September 07, 2004
Fiction
Sugar Fire
The noonday sun pounded the sidewalk with bright hammers. I was wearing a new gray suit. My hat was pushed back from my sunburned forehead and my hammerless Browning felt heavy in the chamois holster under my damp armpit.
I pushed open the door of the Blue Crab Deli. Inside was darker, but not much cooler. Not many people, either. Things would get swinging only after night fell and tourists from the hotels came in to hear the music and drink the overpriced drinks.
The bar wall had a racy calender between signed photographs of Satchmo and Duke Ellington. The year was right—1954—but someone hadn’t crossed off the last days of June. Maybe they figured it was too hot to bother.
The bartender was penciling picks on a racing form and barely glanced up. “Wondered when you’d get here, fella. Thirsty yet?”
I laid a five on the bar. “My secretary just got hold of me.”
The bartender’s hand scuttled like a hairy pink crab and folded the note into a shirt pocket. “The lady you’re after is sittin’ in back.” He patted his pocket. “Thanks.”
“You earned it.”
“Want that drink?”
I lit a cigar with a paper match. “Send a cold one and keep them coming.” I tossed the spent match into a sand bucket.
I walked to the back of the joint. The empty stage was surrounded by confetti the janitor had missed.
I went beyond a sign reading “Colored Seating Only” into a large alcove with a good view of the stage. At night the sign came down and everyone mingled freely but daytime rules were always different in New Orleans.
Two young black men leaning on a table crowded with empties bored sullen eyes at me as I went by.
Lucy Simon sat in a booth with a glass of cold vodka and an open packet of cigarettes at her elbow. A half dozen butts ringed with lipstick crowded the ashtray. From a distance she was an attractive woman in a knee-length white dress, white pumps and white broad-brimmed hat. Up close, the truth was more striking.
Her dark hair ended with a slight inward curl under the chin. Her cafe-au-lait skin contrasted nicely with a dress that revealed the rounded swell of her breasts. Her large brown eyes had flecks of gold playing around in the iris. Her cheekbones were pronounced and she had a spray of pinhead moles on her jaw and neck. Her long legs, crossed demurely at the ankles, were sheathed in white silk stockings. Her fingernails were long and polished.
I took a three-by-five photograph out of my wallet and showed her. “Whoever took this didn’t do you justice,” I said.
An oscillating fan made the egret plume in her white hat wave back and forth. “Mister, that picture’s five years old. Taken when I was a schoolgirl in Paris.”
“Miss Simon, my name’s Ed Dane. Mind if I sit down?”
She shrugged. “Supposed to be a free country.” I removed my hat. A red-headed waitress served my beer, left.
A stray air current pushed the fragrance of jasmine across the table. She held the picture with slim fingers.
“The bartender has one just like it,” I said. “So do a lot of other people in New Orleans. You haven’t been easy to find.”
She tapped a cigarette out of the cellophane packet and I made like a gentleman with my Ronson. When she leaned for the light the valley between her breasts deepened. She raised her head, offering her throat, and blew a plume of smoke between pursed lips. “Should I ask why?”
Maybe it was the calm way she acted, but there was a crystalline sexuality about her I wanted to shatter, roughly. I sipped my beer. “You made someone very angry when you skipped like you did. He hired me to find you.”
She said with cool diffidence, “Does this someone have white-blond hair and a beard?”
I nodded. “Bernard Saint-Armand also owns one of the largest sugarcane plantations in the State of Louisiana and has a penchant for young dark-skinned mistresses.” I knocked the ash from my cigar. “That’s where you come in, by the way.”
“How much is he paying you?”
“Not enough to lie that I couldn’t find you. Unless you give me a very good reason.”
She thought a minute. “You don’t like him, either,” she stated. “Do you?”
“He’s an arrogant bastard who thinks the world owes him a pass. I don’t have to like the people I work for, Miss Simon. I often don’t. That’s the nature of my business.”
