The Marauders by Tom Cooper

sat at the dining room table and Grimes rolled up his shirtsleeves three times apiece like a stumping politician. He snapped open his satchel and withdrew an inch-thick sheaf of papers.
    The surly brother’s eyes flared in disbelief. “Great goddamn,” he said. “Paperwork up the ass. Get rid of some and then a motherfucker drops off twice as much five minutes later.”
    Grimes did not take kindly to being called a motherfucker, especially by a tattoed coon-ass. But he knew saying anything wouldn’t work in his favor. Swampfucks, thinking they were tough. He’d like to see them in New York. In Boston or Chicago. They wouldn’t survive a day without getting fucked a thousand different ways.
    “Well, sit,” the surly brother told Grimes.
    The first twin began to thumb through the papers. He’d finish one page and then hand it to his brother and then move on to the next.
    “Kill you guys to write plain English?” said the brother with the tattoos. A spiderweb. A trident. A Great White shark.
    “Hey, I don’t write them,” said Grimes. “I were the one to write it, I’d say this is a good deal. Sign here. Short and sweet.”
    The brothers kept reading, the only sounds the ticking of the kitchen wall clock, the sigh of the air-conditioning. Grimes looked around. The house was clean and well lit and airy, solidly middle-class. The furniture was heavy and dark, cherrywood and African mahogany, not the cheap pressed-wood stuff Grimes saw in living rooms and kitchens throughout the Barataria. Hell, there were even African violets on the windowsill, a ficus tree in the corner.
    Grimes watched the brothers. Uncanny, the resemblance. “I’ve got a twin brother,” he said.
    “Yeah?” said the first twin.
    “Pretty much the end of the story,” he said.
    “We some kind of soul mates ’cause you got a twin?” said the second.
    Grimes cleared his throat. Stood and hitched his pants. “Use your pisser?” he asked.
    “Shit?” said the tattooed brother.
    Grimes shook his head.
    “Down the hall. Second on the right. Don’t even think about taking a shit.”
    In the hallway bathroom Grimes cursed the brother while he pissed. Midstream he took the toothbrush from the porcelain holder next to the sink and whizzed on the bristles and then stuck the toothbrush back in its hole.
    On the way back to the den Grimes passed an open bedroom door and glimpsed something that made him pause. A prosthetic arm sticking hand-up out of a widemouthed vase or umbrella stand in the corner.
    I’ll be damned
, Grimes thought.
    When Grimes returned, the tattooed brother was standing at the table and the paperwork was ripped to shreds, confetti strewn on the floor. The other brother, looking uneasy and embarrassed, was in the kitchen taking plates out of a dishwasher.
    “That the kind of money you’re offering everyone?” the tattooed brother asked.
    Grimes took his satchel and shouldered it. “Appreciate your time,” he said.
    “Get the fuck out of here,” the tattooed brother said.
    Grimes descended the steps swiftly, a chill at the base of his neck like it was in the crosshairs of a rifle scope.

    The next day at dusk Grimes found Lindquist at the harbor and told him he had some important news to share.
    Lindquist hobbled down the gangplank onto the rickety pier. Eyebrow cocked, he flicked the head of his Pez dispenser and popped a pill in his mouth and mashed it between his molars.
    “Your arm,” said Grimes.
    Lindquist’s bloodshot eyes bulged. “You find it?”
    “Not sure if I’m at liberty to disclose. It’s a sensitive issue.”
    Lindquist stepped beseechingly toward Grimes. “Mister,” he said, “you know how screwed I am without that arm?”
    Grimes was quiet.
    “I mean, look at this damn thing,” Lindquist said, jigging his hook arm.
    They stood in the sweltering twilight next to Lindquist’s boat. Even the
Jean Lafitte
looked crazy to Grimes, its pureed pea green, its varnished wood warped and