Dead Man's Hand

Prologue

Bobby Lee Davis was pleased, his steps light as he approached his new model Cadillac, a gift from an admiring congregation at Slice of Heaven Evangelical Church in Monroe, Louisiana. He was dressed in his standard white suit, of which he had seven in his walk-in closet, consisting of a white vest covering a pale blue shirt, white tie, white shoes and white socks.

Bobby Lee felt the white outfit broadcast purity, especially when he stood in front of his admiring flock with a 40-member choir behind him, all dressed in red robes with white ruffled collars. Image was everything, Bobby Lee had learned. His sermons were presentations, staged for maximum effect, and his white suits were part of it.

He had recently attended a meeting with his financial committee and church deacons, resulting in more support for his crusade against gambling in the state of Louisiana. The parking lot behind the building where the meeting had been held was lighted with a faint glow from a lamp on a nearby utility pole. As Bobby Lee clicked the electronic door opener, he was the happiest he had been in the months since his wife left him and a threatened lawsuit had been settled with the family of a 16-year-old girl who accused him of having sex with her.

~ * ~

For the past five years Bobby Lee’s world had expanded beyond his wildest dreams. A small town fundamentalist preacher, he had latched onto an idea and rode it onto a statewide stage: the evils of gambling. Though standing only five-foot-six inches tall from the top of his wavy black pompadour hair—styled every three days—and weighing one hundred and forty pounds, he had a bombastic style and a message never failing to stir an appreciative group to reach into their pockets and bless him with whatever monetary support they could—and sometimes couldn’t—afford, as the spirit overtook them.

Once he found his religious niche, Bobby Lee pounded his message into the public’s mind through a newspaper column, a weekly radio and television program, and to his Slice of Heaven congregation every Sunday in the newly-built colosseum-size church. He was glad-handed by those in office and those seeking election.

At age thirty-four, Bobby Lee Davis was a force to be reckoned with…and he knew it.

The latest idea he added to his arsenal against gambling was to demand a statewide initiative recall forcing all gambling out of the state of Louisiana. A few years prior, Bobby Lee had supported a local option election where parishes could vote out gambling.

Many of them did.

This gave him the impetus to take the issue statewide. His anti-gambling crusade was gaining momentum and political pundits were saying the recall had a darn good chance to pass.

This made Bobby Lee’s followers all the more determined to rid the state of Satan’s curse on the working class, as he described gambling, while those with millions invested in casinos and video poker were beginning to worry about this upstart small stature preacher from the backwoods of Northern Louisiana.

In short, Bobby Lee made enemies within the law…some legitimate, some not…

~ * ~

With a glad heart and a mind full of those pleasant thoughts, Bobby Lee didn’t notice two masked men in black rushing toward him. Both were over six feet tall and bulky with muscle, yet they moved with grace and speed.

One of the ski-masked men pinned Bobby Lee’s arms to his sides, the other placed a hand towel drenched in ether over his mouth and nose. While the ether took effect, Bobby Lee struggled, like a white bird trapped by black cats in someone’s backyard. As his mind tried to make sense of what was happening to him, he faded into unconsciousness. The men pushed him into the back seat of the Cadillac, jumped into the front seat, started the car, and drove off into the night.

A black van pulled in behind them.

~ * ~

Bobby Lee’s new Cadillac burned up the miles between Monroe and Alexandria down Highway 165.

In a few hours the two men in the car joined the Cottingham Expressway, then onto the Purple Heart Bridge over the Red River at Alexandria. They turned left onto Third Street and traveled several blocks. There they parked the car on a dark side street and left the keys in the ignition, knowing that in this part of town it would be gone within the hour.

Looking around to make sure no one was watching, they transferred Bobby Lee into the van, giving him another dose of ether. They connected to Interstate 49 and headed south to Lafayette. In a little over an hour, they wheeled onto Interstate 10 and the twin span over the Atchalafaya Basin. At a point where they determined there was no traffic to observe them, they stopped, unloaded Bobby Lee, cut his throat from ear to ear and tossed him over the bridge into the swampy water where he would become part of the lower food chain.

His bloodstained white suit provided a beacon of scent and brightness.

Chapter 1

I’d put Gator Simmons up there as the toughest son of a bitch I’ve ever known. We had a history only men serving together in combat can appreciate. When I called him to watch my back, he was always there, no questions asked…yet here he was, sitting across the desk from me, sobbing like a baby. A broken man. Like a wounded animal, his cries came from deep within. I waited, knowing as with all victims of tragedy, the first shock would give way to reality.