“I met Bernard in Paris.” She jerked her brown shoulders up and down. “I was a simple Parisian girl when he brought me to New Orleans. I never minded living off his largesse, but when things changed between us . . .” She was really letting her hair down. “Some men talk when they make love to a woman. Did you know that, Mr. Dane? Some men talk too much.”
I caught the pass and did some broken-field running. “I wouldn’t know. If I’m doing any good at all the woman has more important things on her mind than talk. Like how nice it feels being pinned like a butterfly.”
She eyed me speculatively. “Yeah, you look like the type.” She leaned forward, her breasts taut under the dress. “Let’s not talk here. I have a new place at the Grande Nationale—and a bucket of crushed ice if you’re interested.”
I paid for the drinks. The two black men got up and stood in our way. The first one slipped a hand in his pocket. “Where you going with that?” he asked harshly.
Lucy explained, “Mr. Dane, I hired Sam and his friend for protection when I heard a private eye was looking for me.” She turned to Sam. “I’ve decided to go with Mr. Dane after all.”
I had thirty pounds and twenty years on both of them but they’d been drinking and it had made them stupider than usual. Sam growled, “Me and Chitter decided you ain’t going with this guy; it looks bad. But if you give us another ten spot—”
Lucy snapped her purse open. “Fine, I—”
Sam’s fist flashed out. I dropped into a horse stance and slammed an ox-hand into his breastbone. He stumbled backwards and the knuckle-duster slipped from his fingers. Chitter threw a sharp jab at my chin. I grabbed his arm and contoured my body against his, using my hip as a fulcrum. He crashed against a couple of chairs.
The bartender suddenly appeared, swinging a blackjack. “Trouble here, gentlemen?”
Sam rubbed his chest, grimacing in pain. “Naw, we ain’t got no more trouble.” He helped Chitter off the floor and they left.
I escorted Lucy to my Jaguar and drove to the Grande Nationale on Canal Street. We took the elevator while the operator stared at his shoes, thinking about his own problems. On the top floor I followed her down a carpeted hallway with potted Aspidistra at either end. She handed me the key.
We were barely inside when she melted her long body against mine. Her brown arms snaked around my neck, possessive, wanting. She stared deeply into my eyes. “I’ve never had a man do that for me before. What else can you do, mister?”
“This.” I brought my lips down on hers. Her soft mouth tasted like honey and spice and her hot little tongue sent shivers down my spine. She let me take her full bottom lip between my teeth and bite it.
With her arms wrapped around my neck I walked her over to a black davenport with brass buttons. We fumbled at each other until I stood naked over her. She looked at me with those large brown eyes, her breath coming fast between bruised and swollen lips. Her dress was in a white pool on the wine-colored carpet. I freed her milky breasts from the pink-lace bra. The dark aureolas surrounded pale nipples that were hardening.
Lucy lifted a breast. “Please, baby. Lick me good?”
I took the nipple between my teeth and gently pulled, stretching the skin. She moaned deep in her throat. I squeezed both breasts together so the nipples touched. I sucked them into my mouth, running my tongue over the warm brown flesh. She rolled her head to the side, eyes shut, and bit her fist.
I was so hard it was beginning to hurt. She was a beautiful woman, in deep trouble, and I had been hired by a cold-hearted bastard to bring her back to that trouble—whatever it was. She was about to tell me when Sam and Chitter decided they wanted to be heroes. Now I had something else to prove to her. Something that would lead me to why she ran away in the first place. The easiest way to accomplish it was to gain her trust.
I knelt on the carpet and carefully parted her stockinged legs. I kissed her fat calves and slipped the wisp of panties over her flawless thighs. I kissed the skin from her knee to her hip along one leg. Her warm musk filled the air. I kissed both sides of her vulva, used my thumbs to open her. Her petals glistened. Droplets of her oils were caught in the slight tangle of pubic hair and enough had dripped down the crack of her buttocks to wet her anus.
