Big Easy Bonanza

gave him a distant smile. He had a long scar on his cheek, which he probably thought was sexy, and a lot of muscles.
    The elevator stopped on the third floor, and when Tubby stepped out the man came with him. Tubby did not like that, so he stopped to fish around in his pocket for his parking ticket. The man also stopped and looked at Tubby serenely.
    “What do you want?” Tubby asked, having a hard time controlling his breathing.
    “Let’s get in your car, Mr. Dubonnet. Then you do what I say.” The guy’s voice was not unfriendly. He was at least a head taller than Tubby was.
    “I don’t think so,” Tubby said, not very loudly.
    The man with the scar reached behind him and pulled out a small handgun that must have been holstered somewhere in the band of his running shorts, and he held it out for Tubby to see. Tubby was reminded of a policeman showing a badge. The man was simply providing the explanation for why Tubby should do what he was told. The gun was very small, but Tubby knew it could cause pain. He was no longer into guns. He had seen a lot of their victims. Before he could react, the man with the scar suddenly grabbed Tubby’s left ear and twisted it violently, bringing him to his knees.
    “Let’s go, little man,” he hissed, and started pulling Tubby with him.
    Just then the elevator door behind them whooshed open, and a Hispanic couple stepped off. Tubby’s ear was released in an instant, and the man palmed the gun.
    “Excuse us,” said the woman, a short, dark-haired figure with deep-set eyes. She was plainly irritated that her way was blocked by two men possibly fornicating.
    Tubby started running. Faded arrows painted on the concrete showed the ramp down, and down he went. He looked over his shoulder to see three surprised faces, then saw the guy with the gun start running after him. Tubby was pumping hard, trying to keep his footing on the greasy driveway, coated with years of car exhaust and oil pan drippings. His hard-soled shoes kept sliding, and he had to push off the wall to avoid sprawling headfirst onto the cement. He heard sneakers behind him when he ran past the ticket booth and hit the street. He cut left, toward Bourbon, where there were tourists and lights. Behind him he heard a commotion when the man following him got tangled up with an old derelict who was weaving down the block. Then the sneakers pounded after him again.
    On Bourbon Street the revelry was in high gear, and he ran straight into the crush. It carried him along toward the music. He was in a current of tourists and partygoers waving cups of beer and Hurricanes, small-towners pointing out freaks and laughing.
    Tubby went with the flow, but tried to go a little faster than the rest of the crowd. He needed to catch his breath, and he was trying to find a cop. Once he looked back and he saw the face of the muscle man. It was no more than twenty-five feet away, grimly keeping pace.
    The middle of the street was blocked by a ring of partyers watching some black kids tap-dance with bottle caps nailed to their shoes, the sights of a primitive city. They kept time to the Dukes of Dixieland blasting away inside. Tubby pushed around them, feeling rather than seeing his pursuer. And then he picked out a policeman, a cop on a horse outside of a loud rock ’n’ roll club, talking to a few out-of-towners and posing for photographs. Tubby rushed up and patted the policeman’s patent-leather riding boots, trying to get the cop’s attention.
    “Officer.” He really had to squeeze the boot to get the man to look down. He gave Tubby an angry glare.
    “Officer, there’s a man following me. He’s got a gun.”
    The cop leaned over to get a better look at Tubby. “Where is he?” he asked.
    Tubby pointed back in the direction he had come, but the guy had faded away.
    “He was right there.”
    “Do you know who it was?”
    “No.”
    “What did he look like?”
    “White male, real tall, over six feet, wearing jogging shorts and a T-shirt.” Tubby and the policeman scanned the crowd. A lot of the people on the street looked sort of like that.
    The policeman pulled his walkie-talkie off his belt and relayed the information to someone unseen.
    “We’ll look for him,” he said to Tubby.
    “Thank you, Officer,” Tubby said. Then he hung around, not sure what he was supposed to do next. The policeman stood up in his stirrups and looked around a little bit more. Then a pretty girl asked him where Pat O’Brien’s was,