Bad Day on the Bayou by Mark Johnson

Author:Mark Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Down & Out Books

Chapter 30

Feeling pleased with himself, Russell headed up Dauphin .Island .Parkway to a joint called Mudbugs and ordered a big basket of crawfish. Just as he was up to his elbows sucking heads and squeezing tails, his phone beeped. By the time he had wiped his greasy face and fingers enough to dig the cell out of his pocket, it was too late. He checked his voicemail.

A Black female voice said, “I found your card when I came out the door, Detective. It’s Chassity Cummings. I musta been in the shower or drying my hair. Didn’t hear you knock. I gotta get to work now, so you gon’ hafta wait ’til tomorrow. After noon. I sleep late.”

He finished his crawfish, slaw, ear of corn, and buttered cornbread, washing it all down with cold sweet tea. It was late afternoon, almost five thirty, just before sunset. Getting dark. A little early to visit a strip joint. But what the heck.

As he drove westbound on I-10, the sun was low, in that spot just below the visor, nearly blinding when you’re headed straight into it. His cheap sunglasses and the quitting-time traffic made the drive unpleasant. But it was always a little more bearable in a white Crown Vic. People see it coming up behind them and peel off to the right. One of the few, modest perks of policing.

Just seventeen miles from the Mississippi line, he took exit thirteen and headed southeast on Theodore Dawes Road about a mile, then pulled in to the cracked and potholed parking lot of Club Curvy. A few cars, a half-dozen pickups, a couple Harleys, and a bobtail Freightliner occupied the parking lot. Not a bad crowd for an early Tuesday evening, especially for a dive like this.

Russell badged the burly bouncer at the door and stepped inside the cinder-block club. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. In the center of a sea of chairs and small round tables occupied by a crowd of rough-looking men, there was a small spot-lit stage with a brass pole and a tired-looking woman in a G-string doing squats and thrusts. The room throbbed with too-loud hip-hop bass. Other nearly naked women sat with men at the bar across the back of the room, and still others carried drinks on small trays to the men seated around the stage. Russ scanned the room for Chassity Cummings, but nobody resembled the mug shots he’d studied yesterday. He took a stool at the bar and ordered a three-dollar ginger ale.

“Girl named Chassity Cummings work here?” he yelled over the music to the middle-aged barmaid. She was the only woman in the place with regular clothes on. She squinted and wrinkled up her nose, puzzled. “Name don’t sound familiar, honey, but it’s only my second week here. Hold on, I’ll check with some of the girls.”

After conferring with one of the ladies seated at the other end of the bar, she came back smiling. “You mean Felanie!” she said.

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