Bar Room Brawl

Natalie may have believed her Uncle Clete was the meanest man to ever walk the earth, but she knew little of Marcel Boudreaux beyond what was visible on the surface. Marcel had learned many years ago the art of manipulating others to do his evil bidding while keeping himself hidden behind the scenes, and behind a badge.

Marcel's father pulled him from school when he was but twelve years old to work in the family business full time. The elder Boudreaux proclaimed himself to be a fisherman. Although catfish, crawfish, crabs and the like were plentiful in coastal Louisiana, those caught by the Boudreaux were mainly for personal use. The real money was in the illicit stuff, namely alligators. The Boudreaux clan, along with their counterparts, thought poaching laws were an offense to their sensibilities and had no regard for what they considered northern law.



The skins were most often sold to a man from Orange, Texas and from there found their way to El Paso, where they were slipped into Mexico to be manufactured into fine footwear, belts and purses. The white liquor they made went to a man from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, who distributed it Jackson,Meridian, and points north.

Marcel's father was killed by a single .357 hollow point round to the back of the head, while on his knees, by a Federal agent. The report, which was never disputed, claimed Mister Boudreaux had charged the agent with a machete. Barefoot and shirtless, Marcel hid in the swamp for three days. At the age of fifteen, Marcel gained some wisdom from the event. Rather than grieve his father's death, he focused on how to put himself on the other side of the gun and do business with impunity, never again hiding in the swamp.

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Now where the hell was that ###### Clete? Marcel wondered while eating an oyster po'boy sandwich at Roseys Diner. He had been trying to contact him since the night before, on his home and cell phone. He finally called down to the GatorTail and talked to Natalie.

"No, sir, he ain't here. I had to let myself in this morning. I thought it was odd that the safe was wide open and slap empty. I figured he must have went to the bank to make a deposit, so I called down there to remind him to get plenty of small bills for change and check cashing money too, being Friday and all, but they said he hadn't been there."

"You sure he ain't said nothin' about having to be somewhere?"the sheriff asked.

"Well, last night he did say something about being overdue for a trip to Baton Rouge, but I ain't ever known him to spend the night up there. Besides, Friday is money day and he is always here for that," she answered. She was referring to his custom of cashing customers' payroll checks for a five percent surcharge, making the idea of an empty safe seem all the more unusual.

"Alright, then," he said as he hung up, hearing the rumble ofHarley-Davidsons in the background.

[LEFT]Marcel was becoming more and more agitated with Clete's behavior as of late. They had known each other since they were kids and Marcel knew when Clete was hiding something from him, and his cut from the outside sales seemed to be slim lately. He hadn't pressed him about it, but now wished that he had. Marcel didn't like being seen around the bar, but it was time for a face to face meeting. And hearing the bikes ride up raised another sore point. Clete was letting them boys get away with too much. What the hell didn't he understand about being discreet?

[LEFT][LEFT]After putting on his gray Stetson and adjusting it just so, Marcel lit a Lucky Strike as he walked to his cruiser, his eyes set hard, his mind on the task ahead.[/LEFT]
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Tib heard the heavy glass shatter, wondering why he didn't feel the impact of the pitcher and the penetration of glass into his flesh. The blur of motion above his head revealed that things hadn't gone as planned for the biker who could have very well ended his life.

Natalie swung the weighted belt in circles above her head like a lariat with a steel ball attached, letting the brass knuckle clad buckle collide with the pitcher as the Outlaw was in the midst of his downswing. The impact sent the glass shrapnel in his direction. His wrist area was bleeding profusely from the three inch long triangular point of glass that had imbedded itself in his lower forearm. He screamed in shock as another deadly looking projectile planted itself into the hollow between the bridge of his nose and his eyeball.

Tib lost valuable time staring in awe as the Outlaw, undeterred by his wounds, withdrew a revolver from his jacket pocket, an ugly snub nose .38 with the handle wrapped in electricians tape.​

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Natalie had moved on, unaware of the gun, leaving the ex football player on his own, winding up the belt anew, hoping she wasn’t too late to save the man on the floor with the color draining from his face.

She put an adrenaline fueled strength into the swing of the likes she never dreamed she was capable of. Lord let my aim be true she prayed, and for years to come she never knew where those words came from.

When Natalie was a young girl, her little brother broke open alarge tortoise that had wandered into the yard from the swamp by smashing it with their father’s sledge hammer. He said he always wondered what they looked like inside. She threw up on the ground before running away in tears.

