Dan Ellender

 I'm working on a novel. This is where I am with the prologue. Copyright 2021 by Dan Ellender. All rights reserved.

 

The Bingo Mafia 

 

Prologue

 

    Tyler Brandt hoisted himself out of the limousine in front of Gulf Central Care Center  as usual, and went to open the door of the pearl white Maybach 62 Landaulet. It was a fine, clear afternoon. He was a rather large young gentleman, stiff and clean in his handsome chauffeur's uniform. Looking down, Tyler saw with pleasure that his shoes absolutely gleamed.  He opened the back coach door with a flourish.

 

    But no one got out. That is to say, there was no one in the back seat to get out. Only a woman’s hat and dress coat, and a pair of pale blue silk lace gloves.  At first Tyler simply stood there, in his usual half bow. Then he looked up into the cool, insular back seat with his eyes, which quickly grew wide. Slowly his head lifted and then the rest of him. Standing stupidly, he felt a soft humid wind blow through the live oak trees.  Tyler felt himself starting to sweat.

 

     Looking around and seeing only residents out in their wheelchairs and walkers, the big man finally allowed himself to panic. He leapt into the back of the Maybach and tore through it, pulling forward the front seats and even taking up the brocaded gold floor mats. Finally he got out, opened the trunk, and quickly extracted the two small pieces of luggage that Helen Batiste-Lenoir always brought back with her from New Orleans. He climbed completely into the trunk, searching inside it. Then Tyler struggled out and even looked under the big car, soiling his crisp uniform on the concrete. But Mrs. Helen Batiste-Lenoir herself had disappeared into thin air.

 

    This was all too much for Tyler, who had enjoyed the best job of his life for the past two years. The frail little woman, a prominent resident of Gulf Central Care Center, had been in the back seat when he’d left the French Quarter and put in his earbuds. He would have sworn to it. Now, she'd simply vanished. Tyler was sick over what might have happened to Miss Helen. In defeat, he got up off the ground and sat down on the curb, wringing his massive hands and staring straight ahead.

 

    The morning was still fresh and bright, with all the sounds of a southern spring. A mockingbird sat in one of the tall oaks and chirped like a cell phone down at Tyler.  The sky was crystal clear and the humidity of the day was slowly escaping from under the sprawling oaks and tall pines. But for Tyler, everything had changed as soon as he opened that car door.

 

    His life was finished. He was a failure at the job he’d held onto with such pride. His wife would never understand. They would have to move, probably back to Morgan City. Where was Miss Helen?

 

    The tiny woman had always been nice to him. Riding back to New Orleans last week he’d asked her “Am I like driving Miss Daisy, Miss Helen? You know what I mean?”

 

    “Now, Tyler,” she’d replied. “You know that I think more of you than that old woman thought of Morgan Freeman. You're better looking than him, too.” Then she was on the phone and had him raise the windows up.

 

    Tyler felt someone softly tap him on the shoulder. He looked up from the curb, where he was still sitting like a drunkard in a dead stupor. With the sun framing her shoulders and hair like a halo, Sharon Castle looked down at him.

 

    “Awwwww, what’s wrong, Tyler?” In the bright crisp morning  a gunshot and crash of glass filled the air, startling the mockingbird.