I touched my tongue to her hooded clit. She responded with a sharp intake of breath. Slim muscles stood in relief along her stomach, arms and legs. Working my tongue up and down I watched her writhe helplessly on the davenport. She ground her hips rhythmically, making it a point to sweep her clit across my tongue at the apex of the circle. I cupped her buttocks, lifting her off the davenport, and took her little pink pearl into my mouth. I buzzed my tongue-tip over it. My nose was buried deep in her dark thatch and I inhaled her heated fragrance.
She whipped her head back and forth, snarling her hair in a black skein across her face. She was a woman desperately hungry for love. I nipped her clit. Her fist jumped again to her mouth and she left red-crescent marks on the knuckles with her teeth. Her body was going fast now, so fast it was leaving her behind.
Beads of sweat covered her body. She screamed with soft cries as the orgasm pulsed through her. Her clit was really hard now and she crushed it against my teeth to wring every last breaking wave of pleasure from it. She would be sore later on, but at the moment she didn’t care—all she wanted was to prolong the sweet ecstasy. Finally, she collapsed onto the davenport, legs trembling and out of breath. She reached down and held me in her hand. I throbbed in her palm.
“It’s my turn, baby,” I promised her.
She licked her lips. “It was pure heaven, but I need your hardness inside me to be complete.” She squirmed to bring her open crotch in line with the purple head of my member.
I held her wrists above her head. My voice was hoarse but I didn’t care. “When I first saw you this afternoon I wanted to shatter you. Now I’m going to do it as hard as I can and as deep as I can. I can’t hold back any more and I don’t care if I hurt you. Wrap your legs around my waist. Hurry.”
She did so willingly. Hell, hungrily. But there was a cleft of doubt between her eyebrows as she looked at my face and saw a man who was not going to hold back.
I pulled her arms tight above her head. Her round breasts were taut mounds. With my free hand I lifted her leg onto my shoulder and slid inside her tight warmth. I pulled halfway out and thrust deeper a second time. Her bare underarms were sheened with sweat and beads ran down her rocking breasts. My third thrust went to the hilt.
“I warned you I would pin you down,” I said huskily. Sweat from my broad chest dripped onto her. “Didn’t I?”
She nodded like a little girl and squeaked, “Yes.” Then: “Give me more. Give me everything.”
I sawed in and out of her black pink pussy. She was tight around me, so tight her petals milked me. My balls slapped hard against her anus which added to the range of emotions she was probably trying to interpret. A bolt of molten come throbbed through the shaft of my cock. I crushed her with my hips and pumped deep inside her. She drummed her heels into my buttocks as the hard slap of come flooded her velvet walls.
We kissed deeply one more time. The late afternoon sun shone through the Venetian blinds. Time passed. Angled bands of light and dark moved across the quiet furniture and our slowly cooling bodies as she kissed the fingernail scratches on my body.
Lucy traced my jawline with her fingertips, her other arm cupping her breasts. “I loved that,” she said low. “The way you used me. Everything.”
I marveled at the flecks of gold in her eyes, the pouting bottom lip, her body slick with perspiration. “Why did you leave Saint-Armand?” I asked later. “What do you have on him?”
She took a French cigarette from a humidor on a glass coffee table. I lit it for her and a cigar for myself. Finally, after making a pitcher of cold martinis, she told me the story.
“Bernard owns a sugarcane plantation near Avery Island, one of the biggest in the state. Anyway, it got hit with some kind of root fungus and now the crop’s ruined. He’s going to set fire to it and make it look like arson. Then he’ll collect the insurance.”
I shook my head slowly. “A mistress doesn’t run away from her benefactor because he’s going to bilk an insurance company.” I put my hand on her bare shoulder. “Come on, give.”
For the first time she looked scared. “I told you some men talk too much in bed. Bernard’s one. After he collects the money he’s going to bankroll a Communist spy ring here in New Orleans.”
“That’s crazy.”
She said emphatically, “He means to do it. A lot of maritime traffic ships in and out of New Orleans. Mostly freighters, but sometimes military vessels. Bernard said Moscow will pay hard cash for that information along with the ships’ bills of lading—which he can get because he knows someone working for the Port Authority. Bernard’s like that, you see. He uses his wealth to buy people and get what he wants.” She gave me a level stare. “Just like he used you to find me.”
