Mo & Curio and the Cunt with the Funny Hat

"The citizens of the great State of Mississippi," Stuart Whitman loved the sound of that phrase each and every time he said it in front of a television camera, "must be certain that the gaming industry they have voted for is run cleanly, fairly, and transparently. Beyond the reach of organized crime, answerable to the people. And as Attorney General, it is my duty to ensure that is exactly how it shall be. This task laid before me is one of my priorities and I assure all of you, just as I assured the Governor and the state Congressional leaders, this state's gambling will be run cleanly and profitably for the state. Organized crime elements who may see this state as open for business will find themselves in a perp-walk faster than you can double down. To those members of outside crime outfits who come here thinking they can cheat and beat our state and our children out of what is ours, I say this..." He leaned forward and lowered his bass just a tad. Squinting maliciously for effect, the Attorney General was pitch-perfect for the sound bite.

"...This is our house, the people's house! And our house always wins!"

The crowd of off-duty educators and students from Jackson State and Tougaloo bussed over to give the press a crowd to film clapped uproariously to held the well-coifed and attractive young Attorney General a proper finish for his sound-bite.

In private moments of reflection, be they rooting for his beloved Ole Miss Rebels, putting for par on the seventh hole at Annandale or watching one on his fellow citizens gather her clothes embarrassed to have been fooled into thinking he must really have cared to select her out of the masses, he despised the citizens of Mississippi. He was by far more interested in giving extemporaneous speeches on the floor of the U.S. Senate in a few years, after he whittled his political baby teeth into polished fangs, of course.

Whitman was new to the game after all. Far too in debt to the big donors who funded his ride up to Jackson now, he would have to eat their shit for a while. It was the process and as a prosecutor, he was superhumanly adroit at process. But after he nailed a few big cases by the throat, the people would settle down and vote for him rather than all the pretty campaign posters bought en masse and so gratuitous jammed into their front yards.

If he played the cards correctly, they would vote for him for anything.

Maybe he would take over as Governor in a decade or two and either ride someone else's Presidential coattails up to Washington and live like a king for a while.

Or maybe an ambassadorship like ole Ray Mabus. Whitman frequently yearned fervently for such an august title. To be the official instrument through which the full weight of American could be brought to bear, for better or worse, to a nation, be the face of America in the day-to-day foreign policy tête-à-têtes...it held an almost fantastic appeal for him.

He only threw one caveat to his fantasy. A veritable safe word, a sort-of no-pee line of demarcation in his extent of how far he was willing to go for his professional gratification.

No Middle East postings!

Glad-handing to the Saudis, with all their peculiarities and stringent measures necessary to keep their locals from having a shit-fit over some reference to minute U.S. dealings with the Muslim world was nowhere near as fun as a nice quiet tour of duty in Spain or Australia.

Maybe Brazil?

A box seat for Carnival had to be a better perk than sitting on a floor eating camel with a bunch of oil-rich sand clansmen.

Hell, they were more racist than those shitpoke Klansmen back home out in Scott County.

All in all though, Senator Stuart A. Whitman (D-MISS), he liked to imagine that name best on C-SPAN.

Whitman concluded his remarks at the Capitol steps and took no questions. It was November and by chance, Doreen, his press secretary, managed to get him outside on the stump on the nastiest, drizzly day possible. Holding up the pilgrimage of the Democratic faithful back to the idling busses to take some of Bert Case's sonorous questions was detrimental to the cause. His nose was about to start running as he left the dais and made his way back inside. The crowd was dissipated almost before he hit the door to his office.

Doreen, shrewish, sixty, diminutive but sharp as a tack, took his overcoat and the scarf she picked out for him off and primped his suit jacket.

"Man, it's freezing out there." He sniffled and thanked her for a cup of coffee she seemed to pull from thin air. "It look okay? Hair good?"

"It's prime rib for an otherwise meatless Wednesday news cycle, Stuart." Doreen backed away as he took up his position behind his desk. "Should be a lead on JTV and LBT unless Melton or something national happens. It looked good. The new haircut works. Very George Clooney."

"Glad you think so. Is Cynthia still coming by with that Fed?"