It did.

Jake, he stammered. Are you sure? It was my Queenie?

He pulled a grimy handkerchief from the back pocket of black Dockers and wiped his nose and eyes.

He was wearing a white tee shirt with Festival Acadiens on the front, above a smiling man playing a Cajun accordion. The tee shirt stretched tight across his chest and flat stomach. His given name was Leslie Bryan Simmons, but from the day on a dare he’d grabbed an alligator by the tail and proceeded to wrestle the beast to submission before dragging it back into the bayou from where it came, he was called Gator. He was twelve years old at the time and it was a small alligator, but the legend was born.

Yes, Gator. It was Louise...uh…Queenie. I pushed a box of tissues toward him in case he wanted something clean to use.

Where? he asked.

I opened a folder in front of me.

Marksville, I told him. The hotel at the Paragon Casino Avoyelles. They stayed there two nights.

Who was she with?

I hesitated.

Who was she with, Jake? Tell me, dammit! Who was it?

The reason I took the time to gather my thoughts before going on was the fact that Gator Simmons is someone I’d never want as my enemy. With a shaved head and bushy red mustache, he carries a solid two hundred and sixty pounds on a six-foot-four frame, with hands the size of a baseball glove. Cords of muscles rippled down his arms as he leaned against my desk. His hiking boots with steel toes are specially-made to fit his size fourteen feet.

Gator is a bail bondsman out of Lafayette. My office is in Alexandria about an hour and fifteen minutes to the north via Interstate 49. He and I had once shared an office in Alexandria, but he felt there was more business in a larger populated area with more crime, and therefore more prisoners out on bail, many of whom decide the grass is greener in another city or state.

~ * ~

Gator was on the rebound from his second marriage when he met and fell in love with a Cajun girl from New Iberia whom he met at a music festival. She was younger than he by fifteen years, but from the moment he set eyes on her his fate was sealed. Dynamite couldn’t have blasted away what he felt for her.

He brought her to Alexandria once to meet me and we went to dinner at Tunk’s Cypress Inn. She wore a low-cut sundress that dared anyone to look at two small but firm breasts seemingly anxious to get free. Her hair was jet black, as were her eyes, which seemed to take a person into their depths as she turned her attention on him. The dress hem danced around her knees as if it wanted to inch higher with each movement of perfectly sculpted legs only disciplined daily workouts could produce.

She was tall, perhaps five-ten, with a little-girl voice making men want to protect her from all the evils in the world. Gator knew he could do that and a lot more for his Cajun Queen—Queenie—as he called her.

Gator peeled crawfish for his Cajun Queen so she wouldn’t get her hands dirty or get sauce on her yellow sun dress. He gushed at everything she said. At times I felt I was intruding on their private party. At others, it was as if I wasn’t there at all…but I was and I decided to make the best of trying to like her.

It was made more difficult by Louise touching my leg with her foot under the table. At first I thought it was accidental. When it happened again and her foot moved up and down my leg, I knew...well I don’t know what I knew, except that something was already amiss in love land. I moved sideways and crossed my legs out of the Queen’s reach and that was that. At least it was until Gator had to find the men’s room to get rid of some of the beer he’d been drinking all evening.

She moved to the chair next to me, lacing her arm through mine and leaning close.

Having a good time, Jake? she purred.

Uh, yes. Are you?

It could be better. You think Gator has drunk too much to drive back to Lafayette tonight?

I knew Gator could drink a twelve-pack and still be able to out-drive Dale Earnhardt.

I think he’ll be fine, I said as I removed my tingling arm from unfamiliar territory.

Maybe we had better spend the night with you.

Gator glided back to the table and sat next to his Queenie. He always moved as if he were on roller skates, especially after a few beers and whiskey chasers. Louise languidly moved her body back into the chair, but continued trying to drown me in those deep black pools she called eyes.

Spend the night where? asked Gator as he put his arm around the Queen and drew her close.

I was just wondering if we shouldn’t spend the night in Alexandria since it’s so late and you’ve been drinking, sweetie, she purred to Gator. Maybe Jake can put us up.

I had a large two-story home on Rigolette Road across the Red River near Pineville. It was deeded to me for services rendered to a well-known family in Colfax, a small town some thirty miles north of Alexandria, but that’s another story that would come intruding into my well-structured life about a year later.

Gator looked hurt.

Queenie, he said, I’ve got court tomorrow morning at nine with that LeBlanc kid who skipped. The one I chased to New Orleans last week. Remember?

