Mississippi Rose | Book 1 | Into Darkness Page 2

She thought at first it was a hobo staring in through the door glass. His untidy hair was down to his shoulders and his beard bushy and unkempt. His eyes were like pits, deep and brooding, and they gazed darkly into the office like a cat looking into a bird cage. He opened the door and stepped inside.

  “Can I help you?” said Darla cautiously.

  “I’ve come about the job,” murmured the man, barely moving his lips. His jeans were worn along the creases and sagged badly. His woolen cardigan was clean, but a little odd in the September heat, and a variety of tattoos vied for space on the backs of his hands and the base of his neck.

  “I don’t recall advertising for a serial killer,” she said.

  The man’s face creased into an ironic smile.

  “Steward,” he said.

  “That your name?”

  “No, the job. The one on your website. My name’s Zack Leary.”

  Darla couldn’t think of anyone less likely to be a steward. His countenance alone would have the passengers running for the life rafts, and she couldn’t imagine any of them even daring to ask him for a menu.

  “Not sure that job’s open now,” she said.

  “Any job will do. Here …” he said, pulling out a creased and folded sheet of paper. “My resume.”

  Darla unwrapped the resume, trying to ignore the coffee stain on one corner. A quick skim-through confirmed what she feared. Zack had no experience of river or maritime work. His jobs included bar work, construction, fruit picking and being a lifeguard. Darla glanced up at him, trying, and failing, to picture him in speedos on a beach tower. The resume included a claim that he’d graduated from college, and a ten year work gap that went unexplained. The whole thing looked made up and Darla wondered why he didn’t have a probation officer or social worker to help him lie a little more convincingly.

  “Business is in a downturn,” she said, handing the resume back. “Can’t afford to take anyone on.”

  “I can work for half-rates,” said Zack, deadpan. “Or cash if you want to keep it off the books.”

  “I don’t work like that,” said Darla.

  “Okay,” said Zack ruefully, refolding the sheet. “I guess I’ll be going then.”

  “I guess you will.”

  “Thanks.”

  Darla watched him go, wondering how long it would be before she found herself in the same situation. On the other hand, if she did, she’d make damn sure she had a binder to keep her resume looking good and coffee-free. Scribbling a reminder to remove the vacancy from her website, she took off her captain’s jacket and hat and pulled on a set of overalls.

  Leaving the office, she paused when she saw a figure leaning against a dumpster by the wharf entrance. It was a guy and he looked as if he had been waiting for her. Lean and tall, he stubbed out his cigarette and walked over, rolling his shoulders in a way she knew he’d learned in prison, though he’d always tried to affect an air of toughness, even before his first stint inside.

  “Eric Whelan,” she said.

  “Hey, babe,” said Eric, exaggerating his gait. “Did you miss me?”

  “Not really.”

  “Sure you did.” Eric turned to admire the boat. “So you called her Rose. I like that. I hear you got a vacancy aboard. Don’t mind if I try out for it myself. Be like old times, you and me on the river, and you know I can handle any boat.”

  Darla narrowed her eyes. “Oh, I see. You sent your buddy first to test the waters, knowing he’d never get the job. What was he, your cellmate or something? You and Zack go back a long way too? What did you promise him?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, babe. I just got out of the joint and I’m looking for work. An honest living, right? You got yourself a nice company here. Stands to reason. I’m your man.”

  “No you’re not. We’re done, Eric. We were done a long time ago and I’m not going back to that. Go talk to your buddies on the mile. Maybe they’ve got some weed you can sell or a car you can jack.”

  Eric shifted uncomfortably. “I ain’t like that no more. I got rehabilitated.”

  “Oh sure. Third time lucky, right?”

  Eric glared. He had the deepest blue eyes, and there was a time when she thought of them as puppy eyes, all vulnerable and looking for love. But she’d seen those same eyes harden and knew he could flip in an instant.

  On the boat, Jacques came out onto the deck with the garbage. He paused to look at who Darla was talking to. Eric glanced up at him and narrowed his eyes, squaring up his shoulders.

