Big Stupid (POPCORN) Read Free

also contained copies of all the junk Ray’d showed me in the manila folder, names and addresses to check out.
    The last item was the nickel S&W .38 police special. I thought about Henry Cobb’s mug shot and was glad Ray was thinking ahead although it was also a reminder I was poking my nose into trouble that was likely to poke back.
    Ray thought of everything. His good planning skills on the mend. Yeah, he was the smart one.
    Which made me wonder about all the puzzle pieces missing from this picture.
    How’d he lose Cobb so easily? And what exactly did he plan to say to Cobb or do to him to make him hand over Four hundred grand? It was all too messy and bone-headed to be Ray’s handy work, but I’d arrived at these questions too slowly to ask them back at the office.
    But sooner or later I would ask. Damn straight.
    I made a stop to put gas in and let piss out. Back on the road. Kept south until I hit Interstate 10 at Lafayette and turned east.
    Ray’d told me he was going to set me up with some help. A guy named Fat Otis ran a crew in North Baton Rouge and he owed Ray a favor.
    So I hopped off the interstate at the Acadian Throughway, got lost briefly, found myself on Florida Boulevard and turned north on Foster until I found myself in the crap side of town above Evangeline.
    It was the kind of neighborhood you generally stumbled into by accident and then got the hell out again as fast as you could. When a town passes New Orleans for murder rate, you take that shit seriously.
    I parked in front of a check cashing place which was a front for all kinds of shit Ray said I didn’t want to know about. He was right. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to be here at all.
    I wanted to be on my bass boat with a six-pack not even caring if I caught any fish. Ray said I spent too much time by myself, out on the lake, up late watching DVDs, whatever.
    He said I needed to be around more. Come over for Sunday dinners and all that down home crap. Connect with family and community.
    Fuck that. People disappointed you. People looked out for themselves, and fuck you if you got in the way. Ray must have known this on some level since he called in his brother and didn’t trust his own guys on this one. Blood is different. Sure.
    I got out of the truck and went into the check cashing place to ask for the man in charge.
     
THREE
     
    Fat Otis sat behind his desk, a pork sandwich in one hand and my new P.I. identification in the other, chewing slowly, looking back and forth between the I.D. and my face.
    He was black, mid-fifties, bags under his eyes, and fat.
    “This you?” he asked.
    “It’s an old picture,” I said. “Could you not get grease on that please?”
    He scowled at me, tossed the I.D. on the desk in front of him. “I told Ray I could hook you up with one of my boys. Sort of act as tour guide. Back you up. This ain’t your town, so you don’t know all the dark holes. I owe Ray.”
    I looked at the five black guys scattered around the office behind him. It looked like somebody had crapped a Snoop Dogg video all over the place. If there’d been a fire all of a sudden, they’d all die crispy tripping over their sagging trousers to get out of the place. Not a fucking belt between them.
    I said, “You’re not going to saddle me with one of these gansta looking jokers, are you?”
    They all looked up then, expressions like cocked Glocks. One said, “Whatchoo say, mutha fucka?”
    “You got a mouth on you, peckerwood,” Fat Otis said.
    I hooked my thumbs in my belt. I had a big silver Lone Star Beer belt buckle. Shiny. “Maybe I’ll just buy a map and forego the tour guide.”
    “Ray’s good people, so I won’t have you murdered today.” Fat Otis set aside his sandwich, glanced back over his shoulder at his glowering crew. “Hey, I know. Big Stupid would be perfect for this job.”
    His boys laughed, and Fat Otis turned back to me grinning like he’d just said the funniest shit in the whole