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Bo screamed and dove overboard. The Mississippi swallowed him whole. But the Accountant simply shrugged, wiped the chart clean, and began reassigning seats for the next voyage. After all, a showboat without a captain is just a coffin floating downstream.
“Who sits there?” whispered a gambler. seating chart for general jackson showboat
It began when Captain Beauregard “Bo” LaGrange, the showboat’s dandy impresario, unveiled the new saloon seating for the grand reopening. He’d painted a massive, gilded chart on a mahogany board: ninety-two seats arranged in a horseshoe around the stage. Each seat was assigned to a specific passenger for the voyage from Natchez to New Orleans. Bo screamed and dove overboard
The Accountant rose from Seat 2. He was unremarkable—gray suit, gray eyes, gray smile. “Correct,” he said. “But you’ve misread the fine print.” He tapped the chart. “Seat 17: $5,000 dead or alive. Seat 44: $10,000. Seat 89: $7,500. And Seat 2?” He glanced at Captain Bo, who was edging toward the paddlewheel. “Seat 2 is the buyer.” After all, a showboat without a captain is
Judge Woolcott, now in Seat 44 (the chandelier spot), laughed too loudly. “A game of musical corpses!” he brayed. Half an hour later, the chandelier’s crystal chain snapped. It fell like a guillotine’s blade. The judge was crushed—but not before someone had carved the number “44” into his palm with a shard of glass.
The room went silent as a grave. Bo LaGrange had sold the seats as “premium assignments” to wealthy guests, but he’d also sold their names to a network of assassins. The Accountant was merely the final bidder—a man who paid in gold and collected in souls. But there was one seat left on the chart: Seat 1. It had been empty all along, drawn as a tiny skull.
At breakfast, a deckhand found Silk Thornton slumped over Seat 17, a playing card—the ace of spades—pressed to his forehead. No wound, no blood, just a faint blue pallor and the smell of bitter almonds. Cyanide in his julep.