"Two o'clock. The gambling has their attention. I'm trying to get someone over there to liaise with this office so we can get whatever mileage we can from future prosecutions. They aren't the most friendly bunch over there. Even the secretary's look at me like they wanna' spray Lysol in the air as soon as I leave."

"Our fair Governor doesn't share the same letter by his name as the President so you can expect some pushback. But don't sweat it," the Attorney General yawned and leaned back in his chair.

He pressed his fingertips together. "I'll see what I can do about it with some of our friends on the Hill. There's gonna be plenty of meat on the bone when those boats get to docking up around here. Some of that loot is gonna end up in the coffers. They are going to need me for sanctioning some of it, I'm sure. A letter to the Director about bitchy members of the staff in the local field office in Jackson should get you some hugs soon enough." He shrugged at her as she moved files around on his desk.

"You think this casino business is really gonna help or hurt the state? It seems an awful risk moving gaming into a state with so many idiots with no money looking for the golden arm to pull. You really think the mob will try to move in here, too?"

"That much money to be made, it brings out the carnivores looking for the weak and the young. It always does. Somebody will fuck up somewhere and an example will be made with all due expedience. Personally, I can't wait!"

Curio's ears were burning as she lay on an army blanket spread out near Moses' house. Frustrated now, she had nearly had about enough of his shit for the day.

For nearly two hours solid, the pair was target practicing with a myriad of weapons. Her shoulder and elbows were sore. Her nose was frozen. She was half-drunk and not making her shots count to his satisfaction. But he kept slapping bullets into the clips and handing them full to her to practice.

When Moses bought the land well over a decade prior, he cleared much of it on the rear of the house, all the way to the edges where Flechette Bayou meandered on its way down to Bayou Provost and then flushed itself out into the gulf.

He left a number of the older trees standing and marked their distances with spray paint that was fading with age. In the days when Grizzly Fontenot was in an all-out turf war on the streets of New Orleans, battles occasionally spilled out into other towns as minions from both sides sought out those who ran for the supposed safety of all Acadiana lying beyond New Orleans. Moses rigged a series of tripwires that lead into the house. If he was ever assaulted by Lavon Moncrief's minions or got a dime dropped on him and had a swat team come slinking up from that side of the house, they were in for a rude welcome.

But that was long ago. He often smiled to himself about how paranoid he had been back in those days. Wired on speed or coke for days, certain that some detail was overlooked and thus sure to send Grizzly's abundant enemies in search of the man who dealt so many of their brethren a dose of finality, he would sit in the shadows of his house. Hours he spent listening to the night, his eyes widened by shadows he imagined creeping under the moon, finger tapping idly on a trigger.

Many a varmint died in those days. A shuffling opossum would send him into a fervent panic and end up shot to hell. A deer hit a tripwire one evening when he was asleep. The alarm went off in his ears, two days after he shot two of Fausto Lacombe's cousins in the back as they stumbled out from the Hog's Breath Saloon. He was certain in that moment Fausto and that pair of idiot sons of his were coming up his rear flank in the dark. The tripwire was at the hundred-meter mark. Close enough for any number of weapons to be brought to bear. In a half-asleep panic, Moses reached over and clicked the firing trigger on the claymore mine set on that tripwire.

He felt like an idiot for that. But he ate well for a few days on what was left after the buckshot pellets were spat out from the meat.

The claymores and the tripwires were a distant memory now. Age had tempered the paranoia somewhat. He was after all, off the toot...mostly. At the least, he rarely indulged without Curio to share the speeding feeling.

The street war was ended and the Atchafalaya Mudbugs were the victors. There were the Feds and the local law dogs to occasionally deal with but the days of being a foot soldier in a running series of street fights were long gone.

Moses considered himself special ops now. Strike fast, strike hard. And then curl up next to his lover and forget all about it until next time.

At least until she started wanting to come along. Training her was in itself, a new paranoia. Things that needed to be known instinctively and done without pause were engraved into Moses' skull. Curio, on the other hand, had long ago decided moxie and viciousness could overcome her shortcomings in the mechanics of dealing death. It was an attitude that Moses found impossible at times to overwhelm. He loved her, but often scrolling across his mind was a far terser stream of words than he uttered as she trained alongside him.