  “Don’t forget me, babe,” he said.

  He walked away, glancing back once more at Jacques before turning a corner and disappearing.

  The swift change of behavior confused Darla, and she wondered what just happened. She looked back at the boat herself but Jacques was already gone.

  Whatever. Eric was old news and Darla had bigger things to worry about.

  Back on the boat, she entered the boiler room. Manny was letting the steam out to depressurize the boilers, his work pants slipping low as he bent over the valves.

  “You’ve got more hair on your ass than your head,” Darla said above the noise.

  Manny hiked up his pants and ran a hand over his bald scalp. “It’s gotta grow somewhere,” he said.

  Grabbing an inspection light, Darla got beneath the pipes, looking for the leak.

  “We can braze this,” she said.

  “I thought you said you were going to get new parts.”

  “Must have been static on the radio. You need to be careful about getting the wrong idea with that.”

  Darla got the acetylene tank and torch and wheeled it over, grabbing the gloves and goggles.

  Manny turned to face her, sweat accentuating the lines on his face. “Young lady,” he said firmly. “If you don’t give me the parts and tools I need to do this job, I swear I will quit.”

  “Yeah,” drawled Darla, pulling on the gloves. “All I hear is promises. You and Jacques should run away together some time. The owl and the pussycat.”

  “Wait,” said Manny. “Jacques said he was gonna quit?”

  “Not really. He just kind of implied it.”

  “You think he will?”

  “Nope.”

  “He’ll never quit,” said Manny, reassuring himself. “He’s got too many people looking for him.”

  “Sure. He did mention all the restaurants out to poach him.”

  “No, I mean he’s got people really looking for him. Bad people.”

  “What, like Child Support?”

  “No, no, real bad people.”

  “Jacques?” said Darla, incredulous.

  “I mean it. He’s on the run. I heard someone tell me Jacques is ex-CIA. Used to be a hitman. Pissed the wrong people off. Now he’s lying low, on the lam. Pretends to just be an ordinary guy, but you’ve seen how he handles his knives. He could kill a man with a paper clip.”

  Darla snorted. “And this someone, would he be the same person who claimed to have proof that the moon landings were faked?”

  “They were, I tell you. Now come on, you’ve gotta admit there’s something strange about a top chef working on a boat like this. Don’t it make you suspicious?”

  “I think I’d be more suspicious of the CIA teaching their agents culinary skills. You think they serve Huitres Thermidor at Langley?”

  “Poison. They learn how to hide it in the ingredients. Makes sense.”

  “Only to you.”

  Darla slid under the pipes and lit the torch.

  “Secrets,” said Manny sagely. “People got secrets on this boat. That’s why they take to the river.”

  “Sure,” said Darla. “Nothing to do with needing a wage or nothing.”

  Manny gave Darla a smug look. “You got secrets too. You act tough, but you’re hiding stuff. I know it.”

  Annoyed, Darla extinguished the torch and slid back out, raising her goggles. “If you’ve got nothing else to do, there’s a toilet that needs unblocking in the saloon. A
fter that, try flushing yourself down it.”

  There was a lot of work to do to prepare the boat for the next day’s excursions. After the food supplies arrived and were unloaded, the truck bringing the coal sacks pulled up, and everybody had to help bring it all aboard. Once everything had been squared away, the decks were scrubbed and the brass polished until the Mississippi Rose gleamed, its white paint and black stacks glossy in the sunlight. As the last person to leave the boat, Darla checked the padlocks on all the doors and hatches. She gave the arch of the paddlebox an affectionate pat, pulled the chain across the gangway and walked ashore.

  In the office she fired up the computer and got changed while it took its time to boot up. Accessing her emails, she scrolled past the repeated bank warnings, and the dubious marketing and financial offers, and opened a River Authority weather warning. Apparently a solar storm was due that night, and the authority was warning all boat captains that the atmospheric interference could introduce errors into GPS systems and create ghosting on radars. Darla didn’t take the boat out at night, so it didn’t concern her and she moved on to the next email, which was a notification of another review of her business on one of the many tourist sites she was listed on. Clicking the link, she hummed a little tune while the computer slowly connected to the site.

