by Mark Dawson
“Why not?” she said, giving it to him. “I’m fresh out of other ideas. If you do see him, you tell him that Papa has emptied out his bank account so he can have a place in rehab. I tried to stop him—Christ, it’s not like they can afford it—but he wouldn’t listen to me. It’s paid for and waiting for him. All he has to do is show up.”
There was no hope in her voice, just resignation. He could see that she didn’t think it would help, but the relationship between her brother and the rest of the family was already so corrupted that it would hardly be possible for him to make it any worse.
“I’ll talk to him,” Milton said, slipping the card into his pocket.
She looked at him questioningly. “Why would you do that? You don’t have to.”
“I do. I owe your family. You saved my friend’s life. And I got to fly out of New Orleans the day afterwards like nothing had happened. Your brother was right. And I never felt comfortable about it.”
“You don’t live here. Why would you have stayed?”
“That’s not the point.”
They were silent for a moment. Milton looked out over the street, at the row of beautiful new houses, the well-tended gardens, the jungle that grew up behind them all. He listened to the sound of the nocturnal animals. He heard the noise of a bin being tipped over and then a feral scuffling inside it. He heard the hooting of an owl overhead. He sucked down on his cigarette, holding the smoke in his lungs, enjoying the sensation of a full belly.
“The legal thing,” he began. “The eminent—”
“Domain,” she finished.
“The eminent domain.”
She laughed grimly. “Yeah, it’s all sweetness and light around here.”
“Seriously. Can you fight it?”
She sighed. “I couldn’t lay it all out honestly, not in front of my mom and pop. The other guy has millions to throw at it. The city council is on their side. And it’s just me and a few volunteers. I can make it expensive and inconvenient for them, but, eventually?” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Nah. Probably not. You ask me, in six months, they’ve won and these houses, they aren’t here anymore. And we’re through.”
“Can I do anything to help?”
“Got a couple million bucks floating around? I could hire a slick law firm, even things up a little.”
He smiled ruefully. “Afraid not.”
“Then there’s not much you can do.”
They were quiet again. Izzy pointed into the darkness at the end of the street. They both watched as a possum trotted out of it, making its way along the sidewalk. It was big and brazen, unafraid of them.
“This place is nuts,” Izzy said when it had waddled away again.
“I want to help. I want to do something.”
“With what?”
“You said you have volunteers, right?”
“Sure.”
“So this is me volunteering.”
She finished the cigarette, carefully screwed it into the concrete, and dropped the end into the mouth of her empty bottle. “You’re crazy, John, you know that? But I’m not going to turn my nose up. You want to help, be at the office tomorrow at eight o’clock. There’s plenty of work to get done.”
Chapter Thirteen
THE MEETING with Pierce Morgan had been scheduled for nine in the evening. It was a drive of a couple of hours and, although Babineaux would have been quite content to have been driven there in the Bentley, using the time to catch up on his emails, he wanted to make an impression. So, instead, he had his driver take him to the Downtown Heliport south of Tremé.
The driver took him all the way out to the apron where his helicopter was waiting. He had purchased the AgustaWestland AW101 VVIP helicopter several months earlier. The company was the registered owner of the aircraft, but, in truth, it was Babineaux’s personal plaything. It had cost twenty-one million dollars, but he thought it was worth every last cent. They were typically sold to air forces who needed to fly heads of state and other VIPs, and they were equipped with that in mind. It had the largest cabin in its class, nearly three metres across, fitted with eight leather reclining chairs, enhanced air conditioning, video entertainment systems with personal monitors, a galley and a washroom. The cabin was divided at one end to accommodate Babineaux’s private suite with a separate air-stair entrance. There was a bed, a leather sofa, and a private en suite bathroom.
He circled the big helicopter, inspecting it carefully. He looked for signs of corrosion, stone damage to the tail rotor, or erosion beyond the bond line on the blades. He rapped each panel as he walked along, then rapped the surface of the tail and the stinger. He knew what those impacts should sound like, and he had always found it an accurate and safe way to be sure that all was well.