The sickening crack/thud sound of the turtle’s shell was what she heard when the heavy metal landed aside Stork’s skull just above his ear.​

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Clete's pickup was nowhere to be seen when Sheriff Boudreaux pulled into the driveway of the old shotgun house located four miles off the nearest paved road. The gallery was sagging like an old sway back mule, the paint had peeled from the outer walls and the yard was overrun with ferns and weeds.

If you didn't live like backwoods trash you might find yourself a decent woman instead of going to the cathouse in Baton Rouge Marcel muttered to himself as he approached the front door, trying the knob. Not bothering with finesse, Marcel laid a heavy boot to the locked door, the old jamb shattering with little protest.


Marcel had once done a little investigating while his buddy Clete was passed out drunk on the sofa. Drunk enough to blab about how much he had carefully set aside for himself and what he would do if he ever thought it was about to hit the fan.

The cigar box in the second dresser drawer was empty, no longer layered with stacks of hundred dollar bills as it was the night Marcel peeked in it. The .44 magnum and the box of shells was gone too, along with the AR15 from behind the raincoat in the closet.

Something is going down and that cowardly sonuvabitch has run for the hills. He's a dead man now. Marcel checked his anger and focused on damage control. After he evacuated the GatorTail, he would send Natalie home and seal up the place with the chains andpadlocks in the trunk of his patrol car. He would declare it closed for health code violations and whatever else he could think of.

His cell phone chirped as he got back in his sedan. It was his dispatcher, Marcie. "Sheriff, I've kept it off the radio, but I done got three calls about folks about to get killed down at the GatorTail."

"Them ###### bikers," Marcel said.

"No, sir. It sounds like the bikers is the ones getting killed," she replied. Marcel was already standing hard on the gas pedal, fishtailing down the unpaved road.​

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This is getting way weird. Marcel thought back about the night he conducted the impromptu search of Clete’s house. An item of interest was a cell phone with a number Marcel was unfamiliar with. He contacted an old friend, an ex NOPD homicide detective turned PI for some help with some electronic eavesdropping. No problem, podna, just give me the number.

There was only one particular number that he either called or received calls from. A number Marcel knew to belong to Stork. There was nothing odd about that. What Marcel found to be odd, however is that these calls generally occurred the day before or the day of Clete’s alleged excursions to Baton Rouge.

Marcel had picked up on a rumor that a snitch in Lafayette fed some info to a narcotics agent that the Outlaws were starting to move large quantity shipments of meth to Mobile, Shreveport, and sometimes even Atlanta. The snitch also said they were using a civilian, rather than a fellow biker to make the runs, somebody that wouldn’t attract attention. Marcel knew Clete well enough to know that he could pull it off.

Marcel’s anger intensified; at himself for not catching on to this earlier, and at Clete for screwing him on his fifteen percent of the take. So wrapped up in his thoughts was the usually observant sheriff, he failed to take note of the pair of black Chevy Suburbans with blacked out windows tailing him not so discreetly.​

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Marcel was not prepared for the scene that presented itself when he entered the GatorTail Grille & Lounge. He found it difficult to absorb the events that were unfolding before him, or of the prior events that led to the current state of utter chaos.

The Outlaw he recognized as Slick was bleeding profusely from his left arm. It brought to mind a botched suicide attempt with a deep slash inside the elbow, blood trailing off his fingertips. That wasn't bizarre at all compared the shard of glass protruding from the biker's face. It appeared to be driven right into the corner of his eye socket as if it were being used to dislodge his eyeball as one might pop a clam from its shell.

Marcel found the most peculiar thing about this was the fact that Slick had made no effort to remove the glass dagger, nor did he seem concerned about it. What he did seem concerned about was popping a cap into the young man, who seemed vaguely familiar, kneeling on top of Gorilla, who not only appeared unconscious, but had a pool of blood forming beneath his head.

As if this weren't enough, only a few feet deeper into the bar were two men, one of which he believed to be Stork, out for the count on the canvas. Clete's niece, Natalie, was bent over the other man, one he didn't recognize.

The Sheriff felt his immediate responsibility was to prevent a public homicide in his jurisdiction, and putting all protocol aside, he did just that. Based on Slick's demeanor, he knew shouting "freeze" or "drop your weapon" would not only be ineffective, it would be borderline laughable.

