by Mark Dawson
“You and your parents should probably move out for a while.”
“No,” she said. “No way.”
“Just for a few days.”
“They’ll never go for it, John. And I’m not going to start running.”
This isn’t finished. I can’t say that they won’t come back, and I might not be here next time. You know what happened with your father. He can be a hothead.”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“Just a few days. I think it’s best.”
“Maybe,” she conceded.
“You need money?”
“No,” she said, her eyes flashing. “I got it.”
“Okay.”
She paused for a minute, her mood gradually returning. She looked out at the wild jungle that had invaded the lot and shook her head.
“We’ve been putting this one off. It’s bad.”
“And you’re not joining us?”
“It’s tempting”—she grinned—“but I’ve got preparation to do.”
“For what?”
“Court. I’ve got a hearing tomorrow.”
He fumbled for the explanation that she had given him. “Eminent—?”
“Domain. Trying to clear us off the land. They’ve got to argue against the Fifth Amendment, but they’ve got precedent on their side. It’ll probably come down to a fight about how much compensation we’re due, but I don’t want compensation. None of us want to go. I’m just fighting it off as long as I can. Maybe something will happen in the meantime.”
#
MILTON AND the others started to work, trying to get as much done before the brutal sun had risen too far into the sky. They had only been working for fifteen minutes when two police cars turned the corner and rolled up to a halt next to them. There were three officers in one car and two in the other. Milton drove the blade of his shovel into the tilled earth and wiped the sweat from his eyes. He watched as they consulted on the sidewalk. Izzy came out of the office and watched them, too, meeting them halfway as they walked to the lot.
“What’s the matter, officer?”
“Are you in charge here?”
“Yes.”
“What’s your name, ma’am?”
“Isadora Bartholomew. Who are you?”
“Detective Peacock. NOPD.”
“What do you want?”
“We heard that you’ve got illegal migrants on this project. Know anything about that?”
“No,” Isadora said, but Milton could tell in the stiffening of her shoulders that she was concerned.
“You have a Pedro Mendoza here?”
“Yes,” she said. She looked across at the foreman. Milton did, too. Pedro looked back at the officer defiantly.
“You know that Señor Mendoza has been deported from the United States three times? You know that he has a criminal record? He was convicted in 1999 for possession of cocaine in Harris County, Texas. You know that, Miss Bartholomew?”
“That’s not true!” Pedro said, his spontaneous vehemence enough for Milton to instinctively believe him.
“How about Hector Rivas? He work on your crew?”
“Sure.”
“Señor Rivas has previously served sixteen months for illegal reentry into the United States.”
The other policemen had moved around until they were behind them. Now, two men stepped up to Pedro and another two moved up behind Hector. They took out handcuffs.
“This isn’t necessary,” Izzy protested.
“It’s not true,” Pedro pleaded with her, turning back to the policeman and then back to Izzy again. “I don’t know what he’s talking about.”
Milton could feel the atmosphere changing. There had been confusion, but, now that the police had laid out the reason for their visit, there was an undercurrent of incipient violence. The source of the threat wasn’t the workers, it was the police. Hands had been laid upon the handles of batons and rested against the butts of service pistols. It looked as if they were spoiling for a fight.
The officer turned back to Izzy. “Did you verify their immigration papers, ma’am?”
“Of course.”
“Just not very well.”
“They were checked.”
Milton could see that Izzy’s temper was flaring. He thought that he knew her well enough by now to know that she would have been diligent about things like that. He could see what she was thinking.
She was thinking that this was a fix-up.
He was thinking the same thing.
“I’m afraid that’s something you’re going to have to argue later. You’re under arrest, too, Miss Bartholomew.”
Izzy’s temper boiled over, her eyes flashing with anger. One of the officers grasped her shoulder and she turned in his direction, her hand raised. Milton reached across and caught her by the wrist, holding it gently but firmly enough that she couldn’t strike anyone.
“Take it easy,” he told her quietly.
“They’re setting us up!”
“Then you’ll be out in no time.”
“Take your hands off her, sir,” the cop said.
Milton squeezed her wrist and released it.
Peacock started to read the Miranda warning.
“What if I’m not out?” she said. “I’ve got to get to court.”
The officer behind her pushed her arms down behind her back and fastened a cuff around her right wrist. “Take it easy,” he said.
“Get off me!” she protested, trying to free her left arm.
“Izzy,” Milton said. “Don’t make it worse.”
She looked at him, held his eye, and he watched as she let the fight drain out of her. She was pushed across the sidewalk to the patrol car, the officer pressing down on her head and manoeuvring her into the back.
Milton followed.
“Stay back, sir,” Peacock said.
“I’ll get you out,” he called.
The officer turned to him. “And who are you?”
“John Smith.”
“You want to come downtown, too?”
Milton backed away.
The officer pumped out his chest. “Thought not.”
