over the place and catching Darryl right in the chest. He coughed, coughed, and coughed and went down hard on his back. Both men ran over to the bar, and the short one kicked Darryl. The big guy was pissed off. He grabbed the short man and stuck a gun in his face. He said something, then pushed him away in disgust. He looked up at the camera, and Monique recognized Casey. The two men looked at each other, and then moved off camera in the direction of the stairs.
    She thought about barricading herself in the office and calling the police, but to her Casey was the police. She got out of there and ran down the hall. She could hear them coming at her up the stairs. She slipped through the lounge as quickly and quietly as she could and opened the French doors to the balcony. She closed them behind her and crouched in a corner by the railing. If they came that way, she planned to jump into the lake.
    She heard the sound of wood splintering. That would be the office door. There were more thuds and sounds of things being thrown around. It seemed to go on for a long time, but maybe it was just a few minutes. Then she heard heavy footsteps running down the stairs. Five minutes later, she pushed the doors open slowly and tiptoed across the floor. It was all quiet below, and she slipped downstairs softly. The bar was a mess. The front door was broken open. There was busted glass everywhere. She ran over to Darryl, and there was just lots wrong with him. Blood was pumping out of his chest, and there were large red holes in his shirt and big pieces of flesh hanging off and his eyes were wide open and crossed and his tongue was sticking out of his mouth. He looked horrified. She was horrified. She tried to push his chest back together but it wouldn’t go, and she cried.
    A young couple, thinking they might each have a Corona and lime on a pretty afternoon, came in and found them like that. After they got over the surprise, they called the police.

ELEVEN
    Tubby liked to have a small breakfast at a coffee shop on Maple Street uptown called PJ’S. Back when he was married, Mattie made a big morning meal for the whole family. The divorce had ended that, of course, and for some strange reason it also seemed to have robbed him of his morning appetite. He did enjoy being served, however. He stopped uptown because it was a quiet oasis on his way to the office. One of the nice things about PJ’S was that he hardly ever saw anyone he knew, except the congregation of regulars who were starting to recognize him and would sometimes nod.
    The array of blends and flavors was confusing to him. Tubby was not much on variety in his coffee. He tried hazelnut once, and it put him in a bad mood, so he stuck with what they called “French roast with chicory.” Sometimes a muffin, sometimes not.
    This morning he was trying a banana pecan muffin while reading the newspaper. He sat on the outdoor patio, which was separated from the street by a low fence. His attention wandered to a black guy wearing jeans and a basketball jersey, leaning against the rail with a quarter stuck in his ear. Tubby wondered if that were functional, like the man was ready to use a pay phone, or purely ornamental. Must be a fad, he