Big Easy Bonanza

crouched.
    “Who’s there?” he said in a low voice, like he wasn’t totally sure that anyone was there. She recognized the voice as Casey’s.
    “Me,” she said, and with both hands folded around the pearly grips, she focused what she had at his shadow and started shooting.
    “Shit!” Casey yelled and tumbled onto the floor. A table loaded with chairs turned over with a crash. Casey fired a weapon – she saw the flash but had no thought about where the bullet went – then, with a leap, he smashed through the window she had been looking through and rolled outside. She heard his footsteps running away on the dock.
    Monique stood frozen, both arms expended, pointing her pistol at the broken window, for a minute or more, and then she sat down on the floor.
    “Where’s the damn police?” she sobbed. Not even a dog barked. None lived by the lake. Just the rigging banging on the masts.
    “Where are the sirens?” she cried.
    She got up and walked around the room, stepping around tables and looking into corners. She stuck her head through the jagged hole in the window and looked at the trees blowing outside. A breeze picked up a Popeye’s bag and blew it down the street. She rubbed her hands over the pistol. She smelled its barrel. Somewhere there was a rat in here. At least she could blow that away. An orange streak split the sky.
    The sun came up. Monique sat outside on the dock, watching seagulls dive for their breakfast of minnows at the mouth of the harbor. She was in the company of a bottle of vodka and a row of orange juice cans. The Beretta 9 was on the plank beside her, glistening with dew. She hadn’t thought about it for a while, and didn’t know if it still held any bullets. Some early morning fishermen set up their gear on the rocks across the channel. One waved at her, and in a minute she waved back.
    She got on her feet, not smoothly, stretched, and went back inside to use the phone. It rang a long time before she heard her mama say hello.
    “Hello, Mama.”
    “Who is this? Monique?”
    “Yes, Mama.”
    “What are you calling so early for?”
    “I just got up early this morning. I thought you’d be awake by now. Is Lisa all right?”
    “Of course she’s all right. What makes you think she wouldn’t be all right? Where are you?”
    “I’m in New Orleans, Mama. I just wanted to hear your voice and talk to Lisa.”
    “You sound real funny, Monique, like you’re in a dream. Have you been drinking?”
    “No, Mama. I just had a real bad night. Is Lisa there?”
    “She’s here and in bed and that’s where I’m going to leave her. It’s too early in the morning to be making a phone call and waking people up.”
    “I know she’d like to talk to me.”
    “No, she wouldn’t. It would just trouble her right now. And you’ve been enough trouble to her already. I’m going to leave her asleep.”
    “Please, Mama.”
    “Monique, quit saying please this and please that. You get yourself back together first, and then we’ll talk about it.”
    Monique couldn’t think of anything else to say.
    “Okay, Mama. Well, then I guess I’ll let you go. You’ll tell her I called, won’t you?”
    “Yes, but I won’t tell her how you sounded.”
    “Goodbye, Mama.”
    “Goodbye.”

FIFTEEN
    Tubby, whatsa big deal, huh? You just droppin’ in or what?” Judge Hughes gave Tubby’s hand a mighty shake.
    “I was just in the neighborhood, Al, and I thought I’d see if you were real busy.”
    “Gawd, yes. It’s always real busy. You see all those guys out there? That’s two pretrials and a temporary restraining order. Then I got a trial resuming at two o’clock.”
    Judge Hughes always smiled when he talked, so he looked kind of like a brown cherub because he was bald and had a round, plump face, big inquisitive eyes, and curly ears. Being a judge, you would think he had heard everything, but he always looked like he was curious about what you were going to say. He was invariably friendly and courteous to lawyers, though slow as molasses to render a judgment and sometimes hard to get on the bench. He much preferred meeting in chambers with just the lawyers around, to get it all arranged peacefully. He was probably Tubby’s oldest friend in the city.
    They had studied together in law school. The bond was firmed up when they had both clerked at the district attorney’s office and realized that they both regarded their boss, a flamboyant DA who always found fiction more persuasive than