There was nothing to worry about tonight. The wiper blades and the windscreen had been washed, and all looked good. Babineaux opened the pilot-side door, climbed inside, put on his helmet, strapped himself into his seat and completed the rest of the preflight checks. The chopper had already been fuelled, with plenty of range to get him out to Lafayette and then back again. Babineaux started the engines, felt the vibration through his seat, then looked out to see the big blades slowly begin to turn.
He touched the mic so that it was suspended just above his throat, and keyed the channel.
“New Orleans Downtown, Westland Golf Echo Golf November Romeo, on west apron, with information Tango. Request clearance to lift off, departing to the west.”
“Westland, this is Downtown. Cleared for flight, sir.”
He repeated the clearance to confirm that he had received it, put the RPM into the normal operating range, and then increased the power. He added anti-torque pedal and added cyclic to counter the tendency of the rotor to roll. The helicopter grew light on its landing gear, and Babineaux could tell now that his control positions were correct. The chopper was stable, with no pitching or rolling, and the cyclic was properly centred. He raised the collective until the helicopter transitioned into the air. He lowered the nose by two degrees and felt the very slow acceleration. He hit his climb-out airspeed, started to gain altitude, and put the airport behind him.
Babineaux was religious in ensuring that he put in the requisite number of hours to keep his licence. He loved to fly. He had learned early, and being successful in business had meant that there were plenty of opportunities to go up.
He corrected his course to the west and settled in for the flight. Across the dusty mesa, the looming shadows grew. Above was a small silver moon and, as Babineaux looked down through the cockpit window, he thought of rattlesnakes going in pursuit of their quarries. Predators and prey. Life-and-death struggles locked in eternal embrace, a cycle that would repeat forever.
#
HE PILOTED the AgustaWestland from New Orleans to Lafayette, following the route of I-10. He passed over LaPlace, Gonzales and Prairieville, oases of light smothered by the overwhelming blackness of the wilderness around them. He approached the headquarters of Morgan Construction from the direction of Broussard to the south. It was a large, sprawling facility, with offices and warehouses, engineering sheds and rows of heavy machinery. He flew over it, circled back, and touched down in a wide field to the rear.
He was met there by one of Pierce Morgan’s personal staff. He showed him to a golf cart and drove him the short distance to the main building. The place was ostentatious, with sculpture and extensive grounds that must have cost thousands of dollars to irrigate. Morgan was worth millions, much more than Babineaux, but money was useless until it was put to proper use. Morgan Construction was traditional, slow, and lazy. In Babineaux’s opinion, it was much like its patron. He, on the other hand, represented hunger and drive. And the corporation that he led was nimble enough to pivot quickly when opportunities presented themselves, just like they had presented themselves in New Orleans.
The attendant delivered him to a conference room on the second floor. There was a wide floor-to-ceiling window that would have offered a sple
ndid vista over the gardens during daylight. Now, the trees and plants were picked out by discreet external lighting here and there.
“Where’s Mr. Morgan?” he asked.
“He’ll be a few minutes. Could I get you anything while you wait?”
“No,” Babineaux said.
It was a chump move, entirely predictable, but it annoyed him nonetheless. The message was obvious: I am in charge, I am the senior man, we will meet when I am good and ready. He had been waiting twenty minutes and was beginning to think that Morgan was going to stand him up entirely, and whether it might just be better to save what was left of his reputation and return to the helicopter and beat a retreat, when the door opened and Morgan bustled in.
“Sorry ’bout that,” the man said. He had a slow, deep southern drawl that Babineaux found particularly grating. “Heard you flew in?”
“That’s right.”
“You know, I used to be a flyer in the army. Vietnam? Hueys.”
