Big Easy Bonanza

he’s moved in nearly everything he owns. I can hardly walk around in there, and I don’t know what to do.”
    You would think if you got divorced you wouldn’t have to worry about your ex-wife’s deadbeat brother, but no such luck.
    “Have you tried asking him to leave?”
    “Yes, but he’s very good at ignoring me. It’s hard to evict your uncle. But I’m going to have to get him out of there, or my landlord is going to kick me out.”
    “What for?”
    “This is the part I’m probably not supposed to tell you. Evidently Harold has been dealing drugs, which I knew nothing about, honestly. He got in a big fight with some guys he brought to my apartment last week while I was at school. The landlord called the police.”
    “Did they come out?”
    “Yes, and they got everybody to quiet down. They didn’t arrest anybody or anything, but my landlord is really uptight about it, and really, Daddy, I don’t need this going on at my apartment.”
    “You want me to help you throw him out?”
    “I feel so bad saying it, Daddy, but what else am I supposed to do?”
    “Look, you tell him he has to move out immediately. If that doesn’t work, I’ll come over this weekend and put his stuff on the street. You can mention that to him.”
    “Thanks, Daddy. It’s just that it sounds so mean. I don’t know where he’s going to go.”
    “Harold is almost thirty. He can figure it out.”
    “I guess.” She was happier now. They finished their coffee, and Tubby walked her back to her car.
    Over the throb of “Shake Your Body for Me,” Ali heard one of the girls scream in the back. He moved fast, leaving the bar and its sad-eyed customers to fend for themselves. He stepped past the sign marked PRIVATE and pushed open one after another of the doors to the rooms where the girls got dressed and sometimes gave quickies to the men who wanted them. Behind the third door a black girl named Jodi was sprawled on the floor, bleeding from her nose, shaking the cobwebs out of her head.
    Standing over her was the short, fat deputy named Freddie.
    Freddie swung around menacingly. “Get the fuck out of here,” he yelled at Ali.
    “I know you, asshole,” Ali said to Freddie as he stepped in and swung his big right fist, holding a banana-sized leather-covered blackjack in a wide arc that ended right between Freddie’s eyes. Freddie’s legs gave way, and he collapsed with a soft thud on the floor.
    “Go somewhere else,” Ali told the lady.
    He picked up Freddie and slung him over his shoulders. The back door opened onto an alley. In the daytime, when the ice-cream shop next door was open, it was a tourist byway. At night, only things with four feet skittered through. Ali stuck his head outside and saw no one. He ran with the body about twenty yards and dropped it in a pile on the cobblestones. Then he ran back inside his club and bolted the door.
    A little later a city policeman on horseback clopped slowly down the street. The horse, more than the officer, found the body, and lowered his nose to investigate. After inspecting the heap from his saddle for a full minute, the policeman dismounted. He rolled Freddie over, compared notes with his horse, and then radioed for backup and an ambulance to the morgue.
    For an hour, the alley was full of people and flashing lights, then it was empty and dark again.
    “The little fat fuck had an accident,” Ali told Monique on the telephone.

SEVENTEEN
    Tubby pulled in to the parking lot at the K&B drugstore and cruised around to a space some distance away from the store as he had been told. He parked directly under a street lamp. He waited, watching cars come and go. Some kids, who should have been home at that hour, coasted through on bikes. Last-minute shoppers went in and out of the store. On the streetcorner a fat lady with a pink dress, wearing a frayed straw sombrero, was selling hot tamales from a banged-up wagon. Her stand was illuminated by the hot phosphorous glow of a camping lantern. Tubby was checking out an old man pushing a shopping cart up the broken sidewalk, when a tap on the passenger window startled him. His partner, Reggie, opened the door and got in beside him.
    “Hello, Tubby,” Reggie said softly.
    Tubby was almost too surprised to speak, but he managed, “Hello, Reggie. I didn’t really expect to see you.”
    “Yeah, well, that’s the way the King Cake crumbles.” He looked in the backseat and saw the gym bag. “Is that the money?” he