Valley of Redemption (Tucker Novels Book 2) Read online

  He was in the corner when the door opened.

  “No! It’s not time!” he screamed, not knowing if anyone spoke English. It didn’t matter. He had to scream. “It’s not time!”

  Today was different. He knew right away. They didn’t storm the cell like they normally did. One man was standing in the open doorway and was pointing something at him. Because there was more light beyond the open door, Charles could see other men standing behind the man in the doorway, at least five or six.

  “Don’t shoot!” Charles screamed. He knew he was about to die. It looked like a shotgun of sorts aimed directly at him. “Don’t shoot! He’ll send money! Don’t shoot!”

  “Heh … heh … heh,” came a crazy sickening laugh from the man holding the gun.

  Then it hit him in the chest. A gush of cold water that pinned him against the wall, the force knocked the air from his lungs. He had to turn to the side protect his stomach and testicles as the

  fist-sized stream worked its way down. The water traversed his back and down his legs literally tearing away parts of his pants and shirt. The man with the water was an expert, spinning Charles at his will to hit all parts of his body. He barely had time to cover his eyes before the stream hit him in the head, slamming it against the stone, stunning him into semiconsciousness.

  They chose that time to run into the cell and drag El Gigante from it. It took all of them. El Gigante was heavy. They didn’t have to drag him far. Just down the corridor to another room. In that room was a lone wooden table made of heavy oak. The table was dark and about six feet square. It had ropes wrapped around two of the legs and draped over onto the top. There were two more ropes lying on the floor underneath the table. All laid out like it was planned. Charles was only barely aware of this. He would later remember it vividly.

  The men threw Charles face down on the table and quickly and expertly bound his hands tightly to the ropes attached to the two table legs. While men were tying his hands, others pulled the other two ropes from underneath the table and wrapped one around his waist and the other around his chest. These were also bound tight. This was all done with a sense of urgency. It had to be done before El Gigante fully regained his senses.

  Charles was slowly coming around. As he did so, the memory of the last few minutes also came back. He was never totally out, just stunned. As his pants were jerked down to his ankles and each of his legs tied to the other two legs of the table, Charles began to cry.

  “Please don’t do this,” he begged. “Please … please… please.”

  Then another man entered the room. For a Mexican he was big. His black hair was long and pulled back into a tight form-fitting skullcap, the ponytail hanging down to the small of his back. His face was fleshy and soft like the rest of him. There was something not quite right about his smile. It was more than evil. It was insane.

  “Muchacho’s dejar aquí,” he whispered.

  The men left immediately, and he quietly closed the door.

  Charles was crying as he fought the ropes and the table, but he couldn’t get an advantage. The table seemed to be attached to the floor, and even with all his size and strength, get it to budge.

  “Eeeets no yoose, nino,” he whispered affectionately into Charles’ ear as he ran his hand down his back like he was petting a horse. Then he moved behind Charles. He smelled of sweet lilacs.

  “Noooooooo!” Charles’ screamed was choked off by an all-encompassing physical and humiliating sinful pain.

  The lilac man was stroking Charles’ back saying “Mi niño.”

  His last thought before passing out, far too many minutes later was, this couldn’t be happening, I’m going home soon. He will come for me. He will come for me.

  Charles was 21 years old when his soul started to twist. In the wrong direction.

  Chapter 2

  Grief. You can learn to live with it. Not heavy on your back like it was at first. Always carrying it like a large boulder that’s breaking you down step by step. If you get help and work at it, you can learn to live with it by your side; always there, like a shadow, sometimes darker, sometimes lighter, but always there and always a shadow. Hell, sometimes you can even put your arm around it, buddy up to it, tell it a joke, depends on how much you’ve had to drink.

  Then there’s the other word that forever accompanies grief. Guilt. The circumstances around how your grief was attained is in direct proportion to the mass of your guilt. Guilt’s a bitch. Survival guilt is a heavy load; there may be nothing worse. No buddying up to her. Hell, half the time you can’t find her. She slips and slides like a viper in the grass, just waiting for you to forget she’s there, then…ssspphhhhiiitttt, she strikes and her poison is guilt and it’s hot and strong and you never become immune.

  Grief … guilt… notice how both words have five letters — so does the “blues.”

  I reached over and turned Keb Mo’s CD off.

  I knew the grief I was feeling was out of context for the loss I had just experienced, and I also knew that once someone had dropped to the bottom of that dark well of extreme loss, that’s just where you went with grief.