"You're still jerking the trigger, baby." Moses Holliday rolled over on his side and exhaled his breath slowly as Curio Phelonie rolled on her opposite side to face him. She pouted and took a sip from an Abita Purple Haze bottle.

"I'm cold. I ain't jerking the trigger. My teeth are chattering."

"She says as she drinks a cold beer on her belly while laying prone on the ground." Moses smiled.

"You said I couldn't have coffee."

"It makes you pee."

"And beer doesn't?"

"It doesn't unless you have a ton of them. And alcohol calms you. Coffee churns you up in all kinds of ways. Bowels, bladder, heart rate, mindset. You gotta be calm. It's just a thing that must be learned. And the only way to learn it is to pull that trigger a thousand more times. You're still afraid of that pussy gun's lil kick? One day, you won't be. Drink enough beers, you'll get cocky. Relaxed, calm. Even pissed off is better than nervous when it comes to firing a weapon." He unscrewed his fifth of Rebel Yell and took a long pull from it.

Curio winced as she saw the bubbles rise from his lips and up the narrow neck of the bottle. After a bottle of whiskey, it was her understanding that few men were calmed by it. Moses was a mortal man in that respect. He was not usually a mean drunk, but growing up as she had taught her there was always that one time waiting around the corner. In the years they had been together, he never once raised a hand to her, rarely even raised his voice in anger. Drunk and rowdy though, the swagger of a loose set of limbs and a drunken perception of insult had waylaid many an acquaintance in a hail of angry friendly fire fists the drunk may never recall but always regret.

"You must be super anxious if you need that much calming down."

"Call it a lifetime of looking over my shoulder. Now I gotta look over yours, too."

"I've been good about looking over my shoulder. No one else volunteered until I met you, Moses Holliday." She rolled over on her belly and sighted in the .223 on the three hundred meter target. "In fact, it's one thing I think I've done a kickass job of doing." She inhaled and held her breath, squinting through the scope. Moses raised his binoculars to his eyes and watched the silhouette.

"Don't squint. Both eyes open. You have to get used to seeing not only the target but also what else may be coming into the area. Could be a sniper waiting to see your muzzle flash so he put a return round right back 'atcha."

She fired. Waited. Fired again. Slacked and took another breath and re-sighted. On that exhale, she fired the third round.

"You got a three-inch group. Very good!" Moses rubbed her on the small of her back. "Six more now on the hundred meter."

She shimmied her legs to the left and drew a bead on the closer target. When she adjusted the scope's focus, she could see a hand-drawn note clearly written in black marker hanging, taped, beneath the silhouette. The black target had three tiny hearts drawn in white paint centered on the heart.

It read: "I LOVE YOU!"

"You're too sweet, baby." She chuckled and sighted in on the top heart. Her shots were all dead center.

"You see?" Moses grinned at her and stood up to stretch. "You weren't thinking about the shot, just trying to hit the funny spot." Quick as a whip, he drew his .45 and stitched a crooked smiley face in a ten-meter target. She cursed and rolled away from his hot, spent shell casings as they cascaded on her.

"Smile, it makes people wonder what you're up to." He giggled and removed the empty clip. She laid on her back looking up at him, arm as a pillow. Slipping a fresh magazine into the heavy pistol, he picked up the bottle and rapidly fired five shots one-handed into the same ten-meter target, making the single hole he shot for a nose into a wide-open ragged hole. He downed the remainder of the whiskey and gave it a heave into the air. Curio was fascinated to see him draw on the bottle and shatter it in the air.

She had seen that trick a hundred times. What she was shocked by was after he shot and shattered the bottom of the bottle, he tracked the neck of it after it flew off and shot that as well, in less than two seconds...drunk.

"You are way too good with guns, dear." She finished her Purple Haze and stood up with his long arm offering her assistance. "You need another hobby.

He pecked her on her cheek. "I thought I had one." He pinched her left nipple softly through her blouse and winked lovingly at his little protégé. Smiling, she snuggled up to his bare arm. She was shivering though wearing a heavy wool pea coat and long pants but there he stood in a pair of threadbare jogging pants and a ratty t-shirt. He scratched nonchalantly at the long scar running the length of his left arm.