  She wished she hadn’t bothered. Some anonymous customer had given her a one-star rating, with the comment: A ramshackle boat run by rank amateurs. Not worth the money.

  2

  Darla’s battered Toyota was parked behind a warehouse and a line of dumpsters. One of the biggest problems for her business was the trashy location of her boat. As far as first impressions went, it didn’t project the best image. When she started the company, she’d been advised against basing it in New Orleans. Both the prices and the competition were just too high, and she’d have been better off berthing at one of the smaller towns like Natchez. But that wasn’t good enough for Darla. She wanted to play in the big leagues and saw no reason why she wouldn’t succeed. Now she was in debt, trapped and about to lose her boat.

  The Toyota wouldn’t start. When she turned the key there was a click, then nothing. Popping the hood, she reached into her glovebox for the hammer, got out and hit the starter motor hard. There were marks all over the starter motor from previous impacts. She got back in the car, turned the key and this time it started.

  She drove to her apartment in a bad mood, the radio cutting off a song to announce the solar storm that was going to bring the northern lights to Illinois. She turned the radio off and brooded as she waited in traffic. She considered selling her car to raise the cash for the bank payments, but the Toyota really wasn’t worth a lot, especially in its present condition.

  Perhaps she should quit renting her apartment and go live on the boat instead. Maybe that would see her through till next season. As an idea, it reeked of desperation, but she didn’t know how she could manage otherwise.

  Parking outside her apartment she climbed the stairs and let herself in, dumping her keys in a tray by the door and her overalls in the laundry basket. On the refrigerator was a note that said: Don’t forget your date tonight.

  She’d written the note herself but had still forgotten. With a groan, she ripped off the note and balled it up. She wasn’t in the mood for any kind of human interaction right now. She should have canceled it, along with any thoughts of getting back into the dating scene. It was her sister’s idea that she needed to get out more and focus on something other than the business, and it seemed a reasonable idea when she downloaded the dating app. But that was then. Now it looked like a terrible idea, and Darla wasn’t sure she could face another awkward hook-up attempt. She didn’t even want a relationship and didn’t know why she let herself be talked into it. Her sister, of course, was a great talker and managed to make everything sound wise and reasonable, and Darla thought that sometimes she gave in to her advice because she secretly wished she could be like her sister. At least sometimes. Maybe her life wouldn’t be such a mess then.

  She’d given it a shot doing it her own way. Perhaps she should try tacking in the other direction.

  Only half-convinced, Darla switched the TV on and went into her bedroom to select some clothes from her meager collection. When she came out there was an image of a wildfire on the screen. Darla paused. It was a local station and she wondered if it was happening in Louisiana. Then the image cut to the presenter, sitting smugly in front of the still picture of flames.

  “So is this Armageddon?” the presenter said. “Will the solar storm bring chaos in its wake, or is it just another overblown phenomenon?”

  With a frown, Darla switched the TV off and headed to the shower. When she got out, she dried her hair by the window. Down in the street, a family were throwing suitcases onto the roof of a sedan. The father was yelling at everyone, like they were late for something. It looked like it was going to be a tense vacation, wherever they were going, though it occurred to Darla that it was strange for a family to go away now, after the summer break was over.

  She didn’t think about it anymore, focusing instead on preparing for the evening. Sitting at the vanity table, she cleared away coffee cups, soda cans, discarded magazines and snack wrappers. Opening the drawer, she sorted through her makeup, trying to find stuff that hadn’t dried up from lack of use. Only a few survivors made it onto the table. Uncapping the foundation cream, she looked in the mirror and studied what she saw. Dropping the tube, she sagged in her chair, sighing heavily.

  No amount of makeup was going to make that face beautiful.

  “This is such a waste of time,” she said to her frowning self.