Babineaux nodded amiably enough, but he knew that Morgan was blowing smoke up his ass. He had commissioned a two-hundred-page report on him, including his history and his family. The alcoholic daughter, the son who would have done time for statch rape without his old man paying the victim off. The investigator had looked for anything that might have been useful, any lever that he could have used, but he had struck empty. One benefit of the report, which he had studied again before taking off this evening, was that he didn’t believe that Morgan had ever flown a Huey. His war had been spent with the National Guard. By the time he deigned to go out to the front line, the shooting was practically over. Babineaux was proud of his service, and that kind of bullshit was the kind of thing that could make him hate a man.
But he smiled, took his hand, and said, “Thank you for seeing me, Pierce.”
“Always a pleasure. You want a drink?”
“No,” he said.
“Well, you won’t mind if I do? It’s cocktail hour around here.”
“How is Elizabeth?”
“She’s well. Sends her best wishes.”
Babineaux knew that was a lie, too. Elizabeth Morgan was a catty old bitch who had always made her disdain for him very obvious. The Morgans were the epitome of old money. The company had originally belonged to Pierce Morgan Senior and, before him, his father and then his father’s father. Four generations of Morgans had striven for nearly two hundred years to make the company what it was today. Elizabeth Morgan thought of Babineaux as a parvenu. New money. Distasteful, brash, vulgar. Babineaux was quite sure that her husband shared her opinion. It did not concern him. The opinions of others were irrelevant. The only score that was worth keeping was the size of your bank balance, and Babineaux knew that what he had planned would put the Pierce and Elizabeth Morgans of this world in his shadow once and for all.
There was another five minutes of inane small talk that Babineaux had to suffer through. Morgan was good at it, all that fancy chit-chat and hail-fellow-well-met, all that shit. It was a skill that Babineaux just did not have. He couldn’t butter people up, pretend to be their friend, when all he really wanted to do was take that glass, smash it, and grind the edge into his face. He did his best to conceal his impatience, nodded, said the right things, answered the pointless questions, but he couldn’t do it without giving himself away, and that made him even angrier. He was used to being in control and, here, he was not.
Finally, a member of the staff brought through a bottle of scotch and two glasses. Morgan sat down at one of the conference table chairs and indicated that Babineaux should do the same. He did. Morgan poured himself a large measure, offered the bottle to Babineaux, and shrugged with a gesture of helplessness when he turned it down again. He crossed his right leg over his left, and Babineaux’s eyes were drawn to the snakeskin cowboy boots that he was wearing beneath his suit. He had to stifle a snort of derision since he found it so ridiculous. All this southern bullshit. The man was a fool.
Morgan leant back in the chair and spread his hands. “So what can I do for you, partner, coming all this way at this time of night?”
“You can probably guess.”
“Well, then, yes, I probably could. You want to talk about the mall.”
“Yes. I was hoping we could put it all behind us.”
“Nothing to put behind us, Joel. Just a friendly bit of competition, that’s all it is.”
“Yes, of course, but it has the potential to become unpleasant. I’d much rather that was avoided.”
“Won’t get unpleasant on my account. May the best man win, that’s what my old man always used to say.”
He raised his glass and grinned at him, and Babineaux was suddenly fearful that Morgan had him at a disadvantage. Possibilities flashed through his mind. Was the mayor double-dealing? Playing one of them off against the other so that he could improve the terms of his own involvement? He felt his blood rise.
“I tell you what,” Morgan said, pretending to be magnanimous. “When we win the bid, and we will win the bid, there’s going to be a lot of smaller jobs that we’ll be looking to sub out. You want, I could make sure that you get those jobs.”
Babineaux couldn’t stop the moment of detestation that rippled across his face. He smiled it away, trying to hide it with bluster as he said that he’d better be getting back, but when he stood, his false leg clattered against the chair with a metallic ring and he grimaced, suddenly sure that he had betrayed himself as out of his depth. That thought made him angrier still, and it took supreme effort to stop his fingers from curling into a fist and great strain to ward away the urge to drive that fist into Morgan’s fat, pendulous, gloating face.
“You going?”
“I think so.”
“Shame.” Morgan stood, too. “When this is done, put behind us, you come over to the house. Elizabeth said she’d really love to see you again. We’ll go do some shooting, if, you know, you can.” He nodded his head down to the false leg.