  I could tell myself that Tuesday was just a dog, but she was still one of the loves of my life. She had brought me great comfort, companionship and friendship over the years she was alive. And Buck for over 16 years. They were my black labs, my buddies. My trip to Houston had to be postponed for a few days. The morning Tuesday and I were supposed to leave, she had a violent seizure. The vet said there was nothing we could do; she had a large brain tumor. Just hours after the vet put Tuesday down, Buck decided he was through gimping around and doing his Stevie Wonder impersonations and just died in his bed, like he knew Tuesday was gone and I wasn’t enough reason to stick around for anymore. I won’t say I cried. I still had Razor, my Catahoula hog dog, to patrol the perimeter.

  I was on my way to Houston to look itno the “accidental death due to alcohol” of a Nashville billionaire’s wife, under the guise of investigating the disappearance of the P. I. he had previously hired. I had my reasons.

  I was on I-20, just west of Monroe headed for Shreveport, driving through a penetratingly cold steely sleet that one can only experience in the humidity of a Louisiana winter. I know it’s not the shortest route from Nashville, but I needed to stop at Lake Bistineau to talk to an old … friend. I had my reasons.

  It was getting close to sundown, and I decided to see if Sam Partain’s Catfish Kitchen was still in business. It was just a couple of miles north of the interstate and I was hungry.

  When I pulled into the parking, lot I experienced an eerie déjà vu. It hadn’t changed at all that much that I could see. A blue aluminum-sided rectangle with a lot of glass in front and the flat roof lined with red aluminum that dropped down about 6 feet from the top, with the faded yellow letters “Catfish Kitchen.”

  I walked through the front door into the past. It was just the same. A 20-foot bar centered along the back and four top-tables at each end. I knew the kitchen was behind the back wall that was covered in old photos. The 30 feet between the front door and the bar was scattered with tables covered by red-checkered plastic with condiments arranged in the middle. The restrooms were to the far right through an alcove that I know used to contain a pay phone. I wondered if it was still there.

  I went to the left corner of the bar and took at a stool that would allow me a clear view of the front door. There was a very cute young couple sitting at a four-top just in front of the bar drinking draft beer and waiting for their food. There were a few other tables with customers that seemed harmless enough, but it was the young woman that caught my attention. She was beautiful. Auburn hair with red highlights, little freckles across the bridge of her nose with the bluest eyes and a complexion that screamed healthy! She reminded me of my late wife … a lot.

  The bartender came down to take my order, and I knew immediately he was Sam’s son. Thick blonde hair combed rakishly ’50s style over a clear complexion that belied his age, blue l
aughing eyes and a crooked inoffensive smirk.

  “What can I get you?” he said with only an accent that could only come from the bayou.

  “Bud Light draft,” I said.

  For a moment he didn’t move, just stared. I was wondering if he heard me he when he turned and went to the cooler to get a cold mug. As he poured the beer he kept looking at me through the side of his head, like he didn’t want me to know he was checking me out. I took a quick inventory of my clothes and couldn’t find anything wrong or out of place and I knew he couldn’t see my .45 under my leather jacket and my LSU hat wasn’t a novelty here.

  When he set the beer down in front of me he said, “You look familiar, been here before?”

  I get that familiar thing a lot. I usually attribute it to my movie star good looks, but it’s the scar most people remember.

  “I have been here before, but you hadn’t been born yet.”

  “How do you know when I was born?”

  I took a swallow of beer and said, “What’s your name?”

  “David.”

  “Okay, David,” I said, as he turned his head to look at the wall of photos. “You look just like your father, and the last time I saw your folks, you weren’t around.”

  While he was digesting that, I stole another look at the auburn-haired lass. She was looking straight at me. We locked eyes and then she did it. She smiled at me showing her perfect white teeth. Yowzah! If I was a zillion years younger. She didn’t have a wedding or engagement ring on, so the handsome young guy with her was probably her boyfriend. By the way they were looking at each other, he definitely wasn’t a relative. Lucky guy.

  David walked down the length of the bar studying the framed pictures. Stopping about three quarters the way down, he walked closer to one of the pictures and looked at it for a few seconds then back at me. He took the photograph off the wall; he had to stand on his tiptoes because he also had inherited his parents’ height. His mother was a dark-haired Cajun named Twyla. She and Sam were not tall people.

  He brought the picture over and set it down on the bar just out of the condensation ring forming around my mug.

  “It is you,” he said, like he’d been looking for me.

  Sure enough, it was a black and white photo of the four of us, Twyla, Sam, Margie and me taken in the parking lot with the newly erected Catfish Kitchen in the background. Every time I see a picture of Margie my chest seems to shrink and tighten around my heart. The young lady to my right did favor her, or was I just projecting.

  “Man, you’re Tucker! My old man has told me stories about you. He said if it wasn’t for you this place would never have been built.”

  I had all but forgotten about the money I had given Sam to help him get started. It was easy to do since I had done my best to forget my recidivistic past when $5,000 was not a lot of money. Sam had insisted it was a loan, but one of the things the Major taught me, besides how to duck, was “never lend money you can’t afford to give away.” So, I never expected to get it back and still didn’t.