  On the nightstand was a picture of a baby girl, eight months, two weeks and three days old. That age was burned into Darla’s memory. It was written on the back of the photo, with tear streaks on the ink, and it was like she wrote it just yesterday. Whatever time had passed seemed to be compressed when she looked at the photo, and despite all her efforts, she hadn’t moved on a single day. She was on a treadmill, going nowhere.

  Darla got up and gently lowered the photo down onto its face so that she couldn’t see it anymore, but grayness was already seeping into her mind like winter mist on the water. Opening the drawer of the nightstand, she picked up a well worn packet of antidepressants. It hadn’t been opened since the day she’d been prescribed them, and they were well past their expiration date, but she weighed them in her hand, like a lead line plumbing her depths, taking a reading. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she bowed her head, her eyes dry but her heart heavy.

  It was just getting to be too much. The years of fighting, the pushbacks and the sacrifices. The accumulation of little defeats wore her down. The search for that secret sauce, that lucky break, the triumph that made it all worth it, simply eluded her. Life had hidden the exit door and forced her to go the long way around the maze, and now she was disoriented. She’d tried everything but she was going to lose the last thing she had.

  The pills wouldn’t help with that. Tossing the antidepressants back in the drawer, she flopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, tracing the humidity stains on the yellowing paint. Fantasies of running away with her boat crossed her mind. Maybe she could go to Mexico, ground her on some beach somewhere and convert her into a bar. She could grow old serving tequila to bemused locals and tourists, watching the boat fade around her.

  Or she could quit feeling sorry for herself and try to figure a way out of this. Again.

  Like a punch-drunk boxer, she rose from the bed and dragged herself over to the vanity table. Pulling a face at the mirror, she picked up her makeup to see if she could work a miracle.

  ***

  In the restaurant, Darla sipped at a glass of water. She’d ordered a shot of whiskey at the bar and had downed it to fortify herself, but now she tried to look demure and ladylike so as not to scare her date away. He was late, but that was pretty normal in the Big Easy. His dating profile indicated that he was an efficient, caring kind of guy
, and that was okay. Darla had lied in her profile too.

  The restaurant was half-empty, and the fake ceiling fans turned lazily in the air-conditioned gloom. Low lights hung over the booths for an intimate atmosphere. Outside the windows, two cops on horseback rode by on a street that was closed to traffic.

  A guy entered the restaurant alone, pausing to look around. Darla switched on her phone and glanced down to see if the guy resembled the thumbnail of her date. She looked from the picture to the guy, then back to the picture. At first, it didn’t look to be him, but the more she compared, the more she saw the resemblance. It was vague and not entirely flattering. He also looked indecisive, which wasn’t the impression she got from their brief message conversation. Unable to spot the obvious lone woman in a booth, he looked ready to back out. Darla lifted her hand to wave, catching his attention, and he stared at her. He hesitated, no doubt making similar comparisons in his mind and coming to the same conclusions Darla had. She shifted uncomfortably and planted a smile on her face, trying to look welcoming. He walked over to her.

  “Darla Jean?” he asked in a tone that hoped she’d say no.

  “That’s me,” she said, her smile getting stale. “Steve?”

  “Uh, yeah,” he said, wiping his palms on his pants and glancing around. “That’d be me.”

  He appeared to offer his hand, and Darla lifted hers to shake, but his hand kept moving to scratch his chin and she was left with her hand in the air. She massaged the back of her neck instead. He sat down opposite.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi,” she replied.

  “Traffic was bad,” he offered.

  “Yeah, gets that way,” she said.

  There was an awkward pause.

  “Haven’t dated in a while,” he said.

  “Me neither. It sucks.” She caught herself, a little too late. “I mean, it’s difficult, you know, meeting strangers. At night. Introductions, that kind of thing.” She could already feel the hole opening up beneath her. “Let’s eat,” she said hastily.

  They ordered from the menu and engaged in small talk while they waited for the food to arrive. It didn’t get any less awkward and it was clear he didn’t want to be there. It was about the only thing they had in common.