Damn, you tough old bastard. He never ceased to endear himself to her. He was just Moses. Strong, morally decent in his own perverse shootin-a-sumbitch-who-earned-it way. Never cried out when in pain, handle anything thrown at him, solid upbringing out in the desert, music lover, book reader, playful, indulgent, good fuck....

Many nights since they were thrown together on a crowded French Quarter day, she wondered how she could have found him and he found her. The thought of what her life may have been had she gone over to Royal Street instead of Conti touched her from time to time when she was alone and thinking about such things. All in all, Curio figured damned near everyone, man and woman alike, often stood looking out of a window in some house they inhabited with someone they met and fell for and wondered, "What if?" For many, it may bring a tear of the recognition they damn sure should have zigged for someone else rather than zagged straight into the arms of the asshole or bitch they ended up with. Shrugging, she would merely look around and see him smoking his Winston or maybe a joint, cooking her an omelet.

Or filling up the Jacuzzi tub he bought for the two of them a few months before after she merely mentioned in passing she wished she had a bigger tub so he could massage her while she soaked in some bubbles. She would think of him inside her, large and in charge, savoring every taste and instant of him deep within and swoon. Curio never was so happy to have wanted a cheap drunk-day at Cat's Meow in her life until she realized how happy the days after had been for them.

They stood and watched a distant wind sway the trees across Flechette Bayou.

"Gonna' get cold tonight." He holstered the .45 and laid it on the picnic table next to the small arsenal spread across the weathered planks. Grunting a bit, he stifled a burp and let it slither rather than roar.

"You gonna make me a fire?" She laid the Bushmaster .223 on the only free part of the table and bent over to touch her toes.

"You gonna make sure I'm not lonely beside it?" Moses picked up a battered Marlin .30-.30 lever action and fired a few soft-nosed rounds at the hundred-meter target. "Damn, I forget how much those softies fall." He wrinkled his nose at the bad shot.

Curio rubbed her ears. The old Marlin was loud as hell. "I'm sure we can make an arrangement of mutual satisfaction. What do you want for dinner tonight?"

"I was thinkin about some Italian actually. Would you like to go out for dinner?"

He saw her mouth drop and cocked his head. "What?"

"Nothing. I just can't remember the last time you suggested we go out to eat when we wasn't on a job. Hell yeah I wanna go out to eat!"

"I know. It's been a while." He kicked out the remaining shells from the Marlin and placed them back in their foam houses.

"I think a little run into town sounds like fun. I've been wanting some lasagna from Christiano's. Maybe get dressed up and head out a while? You gotta be goin nuts sitting around out here."

She was going nuts. She was twenty, vivacious. Stir crazy out in the deep obscurity of some desolate bayou. No friends. Only a television and Moses to listen to. She was feeling as if she had dropped from the world. Surfacing long enough to accompany her lover on some mission to kill people and then back to Flechette Bayou or her little cottage in Houma she called Nuit Blanche. Sure, Moses was good company and the pair had a whale of a good thing going together, but by God, she was twenty and sexy as hell. Tucking that all away in some house far from the prying eyes of the miniscule amount of neighbors, the closest of which lived a solid two miles away seemed like such a waste.

"You asking me out on a date? Fuck, that's sweet, baby."

"If you'll have me."

"Okay. But that's enough goddamned whiskey. I ain't having you all sloppy around me in Christiano's throwing up on my bread sticks. Capiche?"

"Yes ma'am. It's a deal. But before we do..."

"Yes, I fucking know. Clean the guns." She frowned and shook her head as she looked at the table over-loaded with firearms.

"That's my girl."

They started collecting weapons and putting them into a trailer mounted to a riding lawnmower.

"Shit, Moses." She shook her head as she laid the blanket over the rail to prevent scratches. "Did you have to shoot every gun in the damned house? I'm fuckin hungry!"

Bertrand Fontenot flipped off the television at 10:25 and snuggled under the heavy quilt and sheets of his bed. He was a guest of the Fairview Inn in Jackson, Mississippi, an opulent bed and breakfast nestled close to Millsap's College just north of the government district on State Street. After a day of meeting with folks with various degrees of stolid reputation and trying to get his head around where the money in casinos was, he was dead tired. Trying to get a taste of the casino cash about to be pouring into the state consumed a great deal of his time lately.