Babineaux’s smile was a rictus and, as he took Morgan’s proffered hand, he could no longer restrain himself. He squeezed his fleshy, sausage-like fingers in his iron grip, grinned into Morgan’s face as the pain flickered there, held it a moment too long and then relinquished it.
“That would be wonderful,” he said.
#
HE GOT out of the golf cart and stalked across the field to the helicopter. He performed a second inspection, too careful to dismiss the possibility, however remote, that Morgan might have stooped to having a flunky sabotage it. Finding nothing, he got back into the cockpit, took out his phone, and called Jackson Dubois.
“Where are you?”
“In the French Quarter.”
“What are you doing?”
“Meeting the two men we spoke about.”
“Good. I want them on this right away. I’m not getting delayed a minute longer by that bitch.”
“You got it. And Morgan?”
He gritted his teeth, the fury threatening to spill out. “No,” he managed. “He wants to go toe to toe with me. If that’s what he wants… No one’s standing in my way, not any longer. Especially not him.”
“You ready to go?”
“Right now. Call everyone we need. Have them come in at midnight. All of them, no excuses.”
“You got it.”
“I’m going to grind that motherfucker into the dust.”
Chapter Fourteen
THE BAR was just off the French Quarter. It was a small room, a pine bar along one side and stools pressed up close against it. There were three booths in the wider part of the room, farthest away from the door, and it was in one of those that Jackson Dubois waited for the two men. He had no intention of letting them anywhere near the offices of Babineaux Properties. That would be reckless, and he was scrupulously discreet and careful. It would still have been possible for them to join the dots and work out who stood to benefit from the task that they were to be assigned, but, Dubois reminded himself, that would require a modicum of ingenuity, curi
osity, and intelligence. Those were not qualities of which either man could boast.
The two men who came into the bar were hoods, pure and simple. Hired muscle. They were blunt instruments, absent any kind of intelligence or subtlety. Dubois had no problem with that. A builder needed tools for every kind of work, and sometimes a sledgehammer was better than a knife. Their names were Melvin Fryatt and Chad Crossland. They were both ex-cons, recruited when they were so fresh out of Angola that it was a simple enough thing to buy their loyalty. He knew that they did crack and junk, and that didn’t concern him, either. If the police should ever look into him, and the two of them could be persuaded to be as foolish as to give evidence, any lawyer would be able to make them look very unreliable indeed. Of course, Dubois kept the amount of information that he provided them with to the bare minimum. Just enough for them to do what he wanted them to do. That usually meant names, addresses, and the numbers of bones he wanted them to break.
They sat down in the booth, their faces avid and expectant. Like dogs waiting to be thrown a bone.
Fryatt was the brightest of the two, and he usually did the talking for both of them. “Yes, Mr. Dubois?”
“I have something for you.”
“Music to my ears.”
“Have you heard of the Build It Up Foundation, Melvin?”
“Building them houses in the Lower Nine? Sure, I heard of them.”
“They’ve built a row of houses,” he specified. “But, unfortunately, they’ve built them on a piece of land that is inconvenient for my business. We’ve tried to buy the houses from the owners, at a very good price, but they don’t seem minded to sell. Can you see what I’d like you to do, boys?”
“Persuade ’em to sell,” Melvin said. “Sure. I get it.”
“Go down there, look like you’ve got a bit of authority behind you, and go and see the Bartholomews. They’re the rabble rousers. The girl can get the others to do what she tells them to do. Tell them that it would be in their best interests to sell. Tell them the offer on the table is a fair offer, and that it will be withdrawn in three days, and, if they want to take advantage of it, they need to accept it before then. Tell them the offer that will replace it will be much less generous. Tell them that they, and everyone else, are going to be moving out. One way or another. Tell them there’s a hard way and an easy way. The easy way is where they get paid a good price for their shacks. That’s much easier than the alternative. I don’t mind if you use your imagination there, fill in the blanks a little. Elaborate on that as you see fit.”
