New Orleans Noir

children up into the attic.
    “Stay here,” he said in Vietnamese, and then again in English. “Your grandmother and I will be back soon.”
    He tossed them a package of cookies, then wedged the attic door shut from the outside so that they couldn’t follow him. They would die slowly, he knew, if he did not succeed. If he did not return.
    He went back to the Pham house.
    Just inside the living room, he stood on his tiptoes to reach past the ornate façade at the top of a mahogany display case. His shotgun, fetched from his attic hours earlier, was exactly where he’d placed it. Ready to use.
    He followed the angry voices. And the high-pitched wavering voice of a woman. One who Sonny knew was far too brave to be as panicked as she sounded. He crept up the stairs, now too busy concentrating to be praying. Then he swung around the corner into the master bedroom.
    Nga had backed away from the men, left them standing before the small wall safe. When she saw Sonny, she dove for cover behind the bed. Just as they’d agreed.
    “Drop your weapons,” Sonny said in Vietnamese, making the effort to keep his voice low and absolutely steady. “Or you’re dead men.”
    The two did as he said, turning to face his shotgun. Impossible to read the expressions on the faces beneath the masks. But Sonny didn’t much care what they thought. He marched them down the stairs at gunpoint. Into the water of the first floor. Past the place where Charlie’s body had been before he and Nga dragged it up to the second floor, placed it in the bathtub, gently wrapped it with a sheet.
    He showed them to the front door.
    “Your friend is dead,” he said. “But I was able to take back the children without killing you. Say your prayers tonight and thank God and the Virgin for your worthless lives.”
    Sonny stood on the porch, gun leveled in their direction, watching as they waded out into the deeper water.
    Nga had come downstairs, too, and stood just behind him.
    “The children are safe,” he murmured.
    “Kam ouen,” she replied quietly. (“Thank you.”)
    Sonny would have smiled, but just then one of the men stopped moving. He turned to face the porch, and his friend followed his lead.
    “As long as the water is high,” he shouted, “we own Village de l’Est! And we’ll be back. Perhaps we’ll take the woman next time.”
    The other kidnapper laughed, nodded.
    “Don’t sleep, old man. Because when you do—”
    Sonny begged for the Virgin’s understanding as he shot them both.
    Their bodies sank beneath the muddy water.

LAWYERS’ TONGUES
    BY THOMAS ADCOCK
    Gentilly
    I hope that the one of my relations who come across this gift find a very exlent use for it since the old bag I hereby confess to steal it from was a lowdown evil person who actually deserve what I imagine they going to do to me up to Angola after they catch up to me, which is stick me with the ugly needle and put me down like a cat …
    Maybe there was ten thousand dollars’ worth of “gift” slipping around in my hands, maybe twenty. A sheaf of beautiful green-gray bills fluttered to the floor, along with Frank’s last letter to anybody. I stared at etchings of dead presidents on paper money. But all I could see, really, was the memory of my brother’s face, how it so often wore the expression of a mutt dog expecting to be cuffed.
    My brother wrote letters practically every day of his life, always on lined paper torn from the Big Chief notebooks he bought from Bynum’s Pharmacy. Frank bought Big Chiefs like other people buy newspapers and chewing gum.
    I picked up his letter from the floor.
    Probly you going to come across this here loot, Wussy Wally. You being the onlyest one of our so-called family ever care to be buzzing around my bizness …
    He always wrote in jet-black Sheaffer Skrip fountain pen ink. His handwriting was strangely elegant; surely that would seem most odd to those who didn’t care to know anything about Frank besides the worst thing about his record in life.
    He called me “Wussy Wally” only when it was just the two of us. I imagine Frank believed his little brother would be embarrassed otherwise. So I was properly Walter, or sometimes Walt, when anybody else was around.
    I considered the private name a gesture of my brother’s affection and gentleness. For indeed, I did care to know about the thoughtful dimensions of an angry man’s life.
    Frank was right. Nobody else cared anything about him beyond keeping him far away.