  “How are your mom and dad?”

  Smiling he said, “They’re great. I’m going to call him and tell him you’re here. I know he would want to see you.”

  Right about then the young man’s cell phone rang. The young lady was checking the level of ketchup in a very large Heinz bottle, one of the glass ones that you don’t see much anymore. I could tell she wasn’t happy about him taking the call. I overheard enough of the conversation to ascertain he was in the construction business and there was a problem at the site, something to do with a delivery and an invoice. He apologized, and as he stood up, mumbled something about his truck.

  As he walked around the far side of the table on his way out, she walked around the near side with the ketchup bottle and up to the bar. That put her only a few feet away from me and allowed me a total side view. Yowzah! Lucky guy.

  “Could you get us another bottle of ketchup please? I know this isn’t going to be enough for him,” she said with a husky Southern voice that would have melted my heart.

  If I was a zillion years younger.

  “Sure thing,” David said. “I’ll go in the back and bring it to your table in a minute.”

  If she would have turned to the right to go back to her table, she would have her back to me, but she turned to her left, which caused her to face me, then stopped. Again she smiled directly at me, as if she knew how unsettling it was to me, and was enjoying it.

  She turned quickly and that caused her hair to flip over onto her right shoulder. Margie couldn’t have done it any better.

  She sat back down. I stared at my beer.

  A minute later David came through a door leading to the kitchen with a full bottle of ketchup and stopped dead in his tracks. Looking toward the front door he whispered loudly, “Oh shit!”

  I followed his gaze and caught a very large man walking past the window to the door. This guy looked like the human version of Mighty Joe Young. He was wearing a wife-beater and his hairy arms and giant shoulders still had grease on them even though his clothes looked clean. He had a basketball beer gut that didn’t hang and looked hard above his jeans. He looked hard all over and strong. On his feet were what we used to call “stompers.” They were thick and black, cut just below the ankle with steel toes and a heavy Vibram sole. They looked like biker boots without the boot. Perfect for stomping a man to death.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “That’s Noyo,” he said, like I should know.

  “And that means?” I said

  “That we’re in deep shit. If he’s been drinking, it’s trouble of the worst kind. He’s a crazy coon-ass who has killed a couple of men with his bare hands, but never goes to jail claiming self-defense and nobody will testify otherwise.” He said all this very quickly because Mr. Noyo had entered the building.

  David seemed frozen with fear, still holding the ketchup bottle.

  Only in Louisiana. There’s no place like it, where a man like this is allowed to walk around loose. I was reminded of just one of the reasons I fled this haunting land I loved as a young man. You should need to show a passport to get into this state. It’s like another country with a whole different set of rules and laws, where for some, the word “civilized” is just a concept.

  Noyo looked around and caught the young lady looking at him over her right shoulder.

  He smiled at her like they were old friends then aimed his stompers straight for her. He sat down at her table to her left with his back to me. She looked scared to death.

  As he got closer I saw his heavy brow was scarred and his nose wasn’t right. His arms were pocked with dozens of almost perfectly round scars dissected by straight ones. I’d seen the round ones before on welders and I had seen the straight ones on an old Korean vet knife fighter named Mack. So I knew they were obviously either knife or straight razor scars. Okay, he’s a welder and a real bad-ass.

  “How ya doin’ chere,” he slurred.

  David visibly cringed and turned white with fear.

  Mighty Joe’s back was to me, which was about four feet across, the back hair crawling out from behind the wife-beater. He had a thick Cajun accent. Usually when a Cajun has to move this far north it’s because the Cajun’s down south have run him off. That’s a very bad sign.

  He didn’t seem interested in anyone else in the restaurant. In my experience, when a man acts like he can do anything he pleases, it’s because he always has and he’s always gotten away with it, and for a man like that that, it just means he’s still alive.

  “I’m sorry but I don’t know you,” she said without a tremor in her voice.

  Gritty woman.

  “Thas okay chere, you gettin’ ready to knows me jus fine,” he said, grabbing her by the arm with a hand that had scars that would correspond with the face and arms, a hand the size of a smoked Tennessee ham.

  “You need to let go of me right this instant,” she said with certainty. Like she knew that the people in the re
staurant surely wouldn’t let anything happen to her.

  Gritty gritty.

  He just laughed, his voice thick with booze and said, “Good, I likes my womens to fights a little.”

  She looked around for help and her searching stopped with me.

  “David, I’ll take the ketchup over to her,” I said, reaching for the bottle.

  As he handed me the full ketchup bottle, I whispered, “Get ready to call an ambulance.”

  Sam looked at me like a question mark.