Big Easy Bonanza

would like it.”
    “No, sir. He don’t drink nothing but Kool-Aid.”
    That was baloney, Tubby knew. Sheriff Mulé had twice hit the papers for being drunk and highly disorderly in very odd unsherifflike places, but he had yet to get locked up in his own jail.
    Tubby smiled again at the receptionist with the big hair, thinking that the black uniforms certainly looked sexier on the women than the men, and he got the elevator back to the ground floor. It was a relief to step out the front door into the free world. Mulé had showed an awful lot of interest in one crooked bartender. He did not like any part of his conversation with the sheriff. The man was connected – to the good guys and also to some characters too shadowy to classify. He had goons working for him who beat on prisoners, or so it was rumored. Maybe all jailers did. But there was also a newspaper reporter who had written about sex and drug rackets in the jail and who had been mugged so badly that he lost sight in one eye, culprits unknown. He had left town for a safer assignment. There was the uppity jailhouse lawyer who had filed dozens of suits over conditions at the jail, who was found with his throat slashed in the shower, done in, said the authorities, by his fellow inmates. All this was smoke, rumors, or allegations the sheriff had defeated in lawsuits. On the flip side was the celebrated community service—no charity gala was complete without him—but still it made you think.
    Tubby figured he needed to do something about the money soon. He was coming to the conclusion that there was something he wanted and something he did not want. He did not want the gym bag to be in his boat much longer. He did want the money.
    A once-pretty redhead on the downside of thirty shook her fanny, cellulite and all, in the face of an old Cuban stuffing an ashtray full of cigarettes in one of the seedy strip joints that had survived on upper Decatur Street. A couple of cop types Ali knew were at a tiny round table in the dark, leaning against the wall, having a private conversation. The taller of the two, a man they called Casey, waved Ali over.
    “You used to have a girl named Monique work here?” he asked.
    “We get lots of girls. About when would that be?”
    “About a year ago. You know who I’m talking about.”
    “Not really.”
    “Brown hair, healthy-looking, real country, all-American type. I’m sure she was real popular.”
    “Okay, yeah. I might remember her.”
    “You probably fucked her,” said the short fat guy with Casey. He was called Freddie, and he always had a radio or a pair of handcuffs hanging off his belt to show he was in law enforcement. Freddie burped up Budweiser.
    Ali didn’t say anything.
    “She turned tricks with the customers, didn’t she?” Casey asked.
    Ali shrugged.
    “When’s the last time you saw her?”
    “If we’re talking about the same girl, not since she quit.”
    “You wouldn’t be fooling me now, would you, Ali? She wouldn’t have come by and given you something to keep for her, would she?”
    “No.”
    “This is a big investigation. It’s not just me asking, it’s the Sheriff.”
    Ali didn’t know if that was bullshit or not. These half-assed policemen always talked like that, but Sheriff Mulé had once been in the joint in Casey’s company, so it was a possibility. Mulé had tipped well. It didn’t matter either way to Ali. He didn’t give a rat’s ass for Sheriff Mulé and the answer was the same anyway.
    “She didn’t leave me nothing.”
    Casey turned to look at Freddie, and Ali walked away. They might not be finished talking, but he was. He moved softly around the dingy room, emptying ashtrays, guiding his bulk by memory and night radar.
    “She’s got to have hidden it somewhere at Champs,” Freddie told Casey. “She don’t go nowhere else.”
    “That’s real smart, Freddie. Of course, we would have had the money by now if you weren’t such an incredibly dumb fuck.”
    “Hey, he had a gun. What was I supposed to do?”
    “Not cut his head off, asshole. They can’t talk that way.”
    “I didn’t know that fucking gun would shoot like that. We didn’t have anything that would fire so fast when I was growing up.”
    “You should have told me if you didn’t know what you were doing, Freddie. I could have got you a .45 or something.”
    “If we was to do it now, I’d do it right. I’d have it set on single shot.”
    “Let’s roll back the camera and you can do it