Excerpt: Sweet Things

A couple who appear to be in their late 20’s pushed a baby buggy ahead of them as they ambled along the north side of Saint Charles Street approaching the front door of Stover’s Furniture Resurrection Studio. They stopped and looked into the display floor and she pointed at something.
Then she lifted the muslin mesh and reached into the buggy and made a minor adjustment of something, than pulled the cover back into place. When she stood; he put his arm around her shoulder and leaned over so that his mouth would be next to her ear. “Just relax, Irene. You are going to do just fine. This will be a piece of cake.”
“I’ll be ok, Jake. Let’s do it”, she said looking into his eyes and smiled.
“Just make sure that you can get to the baby.”
“I can get to the baby. It won’t be a problem. I’m ready. It’s show time.”
He gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze, “You’ll do OK,” then he turned and pulled the door open, and held it for her. She pushed the buggy into the store. He followed her in and let the door close behind them.
Their eyes took a minute to adjust to the shaded atmosphere, and their noses were assailed by the smells of shellacs, varnishes, and associated solvents that emanated from the shop area in the rear of the store. The couple slowly took in the beautiful furniture on the showroom floor. There was a cherry stained bird’s eye maple formal dining room table at the far side of the showroom there was an oak sideboards, sever varieties of cypress bookcase and entertainment centers along the wall. In the center of the rear wall was a beaded curtain. On the left side of the doorway was a large panel of glass which allowed whoever was in the office working to keep tabs on the showroom floor. At the opposite of the display floor there was a carved Plantation Style Poster bed that was darkly stained with matching armoire and dresser.
“Hey, how y’all doin’? I’ll be with you in a minute,” came a disembodied voice from the shop area.
Suddenly a male figure came through the beaded curtain. He had an industrial mask dangling around his neck. He was wearing an old, stained Mardi Gras tee shirt and even older looking and equally stained jungle fatigue pants. “Welcome to my studio,” he said extending his right that he just finished wiping with a rag that he stuffed in into one of his pants pockets with his left. “I don’t usually do business here.”
“Mark, we appreciate you letting us come and pick the stuff up away from some club,” Jake said as Mark shook his hand and nodded to Irene, who was still standing with the carriage.
“From what I see here; what you told us about being able to either build or locate and refinish just about style of furniture is certainly an understatement,” said Irene
“It sounds like you have something in mind. What are you looking for?”
“I…er…we are. We just bought a house and we want some furniture for our kid’s room. We were at Oak Alley and just fell in love with the furniture in the nursery. Are you familiar with that furniture?” asked Irene as she reached under the netting of the carriage and retrieved a manila file folder.
“I’m familiar with the styles that were common in the old plantation homes. I can’t say that I know the specific pieces you saw there, but let me assure you that we can either find the pieces you want or we can custom build them for you.”
“We managed to get pictures of the furniture we are interested in. It is basically a crib, the slay bed with a built in storage drawer, a changing table and an armoire,” said Irene.
“Can we get our other business out of the way and then we can go back to furnishing the house?” said Jake.
“Why don’t we go into my office and see what we can come up with,” said Mark as he led the way through the beaded archway. As they entered the office they could see three men working in the shop area, each at a different work station.
“We have a staff of seven journeymen cabinet makers and at present we are working with eight apprentices. Right now all but the three you see in the shop are working on different sites in the Garden District. They are repairing the damage from Katrina and now from Gustav,” Stover said as took a seat behind the desk. With a sweeping gesture he indicated that they too should sit in the over stuffed chairs in front of the desk. Irene pushed the carriage into the corner by the door then took her seat next to Jake.
Stover pulled open the center desk drawer and pulled out a transmitter detector and turned it on. “No offence,”
Stover said as he stood and walked around the room waiving the device, then returning to his chair, sitting down as shut the device off. “You can’t be too safe,” he said returning the detector drawer and closing it.
“Were you able to locate the product?” asked Jake.
“I was able to locate a pound, which is what you asked for?”
“You said fifty-five thousand hundred a pound?”
“I told you fifty-five to sixty a pound. That lab that the state police took off on Monday was my source of cheap dope. This stuff is outstanding and it’s fifty-eight a pound. I assume you want to test it,” said Stover as he lifted a shiny one gallon paint can onto the desk.
“We do,” said Irene as she got up and strode over to their baby buggy. “I would guess that you want to count the money,” as she pulled two cases from the buggy after setting a doll on the top of he carriage. She handed a black camera case to Jake and she opened a similar blue case.
Jake counted out eleven bundles of one hundred dollar bills and counted thirty additional bills from a twelfth bundle. “There is five thousand in each bundle,” he said as he pushed the stack across desk.
While Stover counted cash, Jake got up and put the black camera case and the doll back into the buggy. He then pushes the buggy up behind Irene.
In the meantime Irene opened the can and pulled a large zip lock bag of white powder and started to weigh it. She then pulled out a small rack and placed five test tubes into the rack. She placed small samples from the five bag in to the tubes. She then took a set of bottles, each with an eyedropper and started to put drops into each tube. Each of the tubes turned a different color after the addition of the different reagents. She looked up at Jake smiling and said, “This is the best stuff I have ever seen.”
“You guys always make these deals so easy. You argue about the price, but once the deal is set there are never any problems,” said Stover as he placed the bundles of cash into the large antique safe behind him. He then opened a file and typed some information into the computer on his desk.
“I hope you know who you are dealing with. I know this gal who works at the Parish Attorney’s Office. She said that the state police were in applying for search warrants on Tuesday. She wasn’t able to tell me where they wanted to search or who they were working on,” Said Stover.
“Is that why you checked us for bugs when we came in?”
“It was. If I hadn’t been doing business with you as long as I have, I’d have told you I couldn’t get the dope and we would have never come into this office.”
“We appreciate the information,” said Irene as placed the last bag of dope from the second paint can into a gallon zip lock bag and stowed it into the buggy. She then started to repackage her testing equipment after throwing the test tubes into the trash can next to desk.
“What was your costume for Mardi Gras, Mark? I went as Wonder Woman,” said Irene as she was rearranging the contents of the buggy.
“What are you talking about?” said Stover as there was a sudden commotion in the front of the shop as several figures wearing Louisiana State Police raid jackets.
“Put your hands flat on the desk, Mark, and don’t move, you’re under arrest,” said Irene as she leveled the Sig 556 that she had pulled out of the buggy on Stover, allowing the red dot of the lazar sight to bounce back and forth between Stover’s eyes.
“You motherfuckers,” said Stover, the hate and disgust were clear to see in his eyes.
“Building is secure,” said a man who stepped into the office wearing black coveralls with NOPD stenciled across the back.
“Thanks Clarence, Tell your team to open every paint can they find. He delivered out buy in one,” said Remy to coverall clad figure of Lieutenant Clarence Harshman of the New Orleans Police Department.
“OK Mark, stand up slowly and assume the position,” said Jake as he pulled his holstered Beretta Px4 Storm from the carriage and clipped it to his belt.