“Why did you run away?”
She stabbed out her cigarette and reached for her drink. “I’m no heroine. Bernard lost his temper and said he’d kill me if I breathed a word of this to anybody. He said nobody would miss a black girl who whored herself for a rich man. I had some mad money saved up—about two hundred dollars. I got this place and hired those men as bodyguards. Of course, I knew it was only a matter of time before someone eventually found me.”
“Why not leave New Orleans?”
“A black woman traveling by herself stands out. Plus, when I heard Bernard hired you I thought that maybe, just maybe, I stood a chance.”
That put me on guard. “How do you mean?”
“They say after the war you stayed in Japan to study judo and that you had a Japanese wife who died. I also heard you hire out as muscle and can be trusted.” She drew a ragged breath. “I need somebody I can trust, Ed. If you are the kind of man who could love an Oriental woman, then maybe you’re the kind of man who might help me.”
She had opened doors to my past I thought were rusted shut. Even my secretary, the only person in the world I was close to, didn’t know. However, I expected Lucy ran in circles and was privy to information most other people weren’t.
I took her hands and pulled her up from the davenport. Her heavy breasts pressed against my chest.
I lifted her chin. “I told you I wouldn’t lie to Saint-Armand unless you gave me a very good reason.”
She rested her head on my bare shoulder to hide her wet eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered.
•
We stopped at my office to pick up some hardware and extra shells before leaving New Orleans. I drove through the night taking Highway 182 through Jeanerette. We pulled into a hunter’s camp five miles from Avery Island. I rented a cabin for the week from the proprietor who also owned a live bait shop around back.
The grizzled veteran pushed his smudged spectacles up on his nose to get a better look at Lucy drinking a Coca-Cola outside. “Nice looking piece of black tail,” he said by way of addressing me. “Good luck with it, pal.”
I didn’t smash a heel palm into his nose because I needed him too much. He had tried to cover up but I saw that he had recognized her. I grabbed the key and left without a word.
We had a map of the camp grounds. I followed a bouncing dirt track through the edge of a marsh and parked under a clapboard house on stilts. A weed-choked bayou ran behind the house and beyond that was a limitless expanse of sugarcane.
Lucy carried groceries to the house. “Tell me again why we’re here?” She swatted a mosquito.
“Saint-Armand will find out damn quick we went off together. He might spook and drop the whole idea of coming after you—doubt that—or parley. Either way we know too much to be left alive. When he shows I want to meet him on my terms.”
“What if he can’t find us?”
“Oh, he will. I left a fuse burning.” The bait shop man had probably jumped for the phone as we pulled out of the parking lot. “Come here, you.”
She’d worn something more practical for the road: a peach-colored blouse and pleated skirt. I slipped my hand under her skirt and rubbed her mound. We kept kissing and slowly sank to the floor. In the short time we’d known each other we had yet to make it to a bed. Lucy loosened my pants and set me free.
“You’re beautiful,” she said. “I love you.”
I pulled her close and smothered kisses on her perfumed cleavage. Her nipples were hard and showed clearly through the thin material. She pushed me back on to the floor and straddled me. I saw the coral lips of her pussy playing peek-a-boo in the black down between her legs. She lowered herself, slowly at first, until she lost control and let her full weight drop. She squealed with surprise at the impalement through clenched teeth.
“Grind, baby,” I said. “Grind your hips hard.”
She closed her eyes and tilted her head to one side, moving.
“You’re so deep in me.” Her eyelashes fluttered. “God, I love your passionate thrusts inside where I’m a woman. My opening is so stretched I feel I’m going to tear.”
She leaned forward and braced her hands on the wooden floor, allowing access to her breasts. I unbuttoned her blouse and set them free from the tight bra. They swayed back and forth with milky abandon as she rocked. I laved her thick nipples with my tongue, sucking gently at the pale buds. She showed me how she wanted them pinched and kneaded. She ground her hips faster in between tiny mewls of desire.