Milton watched impotently as the doors of the patrol cars were slammed shut. Pedro was glaring straight ahead. Hector looked as if he was fighting tears. Izzy was looking right at him.
“Help,” she mouthed through the glass.
Chapter Twenty-Six
MILTON RAN to his car and followed the two police cruisers back into town. They headed west, crossed the bridge, and then turned onto St. Claude Avenue and, finally, Burgundy Street. The precinct house was a squat, two-storey building, with cruisers parked outside and a phalanx of security cameras arrayed across the whitewashed walls. The windows were behind bars, and the yard at the side was protected by a fence topped with rolls of razor wire.
He found a space to park a block away and jogged back.
The precinct house had previously been a post office, and it still retained reminders of its previous use. Antique metal letters over the reception window advertised parcel post services and stamps, and post office boxes lined one wall in the lobby. A plaque inside the door commemorated the building’s completion during the term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The waiting room was arranged before a counter that was protected by a screen of Plexiglas. There were rows of chairs bolted to the floor, and the people in the chairs—some lounging, others fidgeting impatiently—gave the place an uncomfortable, antic atmosphere.
Milton went up to the window. There was a uniformed female officer behind the counter. She looked up at him and then looked down again, making no effort to communicate with him. Milton rested his hands on the counter and waited her out. Eventually, she looked back up at him with a lazy annoyance.
“Yes?”
“A friend of mine was brought here.”
“Lot of people get brought here, sir.”
“I want to know what’s happening.”
“Name?”
“
Isadora Bartholomew.”
“Your name?”
“John Smith.”
She swivelled to tap the details into her computer.
“Miss?” Milton said when she didn’t turn back.
The woman didn’t look at him. “She’s being booked, Mr. Smith.”
“When will she—”
“Take a seat, Mr. Smith,” she spoke over him. “When I hear what’s happening with her, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
“But what does that—”
“Take a seat, please, sir. There’s nothing I can do until I hear from the back.”
#
IT TURNED out that the first woman was incompetent or lying, or both. Milton waited two hours and, when nothing happened, he went back up to the window. The woman had been replaced by a male officer and, despite being equally unhelpful, when Milton asked what was happening to Izzy, he reported that she was being detained prior to being booked. He protested, was sent back to wait, and then, when he went back for a third time an hour later, he was told by a third officer that Izzy’s arraignment had been set for three days’ time. In the interim, she was being released on her own recognisance. Milton was about to ask what that meant when a door at the far end of the room opened and Izzy appeared through it.
He hurried across.
“Are you all right?”
She glared straight ahead, the muscles in her face rigid. “What time is it?”
“Just past midday.”
“Shit.”
“What?”
“Shit, John. I’ve got to be in court in two hours. If I’m not there, they’ll strike out the case. Shit.”
“What do you need?”
“To change clothes, to get my stuff. A shower. Shit, shit, shit. I’m never going to be there in time.”
“Yes, you will,” Milton said. “Come on. I’ll drive you.”
#
MILTON DROVE quickly, but carefully. It was obvious that the campaign against Izzy and the charity was being ratcheted up: the goons that had been sent to scare them, the baseless arrests.
“I knew the politicians were involved,” Izzy said with a heavy frown. “I guess I can add the police to that, too.”
“Why didn’t they keep you in until after the hearing?”
“Because I called my lawyer and she threatened to bring a writ of habeas corpus.”
“Meaning?”
“They have to take me to a judge and explain why it’s important that I’m detained without being booked. They know the charges are bogus. A judge would’ve seen right through it, provided they don’t have tame judges, too, and, now I come to think about that—”
“What about the others?”
She looked troubled. “I told her that she had to get me out first. I can’t miss this hearing. Hector and Pedro are next. They’ll be out today.”
Milton kept his eye on the mirrors as she spoke. They had been absorbed into a steady flow of traffic on the bridge, but there was nothing about any of the cars behind them that made him unduly concerned that they were being followed. That didn’t mean that they were alone, of course. A good tail would be impossible to spot in heavy traffic, even for him. To be sure, and to speed up the last leg of the journey back to the house, Milton swung off Highway 39 and onto the grid of streets to the north. Nothing turned off with them. Milton pressed down on the gas and accelerated to the east and Salvation Row.
He glanced across at Izzy. Her face was still blackened with anger. “When the two men came to the house, what did they say about going to court?”
“I told you, John.”
“Tell me again.”
“That I shouldn’t go. That it wasn’t safe for me.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing specific. You think they were serious?”
“Come on, Izzy. Look at what’s happening. They came around, beat your father, and then they came back just like they said they would. The day after that, you’re arrested on trumped-up charges and put in jail. So, do I think they’re serious? Yes, I do. I’m sure of it. And we have to act accordingly.”
“I’m not letting them scare me off.”
“And I’m not suggesting that you do. We just need to proceed with caution.”
“So?”
