Free Sailor & Lula by Barry Gifford Page B

person’s pumpin’ gas in a fillin’ station for two dollars an hour.”
    â€œCalm down, Marietta. If there’d been an accident we woulda known about it by now. There ain’t no use your gettin’ exercised prematurely.”
    â€œPrematurely! Don’t toss feathers at me, Johnnie Farragut. My only child been kidnapped by a dangerous criminal and you keep tellin’ me to be calm!”
    â€œI’ll handle it, Marietta. Like I told you, there ain’t no evidence Lula done nothin’ against her will.”
    â€œWell, you better get a move on, Johnnie, before that boy got her holdin’ down a Memphis street corner and shootin’ dope up her arms.”
    â€œReally, Marietta, you got more scenarios swimmin’ around in your brain than Carter got pills. Try to take it easy. Go over to Myrtle Beach for a few days.”
    â€œI’m stayin’ right here by the phone until you find Lula, then I’m comin’ to get her.”
    â€œJust hold tight, woman. I’ll call you again in a couple days whether I got a lead or not.”
    â€œYou just got to locate Lula, Johnnie. This is the kinda mistake can take a Hindu’s lifetime to unfix. I got to attend a meetin’ of the Daughters of the Confederacy from two to four tomorrow afternoon, otherwise I’ll be at home. You call soon’s you got somethin’, even if it’s three in the A.M.”
    â€œI will, Marietta. Goodbye now.”
    Johnnie hung up and sat in the telephone booth, thinking about Marietta Pace Fortune. She was still a goodlooking woman but she was getting more peculiar than ever. Marietta had always been nervous and demanding. Why he was still sweet on her after all these years Johnnie couldn’t quite figure. Marrying her was out of the question, it just wasn’t
something Marietta would do. She wasn’t cut out for a December romance, she said. The woman wouldn’t be fifty for two or three years yet and she acted like life forgot her address. Except when it came to Lula, that is.
    At the far end of Inez’s Fais-Dodo Bar on Toulouse Street, Reginald San Pedro Sula, wearing his porkpie hat and a green seersucker leisure suit, sat on a stool drinking a martini. He spotted Johnnie walking toward the door.
    â€œ Hola! Señor Farragut!” Reggie shouted. “We meet again.”
    Johnnie went over to Reggie and shook hands.
    â€œI thought you were in Austin, Texas. Or Takes-us, as they say in these parts.”
    â€œI was. Now I am on my way back to Utila, in the morning. Would you like to enjoy a martini with me?”
    â€œWhy not?” said Johnnie, hoisting himself onto the stool to Reggie’s right. “How was the fishin’?”
    â€œI think they are too serious, these American fishermen. In Honduras we are not so concerned with the method.”
    Reggie ordered a martini for Johnnie and another for himself.
    â€œSo,” said Johnnie, “it’s back to the islands.”
    â€œYes. I spoke yesterday to my son, Archibald Leach San Pedro Sula, who is named after Cary Grant, and he told me there was a shooting. Teddy Roosevelt, one of the local shrimp boat captains, was on a picnic with King George Blanco and King George’s wife, Colombia, and there was, apparently, a disagreement of some kind, during which King George and Colombia were killed. Teddy Roosevelt is in jail now. These people are all friends of mine, so I must return and find out what happened.”
    â€œThis island of yours sounds like a kind of unpredictable place.”
    Reggie laughed. “It has its moments of uncertainty. But how are you finding New Orleans, Señor Farragut?”
    â€œCall me Johnnie. N.O. always been a good town to sit around in.”
    â€œI can tell you are an intelligent man, Johnnie. One difference between your country and mine is that in the islands it does not pay to reveal one’s intelligence. I am reminded of