Lucky's Lady Read Online Free PDF Page A

number of dens of iniquity that were no longer supposed to exist in the civilized South.
    It was the hangout of poachers and men whose backgrounds were filled with more shadows than the swamp. And even among them, Lucky Doucet stood out as a remarkably dangerous sort of man. The men sized him up warily, the women covetously, but no one approached him.
    The bartender, a portly man with a dense, close-cropped salt-and-pepper beard, groaned and rolled his eyes like a man in pain. He brought up the rag he was wiping the bar with and patted it against his double chins like an old matron trying to ward off a fainting spell.
    “Jesus, Lucky, I don' want no trouble in here,” he wailed, waddling toward Lucky's end of the bar. His little sausage fingers knotted together around the towel in a gesture of supplication. “I just barely got the place patched up from the las' time.”
    Lucky shrugged expansively, blinking innocence. “Trouble? Me cause you trouble, Skeeter? Hell, I just came in for a drink. Give me a shot and a Jax long-neck.”
    Muttering prayers, Skeeter moved to do his bidding, sweat beading on his bald spot like water on a bowling ball.
    Lucky's gaze homed in on Pou Perret, a little muskrat with a pockmarked face and a thin, droopy mustache. He was sitting at the far end of the bar, deep in conversation with a local cockfight referee. Picking up his beer bottle by the neck, Lucky sauntered down to the end of the bar and tapped the referee on the shoulder. “Hey, pal, I think I hear your mother callin'.”
    The man took one look at Lucky and vacated his seat, shooting Perret a nervous glance as he moved away into the smokier regions of the bar. Sipping his beer, Lucky eased himself onto the stool and hooked the heels of his boots over the chrome rung.
    “How's tricks, Pou? Where's Willis? In the back cheatin' at
bourré?
You out here keepin' watch or somethin', little weasel?”
    Perret scowled at him and shrunk away to the far side of his stool like a dog afraid of getting kicked. He muttered an obscene suggestion half under his breath.
    “That's anatomically impossible,
mon ami
,” Lucky said, taking another sip of his beer. “See the things you might have learned if you'd stayed in school past the sixth grade? All this time you've probably been wearin' yourself out trying to do that very thing you suggested to me.” He chuckled at Perret's comically offended expression as he helped himself to a pack of cigarettes lying on the bar. He lit one up and took a leisurely drag. Exhaling a stream of smoke, he shrugged and grinned shrewdly. “'Course, mebbe Willis, he helps you out with that, eh?”
    Perret narrowed his droopy eyes to slits. “You bastard.”
    Lucky's expression went dangerously still. His smile didn't waver, but it took on a quality that would have made even fools reconsider the wisdom of getting this close to him. “You say that in front of my
maman
, I'll cut your tongue out,
cher
,” he said in a silky voice. “My folks are respectable people, you know.”
    “Yeah,” Perret admitted grudgingly, bobbing his head down between his bony shoulders like a vulture. He scratched his chest through his dirty black T-shirt, sniffed, and took another stab at belligerence. “How'd they ever end up with the like of you?”
    Lucky's eyes gleamed in the dim light as he looked straight into Perret's ferret face. “I'm a changeling, don'tcha know. Straight up from hell.”
    Perret shifted uneasily on his seat, superstition shining in his dark eyes like a fever. He lifted a hand to the dime he wore on a string around his neck. He snatched his cigarettes out of Lucky's reach and shook one out for himself, sliding a glance at Lucky out the corner of his eye. “What you want, Doucet?”
    Lucky took his time answering. He stood and shoved the barstool out of his way so he could lean lazily against the bar. He set his cigarette in an ashtray and took another long swallow of his beer before turning to look at