Oh, sure, she said, looking as if she were vaguely recalling Gator’s telling her, as well as how he came back with a black eye and a large knot on his forehead when the kid sicced some friends on him in one of the FEMA temporary housing projects springing up after Hurricane Katrina. The friends didn’t last long against the big man, and LeBlanc meekly surrendered thereafter.

Look, Jake, he said as he grabbed the check. This has been nice, but we gotta be hittin’ the road. I just wanted you to meet my Queenie. Well, what do you think, partner?

I stared at Gator and mumbled something I thought appropriate. He apparently liked what I said because he grinned and took Louise’s arm to go to the cashier. As I got up, she turned to me and winked.

Oh, boy. Trouble in paradise. Trouble I wanted no part of.

Later, on a hot summer day in New Iberia’s courthouse, they married before a justice of the peace. I was Gator’s best man. The thing bothering me then was that only one person, her mother, stood up for Louise Queenie Comeaux. No friends. No other relatives.

About a year passed after the wedding and I didn’t hear much from Gator and his Queen until he came to my office five days ago. I was situated in a rehabilitated house I got a tax break on since it was in a historical district on Jackson Street.

The shingle outside read: Jake Coleman. Private Investigations.

It was next door to another older home upgraded by an attorney. This attorney and I were currently sharing beds, sometimes her place, other times mine. We met when she needed the services of a private investigator, which I like to think I am. Seeing that I was next door, she didn’t have to look far to see my shingle swinging in the wind. One thing led to another and we found each other mutually available and willing. Monique Duplantier was divorced with no children. I was single and hopefully with no children. At least none I was aware of.

~ * ~

Gator was serious that day, with a look only troubled people wear when the world is weighing on their shoulders. He made some small talk and then he pushed a photograph toward me.

You remember Louise, don’t you?

I looked at the photo and said I did. She still had that saucy pert look that came through the camera lens like smoldering embers of a fire ready to explode into flames. I noted it was now Louise, not Queenie.

I don’t know how to say this except to say it. Gator looked down at his scuffed boots. I think...I mean...well, Jake, I want to know if she’s staying faithful to me. We haven’t been getting along for months and she’s not like she used to be.

What do you mean, like she used to be?

Well, we haven’t…uh…been like a husband and wife lately, if you know what I mean.

If you mean no sex, Gator, come right out and say it. You never were a man to beat around the bush. I didn’t realize I had made a double entendre. If Gator did, he didn’t acknowledge it.

He gave me a hard look.

All right, no sex, no nookie, no loving…whatever you want to call it. We never had trouble in that area before we were married. She and I burned up the mattress until recently. Now she hardly wants me to put my arms around her. Gator got up from the chair and went to the window, staring out.

I could hear him breathing heavily, like a bull ready to charge.

Maybe she has something bothering her.

"No, I think it’s someone bothering her."

I flashed back to that night in Tunks and thought Gator’s suspicion might be well founded. As I remembered, Louise was not a woman who liked to be left alone even when her man went to the bathroom.

What do you want from me, Gator?

He turned from the window, his blue eyes burning into mine like lasers.

I want you to follow her the next time I go out of town. His voice was deep, cracking with emotion.

Whoa…wait a minute. That’s the sort of thing I do for strangers, not friends. There are too many possible complications…

Jake… He crossed to the chair and sat down hard. We’ve known each other since forever. You’re my closest friend. I can’t go to someone I don’t know. Besides, you owe me one.

Actually I owed him several, but who’s counting? Three years ago, Gator shoved me aside and took a bullet in the shoulder, fired by an irate lawyer I successfully investigated for arranging a key witness in a murder trial to lie on the stand. I thought about this as I sighed and agreed to follow Louise the next week while Gator went to Nashville to search for a bail jumper in a custody case.

During that week my clandestine travels took me from Lafayette to Abbeville, to Lake Charles and finally to Marksville and the Paragon Casino Avoyelles Resort. When he returned, Gator got the sad news. That’s why he was crying in my office that hot summer Monday in July. That’s why he demanded to know who Louise, his Queenie, had chosen as her King for a day.

~ * ~

Dammit, Jake. Just tell me who the bastard is she’s sleeping with.

I can’t say for sure she’s sleeping with anyone. They took separate rooms.

What the hell do you mean, separate rooms?

Just what I said. They took separate rooms. They did the same thing in Abbeville and Lake Charles.

This bombshell made Gator stop for a second.

"You telling me she and this bastard also went to Abbeville and Lake