As Slick was bringing his piece up to firing position, Marcel was drawing his .357 from his well worn leather holster as smooth as a major league catcher palming the ball from his familiar mitt, an action performed without any forethought.​

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Not bothering to pull back the hammer, Marcel brought the revolver up and fired in double action mode, not hindered by the extra trigger pull, for it was his custom to shoot that way. The hollow point round passed an inch from Slick’s head, just high and to the right. A fellow sitting on the pool table, half in the bag, would later tell investigators that he saw the biker’s hair flutter like a bird’s wing.

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The bullet went through the giant, fluorescent, Budweiser sign hanging above the men’s room door, creating a shower of sparks and glass before punching through the one inch pineboard wall, embedding itself into a two hundred year old oak tree at the edge of the marshland bordering the parking lot.


The combination of the thunder of Marcel’s heavy iron and the exploding beer sign tripped a switch deep in the primal recesses of Slick’s mind and his trigger finger relaxed.

Turning his head to the right, he noticed Marcel for the first time, also noticing the source of the mini sonic boom that had just cruised by his ear was pointed directly at him.

“Go easy, Slick. Just lay it down for me, nice and slow,”Marcel said, gently.

Slick, dumbfounded, did as he was told. As he bent over to lay the .38 on the floor, the pointed triangle of glass slid from its nesting place in his eye socket, tinkling when it hit the floor, the only sound in the bar.

Looking at Tib, Marcel said, “Now, how about you getting up off that fella and ease over to that wall yonder…”

Before he could say anymore, Marcel was interrupted by the sound of a shell being racked into a shotgun chamber and a voice that was all business. “We’ll take it from here, Sheriff Boudreaux. Now, nice and easy like, lay down your weapon and place your hands behind your head.”​

 

Josh heard the sound of distant thunder far away from the blackness of his world. He felt a coolness on his face as if he were floating up through a moisture laden cloud as he ascended to Heaven. Then he felt the warm touch of human flesh upon his cheeks accompanied by a soothing female voice. He wondered if he had truly arrived in Heaven for he had surely felt the life drain from his body.

Josh wakeup Josh wakeup wakeup stay with me Josh come on Josh wakeup you're my hero Josh please wakeup come on baby stay with us came the distant voice, gradually gaining volume as he seemed to be pulled from one world to another. He felt reality shift as his eyes opened, as if he was arriving from another dimension.

"Oh, thank Jesus!" Natalie uttered shakily, tears forming in her eyes. "You had us so worried. I would've never forgiven myself if you'd died on my account."

Confused, Josh looked around, taking inventory of himself and his surroundings, immediately discovering his inability to speak, his throat feeling raw, and his heavy breathing, his lungs hungrily seeking oxygen.

He quickly deduced the distant voice had been coming from the young lady before him whose nametag read Natalie and the soothing moisture was from the damp, beer soaked washcloth in her hand. He was sitting on the floor, his back against an upended table. Inches from his leg lay a big fellow, one cheek on the linoleum. The exposed side of his head seemed to have been caved in, blood already congealing on his ear, a pool of it having been formed on the floor.

Four men were spread out behind Marcel, all with the letters, DEA emblazoned in gold letters on the back of their windbreakers, and all holding forty caliber handguns. Four more agents, these men with tactical shotguns, were stationed behind the bar should someone attempt to leave via the back door. They all, the Sheriff included, seemed disappointed that Cletus Benoit was nowhere to be found.

 

Josh spent the night at the New Iberia General Hospital for observation and was released early the next morning. His buddy Tib and his new friend Natalie took shifts sitting by his bedside. Upon his release, he drove home to Arkansas to be with his family.

Natalie used the reward money she collected from the tip line to move away and start a new life. The information she had provided was crucial in bringing down a large scale methamphetamine operation. After a lifetime in the bayou, she thought the Pacific Northwest would be a welcome change. And she never had to repay Clete for the Mustang.

Clete was reportedly spotted by an undercover agent three weeks later in a Memphis bar, one dominated by the Outlaws MC. His body was discovered ten days later in an abandoned cotton warehouse outside of Tunica, Mississippi when two men tracking a wounded wild boar noticed the smell. He was hanging from a rafter by a meat hook inserted into his ribcage, his intestines trailing to the floor.

Marcel Boudreaux had covered his tracks well. He had never dealt with the Outlaws, in person or otherwise. The Outlaws not only didn't know who he was: they had no idea he was getting a cut from Clete, who wasn't around to testify. His phone records indicated a series of phone calls with Clete, whom he convinced everybody he was building a case against. He admitted to breaking in the man's house, but he was looking for evidence. So what? Marcel remains the sheriff to this day.