“So I’m going to stay with you today.”
She swivelled in the seat so that she could look across the cabin at him. “No,” she said. “You’re not.”
“What’s the matter?”
“How much of what you’ve told me is true?”
“Izzy—”
“You better tell me who you really are.”
“A friend.”
She shook her head. “No. That’s not good enough. I need to know what you do.”
“Izzy—”
“The way you dealt with those two guys. I spoke to Vinnie. He told me what you did. How you took them both out. He said that you’ve got to be police or something like that.”
“I’m not police.”
“Okay, you’re not police. So what are you? You either tell me, or I go to court on my own.”
She was angry from what had happened to her, and he could see that the anger could very quickly be turned onto him if she thought that he was feeding her a line. He gripped the wheel a little tighter, looked dead ahead and clenched his teeth. “All right. I used to be a soldier.”
“What kind of soldier?”
“British Special Forces.”
“What—?”
“Have you heard of the SAS?”
“Like Delta?”
“Sort of like that.”
“You saw action?”
He nodded. “I served for twenty years before I got out.”
“And since then?”
He was convinced that she would see through his act, the lies that he was telling by omission. “I’ve been drifting around. I have money, I don’t need to work. I have no ties, no one to be responsible for. I’ve just been enjoying life. Seeing the world. I saw you on the TV, like I said. I thought you could do with some help.”
He could see her reflection in the windshield, faint in the daylight. And he could see that she was still staring at him, unsatisfied.
“What were you doing in New Orleans before? When we met, during Katrina?”
“Business.”
“Army business?”
“Yes.”
“Your friend? Mr. Penn?”
“He was working with me.”
“Jesus, John. You lied to me.”
“We were on an anti-terrorist operation. He was in pursuit of the targets. They rammed him. It wasn’t an accident.”
There was only so much that he could tell her, of course, and that would have to be enough.
She repeated it, “You lied.”
“How could I tell you? It was all classified. It’s still classified.”
She sighed. “I don’t know, John.”
“That’ll have to do, Izzy. I can’t say any more than that.”
“You lied. To me and my family.”
He didn’t let it pass a third time. “No, I didn’t. I was vague. I said that I was on business, and I was. I just didn’t say what my business was.”
“You know what I mean. It’s the same thing.”
“If you really think that, then I’m very sorry. But I’m here now. And I want to help. I can help.” He turned to glance at her. “You have to trust me, Izzy. I know that you’re not going to back down, and I know that they’re serious. You need someone to make sure they can’t get to you or to your family. And I can do that.”
“Is there anything else? Anything at all?”
He would be truthful, right up to the point where he couldn’t be. “There’s one more thing. My name isn’t Smith. It’s Milton.”
“You’re joking?”
“No.”
“It is John, though? Or isn’t it? Is it something else?”
“It’s John.”
“Well, that’s somethin
g, I guess.”
She turned away from him and stared out of the window. He took another quick glance and watched the muscles in her jaw as they clenched and unclenched. She was working out whether she could trust him. Whether she wanted to trust him.
“All right,” she said. “But just so we’re straight from now on, no secrets and no lies. Okay?”
“Okay,” Milton said.
No secrets. No lies. That was a tall order, but, he determined, he would be as true to her as he could.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
JACKSON DUBOIS would much rather not have been involved, but Melvin and Chad had made a mess of a simple task before, and he didn’t want to take the chance that they would err for a second time. He had received a telephone call from Chalcroft’s man in the NOPD earlier that morning to tell him that Isadora Bartholomew had been released. That was an unfortunate development. Dubois had rather hoped that Isadora would be detained a little longer, preferably long enough for the lawyers to strike out her case against the city’s eminent domain proceedings. That hadn’t happened. Her preparation would have been disrupted, and that was good, but Joel had been very clear that the case could not be allowed to drag out. The odds of ensuring that didn’t happen were much better if she wasn’t there at all.
Getting the mayor to involve the police was supposed to have solved things.
It hadn’t.
Annoying, but not irretrievable.
Dubois liked to be prepared.
There was always a Plan B.
He was going to have to change things a little.
His car was parked alongside the Industrial Canal, the watercourse that marked the western boundary of the Lower Ninth. The canal had been one of the first to be breached during the hurricane, pouring its waters into the streets around and about. The Army Corps of Engineers had restored the levee, but Dubois couldn’t help but think that what they had done could only ever be a Band-Aid. He would not have chosen to build a multimillion-dollar development on land that was forever at risk of flooding, but, he reminded himself, Joel had found his success by taking calculated gambles like this. He knew what he was doing, had demonstrated that over the course of his career a hundred times. Dubois wasn’t going to doubt him.
Dubois looked into the rear-view mirror as Melvin Fryatt’s Lexus pulled up behind him. He pressed his two-hundred-dollar sunglasses onto his face, opened the car, and stepped out into the broiling sun.