I held her waist and thrust as hard as possible. The skin on her face tightened with pleasure. She reached behind her ass and gently massaged my balls.
When she felt my body tense she rolled off and brought her mouth down on my organ. I held the back of her head and pulsed into her throat. Her hair fell across my hand in a dark wave. She gagged, tried to catch her breath as I popped free of her lips. A thin stream of white hot come splashed her breast and dripped from the dark tip onto her brown thigh. My sperm looked lovely on her brown body. She was the kind of woman who made it look like it belonged there. “I want you on top of me,” she begged. “Please, Ed, I like to feel your weight.”
We rolled over again. It became very quiet.
“I’m sorry I messed that up.” She was cradled in my arms. “I’ll do better next time.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Her nipples felt good digging into my skin. Her cleft was still hot and she rubbed it against my hairy thigh to let me know she was there. —That I owned her entire body and her soul, if I wanted to. I did.
“I . . .I don’t do that very often,” she went on. “Only when I’m with a man I really love, really want to taste because I want to please him with everything I have. Everything I am.”
I stroked her hair, slowly hardening again. “I want to make love to you more than ever before, darling.”
She gave me her mouth. I sipped her breath, tasting spice and honey.
#
Two nights later I woke her with a gentle shake. “Lucy, they’re here. A car drove up without its lights and parked under that old cypress in back.”
We had expected this. During the wait we had explored our intimacy for one another. The love had been good even though it was under storm clouds. Now those clouds were about to break.
Lucy peered through a chink in the muslin curtain at the men dispersing into the woods. “That’s Bernard, leading. The tall man in the cowboy boots is Judd Wallach, his plantation foreman. The man carrying the rifle is another of his boot-lickers, Koby Holt. I don’t know the fourth man, though.”
They didn’t waste any time. Saint-Armand lit a Molotov cocktail and Judd tossed it towards the cabin. I cut loose with a sawed-off shotgun from my office, blowing it apart in mid-air. Flaming kerosene rained down on Judd and he screamed. I fired again at the flickering shadows until my magazine was empty.
“Go,” I told Lucy, reloading. “I’m right behind you.” She went to the back of the cabin and rolled out a rope ladder. We shinnied out the window and ran to the bayou. A shadow moved near a big mossy oak to my left. Koby’s rifle and my shotgun roared simultaneously. Splinters of bark ripped his face and he went down in writhing agony.
That’s when I heard the first shot. A sharp report from a pistol.
We followed the bayou into the sugarcane field. The leaves lacerated our arms and faces as we struggled across secondary irrigation canals. A second shot echoed across the marsh.
I looked back grimly. “That fourth man is cleaning up the mess we left behind.”
Lucy stared. “Russian?”
I nodded. “Probably here to keep an eye on Saint-Armand.”
A fierce glow illuminated the night sky. Someone had set fire to the dying sugarcane. Red flames leapt into the sky. We made it to a bayou and dove to the muddy bottom. When we came up for air the wind and fire had shifted with the coming dawn. We stumbled out and found Saint-Armand. He had been caught in the fire but it was the bullet hole in his heart that had killed him.
“I guess he didn’t have what it took after all,” I said. There was no sign of the Russian. He had seen enough.
Lucy looked away, sickened. “I’m sorry this happened.”
We walked along the edge of the cane field. The fire raged in the distance, destroying everything.
“A sugarcane fire burns hot for a very long time,” I said reflectively. “They’ll have a hard time putting this one out.”
Lucy took my hand. “What about our own sugar fire?”
I looked at her. Her clothes were torn and her face smudged. She was more beautiful than ever.
“Someday it may burn itself out.” I put my arm around her waist and pulled her close. “Until that happens let’s enjoy the heat.”
We kissed. “What happens now?” she asked.
I remembered the bait shop man. I smiled.
“First we’re going to go see a man about a broken nose,” I said.
has sold over twenty stories and articles to professional and semi-professional magazines and is currently training for a brown belt in Shotokan karate. This is his first appearance in Fishnet.
