Free 4 Shelter From The Storm by Tony Dunbar

asleep with a glass in her hand.
    The next morning, Marguerite woke up late, with a large headache, all alone, and the weather was crummy. At least it was so cloudy and gray that it might as well have been raining. She took a quick angry look outside and jerked the curtains shut. She ordered room service for breakfast, and it was not very good.
    But the big pot of coffee they left with her restored her a little, and after she pushed the tray away she decided she might as well check out her very own second-floor balcony. As soon as she stepped outside and leaned over the rail, things started to get more interesting.
    Attracted by her red silk bathrobe, some passersby below tried to engage her in conversation. Her spirits brightened when he suggested she take it off. She twitched her hips experimentally, and he left laughing. After a while someone tossed a string of beads at her, and she put them on, working the plastic clasp under her hair. A little later she took them off and threw them across the street at a man looking at the pictures of strippers on the wall outside the cabaret. Bombed him right in the back of the head. This became a game.
    There sure were plenty of weirdoes walking around down there. Africans in tribal dress. Weight lifters in tutus. Kids tap dancing on the sidewalk, until the hotel staff ran them off. Girls with earrings all over their faces.
    But then it started to rain for real, and she had to run back inside to her dull room.
    * * *
    Two men scampered back to their lodgings from the Lundi Gras pageant by the river which had been interrupted by the sudden rain. They were leaping over puddles in the streets of Paris. That’s how they felt, weaving and laughing down the cobblestoned alleyways of the French Quarter. Edward and Wendell had had a lunch of raw oysters for breakfast and after-dinner drinks for lunch. The stock market had become a foreign concept. The important issue was where to dine later— whether to eat
haute
at Arnaud’s or
bas
at The Acme. But now was a good time to head home and be dry, back for a couple of hours of vigorous rest at the grotto, as they referred to their mysterious apartment at the Lafitte’s Lair.
    * * *
    The world that Willie LaRue found when he splashed his way to the brass and glass exit of the First Alluvial Bank was not the same one he had left four hours earlier. Monk and Big Top were pushing the generator and tool chest through the elevator lobby behind him, making gentle waves through the half inch or so of brown water that was pooling in lazy swirls atop the marble floor and draining musically down the steps to the basement and into the deeper crevasses hidden by the elevator doors.
    Everything that LaRue could see was wet. The street had become a canal, its shores marked by the rows of beached cars with water lapping their hubcaps. The sidewalk was submerged in most places. When a UPS truck driver, frantic to escape the flood, blew a futile horn and slalomed through the intersection, sending a wave splashing over the doorsills of the storefronts facing the street.
    LaRue unlocked the bank’s solid doors with the key he had taken from Corelle. He wasn’t worried about setting off any alarm. He doubted if anybody would respond, even if the damn things were working.
    “What happened?” Big Top asked in awe, staring at the curtain of rain falling straight down from heaven. Grape-sized water bullets rebounded six inches when they hit, making the murky brown sea froth and boil.
    “I don’t know,” LaRue said, finding himself disturbed at some deep primal level.
    “Let’s run for the van,” Monk suggested. “This is just one of them crazy New Orleans downpours. It’ll let up in half an hour.”
    “We sure as hell can’t stay here,” LaRue said and set his jaw. He stepped out into the torrent, hugging the side of the building and dragging a heavy canvas sack full of loot.
    It was difficult making any headway. The little wheels of the tool chest, with